BP Worker Warns of Catastrophe
RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Mark Kovac was 24 when he joined BP. For 33 years he has been working on Alaska's north float and 18 of them on the pipelines. Kovac says that BP pays him well, and yet he could be risking his job talking to us. BP's operation in Alaska, he warns is a ticking time bomb.</s>MARK KOVAC, BP EMPLOYEE: I see a gulf-like explosion. If the two large gas handling plants that we have, CCP or CGF, go up, in the worst case scenario, it will be worse than what you saw on the platform. More people will die.</s>KAYE: He says that it is inevitable because BP and Alaska already have a history of spills, fires and explosions. Workers injured and killed on the slope, he says, because BP cuts corners on safety to save money. BP's mantra according to Kovac and others is to "run equipment to failure." BP says it does no such thing and never has.</s>KOVAC: If it falls apart or breaks or if they don't need it, they won't replace it. If they do need it, they will replace it, but they are taking a huge risk, and isn't those people making the decisions taking the risk, but it is the people who are working in the field. We work next to this equipment when it fails. Those people sit behind their desks.</s>KAYE: He is talking about management. Eleven years ago, Kovac and dozens of other BP Alaska employees sent this letter to then CEO Lord John Brown. Two workers had been killed and the letter asks when the body count and capital destruction and loss of production be enough to halt this dead end course? Among Kovac's concerns, not enough workers to monitor too much pipeline for leaks and corrosion. When a pipeline gets heavily corroded it can leak or even explode putting safety at risk. In 2006, it was an aging corroded pipeline that burst. 200,000 barrels of oil spilled into Alaska's bay. BP plead guilty to a misdemeanor count of violating the clean water act. A federal judge put BP on probation for three years and fined it $20 million. Keeping them honest, we talked with Steve Rinehart, a spokesperson for BP Alaska who told us their budget does not limit the safety program. He insists corrosion efforts have improved in recent years.</s>STEVE RINEHART, SPOKESMAN, BP ALASKA: In the past few years, certainly since 2006, every element of our anti-corrosion program has advanced. We have taken the number of pipeline inspections from something in the neighborhood of 40,000 a year to about 90,000 this year.</s>KAYE: Still as recently as 2008, Kovac wrote this e-mail to a BP manager warning, "We are expecting a major failure in Alaska. Next time BP may not be so lucky." These 2008 pictures from Kovac show the risk he says BP employees face everyday. The gas injection line snapped due to corrosion. In response, BP's Rinehardt says that the pipe "regrettably missed its inspection because it was covered in snow and never made it on to the to-do list." A former BP Alaska employee who did not want to be identified because he still works in the industry told me the oil giant had "serious lapses in safety compliance in terms of corrosion." This employee says he was fired back in 2007 after refusing his supervisor's request to manipulate data and paint a better picture of the pipelines than really existed. BP would not discuss the charge.</s>RINEHART: Any individual working on the North Slope has the right to raise his or her hand and say stop the job. Without retaliation. Safety is that important.</s>KAYE: We contacted many BP workers in Alaska to discuss safety concerns with them. Most would not go on camera, because they fear for their jobs. Marc Kovac said it's well known BP has a history for harassing and intimidating workers when they speak out. BP says that is just not true, and they set up an office to prevent that.</s>RINEHART: There is zero tolerance for retaliation of any sort.</s>KAYE: Kovac also worries about safety, because he says that too many fire and gas protection warning systems which would warn workers about a fire or explosion are not in compliance.</s>KOVAC: Our systems were supposed to be updated 20 years ago and BP has been piecemealing the systems together, and some of the locations are not updated. Warning systems are not even functional.</s>RINEHART: They are old systems. And we are in the midst of a steady step by step process to upgrade these.</s>KAYE: Kovac remembers three years ago when incoming CEO Tony Hayward promised to make safety this soul of the company.</s>KOVAC: What he said was basically lip service. It is all show and no go.</s>KAYE: That is why he is sounding the alarm. What happened to BP in the gulf, he is certain will happen again to BP in Alaska. Randi Kaye, CNN, New York.</s>MALVEAUX: And we have an extraordinary exclusive one on one interview with the American man who set out to hunt Osama bin Laden by himself.</s>GARY FAULKNER: You sit down and you get to the back of the bus. Better yet, get off of the bus, because this is not your bus, this is not your ride.