Oil seeps into the Mississippi Delta

[Last Updated June 21st]

1. The explosion on the Deepwater Horizion was caused by a large number of safety violations, as revealed by a 60 Minutes interview with one of the last survivors to escape the inferno. Stress was being put on the crew because they had lost time drilling the first hole too fast, breaking the drill and forcing them to abandon it for a second well, the one that ultimately exploded. A drill pipe was accidentally pulled while the blowout preventer had been engaged during a test, causing broken-off chunks of rubber to spew at the top. The supervisor dismissed the chunks of rubber. Not only that, but one of the pods had lost functioning a few weeks ago. There were two failed pressure tests, and although BP is claiming that it passed a third pressure test, a Halliburton supervisor disputes that the test was completed. On top of that, the batteries were weak, meaning the blowout preventer was broken in at least two known ways before it failed to work when it was needed. Amazingly enough, BP said it never followed a federal law requiring it to certify that a blowout preventer device would be able to block a well in case of an emergency and actually blamed the Minerals Management Service for not asking it to comply with the law.

2. During a safety meeting, Transocean manager Jimmy Harrel was talking about how they were going to cap the well when a newly arrived BP manager interrupted him, saying he was going to do it his way instead. The Transocean manager wanted to plug Halliburton’s corks into the well with a column full of heavy drilling fluid to keep the pressure contained, but the BP manager had the “mud” removed and replaced with sea water before the last plug was set in order to speed up the project. The BP manager had been flown to the rig along with several others to celebrate seven years without an injury. After the meeting ended, Harrell was heard grumbling, “I guess that’s what we have those [blowout preventer] pincers for.” After the explosion, Harrell was heard by a crewman yelling into the phone, “Are you fucking happy? Are you fucking happy? The rig’s on fire! I told you this was gonna happen…. I am fucking calm. You realize the rig is burning?” But during hearings by the Coast Guard and the Minerals Management Service, Harrell denied any conflicts with his BP or Transocean bosses.

3. A senior BP executive and CEO of Transocean told lawmakers that discrepancies in key pressure tests on the afternoon of the explosion should have raised alarms. Tests showed that the cement job hadn’t sealed off the well and a gaseous mixture was leaking into it. As far back as 11 months ago, BP was concerned about the well casing and the blowout preventer. One of the 11 men who died had been so disturbed by the safety violations that he had his will drawn up and his affairs put into order on his last trip home. On June 22, 2009, BP engineers expressed concerns that the metal casing the company wanted to use might collapse under high pressure. One engineer said, “This would certainly be a worst-case scenario. However, I have seen it happen so know it can occur.” Special permission had to be given because it violated the company’s safety policies and design standards, but internal reports do not explain why the company allowed for an exception for the “nightmare” well. BP employee Richard Miller wrote in an email, “We have flipped design parameters around to the point I got nervous.” The company could have squeezed more cement in using a new section of pipe that would have cost some $5 to $10 million dollars. Halliburton engineers told BP they should install 21 centralizer mechanisms instead of just 6 to ensure the casing ran straight into the well. The emailed response coming back from BP official Brett Cocales read: “But, who cares, it’s done, end of story, will probably be fine and we’ll get a good cement job… So Guide is right on the risk/reward equation.”

4. BP hired a top oilfield service company to test the strength of cement linings on the Deepwater Horizon’s well, but sent the firm’s workers home 11 hours before the rig exploded without performing a final check that a top cementing company executive called “the only test that can really determine the actual effectiveness” of the well’s seal.

5. BP engineers tried to activate a huge piece of underwater safety equipment but failed because the device had been so altered that diagrams BP got from the equipment’s owner didn’t match the supposedly failsafe device’s configuration, congressional investigators said.

6. An oil industry whistle-blower has told the Huffington Post that BP was aware of device tests on blowout preventers being falsified and had himself witnessed cheating on the tests at least 100 times. Failure is common.

7. BP makes $93 million in profit every day. That means they could have used one day’s profit to buy 186 of those acoustic fail safes that were deemed too expensive.

