[A-List] Fwd: [R-G] The Pentagon still subsidizes British Petroleum (BP)

[Suzanne de Kuyper]

You might find this fascinating considering disagreements on the
Presidnt's ass kicking show.  S.


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From: Richard Menec <menecraj at shaw.ca>
Date: Sat, Jun 19, 2010 at 3:06 PM
Subject: [R-G] The Pentagon still subsidizes British Petroleum (BP)
To: Suzanne  de Kuyper <suzannedk at gmail.com>
Cc: RAD TIMES <resist at comcast.net>, ICH <emailtom at cox.net>, "Radical
anti-capitalist environmental discussion."
<rad-green at lists.econ.utah.edu>, ALTERNET <feedback at alternet.org>,
COMMON DREAMS <editor at commondreams.org>, DISSIDENT VOICE
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http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175262/tomgram:_nick_turse,_bp_and_the_pentagon%27s_dirty_little_secret__/

Tomgram: Nick Turse, BP and the Pentagon's Dirty Little Secret

Posted by Nick Turse at 11:00am, June 17, 2010.

[Note to TomDispatch Readers: Atop my last post I urged readers to pre-order
my new book, The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's, due
out in a few days, and I made an offer as well: anyone willing to contribute
$75 or more to TomDispatch to keep this site chugging along would get a
signed copy of the book with my deepest thanks.  Let me admit to my
amazement that so many were so generous!  A deep bow to those of you who
have already contributed, and a small warning -- be patient.  A box of my
books will soon be in the mail to me, but you may have to wait a couple of
weeks to get your books.  In the meantime, so many thanks!  Tom]

It couldn't be worse, could it?  In the Gulf, BP now claims to be retrieving
15,000 barrels of oil a day from the busted pipe 5,000 feet down.  That's
three times the total amount of oil it claimed, bare weeks ago, was coming
out of that pipe.  A government panel of experts now suggests that the real
figure could be up to 60,000 barrels or 2.5 million gallons a day, the
equivalent of an Exxon Valdez spill every four days -- and some independent
experts think the figure could actually be closer to 100,000 barrels a day.

In the meantime, we just learned from the Los Angeles Times that -- go
figure -- the "primary responsibility for safety and other inspections" on
the oil rig that blew in the Gulf "rested not with the U.S. government but
with the Republic of the Marshall Islands," and that those impoverished
islands had outsourced their responsibilities to private companies.  Go BP!
We also learned that the relief wells sure to staunch the flow of oil by
"early August" could take far longer, fail, or even make matters
significantly worse; that BP cut every corner in the book to save money when
drilling its well; and, oh, that evidently even the heavens are angry at the
oil giant, since on Tuesday a lightning strike put its sole drill/retrieval
ship in the Gulf out of action for hours, leaving all that oil pouring into
the water unimpeded.  However bad the bad news is, each new dawn it only
seems to get worse, as does the "collateral damage," whether to pelicans or
the Gulf's beaches and wetlands.

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, that war equivalent of BP's Gulf disaster, things
are similarly trending downward at a startling pace as the news from there
grows ever grimmer.  The model American offensive in the southern town of
Marja, declared a "success" in early May, has faltered badly and has been
labeled by Afghan war commander General Stanley McChrystal a "bleeding
 ulcer"; the "government in a box" that he claimed the U.S. would merrily
roll out after U.S. and Afghan troops decisively shoved the Taliban aside,
is still in absentia, and the Taliban remain all too present; Afghan
President Hamid Karzai now openly indicates that he thinks the Americans can't
win in his country and he's planning accordingly; the much ballyhooed
American "offensive" in Afghanistan's second largest city, Kandahar, has
once again been delayed; corruption increases; American and NATO death tolls
grow worse by the month as support for the war in the U.S. sinks; the
"collateral damage" only increases; and this week, in a piece in the New
York Times, we were told things are so bad that a serious drawdown of forces
in 2011 is considered unlikely.  Go figure (again)!

And oh, the heavens are evidently not so happy with our Afghan operations
either, since Centcom commander General David Petraeus fainted while under
what one commentator called "withering" questioning about drawdown schedules
for U.S. troops in a Senate hearing room Tuesday.

To make matters more complicated, as Nick Turse, TomDispatch regular and
author of The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives, points
out, America's two distant disasters are not only out of control and
seemingly unstaunchable, but more intimately connected than we might
imagine.  The American disaster in Afghanistan runs, in significant part, on
BP-produced fuel, and government payments for that fuel are bolstering BP
while it lives through its purgatory in the Gulf.

