BP and Shell have been raided by agents of the European Commission on suspicion of rigging oil prices for over a decade. Rigging petroleum prices could prove to be even more lucrative than rigging LIBOR.

Most everyone knows the most common use of welfare as helping those in danger of being left behind by society. Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP although often still referred to as Food Stamps, and Medicaid are the most well known programs available to people. And no, Social Security and Medicare are not welfare programs.

Arkansas’ Attorney General Dustin McDaniel has contracted out the “independent analysis of the cleanup” of the ExxonMobil Pegasus tar sands pipeline spill to Witt O’Brien’s, a firm with a history of oil spill cover-ups, a DeSmogBlog investigation reveals.

Almost 11 years ago in June 2002, Environmental Resources Management (ERM) Group declared the controversial 1,300 mile-long Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan (BTC) Pipeline environmentally and socio-economically sound, a tube which brings oil and gas produced in the Caspian Sea to the export market.

On March 1, it said the same of the proposed 1,179 mile-long TransCanada Keystone XL (KXL) Pipeline on behalf of an Obama State Department that has the final say on whether the northern segment of the KXL pipeline becomes a reality. KXL would carry diluted bitumen or “dilbit” from the Alberta tar sands down to Port Arthur, Texas, after which it will be exported to the global market.

In what may be a case study on how not to handle a hostage crisis, the death toll from the Algerian government’s raid on the BP natural gas plant has risen.

Perhaps out of a combination of peevishness and thirst, John Boehner recently blurted out, “I need this job like I need a hole in my head.”  Of course, the job he was complaining about, Speaker of the House, third in line for the Presidency, happens to be well-paid, prestigious, and quite evidently can be performed, after a fashion, even when drunk.  That is, it’s decidedly not like the jobs that the vast majority of Americans toil away at, should they be lucky enough to have a job at all. 

Oil. Oil to the world. And that’s what America is hoping for by 2020. That flow of generosity, that holiday spirit has seeped into Versus, where creator Marcy Schaffer has penned a new set of lyrics to celebrate that we’re fracked.

The Environmental Protection Agency has temporarily suspended BP from any new contracts with the federal government. In a statement, the EPA attributes this action to “BP’s lack of business integrity as demonstrated by the company’s conduct with regard to the Deepwater Horizon blowout, explosion, oil spill, and response, as reflected by the filing of a criminal information.”

So now we have an answer to the talk of a settlement in the BP oil disaster case. The company will pay a total of $4.5 billion in fines and payments, as well as admit to criminal charges. But the fines and payments do not include civil violations of either the Clean Water Act or the Oil Pollution Act, which carry additional fines of up to $21 billion.

Well, I think we’ve figured out how an elite corporation can receive criminal charges in 21st-century America. All you have to do is spill 205.8 million gallons of oil into a US waterway. Then, you’re just going to have to cop a criminal misconduct plea, as long as the Justice Department gives you immunity from future suits and wraps up all your negligence in one case.