In the past three years, British Petroleum netted — netted — $58.5 billion. That’s not gross income, that’s NET income — aka profit. In that same three-year period, BP spent $29 million on safer drilling techniques. Twenty-nine million on safer drilling, $58.5 billion in profits, in the same period.
Now, that still does not account for money spent on clean-up — on actually responding to oil spills, explosions, or other oil-related accidents when they do happen. Right? Well, first, BP did not do its own oil spill cleanup research. BP contracted out its oil cleanup research to an outside company called Marine Spill Research Corporation. In other words, MSRC was hired by BP to do oil spill cleanup research for BP.
Okay, so what was MSRC’s budget for oil spill cleanup research, how much did it spend in the last three years, and what were the results?
Zero. Zero. And zero. The amount of money in MSRC’s budget for oil spill cleanup research is… was, zero. And when contacted, MSRC said they did not even do that kind of research.
All of the above, via Rachel Maddow, on MSNBC, tonight. The transcript and video of the segment should be on MaddowBlog tomorrow.
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