BP Oil Spill Disaster

Floor Speech

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Mr. POLIS. I thank the gentleman from Virginia.

This disaster of great proportion is indicative of the culture of deregulation and the influence of the special interests in the oil industry and the prevalence of those interests within the Bush administration, embedded into the regulatory structure. These interests within the Department of the Interior fought tooth and nail Secretary Salazar's attempts to bring balance back to the oil and gas industry. They fought with claims of severe economic hardship. Well, as the gentleman from Virginia talked about, I think the people of the gulf coast will be experiencing severe economic hardship, much worse than anything that these oil companies were worried about.

All actors involved with this unmitigated disaster have taken steps to try to limit their own liability. BP and Transocean have tried to spread their profits among shareholders. They've been giving dividends. They have been trying to decentralize their coffers, already scheming to get themselves off the hook and to put taxpayers on the hook. These oil companies are now trying to maneuver to get taxpayer bailouts for their own bad practices and their own failure to prevent what was a preventable disaster.

The use of highly toxic dispersants have exacerbated the damage, leading to underwater plumes of oil. It turns out that the emergency response plan of BP was riddled with errors, had falsities. It even listed people who were no longer alive as points of contact in the event of a disaster.

We need, and I'm sure we will have, a full public accounting of the fallacies and the flaws in the planning process with BP and their contractors that have led to this disaster, and it's critical for our Congress to make sure that these maneuvers to get off the hook for their own failure to prevent this catastrophe will not meet with success and that the responsibility will reside with BP and their contractors.

NEPA requires an assessment of environmental impact for any major project on Federal lands, but loopholes were placed in that policy in 2005, including a categorical exclusion, saying that oil drilling doesn't have any risk and, therefore, shouldn't need to do an environmental assessment.

The Deepwater Horizon was granted a categorical exclusion in 2007 under the Bush administration. Ironic, because NEPA was first initiated in 1968 as a response to an oil spill offshore, yes, off the coast of California, stripped of the very provisions that are one of the main reasons for its passage by the Bush administration.

We as a Congress need to address the statutory side, and I know that Secretary Salazar is working hard to fight the entrenched interests from the oil and gas industry that seek to influence the actions of the Department of the Interior.

I thank my colleague from Virginia for helping to raise this important issue.

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