British Petroleum
BP plc is a British global energy company that is also the third largest global energy company and the 4th largest company in the world. As a multinational oil company ("oil major") BP is the UK's largest corporation, with its headquarters in St James's, City of Westminster, London. BP America's headquarters is in the Two Westlake Park in the Energy Corridor area of Houston, Texas. The company is among the largest private sector energy corporations in the world, and one of the six "supermajors" (vertically integrated private sector oil exploration, natural gas, and petroleum product marketing companies). The company is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.
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[edit] Incidents
In the United States BP or its subsidiaries have been convicted of Environmental crimes on three occasions, one of those convictions resulted from the Texas City Refinery Disaster where BP was fined $50m and given 3 years probation. Separate to the conviction the Occupational Health and Safety Administration issued its largest fine of $87m to BP for 270 safety violation, BP is appealing the fine.
A BP contractor Doyon Drilling working in North Slop Alaska in 2000 pleaded guilty to dumping hazardous materials down oil well shafts, BP was fined $500,000 for failing to report the dumping when it became aware of it. In addition to the fine BP was placed on probation and order to create a nationwide environmental management program.
Texas City Refinery explosion
One of BP's largest refineries in the US exploded in March 2005 causing 15 deaths, injuring 180 people and forcing thousands of nearby residents to remain sheltered in their homes. A large column filled with hydrocarbon overflowed to form a vapour cloud, which ignited. The explosion caused all the casualties and substantial damage to the rest of the plant. The incident came as the culmination of a series of less serious accidents at the refinery, and the engineering problems were not addressed by the management. Maintenance and safety at the plant had been cut as a cost-saving measure, the responsibility ultimately resting with executives in London.
The fall-out from the accident continues to cloud BP's corporate image because of the mismanagement at the plant. There have been several investigations of the disaster, the most recent being that from the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board which "offered a scathing assessment of the company." OSHA found "organizational and safety deficiencies at all levels of the BP Corporation" and said management failures could be traced from Texas to London.
The company pleaded guilty to a felony violation of the Clean Air Act, was fined $50 million, and sentenced to three years probation.
On October 30, 2009, the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) fined BP an additional $87 million — the largest fine in OSHA history — for failing to correct safety hazards revealed in the 2005 explosion. Inspectors found 270 safety violations that had been previously cited but not fixed and 439 new violations. BP is appealing that fine.
Prudhoe Bay
In August, 2006, BP shut down oil operations in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, due to corrosion in pipelines leading up to the Alaska Pipeline. BP had spilled over one million litres of oil in Alaska's North Slope. This corrosion is caused by sediment collecting in the bottom of the pipe, protecting corrosive bacteria from chemicals sent through the pipeline to fight this bacteria. There are estimates that about 5,000 barrels (790 m3) of oil were released from the pipeline. To date 1,513 barrels (240.5 m3) of liquids, about 5,200 cubic yards (4,000 m3) of soiled snow and 328 cubic yards (251 m3) of soiled gravel have been recovered. After approval from the DOT, only the eastern portion of the field was shut down, resulting in a reduction of 200,000 barrels per day (32,000 m3/d) until work began to bring the eastern field to full production on 2 October 2006.
In May 2007, the company announced another partial field shutdown owing to leaks of water at a separation plant. Their action was interpreted as another example of fallout from a decision to cut maintenance of the pipeline and associated facilities.
On 16 October 2007 Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation officials reported a toxic spill of methanol (methyl alcohol) at the Prudhoe Bay oil field managed by BP PLC. Nearly 2,000 gallons of mostly methanol, mixed with some crude oil and water, spilled onto a frozen tundra pond as well as a gravel pad from a pipeline. Methanol, which is poisonous to plants and animals, is used to clear ice from the insides of the Arctic-based pipelines.
Deepwater Horizon oil spill
On April 20, 2010, a semi-submersible exploratory offshore drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded after a blowout and sank two days later, taking with it eleven lives and causing a massive oil spill threatening the coast of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. The rig is owned and operated by Transocean Ltd on behalf of BP, which is the majority owner of the oil field. The company originally estimated the size of the leak at about 1,000 barrels a day but later accepted government estimates of a leak of at least 5,000 barrels a day. On April 30, BP stated that it would harness all of its resources to battle the oil spill, spending $7 million a day with its partners to try to contain the disaster. In comparison BP's 1st quarter profits for 2010 were roughly $61M daily BP was running the well without a remote control shut-off switch used in two other major oil-producing nations, Brazil and Norway, as a last resort protection against underwater spills. The use of such devices is not mandated by U.S. regulators. The U.S. Government gave the responsibility of the incident to BP and will hold it accountable for costs incurred in containing the situation. On May 11, 2010, Congress called the executives of BP, Transocean, and Halliburton to a hearing regarding the oil spill. When probed for answers regarding the events leading up to the explosion, each company blamed the other. BP blamed Transocean who owned the rig, who then blamed the operators of the rig, BP. They also blamed Halliburton, who built the well casing. Scientists have been requesting the right to monitor the amount of oil that is actually being released per day, but "'The answer is no to that,' a BP spokesman, Tom Mueller, said on Saturday, May 15. 'We’re not going to take any extra efforts now to calculate flow there at this point. It’s not relevant to the response effort, and it might even detract from the response effort.' Steven Wereley, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, analyzed videotape of the leak using particle image velocimetry and estimated oil flow rates at between 56,000 barrels to 84,000 barrels per day. or equivalent to one Exxon Valdez spill every 3.5 to 2.4 days.
