When natural resource industry giants get hit with worker safety and environmental violations, they open their checkbook, pay a fine, and go on operating as per usual.
At least that’s the lesson learned from the recent Massey Energy deadly mine explosion and British Petroleum’s (BP) massive oil spill. Both companies have paid millions in fines in recent years, yet have gone on with their business as usual.
“Violations are, you know, unfortunately, a normal part of the mining process. You know, you have inspections every day,” said Massey CEO Don Blankenship on MetroNews Radio shortly after the disaster. “And it’s hard to differentiate sometimes between, you know, head count or number counts on violations and, you know, the seriousness or type of it.”
According to Blakenship, these violations are simply something we should all accept. In all, Massey was levied over 1,300 safety violations at its Upper Branch mine where 29 miners died horrific, and arguably preventable, deaths in April. It appears these fines are just a part of doing business instead of an effective method of enforcing the law.
Data from the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) shows that Upper Big Branch mine had six violations related to ventilation since January of this year and four since mid-March.
Last year the mine had 50 “unwarrantable failure citations,” which are the most serious acts of negligence a mine inspector can ticket a mining company for. In 2009, MSHA had also proposed 458 total safety violations, which racked up $900,000 in fines.
But if you thought Massey’s rap sheet was long, take a peek at BP’s list of documented mishaps.
Transocean, which oversees 141 oil rigs around the globe, managed BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig that claimed the lives of eleven workers and continues to leak thousands of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico daily. The company operates fifteen other oil rigs in the Gulf, yet avoids paying a single royalty to US taxpayers.
BP also owes US citizens for its law-breaking ways. Since 2005, the oil company has paid the US government $485 million in fines and settlements for “willful neglect of worker safety rules, and penalties for manipulating energy markets.” BP is the most heavily-fined energy company in the United States.
“We need to consider whether or not [BP’s] Corporate Charter in the United States needs to be revoked,” Tyson Slocum, the Director of Energy for Public Citizen, a Washington DC based citizen advocacy group, said on Free Speech radio. “We need to consider whether or not its rights to win leases on public lands should be revoked.”
In 2009, the British-based company paid $87.43 million for a single Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) violation for willful negligence that led to the deaths of fifteen works in a 2005 explosion at a Texas refinery. BP handed over $50 million to the Department of Justice for the same crime.
In 2006, an oil leak at a BP pipeline in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, resulted in a $20 million settlement for alleged Clean Water Act violations.
“The Texas and Alaska cases illustrate the twin pillars of environmental enforcement: first, protecting human life and health and, second, protecting our natural resources,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Ronald J. Tenpas of the Department of Justice’s (DoJ) Environment and Natural Resources Division. “BP cut corners with disastrous consequences for both and is being held to account.”
Despite the DoJ’s claim that BP is “being held to account,” just last month the company paid another $3 million fine for 42 worker safety violations at a company refinery in Ohio. In fact, if BP were an actual person, it would have spent time in prison, as the company has been levied two separate felony charge for violating the Clean Air & Water Acts.
“We need to get tough on corporations that fail to comply with US laws and regulations,” said Slocum of Public Citizen.
Federal fines have not put an end to BP’s egregious environmental and worker safety violations. But consumer advocate Ralph Nader takes it a bit further, claiming that manslaughter charges ought to be considered for Massey Energy.
“In the last month, MSHA has filed a dozen citations specifically alleging the mines failure to properly ventilate the lethal, highly volatile methane gas,” Nader recently wrote in response to Massey’s Upper Branch mine explosion. “That is why affected people are wondering whether any district attorneys will have the will and an adequate budget to charge Massey officials with ‘involuntary manslaughter’, should the findings of the completed investigation meet the statutory definition.”
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy