U.S. lawyers say BP, spill partners harmed cleanup crew
(Reuters) - BP Plc and other companies who had used chemical dispersants to fight the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill should compensate the cleanup crew and residents harmed by those toxic chemicals, lawyers suing the firms said in a court filing.
To date, BP and its contractors have used more than 1.8 million gallons of Nalco Holding's chemical dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico in connection with the oil spill, according to the complaint. Nalco was also named in the complaint.
Lawyers said many plaintiffs, who were assisting in the effort to prevent oil slicks from reaching the shore, or cleaning oil spill residue from the beaches, came into contact with crude oil, chemical dispersants and other toxic chemical mixtures.
The complaint has sought unspecified compensatory damages from BP and the other companies involved in the clean up act. The lawsuit has also sought damages for medical screening and monitoring.
BP in London declined comment.
The Case is in re: Oil Spill by the Oil Rig "Deepwater Horizon" in the Gulf of Mexico, on April 20, 2010, Case No. 2:10-md-02179-CJB-SS, U.S. District Court, Eastern District Of Louisiana.
(Reporting by Sakthi Prasad in Bangalore; Editing by Hans Peters)
This is the clearest proof that BP does not stand for Benevolent Provider but Blatant Poisoning. They knew that Corexit was toxic yet they insisted on using it when there are much better and safer alternatives for dealing with the recovery. Why?
1. they needed to make the thick oil slick disappear fast so that their BP apologists can safely use a couple of molecules thickness (1 ~ 2 microns) to describe the sheen (slick) and provide a totally absurd estimate of the volume of oil spilled. A minimum thickness of 100 microns for the brown-black slick would have raised the volume 50 times. A 200 micron thick slick would bankrupt BP.
2. they had already ordered, produced and stocked enormous amount of corexit in anticipation of the mega oil spill. Screw the environment and clean up crew. They were "high" on corexit. If they do not use up the huge stockpile of corexit, Nalco would be snuffed to death. So it is either Nalco or the gulf residents and clean crew? Your guess is as good as mine, which way the board voted. Procurement of millions of gallons of corexit is not like going to the neighbourhood Walmart to get if off the shelf.
3. they can deceive the public by feeding deceptive and erroneous information to the main media. But can the satellite images and aerial photos lie? No. That why they impose a no fly zone to prevent independent aerial observation as soon as disaster occurred. But just like the ROV videos, there were "well-intentioned" insiders who cannot tell but they can show. For example the close up view of the satellite image . see http://bklim.newsvine.com/_news/2011/04/19/6495651-did-the-oil-slick-really-spew-from-only-well-a. They needed to sink the oil slick before people realise the volume of oil spewed out was more than the unimaginable thousands of times more than the official estimates from a single 10-inch well. The late Matt Simmons was right in many of his assertions and yet he was "unfairly trashed" by TOD and eventually silenced when the truth was starting to "burst thru the seams".
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