BP Fined! And It's Not Because of the Gulf Oil Spill

(MoneyWatch)  Any doubt that BP's irresponsible behavior pervades the company's operations should have been erased in the wake of the Gulf oil spill -- its third major disaster in the past five years. But just in case there are still some skeptics out there, consider the company's latest offense, not in the Gulf, but onshore.

The Interior Department's newly minted Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEM) announced Wednesday that BP America has been fined a $5.2 million civil penalty for submitting false, inaccurate, or misleading reports on its energy production within Southern Ute Indian tribal lands in Colorado.

This isn't some isolated slip-up that BP is getting nailed for, by the way. Three years ago, an audit of BP's oil and gas production data and found the company incorrectly reported royalty rates and prices, and gave well production data on the wrong leases. The Southern Ute Tribal auditors alerted BP back in August 2007 of the errors. BP acknowledged the problem, blamed it on an automated filing system and promised to correct the error.

Shockingly, the error wasn't fixed. A later audit of production reports found the same problem. BOEM director Michael Bromwich said in an emailed statement Wednesday, the repeated inaccurate reports led to only one conclusion: "BP's continued submissions of erroneous reports was knowing or willful."

Inaccurate reporting may seem like small potatoes. But it's not when it follows dozens of other violations in virtually every aspect of a company's operations in the U.S. These repeated problems confirms BP's culture of willful irresponsibility throughout its U.S. operations. Any real change would require nothing short of a massive overhaul directed by an outsider to BP, and certainly not its CEO Tony Hayward.

Lest we forget, here are some highlights of BP's repeated safety and management missteps:

• Two BP refineries account for 97 percent of all willful violations found in the refining industry over the past three years, according to a Center for Public Integrity report released in May. OSHA contends most of those were "egregious, willful" violations.
• Fatal blast in 2005 at BP's Texas City Refinery. An investigation found management focused on cutting maintenance and capital spending costs, and managers' performance was measured in part by their ability to meet these goals.
• A 200,000-gallon oil spill from a BP transit pipe in Alaska's Prudhoe Bay caused by corrosion in the pipeline. Investigators later said cuts to capital spending and maintenance contributed to the accident.
• Three BP gas and oil pipelines on Alaska's North Slope clogged or ruptured between September 2008 and November 2009.

Photo of oil cleanup from the Deepwater Horizon Joint Command For complete coverage, see: All Things BNET on BP's Gulf of Mexico Spill Related:

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