Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
This episode of Swindled may contain graphic descriptions or audio recordings of disturbing events which may not be suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised.
In Alaska, the pipeline has been repaired. Oil is expected to flow again today. But that crack that developed Sunday allowed 1,500 barrels of crude oil to escape. 700 barrels recovered. And in the Gulf of Mexico, oil workers are trying to handle a much larger oil spill. A burning offshore oil well is dumping 30,000 barrels of crude each day into the Gulf. In the early hours of June 3rd, 1979, a catastrophe occurred in the Gulf of Mexico.
While Pemex, the Mexican government-owned petroleum company, was drilling an exploratory oil well named the Ixtoc 1 about 50 miles from the northwestern shore of the Yucatan Peninsula, a burst of natural gas bubbled to the surface through the pipeline, sending the drilling mud, which is meant to counterbalance such pressures, 20 feet into the air above the offshore rig.
Workers attempted to sever the pipe and seal the well by activating the blowout preventer, the multi-ton stack of valves and tubes that sits atop deep water wells to prevent the uncontrolled release of oil and gas that can lead to such accidents. But that equipment had failed, and at 3:30 that morning, fumes from the emanating oil and gas made contact with the pump motors on the rig and ignited. The entire drilling platform became engulfed in flames.
The drilling tower collapsed as the crew abandoned ship. Thankfully, everyone made it out alive, but crude oil was spewing from the head of the blown-out well 150 feet below the surface at an estimated rate of more than 1,800,000 gallons per day.
Initially, news of the blowout at the Ixtoc Well was music to the ears of the oil industry executives. A gusher that violent was usually indicative of a vast, untapped pocket of black gold, the kind of prospect that requires vast resources to locate and tap, but can result in millions, maybe billions of dollars in profit after it's sucked dry. But within days, those crooked smiles were wiped clean from the flappy jowls of the greedy businessmen.
It had become apparent that the containment crews were having little success in stopping the well from leaking. In less than five days, more than six million gallons of crude oil had poured into the Gulf. Concerns were growing over the environmental impact of the spill and the likelihood that it would reach American shores. The beaches would be painted black, they worried. Generations of animals would die. People would lose their jobs. None of those things were good for business. Think about the stock market for a second, would you?
But there was no stopping it. The Ixtoc was angry. Everyone watched in horror as the oil spread out, quote, like a blanket of reddish-brown goo over a 40,000 square mile area in the Bay of Campeche, an area roughly equivalent to the size of Iceland. Campeche Bay, Gulf of Mexico, June 3rd, 1979. An offshore oil well blows out.
The rig, owned by Pemex, Mexico's state-run petroleum operation, is shown here moments after the blowout. Experts and equipment are rushed to the site to try to cap the runaway well and contain the huge oil slick. But efforts to plug the well, spewing as much as 20,000 barrels of oil a day, prove unsuccessful. Slowly, steadily, and relentlessly,
the spill migrates northward and finally comes ashore on the Texas coast at South Padre Island. Cleanup operations are begun, but marine biologists fear that the area's problems are far from over and that the fish, lobster, shrimp, and oyster-rich Gulf coastal waters have been contaminated indefinitely.
In the following days, after an unsuccessful attempt to manually operate the blowout preventer, PIMEX tried clogging the leaking pipe with small balls made of lead and steel in a procedure known as a "junk shot," but that didn't work, and neither did the top kill procedure, which involved pumping the pipes with cement and salt water. These efforts did contribute to a reduced rate of oil flow from the well, but it was still leaking. 10,000 barrels per day. Not ideal.
Pim-X then tried to cover the Ixtoc with a metal dome-like structure to re-harness control.
Of course, they also had to give it a cute nickname. Mexican officials are calling it Operation Sombrero. Workers have been trying since the weekend to put a 300-ton steel cone over the mouth of the runaway well. Officials say once in place, the cone will collect up to 90% of the crude oil, which has been gushing from the well for more than three and a half months. From 10,000 to 30,000 barrels a day have flowed into the Bay of Campeche and the Gulf of Mexico.
Operation Sombrero was also unsuccessful. Three and a half months had passed since the initial accident and the Ixtoc continued to gush while one team struggled to contain the release of oil from the well on the sea floor. Another team struggled to contain the millions of gallons of oil that had already been released into the ocean. PIMEX cleanup operation attacked the spill from the air, land, and water.
Airplanes are to be used to drop chemicals on the oil, but there is a shortage of aviation fuel down there. The workers are also putting up a mile-long boom. They're putting it into place. They're trying to contain the oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico. Volunteers and workers on the coastline collected oil using nothing but a pair of boots, a spade, and a plastic bag. Skimming vessels maneuvered around the water to try and absorb and remove the oil floating in the gulf.
