Rep. Luis Gutierrez Wants BP Renamed ‘Banned Permanently’
(Wikimedia Commons)
Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D — Ill.) wants to change the name of oil giant BP from Beyond Petroleum to “Banned Permanently,” according to his op-ed published today on the Huffington Post. Gutierrez wrote a letter to Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar demanding that he “suspend consideration of any new oil drilling leases for BP and review all existing leases to evaluate compliance with basic worker safety and environmental safety regulations.” If those leases are not in compliance, then Gutierrez wants them to be immediately suspended.
Gutierrez goes on to continue to beat up this month’s punching bag, calling the blowout and gas explosion on BP’s Deepwater Horizon reactor the “worst man made environmental and economic disaster in American history.” This might be a little premature, as we do not yet know the extent of the damage, but it the continuing disaster is probably among the worst.
Gutierrez also criticized BP for being “more interested in finger-pointing and damage control than in immediately solving the environmental disaster they caused and which cost eleven lives.” Again, this might also be hasty. Certainly BP has paid attention to its public image, but it should not be expected to do anything less. Does it have an obligation to clean this up as quickly and safely as possible? Of course it does. Is BP responsible for any damages that might take place? I believe so. But we cannot forget that some of the delay lies in the hands of regulators who knew this could happen yet continued to allow the drilling without requiring that companies demonstrate that they have adequate plans for controlling the potential disaster.
The Congressman only drives this point home when he criticizes BP’s record on safety that puts corporate profits before the safety of their employees and the environment:
But an environmental disaster — and one that costs lives — is par for the course when it comes to BP. Fifteen deaths and almost 200 injured in the Texas City refinery explosion, convictions for environmental and safety violations — including felonies — for BP and subsidiaries, the biggest ever fine for willful work safety violations in U.S. history, countless other complaints, and now revelations that serious short-cuts were apparently taken concerning safety and maintenance procedures for platforms like the one that exploded in the Gulf. You would think that a company with this track record would stop and think and adjust their business plan for a moment there. But not BP. They are very focused on the bottom line. Their bottom line is not the safety of the bottom of the ocean. Their bottom line is not the lives lost when their rig sank to the bottom of the ocean. No, their bottom line is the safety of their profits.
Andrew Bluebond is a staff writer for Campus Progress. He attends Claremont McKenna College.
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