Environmental News Network: Energy giant BP was making some progress on Monday with its efforts to contain the oil gushing forth from a ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico,
But the stakes are high amid fears of an ecological and economic calamity along the U.S. Gulf Coast. Investors have already knocked around $30 billion off BP’s value and its share price will be closely watched this week.
After several tough weeks, this is shaping up to be another rough one for the company. A U.S. Labor Department official told the Financial Times that BP has a “systematic safety problem” at its refineries.
“BP executives, they talk a good line. They say they want to improve safety,” Jordan Barab, a senior official at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, told the paper.
“But it doesn’t always translate down to the refineries themselves. They still have a systematic safety problem.”
Last year U.S. regulators slapped a record $87.4 million fine on BP for failing to fix safety violations at its Texas City refinery after a deadly 2005 explosion.
BP reported limited success at containing the oil flow on Sunday but a skeptical Obama administration downplayed it.
After other attempts to contain the spill failed, BP succeeded in inserting a tube into the well and capturing some oil and gas. The underwater operation used guided robots to insert a small tube into a 21-inch (53-cm) pipe, known as a riser, to funnel the oil to a ship at the surface.