BP Whistleblowers Paying High Price for Confessions

By Victor Thorn

Oil industry critic Charles Hamel realizes the dangers facing those who expose the Gulf of Mexico cover-up. “These oil interests are very powerful. They’ll stop at nothing to stop you,” he has said.

A host of casualties prove his point. First is whistleblower Mike Mason, who worked for BP subcontractor Nabors Drilling. In 2005 he told investigators that BP regularly falsified blowout preventer (BOP) tests at Alaskan facilities.

His employer immediately fired him following these disclosures, but not before Mason reported to Hamel’s Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission that BP’s safety procedure is to “look the other way when it’s convenient for them.”

Hamel had been chronicling BP abuses since the 1980s, costing them millions in repairs to the Alaskan pipeline. As retaliation, journalist Marcus Baram reported on May 12 that a BP subsidiary in Alaska “hired a private security firm, Wackenhut, to conduct surveillance on Hamel.” Their tactics included wiretaps and forced entries into his home. They watched his house and his family and even hired attractive women to try to persuade him to divulge his secret sources.

Hamel sued BP, Exxon and Wackenhut in the 1990s for harassment and invasion of privacy and reportedly settled for an undisclosed amount believed to be in the millions of dollars.

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