Staying the Closet Carries A Huge Cost

Coming out of the closet can be difficult and traumatic - something that I know first hand and which many blog entries on this blog in its early years give witness too.  I still receive e-mails (and occasionally even telephone calls) from men who are struggling in the closet that want advice but who are too afraid of what they will lose if the are honest with themselves and their families.  Unfortunately, these individuals too often do not factor in the costs of not coming out: self-loathing, strained family relationships, spouses deprived of a straight spouse, and much more.  I can honestly say that I think I'd rather die than ever go back in the closet and live the way I once did.  Hopefully, with societal attitudes changing, it will be easier for future generations to avoid the trap of the closet.  But for many already denying who they are, comments by Lord Browne, former chair of British Petroleum are worth listening to.  Gay Star News reports on Browne's remarks about the closet.  Here are highlights:

Lord Browne of Madingley, who was outed by a newspaper in May 2007 after it discovered details of his relationship with a man, spoke movingly today at a leading business and diversity conference in London.

The annual EurOUT 2014 conference – now in its fourth year – was held at the London Business School, Regents Park. The event is aimed at tomorrow’s business leaders; both students and recent alumni.

A British peer, Lord Browne remained professionally in the closet for his entire business life. Away from work, he also chose to reveal his secret to very few people in his personal life either.

Since that time, he has spoken out about the huge amount of energy it took him to remain in the closet. He has also recently published a book, The Glass Closet, exploring his business life, his decision not to come out, and interviewing others – both those in and out of the closet – who work in the business world.

To a packed auditorium, Lord Browne was asked by one student whether he could understand some of those assembled choosing to stay in the closet. Lord Browne’s advice was unequivocal:

‘I would say to them it is not a valid choice. Think of the cost of it. The cost will be huge, and it’s an unnecessary cost in today’s environment. The cost is unimaginably high, and it changes everything.’

Reflecting from his resignation from BP – a company that he is widely credited with transforming during his time as Group Chief Executive (1995-2007) – he said that he felt the newspaper revelations would prove the end of him. Instead, he was ‘overwhelmed’ by the huge number of letters he received with message of support.

‘Thousands of letters. Tragic letters. Some from straight people that had been roasted by the press, others who’d been in jail in the 50s for being gay – it was a year of experience reading those letters. Humbling. All those fears I'd had of losing everything … nothing changed. People continued to invite me to things. Suppliers still approached me about doing business.’

‘I was born when being gay was illegal and my mother, a holocaust survivor, had rules: never tell anyone a secret as they might use it against you, and never reveal being part of a minority as when the going gets tough, the majority bash the minority.

‘When you’re in a high-profile position, you have a duty to be authentic and clear on who you are. I wasn’t.’

He said that he felt business schools have a duty to teach students about the value of diversity in a business context.

‘Schools need to instill in them how long it takes to build teams of people, and to understand what inclusion means. And that it’s not something that can merely be delegated to HR. The moment they take charge of it, as opposed to the CEO taking charge of it, it goes wrong.’

In the world of global organizations, he acknowledged that some sectors, such as finance, were doing better than others when it came to diversity and inclusion, and that gas and oil companies were among the worst – partly because some are state-owned by countries that have poor records in regard to LGBT rights. However, he said that he felt things were slowly changing, and singled out his former company, BP, as one organization that had made great progress since his departure.

 Despite the upheaval of my coming out, I believe that I've come a better parent.  It's hard to be genuine when you are filled with self-hate and lying to the world about who you are.   And when you are happy with who you are, that comes across in all of your relationships.

Lord Browne - Internalized Homophobia at the Highest Levels

For me, a major part of the "coming out" process was letting go of all of the religious and societal brainwashing that I had grown up with that made me perceive being gay as something simply too horrible to contemplate.  Hence the decades of mental gymnastics to convince myself "it wasn't really true" and living constantly on guard and behind a glass wall, if you will, so that no one might discover my terrible secret.  I suffered from internalized homophobia of the highest order.  And it took several years of therapy to get over the damage that had been done to me emotionally and psychologically.  For many of us older gays, the homophobia that we internalized made coming out so, so difficult and painful.  Indeed, I have gay friends who still cannot completely let go of the homophobia they internalized in their youth.  A lengthy article in The Guardian looks at Lord Browne (pictured above), former head of British Petroleum who similarly had to overcome this kind of toxic internalized homophobia.  Browne has now written a book, The Glass Closet, that looks at Browne's experience and why he believes continued homophobia in the business world undermines business productivity. Here are article highlights:

When Lord Browne was in charge of BP, had anyone told him he would one day invite a journalist into his home to discuss his sexuality, he would have said they were insane. Homosexuality was the last thing he expected to talk about in public; after all, he never spoke of it even in private. The former CEO spent half a century in the closet, so terrified of letting his secret slip that he never talked about himself at all, confining his conversational repertoire instead to "the news, and politics, and business. That's what you'd talk about."

But since a Sunday tabloid outed him seven years ago, his life has become a series of unimaginable surprises. For Browne, the revelation has been how much less homophobic the world is than he had always feared. He has now written a book about homosexuality within the business world, and the revelation for many readers will be how homophobic that world still is.

