http://fuelfix.com/blog/2011/12/07/feds-charge-bp-with-new-oil-spill-violations/
Posted on December 7, 2011 at 9:37 am by Jennifer A. Dlouhy
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Mickal Vogt of Covington, La., uses a stick to place tar balls in a jar that washed up on the shore in Orange Beach, Ala., Saturday, June 12, 2010. Large amounts of the oil battered the Alabama coast, leaving deposits of the slick mess some 4-6 inches thick on the beach in some parts. (AP Photo/Dave Martin)
The federal government today issued fresh citations to BP in connection with the 2010 Gulf oil spill and accused the oil company of violating safety and environmental regulations governing offshore drilling.
The incidents of non compliance sent to firm today builds on earlier allegations that BP, Halliburton and Transocean together ran afoul of 15 offshore regulations in drilling, designing and cementing the failed Macondo well last year.
The companies already face up to $45.7 million in fines for those earlier citations, which were issued in October and based on the conclusions of a federal probe of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Today’s citations go further. The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement issued the newest so-called incidents of non compliance to BP today after taking a closer look at how the Macondo well was drilled.
Bureau director James Watson said the new citations were a result of that deeper dive.
“Further review of the evidence demonstrated additional regulatory violations by BP in its drilling and abandonment operations at the Macondo well,” Watson said in a statement.
“Our federal regulations exist to ensure safe and environmentally-responsible activities,” Watson added. “We will continue to be vigilant in enforcing those regulations.”
The safety bureau today sent BP five citations and accused the firm of violating two different regulations governing work on the outer continental shelf (in the case of one of those regulations, the violation is alleged to have occurred four times, in different sections of the Macondo well).
According to the safety bureau, BP violated a rule requiring the company to conduct an accurate pressure integrity test at the 13-5/8″ liner shoe. The bureau also argues that BP violated a separate regulation four times, by failing to suspend drilling operations at the well when the safe drilling margin that had been identified in the company’s government-approved permit to drill was not maintained.
That drilling margin represents the difference between the weights of drilling fluids at the site and the estimated formation and pore pressures there.
Each violation carries a penalty of up to $35,000 per day per incident. In the case of the oil spill, violations may have covered just one day or up to 87 days – the time crude was gushing into the Gulf – creating a maximum potential tab per incident of $3.05 million.
The new violations could add anywhere from $175,000 to $15.23 million to BP’s tab, on top of the $21.32 million in penalties the company was facing from the citations issued earlier.
The safety bureau’s sanctions are separate from fines and penalties expected under the Clean Water Act, which could reach $21 billion for BP, based on estimates that 4.9 million barrels of oil gushed into the Gulf after its Macondo well blew out on April 20, 2010. The failure triggered a lethal explosion on board Transocean’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, killed 11 workers and unleashed the worst oil spill in U.S. history. Halliburton was responsible for cementing work at the site.
The incidents of non compliance kick off a long process of assessing civil fines. The companies ultimately are able to challenge a fine assessment to the administrative Interior Board of Land Appeals.
Special thanks to Richard Charter