Also, thousands of feet of oil boom were deployed to contain the spill and prevent it from spreading, while airplanes released a chemical dispersant called corexic onto the slicks from above. On contact with the corexic or any dispersant, oil that would otherwise float on the surface of the water was broken down into smaller droplets that more readily mix with the water.
In theory, this allows the oil to be more rapidly degraded by bacteria and prevents it from accumulating on beaches and in marshes. But in reality, dispersants do not reduce the amount of oil entering the environment. It just hides the effects of the spill underwater, like slathering makeup over a black eye on the oil industry, and it comes at a cost.
According to the Center for Biological Diversity, dispersants and dispersed oil have shown to have significant negative impacts on marine life, ranging from fish to corals to turtles and birds. And there's evidence that these chemical dispersants pose significant health risks to humans as well. In the late 80s, dispersants were identified as the primary suspect as to why so many cleanup workers of the Exxon Valdez spill later found themselves pissing blood.
But back in the Ixtoc days, even the Environmental Protection Agency admitted that the long-term effects of chemical dispersants were unknown. This should be the high season for tourists. Usually the town is filled with vacationers getting in that last trip before the fall, but all the publicity has resulted in many people canceling their plans. Scenes of black beaches on network newscasts have been powerful persuaders.
In addition to being an ecological disaster, the Ixtoc oil spill was also an economic disaster for those that worked in the tourism, hospitality, and fishing industries on the Mexican and Texan coasts. In Texas alone, almost 170 miles of beaches were coated in the Ixtoc oil.
According to the Pioneer Press, on South Padre Island, hotels had installed special mats outside along with signs pleading with guests to clean their feet rather than track tar into their rooms.
How could things get any worse? Thick oil and tarball stained Galveston beaches today and more is expected during the next several days. The oil is coming from the tank of Burma Agate which continues to burn and spill oil into the Gulf. This morning another body was found bringing the total number of dead to 11 and 21 are still missing.
On the morning of November 1st, 1979, six months into the Ixtoc cleanup, which was still spearing up to 10,000 barrels a day into the southern part of the Gulf of Mexico, an outbound cargo ship collided with an inbound oil tanker named the Burma Agate just outside the entrance to Galveston Bay in the northern part of the Gulf of Mexico.
The tanker which was transporting 400,000 barrels of Nigerian oil caught fire instantaneously and burned for almost 70 days. 33 of the Burma Agate's 37 crew members were killed in the accident. Another 2.6 million gallons of oil were spilled into the Gulf. Meanwhile, PIMEX had just completed drilling the first relief well near the Ixtoc for the purpose of lowering the pressure of the blowout by diverting the oil flow into waiting tanker ships.
Despite this interception, the Ixtoc continued to leak for another three months until a second relief well was completed. Two relief wells are still being drilled to relieve pressure on the blown out well so it eventually can be capped. The Ixtoc 1 well was finally capped on March 23, 1980. It had leaked for 297 days straight. In total, almost 140 million gallons of oil was spilled into the Gulf of Mexico.
That's almost 14 times the amount that would dump from the Exxon Valdez incident near Alaska nine years later. Mexican officials estimate that more than 70% of the Ixtoc oil either evaporated or sank to the sea floor. Pemex spent $100 million to clean up the spill and not a dime more.
since Pemex was a state-owned company. It was able to avoid most American compensation claims by asserting sovereign immunity. It also helped that the governor of Texas at the time, Bill Clements, encouraged the people of his state to uphold a good neighbor policy and refrain from suing the Mexican government at all. He told a newspaper, "...it's a big to-do about nothing. So far we're really not hurt, and I want to emphasize that."
There are a lot of people out on the beaches. They're enjoying the beaches and the environment is not really suffering at this point. What has happened to date, we can easily clean up. It should be noted that Texas Governor Bill Clements was the founder of a company called Sedco, a company that coincidentally owned the semi-submersible drilling rig involved in the blowout of the Ixtoc Well. But don't worry, that's not a conflict of interest or anything.
Governor Clements placed all of his assets in a blind trust when he took the oath of office. Nothing to see here. Zetko would eventually agree to pay the US Justice Department $2 million for clean-up costs, as well as an additional $2.14 million to be split amongst fishermen, boat owners, property owners, hotels, motels, and others. Zero dollars were allocated for research purposes. Zero. Not from the US, nor from Mexico. So that research was never done.
