Alaska officials are investigating BP again due to a spate of fires on the North Slope, which come after two years of scrutiny over safety at BP’s U.S. operations.
A flaring event earlier this week was the fourth BP fire in the past month, a troubling pattern that could result in some new rules, state officials said. “Four fires in a month, that’s above and beyond anything that’s acceptable,” Alaskan Governor, Sarah Palin told a news conference.
The state has called the managers of BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc, including president Doug Suttles, into meetings to see if there are management, operations or structural problems at BP’s oil fields, said Tom Irwin, commissioner of the state Department of Natural Resources. “You can’t ignore four. You just can’t. We can’t ignore one. But when it gets to four, in my own mind if I were the public, I’d be saying, Gee, what’s going on?”‘ he said.
Four is four too many.