Louisiana deep oil drilling disaster

[Bernice Moore]

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/fea...04481.html
BP SPILL ONE YEAR LATER..

[Magda Hassan]

Too sick and scared of Obama's thugs: Australian SBS reports Gulf truth (video)

Deborah Dupre, Human Rights Examiner
September 15, 2010

A sixty-six year old Louisiana grandmother, an environmental scientist, has threatened the American petrochemical-military-industrial-complex (PMIC) by collecting approximately 600 testimonies from Southerners stricken ill since the Gulf Operation overtly began April 20th, too afraid to speak out publicly due to hired black operatives intimidating locals, even threatening their lives as detailed in Australia's Special Broadcast Service (SBS) Dateline News report, but not American news reports.

SBS is one of Australia's top TV news resources.



Australia's SBS Dateline reporter on the Gulf truth, 'Sophie McNeill made her first documentary in 2001 at age 15, when she travelled to East Timor to film the country's health crisis.' (SBS)

Australians now know Gulf Truth

Wilma Subra and now many Australian TV viewers know first-hand why Gulf Coasters are afraid, the same reasons most Targeted Individuals live in fear. Since the Gulf operation onset and Subra's advocacy for the coastal people and environment, she has had repeated office break-ins, intimidating anonymous phone calls and death threats, all part and parcel of secretly hit-listed as indicated in the SBS special report by Sophie McNeill, Toxic Legacy on Youtube as 'Wilma Subra' below in which Subra states:

"One individual who was proposing a nuclear radioactive site threatened to kill me, my family and the local elected official and his family, so I had bullet proof glass put in on all the windows on the front and I had a security consultant come in and he said move everything to the back of the office and that's why my computer is now in the back so I'm not so visible up front.

"So, here is a stack that I record all of the complaints that come in but I can't show you information on the complaints because I'm protecting the identity of the people who called in the complaints because they are very scared of repercussions..."

Obama's authorized hit-list appears to be squarely aimed at people who dare speak out, suppression through the CIA's hired mercenaries, private contractors such as Blackwater (Xe), it's 20 subsidiaries plus Wackenhut and others defending crimes on the Gulf Coast. It appears as though these thugs are using their dirty tricks to both maintain the controlled U.S. mainstream media black-out of Gulf news that would be in best interest of the public and to enable the petrochemical-military-industrial complex to continue its slow-kill operation of Gulf Coasters where it continues to gas people and all other life struggling to survive.

In June, a passenger in a car passing Subra's house fired shots through her window, the bullet lodging "in a brick a few feet from where she was sitting." (See: Environmental warrior takes on industry - CNN) Recently, the Examiner reported that Project Gulf Impact filmmaker who has been documenting Gulf Coast evidence was paid a visit at his home by men in black. There is widespread speculation about the untimely death of one of the most vocal of all Gulf Coast whistleblowers, Matt Simmons.

Recently leaked documents indicate that Obama's "national security" tactics are not limited to the Deep South. They include "Pennsylvania Office of Homeland Security tracking anti-gas drilling groups and their meetings including a public screening of the documentary, Gasland about environmental hazards of natural gas drilling. (See Department of Homeland Security Tracks Anti-drill groups in Pa, Intel Hub, Sept. 14, 2010)

Washington's Blog reports this week, "Indeed, police have been terrorizing children, little old ladies and other "dangerous" people who attempted to protest peacefully."

In what resembles a U.S. biochemical war on Americans, with America's own PMIC, its black operatives destroying innocent American lives in the Gulf region, Subra continues collecting testimonies from people phoning her for help. Due to her abundance of evidence, she has been called to testify before Congress during its dispersant investigation. Subra states in the SBS report:

"
The dispersant is a very toxic substance that causes a lot of health impacts - short term and long term. Portions of them are known cancer-causing agents, the other portion causes the headache, the nausea, the respiratory problems and when it is mixed with the oil, it is much more toxic than either the oil or the dispersant. And you can inhale it, you can ingest it, you can have skin contact out here. So, it is an issue that is really important for people's health. They need to be protected from any exposure."
As Gulf Coast residents learn about non-government organizations (NGO) opening their phone lines to offer help with survival resources, more calls and emails flood in daily from people desperate for help for themselves and their children who are ill. The sole way to obtain these NGO numbers is through alternative media that most people do not access, and though word of mouth. Fear and confusion in the Gulf Coast is exemplified by, Edmon L, a Mobile, Alabama resident who wrote yesterday:

"My wife is a Bio-Chem student at USA in Mobile and is very knowledgeable on chemicals and the such. She is concerned and has a lung condition that has amplified since this all came about. We have 4 young children and her concerns are what this could cause in the development of our kids. She is very concerned and feels that we should evacuate the area ASAP. Personally, I am scared!!! (Examiner)

One woman, Wilma Subra, has collected 600 case testimonies thus far. Daily, more people phone her for help.

Subra is not the only one collecting such testimonies. Louisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN), Louisiana Bucket Brigade, Project Gulf Impact and Gulf Coast Barefoot Doctors are among others collecting accounts from people unknown to each other, providing consistent stories of illness, fearing for their lives and that of their families, not only because of poison used on them, but also retribution from thugs if it is known they have sought help.

As Subra explains, the sick and injured are not only BP workers and fisherman. They are ordinary people who had been living ordinary lives in ordinary neighborhoods until late April, before the 1.8 million gallons (and still rising) of the deadly Corexit was sprayed in their air, water, food, homes and gardens.

Subra and her colleagues tackled BP over the waiver in court, and they're now preparing to take action over the use of oil dispersant, saying it is one of the most toxic available and has made people ill. (SBS)

Project Gulf Impact and Gulf Coast Barefoot Doctors have reported that sick Gulf Coasters using public health facilities are being mistreated, mis-diagnosed and worse, re-victimized by health workers attributing their illnesses to a mental problem, as Pensacola resident Heather Dixey recently experienced when she went to the hospital with severe chest pains and internal bleeding.

Thousands of people have mysterious scabs and pustules covering their extremities according to a July report by Project Gulf Impact.

"We are hearing from people in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida with similar stories," reports Gulf Coast Barefoot Doctor Delia LaBarre from Ground Zero in New Orleans yesterday.

LaBarre stated:

"We are convinced that we are in the Gulf region experiencing a grave public health crisis and that it will only get worse in the years to come. We know this because of the toxins toxicologists tell us we have been exposed to and because of the 'latent illnesses' caused by the toxins from the Exxon Valdez oil spill, 9-11 Ground Zero contaminants, and oil disasters throughout the world that continued to manifest years after the initial exposures.

"We know also that Corexit continues to be sprayed along the Gulf Coast, even though government officials and BP representatives claim they have ceased applying chemical dispersants. We have many witnesses who refute those claims."

Louisiana Fisherman Gary Burris, among those who have provided testimony to Subra and LEAN because he is now ill states in the SBS report, "And there were planes, just not three miles from us, like 10 or 15 in a row, and they come back empty, an this went on for four or five hours. I mean, they were hitting it - hitting it."

Faceless people of the Gulf Coast

"Where are all these people who are supposedly sick and suffering?" some people ask in disbelief.

Instead of covering the Gulf criminal activities, U.S. mainstream news is covering-up the Gulf operation with as much professionalism as it did throughout the September 11, 2001 false flag operation, the general public is again duped, this time impacting the survival needs of millions of people, families needing support from fellow Americans. Unlike the 911 psychological weaponry used on the public, TV viewers do not repeatedly hear people crying, people jumping off the skyscrapers, the destruction, he faces of victims and their families' stories.

People of the Gulf Coast have no faces.

Instead of giving faces to people of the Gulf Coast, airing the children crying because they are ill, showing Corexit dispersant foam swooshing atop Gulf waters, chemical burned bodies, and bloody faces from internal bleeding, the U.S. media is airing nonsense.

Today, Williams Rivers Pitt writes in Truthout, "I don't know about you, but I'm getting pretty sick and tired of seeing these Tea Party idiots all over my television. I turn on the news,' and there they are, holding badly spelled signs and chanting nonsense."