The Glass Closet tells the story of Browne's 38-year career and double life, which began when he joined BP in 1969, and ended with a single phone call from the Mail on Sunday in January 2007, informing him that it was about to publish a kiss'n'tell by a former Brazilian escort, Jeff Chevalier. He had been Browne's first and only boyfriend; the pair met in 2003 on a gay escort website and were together for almost three years. But in public, Browne was a heterosexual bachelor.

His reason for writing The Glass Closet is, he says, quite simple. "I wouldn't want anyone else to go through what I went through."

This motivation to spare others is common among victims of injustice who become campaigners, but it's about the only thing Browne has in common with a typical activist. He lives in a town house on Cheyne Row in Chelsea, where a butler leads me through rooms that could pass for an art gallery and out across a courtyard to a private library purpose-built to hold his antique book collection. A chauffeur-driven Bentley is waiting to whisk him off to the launch of a Matisse exhibition when we have finished.

Browne knew he was gay by the time he left boarding school, and didn't tell a soul. His mother, a Roma Jew, was an Auschwitz survivor and passed to her son an abiding fear that to be different was to invite persecution. "I internalised that to mean being gay was basically wrong, because if you got caught it would be very dangerous."

In Browne's mind, there was no choice. He had to keep his sexuality secret, or his career would be over. "You had to blend in, be chameleon-like, so no one would notice your private life. But you could be noticed in your work life, so you sublimated a lot into that. 

Early in his career, he thought perhaps he could quietly come out once he was further up the ladder. But the higher he climbed, the bigger his public profile grew. In 1995 BP was just a struggling national company, but its new CEO launched a series of audacious takeovers and mergers that turned it into the second largest oil corporation on the planet. Browne became known as "the Sun King", described as Britain's most successful businessman, and almost certainly its most highly paid. 

His devotion to the job left little time for friends. His father, an army officer, had died in 1980; an only child, he was overwhelmed by loneliness when his mother died in 2000. For the first time in his life, aged 52, he risked a relationship with a man.

To anyone of Browne's generation, what happened next may be perfectly recognisable. To anyone under 25, it will sound incomprehensible. When Browne fell in love with Chevalier, he didn't announce their relationship, nor even acknowledge it to his closest friends. The words, "I am gay" had passed his lips only twice in his life, and when Chevalier moved in, Browne didn't even mention his new domestic arrangement to his butler.

Browne thought he was being careful, but now sees it differently. "A friend said, 'Well, of course what you were really doing was daring people to pull you out, and you didn't know you were, but you shouldn't have been surprised when it happened.' And I think, now, that probably the time was coming when what I was doing, and who I was, was becoming unsustainable."  It never occurred to him that Chevalier might betray him.

Seven years on, he still looks stunned by the avalanche of supportive letters and emails that came pouring in, his first intimation that the world might not mind him being gay after all: "It was just amazing." Friends, former colleagues, politicians, journalists and strangers offered support and advice;  . . . .  One of the many strangers who wrote to him was a 32-year-old Vietnamese banker. They met for a drink, fell in love, and have been together since. For the very first time, Browne is one half of a public gay couple.

[T]he simple act of coming out has made him feel like a completely different person.  "The transformation was quite extraordinary for me, because I had to confront who I was, and talk about who I was. I'd never done that before – I always talked about myself just as someone who represented a business. And now I have changed."

Had Browne's story been unique, he would not have written the book. But the statistics indicated to him that the corporate closet must be crowded. British attitudes towards homosexuality have undergone such a sea change in the past 15 years that in many professions – politics, the media – inclusivity is now taken for granted. The less widely reported, more troubling story Browne decided to tell is how little the corporate world has changed.

Only half of all LGBT employees in the US are estimated to be out at work, and in this country a third are estimated to be in the closet.

[I]t is industry leaders who, he hopes, will read his book. He was taken aback by the culture of fear and prejudice he uncovered. Interviewees were offered a guarantee of anonymity, and even then closeted businessmen and women told him they were too frightened to talk.

Homophobia isn't just a problem for gay employees, Browne argues – it's a problem for business. He doesn't concern himself with appeals to morality or equality, but instead keeps hammering home his unshakable conviction that firms that allow their staff to be open and honest are more profitable than companies that make gay employees live a lie. Browne used to think he was doing BP a service by staying in the closet. It was only after he came out that he realised what a colossal waste of energy it had been, and how much more of himself could have been devoted to BP had he been able to be open.

In the book, he quotes a gay businesswoman making the case for introducing a non-discrimination policy to cover sexual orientation. "I want you to go back to your offices," she told her heterosexual bosses. "I want you to remove all vestiges of your family, particularly your spouse. Put the pictures in the drawer and take off your wedding band. You cannot talk about your family, and where you were on vacation. And if your spouse or partner is seriously ill, you are afraid to acknowledge the relationship, because you are afraid you might lose your job. Do all of that – and see how productive you are."

The classic mistake, he says, is to devolve responsibility to an HR department. "HR managers are not CEOs; they're not there to set the tone; the tone has to come from the very top." It's no use simply saying their business is gay-friendly. Chief executives need to give speeches about inclusion, make the diversity officer's role an executive one, create LGBT resource groups and run "allies' programmes", where heterosexual employees sign up to support colleagues who want to come out.

The key, he argues, is to make it easy for gay employees to come out at the beginning of their careers.

I agree with Browne completely on the issue of lost productivity.  Being in the closet at work is exhausting and all the energy and effort expended hiding one's "secret" can be far better used to further the business' interests.   

BP Negligence - Anatomy of a Disaster. Tsunami Dager Too?

