British Petroleum's Horrendous Pollution Record Hits Close to Home

Update 1/22/08

This new dumping is in addition to the dumping already being done by BP. There has been progress for 35 years making Lake Michigan cleaner. Indiana has a very poor track record. The Indiana shoreline is littered with manufacturing plants, refineriers and other industrial facilities spewing poison into the air and toxins into the waters of Lake Michigan. Contrast that with the parks and other green space for public use along the shore in every other state. It's clear that Indiana has nothing to lose. To that state, what little shoreline they do have is only good for making money. The water is dirty and the air is foul.

British Petroleum has a fact sheet on their Whiting operation in Indiana. This is BP's official statement about that plant. It includes short videos of comments by employees and citizens.

Advocates opposed to the increased dumping cite BP's poor environmental record elsewhere in the world and the large fines that have been levied against BP. There is criticism of the permitting process in Indiana and of the EPA's role in helping with the permit.

BP's environmental record in recent years has proven to be controversial:. Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman publish a list of the 10 worst companies each year. From 2000 through 2006, BP has made the list twice.

• In 1991 BP was cited as the most polluting company in the US based on EPA toxic release data. Greenpeace International named BP one of Scotland's two largest polluters in 1992. Since branding itself an environmentally sound corporation in 1997, BP has been charged with burning polluted gases at its Ohio refinery (for which it was fined $1.7 million), and in in July 2000 BP paid a $10 million fine to the EPA for its management of it US refineries.
  
• According to PIRG (Public Interest Research Group) research, between January 1997 and March 1998, BP was responsible for 104 oil spills.
  
• In February, 2000, BP Amoco's Alaska subsidiary -- BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc. -- was hit with a $500,000 criminal fine for failing to report the illegal disposal of hazardous waste on Alaska's North Slope. The company was also ordered to establish a nationwide environmental management system designed to prevent future violations.
  
• The company is now constructing a controversial offshore oil project in the Arctic, and heavily lobbying Congress to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling.(2000 and on-going)
  
• In April, 2000 BP Amoco agreed to pay $32 million to resolve claims that it underpaid royalties due for oil produced on federal and Indian lands since 1988.
  
• In July, 2000 BP/Amoco agreed to pay $10 million to settle a Clean Air Act case.
  
• On March 23, 2005, an explosion occurred at BP's Texas City Refinery in Texas City, Texas. It is the third largest refinery in the United States and one of the largest in the world, processing 433,000 barrels of crude oil per day and accounting for 3% of that nation's gasoline supply. Over 100 were injured, and 15 were confirmed dead, including employees of the Fluor Corporation as well as BP. BP has since accepted that its employees contributed to the accident. Level indicators failed, leading to overfilling of a heater, and light hydrocarbons spread throughout the area. An unidentified ignition source set off the explosion. . . . 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. It was preceded by the Baker report and BP's own internal investigation. Essentially, a large column filled with gasoline 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..
  
• In March of 2006, one of BP's pipelines in the North Slope of Alaska ruptured, causing a major environmental hazard. It was the 2nd largest oil spill in Alaska history. Then, in August 2006, BP was forced to shut down the pipeline because of massive corrosion problems the company had permitted to fester
  
• 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 pipeline
  
• When, in July of 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, environmental advocates 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.
  
• As of August 7, 2006, BP has begun to shutdown oil operations in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, due to corrosion in the 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. Prudhoe Bay produces about 2.6% of the United States demand for gasoline. It was initially estimated that the shutdown would cause a reduction of 400,000 barrels per day and reaction to that scenario was a contributing factor pushing the price of oil to over $77(USD) per barrel
  

WISH TV, Channel 8 in Indina reported on the favorable reaction of Indiana's Governor Daniels when the project was first announced in September, 2006.

Apparently, the public did not learn of the higher dumping levels approved by the State of Indiana until July 15 2007, when the Chicago Tribune carried an article about the higher limits.

Here is one article from All Headline News about what Illinois legislators are doing Click Here for the story.

The Allegan County (Michigan) News on August 1, 2007, reported that Congress passed a resolution " . . .expressing its disapproval of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management's issuance of a permit allowing BP to increase their daily dumping of ammonia and total suspended solids into Lake Michigan;" The entire text of the resolution is included in the story allong with comments by Michigan Congressional Representtive Fred Upton - (R St. Joseph) who supported the resolution.

In resonse to the critism, the US BP issued a statement August 23, 2007 promising no increase in emission of pollutants into Lake Michigan. Click Here for the official statement. (Photo of the Whiting, Indiana BP facility from Yahoo News)

However, there is a puzzling comment in the statement by a BP American executive:
"We will not make use of the higher discharge limits in our new permit," said BP America Chairman and President Bob Malone. "We're not aware of any technology that will get us to those limits but we'll work to develop a project that allows us to do so. If necessary changes to the project result in a material impact to project viability, we could be forced to cancel it."

On that very same day (8/23/07) the Indystar.com, the online edition of The Indianapolis Star reports that the chairman of a committee studying the permitting process says it is nearly impossible to revoke the permit. State Representative Scott Pelath - (D- Michigan City) hopes public pressure will do what Indiana and the Federal EPA didn't do -- make BP change its plans.

Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Illinois)voices opposition to BP's plans in a brief YouTube video. Click Here to see the video.

On August 2, 2007, David Ulbrich, Executive Director of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative testified in front of the Chicago City Council, Joint committee on Energy and Parks about the approved discharges. His testimony contans some facts that none of the other links on this page do.

The August 5, 2006 issue of the Houston Chronicle carried an article unfavorable to BP operations in Joliet, Illinois. The article, written by the business columnist for the paper, sees the environmntal problems of BP as systemic.

July 24 of this year, the Chesterton (indiana) Tribune reported on a resolution pending in Congress urging the public to join in the opposition to BP's plans to increase its dumping of poollutants into Lake Michigan. The resolution was introduced by U.S. Rep. Rahm Emanuel, (D-Ill..)

R> Searching for background on this issue turned up a great many organizations and blogs whose purpose is to protect and promote the Great Lakes. If you would like to find some yourself, try searching on "british petroleum" +"lake michigan" (make sure to use the quotation marks and the plus sign.