Greenpeace Publishes Confidential Oil Spill Documents

Greenpeace Publishes Thousands Of Confidential Oil Spill Documents

Huge searchable database of new evidence will help compensation claims, lawsuits

Washington DC, Tuesday 19 April 2011 - Thousands of internal documents relating to last year’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico have been uploaded to a new website which aims to help local communities file compensation claims and discover the true causes of the disaster.

The ‘polluter watch’ website, which is operated by Greenpeace, allows users to search approximately 30,000 pages of previously unseen documents obtained under Freedom of Information laws. These include internal government correspondence with BP, evidence of conflict between scientists and officials and even flight records from pilots operating in the region.

“BP and the federal government tried to hide the true impacts of the biggest oil disaster in American history. We’re hoping that this website can help expose how they did it and allow local people to get the compensation they deserve. The fact is this kind of event will happen again unless our leaders realize what happened here and start to get tough with Big Oil.” said Kert Davies, research director at Greenpeace USA.

The Gulf Restoration Network, a local group focused on working for restoration and protection of the Gulf environment and communities, is today calling on its members to log on to the website and begin the process of sifting the evidence.

“As the governments around the world consider new deep water drilling permits such as Shell and BP’s in the Arctic, it is vital that the true cost of the Deep Water Horizon disaster is revealed. It is vital that we see the industry for what it is: deadly, dangerous and duplicitous. How many more lives and livelihoods need to be lost before we embrace a safe and clean energy future based upon abundant renewable energy sources,” said Tzeporah Berman, Greenpeace International Co-director Climate and Energy Program.

A fraction of the documents released today have already been analyzed by Greenpeace researchers. Highlights include how:

• An infamous government claim about the spill’s impact was hotly contested by the scientists involved who flatly state “it is not accurate to say that 75% of the oil is gone”.

• Government officials, to the dismay of qualified experts, seriously underplayed the oil’s impact on marine life including turtle populations.

• BP appears to have been in sole charge of issuing permits to trained scientists wishing to access affected areas as the disaster unfolded.

The website allows people to sift though the documents by subject and flag any that they believe could show evidence of misconduct. These can be downloaded directly or sent for further examination by Greenpeace researchers.

The site also includes instructions on how the public can enter formal requests themselves, in an attempt to add further transparency to the government’s handling of the disaster.

The website will be added to as more FOIA documents are received. It can be viewed at: http://www.polluterwatch.org/research

Greenpeace is calling on governments to move away from dirty fossil fuel dependency and oil and embrace clean and safe energy technologies. They quickly need to enact legislation such as strong vehicle efficiency legislation in order to increase energy security and decrease price vulnerability.

ENDS

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