The chart and explanation set out below comes by way of Halliburton and the Times-Picayune. NOTE: Click on the image for a larger version. The pictorial makes a strong case that BP's efforts to cut corners (and lower costs) played a major role in the disaster still unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico. If the failure to seal the casing at the bottom occurred to save money - as many now speculate - it would seem that BP is guilty of criminal negligence and manslaughter in respect to the eleven individuals who died in the drill rig explosion.

As if the death of the waters of the Gulf of Mexico isn't disaster enough, there seems to be growing concern that a tsunami could be triggered in the Gulf if the methane trapped beneath the well explodes. A new post at Huffington Post looks at this potential catastrophic disaster. Here are a few highlights:
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Older documents indicate that the subterranean geological formation below the "Macondo" well in the Gulf of Mexico may contain the presence of a huge methane deposit. It has been a well known fact that the methane in that oil deposit was problematic. As a result, there was a much higher risk of a blow out.
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The crude oil from the "Macondo" well, which is damaging the Gulf of Mexico, contains around 40 percent methane, compared with about 5 percent found in typical oil deposits. Scientists warn that gases such as methane, hydrogen sulfide and benzene, along with oil, are now depleting the oxygen in the water and are beginning to suffocate marine life creating vast "dead zones". As small microbes living in the sea feed on oil and natural gas, they consume large amounts of oxygen which they require in order to digest food, ie, convert it into energy. There is an environmental ripple effect: when oxygen levels decrease, the breakdown of oil can't advance any further.
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A methane bubble this large -- if able to escape from under the ocean floor through fissures, cracks and fault areas -- is likely to cause a gas explosion. With the emerging evidence of fissures, the tacit fear now is this: the methane bubble may rupture the seabed and may then erupt with an explosion within the Gulf of Mexico waters. The bubble is likely to explode upwards propelled by more than 50,000 psi of pressure, bursting through the cracks and fissures of the sea floor, fracturing and rupturing miles of ocean bottom with a single extreme explosion.
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If the toxic gas bubble explodes, it might simultaneously set off a tsunami travelling at a high speed of hundreds of miles per hour. Florida might be most exposed to the fury of a tsunami wave. The entire Gulf coastline would be vulnerable, if the tsunami is manifest. Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and southern region of Georgia might experience the effects of the tsunami according to some sources.
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While I certainly hope and pray that no enormous tsunami triggering methane explosion occurs, the irony would be that the majority of states facing destruction on their shores would be the same states that for the most part blindly supported the Bush/Cheney regime and its anti-regulation mantra. If this should happen, Karma would certainly be a bitch indeed.

Obama's Fatal Error in Failing to Crack Down on the Corruption of the Bush Years

I have been extremely harsh on President Barack Obama on many fronts, particularly broken campaign promises that as of this moment still have not been kept. In respect to the Gulf oil spill disaster, I have been equally harsh. Why British Petroleum - which created the disaster by its utter disregard to safety regulations and the complaints of the drilling staff - has been left in charge of addressing the disaster is mind numbing. From my oil and gas industry background, I continue to believe that BP is more concerned in salvaging the blown out well than it is in stopping the oil flow. Equally disturbing is the fact that the USA in its typical hubris has refused better technology offered by The Netherlands and Norway, both nations with major experience with offshore oil exploration - Norway from its own deep water production and The Netherlands as home of Royal Dutch Shell, the world's eight largest corporation.