The center of American homes, once the kitchen or dining table where families gathered to listen and learn from each other has been replaced with the TV, the perfect PMIC psychological weapon. TV is now being used to distract people of goodwill who could reach out to help Gulf Coasters. TV is perfect for covering up the new mass murder on the Gulf Coast that is destined to make the tragic 3000 lives lost on 911 pale in comparison.

"The U.S. media landscape is dominated by massive corporations that, through a history of mergers and acquisitions, have concentrated their control over what we see, hear and read. (Ownership Chart: the Big Six, Free press)

"In many cases, these giant companies are vertically integrated, controlling everything from initial production to final distribution," reports Freepress. (See information about the largest U.S. media firms here.)

Dixie 56 commented on the SBS Dateline report, Toxic Legacy ('Wilma Subra'):

"As a resident of Alabama we see first hand the destruction and continued destruction of the Gulf. We will be seeing the effects of BP and the Fed's lies for generations to come. The main stream media over here has pretty much stopped reporting on the damage and the people of the Gulf coast region are left to fight this horror. I appreciate datelines excellent report. Just wish the media here would tell the truth. Fat chance! We had some of the most beautiful water and sugar white beaches."

Lisa from Queensland wrote:

"More awareness about the long term health effects of chemicals on human health is needed. I applaud Wilma Subra for thinking long term. Some of the people in the Gulf area and some of the workers who help with the clean up will go on to develop long term and chronic health problems caused by chemical injury as is the case with 9/11. Who will be there to help those people? Society needs to be better educated on chemical injury and the consequences of chronic poisoning, at the moment it is being whitewashed by the Government, the medical profession and the chemical industry."

Meanwhile, barefoot doctors at Ground Zero report, 'We need to let the rest of the country - the world - know that this catastrophe is only beginning. Gulf Coast Barefoot Doctors needs help to supply detoxification kits and information to the public."

"Most of the people contacting us can neither afford to relocate or to purchase many of the supplies recommended for detoxification. We are currently able to assemble the kits for $10 to $25, depending on the donations from our generous sponsors."

Lynne Frye, who became an American refugee, fleeing the Gulf Coast with her husband for health and safety, sent a message through the Examiner to people of the Gulf and the world early today:

"What the video didn't show was my husband and I couldn't afford to move either. We sold everything we owned except for his work truck and what clothes and camping gear, and whatever we could fit in the back of our small nissan. We met someone that wanted to help out a gulf coast family. She offered a room in her house until we could get back on our feet. We left Pensacola. We found a campground by a beautiful a river and some amazing caverns, we stayed for a week. We have met some amazing people that want to help the 'Gulf Coasters' just like me and my family. We have lost our beaches.

"All the information is out there and as individuals, we have to do the research and not rely on corporate media to tell us everything because they won't. Your wife is right. y'all should evacuate. We had to think about our daughters health. My prayers are with you!'

For Americans needing proof of the U.S. PMIC's calculated use of lethal chemicals on millions of Americans now causing illness and early death, the SBS report (below) may provide enough evidence to break denial of the crime against humanity occurring in the United States against the nation's citizens.

Thanks to SBS and Sophie McNeill, at least Australians now know the Gulf truth.

Photo: Special Broadcasting Service (SBS)

Sources:

SBS

Gulf Coast Barefoot Doctors

Subra Company

Copyright ©Deborah Dupre' 2010 All Rights Reserved

The author grants permission to republish the title and first paragraph of this article provided they are linked to the original article on Examiner. She welcomes emails: info@DeborahDupre.com

Deborah Dupré, with post-graduate science and education degrees from U.S. and Australian universities, has been a human and environmental rights advocate for over 25 years in the U.S., Vanuatu and Australia. Support her work by subscribing to her articles and forwarding the link of this article to friends and colleagues or reposting only the title and first paragraph linked to this Examiner page. Dupré welcomes emails: info@DeborahDupre.com Please send Gulf illness news tips to her with your name or anonymously. See her Vaccine Liberty or Death book plus Compassion Film Project DVDs.

