BP Stands For...

...British Petroleum. Also Bull Pucky.

Isn't it strange that BP's pipeline shutdown due to corrosion problems they've known about for years comes at the height of the summer driving season?

Or maybe not so strange. As usual, Greg Palast has the story.

BP's suddenly discovered corrosion necessitating an emergency shut-down of the line is the same corrosion Dan Lawn has been screaming about for 15 years. Lawn is a steel-eyed government inspector who has kept his job only because his union's lawyers have kept BP from having his head.

Indeed, it's pretty darn hard for BP to claim it is surprised to find corrosion this week when Lawn issued a damning report on corrosion right after a leak and spill were discovered on March 2 of this year.

What's the payoff for BP? It's pretty huge, and Palast has that end of the story too.

A precipitous shutdown in mid-summer, in the middle of Middle East war(s), is guaranteed to raise prices and reap monster profits for BP. The price of crude jumped $2.22 a barrel on the shutdown news to over $76. How lucky for BP which sells four million barrels of oil a day. Had BP completed its inspection and repairs a couple years back -- say, after Dan Lawn's tenth warning -- the oil market would have hardly noticed.

For those who would discredit Palast's reporting because he's a radical liberal commie faggot pinko peace creep, his contentions in this article are pretty much echoed and vindicated in a report from a much more mainstream source, NBC News.

The problems inflicted on this society by monopoly capitalism are legion, ongoing, and nothing new. But it's been 100 years since we've been in thrall to the "trusts" to the degree we are now.

I'm not sure these bastards are aware of how close to the edge they are, or how much trouble their shennanigans will eventually get them into.

It's a good thing the executives of companies like BP and Exxon are living in gated, walled communities. They ought to think about making the walls a little higher and thicker, and reinforcing the gates.