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However, what must not be lost in all of the Fox media and GOP noise is the fact that Obama's biggest error - and it was a huge error - was not to promptly overhaul the deregulation nightmare put in place by the Bush/Cheney regime. Under Bush/Cheney - and I suspect mostly under Cheney - the supposed regulators of the oil industry were in effect members of a revolving door operation staffed by either former oil industry officials or people more than willing to turn a blind (maybe even accept a bribe) eye toward criminal misconduct. Surprisingly, it is the Rolling Stone that has one of the most comprehensive articles that traces the blame back to the handiwork of Bush/Cheney. Yes, Obama screwed up an incredible scale by his failure to fully clean house at MMS. But the ultimate blame traces back to Bush/Cheney - a fact that needs to be shoved down the throats of the Fox News talking heads and Republican windbags. We need comparable investigative reporting stories that look at the torture programs and other foul initiatives put in place by the Chimperator and Emperor Palpatine Cheney that Obama has yet to overhaul. Here are highlights from the Rolling Stone article (NOTE: I urge you to read the full story even though it may make you sick):
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For weeks, the administration had been insisting that BP alone was to blame for the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf – and the ongoing failure to stop the massive leak. "They have the technical expertise to plug the hole," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs had said only six days earlier. "It is their responsibility." The president, Gibbs added, lacked the authority to play anything more than a supervisory role – a curious line of argument from an administration that has reserved the right to assassinate American citizens abroad and has nationalized much of the auto industry. "If BP is not accomplishing the task, can you just federalize it?" a reporter asked. "No," Gibbs replied.
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Now, however, the president was suddenly standing up to take command of the cleanup effort. "In case you were wondering who's responsible," Obama told the nation, "I take responsibility." Sounding chastened, he acknowledged that his administration had failed to adequately reform the Minerals Management Service, the scandal-ridden federal agency that for years had essentially allowed the oil industry to self-regulate. "There wasn't sufficient urgency," the president said. "Absolutely I take responsibility for that." He also admitted that he had been too credulous of the oil giants: "I was wrong in my belief that the oil companies had their act together when it came to worst-case scenarios." He unveiled a presidential commission to investigate the disaster, discussed the resignation of the head of MMS, and extended a moratorium on new deepwater drilling. "The buck," he reiterated the next day on the sullied Louisiana coastline, "stops with me."
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Like the attacks by Al Qaeda, the disaster in the Gulf was preceded by ample warnings – yet the administration had ignored them. Instead of cracking down on MMS, as he had vowed to do even before taking office, Obama left in place many of the top officials who oversaw the agency's culture of corruption. He permitted it to rubber-stamp dangerous drilling operations by BP – a firm with the worst safety record of any oil company – with virtually no environmental safeguards, using industry-friendly regulations drafted during the Bush years.
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Most troubling of all, the government has allowed BP to continue deep-sea production at its Atlantis rig – one of the world's largest oil platforms. Capable of drawing 200,000 barrels a day from the seafloor, Atlantis is located only 150 miles off the coast of Louisiana, in waters nearly 2,000 feet deeper than BP drilled at Deepwater Horizon. According to congressional documents, the platform lacks required engineering certification for as much as 90 percent of its subsea components – a flaw that internal BP documents reveal could lead to "catastrophic" errors.
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During the Bush years, the Minerals Management Service, the agency in the Interior Department charged with safeguarding the environment from the ravages of drilling, descended into rank criminality. According to reports by Interior's inspector general, MMS staffers were both literally and figuratively in bed with the oil industry. When agency staffers weren't joining industry employees for coke parties or trips to corporate ski chalets, they were having sex with oil-company officials. But it was American taxpayers and the environment that were getting screwed. MMS managers were awarded cash bonuses for pushing through risky offshore leases, auditors were ordered not to investigate shady deals, and safety staffers routinely accepted gifts from the industry, allegedly even allowing oil companies to fill in their own inspection reports in pencil before tracing over them in pen.
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"The oil companies were running MMS during those years," Bobby Maxwell, a former top auditor with the agency, told Rolling Stone last year. "Whatever they wanted, they got. Nothing was being enforced across the board at MMS."
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Salazar was far less aggressive, however, when it came to making good on his promise to fix MMS. Though he criticized the actions of "a few rotten apples" at the agency, he left long-serving lackeys of the oil industry in charge. "The people that are ethically challenged are the career managers, the people who come up through the ranks," says a marine biologist who left the agency over the way science was tampered with by top officials. "In order to get promoted at MMS, you better get invested in this pro-development oil culture." One of the Bush-era managers whom Salazar left in place was John Goll, the agency's director for Alaska. Shortly after, the Interior secretary announced a reorganization of MMS in the wake of the Gulf disaster, Goll called a staff meeting and served cake decorated with the words "Drill, baby, drill."
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"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. "They're working for the same managers who are implementing the same policies. Why would you expect a different result?"
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The tale of the Deepwater Horizon disaster is, at its core, the tale of two blowout preventers: one mechanical, one regulatory. The regulatory blowout preventer failed long before BP ever started to drill – precisely because Salazar kept in place the crooked environmental guidelines the Bush administration implemented to favor the oil industry.
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MMS has fully understood the worst-case scenarios for deep-sea oil blowouts for more than a decade. In May 2000, an environmental assessment for deepwater drilling in the Gulf presciently warned that "spill responses may be complicated by the potential for very large magnitude spills (because of the high production rates associated with deepwater wells).
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Enter the Bush administration. Rather than heeding such warnings, MMS simply assumed that a big spill couldn't happen. "There was a complete failure to even contemplate the possibility of a disaster like the one in the Gulf," says Holly Doremus, an environmental-law expert at the University of California. "In their thinking, a big spill would be something like 5,000 barrels, and the oil wouldn't even reach the shoreline." In fact, Bush's five-year plan for offshore drilling described a "large oil spill" as no more than 1,500 barrels. In April 2007, an environmental assessment covering the area where BP would drill concluded that blowouts were "low probability and low risk," even though a test funded by MMS had found that blowout preventers failed 28 percent of the time.
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Nowhere was the absurdity of the policy more evident than in the application that BP submitted for its Deepwater Horizon well only two months after Obama took office. BP claims that a spill is "unlikely" and states that it anticipates "no adverse impacts" to endangered wildlife or fisheries. Should a spill occur, it says, "no significant adverse impacts are expected" for the region's beaches, wetlands and coastal nesting birds. The company, noting that such elements are "not required" as part of the application, contains no scenario for a potential blowout, and no site-specific plan to respond to a spill. Instead, it cites an Oil Spill Response Plan that it had prepared for the entire Gulf region.
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Under Salazar, MMS continued to issue categorical exclusions to companies like BP, even when they lacked the necessary permits to protect endangered species. A preliminary review of the BP disaster conducted by scientists with the independent Deepwater Horizon Study Group concludes that MMS failed to enforce a host of environmental laws, including the Clean Water Act. "MMS and Interior are equally responsible for the failures here," says the former agency scientist. "They weren't willing to take the regulatory steps that could have prevented this incident."
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BP is the last oil company on Earth that Salazar and MMS should have allowed to regulate itself. . . . The company applied the same deadly cost-cutting mentality to its oil rig in the Gulf. BP, it is important to note, is less an oil company than a bank that finances oil exploration; unlike ExxonMobil, which owns most of the equipment it uses to drill, BP contracts out almost everything. That includes the Deepwater Horizon rig that it leased from a firm called Transocean. BP shaved $500,000 off its overhead by deploying a blowout preventer without a remote-control trigger – a fail-safe measure required in many countries but not mandated by MMS, thanks to intense industry lobbying. It opted to use cheap, single-walled piping for the well, and installed only six of the 21 cement spacers recommended by its contractor, Halliburton – decisions that significantly increased the risk of a severe explosion. It also skimped on critical testing that could have shown whether explosive gas was getting into the system as it was being cemented, and began removing mud that protected the well before it was sealed with cement plugs.