Gulf incident reports can be made and viewed at oilspill.labucketbrigade.org. Mobile phone users can text or call in reports to (504) 27 27 OIL. Reports can also be sent to bpspillmap@gmail.com and through Twitter with the hashtag #BPspillmap. If you are in danger or witness an emergency, please contact your local emergency response agency immediately.

Obtain a Toxic Survival Kit or to have one delivered to a Gulf Coast resident in need. See Gulf Coast Barefoot Doctors online or email info@gcbarefootdocs.org.

Learn to become a Gulf Coast Barefoot Doctor here.

Send information or inquirel ProjectGulfImpact@gmail.com and visit Project Gulf Impact online at http://www.projectgulfimpact.org.

If you are a Gulf Coaster wanting to evacuate but needing help, please ask! If you can assist a gulf coaster in evacuating, please advise! See --http://pub47.bravenet.com/forum/static/show.php?usernum=3957401277&frmid=0



Continue reading on Examiner.com Too sick and scared of Obama's thugs: Australian SBS reports Gulf truth (video) - National Human Rights | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/human-rights-in-...z1Vk9Y2Jdn

[Jan Klimkowski]

Many of its propagandists declare that Capitalism promotes the Survival of the Fittest.

Let's see, um, Tony Hayward?

Tony Hayward in line for multimillion windfall after Iraq oil deal

Hayward, who quit BP 14 months ago following the Deepwater Horizon disaster, will be chief executive of Genel Energy PLC, which has oil reserves in Kurdistan

Graeme Wearden guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 7 September 2011 09.53 BST

Tony Hayward has sealed a deal to exploit the oil fields of Iraq's Kurdistan region, landing the former BP boss an expected windfall of around £14m.

Hayward's return to the oil industry was finalised on Wednesday as his new investment vehicle, called Vallares, agreed a merger with Genel Energy International of Turkey. The deal will deliver an estimated £176m windfall for Hayward and his fellow backers of Vallares, including Nat Rothschild.

Hayward said the deal would allow Vallares to exploit "one of the last great frontiers in the oil and gas industry".

"Arguably, it [Kurdistan] is the last big onshore 'easy' oil province available for exploration by private companies anywhere in the world," he added.

The combined company will be named Genel Energy PLC, and aims to join the FTSE 100 by early 2012.

Hayward, who quit BP 14 months ago following the Deepwater Horizon disaster, will be chief executive of the combined company, sealing his return to the ranks of major oil firm bosses. On a conference call with reporters he refused to discuss how the transformation of his fortunes over the last year contrasted with the ongoing struggle faced by those affected by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Genel holds proved and probable reserves of 356m barrels of oil. It is well-placed to tap Kurdistan's huge reserves of hydrocarbons, with an estimated 40bn barrels of oil still to be discovered. Hayward compared the region's potential to that of the North Sea.

Vallares will issue $2.1bn (£1.3bn) worth of new shares, and use the proceeds to buy Genel in a 50:50 merger that will see the Turkish firm merge with Vallares and take its share listing through a "reverse takeover".

Vallares was created by Hayward, Rothschild and two other businessmen earlier this year, raising £1.35bn through a stock market flotation.

Under the terms in which Vallares was created, the four co-founders will share a windfall worth 6.67% of the group's value once it has completed its first major deal, in return for injecting a total £100m at its creation. That means the quartet will share around £170m, depending on their original stakes. The split of the £100m was not made public, but Hayward reportedly contributed £8m.

Mehmet Sepil, the current CEO of Genel, was hit with a record fine of almost £1m for insider trading in February 2010. The Financial Services Authority imposed the penalty after Sepil, and two colleagues, bought shares in Heritage Oil following confidential test results that revealed that Heritage and Genel had made a major oil discovery. Sepil insisted that he had not realised that this breached insider dealing rules.

Sepil will become president of the new company, but will not serve on its board. Some analysts have questioned whether, given this fine, Genel would have been allowed to list in London with Sepil at the helm.

City grandee Rodney Chase will chair the company. He insisted on Wednesday that Genel Energy will show "total adherence" to City rules. Chase added that the merger with Genel showed that companies from around the world could be attracted to list in London.

