Obama allowed pals at 'green' BP oil to avoid environmental study in 2009-Washington Post

• "The Interior Department exempted BP's

calamitous Gulf of Mexico drilling operation from a detailed environmental impact analysis last year, according to government documents,

• after three reviews of the area concluded that a massive oil spill was unlikely.
  

• The decision by the department's Minerals Management Service (MMS) to give BP's lease at Deepwater Horizon a

• "categorical exclusion" from the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) on April 6, 2009 --

• and BP's lobbying efforts just 11 days before the explosion to expand those exemptions --

show that neither federal regulators nor the company anticipated an accident of the scale of the one unfolding in the gulf. "...

• (Italics mine, as the Washington Post makes an assumption for which it doesn't offer facts other than opinions by involved parties. The fact that a company lobbies to avoid oversight does not mean it or the government therefore decided they were perfectly fine.)

Washington Post, continuing, "Kierán Suckling, executive director of the environmental group Center for Biological Diversity, said

• the federal waiver "put BP entirely in control" of the way it conducted its drilling.

"The agency's oversight role has devolved to little more than rubber-stamping British Petroleum's self-serving drilling plans," Suckling said.

• BP has lobbied the White House Council on Environmental Quality -- which provides NEPA guidance for all federal agencies-- to provide categorical exemptions more often.
  

In an April 9 letter, BP America's senior federal affairs director, Margaret D. Laney, wrote to the council that such exemptions should be used in situations where environmental damage is likely to be "minimal or non-existent." An expansion in these waivers would help

• "avoid unnecessary paperwork and time delays," she added."...

Washington Post, "US exempted BP's Gulf of Mexico drilling from environmental impact study," 5/5/10, Eilperin