[edit] Controversy
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline
BP has been criticised for its involvement with Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, due to human rights, environmental and safety concerns.
Colombian pipeline
In July 2006, a group of Colombian farmers won a multi million pound settlement from BP after the British oil and gas company was accused of benefiting from a regime of terror carried out by Colombian government paramilitaries to protect a 450-mile (720 km) pipeline.
Mist mountain project
There have been some calls[who?] for BP to halt its "Mist Mountain" Coalbed Methane Project in the Southern Rocky Mountains of British Columbia. The proposed 500 km² project is directly adjacent to the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park.
Canadian oil sands
BP is one of numerous firms who are extracting oil from Canadian oil sands, a process that produces four times as much CO2 as conventional drilling. The Cree aboriginal group describe BP as being complicit in 'the biggest environmental crime on the planet'. The Cree aboriginal group also describe the oil sands projects some of the great economic influences of the area.
[edit] Environmental and safety record
BP was named by Mother Jones Magazine as one of the "ten worst corporations" in both 2001 and 2005 based on its environmental and human rights records. In 1991 BP was cited as the most polluting company in the US based on EPA toxic release data. BP has been charged with burning polluted gases at its Ohio refinery (for which it was fined $1.7 million), and in July 2000 BP paid a $10 million fine to the EPA for its management of its US refineries. According to PIRG research, between January 1997 and March 1998, BP was responsible for 104 oil spills. BP patented the Dracone Barge to aid in oil spill clean-ups across the world.
BP Amoco was a member of the Global Climate Coalition an industry organization established to promote global warming scepticism but withdrew in 1997, saying "the time to consider the policy dimensions of climate change is not when the link between greenhouse gases and climate change is conclusively proven, but when the possibility cannot be discounted and is taken seriously by the society of which we are part. We in BP have reached that point.".
In March 2002 Lord Browne of Madingley declared in a speech that global warming was real and that urgent action was needed, saying that "Companies composed of highly skilled and trained people can't live in denial of mounting evidence gathered by hundreds of the most reputable scientists in the world."
BP Amoco changed its name to BP in 2000, and introduced a new corporate slogan: “Beyond Petroleum.” It replaced its “Green Shield” logo with the helios symbol, a green and yellow sunflower pattern similar to the emblem of the Green Party of Canada. These changes were intended to highlight the company’s interest in alternative and environmentally friendly fuels. When, in July 2006, BP admitted, only after journalists became aware of the spill, that it was facing criminal charges for allowing 270,000 gallons of crude oil to spread into the Alaskan tundra, critics pointed to the relative lack of press coverage about the spill as evidence that BP had successfully greenwashed its image while maintaining environmentally unsound practices.
BP was one nominee for the 2009 Greenwash Awards, on companies trying to look green and failing.
As of 11 February 2007 BP announced that they would spend $8 billion over ten years to research alternative methods of fuel, including natural gas, hydrogen, solar, and wind. A $500 million grant to the University of California, Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, to create an Energy Biosciences Institute has recently come under attack, over concerns about the global impacts of the research and privatisation of public universities.
BP's investment in green technologies peaked at 4% of its exploratory budget, but they have since closed their alternative energy headquarters in London. As such they invest more than other oil companies, but it has been called greenwashing due to the small proportion of the overall budget.
In 2004, BP began marketing low-sulphur diesel fuel for industrial use.
BP Solar is a leading producer of solar panels since its purchase of Lucas Energy Systems in 1980 and Solarex (as part of its acquisition of Amoco) in 2000. BP Solar had a 20% world market share in photovoltaic panels in 2004 when it had a capacity to produce 90 MW/year of panels. It has over 30 years experience operating in over 160 countries with manufacturing facilities in the U.S., Spain, India and Australia and has more than 2000 employees worldwide. Through a series of acquisitions in the solar power industry BP Solar became the third largest producer of solar panels in the world. It was recently announced that BP has obtained a contract for a pilot project to provide on-site solar power to Wal-mart stores. In the 2006 annual report Lord Browne noted that BP now has a total wind generation capacity of nearly 15,000 megawatts. 15,000 megawatts would be sufficient to provide power to approximately 15,000,000 typical American households simultaneously. This makes BP one of the largest generators of wind power in the world.