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[O]n the eve of the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, the Deepwater Horizon rig went off like a bomb. From the start of its operation in the Gulf, BP had found itself struggling against powerful "kicks" from gas buildup, just as MMS had warned. Now, on April 20th, the pent-up methane exploded in a fireball that incinerated 11 workers. Like a scene out of a real-life Jerry Bruckheimer film, the half-billion-dollar rig – 32,000 tons and 30 stories tall – listed over and sank to the bottom two days later, taking a mile of pipe down with it.
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[T]he effort, has been "like a drunk driver [BP] getting into a car wreck and then helping the police with the accident investigation." Indeed, the administration has seemed oddly untroubled about leaving the Gulf's fate in the hands of a repeat criminal offender, and uncurious about the crimes that may have been committed leading up to the initial sinking of the rig.
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The failure of the Obama administration to crack down on BP – and to tackle the crisis with the full force of the federal government – is likely to haunt the Gulf Coast for decades to come. Oil continues to lap up onshore in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida. Pelican rookeries are fouled, their eggs and nests soaked in oil. The region's fisheries – some of the richest in the world – are imperiled; anglers and shrimpers have been barred from more than a third of the Gulf's waters, which may never fully recover from the toxic stew of crude and chemical dispersant now twisting in its depths. The region's beaches are empty, and tourist towns are dying. Administration officials now admit that the oil may continue to gush into the Gulf until August, when relief wells are finally in place.

Alabama Paying Price for Republican Policies

Having lived on the Gulf Coast for six years - part of it in the Mobile area - and with family roots that trace back to New Orleans, I continue to be saddened by the damage being done to both the environment and people's livelihoods as a result of British Petroleum's apparent gross negligence and wilful misconduct at the Deep Horizon well which continues to spew oil into the Gulf of Mexico. At the same time, I cannot help but note the irony that through their blind support of the deregulation/smaller government worshipping Republican Party, Alabamians helped set the stage for their own misfortune. Yes, the Obama administration has dropped the ball on dealing with the disaster. But the framework that allowed the disaster in the first place was put in place by the Bush/Cheney regime. Time and time again we were told that big oil could police itself. Obviously, the mantra was a lie and now thousands of people are seeing their businesses and livelihoods wither. Whenever the GOP faults Obama's missteps, it is critical that the blame be cast back on the anti-regulation mindset that controlled Washington, D.C., for the eight years of the Bush/Cheney age of darkness. The Mobile Press Register has some details on the latest devastation along the Alabama coast. Here are some highlights: *
As unprecedented amounts of oil slathered Alabama's coastline Friday, officials closed stretches of water in Alabama, Mississippi and Florida to most boat traffic to aid containment efforts.
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The closure of Alabama waters inside Perdido Pass to all recreational boating traffic, requested by Orange Beach Mayor Tony Kennon, effectively shut down fishing from the self-titled "Red Snapper Capital of the World."
Only vessels working with BP will be allowed to use the pass until further notice.
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The main body of the Gulf oil slick will hover just miles south of coasts on both sides of the Florida-Alabama line by Sunday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration projected.
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[Alabama Governor] Riley told members of the Press-Register's editorial board on Friday that he was dissatisfied with delays in processing claims related to the spill, and would send National Guard troops and staff from the Alabama Emergency Management Agency to help speed the process.
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"These are small businesses and family businesses that don't have a lot to fall back on," Riley said. "They're losing business, and if they don't get help, they're gone."
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Some of these business owners should have thought harder before casing votes for Bush/Cheney and "drill baby drill" Sarah Palin.

Did BP Deliberately Lie on Its Drilling Application?

The more facts that come out, the more it appears that British Petroleum deliberately lied on its permit application for the Deep Horizon well that is now turning much of the Gulf of Mexico into a toxic wasteland. While fault also lies with the permit review authorities who never checked out the details of the application - e.g., one of the experts cited as available for consultation in the event of a spill had in fact been dead for several years - the principal blame lies on BP which was apparently willing to say anything in order to secure the drilling permit. Obviously, someone at BP needs to be prosecuted for the knowingly false application. The facts as disclosed by the Associated Press certainly seem to support a finding of gross negligence, if not wilful misconduct on the part of BP. The facts also underscore why oil companies need to face strict liability without a liability cap in respect to all future drilling. I suspect BP factored in the maximum fines under the rules in place at the time and figured it was worth the gamble. The Virginian Pilot has some highlights:
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NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Glaring errors and omissions in BP's oil spill response plans have exposed a slapdash effort to follow environmental rules, outraging Gulf Coast residents who can see on their beaches how unprepared the company was.
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BP PLC's 582-page regional spill plan for the Gulf, and its 52-page, site-specific plan for the Deepwater Horizon rig vastly understate the dangers posed by an uncontrolled leak and vastly overstate the company's preparedness to deal with one, according to an Associated Press analysis. The lengthy plans were approved by the federal government last year before BP drilled its ill-fated well.
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Among the glaring errors in the report: A professor is listed in BP's 2009 response plan for a Gulf of Mexico oil spill as a national wildlife expert. He died in 2005.
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The plan lists cold-water marine mammals including walruses, sea otters, sea lions and seals as "sensitive biological resources." None of those animals live anywhere near the Gulf.
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Also, names and phone numbers of several Texas A&M University marine life specialists are wrong. So are the numbers for marine mammal stranding network offices in Louisiana and Florida, which are disconnected.

