Attention

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not represent our advertisers

Sunday, July 11, 2010

For BP, Multimillion-Dollar Fines Amount To A Day’s Worth Of Profit

OSHA and others have fined BP before, but does that punish a company that makes $2.8 million an hour?

A reader wrote in to point out that too often, the fines that BP has faced for safety and environmental violations over the years are rarely put into proper context: in proportion with profits.

We’ve noted some particularly small penalties [1] paid to offshore drilling regulators specifically, but it’s certainly worth pointing out that even the fines that are touted as being larger—such as the commonly cited $87 million fine [2] from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration—hardly make a dent in the company when compared with profits.

GO HERE to read more.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Keep in mind that, in spite of all the smiles from the Administration, they knew that BP wasn't going to be paying for this. It's being covered by the suspension of BP's paying dividends to stockholders. Many stockholders are little people who relied on these dividends to supplement retirement income.

Anonymous said...

As punishment - BP should supply free gas products to everyone in the united states for life!

Anonymous said...

BP should be maide to clean up its mess and pay restitution to the people affected. That should be punishment enough. They employ lots of US Citizens and we need the jobs, no need to destroy the company and those jobs.