Public Pressures Feds To Shut Down BP Atlantis as Presidential Commission Meets in Washington
Washington, D.C.— Today Zach Corrigan, Senior Staff Attorney at Food & Water Watch, delivered over 5500 petitions to the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling during his comments at today’s commission hearing in Washington, D.C. on the safety problems plaguing the BP Atlantis platform in the Gulf.
“With the Horizon disaster now seemingly contained, some may think that all major threats to the Gulf and Gulf Coast communities are also under control,” said Corrigan. “But Atlantis is a ticking time bomb. The Commission should take action to pressure regulators to shut it down until it’s proven safe.”
Located more than 150 miles from New Orleans in the Gulf of Mexico, and operating at a depth of more than 7,000 feet, BP’s Atlantis facility is one of the deepest moored semi-submersible oil and gas platforms in the world. It has been in operation since October 2007 despite the fact that former BP document control contactor turned-whistleblower Ken Abbott discovered that Atlantis lacks proper up-to-date and engineer-approved documentation. Over 85 percent of the project’s subsea piping and instrument diagrams, critical documents for operating the platform, were not approved by engineers, and over 95 percent of its subsea welding documents had no final engineering approval, calling into question the safety of the welds.
Food & Water Watch has been working with Ken Abbott since July 2009 to bring the safety problems associated with the Atlantis facility to light. In September it plans to file suit against the federal government and BP to halt production on Atlantis until it can be proven safe to operate.
Photos are available here for download and reprinting.
Contact: Kate Fried, Food & Water Watch: (202) 683-2500, kfried(at)fwwatch(dot)org.
Caption: Zach Corrigan, Staff Attorney at Food & Water Watch, prepares to deliver over 5500 petitions to the the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling calling for the shut down of BP’s Atlantis, another deepwater rig operating in the Gulf of Mexico. Corrigan testified today about the lack of proper safety documentation on the oil platform first brought to light by whistleblower Ken Abbott over a year ago.
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