The immediate and long-term effects of the massive Ixtoc oil spill will never be fully understood. Of course, studies conducted in the area have since found that the Ixtoc spill acutely affected the species and ecosystems in the Bay of Campeche. In parts, you can tell just by looking at it. Some species have rebounded, others shriveled up and died forever, but maybe one day those we lost will become crude oil too.
for which to be eventually sucked from the earth, to be refined and molded, so to ultimately revisit us in the form of a plastic drinking straw, only to be used and abused and discarded into the ocean, where it will float to its final resting place, lodged inside the throat of an endangered sea turtle. Maybe one day that sea turtle will become crude oil too.
while the straw continues on its way, drifting through the ocean. A spiritual journey with its friends to the great garbage patch in the Pacific. It's the natural cycle of life. Everything repeats, and nothing is ever learned. That much became obvious 31 years after the Ixtoc spill.
when the same critical piece of safety equipment failed on an offshore drilling rig, resulting in an explosion in the Gulf of Mexico to send the crew overboard with millions of gallons of oil into the sea. Disaster deja vu on this episode of Swindled.
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We get a 360 degree view here. This large house that we're looking at right here, this large module is the BOP house, blowout preventer house, when we pull the blowout preventer up from the bottom, store it in there. Looks like the Starship Enterprise. So we have our navigation console. We have our dynamic positioning console when we're staying on location. This is our subsea control panel.
Each one of those white identification tags with a lighted button behind it represents a piece of equipment on the blowout preventer which sits on the subsea floor. This is used to divert or shut down any blowouts that come from the pressure of the well if we strike oil or water or gas. This is the well we're drilling for BP.
Early in the day on Tuesday, April 20th, 2010, the captain of the Deepwater Horizon welcomed two executives from the British multinational oil and gas company BP aboard the massive 250 by 400 foot three-level offshore drilling rig to celebrate seven years of operation without a serious accident. In the industry, the Deepwater Horizon had earned a reputation for being safe and lucky.
and the rig was just days away from another successful and profitable mission, everyone assumed. In recent years, BP had been leasing the lucky rig from Transocean, formerly known as CEDCO, to drill oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico. The latest well, the Macondo, was drilled more than 18,000 feet into the sea floor, which set 5,000 feet below sea level, 40 miles off the coast of Louisiana.
When the well bore was complete, the Deepwater Horizon would plug and suspend it to let a subsea producer later harvest the crude. But not everything had gone as planned. In fact, the Deepwater Horizon had not even planned to drill on the Macondo Prospect at all. Another semi-submersible rig named the Transocean Marianas had begun drilling in October 2009, but had to be replaced after it was severely damaged by Hurricane Ida.
The Macondo well was 43 days over schedule and $21 million over budget by the time the drilling project neared completion. In an email to a colleague a week earlier, Brian Morrill, a BP drilling engineer, described the Macondo as, quote, a nightmare well which has everyone all over the place. Around 9.47 p.m. on that fateful day, workers on the Deepwater Horizon reported hearing a sudden hiss.
Unbeknownst to everyone on board, high-pressure methane gas from the well had expanded in the marine riser, blanketing the rig in a matter of minutes. There were no alarms, no warning signs, just a noxious odor, a foul taste, and the unnerving visual of drilling mud being forcefully reversed out of the derrick like a volcano. Then the entire rig started shaking. The computer screens flashed warnings, and then boom.
A deafening explosion on the drilling floor, 11 members of the 126-member crew were killed almost instantly, including Dale Burkeen, a 37-year-old crane operator from Mississippi who was blown completely off the catwalk where he had taken cover. His head hit the railing on the way down before smashing into the deck 50 feet below.
Other workers suffered burns, cuts, bruises, and broken bones from the series of detonations that followed, when the flames from the well mixed with the preserved tanks of helicopter and diesel fuel. Those that worked closest to the drill never stood a chance, some as young as 22 years old. Luckily, much of the crew, like 23-year-old Andrea Fleitas, one of very few women on board, were far enough away from the blast to remain unharmed.
She watched as men carried their injured colleagues through the openings in the barracks where the steel doors had been blown off their hinges. They were slipping in the mud and screaming and dodging falling debris. Andrea saw the flames shooting 250 feet into the air out of the well hole like the gates of hell had just opened. Before the power went out, she saw equipment melt and fold onto itself like a piece of notebook paper.
So Andrea Fleitas yelled a distress signal onto the radio to alert the U.S. Coast Guard, who would not arrive for at least half an hour. The captain of the Deepwater Horizon reportedly reprimanded Andrea for making that call for not having the authority to do so. But somebody had to do something. There was mass confusion all around. We're talking about a lot of noise, a lot of fire, a tremendous amount of heat, you know, people panicking, and, you know, the fear of losing your life.
Eventually, Mayday calls went out over the Deepwater Horizon's loudspeaker. The orders were to meet at the lifeboats, prepared to abandon ship. But two of the rig's four lifeboats were inaccessible behind the towering inferno. Another one had already been lowered to the water at three-quarters capacity.
