Article: Reasons to Oppose Drilling in ANWR Found in Alaska's North Slope

Additional whistleblowers came forward to expose the flaws at BP's North Slope operations, in some cases warning company executives and lawmakers that an Exxon Valdez-type disaster was bound to happen if BP did not invest additional funds in upgrading its corroded pipelines and non-operational safety valves.

“The situation will continue to deteriorate for the workers' safety and the environment until one of two things happen: Either there will be a major environmental catastrophe at Prudhoe Bay, similar to the Exxon Valdez, or there will be a change in environmental and employee safety oversight in Alaska before that disaster occurs," according to a March 4, 2002, copy of BP employee William Burkett's testimony before a Senate Committee chaired by Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn. and Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla.

BP refused to budge, and on several occasions, Hamel alleged, company executives lied to Congress and Alaska state regulators about the condition of its Prudhoe Bay facilities and the amount of money the company was spending on maintenance and pipeline upgrades.

Glen Plumlee, a senior financial analyst with Alyeska Pipeline Service Co., operator of the trans-Alaska pipeline system of which BP is a majority owner, filed a complaint with federal labor officials in 2006 alleging that company executives retaliated against him because he cooperated with the Environmental Protection Agency's criminal investigation into the company.

Plumlee, 51, of Anchorage, told federal investigators he was pressured to boost estimates of how much Alyeska was spending to fight corrosion on the trans-Alaska oil pipeline. Severe corrosion in one of BP's transit pipelines at Prudhoe Bay, which connects directly to the trans-Alaska pipeline, is the reason the company shut down its North Slope operations this week.

Plumlee claimed that company executives pressured him in December 2005 to alter the amount of money BP-controlled Alyeska spent on pipeline corrosion - from $28 million to $46 million - for the previous year, which he refused to do.

Plumlee added that it wasn't the first time he had been asked to cook the books. "On September 19, 2005, an Alyeska executive asked him to pull together the numbers on corrosion spending for Steve Marshall, BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc.'s president," according to an April 5 report in the Fairbanks News-Miner.

Another high-level executive of BP-controlled Alyeska also tried to warn company executives about numerous safety and maintenance problems associated with the 800-mile trans-Alaska pipeline system that, if unanswered, would have had a direct impact on BP's Prudhoe Bay operations.

In August 2005, Dan Hisey, the former chief operating officer of Alyeska, created a comprehensive list for Alyeska's top executives of the 101 current and potential problems plaguing the pipeline system, one of which was severe corrosion. A week after the list was circulated Hisey's position was abolished.

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