BP already carries a notorious reputation for destroying wetlands and leaving marine life tarred and tattered for miles along the Gulf Coast. Today, the company again finds itself in troubled waters.
The company's fourth quarter earnings are in, and the news is not good.
Yes, the British oil giant boasted a fourth quarter profit of $5.6 billion, up 30 percent from the previous year-end quarter. But largely because of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, which left 11 workers dead and poured approximately 170 million gallons of oil into America’s southern shoreline last April, the company reported an overall loss of $3.7 billion -- the first such loss in twenty years.
Though BP has already restored dividend payments to shareholders, the company said Tuesday that it will sell roughly half of its refining capacity in the United States to cover losses. In addition to a refinery in Carson, California, this includes the notorious Texas City, Texas refinery, a 1,200-acre facility not far from Galveston, where 15 people died in a 2005 explosion that defined safety what-not-tos. (Yes, this sounds familiar.)
While Bob Dudley, BP chief executive, describes 2011 as a road to “recovery and consolidation,” this week environmental groups and local residents are introducing a civil lawsuit about an incident last spring, in which more than 530,000 pounds of benzene escaped flares at the Texas City plant.
As BP looks to sell the refinery by 2012, it has already spent more than $1 billion in equipment upgrades, $2.1 billion in accident claims, and more than $100 million in safety regulations at the coastal plant. For a refinery that hemorrahged money for the past decade, a big question remains: Who would ever buy Texas City?
Image: The author with a dead fish on Texas Gulf Coast, in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
