Greg Palast: BP Poisoned the Gulf to Make Money
Truthdig contributor and New York Times best-selling author and investigative journalist Greg Palast appeared on RT's "Breaking the Set" on Wednesday to discuss the "gross negligence" committed by BP and described in a federal judge's Findings of Fact on the circumstances that led to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster that killed 11 men and turned the Gulf of Mexico into a tub of toxic soup.
Truthdig contributor and New York Times best-selling author and investigative journalist Greg Palast appeared on RT’s “Breaking the Set” on Wednesday to discuss the “gross negligence” committed by BP and described in a federal judge’s Findings of Fact on the circumstances that led to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster that killed 11 men and turned the Gulf of Mexico into a tub of toxic soup.
As Palast wrote in a Truthdig article on Sept. 11, U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier found BP liable for “gross negligence,” but as “some U.S. media failed to mention … let BP off the hook on punitive damages.” That means that the financial and other consequences meted out to the company could have been far worse given the charges described in the judge’s record.
Palast’s primary example involved BP’s “deliberate” cover-up of an unacceptable pressure reading of 1400 psi on one pipe — enough to “blow your skull apart” — with a reading of zero taken from another pipe.
Why the concealment? To save BP’s shareholders and the company money. As Palast told RT’s Abby Martin:
The judge just said this was gross negligence. BP was ultimately responsible… And by the way, the reason he said that — the reason, the motive — it wasn’t that they were just incompetent. It didn’t matter that they were cruel. The problem was that they did it to make more money, penny-pinching every step of the way.
breakingtheset:— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly
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