Saturday, October 27, 2007

BP tries to put its woes behind it


We have been very critical of BP in these pages for its safety and environmental disasters and for its failure to respond quickly.

Its new leadership is to be congratulated for assuming this responsability and taking its medicine.

Onésimo Alvarez-Moro

See article:
For at least two years, BP’s US operations have been a festering sore for the UK energy group.

First, there was the explosion at a Texas refinery that killed 15 people in 2005, followed by leaks of crude oil into the Alaskan tundra. BP’s trading arm has fallen foul of regulators who have unearthed fraud and manipulation by BP’s energy trading arm.

So by agreeing to pay $373m in civil and criminal penalties as part of a package to settle all its outstanding issues, how far has the group succeeded in putting its woes behind it?

While the total fine is modest for a company with a market capitalisation of about $240bn, some individual fines were records. The $125m propane manipulation civil penalty levied by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is the largest in the futures regulator’s history.

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