No use trying to shred the emails for BP

All the evil companies in Hollywood movies shred written documents to pieces at some point to cover up a massive lie. This might have been a viable option a decade ago but with the new laws and regulations that force companies to keep records of all emails sent and received, it is of no use to the wicked these days.

According to the Huffington Post, emails that attorneys representing a defendant in the BP oil spill case plan to introduce in February show, for the first time, that the oil company knew the massive scale of the 2010 blowout in the Gulf of Mexico weeks earlier than previously disclosed.

BP has long maintained that it provided full disclosure to the public and the federal government about its knowledge of the spill’s extent and did so promptly. The emails suggest otherwise.

BP has said in the past that it learned of the spill’s full extent months after the April 2010 blowout. But the emails indicate that the company knew almost immediately after the drilling rig exploded, killing 11 workers and injuring 17, that the spill may be extraordinarily large.

BP pleaded guilty in mid-November to more than a dozen felony charges related to the spill, including lying to Congress about the size of the leak, as part of a wide-ranging deal settling the company’s corporate criminal liability. Justice Department officials said a probe of individual criminal activity related to the spill is ongoing and may result in more indictments.

Just two days after the rig explosion, a former BP engineer named Kurt Mix emailed a projection to a supervisor estimating the runaway well could be leaking from 62,000 to 146,000 barrels per day. Two days later, BP executives told the Coast Guard their best estimate for the leak was 1,000 barrels per day. A federal scientific group concluded after the well was capped that the flow was 62,000 barrels per day at the beginning of the disaster.

In another email, dated May 10, 2010, an executive at a Norwegian energy consulting firm said he had analyzed video of the undersea leak sent to him by Mix. “I do not think it can be ruled out that the flow at seabed is in the order of 40,000” barrels per day, said the executive, whose name is redacted in Mix’s brief.

The days have long gone that a giant corporation could hide hard facts and get away without being punished, thanks to extensive use of emails.

If you don’t love emailing for the increase in productivity, you gotta love it for the sake of transparency.