BP and Three Executives Facing Criminal Charges Over Oil Spill

New submitter SleazyRidr writes "Finally some news that will please a lot of the Slashdot crowd: a company has been charged with manslaughter! BP has been charged with manslaughter following the Macondo Incident. 'BP has agreed to pay $4.5 billion to settle the criminal charges and related Securities and Exchange Commission charges.' Two of the rig supervisors and a BP executive are also facing jail time. The supervisors are charged with 'failing to alert on-shore managers at the time they observed clear signs that the Macondo well was not secure and that oil and gas were flowing into the well,' and the supervisor is charged with 'obstruction of Congress and making false statements to law enforcement officials about the amount of oil flowing from the well.' Is this the start of companies being forced to take responsibility for their actions?"

Comments

Corporations are people

[Toe, The]

Who knew that could ever come back and bite them in the ass?

Re:Corporations are people

[MozeeToby]

Oil is a fungible commodity. That is to say, oil of similar quality is worth the same regardless of whom it comes from. That is to say, they cannot raise prices because their competitors (of which there are many, many competitors in the crude oil industry) will eat them alive.

And even ignoring all that, your statement implies that by raising prices they could increase their profit margins. Why wouldn't they be doing that before the fine was levied. That would be like someone at the boardroom meeting says "if we increase our prices by 10% we will see a $4.5 billion increase in profit", if it worked that way they would have done it already.

Re:Corporations are people

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea but that's not exactly a market in which competition is a thing. They'll just jointly raise prices, the others will make a bit more profit in the short-term for when it's their turn to pay for a major fuckup and the industry as a whole does business as usual.

Re:Corporations are people

[vlm]

Oh how I wish this wasn't posted AC...

Thats exactly how an oligarchy works. Today, company A would love to raise prices to make more money, but B and C won't play along, so they can't. We now know for certain that company B will raise prices next week by X dollars. Therefore A and C will match and stash away the profit.

Its not entirely bad, because its not so much a fine for BP as a reward via higher profits to all their competitors. If CEO compensation were related to profit (which it is not) then there would be intense pressure to not screw up and miss out on the fine platter of free profit.

Settle criminal charges?

[SoupGuru]

You can settle criminal charges with a load of cash? That doesn't seem right to me.

Not really

[Safety Cap]

When "BP" has to spend 180 days in prison like a regular person convicted of manslaughter then I'll believe it.

Oh, and I'd want BP to be a registered felon, so no government jobs/contracts, no leaving the country and no crossing state lines without the court's okay.

Re:Not really

[MaskedSlacker]

When "BP" has to spend 180 days in prison like a regular person convicted of manslaughter then I'll believe it.

I'd settle for a fine equal to 180 days gross revenue (effectively the same).

Re:Not really

[dave562]

You got your second wish. The EPA denied BP the right to bid on oil contracts.

http://blog.chron.com/lorensteffy/2012/11/in-suspending-bp-epa-does-what-drilling-regulators-would-not/

Re:Not really

[Pseudonym]

BP is a multinational company, just like every large company that you think is "an American company".

Re:Scapegoats

[buchner.johannes]

The larger damage was not to manslaughter but to destroying a complete ecosystem - Privatizing profits and socializing losses in action. Companies trifle with natural resources because they know if it all fails, we will have to pull together to get out of it.

On the same note, why can people put a price on a pirated mp3, but not on a long-term damaged ecosystem?

"Is this the start of companies being forced to.."

[Gaygirlie]

"...take responsibility for their actions?"

No. This is just to appeal to environmentalists and the general populace, and will be a very rare occurrence. I verily doubt you'll see a single company in the next 10 years being forced to "take responsibility."

Re:Scapegoats

[Anonymous Coward]

It's escape goats, dude.

So if we can hold the oil company accountable...

[scorp1us]

Why can't we hold the financial industry accountable and start putting bankers in Federal pound-me-in-the-ass prisons?

Re:Stupid summary

[Jeremy Erwin]

A few states, such as Australia and the UK have such a thing as corporate manslaughter. Not every murderer acts on his own initiative, sometimes he has his employer's interests at heart. UK version

Drop, meet Bucket

[sl4shd0rk]

With over $150 Billion in equity* it's a laughable settlement considering the gross negligence BP should be cited for.

[*] - http://www.bp.com/extendedsectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=9021229&contentId=7039276

Where's the apology?

[Squirmy McPhee]

Has Rep. Joe Barton apologized to BP for this yet?

BP denied EPA contracts

[dave562]

The more important and related story is that due to this, the EPA has suspended BP from any further contracts with the Federal government.

http://blog.chron.com/lorensteffy/2012/11/in-suspending-bp-epa-does-what-drilling-regulators-would-not/

I'm sure it will not be long before BP is crying about unions and regulation and it being too expensive to do business in America.

You can settle criminal charges now?

[Sydin]

That's nice. So go right ahead and take up that manslaughter hobby you've always dreamed of! After all it was only what, 11 people killed? so $4.5 billion divided by 11: that means you can murder anybody you want for the low low price of only ~$409 million!. What are you waiting for!? ...I fucking hate this country.

Re:Scapegoats

[MightyMartian]

This was falsified a long time ago. Natural seepage into the Gulf nowhere equals what was puking out of that damaged well. The ecosystem has not returned to normal, and with the added known of the dispersal chemicals, no one can actually say what is happening or how long it will take for the oil to be absorbed. But this belief that bacteria just magically eat oil and in turn leave behind no deleterious side effects is pretty much akin to claiming that women's reproductive systems magically expunge rapists' sperm.

But you would have made a great member of the group at the beginning of Thank Your Smoking; the oil company representative who insists that oil spills just get eaten up by the ecosystem, and even vaguely hints that ecosystems actually benefit from it.

Actually, what you're post reminds of is a great and sadly departed Seattle comedy show called Almost Live, where there was fantastic sketch featuring a pro-tobacco lobbyist who said bizarre things like "Three out of four chiropactors agree that not only does smoking not harm you, but in fact places a protective coating on the lungs!" You could have done the followup sketch; "Three out of four industry 'researchers' insist that only do oil spills not harm the environment, they in fact feed the bacteria and make the environment even better!"