In addition, lest the American people learn the absolute worst, BP,
evidently working hand-in-hand with the government, has put great effort
into avoiding unnecessarily ugly photos, potentially negative stories, and
unwanted information from the Gulf, by adopting methods of news control
pioneered by the Pentagon in Iraq and Afghanistan.  These include the
"embedding" of reporters with government minders on public beaches, in the
water, and in the air.  It has even evidently become the norm in the Gulf
now for officials to speak of reporters covering the scene as "media
 embeds."  In this way do our disparate disasters merge in corporate and
government hands.  Tom

Kick Ass or Buy Gas? How Taxpayers Are Subsidizing BP's Disaster Through the
Pentagon By Nick Turse

Residents of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida are livid with BP
in the wake of the massive, never-ending oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico --
and Barack Obama says they ought to be.  But there's one aspect of the BP
story that most of those angry residents of the Gulf states aren't aware of.
And the president hasn't had a thing to say about it.

Even as the tar balls hit Gulf beaches, their tax dollars are subsidizing BP
and so far, President Obama has not shown the slightest indication that he
plans to stop their flow into BP coffers, despite the recent call of Public
Citizen, a watchdog group, to end the nation's business dealings with
company.  In fact, the Department of Defense, which has a longstanding,
multi-billion dollar business relationship with BP, tells TomDispatch that
it has no plans to sever current business ties or curtail future contracts
with the oil giant.

Talking Tough

In recent weeks, against a news backdrop of oil-soaked pelicans, President
Obama has been talking tough.  "We've ordered BP to pay economic injury
claims, and we will make sure they deliver," he announced on June 1st.  Days
later, he rebuked the oil giant for considering plans to pay out large
dividends to shareholders and for spending tens of millions of dollars on an
advertising campaign to repair the company's tarnished image.

"My understanding is that BP had contracted for $50 million worth of TV
advertising to manage their image in the course of this disaster," the
president said.  "Now, I don't have a problem with BP fulfilling its legal
obligations. What I don't want to hear is that they're spending that kind of
money on shareholders and spending that kind of money on TV advertising,
[but] they're nickel-and-diming fishermen or small businesses here in the
Gulf who are having a hard time."

As part of his ongoing attempt to deal with flak from critics who claim that
his reaction to the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has been far too measured
and that his administration has mishandled its response to the disaster,
Obama told NBC "Today Show" host Matt Lauer: "I don't sit around just
talking to experts because this is a college seminar. We talk to these folks
because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to
 kick."

While the president has been on the verbal warpath, the U.S. military has --
with little notice -- continued to carry on a major business partnership
with BP, despite the company's disastrous environmental record.

Repeat Offenders

As an institution, the Pentagon runs on oil.  Its jet fighters, bombers,
tanks, Humvees, and other vehicles burn 75% of the fuel used by the
Department of Defense. For example, B-52 bombers consume 47,000 gallons per
mission, and when an F-16 fighter kicks in its afterburners, it burns
through $300 worth of fuel a minute.  In fact, according to an article in
the April 2010 issue of Energy Source, the official newsletter of the
Pentagon's fuel-buying component, the DoD purchases three billion gallons of
jet fuel per year.

Thanks to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Department of Defense has
been consuming vast quantities of fuel.  According to 2008 figures, for
example, U.S. military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan used a staggering 90
million gallons per month.  Given the base-building boom that preceded
President Obama's Afghan surge, the 2010 figures may be significantly
higher.

In 2009, according to the Pentagon's Defense Energy Support Center (DESC),
the military spent $3.8 billion for 31.3 million barrels -- around 1.3
billion gallons -- of oil consumed at posts, camps, and bases overseas.
Moreover, DESC's bulk-fuels division, which purchases jet fuel and naval
diesel fuel among other petroleum products, awarded $2.2 billion in
contracts to support operations in Iraq and Afghanistan last year.  Another
$974 million was reportedly spent by the ground-fuels division, which awards
contracts for diesel fuel, gasoline, and heating oil for ground operations,
just for the war in Afghanistan in 2009.