8. The figure of 5,000 barrels a day was hastily produced by government scientists in Seattle. It appears to have been calculated using a method that is “specifically not recommended for major oil spills.” An expert on oil slicks said his own rough calculations using satellite imagery suggested that the leak could “easily be four or five times” that estimate. After seeing the video of the spill, some are estimating 19 times that amount. A confidential government report on the unfolding spill disaster in the Gulf makes clear the Coast Guard now fears the well could become an unchecked gusher shooting millions of gallons of oil per day into the Gulf. The CEO of BP, Tony Hayward, however, has described the disaster’s impact as very, very modest. An internal document from BP originally made the estimate of 14,000 barrels per day. That also fit within the 12,000 to 19,000 estimate given by an independent report, but another internal BP document puts the worst case scenario at 100,00 barrels a day. According to the New York Times:

BP has repeatedly said that its highest priority is stopping the leak, not measuring it. “There’s just no way to measure it,” Kent Wells, a BP senior vice president, said in a recent briefing. Yet for decades, specialists have used a technique that is almost tailor-made for the problem. With undersea gear that resembles the ultrasound machines in medical offices, they measure the flow rate from hot-water vents on the ocean floor. Scientists said that such equipment could be tuned to allow for accurate measurement of oil and gas flowing from the well. Richard Camilli and Andy Bowen, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, who have routinely made such measurements, spoke extensively to BP last week, Mr. Bowen said. They were poised to fly to the gulf to conduct volume measurements. But they were contacted late in the week and told not to come, at around the time BP decided to lower a large metal container to try to capture the leak. That maneuver failed. They have not been invited again. “The government and BP are calling the shots, so I will have to respect their judgment,” Dr. Camilli said. BP did not respond Thursday to a question about why Dr. Camilli and Mr. Bowen were told to stand down. Speaking more broadly about the company’s policy on measuring the leak, a spokesman, David H. Nicholas, said in an e-mail message that “the estimated rate of flow would not affect either the direction or scale of our response, which is the largest in history.”
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A small organization called SkyTruth, which uses satellite images to monitor environmental problems, published an estimate on April 27 suggesting that the flow rate had to be at least 5,000 barrels a day, and probably several times that. The following day, the government — over public objections from BP — raised its estimate to 5,000 barrels a day. A barrel is 42 gallons, so the estimate works out to 210,000 gallons per day. BP later acknowledged to Congress that the worst case, if the leak accelerated, would be 60,000 barrels a day, a flow rate that would dump a plume the size of the Exxon Valdez spill into the gulf every four days. BP’s CEO, Tony Hayward, has estimated that the reservoir tapped by the out-of-control well holds at least 50 million barrels of oil.

Satellite imagery of the oil spill has also been posted on the NOAA website. The shape of the oil looks just like a dragon on April the 28th.

BP Oil dragon uses his breath attack against the Louisiana coast.

9. BP has resisted entreaties from scientists that they be allowed to use sophisticated instruments at the ocean floor that would give a far more accurate picture of how much oil is really gushing from the well. “The answer is no to that,” a BP spokesman, Tom Mueller, said on Saturday. “We’re not going to take any extra efforts now to calculate flow there at this point. It’s not relevant to the response effort, and it might even detract from the response effort.” Gigantic plumes of oil dozens of miles long and several miles wide have been discovered underneath the ocean by several independent sources, yet BP CEO Tony Hayward outright denied these findings, saying, “The oil is on the surface. There aren’t any plumes.”

10. BP was deploying oil-dispersing chemicals, called Corexit, manufactured by a company with which it shares close ties, even though other EPA-approved alternatives have been shown to be far less toxic and, in some cases, nearly twice as effective. As liberal blogger Bryan Lambert puts it: “What’s in Corexit? Nobody knows. Why? Because it’s a trade secret. Because three-plus decades of pro-corporate deregulation [has] gotten us to the point where a foreign oil company can dump hundreds of thousands of gallons of a mystery chemical made by NALCO into the ocean, and we can’t make them tell us what’s in it.” By May 12th, 6 dolphins had washed up dead on the coast and a video had been shot of more swimming in dispersent-tainted water. Sea turtles and other endangered species are also at risk. Divers examining the site of the accident have seen how the millions of gallons of crude and the introduction of chemicals to disperse it have thrown this underwater ecosystem into chaos. Fishermen were reporting being disoriented and coughing up stuff, with one claiming a doctor told him his lungs looked like those of a 3-pack-a-day smoker. Marine toxicologist Riki Ott said the chemicals used by BP can wreak havoc on a person’s body and even lead to death. “The volatile, organic carbons, they act like a narcotic on the brain,” Ott said. “At high concentrations, what we learned in Exxon Valdez from carcasses of harbor seals and sea otters, it actually fried the brain, [and there were] brain lesions.” It’s maker, NALCO, says it’s 27 times safer than dish soap. Yet BP’s home country banned the stuff for the North Sea. BP CEO Tony Hayward instead blamed food poisoning for the workers getting sick. According to one human rights group, BP is discouraging crews from using respirators because it’s bad PR. The EPA originally stated it could not force BP to choose a different one but then reversed itself, demanding that the company choose a safer dispersant within 72 hours or explain why no other dispersent meets the necessary standards. BP has ignored this order, saying that they have not found sufficient supplies of a safer chemical, but even if there isn’t enough supplies of the safer chemical, that’s no excuse for not buying them out and using them first. On June 9th, the EPA quietly released a list of the dispersent’s ingredients. Corexit 9527, used in lesser quantities during the earlier days of the spill response, is designated a chronic and acute health hazard by the EPA. Corexit 9500, the formula used since late April, has two hazardous chemicals taken from crude oil and a third hazardous chemical found in detergent and certain laxatives.

