In February 1990, with Hermiller's blessing, Alyeska hired Wackenhut Corp., a security company in South Florida, to concoct a sting to nab Hamel and identify his whistleblowers. Operatives from Wackenhut set up a phony environmental law firm and attempted to get Hamel to use it to pursue public interest lawsuits against Alyeska and Exxon. They stole Hamel's trash, bugged an office he used and hired a beautiful blonde to pretend she was an environmentalist in order to get Hamel to talk.
But the scheme collapsed when one of the Wackenhut operatives came to believe that it was Hamel who was honorable, not Alyeska, and switched sides, bringing several of the Wackenhut spies with him.
Hermiller retired in the wake of subsequent investigations and Congressional hearings and was eventually replaced by a new BP official who vowed to clean up Alyeska's corporate culture. Hamel successfully sued and used some of his damage award to continue his watchdog pursuit of the industry. Hamel, now 79 and retired in Washington state, is still contacted by whistleblowers, mostly on BP matters, he says.
From 1993 through 1995, a BP contractor on the North Slope, Doyon Drilling, saved money by illegally dumping hazardous materials down oil well shafts. The company pleaded guilty in federal court to a felony violation of the Clean Water Act and was fined $3 million. BP's punishment for pleading guilty to failing to report the dumping as soon as it learned about it: a felony conviction in 2000 that brought a $500,000 fine, five years probation and an order to create a nationwide environmental management program that cost the company at least $40 million.
A federal prosecutor, Deborah Smith, said at the time that BP's sentence sent a message to corporations that hire contractors: "You can't contract away your responsibilities."
A BP official told the judge, "We are committed to ensuring this never happens again."
PIPELINE LEAKS
BP was still on probation, and under strict rules to prevent reprisals against employees who raised environmental concerns, when new problems erupted in its North Slope corrosion control program.
Despite warnings from a leak-detection system, a badly corroded 34-inch-diameter pipeline in Prudhoe Bay lost oil for at least five days before a worker driving down a nearby service road on March 2, 2006, smelled oil and spotted the spill, which covered at least two acres of tundra. At 200,000 gallons, it was the largest ever on the North Slope.
Just five months later, on Aug. 6, 2006, a second spill of about 1,000 gallons was discovered on another line. Subsequent investigation found the line was riddled with corrosion, with 176 places where more than half the original diameter had been eaten away.
Congressional hearings held to probe the spills immediately focused on claims that BP actively discouraged workers from reporting safety and environmental problems. The chief of BP's corrosion unit, Richard Woollam, who was reassigned to nonsupervisory duties in 2005, took the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination during the hearings, which uncovered a 2004 report by the Houston law firm Vinson & Elkins warning BP that employees faced retaliation for reporting problems.
Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, suggested BP had decided to "bet the farm" that the pipeline wouldn't fail before Prudhoe Bay would run out of oil, saving it the cost of replacement. He accused the company of fostering a "corporate culture of seeming indifference to safety and environmental issues." In 2007, BP pleaded guilty in federal court in Anchorage to another violation of the Clean Water Act for the 2006 spill. This crime was a misdemeanor, but it still cost BP $20 million in fines and restitution and three more years of probation. Prosecutors said the spill occurred because BP was more interested in cutting costs than in maintaining an aging oil field.
A BP vice president told the judge that the corrosion problems were "out of character" for the company. BP had learned its lesson, he said.
But in November last year, 46,000 gallons of oil and water gushed from an over-pressurized BP pipeline on the North Slope, prompting the EPA and the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation to open another criminal investigation of BP. An EPA investigator declined to comment last week on the probe's status.
BP is still on probation from its 2007 conviction, but its probation officer, Mary Barnes, said the Gulf oil spill would not result in probation revocation because it involved a different BP subsidiary, BP Exploration (Alaska).
TEST RESULTS MANIPULATED
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