[PA Engineer]

Here are a couple follow up articles. The important points are BP's refusal to take action years ago when the corrosion was first reported. This entire incident was preventable with a propper corrosion program. Here is another article from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

BP pays price for bad maintenance

"But experts say the simple answer is this: BP did a poor job of pipeline maintenance, used the least-thorough pipeline inspection procedures and had little government oversight.

BP also is accused of largely ignoring — or at least not properly addressing — warnings about its bad pipes from critics and even its own workers.

Two years ago, a retired oil man turned industry watchdog wrote a letter warning BP director Walter Massey — who also is president of Morehouse College in Atlanta — of serious corrosion problems in the very pipeline that was shut down."

[AMHN]

Yes, but then they could not be part of everybody raising the price of oil to offset cost...whereas now they can offset the costs by jacking prices (because of global market demands...of course)

[stylin19a]

BP's board and London-based executives were informed of widespread corrosion at the UK oil giant's Alaska field two years before the company was forced to shut it this week, citing "unexpectedly severe corrosion

wouldn't they have had to shut it down then ?

[E. Pluribus Unum]

I'm sure BP wanted their pipes to corrode and fail because they make more money if they don't have any oil to sell.

And I'm sure government oversight would have prevented the current problem, because the government knows so much about oil production as evidenced by the amount of oil the produce.

</sarcasm>

[mewzilla]

To be fair to BP, if the corrosion was due to bacteria, isn't that a bit harder to predict and troubleshoot?

[Spirited]

I hope that the stockholders give the elitists at the head of the corporation a good shakeup.

[ASOC]

Mr Charles Hammel has a long history with the oil companies here in Alaska (lawsuits, lots of letters to board members, etc) and many residents consider him a gadfly. Others see him as anti-development, and thus a threat to local jobs. Some union concerns come into play depending on the company/issue.

Others see him as a crusader:

From counterpunch.org
Take the case of Charles Hammel. Back in the late 1980s, pipeline workers and inspectors began feeding Hammel information problems with the pipeline and with Alyeska's reckless cost-cutting and mismanagement. Hammel, an independent oil broker, took these concerns to congress and Alyeska was forced to spend millions of dollars to repair corrosion along the line.

The company, and the oil corporations behind it, didn't like this one bit, so they went after Hammel with a vengeance. In 1990, they hired the Wackenhut Corporation dig up dirt on Hammel. They rummaged through his trash, ran credit reports on him, set up a fake enviro group to trick him into giving them information and even hired a hooker to try to seduce him. Hammel sued the company for invasion of privacy and won a $5 million settlement.

From the oildrum.com
I caught CNBC early this morning. They had a guy on there named Charles Hammel. Hammel is an advocate for BP workers in Alaska. Hammel said he warned BP in 2004 that there were serious corrosion problems with the pipeline. He said BP workers reported this problem to him. He said there is about 1000 miles of "flow-line" in Alaska. He said the entire flow-line is like Swiss cheese. He said BP responded by trying to figure out who was talking to him

The truth, I suppose as is the case of events such as these, is somewhere in between.

SO pretty much take anything/everything said by the oil companies - and Mr Hammel et al, with a grain of salt. The real truth lies somewhere in between the extremes.

[Eva]

There have been many complaints about the routine maintenance and safety procedures that BP performs, both from employees and contractors. The problem with BP is that they are so bottom line oriented that nothing else matters. They give out yearly bonuses to top management based on increased profit, as compared to comparable departments, through out the company. Consequently, they constantly have bean counters working on ways to cut cost, usually by eliminating jobs, which means fewer people to perform routine maintenance, and longer hours for lower level salaried workers.

[dr_who_2]

Pump, pump, pump while gas prices are high, right?

[kittymyrib]

Where is our absolutely useless Energy Dept. in all this? They have no rules for pipeline polution in Alaska? Let one oil rig in the Gulf dump 10 barrels of oil and the EPA is on them like a duck on a June bug. BP, which also has the most poluting refinery on the Gulf Coast, should be fined millions for not only dumping petroleum onto that "pristine" environment that we can't drill on, but for those lying TV ads that brag about how "green" they are.