Panic set in as those left behind did the math in their heads to see if there was enough room to fit everybody in the remaining vessel. A handful must have not liked their chances. They started getting mayday calls out and assembling at the must station, and that's when I seen the first of three or four people jump to the water from the rig. In a last-ditch effort to save their own lives, several of the crew leapt from the rig 75 feet down into the aquatic abyss.
Once they surfaced, they began swimming towards the Bankston supply ship that was usually tethered to the rig. The Bankston had pulled away from the rig as soon as the mud landed on their deck. Using a small rescue boat, the survivors were retrieved and brought on board.
One of the workers plucked from the water was Andrea Fleitas. She and several other passengers had bailed from the second lifeboat when they realized it wasn't moving. It wasn't until the Bankston rescue crew tried towing the lifeboat away that the remaining passengers realized it was still attached to the rig by rope. After the line was severed, all 115 surviving crew members of the Deepwater Horizon were rescued, including 17 who were seriously injured.
We've accounted for 115 personnel and currently have 11 missing and the search and rescue efforts as Mary said are still ongoing.
We're making every effort to inform the families of the missing and the injured. There were 17 people that were injured and airlifted to hospitals here in Louisiana. We do not know whether the rig will be a total loss or not until we put the fire out and we salvage the rig and we get it inspected. A little more than 24 hours later, at 10:21 a.m. on April 22, 2010,
The fire on the deep water horizon was extinguished when it sank to the bottom of the ocean.
Have information now that this rig has gone under? It has gone under the surface at about 10:21 this morning. A Coast Guard got word that the vessel has gone under. And just recently we got word that the fire visibly has gone out. What's the implication now of that having gone under? We've seen it burn, which means some petroleum was burning, natural gas or oil. At this point, is that oil in danger now of escaping into the sea? That is correct.
The surviving crew watched the Deepwater Horizon burn for hours from the deck of the Bankston where they were held for almost an entire day with no contact to the outside world. Those that weren't airlifted to the hospital were eventually taken to shore where drug tests and porta-potties waited for them. Brig worker Steven Davis told the Guardian that from there, the crew was given a change of clothing and a box of sandwiches and taken to a hotel in Kenner, Louisiana.
They were told they were not allowed to leave until they signed a pre-printed waiver form that contained the following statements: "I was not a witness to the incident requiring the evacuation and have no first-hand or personal knowledge regarding the incident" and "I was not injured as a result of the incident or evacuation." Most of the workers signed the form. They had been awake for over 50 hours and just wanted to go home.
They said there's 94 people on this boat. Nobody's getting off until I get one of these from everybody. I don't know what everything it said. I don't know at the top. It said I and then had a space for your name. It said something about like it was I freely volunteer this information. And then it's a bunch of blank lines front and back. And then at the bottom it says something about like this can be used as evidence and coordinate on it.
While BP and Transocean attempted to legally wash the blood off their hands on land, back out on the Gulf it was becoming more readily apparent that they were neck deep in loose oil as well. The Coast Guard reported that two attempts to actuate the blowout preventer using a remote operated underwater vehicle were ineffective due to a hydraulic leak on the valve, which meant that the well had never been sealed. It was a possibility that oil had been spewing underwater for over a day
Those suspicions were confirmed using the cameras on the ROV, but BP refused to share the video. On April 24th, 2010, BP reported that oil was, in fact, leaking from the well at a rate of 1,000 barrels per day. That's about 42,000 gallons.
The next day, a rainbow-colored sheen covered 580 square miles just south of the Mississippi and Alabama coastlines. Oil was also spotted 35 miles southeast of Louisiana. BP later increased its estimate to 5,000 barrels a day.
A unified command team consisting of officials from BP, Transocean, the US Coast Guard and numerous federal agencies including the EPA, Centers for Disease Control, OSHA and the Minerals Management Service was set up to coordinate the response and contain the spill.
Four-star Admiral Thad Allen served as the National Incident Commander. We knew this was catastrophic from the beginning when the oil rig exploded and caught on fire. I've said time and time again that nothing good happens when oil is on the water, and we're making no allusions that this is anything other than a catastrophe, and we're addressing it as such. One of the first actions taken by the response team was to set up booms to prevent the oil from washing ashore.
Just like the Ixtoc spill 31 years earlier, they tried burning it, skimming it, dispensing it, and clogging the hole with debris. They even tried applying a 125-ton containment dome over the well, reminiscent of the Ixtoc Sombrero project. This time the dome was called a "top hat."
so delightfully British. So what we did last night was we lowered the dome. The dome had to be lowered quite carefully over the seabed. We actually were successful in placing it over the top of the leak site. But these gas hydrates are actually like crystals, like ice crystals. But of course they're lighter than water. What they did is formed on the inside of the dome, which tried to make the dome buoyant. And it also plugged up the top of the dome where the oil would come out of.
