bpjustice

In 2006, there was a 200,000-gallon spill at BP’s Prudhoe Bay Alaska pipeline, the largest ever spill on Alaska's North Slope.  As reported by ProPublica, leading up to the 2006 spill, “[BP] pleaded guilty to a felony conviction in 1999 for illegal dumping at an offshore drilling field there it drew fresh scrutiny to its operations and set off a cascading cycle of attempted -- and seemingly failed -- reforms that continued over the next decade.”  For example, “a 2001 report noted that BP had neglected key equipment needed for emergency shutdown, including safety shutoff valves and gas and fire detectors similar to those that could have helped prevent the fire and explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf.”  Moreover,

In May 2002 -- less than seven months later -- Alaska state regulators underscored the panel's critical findings in a tersely worded order warning BP that it had failed to maintain its pipelines. Alaska struggled for two years to make BP comply with state laws and clear the pipeline of sedimentation that could interfere with leak detection systems.

Soon after, BP hired another team of outside investigators to check complaints made by workers on the North Slope. The resulting 2004 study by the law firm Vinson & Elkins warned that pipeline corrosion endangered operations on the Slope. 

[Vinson & Elkins found] a pattern of intimidating workers who raised safety or environmental concerns. It said managers were shaving maintenance costs with the practice of “run to failure,” under which aging equipment was used as long as possible.”

Two years later, in March 2006, disaster struck. More than 200,000 gallons of oil spilled out of a corroded hole in the Prudhoe Bay pipeline into the snow, the largest spill ever on the North Slope. Inspectors found that the steel pipe -- the inside of which hadn't been inspected in years -- had been corroded to dangerously thin levels along nearly 12 miles of pipeline. It was exactly the kind of situation BP's auditors and Alaska officials had feared.

In August 2006, just five months after the spill at Prudhoe Bay, a pipeline safety technician for a BP contractor in Alaska discovered a two-inch snaggle-toothed crack in the steel skin of an oil transit line.  Nearby, contractors were grinding down metal welds, sending a fan of sparks shooting across the work site. The technician, Stuart Sneed, feared the sparks could ignite stray gases, or the work could make the crack worse, so he ordered the contractors to stop working.…

But instead of receiving compliments for his prudence, Sneed -- who had also complained that week that pipeline inspectors were faking their reports -- was scolded by his supervisor for stopping the work.

Sneed was harassed and then fired even though his concerns were later substantiated.  “’They say it’s your duty to come forward," said Sneed of BP's corporate policies and public statements, ‘but then when you do come forward, they screw you. They'll destroy your life.’”

In 2007, BP pled guilty to a federal misdemeanor violations of the Clean Water Act and paid $20 million in criminal penalties.  The Anchorage Daily News reported,

Prosecutors said BP managers failed to heed “many red flags and warning signs” that key pipelines within the nation's largest oil field were going bad, with one of them leaking an estimated 201,000 gallons of oil onto the tundra and a frozen pond in March 2006, the largest oil spill ever on the North Slope. Another leak the following August forced a temporary shutdown of half the field, driving up the price of oil on world markets and adding fuel to a federal criminal investigation that already was under way.…

“As a result of BP’s criminal negligence, corroded pipelines leaked crude oil into one of the nation's most fragile ecosystems,” said Granta Nakayama, assistant administrator for enforcement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which helped investigate the case with the FBI and other agencies. “Global companies like BP, with their experience, capabilities and financial resources, have no excuse for committing environmental crimes,” he said.

“BP cut corners with disastrous consequences and is being held to account,” said Ronald Tenpas, a ranking assistant U.S. attorney general.

What’s more, federal prosecutors now say that BP violated probation when it spilled about 13,000 gallons of oil onto the tundra at the Lisburne oil field [in 2009]. … While smaller, the 2009 spill in the Lisburne field was also one of the North Slope's largest spills. The company's probation officer, Mary Frances Barnes, filed a petition to revoke probation in November [2010]. She said BP violated its probation when it failed to take action on warning signs that the Lisburne pipeline was compromised months before it leaked.”

Further,

[W]orker harassment claims continued to be made in Alaska and elsewhere, and more problems with the Alaska pipeline systems also emerged.

In September 2008, a section of a high-pressure gas line on the Slope blew apart. A 28-foot-long section of steel -- the length of three pickup trucks -- flew nearly 1,000 feet through the air before landing on the Alaskan tundra. [Stuart] Sneed had raised concerns about the integrity of segments of the high-pressure gas line system before he left the company. If the release had caught a spark the explosion could have been catastrophic, said Robert Bea, a University of California Berkeley engineering professor who has worked for BP on the North Slope.

Three more accidents rocked the same system of pipelines and gas compressor stations in 2009, including a near explosion that could have destroyed the entire facility. According to a letter that members of Congress sent to BP executives , obtained by ProPublica, the near miss was the result of malfunctioning safety and backup equipment.

BP spokesman Tony Odone said BP is continuing to roll out a company-wide operating management system that helps track and implement maintenance. He said the company reduced corrosion and erosion-related leaks in Alaska by 42 percent between 2006 and 2009.

If only.  ProPublica’s investigative team found that as of Oct. 1, 2010,

[A]t least 148 BP pipelines on Alaska's North Slope received an “F-rank'” from the company. According to BP oil workers, that means inspections have determined that more than 80 percent of the pipe wall is corroded and could rupture. Most of those lines carry toxic or flammable substances. Many of the metal walls of the F-ranked pipes are worn to within a few thousandths of an inch of bursting, according to the document, risking an explosion or spills.

BP oil workers also say that the company's fire and gas warning systems are unreliable, that the giant turbines that pump oil and gas through the system are aging and that some oil and waste holding tanks are verging on collapse. …

BP employees told ProPublica that several of the 120 turbines used to compress gas and push it through the pipelines have been modified to run at higher stress levels and higher temperatures than they were originally designed to handle. They also said giant tanks that hold hundreds of thousands of gallons of toxic fluids and waste are sagging under the load of corrosive sediment and could collapse.

One critical maintenance issue concerns the replacement of the warning systems used to alert workers to a gas leak that could lead to an explosion.

The need to replace the gas detectors was made a priority in 2001 in an internal BP report that said oil field technicians were "very concerned about continuing degradation of system reliability, and the ability of these systems to protect the workforce."

Nine years later, outdated systems to detect fire and leaked gas remain in place at some of BP's largest and most important plants, including the Central Power Station, several drill pads and two flow stations that route oil and gas into the pipeline system.

Many of the detection systems are obsolete - the manufacturers that made them are shuttered - so replacement parts are hard to come by, said Kovac, the mechanic. More important, the systems have to be shut down every time BP conducts maintenance on its facilities and pipelines, because the methods used to scan the equipment for flaws have been known to trigger the ultraviolet detectors that set off the fire and gas alarms.

As a result, BP technicians on the North Slope say, the detectors at some facilities are shut down nearly a third of time. When they are off-line, the company relies on what employees refer to as "human fire detectors" - a foot patrol that sniffs for flammable materials and listens for the hiss of broken pipes.

BP has been upgrading the detection systems in recent years and has installed new ones at several facilities, including the buildings that house its workers. But many important facilities remain on the list.

According to people inside BP who declined to be identified because they were not authorized to speak about company affairs, replacing all the detections systems could take nearly 20 years at the current rate of investment.

"They say, 'Yep in the next few years we're going to upgrade all this fire and gas stuff and it's going to be more dependable,' and blah, blah, blah," said Glenn Trimmer, a BP technician who works on the Slope. "Well, after a few decades, I'm not buying it anymore. We can't even maintain the equipment that we have."

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