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BP denies cover-up as US safety questions mount
By Justin Cole
AFP
WASHINGTON
Petroleumworld.com 08 10 06BP denied Wednesday it had ignored corrosion problems at its stricken Alaskan pipeline for years as it battled to fix operations at America's biggest oil field.
The British energy group is facing mounting criticism about its US safety record after announcing on Sunday that it was shutting down the giant Prudhoe Bay oil field due to a corroded pipeline that caused a small oil spill.
The Financial Times reported that an advocate for BP workers in Alaska, Chuck Hamel, had notified a top company official of widespread corrosion at the field over two years ago.
Hamel said he wrote to Walter Massey, the chairman of the environment committee of BP's non-executive board of directors, in May 2004 laying out concerns about safety relayed over the previous four years by BP workers.
"They seek to see the corrosion problem addressed and corrective action undertaken before any of their colleagues at Prudhoe are harmed," Hamel wrote in the letter, according to the FT.
BP responded by sending lawyers to Alaska "with questions that seemed aimed more at identifying whistleblowers than uncovering corrosion", Hamel was quoted as saying.
BP America chairman Bob Malone denied claims the company had brushed off Hamel's concerns.
"BP encourages our employees or the public to raise concerns and we have no interest in who is raising the concern," Malone told CNN in an interview.
He said BP had a "world-class" program against corrosion, "but what we've found is we had a gap."
Malone also said that engineers were scrambling to see if BP could avoid a complete shutdown of the field and keep at least 200,000 barrels per day of oil gushing.
Engineers would make a decision between Friday and Monday, he said.
In normal times the affected pipeline system handles 400,000 barrels of oil a day, or 8.0 percent of daily US production.
Analysts believe it will be many months before full output is resumed, although Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said Tuesday that he had been assured by BP managers that a full shutdown may not be necessary.
Political anger has mounted over the incident with some senior US lawmakers calling for congressional hearings into BP, which has suffered a series of industrial accidents at its US sites of late.
"There's no doubt we're going through tough times," BP spokesman Daren Beaudo told the CNBC business channel.
Beaudo said it was assumed Prudhoe Bay would only be in operation for 25 years when it first started operations in 1977. Some of its infrastructure at the field dates back to that time.
"It is a large job. We don't deny that. We can get better and we will get better in our corrosion maintenance program. We'll revisit every aspect of our corrosion program," he said.
Beaudo stressed that BP managed 1,500 miles (2,414 kilometers) of pipelines at the vast site on Alaska's North Slope and said the company had a "huge inspection program" which involved the checking of over 100,000 locations every year.
Both Malone and Beaudo took to the airwaves to repel a growing political and media firestorm over the Alaska incident, which came months after BP was reprimanded by the government for a large oil spill in the region.
The company is also being investigated by the Justice Department over a vast explosion at its Texas City refinery in March last year which killed 15 people.
Alaska governor Frank Murkowski has said his state is losing about 6.4 million dollars in daily revenues due to the shutdown, and has urged BP to re-start Prudhoe Bay as soon as it is safe to do so.
AFP 09 2149 GMT 08 06
Copyright ©2006 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
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