BP bans Louisiana fishing folk from meeting

This video from the USA is called BP Oil Spill Effect on Wildlife.

From daily News Line in London, England:

Friday, 15 April 2011

No admission at BP AGM!

BP yesterday faced angry protesters – including Louisiana fishermen, Canadian Indians opposed to Tar Sands, and locked out UK construction workers – at its first annual general meeting since the disastrous Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Fishermen representing Louisiana Gulf communities were refused entry into the AGM.

Byron Encalade, president of the Louisiana Oystermen Association, told reporters: ‘We’ve had no money, no interim payments. We lost everything after the spill. We had good faith that BP were going to make our communities whole, but they’ve gone down the wrong road.’

‘All we’re asking for is to rehabilitate our oyster beds. Give us what was promised us. I don’t know why we’re not welcome here.’ He warned BP, ‘You can’t think you can do this and get away with it. We’re going to keep the pressure on BP. The quicker we can get funds, the quicker we can recover.’

Locked-out Hull rigger and Unite branch chairman, Bob Webster was with work colleagues outside the AGM.

He told News Line: ‘Vivergo is a diluted version of BP, Tate and Lyle and Dupont producing ethanol fuel off the plant that we were building. They pulled the contract, with no consultation, no redundancy notice, effectively putting 400 men out of work.’

‘There is no redundancy money as we are not officially made redundant. This is a lock-out but we haven’t been told that. This happened around six weeks ago.’

‘At present there are no prospects of getting a TUPE contract back onto the job. We don’t know who the new contractors will be.’

‘If there is no resolution in the next 38 hours, we are taking it to national level, involving all construction workers throughout the country, for moral and financial support. We’re asking for more than that if we don’t get it resolved, i.e. a stoppage.’

‘We have a meeting on Monday with national shop stewards and the union hierarchy.’

With everything Big Oil and the government have learned in the year since the Gulf of Mexico disaster, could it happen again? Absolutely, according to an Associated Press examination of the industry and interviews with experts on the perils of deep-sea drilling: here.

Protesters angry at BP’s failures over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill will descend on Tate Modern tomorrow in protest at the London gallery’s links with the oil giant: here.

More than 150 protesters stormed London’s Tate Modern art gallery yesterday in a colourful demonstration against its sponsorship by oil giant BP: here.

Emails expose BP’s attempts to control research into impact of Gulf oil spill: here.

BP tried to control oil spill damage science, White House helped too: here.

Kim Barker, ProPublica: “The oil spill that was once expected to bring economic ruin to the Gulf Coast appears to have delivered something entirely different: a gusher of money. Some people profiteered from the spill by charging BP outrageous rates for cleanup. Others profited from BP claims money, handed out in arbitrary ways. So many people cashed in that they earned nicknames – ‘spillionaires’ or ‘BP rich.’ Meanwhile, others hurt by the spill ended up getting comparatively little”: here.

“5 Million Barrels of Oil Does Not Disappear,” says @AntoniaJuhasz about BP Oil Spill, 1 Year Later: here.

Sue Sturgis, Facing South: “As the one-year anniversary of the BP drilling disaster nears, the American public has largely turned its attention away from the Gulf Coast. But for the people and other living creatures who make the region their home, the oil spill’s impacts are still being felt acutely today. In an effort to correct the misperception that the BP disaster is over and the 200 million gallons of oil that spill into the Gulf of Mexico have magically disappeared, staff with the Louisiana-based Gulf Restoration Network last week took reporters on a tour of areas that are still heavily impacted by BP’s oil”: here.

10 Reasons to Still Be Pissed Off About the BP Disaster: here.

One Year After BP Oil Disaster, UN General Assembly to Debate Whether Nature Has Rights: here.

This article, the first of a four-part series marking the first anniversary of the BP Gulf oil disaster, reviews the systematic corporate and government cover-up of the BP disaster and its consequences: here.

Report: Big Oil continues to pollute with dangerous chemicals: here.