[Carsten Wiethoff]

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/fea...09550.html

Fifteen months after BP's crippled Macondo Well in the Gulf of Mexico caused one of the worst environmental disasters in US history, oil and oil sheen covering several square kilometers of water are surfacing not far from BP's well.
Al Jazeera flew to the area on Sunday, September 11, and spotted a swath of silvery oil sheen, approximately 7 km long and 10 to 50 meters wide, at a location roughly 19 km northeast of the now-capped Macondo 252 well.

[Peter Lemkin]

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/fea...09550.html

Fifteen months after BP's crippled Macondo Well in the Gulf of Mexico caused one of the worst environmental disasters in US history, oil and oil sheen covering several square kilometers of water are surfacing not far from BP's well.
Al Jazeera flew to the area on Sunday, September 11, and spotted a swath of silvery oil sheen, approximately 7 km long and 10 to 50 meters wide, at a location roughly 19 km northeast of the now-capped Macondo 252 well.

See....nothing to worry about...and we were told the truth....again! :banghead:

[Peter Lemkin]

BP has just applied for new drilling permits in the same area as the Deep Water Horizon disaster....and will likely have them granted. Meanwhile, tar balls and oil slicks still wash ashore; hundreds of thousands of tons of crude oil are still in the sediments; clean-up workers get increasingly ill; many damaged by the spill have never been compensated or fully compensated. Business as usual......

[Magda Hassan]

BP sued 'for hiding truth over safety' in Gulf oil disaster

BP is being sued for tens of millions of dollars in the US by institutional investors who allege the oil major misled them over its safety policies and the scale of the spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The April 20, 2010, explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig killed 11 workers and triggered the largest offshore oil spill in US history. Photo: Rex Features

By Emily Gosden

6:00AM BST 04 Sep 2012
The company's shares more than halved wiping billions of pounds off the value of the group in the wake of the April 2010 disaster, which killed 11 men and caused the worst offshore spill in US history.

Six investors who bought shares in BP in London prior to the accident or in its immediate aftermath claim that they would not have done so at the price they did "had they known the truth". They include the South Yorkshire Pensions Authority, Skandia Global Funds and GAM Fund Management.

The funds allege that they lost "substantial sums as a result of BP's misleading statements", and are suing under Texas law for common law fraud and negligent misrepresentation, and for statutory fraud. The US Supreme Court blocked foreign investors seeking damages in federal courts.

The claimants are seeking damages "in an amount to be proved at trial" but the plaintiffs' lawyers, Pomerantz Haudek Grossman & Gross, said the claims were likely to total tens of millions of dollars. They said they were in talks with further investors who could join the action.

The investors claim BP and its then chief executive, Tony Hayward, misled them over its "safety first" policies in the years before the disaster, the size of the oil spill following the accident, and "the degree of BP's likely responsibility for the catastrophe".

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BP is separately embroiled in law suits with US authorities over civil and possible criminal claims related to the disaster and has targeted $38bn of divestments to cover all costs related to the spill. Its share price has yet to recover to its 655.4p high on April 20, 2010, before news of the spill emerged.
Yesterday the shares rose 2.35 to 443.7p.
Legal documents filed in Texas in July and August set out numerous occasions in which BP publicly professed its commitment to safety from 2007 to 2010.
The suits allege: "These 'safety first' statements were materially false and misleading. BP paid only lip service to such reforms, lacked any tools for dealing with oil disasters such as deep water spills, and continued to operate by sacrificing safety for savings. Indeed, BP's reform failures led directly to the April 2010 disaster."
They cite investigations into the spill which found safety failings at BP.
The investors allege that, after the explosion, BP "issued statements intended to assure investors that the leakage was limited and containable, that BP had done nothing wrong, and that consequential damages would be limited" and that "these statements minimised the decline of BP stock prices, and induced Plaintiffs to purchase additional shares".
They claim BP executives "acted in reckless disregard of the truth, ignoring and concealing indications that the disaster was much larger than investors were being led to believe".
The suit covers shares bought between January 16, 2007, when BP's share price stood at 541p, and May 28, 2010, more than a month after the spill, when the shares had fallen to 494.8p.
The shares subsequently fell as low of 302.9p on June 29. BP and Tony Hayward declined to comment.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsb...aster.html

[Jan Klimkowski]

Halliburton destroyed evidence shocker....

