U.S. BREACH unleashed British oil

Re-reporting, excerpting, editing, commentary by Carolyn Bennett  

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America [Preamble to the U.S. Constitution].

Taking the oath of office, U.S. Government Officials swear to uphold the Constitution and, failing that, they stand in breach of this Constitution. A report today in the New York Daily News illustrates that the U.S. Government and a long line of government officials are in continuing breach of their oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America. 

U.S.-BP is the case in point. British Petroleum “suffered the most spills” of any oil company in the period 2000 to 2010, Juan Gonzalez reports, and the U.S. government knew about it. “Federal records show BP reported 23 significant oil spills” in this period; two of them within weeks of each other in 2003. Involved was “the same Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that was destroyed in the April 21” catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico.

• January 19, 2000: 2,400 barrels of 60 percent synthetic-based drilling mud [with approximately 60,000 gallons of oil] leaked into the Gulf of Mexico.
• May 21, 2003: 2,450 barrels of 58 percent Accolade synthetic-based drilling mud (SBM) spilled at Mississippi Canyon 778 containing approximately 1,421 barrels (59,000 gallons) of Accolade synthetic base oil.
• June 30, 2003: 944 barrels (est.) of Nova Plus synthetic base oil were spilled into the sea.
• August 3, 2003: 143 barrels (est.) spilled after the boost line leaked because of a rupture in the boost hose and several worn places along the hose

Between 2000 and 2009 “there have been thousands of spills,” Gonzalez quoted the head of Toxics Targeting in Ithaca, N.Y, a company that tracks and analyzes federal hazardous spill reports.

 “Spills mounted,” Gonzalez, and “no one paid attention. Now the big one has come and nothing can hide the gushing hole at the bottom of the sea” [“Devastating BP oil spill was inevitable as government failed to learn from past tragedies” (Juan Gonzalez – News), June 11, 2010, http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/06/11/2010-06-11_previous_oil_spills_taught_them_zilch.html]

Today on the Democracy Now program, Juan Gonzalez talked about the current Gulf of Mexico catastrophe and his reporting for the New York Daily News story.

“New government estimates have found the BP oil spill may be spewing twice as much oil into the Gulf of Mexico as previously thought. On Thursday, the Flow Rate Technical Group released its new estimate of 25,000 to 30,000 barrels of oil a day based on information gathered last week, before BP installed a new capture device.

“Some scientists have warned that the flow rate sharply increased after BP last week cut the pipe known as the riser to install the new device. The current estimates from the government panel suggest that an amount equivalent to the Exxon Valdez disaster could be flowing into the Gulf of Mexico every eight to ten days. The new numbers were released shortly after a scientist on the Flow Rate Technical Group publicly warned that the oil might be spewing out at a rate of more than 100,000 barrels a day, a figure BP once called its worst-case scenario. …”

Based on the Toxics Targeting analysis, Gonzalez reported that in government databases over the past several decades “there had been literally thousands of spill reports in the Gulf of Mexico and they have been increasing dramatically ─ especially the significant spills ─ since the Bush administration…. BP has been the firm with the most spill reports, twenty-three in the last ten years…. The number of incidents clearly should have signaled to the government that the number of accidents was increasing ─ and that a big one was bound happen.”

In the clean up now being undertaken in the Gulf, Gonzalez commented, “many of the people working out there are getting sick as a result of the lack of safety provisions” and “BP [has hired former U.S. Vice President] Dick Cheney’s former spokesperson as their director of communications” [http://www.democracynow.org/2010/6/11/].

 In the entrenched earmark-making, broken U.S. governmental system where money and luxury buy legislation and policy (government officials), deregulation and blindness ─ governance in the interest of private for-profit and nonprofit corporations ─ the constitutional principle of providing for the common defense, promoting the general welfare, securing the blessings of liberty to ourselves, and our posterity is abandoned. A “more perfect union” where justice takes root, peace among the people is insured is a pipedream ─ a betrayal of public trust, a BREACH of the people’s law.