Also reminiscent of the Ixtoc, none of these methods proved very effective. Containment was further complicated by the fact that the Macondo well was 5,000 feet below the surface. Nothing like this had ever been tried in such deep water. Containing the oil spill was stretching humanity's technological and engineering capabilities to the limit. Relief wells were still months away. All the while, the oil continued to flow.
On April 29, 2010, Louisiana declared a state of emergency per Governor Bobby Jindal.
We've only got two options in Louisiana. There's only two options in front of us. We can either fight this oil off of our coast 15 to 20 miles away on barrier islands on sand booms where it will do much less damage to our marine life and to our wetlands and our fragile ecosystem. But every day we do not fight this oil on a barrier island. Every day we are not dredging sand. It means one more day this oil has a chance to come into our ecosystem, into our wetlands that are home to some of the nation's most important fisheries.
30% of the nation's oil and gas comes off this coast. 30% of the nation's fisheries. These are America's wetlands.
Let's make no mistake about what is at stake here is our way of life. By the month of May, beaches were stained black, balls of tar had washed ashore in Alabama and Florida, and in parts of Louisiana, crude oil was literally falling from the sky. You see the shade, but look at this. There's that same very brown bubbly stuff you saw yesterday in the gulf under the Bay St. Louis Bridge. So, you can see it. I mean, it's raining oil.
And despite everything in the region being blinded by a thick coat of oil, one thing remained perfectly clear for the residents of America's third coast. Something terrible had happened in the Gulf of Mexico.
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The Gulf spill is a tragedy that never should have happened. I'm Tony Hayward. BP has taken full responsibility for cleaning up the spill in the Gulf. We've helped organize the largest environmental response in this country's history. More than 2 million feet of boom, 30 planes and over 1,300 boats are working to protect the shoreline. Where oil reaches the shore, thousands of people are ready to clean it up.
We will honour all legitimate claims and our clean-up efforts will not come at any cost to taxpayers. To those affected and your families, I'm deeply sorry. The Gulf is home for thousands of BP employees and we all feel the impact. To all the volunteers and for the strong support of the government, thank you. We know it is our responsibility to keep you informed and do everything we can so this never happens again. We will get this done. We will make this right.
BP is one of the largest privately owned oil and gas companies in the world. The British company, formerly known as British Petroleum, became a massive conglomerate in the late 90s by rapidly acquiring other large oil companies. BP currently has operations in more than 80 countries across the globe. But even before the Deepwater Horizon spill, the company had an ugly history of environmental disasters and other atrocities.
In the United States alone, BP was responsible for 8,000 spills, 217 injuries, and 38 employee deaths since 1990. The company had been charged with numerous felonies and fines and earned a notorious reputation for cutting corners to increase shareholder profits. But that was not the case this time around. BP promised,
In other words, according to BP, the disaster wasn't entirely BP's fault.
But BP was dedicated to making things right. That's according to commercials that aired on American television as part of a $50 million public relations blitz it had budgeted for in the midst of the Macondo spill. Yet any goodwill that was purchased with that propaganda was eroded by the company's CEO, Tony Hayward, who habitually put a foot into his own mouth.
I think the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to have been very, very modest. There's no one who wants this thing over more than I do. You know, I'd like my life back.
Obviously, Hayward's comments did not sit well with the residents of the Gulf Coast. So BP's chairman of the board, Carl Hendrik Svanberg, raced to his CEO's defense. He is frustrated because he cares about the small people and we care about the small people. I hear comments sometimes that large oil companies are greedy companies or don't care. But that is not the case in BP. We care about the small people.
You're not helping, Carl. And neither was the video of the gushing oil well that was made public on May 12th, 2010, thanks to demands from Senator Edward Markey. The video was important because outside scientists could now analyze the rate of flow to determine if BP's estimate of 5,000 barrels a day was accurate. Spoiler, it wasn't even close.
Larry, thanks very much. Breaking news tonight, potentially chilling news. A leading expert, who you'll hear from in a minute, has examined this video of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. And what he says is horrifying. The leak, which the Coast Guard estimates at 5,000 barrels a day, could be far worse, 10 times worse.
And that's the bottom end of his estimated range, which means that this expert is talking about, at a bare minimum, about the equivalent of one Exxon Valdez spill every four days. One Exxon Valdez every four days. No big deal. At least according to BP CEO Tony Hayward, who after the video was published, pointed out that the amount of oil being spilled in the Gulf was tiny in relation to the total water volume.
Expert estimates said the rate of oil flow ranged from 20,000 barrels a day to 40,000 barrels a day. Worst case scenario, the Mkondo well had leaked over 90 million gallons since the accident happened.
That's an alarming amount of oil, which is probably why BP did not want the public nor anyone else to see the video. Because BP, being savvy veterans of spewing oil into the sea, knew that the fines and penalties that were inevitably coming down the pipeline would be based on the total amount of oil that was spilled. It was in the BP shareholders' best interest to hide that data, and the shareholders' interest is the only one that ever matters.
It was the same reason BP denied the existence of the huge plumes of oil that outside observers reported seeing below the surface. And it was the same reason the company was constantly showering the spill with chemical dispersants under the cover of night. Millions of gallons of Corexit would make the evidence evaporate or sink to the bottom of the ocean. Some say the cover-up is worse than the crime, but if there is no body, or oil in this case, there is no crime.
Hugh Kaufman, a senior policy analyst for the Environmental Protection Agency, who eventually banned BP from using the dispersant, sounded the alarm during an appearance on Democracy Now!
And so, and there's been a lot of work to show that dispersants, which is true, make it more difficult to clean up the mess than if you didn't use them. The sole purpose in the Gulf for dispersants is to keep a cover-up going for BP to try to hide the volume
Quite the opposite. In fact, all signs pointed to BP's cost-cutting measures as being a major contributing factor to the occurrence of the blowout.
It had been revealed that in the events leading up to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, that in order to save millions of dollars, BP had repeatedly ignored technical recommendations when drilling the Macondo well, which led to a failure of the cement sill, which led to the catastrophic fire and spill. It was also reported that the cement bond tests scheduled for the morning of the disaster had been cancelled. That stroke of genius saved BP a little more than 100 grand and cost 11 people their lives.
At the June 17, 2010 House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing, three dozen members of Congress grilled BP CEO Tony Hayward over what one senator referred to as the company's incompetence and deceit in reference to the events leading up to the disaster, its spill response, and its sordid history. Since you took over as CEO of BP, that safe, reliable operations are number one priority, correct? Correct.
That is correct. And you've been CEO for the past three years, correct? Correct. Then explain to us why between June of 2007 and February of 2010, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration checked 55 oil refineries operating in the U.S., two of those 55 are owned by PPP, and
and BP's refineries racked up 760 citations for egregiously willful safety violations, accounting for 97% of the worst and most serious violations that OSHA monitors in the workplace. That doesn't sound like a culture of safety. Although his testimony began with a customary apology to the American people, Tony Hayward stonewalled and did not provide direct answers to any of the questions asked of him.
He cited the ongoing investigations and limited technical expertise for his lack of forthrightness. There was a palpable frustration in the room. So my question for you today is today Thursday. Yes or no? It is Thursday. Okay. Perhaps the strangest moment of the hearing came courtesy of Texas Republican Representative Joe Barton, who actually issued an apology to the oil company. But I'm ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday.
I think it is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown, in this case a $20 billion shakedown.
So I apologize. The $20 billion shakedown Representative Barton was referring to was a compensation fund the Obama administration asked BP to set up to pay out claims to those who were damaged by the spill. Tomorrow, I will meet with the chairman of BP and inform him that he is to set aside whatever resources are required to compensate the workers and business owners who have been harmed as a result of his company's recklessness.
Representative Barton was worried that the compensation fund set a bad precedent. In his opinion, it was unfair that corporations could be held accountable for their actions through nothing but political pressure. Later, it was divulged that Congressman Barton had received $27,350 in campaign donations from BP earlier that year. Business as usual.
A few days after that hearing, BP CEO Tony Hayward returned to the UK to lick his wounds and to spectate a yacht race. Hayward's yacht, which he had named Bob, finished in fourth place on the other side of the world. The Gulf entered its 60th day of oil flowing into it uncontrollably. Tony Hayward and Bob were not the only ones taking a beating.
The company's stock price had lost more than half of its value since the beginning of the disaster, down to its lowest point in 14 years. The enormous cost of the bumbling response, the global protests, the horrific public relations blunders, and the chastisings by elected officials were adding up. That's probably why, 10 days later, Tony Hayward announced that he would be stepping down as BP's CEO. At long last, the poor man was finally able to get his life back.
The same week that Hayward quit, the New York Times reported that BP had continued to use massive quantities of dispersants on the spill, even after their use had been banned by the EPA. In fact, during the first 30 days of the spill, BP had totally disregarded the EPA's warnings about using a more toxic, less effective dispersant, because according to the company, it was more readily available.
Coincidentally, the majority shareholder of BP was also a majority shareholder of the company that manufactured that more toxic dispersant. Nice. Making a profit off the mess that they made. Peak disaster capitalism. Meanwhile, the people of the Gulf Coast and the survivors of the Deepwater Horizon continued to suffer from unemployment, environmental degradation, and PTSD. Tourism was dead. So was the fishing industry.
the locals were losing their way of life. I can understand frustration. I can understand seeing certain people getting certain amounts of money and some of the things that people see.