"The AP report paints a picture of a company that was making it up as it went along, while telling regulators it had the full capability to deal with a major spill," Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., wrote in an e-mail to the AP. "We know that wasn't true."
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Legal experts say that to file criminal charges, the Justice Department will have to find evidence that BP or other companies involved in the deadly oil rig explosion and subsequent spill orchestrated a coverup, destroyed key documents or lied to government agents. Charges and civil penalties can be brought under a variety of environmental protection laws.
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In its Deepwater Horizon plan, the British oil giant stated: "BP Exploration and Production Inc. has the capability to respond, to the maximum extent practicable, to a worst case discharge, or a substantial threat of such a discharge, resulting from the activities proposed in our Exploration Plan."
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The plans contain wildly false assumptions about oil spills. BP's proposed method to calculate spill volume judging by the darkness of the oil sheen is way off. The internationally accepted formula would produce estimates 100 times higher.
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The Gulf's loop current, which is projected to help eventually send oil hundreds of miles around Florida's southern tip and up the Atlantic coast, isn't mentioned in either plan.
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There are other examples of how BP's plans have fallen short:
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- Beaches where oil washed up within weeks of a spill were supposed to be safe from contamination because BP promised it could marshal more than enough boats to scoop up all the oil before any deepwater spill could reach shore - a claim that in retrospect seems absurd.
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- BP's site plan regarding birds, sea turtles or endangered marine mammals ("no adverse impacts") also have proved far too optimistic. While the exact toll on the Gulf's wildlife may never be known, the effects clearly have been devastating.
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The obvious conclusion is that BP was lying and knew it was lying but simply did not give a damn. Some folks need to go to prison to ensure that no company in the future will dare to file such a false and cavalier document.

Who's in Charge of the BP Oil Spill, Anyway?

Today's Mobile Press-Register main editorial asks a relevant question that focuses on the ineptitude of the federal government/White House's response to the BP oil spill disaster. It's a simple question of who is in charge. Clearly, it's not the feds or the White House. BP continues to dither rather than simply explode the well and seal it permanently. BP would clearly rather turn the entire Gulf of Mexico into a dead zone as opposed to lose a potentially profitable well. It's a travesty, yet the U.S. government continues to sit by with it's thumb up its butt rather than dictate to BP what WILL be done to stop the oil leakage now. Here are some highlights from the editorial (P.S. I once lived in Fairhope):
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A MONTH ago, according to Fairhope’s assistant public works director, BP pledged to put out boom to protect the city from the effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. But the oil company never followed through. Last week, when oil began showing up on Alabama beaches, the Fairhope City Council quit waiting on BP.

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At an emergency meeting Friday, council members voted to spend about $626,000 of the $650,000 the city has received through the state from BP, and a contractor immediately began deploying boom in two layers, from the Grant Hotel Marriott in Point Clear northward to the Fairhope Yacht Club.

Fairhope’s experience does not seem to be unique along the Alabama Gulf Coast. From Gov. Bob Riley to a beachside condominium manager, people dealing with the oil spill say BP isn’t following through. Some say they’ve called for cleanup assistance and have gotten no response. So who is in charge of picking up tarballs and scraping oil off beaches?
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Should it be local governments? Local officials know their sections of coastline better than anyone, and when a city like Fairhope sees no progress for a month, its leaders are right to take action to protect their shores. But they aren’t concerned with the big picture, and their individual actions are piecemeal.
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But should the federal government be in charge of the cleanup, too, in addition to acting as watchdog over BP’s efforts to contain the catastrophic leak? And where’s FEMA? After all, as implied by its very name — the Federal Emergency Management Agency — FEMA is the government agency that’s designed to coordinate the federal response to emergencies.
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Meanwhile, municipal and county governments can’t ignore the threat at the edge of their shores. Short of breaking the law, no one can blame them for taking matters into their own hands.

