Exxon Valdez still hasn't paid up

[donsu]

http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=268&row=0

Fourteen years after Exxon Valdez slimed over one thousand miles of Alaskan beaches, the oily company has yet to pay most of the damages awarded by the jury. The $4 billion Exxon owes for "punitive" damages is getting off easy: by Exxon's own calculation it merely equals the cost of the damage they inflicted.

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Now, Exxon-Mobil, the Number One campaign contributor to the George W. Bush campaigns, has gotten their big fat sloppy payoff. Last week, the Bushified appellate courts in Texas ordered the Alaskan judge once again to review the award.

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The official story remains “Drunken Skipper Hits Reef.” Don’t believe it.

In fact, when the ship hit, Captain Joe Hazelwood was nowhere near the wheel, but belowdecks, sleeping off his bender. The man left at the helm, the third mate, would never have hit Bligh Reef had he simply looked at his Raycas radar. But he could not, because the radar was not turned on. The complex Raycas system costs a lot to operate, so frugal Exxon management left it broken and useless for the entire year before the grounding.

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- We discovered an internal memo describing a closed, top Level meeting of oil company executives in Arizona held just ten months before the spill. It was a meeting of the “Alyeska Owners Committee,” the six-company combine that owns the Alaska pipeline and most of the state’s oil. In that meeting, say the notes, the chief of their Valdez operations, Theo Polasek, warned executives that containing an oil spill “at the mid-point of Prince William Sound not possible with present equipment”—exactly where the Exxon Valdez grounded. Polasek needed millions of dollars for spillcontainment equipment. The law required it, the companies promised it to regulators, then at the meeting, the proposed spending was voted down. The oil company combine had a cheaper plan to contain any spill—don’t bother. According to an internal memorandum, they’d just drop some dispersants and walk away. That’s exactly what happened. “At the owners committee meeting in Phoenix, it was decided that Alyeska would provide immediate response to oil spills in Valdez Arm and Valdez Narrows only”—not the Prince William Sound.
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these criminals should be in prison not pot tokers or holders.