British Petroleum (BP) Whistleblower Leaks 'Profits Before Safety' Engineering Practices

BP's Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Disaster 

Did BP Cut Corners By Hiring H-1B's?

Click here for UPDATE: The Meaning of Gluttony...

Has British Petroleum (BP) Cut Corners By Hiring H-1B's? Yes. Here is a current list of many job openings at BP for H-1B's, complete with salary listings. (Note that this list does not include any reference to the large numbers of Indian body shops in the U.S. that they may be contracting imported workers from as well.)

In this shocking Truthout report, Jason Leopold uncovers a former BP contractor turned whistleblower who was hired to supervise the company's databases who had raised concerns in 2008 over BP's failure to maintain crucial safety and engineering documents related to one of the firms other deepwater production projects in the Gulf of Mexico (don't miss the comments.) The contractor had feared the engineering document “shortfalls” related to Atlantis "could lead to catastrophic operator error" and that BP's own internal communications even showed that company officials “were aware of the issue.” Although Leopold's article does not indicate if any of the positions related to BP's disastrous rig explosion were given to H-1B visa holders (or if the whistleblower him or herself is an H-1B visa holder), it does expose the company's profits over people and safety issues that are increasingly linked to disastrous, locally unsustainable economic hiring practices where American corporations are trained to cut corners on how NOT to hire American workers.

Who is behind the orchestrated sell out of American jobs to cheap, dubiously “skilled” labor responsible for corporate America's rising numbers of compromised products and services spilling into heightened security and deadly safety breeches? Despite the growing millions of educated American engineers now unemployed/underemployed, BP has an appetite for cheap imported, “best and brightest” foreign workers to do the work that the corporate sponsored, American job killing tech lobby propaganda pit TechNet claims Americans actually support! And if you buy that whopper, I've got a collapsed bridge in India to sell you.

Among many positions advertised for non-Americans, BP is looking for an H-1B to Market Sector Analyst - Offshore Rigs to contribute “to BP's bottom line and is in the midst of implementing a new Strategy...” and  an SPU Data and Information Manger, Gulf of Mexico. Need a job but you're not from India? Get over yourselves! In the Neo-frat boy corporate state of America, No Americans Need Apply. (So much for local labor and oil sustainability from leading corporate persons like BP.)

The former BP contractor who worked for the oil behemoth and noted the engineering document safety gaps claimed in internal emails and other documents obtained by Truthout reveal he first raised these concerns back in 2008:

“The whistleblower, whose name has been withheld at the person's request because the whistleblower still works in the oil industry and fears retaliation, first raised concerns about safety issues related to BP Atlantis, the world's largest and deepest semi-submersible oil and natural gas platform, located about 200 miles south of New Orleans, in November 2008. Atlantis, which began production in October 2007, has the capacity to produce about 8.4 million gallons of oil and 180 million cubic feet of natural gas per day.

It was then that the whistleblower, who was hired to supervise the company's databases, discovered that Atlantis had been operating without a majority of the engineer-approved documents it needed to run safely, leaving it vulnerable to a catastrophic disaster that would far surpass the massive oil spill that began last week following a deadly explosion on a BP-operated drilling rig.”

It was later determined that the documents described as “as built” drawings “need not be complete or accurate and, furthermore, are irrelevant to a hazard analysis BP was required to complete.”

An engineer with Apex Safety Consultants last year into BP's engineering documentation practices related to the subsea Atlantis components records revealed they lacked final approval:

“Last May, Mike Sawyer, an engineer with Apex Safety Consultants who evaluated BP's database and looked into the whistleblower's allegations, concluded that of the 2,108 P&IDs BP maintained that dealt specifically with the subsea components of its Atlantis production project, 85 percent did not receive engineer approval. Even worse, 95 percent of Atlantis' subsea welding records did not receive final approval, calling into question the integrity of thousands of crucial welds on subsea components that, if they were to rupture, could result in an oil spill 30 times worse than the one that occurred after the explosion on Deepwater Horizon last week.

He said the safety shutdown logic drawings on Atlantis, a complex computerized system that, during emergencies, is supposed to send a signal to automatically shut down the flow of oil, were listed as "requiring update."

But if corporate state persons like BP hire cheap imported and outsourced labor to cut corners and continue to bar educated American engineers from jobs, who does care about local jobs and oil sustainability when the cost cutting corporate overlords are at the switch? One commenter noted:

“This horrific disaster in the Gulf of Mexico should be the last nail in the coffin for offshore drilling! Yes, we will probably have to continue to use conventional energy until we catch up with clean energy. But, we don't have to imperil the oceans to do it.”

It's time for Americans to demand corporations and their sleazy political enablers STOP putting corporate profits before local people's jobs and our safety. As is true for other countries, it's time for America to clean up our local environment and our local hiring practices by stopping the flood of cheap imported labor and to hold who is responsible for the lack of sound, quality engineering practices at BP accountable.

BP's latest horrific Gulf of Mexico disaster should be the last nail in the coffin to the horrific American job outsourcing and insourcing cheap foreign visa labor hiring practices used to kick Americans in our towns across the country to the curb.

Party on, plebes!

-2Truthy