BP's claims of Gulf recovery are a mockery | Commentary

Commentary by David Yarnold, President, National Audubon Society

Tribune News Service – April 22, 2015

Just in time for the fifth anniversary of the worst oil spill in U.S. maritime history, BP has declared all’s well on the Gulf Coast: The oil has been mopped up and there’s been no lasting damage to birds, wildlife or fish.

Really?

At the same time that BP was releasing its five-years-later report, BP contractors were trying to clean up 25,000 pounds of oiled sand from a massive tar mat that slimed one of the fragile barrier islands south of New Orleans.

Toxicology experts at Louisiana State University confirmed it was the same oil that spewed from the April 20, 2010 Deepwater Horizon blowout that killed 11 men.

Here’s what BP doesn’t want you to know: Its crews had been on the scene of that massive cleanup for the three weeks leading up to the release of that report which claimed all cleanup operations had been long finished. That’s a serious truth gap. The British-owned oil giant continues to be far more concerned about its bottom line than repairing the damage it inflicted on the Gulf Coast.