White House Endorses Unlimited Liability Cap For Oil Spillers

I guess it's a case of better late than never, but I cannot fathom why the White House did not get on board with removing the liability cap on oil spills a month ago or more. Oil well drilling - whether onshore or offshore - is an inherently dangerous activities which ought to face a strict liability standard. Even when evidence of negligence, possible false application statements, and sacrifices of safety to save money are not involved. Having been in Key West last week and lived on the Gulf Coast of Alabama, it makes me nauseated to think of the environmental damage that has occurred - not to mention what may yet occur. I am still dumbfounded, however, as to why the White House seems to be allowing BP to call the shots rather than the other way around. It still seems to me that destroying the well a month ago wasn't pursued - oh, I forgot, BP doesn't want to lose the well, even if it destroys the entire Gulf of Mexico. Here are highlights from Huffington Post on this belated move by Obama:
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Democrats in Congress and officials in the White House are making yet another major push to pass legislation to make the liability for oil companies involved in damaging spills unlimited.
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On Monday evening, the White House confirmed that it favors the most recent piece of legislation that would drop any numerical ceiling to the amount of money an oil company like BP would have to pay for economic damages caused by a spill. Currently, the cap is $75 million.
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"The president supports removing caps on liability for oil companies engaged in offshore drilling," said spokesman Ben LaBolt. "Oil companies should have every incentive to maximize safety and arbitrary caps on liability create a disincentive to achieve that goal."
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So far, votes to raise the liability cap -- first to $10 billion and then unlimited -- have failed to pass via unanimous consent in the Senate. But now, congressional negotiators are planning alternative legislative routes. On Wednesday, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), the author of the liability-cap-raising bill, is set to testify before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works about his proposal.

Reckoning in the Gulf of Mexico

My post yesterday on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill catastrophe focused on the local concerns of residents here in Key West and my own misgivings in terms of trusting BP with control of anything going forward. The lead editorial in the Key West Citizen underscores local distrust of BP. From what has been made public to date, it sounds as if BP broke rules and engaged in actions that the head of the Transocean drill team objected to - and 11 individuals likely paid with their lives when the objected procedure caused the well and platform to explode. The environmental loses since then have been staggering. The New York Times has a spot on editorial that lays out the federal government's much belated response to the disaster. The sad reality, however, is that no amount of money will replace the lost wildlife or the damage to delicate ecological systems. The second sad reality - one that locals here are very much afraid of - is the fact that even if they prevail in lawsuits against BP and other responsible parties, it could be decades before any money is received by those whose livelihoods have been destroyed in the interim. Those who want to see the cap on BP's liability removed should sign the petit1on to Congress here. Now, here are Highlights from the Times:

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The spill, the worst in United States history and growing more damaging by the day, cries out for accountability and appropriate punishment. Attorney General Eric Holder did not name specific targets, but BP, Transocean — the rig operator — and other important subcontractors like Halliburton are obvious candidates.
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Justice’s investigation will run parallel to an inquiry by a special commission appointed by President Obama to discover the causes of the disaster, assess the performance of federal oversight agencies and recommend ways to prevent similar calamities. The White House must take special care that both are allowed to do a complete job.
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Unlike the Justice Department, the commission does not have subpoena powers. Congress should grant that power if only to make sure that witnesses from an industry that is accustomed to going its own way actually show up.
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As Mr. Holder knows, the legal journey will be long and arduous. Exxon did not finally settle up for damages related to the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill — in addition to the billions it paid in cleanup costs — until a Supreme Court decision in 2008. BP is responsible for containing the gulf spill and cleaning it up, but the fines it must ultimately pay, as well as compensatory damages to injured parties, will depend in part on the whether the company can be shown to have broken the law.
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One relevant law is the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, enacted after the Exxon Valdez spill, which imposes monetary penalties for every barrel of spilled oil — even if negligence is not found, but more if it is. Another is the Clean Water Act, which carries both civil and criminal penalties for polluting waterways. BP could also be found negligent under the Marine Mammal Protection Act because it failed to obtain necessary federal permits to drill in areas inhabited by endangered whales.
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Senator Barbara Boxer, who was pressing Mr. Holder to act, raised one more ominous possibility: that BP may have made false and misleading statements to federal authorities in the 2009 exploratory drilling plan it submitted to the Minerals Management Service. The plan asserted that the company had “proven equipment and technology” to respond to a blowout. Given the ad hoc nature of BP’s response, Ms. Boxer has suggested, that assertion now seems misleading or even false.
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There are extraordinarily tough times ahead for the gulf and the region’s residents. That BP will also suffer does not trouble us in the least.