A $200k fine, a charity donation, and they move on.

Business as usual.

Gulf oil spill: Halliburton to plead guilty to destroying evidence

Contractor to plead guilty over deleted computer simulations testing methods used to cement Deepwater Horizon well

Reuters
guardian.co.uk, Friday 26 July 2013 07.20 BST
Jump to comments (61)

Halliburton has admitted ordering employees to delete computer simulations about cementing of the Deepwater Horizon oil well. Photograph: Richard Carson/Reuters

Halliburton has agreed to plead guilty to destroying evidence related to the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the US department of justice said on Thursday.

The government said Halliburton's guilty plea was the third by a company over the spill and would require the world's second-largest oilfield services company to pay a maximum US$200,000 statutory fine.

Halliburton also agreed to three years' probation and to continue co-operating with the criminal probe into the 20 April 2010 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.

Court approval of the deal is required. Houston-based Halliburton also made a separate, voluntary $55m payment to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the justice department said.

Edward Sherman, a Tulane University law professor, said the plea could suggest weakness in Halliburton's position in negotiating a settlement over spill-related liabilities. "Their willingness to plead to this may also indicate that they'd like to settle up with the federal government on the civil penalties," he said. "It may indicate a softening of their position."

Halliburton said in a statement that it pleaded guilty to the misdemeanour charge and confirmed the plea agreement's terms.

The disaster caused 11 deaths and triggered the largest US offshore oil spill following the rupture of the Macondo oil well, which was 65% owned by BP. Halliburton had earlier provided cementing services to help seal the well.

According to the government Halliburton recommended to BP that the Macondo well contain 21 centralisers metal collars that can improve cementing but BP chose to use six. The government said that during an internal probe into the cementing after the blowout Halliburton ordered workers to destroy computer simulations that showed little difference between using six and 21 centralisers.

Efforts to locate the simulations forensically were unsuccessful, the government said.

BP and Transocean Ltd, which owned the drilling rig, have previously entered guilty pleas over other aspects of the Gulf oil spill and agreed to pay respective criminal fines of $1.26bn and $400mn. Both declined to comment on the Halliburton plea.

Halliburton, BP and Transocean are also defendants in a federal civil trial that began in February to apportion blame and set damages for the oil spill.

[Peter Lemkin]

Greg Palast: BP Deepwater Horizon, Lap Dancers, the CIA and Pay-offs

By Greg Palast / Legal ExaminerApril 21st, 2014

• 
  

Photo: BP operative Leslie Abrahams with AK-47 in Baku, Azerbaijan. Photo by Greg Palast Investigative Fund

By Greg PalastLegal Examiner, April 21, 2014

"There was CIA involvement through a company called Mega Oil. They were shipping in arms under the cover of oil tools." Said the BP executive who was explaining to me how the CIA, MI6 and British Petroleum engineered a coup d'état, overthrowing a nation's elected president who was "not favorable to BP." The corporation's former vice president, Leslie Abrahams, is pictured above, holding an AK-47 in front of BP's offices in Baku, Azerbaijan. Like most of the other BP executives I spoke with, he proudly added that although he was working for BP, he was also an operative for MI6, British intelligence.