The Pentagon's foreign wars have left it particularly heavily dependent on
oil services, energy, and petroleum companies.  An analysis published at
Foreign Policy in Focus found that, in 2005, 145 such companies had
contracts with the Pentagon.  That year, the Department of Defense paid out
more than $1.5 billion to BP alone and a total of $8 billion taxpayer
dollars, in total, to energy-related firms on what is a far-from-complete
list of companies.

In 2009, according to the Defense Energy Support Center, the military
awarded $22.5 billion in energy contracts.  More than $16 billion of that
went to purchasing bulk fuel.  Some 10 top petroleum suppliers got the lion's
share, more than $11.5 billion, among them big names like Shell, Exxon Mobil
and Valero.  The largest contractor, however, was BP, which received more
than $2.2 billion -- almost 12% of all petroleum-contract dollars awarded by
the Pentagon for the year.

While one exceptionally powerful department of the federal government has
been feeding money into BP (and other oil giants) with abandon, BP has
consistently run afoul of U.S. government regulators from the Occupational
Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).  According to the Center for Public
Integrity, "BP account[ed] for 97 percent of all flagrant violations found
in the [oil] refining industry by government safety inspectors over the past
three years."  Records obtained by the Center demonstrate that between June
2007 and February 2010, BP received a total of 862 citations, mostly for
alleged violations of "OSHA's process safety management standard, a sweeping
rule governing everything from storage of flammable liquids to emergency
shutdown systems."  Of these citations, 760 were considered "egregious
willful," which OSHA defines as a violation even more severe than those
committed due to "plain indifference" or evidencing "intentional disregard
for employee health and safety."  As a result, BP faces $90 million in
penalties which the company is currently contesting.

Over those same years, BP received around $5.7 billion in federal contracts,
according to official government data.  In fact, the $2.2 billion the
Pentagon paid to the oil giant in 2009 accounted for almost 16% of the
company's nearly $14 billion in annual profits.

This fiscal year, the U.S. military has already awarded the company more
than $837 million, inking its latest deal with BP in March.

The Pentagon's Green Revolution

In recent years, the gas-guzzling Pentagon has launched a major effort to
invest in developing green technology -- or at least give the appearance of
doing so -- with, at best, mixed results. As defense-tech writer Noah
Shachtman has pointed out, the military is "now focusing on algal feedstock
for biofuel and next-generation solar panels. One of the world's largest
solar-power projects is planned for the Army's main training center, at Fort
Irwin, Calif. Billions in stimulus money were spent to green military
facilities."

But efforts in the Bush years to develop "green" vehicles generally stalled,
flopped, or barely got rolling.  Under the Obama administration, more
ambitious goals have been set, but tangible results are still lacking.  Last
year, the military's contracts for renewable fuels derived from algae,
according to DESC, added up to less than 22,000 gallons.

One major reason for this, Shachtman writes, is that "the current systems
for delivering power and fuel to war zones are reliable, if inefficient and
unsustainable.  Military leaders," he adds "don't want to jeopardize
operations in Afghanistan or Iraq for something perceived as experimental or
risky."  As a result, whatever solar panels it has installed or renewable
jet fuel it has purchased, the Pentagon remains dependent on buying huge
amounts of petroleum products from BP and other large energy corporations,
and when it comes to war-making, any substantive reduction in oil dependence
appears far off indeed.

Nonetheless, the Department of Defense has devoted significant resources to
publicizing its green efforts.  The commander-in-chief has even lent a hand.
On March 31st, President Obama stood in front of a "green" F-18 Hornet
fighter designed to run partly on bio-fuels and announced to the nation that
he was proposing to open large new areas off the Atlantic coastline, the
eastern Gulf of Mexico, and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas
drilling.  Less than a month later, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded
in the Gulf of Mexico.

In the weeks since, despite Obama's tough talk, his reported "anger and
frustration," and his efforts to identify the proper "ass to kick," as well
as the Pentagon's much-touted green-energy initiative, the U.S. military
continues, as Shachtman points out, to burn "22 gallons of diesel [fuel] per
soldier per day in Afghanistan, at a cost of more than $100,000 a person
annually."

In other words, as a direct result of war-making in distant lands, taxpayer
dollars, including those from Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana,
will continue to flow into BP coffers, even as more wildlife dies, more
beaches are fouled, and more livelihoods are lost in the Gulf of Mexico.