11. BP originally forced now-out-of-work fishermen they hired for cleanup duty (some of who are contemplating suicide) to sign a waiver promising not to talk about what they saw with the public or sue BP for any health problems they get from working in such a dangerous environment. When people started to complain, BP claimed it was a mistake and that the waiver form was generic (meaning they always demand people keep quiet and give up all their rights). BP is now using a different form. But now it’s come out that two survivors of the rig explosion are alleging they were forced into seclusion in order for Transocean to coerce them into signing legal waivers. BP is also trying to buy off people’s right to sue with ridiculously small settlement offers and has now hired the former secretary to Dick Cheney to head their public relations in America. Bob Cesca wonders when we will be hearing that the oil spill is in it’s “last throes.”

12. Much was made of BP including arctic-based walruses on their emergency response plan’s list of animals threatened by the oil spill, proving it was just a cribbed version of the Valdez response plan. But now it’s coming out that Exxon Mobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Shell also submitted emergency response plans that, in addition to being “virtually identical” in their outdated and ineffective methods, nearly all reference the safety of walruses.

13. According to Truthout.org, one of Bush’s Department of Justices killed a criminal probe into BP that threatened to net top officials:

West was confident that the thousands of hours he invested into the criminal investigation would result in felony charges against BP and the company’s senior executives who received advanced warnings from dozens of employees who worked at its Prudhoe Bay facility that unless immediate steps were taken to repair the severely corroded pipeline, a disaster on par with that of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill was only a matter of time.

In fact, West, who spent nearly two decades at the EPA’s criminal division, was also told the pipeline was going to rupture – about six months before it happened.

In a wide-ranging interview with Truthout, West described how the Justice Department (DOJ) abruptly shut down his investigation into BP in August 2007 and gave the company a “slap on the wrist” for what he says were serious environmental crimes that should have sent some BP executives to jail.

He first aired his frustrations after he retired from the agency in 2008. But he said his story is ripe for retelling because the same questions about BP’s record are being raised again after a catastrophic explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig killed 11 workers and ruptured an oil well 5,000 feet below the surface spewing 200,000 gallons of oil per day into the Gulf waters for a month.

14. The Minerals Management Service, or MMS, conducted at least 16 fewer inspections aboard the Deepwater Horizon than it should have under its own policy, a dramatic fall from the frequency of prior years. Even using the more favorable numbers for the most recent 64 months, 25% of monthly inspections were not performed. The first set of data supplied to AP represented a 59% shortfall in the number of inspections. An Interior Department review itself found in 2008 that MMS was “a dysfunctional organization that has been riddled with conflicts of interest, unprofessional behavior and a free-for-all atmosphere for much of the Bush administration’s watch,” which involved 13 employees accepting gifts from energy companies, cocaine use and sexual misconduct. Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said that, “between 2002 and 2006, nearly one-third of the staff socialized with, and received a wide array of gifts and gratuities from, oil and gas companies,” including ski and golf trips, tickets to sporting events, a party in New Orleans, dinners, drinks and a paintball outing. Last summer the Obama administration tapped a BP executive to serve as a deputy administrator for land and minerals management.

15. BP has spilled a sizable amount of oil in the last 15 years compared to other companies. OSHA statistics show BP ran up 760 “egregious, willful” safety violations, while Sunoco and Conoco-Phillips each had 8, Citgo had 2, and Exxon had 1 comparable citation. The MMS collected only 16 fines for nearly 200 safety and environmental violations in the Gulf of Mexico. After a BP refinery explosion in Texas City killed 15 people and injured 180 in 2005, a Justice Department investigation found that the explosion was caused by “improperly released vapor and liquid.” Procedures required by the Clean Air Act to reduce the possibility of an explosion were either not followed or had not even been established. From 1998 through 2007 (the year MMS issued its last fine against the company), BP paid less than $580,000 in penalties for 12 safety violations. The fines were the equivalent of a rounding error.

