"At what point is credibility stretched too far not to realize you cannot reduce the budget as has been done and not have an impact?" one senior BP official asked. Another person who has worked with BP said, given the fact that evidence has surfaced showing that BP cut corners on safety related to the Deepwater Horizon, it's "absurd" for Rinehart to state that BP Alaska isn't doing the same thing.
The employee's email, Truthout has learned, is now in the hands of criminal investigators and BP's probation officer, Mary Frances Barnes, who are scrutinizing the employee's claims to determine if it had any bearing on the pipeline rupture last November and whether it would amount to a probation violation for the company. BP pleaded guilty in October 2007 to a criminal misdemeanor violation of the Clean Water Act, resulting from two oil spills on the North Slope in 2006, both of which resulted from severely corroded pipelines that the company failed to upkeep. The company was placed on probation for three years.
Tyler Amon is the special agent-in-charge at the EPA's Criminal Investigation Division probing the circumstances behind last November's oil spill. He did not return calls for comment, nor did Barnes or a spokesperson for the FBI. The email has also been sent to Congressman Henry Waxman, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Waxman's office did not return several calls for comment.
As of June 5, Lisburne was shut down for planned maintenance. It's unknown if BP intends to address any of the maintenance and operational issues described in the email.
"Hopping"
Kovac and other employees who confirmed his claims also raised red flags about a newly constructed pipeline currently in use, which feeds directly into pump station 1, the beginning of the Trans Alaska Pipeline, that he said was poorly designed. This was a portion of the pipeline that was severely corroded and ruptured in 2006, spilling more than 200,000 gallons of oil across the frozen tundra, which resulted in the largest oil spill on the North Slope.
Eight employees said the two-mile long rebuilt pipeline has experienced "severe hopping up and down on the vertical support members," due to wind induced vibration, a phenomenon that was discovered when the oilfield was developed more than 30 years ago. But it does not appear that BP learned the lessons of the past when it designed the new pipeline. That "hopping," Kovac said, has caused stress on the "pipewall" and weld joints on sections connected to the vertical support members.
"The harmonics in [the pipeline] allowed it to bounce up and down," Kovac said. "BP rectified the problem by placing timbers under the line between the vertical support members [which is not unusual] about two months ago. As far as I know, there isn't a plan in place to fix the problem."
Rinehart, the BP Alaska spokesman, acknowledged that "a section of the new transit line has experienced wind-induced vibration." But he said the company is addressing the matter
"The vibration was not such that it would be expected to damage the line, and was a factor considered in the design," Rinehart said. "Just the same, we have decided to fit wind-susceptible sections of the line with wind dampeners, scheduled to be done before the end of this year. In the meantime, as a precaution, we put timber 'cribbing' underneath wind-susceptible locations, to limit movement. We also checked all the welds in those locations; no damage was found. This has all been communicated to the US Department of Transportation Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, our lead federal pipeline regulator."
But Kovac and other employees added that there are other pipelines that are corroded that should have been replaced three years ago, but which haven't been, and a spill detection system still hasn't been installed. He said the matter is urgent in light of a high-pressure artificial lift natural gas pipeline that ruptured and separated in September 2008, whipped around like a snake, and released natural gas into the atmosphere, all due to external corrosion that BP failed to address for nearly a decade. Had their been an ignition source, employees who were working nearby would have been killed. When the line separated, the force was so powerful, pieces of pipe snapped off, one of which rocketed through the air and was never found.
The corrosion built up as a result of water that accumulated under the insulation that surrounds the line. The insulation was never replaced when it was peeled away following an inspection more than 10 years ago. BP had told state environmental investigators that heavy snowfall in 2003 prevented the company from inspecting the portion of the line that separated. But BP did not re-inspect the line when the snow melted.
According to a February 20, 2009, letter sent to Tony Brock, BP Alaska's senior vice president and technical director from the Alaska's Department of Natural Resources, which is investigating the incident, "Had the high pressure gas pipeline failure occurred under slightly different circumstances, the results would have been catastrophic, potentially with the loss of life."
Recently, the House Energy Committee asked John Minge to provide the panel with the results of an internal investigation into the rupture, which he did in late February. The committee has not released the details of BP's own probe into the incident.
Overworked
One of the other major issues, according to Kovac and other employees that may also have been a contributing factor in the two most recent oil spills and has been identified in internal company documents as an "imminent safety risk," is 16-18 hour work shifts, due in large part to a shortage of trained personnel.
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