Tough Talk and No Action

In a June 5th email message to supporters, paid for by Organizing for
America, a project of the Democratic National Committee, President Obama
again acknowledged the severity of the BP disaster and validated the anger
it has unleashed.  "This spill," he declared, "has not just damaged
livelihoods. It has upended whole communities. And the fury people feel is
not just about the money they have lost. It is about the wrenching
recognition that this time their lives may never be the same."

"We have," he continued, "...ordered BP to pay economic injury claims, and
this week, the federal government sent BP a preliminary bill for $69 million
to pay back American taxpayers for some of the costs of the response so
 far."

Two days later, Tyson Slocum, the director of the consumer advocacy group
Public Citizen's energy program, sent a letter to Obama and Secretary of
Defense Robert Gates asking them to go further.  He urged them to suspend,
and ultimately debar, BP and its subsidiaries from serving as defense
contractors, to terminate six current federal contracts with the company,
and prohibit BP and its subsidiaries from winning federal contracts for the
next three years.  He wrote:

"Given the company's willful transgression of U.S. laws, it can no longer be
presumed that BP will responsibly perform its contractor responsibilities.
The demonstrated disregard for the law means that there is good reason to
doubt that the company will abide by its obligations under its Department of
Defense contracts. Moreover, the company's repeated violation of
environmental laws suggests an unacceptably high likelihood that BP will
violate such laws in carrying out its contractual obligations. BP's
aggregate record of wrongdoing -- including but not limited to causing the
ongoing gusher in the Gulf of Mexico -- evidences a lack of business honesty
that seriously and directly affects its ability to perform its contractual
duties."

Public Citizen has yet to receive a response or any indication that the
president or the defense secretary has read the letter, Slocum informed
TomDispatch this week.

"I am not aware at this moment of any plans to curtail or cancel any DoD
contracts that may exist at this time," Department of Defense spokesperson
Cheryl Irwin told TomDispatch.  Irwin also stated that she knew of no plans
to restrict the awarding of future contracts to BP.

The president has remained silent on the issue.  Repeated requests by
TomDispatch for comment from the White House's Council on Environmental
Quality went unanswered.  In a statement to TomDispatch this week, however,
the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said it "is closely monitoring the
investigations into the circumstances leading to the explosion and spill at
the Deepwater Horizon facility. EPA will weigh its options under our
debarment authority and take appropriate actions."  No time frame, however,
has been set for any type of decision.  "It is really premature to speculate
on the Agency's actions," an EPA official, who asked not to be named, told
TomDispatch.  "We're on hold pending the larger federal investigation."

Yesterday, the White House and BP agreed that the oil giant would establish
a $20 billion escrow account to compensate claims resulting from the Gulf
Coast oil spill.  "This should provide some assurance to small business
owners that BP is going to meet its responsibilities," said President Obama
following the announcement.

The message is clear.  BP will be held accountable -- but only to a point,
and not nearly in strong enough terms, says Public Citizen's Slocum.  The
escrow account is "a no-brainer," he told TomDispatch.  "But that's just
related to the company's obligations to pay for a mess it created," he
pointed out, likening the situation to an individual breaking the law.  "If
I commit a crime that causes damage, I don't just pay restitution.  I pay a
punitive fine or I'm incarcerated. The question is: What is the version of
incarceration for corporations?"

Slocum sees a 2007 guilty plea by BP Products North America for a felony
violation of the Clean Air Act -- stemming from a 2005 explosion at a BP
refinery in Texas that killed 15 workers -- as evidence that stronger
sanctions are now warranted.  The fine resulting from the Texas disaster was
just a "blip on their balance sheet," he says.

"You have to send a clear message to shareholders that committing felonies
is not tolerated in the United States.  And the way you do that is through
some form of permanent sanctions."  Barring the company from government
contracts, says Slocum, would be just such a step.

With anger boiling over in the Gulf, there seemingly could be no more
egregious offender or more deserving "ass to kick" than BP's.  "I don't know
of any other oil companies operating in America that are currently on
criminal probation," says Slocum.  "I don't know any other oil companies
that recently pled guilty to a felony.  I don't know any other oil companies
that appear to have committed numerous acts of negligence that resulted in
the largest industrial environmental disaster in American history. BP is an
outlier, so it needs to be treated as an outlier."

Somebody should tell the president.  Again.

Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com.  An award-winning
journalist, his work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, In
These Times, and regularly at TomDispatch. He is the author of The Complex:
How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives (Metropolitan Books). His
website is NickTurse.com.

Copyright 2010 Nick Turse


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