16. The MMS has exempted 27 other offshore drilling projects from an environmental analysis since the accident, including one to BP. Both the Bush Administration and Obama have tried to blame this on an unrealistic 30-day time limit, but a November 2008 court ruling found that “[t]here is flexibility built into the regulatory scheme so that the agency can perform its full duties under NEPA.” One of the worst elements of the “Dick Cheney energy bill” had a direct role in eliminating the kind of regulatory oversight that may have prevented the blowout of BP’s Mississippi Canyon 252 well on April 20th, 2009. The legislation also dramatically expanded the circumstance under which drilling operations could be excluded from environmental reviews and be approved almost immediately. “Employees describe being in Interior – not just MMS, but the other agencies – as the third Bush term,” says Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which represents federal whistle-blowers. In the three months prior to the disaster, BP hired at least 27 lobbyists who formerly worked in Congress or the executive branch and spent more than $3.8 million dollars on lobbying the federal government.

17. The man in charge of gas and oil drilling for the MMS, Chris Oynes, who gave Transocean an award for safety just last year, has announced he’ll retire at the end of the month. Oynes was promoted to Associate Director for Offshore Energy and Minerals Management with the Interior Department in 2007, despite being embroiled in a controversy over the friendly terms he signed for companies who leased land in the Gulf. Representative Carolyn Maloney, at the time said: “It is completely ridiculous that MMS would take the person most likely responsible for the royalty rip-off and put him in charge of the whole show.”

18. The government seems to have given BP complete command not only of the clean-up, which represents a gross conflict of interest in and of itself, but even command of the Coast Guard, as evidenced by the Coast Guard and BP threatening journalists documenting the oil spill:

The Obama administration, it appears, has higher priorities … namely helping BP in its frantic efforts to keep the public in the dark about what is almost surely the worst environmental catastrophe in U.S. history.

Contacts in Louisiana have given me numerous, unconfirmed reports of cameras and cell phones being confiscated, scientists with monitoring equipment being turned away, and local reporters blocked from access to public lands impacted by the oil spill. But today CBS News got it on video, along with a bone-chilling statement by a Coast Guard official:

“These are BP’s rules. These are not our rules.”

But wait … isn’t that a public beach? From my viewpoint, it looks as if the Coast Guard* has been given direct orders to protect BP’s PR interests above safety concerns over air and water quality, above the outcries of local governments in need of aid, and (worst of all) above the need for the American public to be informed about what is really going on in the Gulf.

A contractor says BP is also trying to hide the effects of their disaster, saying, “There is a lot of coverup for BP. They specifically informed us that they don’t want these pictures of the dead animals. They know the ocean will wipe away most of the evidence. It’s important to me that people know the truth about what’s going on here.”

19. Although BP originally assured the EPA and MMS they had measures to contain any disaster, they never bothered building any containment devices before the spill because a blowout “seemed inconceivable.” So the dome they built was never tested under such pressure. Sure enough, the dome failed. BP then delayed the attempt to stop the leak using the “top kill” for quite a long time. Scientists said a misfire could lead to new problems. Ed Overton, a Louisiana State University professor of environmental studies, said the blowout preventer could spring a new leak that could spew untold amounts of oil if there’s a weak spot that is vulnerable to pressure from the heavy mud. Ultimately, it too failed. So how long could it be until the hole is plugged? Try Christmas.

20. Ken Abbott, who worked for Shell and GE, was hired by BP in 2008 to manage thousands of engineering drawings on how to shut down another Gulf of Mexico rig called Atlantis in case of an emergency. He found 89% of those critical drawings and 95% of the underwater welding plans had never been inspected and approved.

