Project Katrina

Over the weekend, news broke that three months after his oil company’s rig set off the largest oil spill in American history, BP CEO Tony Hayward would be stepping down. In his resignation statement, Hayward stressed that, “BP will be a changed company as a result of” its oil spill in the Gulf. Yesterday morning BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg went on CNBC to celebrate Hayward’s performance at BP:

SVANBERG: Tony Hayward has done a great job for the company through his almost thirty years and he has done it very well, greatly as a CEO. He has driven the company’s performance and developed the company in many, many ways. He has also led an unprecedented response in the Gulf of Mexico. But it became obvious to him and to us that in order to rebuild our position, in order to rebuilt our brand and reputation, we needed fresh leadership and that is why we are doing the change.

Not only didn’t Hayward get shit canned, it did a “great job for the company” and will receive a £600,000-a-year ($930,000) pension when he leaves the firm in October. Kind of makes you wonder doesn’t it.

The costs to BP for poisoning the Gulf of Mexico will actually lower the company’s taxes by billions of dollars, and BP “may be able to get a refund for taxes paid in previous years.” If BP’s cleanup costs reach $60 billion, as Merrill Lynch & Co. estimates, the company will be able to deduct almost $20 billion over time they would have had to pay in taxes.

In addition to billions in subsidies, the company has received $10 billion in federal contracts from the American taxpayer in the last ten years. BP spokesman Steve Rinehart told Bloomberg News that BP will deduct the $3.5 billion already spent on cleanup efforts and any future expenses:

Taxes are paid on profits. If our profits are down due to increased expenses such as the cost of responding to this spill, then it follows that our tax bills will be lower as a result.

BP cannot write off future government fines and penalties, including criminal fines, but it can write off punitive damages that are awarded by courts, according to a report by Center for American Progress tax expert Sima Gandhi.

A former BP contractor has come forward to denounce the “cutthroat individuals” running the oil disaster response. On Friday, contractor-turned-whistleblower Adam Dillon told New Orleans television station WDSU he was fired “after taking photos that he believes were related to the use of dispersants and to the cleanup of the oil.” As a BP liaison, he had rebuffed reporters’ attempts to observe cleanup operations in Grand Isle, LA, in June, before being promoted to the BP Command Center near Houma, LA. At the command center BP manages the private contractors running practically every aspect of the spill response. Dillon, a former U.S. Army Special Operations soldier, “has lost faith in the company in charge”:

There are some very great, hardworking individuals in there. But the bottom line is just about money. There are some very cutthroat individuals. They’re not worried about cleaning up that spill as it is. . . .

I will never have loyalty to this company. I will always have loyalty to my country. And my country comes first. What this company is doing to this country right now is just wrong.

Before he was fired, Dillon was “confined and interrogated for almost an hour.” WDSU’s Scott Walker will air more of his interview with Adam Dillon on Monday night.

BP CEO Tony Hayward has flown to Abu Dhabi today. Rumors are it is to raise funds and secure new investors from the region as his company’s stocks continue to plummet:

BP’s embattled CEO flew to the wealthy emirate of Abu Dhabi to meet officials amid speculation the oil giant is looking to raise cash to cover clean up costs from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Chief Executive Tony Hayward arrived in the Emirati capital Tuesday and would be staying “a couple of days,” BP spokesman Andrew Gowers said. He would not say whether Hayward planned to sit down with the region’s powerful investment funds, which have provided needed cash to Western multinationals in past times of crisis. “He’s visiting partners as he does from time to time. He’s conducting normal business,” Gowers said.

The Financial Times writes that an “official in the Gulf familiar with BP’s discussions” said “there have been communications between the group and investors in the region since the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, describing them as an ‘immunisation strategy’ as BP looks to its future.” Additionally, the Saudi paper “Al-Eqtisadiah reported Wednesday that a delegation of Saudi investors was headed to London to discuss an acquisition of up to 15 percent of BP.”

In an ongoing struggle to save what is left of its brand equality, BP has launched numerous efforts to revamp its image as “part of the community.” Now, the “embattled oil giant” has “stepped forward to pay” for the annual July Fourth fireworks display in Durango, CO. BP Agreed to pay for the display five months before the Deepwater Horizon explosion, BP is pitching the display as a community donation:

The display typically costs $15,000 and city officials were poised to cancel it because of a budget crunch. But representatives of BP’s office in southwestern Colorado surprised the council by announcing the company would pick up the tab.

Company spokesman Curtis Thomas says BP knows how important the celebration is to the community and didn’t want it to be lost. He says BP hasn’t asked for any advertising in exchange for its donation.

I just don’t think BP is going to be able to “buy” their way out of this. But I could be wrong (lets hope not).

Yet another major revelation in the last week to undermine Bobby Jindal’s consistent claims he has effectively managed Louisiana’s response to BP’s oil spill gusher:

For more than two months, Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana has made it clear that he considers the response of the federal government and BP to the gulf oil leak a failure on many fronts.

But elected officials in Louisiana and members of the public seeking details on how Mr. Jindal and his administration fared in their own response to the disaster are out of luck: late last week the governor vetoed an amendment to a state bill that would have made public all records from his office related to the oil spill.

The measure was proposed by Senator Robert Adley, a Republican, and easily passed the Democrat-controlled Legislature. He told the Associated Press that the veto was a “black eye” on the state. “This governor has opposed transparency for the three years he’s been in office,” he said.

According to the New York Times, Jindal says he vetoed the measure to strengthen the state’s position if it pursues legal action against BP. This argument seems transparently bunk since if any legal action is taken (and why wouldn’t it BTW) would require all those documents to be turned over to BP during discovery.

Other recent revelation include CBS noting that despite Jindal’s attacks on the Obama administration for not delivering enough resources fast enough, Jindal actual held up the deployment of 5,000 National Guard troops authorized by the Obama administration. And over the weekend, the New York Times reported that experts at the state and federal level had panned Jindal’s response, saying the state was ill-prepared for the spill and that Jindal’s attacks on the Federal response smacked of political calculation designed to distract attention from his own failures. Oh you got to love (insert hate) Louisiana politics.

Greg Sargent at the Washington Post reports Jim DeMint has backed down from his attempt to deny subpoena power to the Obama Administration’s Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling Commission.

Last week the House near-unanimously passed legislation giving the commission that power, but yesterday, Senator  Jim DeMint infuriated Democrats by  putting a block on the legislation when a Dem brought it to the floor for a voice vote.

DeMint claimed he was doing this on behalf of unnamed GOP Senators in his caucus, prompting Dems to charge that Republicans were shielding Big Oil from a real probe.

But the Senate GOP leadership has informed DeMint’s office that it has no objections to the legislation, and it will proceed, DeMint spokesman Wesley Denton tells me.

According to Sargent, DeMint’s office says they never had any objections to the concept of subpoenas, but put a hold on the legislation because a number of other senators had not had time to read it yet.