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Rival oil companies get a taste of BP's medicine on Capitol Hill
By David Usborne, US Editor
Wednesday, 16 June 2010
Members of Congress tore into the big energy corporations last night for filing almost identical Gulf of Mexico oil spill response plans – which included contact details for a deceased scientist and steps to protect a marine mammal not found in the region's waters.
It was an astonishing and sustained verbal battering which undermined attempts by Shell, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil to suggest that their working practices differ from those of BP; and that the catastrophe would not have happened if the leaking well had been theirs.
No one at yesterday's House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing suffered more, however, than Lamar McKay, chairman of BP America. He recoiled when he was repeatedly asked to apologise for the failure early on in the spill to accurately report the amount of crude gushing into the ocean.
An early BP document put the spill rate at between 1,000 and 14,000 barrels a day. A panel of US scientists offered grim news last night warning that the "most likely flow rate of oil today" ranges from 35,000 to 60,000 barrels per day – once more far higher than previously suggested. At the upper end of the range that would mean the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez spill is erupting from the well every four days. In another setback, BP said it had to interrupt collection of oil from the leak yesterday after a tanker on the surface was struck by a bolt of lightning, igniting a fire.
etc...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 01575.html
By David Usborne, US Editor
Wednesday, 16 June 2010
Members of Congress tore into the big energy corporations last night for filing almost identical Gulf of Mexico oil spill response plans – which included contact details for a deceased scientist and steps to protect a marine mammal not found in the region's waters.
It was an astonishing and sustained verbal battering which undermined attempts by Shell, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil to suggest that their working practices differ from those of BP; and that the catastrophe would not have happened if the leaking well had been theirs.
No one at yesterday's House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing suffered more, however, than Lamar McKay, chairman of BP America. He recoiled when he was repeatedly asked to apologise for the failure early on in the spill to accurately report the amount of crude gushing into the ocean.
An early BP document put the spill rate at between 1,000 and 14,000 barrels a day. A panel of US scientists offered grim news last night warning that the "most likely flow rate of oil today" ranges from 35,000 to 60,000 barrels per day – once more far higher than previously suggested. At the upper end of the range that would mean the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez spill is erupting from the well every four days. In another setback, BP said it had to interrupt collection of oil from the leak yesterday after a tanker on the surface was struck by a bolt of lightning, igniting a fire.
etc...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 01575.html