Photo: BP operative Leslie Abrahams with AK-47 in Baku, Azerbaijan. Photo by Greg Palast Investigative Fund

This conversation, which took place in 2010, was far from the weirdest I had in my four-continent investigation of the real story of the Deepwater Horizon.
The BP oil rig blew out on April 20 of that year, four years ago this Sunday.
Last month, the Obama administration officially OK'd BP's right to resume drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. A few days after lifting the ban, just to assure the company that all is forgiven, the U.S. Department of the Interior gave BP a new contract to drill in the Gulf of Mexicoright next to where the Deepwater Horizon went down. At the same time, the forgive-and-forget U.S. Justice Department has put the trial of David Rainey, the only BP big shot charged with a felony crime in the disaster, on indefinite hold.
The Deepwater Horizon blowout incinerated 11 men on the rig and poisoned 600 miles of Gulf coastline. What political fairy dust does BP keep in its pocket to receive virtual immunity from the consequences?
To understand what really happened in the Gulf of Mexico, and how BP became a corporate creature beyond the reach of the law, British television network Channel 4 sent me on an investigation through a labyrinthine fun house of bribery, lap dancing, beatings, WikiLeaks, a coup d'état, arrests and oil-state terror.
I found the cause of the tragedy of the Deepwater Horizon 7,000 miles from the Gulf in the ancient city of Baku, the Central Asian caravan stop on the Silk Road.
For the interview with agent Abrahams and the full story of the Deepwater Horizon, see, "Vultures and Vote Rustlers," the documentary that will be available as a download without charge until April 21 courtesy of the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund.
The literal source of Soviet power until 1991, Baku has been exporting petroleum for 3,000 years. As the Soviet Union shattered into pieces that year, BP set its sights on the city. It is now the capital of the new nation of Azerbaijan, which sits atop the biggest untapped oil field in the world, right beneath the Caspian Sea.

A coup for BP

In 1992, then-BP Chairman Lord Browne flew into Baku as soon as the young state elected its first president, Abulfaz Elchibey. Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher joined him via the "Iron Lady," a plane the corporation outfitted especially for her. At a state dinner, Browne handed Abrahams, a BP vice president at the time, a briefcase and showed him the contents: a check for $30 million. Browne then gave the check to the president of Azerbaijan.
Still, the new president remained "not favorable" to BP's demand for control of the Caspian oil, so MI6, the CIA and the corporation went into action. The spy agencies armed and empowered former Soviet KGB chief Heydar Aliyev, who in 1993 overthrew Azerbaijan's elected government. Once he became dictator, Aliyev named himself president for life and within four months signed a no-bid deal to give the reserves to BP.
BP and MI6 man Abrahams was instructed, he told me, to "smooth the way" for the deal by taking Azeri officials to London in Browne's jet for weekends of lap dancing and other entertainment. By Abrahams' own estimation, he paid over $3 million in additional cash bribes to make certain BP would have no trouble.
I should note that Abrahams broke no law: Bribery by a British subject was legal then. BP executives did not deny the payoffs when I questioned them directly, and MI6 officers proudly confirmed the coup's purpose of locking in the offshore deal for BP.

Quick-dry, quick-kill cement

What does this have to do with the blowout of the Deepwater Horizon?
This: It is now well established that the disaster occurred when the cement used to cap the well failed, allowing explosive methane gas to fill the rig and transform it into a sinking fireball.
But this was not BP's first cement failure and explosion. Just 17 months earlier, BP's Caspian Sea Transocean rig had suffered exactly the same fate.
The cause of the two blowouts was identical. In the Caspian as in the Gulf, BP laced its cement with nitrogen gas. The nitrogen bubbles sped up the drying of the mixture, saving BP half a million dollars a day on rig rental charges. But in offshore high-pressure zones, nitrogen-spiked cement can fail. And it did. Twice.
Question: Why in the world was BP allowed to use this insanely dangerous "quick-dry" cement just after a failure in the Caspian? Answer: A cover-upvia threats, beatings, arrests, bribery, perjury and the complicity of the U.S. State Department.
I learned of the prior blowout only because of a coded message from the Caspian Sea received from one very nervous eyewitness. To get the evidence, I flew to Baku and headed across the road-less desert to find more witnesses.