BP Cannot Be Trusted to Stop Spill or Process Claims

Here in Key West the fear of the approaching environmental disaster is becoming palpable as is the fear that the region's tourism industry will be destroyed. Also palpable is the total distrust of leaving anything up to BP which seems to be being aided and abetted by the U.S. government which is allowing BP to keep the media away from areas in an effort to avoid damaging photos from hitting the air waves and thus sparking total fury and outrage. Some have criticized my post that suggested that BP North American assets be placed into temporary receivership, but to be honest I do not see BP doing all that should and could be done. After yesterday's incredible snorkeling and kayaking cruise, it literally sickens me to think of all the beauty we saw about to be potentially destroyed. The photo of the dead dolphin above reminds me of the possible fate of the happy and playful dolphins we saw just yesterday. Does BP give a damn about it? I doubt it - or not beyond worries of what money may be lost. The following are highlights from the New York Daily News :
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Here's what President Obama didn't see when he visited the Gulf Coast: a dead dolphin rotting in the shore weeds.
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"When we found this dolphin it was filled with oil. Oil was just pouring out of it. It was the saddest darn thing to look at," said a BP contract worker who took the Daily News on a surreptitious tour of the wildlife disaster unfolding in Louisiana.
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His motive: simple outrage. "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," the contractor said.
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"The things I've seen: They just aren't right. All the life out here is just full of oil. I'm going to show you what BP never showed the President."
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After checking that he was unobserved, he motored out to Queen Bess barrier island, known to the locals as Bird Island. The grasses by the shore were littered with tarred marine life, some dead and others struggling under a thick coating of crude.
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"When you see some of the things I've seen, it would make you sick," the contractor said. "No living creature should endure that kind of suffering."
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The uninhabited barrier islands are surrounded by yellow floating booms, also stained black, that are supposed to keep the oil out. It's not working.
"That grass was green a few weeks ago," the contractor said. "Now look. ... This whole island is destroyed. How do you write a check for something like this?"
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He said he recently found five turtles drowning in oil. "Three turtles were dead. Two were dying and not dead yet. They will be," he said. As the boat headed back amid the choppy waves, a pod of dolphins showed up to swim with the vessel and guide it to land. "They know they are in trouble. We are all in trouble," the contractor said.
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BP's central role in the disaster cleanup has apparently given the company a lot of latitude in keeping the press away from beaches where the oil is thickest. On Monday, a Daily News team was escorted away from a public beach on Elmer's Island bycops who said they were taking orders from BP.
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38% of the Gulf of Mexico is now closed to fishing and the area involved will only increase. It is beyond pathetic that the President of the United States is shown what a private company wants him to see. You talk about an ass backwards scenario. Meanwhile, BP diddles rather than simply totally destroying the leaking well - likely because it wants to savage the well and save money. And the U.S. government likewise dawdles away time as the disaster grows. The Washington Post looks at the potential economic disaster which will be piggy backing the environmental nightmare. Here are highlights:
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[T]he economic impact of the nation's worst ever oil spill may be just beginning. With the vast majority of the oil floating offshore, where it will land and whom it will affect have become a guessing game fraught with worry. Wherever the oil goes, it threatens to obliterate billions of dollars for the region's tourism and fishing industries.
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At stake are industries that employ tens of thousands of people and generate billions of dollars in economic activity for coastal areas stretching hundreds of miles. . . . For gulf regions from Texas to Key West, commercial fishing contributes $1 billion to GDP, tourism and recreation contribute $13 billion, . . .

When Will Obama Start Acting Like a Leader?

At dinner tonight here in Key West the topic came around to the issue of the BP oil spill and the frustration that more and more are feeling over President Obama's continued failure to be a LEADER rather than a follower waiting for Congress to act or allowing matters to spill out of control as he fails to act in any meaningful manner. The topic got started by a sign hanging on a balcony on a building on Duval Street that called for a boycott of BP and action to address the continuing environmental catastrophe unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico. BP continues to dither while Obama acts like Nero fiddling as Rome burns. Add to that Obama's inability to control members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of the Army who are actively working to undermine the DADT repeal compromise and it's enough to make one want to start screaming. Sitting not even a mile from Truman's Little White House and the lack of leadership by the current president could not be more stark. Now Robert Reich is arguing that Obama needs to place BP under temporary receivership in order to deal with the fiasco. Personally, I believe Reich is right on target. Here are some highlights:
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It’s time for the federal government to put BP under temporary receivership, which gives the government authority to take over BP’s operations in the Gulf of Mexico until the gusher is stopped. This is the only way the public know what’s going on, be confident enough resources are being put to stopping the gusher, ensure BP’s strategy is correct, know the government has enough clout to force BP to use a different one if necessary, and be sure the President is ultimately in charge.
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If the government can take over giant global insurer AIG and the auto giant General Motors and replace their CEOs, in order to keep them financially solvent, it should be able to put BP’s north American operations into temporary receivership in order to stop one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history.
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The Obama administration keeps saying BP is in charge because BP has the equipment and expertise necessary to do what’s necessary. But under temporary receivership, BP would continue to have the equipment and expertise. The only difference: the firm would unambiguously be working in the public’s interest. As it is now, BP continues to be responsible primarily to its shareholders, not to the American public.
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Five reasons for taking such action:
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1. We are not getting the truth from BP. BP has continuously and dramatically understated size of gusher.
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2. We have no way to be sure BP is devoting enough resources to stopping the gusher. BP is now saying it has no immediate way to stop up the well until August, when a new “relief” well will reach the gushing well bore, enabling its engineers to install cement plugs. August? If government were in direct control of BP’s north American assets, it would be able to devote whatever of those assets are necessary to stopping up the well right away.
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3. BP’s new strategy for stopping the gusher is highly risky. It wants to sever the leaking pipe cleanly from atop the failed blowout preventer, and then install a new cap so the escaping oil can be pumped up to a ship on the surface. But scientists say that could result in an even bigger volume of oil . . . .
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4. Right now, the U.S. government has no authority to force BP to adopt a different strategy. Saturday, Energy Secretary Steven Chu and his team of scientists essentially halted BP’s attempt to cap the spewing well with a process known as “top kill,” which injected drilling mud and other materials to try to counter the upward pressure of the oil. Apparently the Administration team was worried that the technique would worsen the leak. But under what authority did the Administration act? It has none.
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5. The President is not legally in charge. As long as BP is not under the direct control of the government he has no direct line of authority, and responsibility is totally confused.
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The President should temporarily take over BP’s Gulf operations. We have a national emergency on our hands. No president would allow a nuclear reactor owned by a private for-profit company to melt down in the United States while remaining under the direct control of that company. The meltdown in the Gulf is the environmental equivalent.
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Americans voted for what they thought would be a strong leader. It's increasingly clear that we got the exact opposite. All the GOP needs to do in 2012 is not nominate a nutcase and Obama could well be a one term president and deservedly so.