House panel says BP may have withheld Alaska info - Yahoo! News

NEW YORK (Reuters) - BP faced fresh questions about its conduct in the United States late on Tuesday after a powerful U.S. Congressional panel demanded to know why the oil major had not disclosed a five-year-old order to inspect the pipelines at its Prudhoe Bay oilfield in Alaska that leaked this year causing major shutdowns.
Leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee said in a letter sent on Tuesday to BP that a 2001 Compliance Order issued by Alaska state regulators undercut BP executives' claims that the firm could not have been aware of the problems arising from a build-up of sediment in the oil transit pipelines at Prudhoe Bay.
The 2001 state order obliged BP to make an accurate determination of the amount of potentially corrosion-aiding sediment that had settled in the oil transit pipelines that carry export quality crude oil from the Prudhoe Bay oilfield to the Trans Alaska Pipeline, the congressmen said.
"The (2001) order is signed by a BP employee named Mr. Jack M. Fritts who is identified as the Greater Prudhoe Bay Operations Manager... Who did Mr Fritts report to and is that person still employed by BP?" asked Representatives Joe Barton and Tom Dingell, the ranking Republican and Democratic members of the committee, in the letter.
Corrosion within a pipeline on the western side of the Prudhoe Bay oilfield led to a spill of at least 200,000 gallons of crude in March.
BP temporarily shut down the eastern half of the field in August after tests ordered by the federal Transportation Department turned up serious corrosion in a segment of the eastern oil transit pipeline.
BP testified before the committee in September that the company had no idea that serious corrosion was occurring in some of the oil transit pipelines because its experts believed corrosion was unlikely to occur in the pipelines due to the absence of water.
The House committee says it has a copy of the 2001 Compliance Order signed by Jack Fritts, under which BP agreed to determine how much sediment was in some of the pipelines at Prudhoe Bay by March 2002 and to clean the lines if necessary.
The committee asked BP in the letter to provide an accounting for its actions over the 2001 Alaska state order, including an explanation for why it was not turned over to Congressional investigators, by October 20.
BP's reputation in the United States has been battered by a string of environmental, safety and ethical incidents that have tarnished the company's heavily promoted "green" image.
BP already faces a federal criminal probe into the spills at Prudhoe Bay this year and other agencies are considering civil action against the company.
Some BP shareholders have also sued the company, alleging BP management failed to deal with a systematic poor safety and operational culture within the company, a charge denied by BP executives.