Greg Palast and crew under arrest in Azerbaijan. Photo by Palast Investigative Fund
But we had been ratted out. My crew was placed under arrest by Azerbaijan's secret police. Although officers demanded our film, I was allowed to keep my pen, which was actually a hidden camera. (I've learned a few things from Maxwell Smart.)
How do you keep a monstrous blowout from going public? As one of the arresting cops told us with odd pride, "BP drives this country." It drives it with cash. Robert Ebel, former chief of oil analysis for the CIA, estimates that at least $140 million in payments by BP for Azeri oil has gone unaccounted for. Where did it go? Notably, the Aliyev ruling family lives like pashas despite the president's official salary of $100 a month.
Oil worker advocate Mirvari Gahramanli said she was beaten by police for raising questions. In case I doubted it, she showed me photographs of a dozen cops slamming her with long clubs.
What's worse, while I was tossed out of the country (it would have looked bad to throw a TV reporter into a dungeon), my witnesses disappeared.

WikiLeaks and oily lies

Just five months before the Deepwater Horizon spill, RaineyBP's vice president for Gulf explorationtestified before the U.S. Congress that the company had drilled offshore "for the last 50 years in a manner both safe and protective of the environment."
BP's testimony was a lie. The Caspian rig had blown out a year earlier.
But the lie was good enough for Congress. Based on Rainey's assurances, legislators pressured the Department of the Interior to drop objections to plans for drilling in the Gulf's deep waters.
Withholding information from Congress is a felony. But Rainey has one heck of a defense: The U.S. State Department was in on the cover-up.
Deep in the pile of confidential State Department cables released by one courageous U.S. soldier, Pfc. Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning, we have the notes from a secret meeting between the U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan, Anne E. Derse, and the chief of BP's Caspian operation.
The hugger-mugger was demanded by BP's American partners, Chevron and Exxon. The U.S. oil companies had complained to the State Department that they were no longer getting their piece of the Caspian loot and BP wouldn't tell them why. (You'll remember that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was a member of Chevron's board.)
In the memo, which you can see in our film "Vultures and Vote Rustlers," the U.S. ambassador provides the details of the blowout of the bad cement on the BP rig.
The State Department kept schtum (quiet) about it, not even warning U.S. safety regulators. And Exxon and Chevron's chiefs joined BP's Rainey in the mendacious sales pitch to Congress, testifying, despite their knowledge, that their offshore drilling methods were as safe as a game of checkers.
Justice is not always abused: Rainey was indicted on a felony charge of obstruction of Congress. However, the charge centers on a relatively minor falsehood: his alleged understatement of the amount of oil bursting into the Gulf. Neither Rainey nor BP will be tried for the deadlier lie to Congressthe prior blowout caused by the penny-pinching quick-dry cementbecause the U.S. government is itself complicit in the cover-up.

Blowbacks and blowouts

And that's why we are seeing the red carpet rolled out for BP in the Gulf once more.
When the U.S. government participates in the corruption of other democracies, when it authorizes bribery and ignores police-state tactics to benefit from business deals, the sins of empire can come back to haunt the nation. In the CIA's world this is called "blowback." What was covered up in Baku has killed Americans in the Gulf, and it will likely continue to kill.
And bribery does not simply stay "over there." American officials are not as different from the Baku bandits as they may like to believe. The agency in charge of regulating BP's drilling in the Gulf, the U.S. Minerals Management Service, was rife with watchdogs who, like their Azeri counterparts, took backhanders and payouts from BP. And when I say BP was in bed with the regulators, that is not a metaphor: A BP lobbyist was reportedly sleeping with a chief of the agency.
Don't bother sending Rainey a file in a cake: The BP man won't get two minutes of jail time. His trial has been suspended indefinitely.
Immunity from law is not new to BP. As I reported last month, BP was the main culprit in the disaster caused by the Exxon Valdez grounding. The company walked away without paying a dime to the victims. In the case of the Deepwater Horizon, a few tenacious attorneys have ensured the corporation pays some compensation in the Gulf. But that money comes nowhere close to the damage it caused and will do nothing to harm the company's bottom line.

The oil is still there

Today BP has declared Gulf waters clean, as if Mother Nature were just a toilet you can poop in and flush. But I've been to the Gulf shores. Dig down 10 inches in the shoals off Gulfport, Miss., and you'll hit Deepwater Horizon crude. Biologist Rick Steiner told me BP's poisonous sludge will remain just under the surface for another 40 years. Hiddenjust like BP's crimes.
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