Belt Auction

Will Anyone at BP Face Any Charges?

Simple question: will there be any legal repercussions; domestically or internationally? If they sold drugs local police and FBI would have already sent the SWAT team to bust down their door at 5am, shot their dogs, arrested them, given them their "walk of shame", processed and indicted them, seized all their assets before they were convicted of any crime, auctioned their homes, cars, boats and planes before they were convicted of any crime, held a press conference to brag for all to see on the 24-hour news networks about how they take their jobs to keep this nation they love safe are not going to tolerate criminals polluting it with their filth.

Public Comments

1. They Attorney General of the U.s. is looking into what possible crimes they could be charged with but I think the population of the Gulf would object because they care about their jobs more than justice. If BP officials are prosecuted, that would hurt the economy. Even the billions of dollars in fines is hurting the company's bottom line, and their dividends to stockholders have diminished, and those stockholders are complaining about the government being too harsh. So, you cant please everyone.
2. Well I don't believe BP has committed any international crimes, which tend to be focused on war time atrocities and genocide. They certainly will face civil claims/complaints from state and federal and local authorities and individual home and business owners. As far as criminal charges are concerned you have to find out more about what the BP executives were doing on board the oil rig the day of the explosion. In other words what they knew and how they conducted themselves while in possession of that knowledge. BP overrode Transocean's people that day and it was to save money. George Orwell, an Englishman, would have appreciated that the pretext was a safety award to be presented from BP to Transocean when the reality was that they were tired of the safe and cautious approach to drilling that had characterized the Transocean drilling effort. There's no excuse for an inoperative blowout preventer and someone will have to answer for that, but the critical errors were all manmade and made by BP on the rig that day. It's simply not yet clear who gave the orders to the BP executives who were on the oil rig that day and how much was relayed back to upper management that day, if anything, for their review/direction/approval. If it's one or two rogue BP executives at fault, then that's one thing. If it isn't, then it's a different kettle of fish. Let's get the oil contained as well as it can be contained, let's get the sand berms in place, let's get some crop dusters to disperse oil-digesting bacteria, lets get more skimmers working, et cetera. We will get to the bottom of what happened that day, but it won't bring any of the Transocean eleven back to live. It won't help us cap the riser pipe or clean up the surface oil or figure out what to do about those two massive sub-sea oil plumes. Let's get our priorities right, and solve the most pressing and immediate problems first. If you want Congress to do anything, then have them enact a law that requires any corporation responsible for polluting fresh or salt water with oil to set aside a sum of money equal to whatever dividends they declare subsequent to the oil leak/spill. So if BP wants to distribute a $10 billion dividend to its stockholders it must also place $10 billion in cash aside in the hands of a federal escrow agent for damages which may ultimately be determined are owed by BP to parties other than those who were participating with BP or working for BP on this oil drilling operation. Does that make some sense?