BP Has a Long History of Problems at Alaska's Prudhoe Bay

BP Has a Long History of Problems at Alaska's Prudhoe Bay
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.
On Tuesday, it was announced that BP would pay $25 million and spend another $60 million implementing a state-of-the-art monitoring system to guard against North Slope oil spills under a proposed settlement reached with the federal government over a 2006 spill. Since 2000, BP has been fined and criticized for cutting corners and not properly maintaining Prudhoe Bay. BP operates the Alaska oil field on behalf of itself, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil Corp. and other companies. Here's a timeline of BP's issues at Prudhoe Bay:
  • 2000: BP is placed on five years federal probation, stemming from an incident in which a contractor dumped thousands of gallons of toxic material underground at a BP oil field in Alaska during the 1990s. BP pleads guilty to a single felony in connection to the incident, admitting that it took too long to notify federal regulators about the dumping. It pays a $6.5 million fine and agrees to set up a nationwide environmental management program, which ultimately cost about $40 million.

  • 2001: A work crew injects oil and fluids underground to dispose of them after a small spill. BP pays $675,000 in fines for not consulting with state environmental regulators before dumping the material.
  • Spring 2001: Alaska regulators discover that safety valves atop of some Prudhoe oil wells, which shut down production if pressure drops because of a leak, have high failure rates, prompting regulators to step up inspections and call on BP to do a better job of inspecting wellheads.
  • See the complete timeline from 2000-2011, including the most recent, record oil spill in Alaska's oil patch, only at Alaska Dispatch.

    Popular in the Community

    Close

    What's Hot