Legislation is being drafted in Congress to deny oil giant British Petroleum new offshore oil and gas drilling leases for up to seven years because of its extensive record of serious worker safety and environmental violations at its refineries, pipeline, and drilling operations, Congressman George Miller (D-CA) announced Wednesday. '

At a congressional hearing this morning on legislation to reform oil and gas leasing policies, Miller told Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and new director of Minerals Management Service* Michael Bromwich that a company’s history of violations of federal environmental and worker safety laws ought to be a significant factor in determining which companies can drill for oil in federal waters.

“British Petroleum has a flagrant history of taking risks to boost profits that has resulted in deaths of workers, destruction of the environment, and economic chaos in local communities,” said Miller, the former chairman of the Natural Resources Committee and the sitting Chairman of the Education and Labor Committee. “Serial violators ought to face consequences, and one of those consequences should be denying British Petroleum, and any other company with this kind of record, the right to drill in America’s offshore waters.

“It is a privilege to be able to drill for these very valuable resources that belong to the American people,” Miller added. “And the American people have a right to insist that only the companies of the highest caliber and with the best records be permitted to drill off our shores for oil and gas.”

Secretary Salazar and Director Bromwich told Miller that they were making revisions to the offshore drilling permitting process and would take his suggestion into consideration. But Miller said that, in the end, it would be up to Congress to make this change.

Miller intends to introduce his draft legislation within the next few days and then offer it as an amendment to Natural Resources Committee Chairman Nick Rahall’s broader reform legislation.

Under Miller’s draft legislation, the Secretary of Interior could not issue offshore oil and gas leases to a company the Secretary determines is a danger to workers and natural resources. In determining whether a company poses such a danger, the Secretary must include the record of any of its subsidiaries, successors, or entity falling under its partial ownership. A company would be considered to pose a risk to workers and the environment if it crosses an established threshold of violations of several environmental and worker safety laws – such as OSHA, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and others.

It has been well established by government investigators and the news media that British Petroleum, in particular, has repeatedly violated safety standards and environmental laws in its efforts to boost profits. While the Deepwater Horizon explosion and blowout is the most catastrophic incident in BP’s history, it is part of a pattern of BP’s history of reckless behavior:

• In 2005, BP’s Texas City refinery exploded, killing 15 and injuring 180. The federal Chemical Safety Board found that cost cutting and budget pressures from BP executives impaired safety at Texas City, resulting in $1.5 billion in damage. The federal government fined BP $21 million for 300 “egregious willful” violations. In 2009, OSHA fined BP another $87.4 million for 700 violations that BP promised but failed to fix after the 2005 explosion. BP commissioned former Secretary of State James Baker to head a panel that found that BP tolerated “serious deviations from safety operating practices,” and concluded that “material deficiencies in process safety performance exist at BP’s five US refineries.”

• In March 2006, BP spilled more than 200,000 gallons of crude oil over Alaska’s North Slope. Congressional investigations found that BP had cut expenditures on corrosion control to save money and had not conducted internal pipeline cleanout and inspection for 14 years. In November 2007, BP pled guilty to a single criminal misdemeanor for violations of the Clean Water Act and paid $20 million in fines and restitution for this spill. This followed a $22 million fine paid in 2000 to settle criminal and civil violations from illegally discharging hazardous waste at its North Slope operations.

• In March 2010, OSHA issued a $3.0 million fine against BP’s Toledo, Ohio, refinery for process safety violations.

• And investigators quickly uncovered BP’s cost-cutting measures that are now believed to have contributed to the April 20, 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion, including using a riskier well design and skipping safety steps. Another 11 workers dead and 17 injured.

Miller noted that the economic and environmental effects from the Deepwater Horizon blowout, which has caused the worst environmental disaster in America’s history, will be felt for decades to come, regardless of how effective the cleanup and containment response to it will be, and that an incident of this magnitude compels reforms to federal offshore leasing policy.

* The Mineral Management Service was recently renamed as the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement, as the first step in the Interior Department’s reorganization of MMS in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon blowout.