But someone is going to have to explain to me why BP would not want to clean up this oil. This was not...
Y'all taking all cases, you know y'all taking it, you know what y'all doing. Y'all 10 all aboard, y'all put them in a group at night, we all hear the fleas, and the next morning, none of my wife bothers. What you think, we stupid? We not stupid. Y'all putting all on the bottom of our fishing drive. Y'all not only messing me up now, y'all messing me up for the rest of my life. I ain't gonna live long enough to buy no more shrimp.
On April 20th, an explosion ripped through BP Deepwater Horizon drilling rig about 40 miles off the coast of Louisiana. Eleven workers lost their lives. Seventeen others were injured. And soon, nearly a mile beneath the surface of the ocean, oil began spewing into the water. Because there's never been a leak this size at this depth, stopping it has tested the limits of human technology.
And unlike an earthquake or a hurricane, it's not a single event that does its damage in a matter of minutes or days. The millions of gallons of oil that have spilled into the Gulf of Mexico are more like an epidemic, one that we will be fighting for months and even years. But make no mistake, we will fight this spill with everything we've got for as long as it takes. We will make BP pay for the damage their company has caused.
and we will do whatever is necessary to help the Gulf Coast and its people recover from this tragedy. And one place we've already begun to take action is at the agency in charge of regulating drilling and issuing permits, known as the Minerals Management Service. On June 15, 2010, U.S. President Barack Obama delivered the first Oval Office speech of his administration.
He called the oil spill the worst environmental disaster that America had ever faced and laid out what he referred to as a battle plan going forward. A month earlier, Obama had announced a six-month moratorium on new deep-water oil drilling permits in 500 feet of water or more. A week after the Oval Office speech, a federal judge named Martin Feldman overturned that moratorium, arguing that it was too broad and that the government had failed to provide adequate reasoning.
Come to find out that same judge also owns stock in numerous companies involved in the offshore oil industry, including Transocean, the owner of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. This may come as a surprise, but the oil industry has the federal government in its pockets. And there's no better example of this than the Minerals Management Service, the agency of the Department of Interior responsible for overseeing the nation's natural gas, oil, and other mineral resources.
MMS was a creation of the Reagan administration. The agency regulated drilling, issued permits, and managed the royalties associated with production on public lands. For years, the MMS fostered a culture conducive to corruption. The agency had become a bit too cozy with the industry it was supposed to regulate, especially during the second half of the Bush-Cheney administration, whose cabinet was stuffed full of former oil company officials.
The summary of an investigative report issued by the Inspector General of the Interior Department in September 2008 describes the Minerals Management Service as a dysfunctional organization that has been riddled with conflicts of interests, unprofessional behavior, and a free-for-all atmosphere for much of the Bush administration's watch.
Eight officials in the agency's royalty program, which is responsible for collecting about $11 billion a year from the oil industry, had accepted gifts from oil industry officials that included golf, ski and paintball outings, meals and drinks, and tickets to football and baseball games, as well as other highbrow entertainment such as a Toby Keith concert.
The investigation also concluded that several of the officials, quote, frequently consumed alcohol at industry functions, had used cocaine and marijuana, and had sexual relationships with oil and gas company representatives. A bit too cozy indeed. Even the director of the Royalty Division, a man named Gregory W. Smith, contributed to the, quote, culture of substance abuse and promiscuity.
In a 2008 investigative report, a female employee claimed that Mr. Smith would trade positive performance appraisals for cocaine. She referred to the drug as office supplies when discussing it in the office. According to that employee, Greg Smith also requested sex from her on occasion.
One time in a car she relented because she was afraid of losing her job, and another time when Greg came over to her house. She gave him oral sex after he bought crystal meth from her roommate and snorted it off the toaster oven. In total, the investigations found ethics breaches by 19 MMS employees. Director Smith, who had also earned more than $30,000 on the side, moonlighting as a consultant for an engineering firm, retired during the 2008 probe.
Others involved were transferred to different departments, but the Minerals Management Service remained rotten to the core. In light of the BP oil spill, the agency was back under the microscope, and for good reason. MMS's regulatory decisions led to the negligence that contributed to the disaster, and they routinely looked the other direction instead of providing adequate oversight.
For example, MMS regulators in the Gulf region had allowed industry officials to fill in their own inspection reports in pencil and then turned them over to the regulators, who traced over them in pen, before submitting the reports to the agency. MMS had also permitted dozens of oil companies to drill in the Gulf of Mexico without first getting required permits that assessed threats to endangered species and to assess the impact the drilling was likely to have on the Gulf.
