Excellence in Safety?
In a perfect example of the massive disconnect between corporate greed and responsibility, Transocean, Ltd., the offshore drilling contractor whose faulty rig, the Deepwater Horizon, exploded last April, killing eleven people and dumping an estimated 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, had, according to securities filings obtained by the Wall Street Journal, their “best year in safety performance.”
Gulf of Mexico? What’s that? Environmental catastrophe? Never heard of it.
Their CEO, one Steve Newman, collected a new compensation package valued at $5.8 million dollars for all of that so-called safety. According to MSNBC:
“That figure includes an $850,000 base salary — a 34 percent increase from the prior year; perquisites of $622,057, which includes housing and vacation allowances, among other things; and the $374,062 bonus. Also included in the figure are stock options valued at $1.9 million and deferred shares valued at $2 million when those awards were granted in March 2010.”
How does that square with the company’s treatment of families who lost loved ones during the disaster? Not very well. At the BP Oil Spill Lawyer’s Log, the Berniard Law Firm said this in December:
So far, three families out of the eleven have settled with Transocean, the company that actually owned the rig that exploded. The settlement included a long-term plan for the deceased rig worker’s dependents as well as a charitable fund that distributed $130,000 to all the families in July. To put this into perspective, an oil rig employee’s annual salary can range anywhere between $55,000-$125,000 per year, and yet the company gave the families $130,000, which may equate to only one year’s worth of their loved one’s salary. Additionally, in order to pay respect to the fallen eleven men, eleven stars were imprinted on the well’s final cap. Yet, having their loved one would be better than any sum or star offered in the world.
Disturbingly, many of the families have reported that any compensation from Transocean or BP have ceased, and the companies may be relying on an old 1920s law which limits liability to their worker’s lost earnings rather than their families’ pain and suffering. This falls in line with BP and, subsequently, the GCCF fund, denying any applicants emotional distress compensation. Thus, the wife of Roshto, the youngest of the eleven men who died at only 22 years old, will most likely have her lawsuit which was filed after the explosion, claiming she was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, face an uphill battle.
The $20 billion fund set up by BP to compensate thousands of people, fishermen and small businesses along the Gulf Coast has paid out around $3.6 billion so far amongst 172,000 claimants, which averages out to about $21,000 per claim.
It is still possible that criminal charges against Transocean and BP could be brought, but at this point, I’m not holding my breath. I have a feeling it will be an icy day in Hades before we see any of the companies involved brought to justice for this disaster, which is still unfolding and the complete effects of which are still unknown.
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