21. If this disaster is anything like the Valdez incident, BP will probably be able to get the punitive damages against them minimized, as the legal teams of most huge companies are able to do. Exxon was originally ordered to pay $5 billion in punitive damages, but after 20 years of litigation, Exxon managed to cut it down to about 10% the original judgment against them, amounting to about 1.4% of their $36.1 billion profit that year. BP also happens to have been the leader of the botched containment efforts in the critical hours after the Valdez ran aground. More than 20 years after the Exxon Valdez foundered off the coast of Alaska, puddles of oil can still be found in Prince William Sound. And more than 40 years after the barge Florida grounded off Cape Cod, dumping fuel oil, the muck beneath the marsh grasses still smells like a gas station. “In the bodies of organisms such as mammals or birds, these aromatic hydrocarbons can be transformed into even more toxic products, which can affect DNA.” The effects of the oil spill may linger in the genetics of Gulf coast animals long after the spill is gone, resulting in mutations that could lead to problems ranging from reduced fertility to cancer.

22. The Republican Senator Lisa Mukowski of Alaska has blocked legislation that would raise the maximum liability for penalties to the oil companies for these kinds of disasters from $75 million to $10 billion. Murkowski has collected over $426,000 — more than any other industry aside from electric utilities — for her campaigns over the course of her career. She is joined by Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, who says he’s afraid it will unfairly hurt smaller oil companies, as if there are any. The idea of retroactively changing the law to increase the limit is so absurd to Glenn “Nazi Tourette’s” Beck that he suggested people will soon be arrested for driving their cars and quipped, “Is this what we fought the Nazis for?” Meanwhile, some protesters are calling for BP to be seized. To dream.

23. Despite the fact that both Obama and the CEO of BP has repeatedly said that BP will be paying the bill for all the damages, the White House has asked Congress for $10 million to fight litigation against the government involving the oil spill. Transocean is petitioning to limit their liability to $27 million. BP has a law firm headed by a Clinton deputy attorney general and the company has asked that a single, cherry-picked Houston judge with oil ties be put in charge of all the pre-trial issues stemming from the 100+ lawsuits now being brought against them.

24. According to the Public Policy Polling: “Just 9% of voters say they think environmentalists caused the spill while 22% are unsure and 69% don’t believe they had anything to do with it. Even among GOP voters only 13% are buying into the ‘the environmentalists’ did it frame of mind.” “Just 9%”? And 31% think it’s either a sure thing or a coin flip, and that’s supposed to be a compliment? I admit after seeing a poll that said 20% of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth, I’m willing to admit that people just plain lie on these polls, but still, that’s almost 1 in 3 who think environmentalists may or may not be involved. Thank you Rush Limbaugh for “putting it out there.”

25. As covered by just about everyone, when BP, Transocean, and Halliburton were called to explain what happened to Congress, each tried to place the blame on the other.

26. Obama denounced it as a “ridiculous spectacle” of finger-pointing. Rand Paul then characterized the criticism as “un-American,” adding: “And I think it’s part of this sort of blame-game society in the sense that it’s always got to be somebody’s fault instead of the fact that maybe sometimes accidents happen.” He also criticized Interior Secretary Ken Salazar (“a right-of-center Democrat who often favors industry and big agriculture in battles over global warming, fuel efficiency and endangered species”) for saying the administration was putting it’s “boot heel on the throat of BP.” If only. Sarah Palin took the exact opposite position, suggesting Obama isn’t taking over because of BP campaign donations, and PolitiFact has noted that Obama has taken a lot of money from BP in particular, although Republicans took in more. After famously touting the safety of offshore drilling to the point where it became the resonate chant of the 2008 Republican presidential election, Palin is now blaming the disaster on “xtreme greenies” protesting onshore drilling, very similar to Rush Limbaugh’s other bullshit story that environmentalists “pushed” the drilling further offshore when in fact companies were simply allowed to take the drilling deeper as reserves closer to shore became depleted.

27. After several weeks, BP has finally approved an idea funded by Kevin Costner for separating the oil. Jeff McMahon writes:

Maybe “Waterworld” wasn’t a complete waste. While Costner was making that watery flop he began paying scientists to develop an idea for cleaning up oil spills — a large-scale centrifuge that can separate oil from sea water, saving the oil in tanks while returning the clean seawater to the sea.

BP approved Costner’s “Ocean Therapy” centrifuge as a cleanup technology yesterday, according to WWL-TV, after watching it work in New Orleans last Thursday. The centrifuge reportedly can remove 97 percent of the oil from water.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune seemed dismissive of Costner’s centrifuge when it appeared last week, listing it along with a raft of other ideas people have submitted for addressing the BP’s disaster in the gulf.

But one centrifuge can clean up to 210,000 gallons of sea water per day, according to John Houghtaling, CEA of Ocean Therapy Solutions. That’s the amount some government scientists estimate has been spilling from the remains of the Deepwater Horizon oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico.