In the case of the Macondo prospect, BP had been exempted from such a study. In cases where they were required, the assessments submitted were laughable. This is Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. Cut and paste environmental assessments were provided by the oil and gas companies. BP's environmental assessment listed walruses as a species of concern in the Gulf of Mexico.
Mr. President, there are not and never have been in the memory of man, walruses in the Gulf of Mexico. When they are writing about walruses in the Gulf of Mexico, you know, one, they are cutting and pasting out of documents in Alaska. Two, they are paying no attention to what they write because they know it doesn't matter. And three, they know perfectly well that MMS will never catch the fact that they've cut and pasted because they're not looking at it either.
Even the cover pages of the environmental assessments for multiple oil companies were copied. They only bothered to change the color. It was good, old-fashioned regulatory capture. The inmates were running the asylum. The scope, the extent, the insidious nature of corporate influence in regulatory agencies of government. This question of regulatory capture
is something we should attend to here. It is the lesson. And it raises the question beyond the Minerals Management Service, how far does this corporate influence reach into our agencies of government?
President Obama eventually dissolved the Minerals Management Service but received criticism for not taking action sooner. The Guardian reported that in the two months after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, 27 new offshore drilling projects had been approved by MMS, and all but one was granted similar exemptions for environmental assessments.
"This oil spill has had absolutely no effect on MMS behavior at all," said Karen Suckling, the director of the Center for Biological Diversity. "It's still business as usual, which means rubber stamping oil drilling permits with no environmental review. It was too little too late. The damage had been done. More than 800,000 birds had perished in the wake of the spill. Root systems and bottom feeders, which are critical to the wetlands, estuaries, and fisheries, had been destroyed.
WTVT also reported that endangered species such as the Kemp's Ridley turtle were becoming trapped in the booms and being burned alive with the oil. Ten years later, it's still too early to determine if the Gulf will ever be fully restored. Human life stood a better chance at immediate recovery thanks to the $20 billion response fund that the federal government had demanded from BP.
Those that worked in industries affected by the disaster received money from the company, even though submitting a claim was reportedly equivalent to pulling teeth. Though the funds were welcome relief for the fishermen and the restaurants and the hospitality workers who were out of work, a couple of thousand bucks is little consolation for destroying the earth, not to mention the risk that arise by handing out cash to people.
They call them spillionaires, workers who receive lump sums from the Gulf Coast claims facility. And some of them took the money and left their jobs, leaving businesses wondering how they're going to fill those positions as they recover. In a shocking turn of events, people who earned more money sitting at home than their employers were willing to pay did not feel like working anymore. Business owners were absolutely flabbergasted.
Maybe we should offer to pay our essential employees a higher wage, one of the more astute job providers suggested. Maybe even offer them health insurance or something. Don't be ridiculous, another shot back. They're probably just lazy. And then he hung up the phone and berated a cashier for politely asking him to wear a mask. Wait, what year were we in? Oh yeah, 2010, late June. Efforts to stem the flow of oil from the Macondo well were still ongoing.
The containment team tried something called a top kill, then a bottom kill, then a static kill through the top of the new cap, which had finally stopped the flow of oil on July 15th, 87 days after the explosion. The Macondo well was completely and permanently sealed on September 19th, 2010. Sir, are you encouraged that the oil has stopped flowing in the Gulf? I think it is a positive sign. We're still in the testing phase. I'll have more to say about it tomorrow.
In total, more than 200 million gallons of crude oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico. 16,000 miles of coastline were affected. The disaster cost BP more than $65 billion in fines, cleanup costs, and settlements. The devastation was incalculable. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill remains the largest oil spill in United States history, for now at least.
Less than a decade after the massive BP oil spill, the Trump administration is preparing to open up new offshore drilling and pull back many of the inspection regulations put into place after that disaster. Everything repeats. Nothing is ever learned. The oil spill is not the last crisis America will face. This nation has known hard times before and we will surely know them again. What sees us through, what has always seen us through, is our strength
our resilience, and our unyielding faith that something better awaits us if we summon the courage to reach for it. Tonight, we pray for that courage. We pray for the people of the Gulf. And we pray that a hand may guide us through the storm towards a brighter day. Thank you. God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.
Swindled is written, researched, produced, and hosted by me, a concerned citizen, with original music by Trevor Howard, a.k.a. Deformer, a.k.a. I Got Nothing. It's the last episode of the season. Cut me some slack. For more information about Swindled, you can visit swindledpodcast.com and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, at Swindled Podcast.
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My name is Christian Gordon from San Francisco, California. My name is Maddie Peltier from Brighton, Michigan. My name is Dylan calling from the United States at the center of coronavirus, a.k.a. Kirkland, Washington, and I am absolutely concerned for the government.
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