Lessons From BP: It Pays To Pollute

I received this information a while ago and apologies in advance, as I don’t know where it came from. What is appalling is how BP made money off the gulf spill disaster. In fact, it was just a blip to BP and of no consequence, no remorse and no incentive to change.. as they (BP) just continues to go on printing money. It is sad.. even more sad, is this will not be the last oil spill and I dare say did nothing to decrease our addiction to oil.

On April 20 2010,  The largest ocean disaster and oil spill in the world via BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded. 87 days later it was finally capped.

$10 billion=  BP oil spill to cost U.S. taxpayer  yet- BP said it planned to offset the entire cost of its Gulf of Mexico oil spill against its tax bill, reducing future contributions to U.S. tax coffers by almost $10 billion. In other words, the whole oil spill was a tax write off, against profits, which reduced the amount of taxes BP paid. 

BP reportedly paid 40 Billion for clean up but 80% of the total payments qualify as “ordinary and necessary business costs,”

BP MADE /Earned at least $10 billion from the disaster.

The Results 

• BP’s oil spill led to at least 4.9 million barrels of oil being injected into the Gulf of Mexico.
• 6,000 total miles of coastline have been affected, including the coasts of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida.
• The initial oil rig explosion killed 11 people and injured 17 others.
• Over 8,000 animals (birds, turtles, mammals) were reported dead just 6 months after the spill, including many that were already on the endangered species list.
• Over 700,000 birds, which included more than 100 species, were killed.
• The blowout killed or injured more than 25,000 dolphins and whales and tens of thousands of sea turtles
• Over 30,000 people responded to the spill in the Gulf Coast working to collect oil, clean up beaches, take care of animals and perform various other duties. As of 2012, the Gulf was still polluted with oil.

Animals 

• Sick Dolphins – As part of the official investigation into impacts of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, a team of scientists did comprehensive physicals on dolphins in Barataria Bay in 2011, a heavily-oiled area of the Louisiana coast. Nearly half the dolphins studied were very ill; 17 percent of the dolphins were not expected to survive.
• Sea Turtles Stranding at 5x Normal Rates – Data from the Sea Turtle Stranding and Salvage Network indicates that between 1986 and 2009, an average of nearly 100 sea turtles were found stranded annually in the oil spill area. Since the spill, each year roughly 500 sea turtles have been found stranded, most of which were the very endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtles.
• Unbalanced Food Web – The Gulf oil disaster hit at the peak breeding season for many species of fish and wildlife. The oil’s toxicity may have hit egg and larval organisms immediately, diminishing or even wiping out those age classes. Without these generations, population dips and cascading food web effects may become evident in the years ahead.
• Decreased Fish and Wildlife Populations – Scientists will be watching fluctuations in wildlife populations for years to come. It wasn’t until four years after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil disaster that the herring population collapsed. Twenty years later, it is still has not recovered.
• Decline in Recreation – The Gulf Coast states rely heavily on commercial fishing and outdoor recreation to sustain their local economies. According to NOAA, commercial fisheries brought in $659 million in shellfish and finfish in 2008, and just over 3 million people took recreational fishing trips in the Gulf that year. After the spill, recreational fishing from the Atchafalaya Delta to Mobile Bay was shut down from May to August, and state park closures dealt a serious blow to the parks’ summer revenue.

I don’t know why this got me so much.. but if you think this is unfair.. Tell the Department of Justice to deny BP tax deductions for its remaining payments to address the 2010 Gulf Coast disaster.

Resources

• Environment California 
• Deepwater Horizon: An Ongoing Environmental Disaster, Environment America.
• Cronin Fisk, Margaret and Laurel Brubaker Calkins. “BP Settlement Seen as Probable Outcome of Spill Penalty Trial,” Bloomberg Business, January 19, 2015.
• Deepwater Horizon: An Ongoing Environmental Disaster, Environment America.
• Cohen, Patricia. “When Company Is Fined, Taxpayers Often Share 
• Do Something 

Today 

• BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill 5 years later 
• BP Oil Spill Concerns For Long Term Health of Workers 4 years Later 
• Video on Gulf Spill Damage 2010 - 2015

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