“The machines are basically sophisticated centrifuge devices that can handle a huge volume of water and separate at unprecedented rates,” Houghtaling told WWLTV. “Costner has been funding a team of scientists for the last 15 years to develop a technology which could be used for massive oil spills.”

Inspired by the 1989 Exxon-Valdez spill, Costner and his brother Dan have invested $15 million in the centrifuge.

You read right. These multi-billion oil companies can’t afford to look into oil separation technology, but Kevin Fucking Costner can. Next thing you know they’re going to be bringing in James Cameron to brainstorm solutions for the oil spill alongside scientists, academics, and Washington officials.

28. Oh, wait. They ARE bringing in James Cameron to brainstorm solutions for the oil spill alongside scientists, academics, and Washington officials. Video Gum blogger Gabe reacts thusly:

You know what that means, right? We’re fucked. Boys, if you could play us out that would be great. I mean, I know that James Cameron has the world’s most extensive collection of Titanic figurines, and that one time he wore a fanny-pack to Brazil so that he could hug the jungle back together, but I am pretty sure that if the nation’s leading Actual Ocean Scientists and Trained For Real Oil Spill Disaster Relief Experts are running so thin on ideas that we are inviting “the dude who made Abyss” into the chambers of power to try and, you know, mix it up, I for one am saying goodbye to my loved ones and climbing onto the roof of my building with a life-preserver around my neck and a gun with one bullet in the chamber tucked into the waistband of my HAZMAT suit. Goodnight, nurse!

Actually, I’ve been told that Cameron has a team of scientists helping him, which makes me wonder if we should just turn over our entire energy apparatus to Hollywood.

29. Russia has dealt with a similar problem successfully four out of five times. Their method? They nuked the well. The Russians are advising we do the same, saying “the chances of failure in the Gulf of Mexico are 20%.” We probably wouldn’t even need a nuke, just a high-powered explosive. Some news personalities, only recently as far as I have been able to tell, have put some small amount of time into the consideration of blowing up the well, but only in the context of mocking the “nuclear option.” I’ve heard very little serious consideration for using conventional explosives. Even this may still be untenable, but I find it strange that nothing but ridicule has been heaped upon it. Granted, the Russian disasters were gas leaks on the land, not oil leaks deep underwater, and there is obviously a great danger that even a non-nuclear explosive could make things worse, but everything else has failed so far, so there’s no reason to assume the relief pipe that will appear two months from now will work and we can’t just let it go on forever. If the relief pipe does fail, I bet Keith Olberman won’t be acting like the idea is so crazy.

30. BP and Shell are making “discreet” stops at Iran to purchase their oil. Three reporters from the Wall Street Journal write:

An oil tanker named Front Page, chartered by Royal Dutch Shell PLC, left this port on March 17 and reported it was going to another U.A.E. port, then on to Saudi Arabia, ship-tracking data show.

But the tracking information reveals that Front Page also made an unreported stop—to the coast of Iran. There it loaded Iranian oil, according to records obtained by oil traders and shipping sources.

The incident, some oil-industry experts say, is an example of how some companies these days are hiding their business dealings with Iran, even when they are perfectly legal because they aren’t subject to any sanctions.

Another oil tanker that stopped in Iran in March, which oil traders say was chartered by Total SA of France, turned off its tracking transponder throughout the visit, according to ship-tracking data.

Spokesmen for Shell and Total declined to comment.

None of the current sanctions proposals in the United Nations or the U.S.—including the latest ones agreed to this week by the U.S., Russia and China—would target Iran’s oil-export business, which generates about half of its government revenues. Doing so, experts say, likely would drive up the commodity’s price world-wide and result in higher gasoline prices in the U.S., of as much as $1 more a gallon, even though the U.S. doesn’t import any Iranian oil.

U.S. officials also fear that targeting Iranian crude could wreak havoc on the recession-ravaged economies of allies like Japan, which last year imported about 421,000 barrels of Iranian crude a day, just behind China and India.

As a result, companies like Shell and BP PLC continue to do a brisk business buying Iranian oil products. BP declined to comment.

BP has a long history of this, starting with its founding in 1909 to plunder Middle Eastern oil reserves. And now here they are in command of their own disaster without showing any evidence that they know what they’re doing or that they have America’s best interests as their top priority. It’s crazy.

And all of this is only the latest in a long line of disastrous practices that have wrecked the ocean.