The BP Papers

Description: A March 2011 email from a BP Industrial Hygiene Lead reveals efforts to control and limit the documentation of chemical exposures during the Deepwater Horizon cleanup. The email, sent to her team of industrial hygiene technicians, contained instructions designed to minimize recorded contamination readings and carefully manage the language used to describe workplace hazards during the 2010 BP Oil Spill.

The most significant directive was: “If you have a detect, call me before you enter it. Some of the detects have been readings that don’t represent breathing zone exposures, so we want to confirm that it is before documenting it.” This instruction required BP’s industrial technicians (responsible for assessing worker safety based on real time conditions) to obtain supervisor approval before officially recording any positive readings for chemical contamination on their sampling or monitoring equipment.

Relevance: This document and deposition testimony provide evidence that BP implemented systematic controls over the documentation of workplace chemical exposures during the Deepwater Horizon cleanup. By requiring supervisor approval before recording positive contamination readings and mandating the use of minimizing language like “soiled” instead of “contaminated,” BP appears to have created a system designed to underreport actual workplace and public health hazards. These controls would have directly impacted the official record of worker exposures used in health assessments and legal proceedings, potentially minimizing BP’s liability while compromising worker safety documentation.

Description:A November 2016 internal NOAA “Lessons Learned” review of the oil spill response reveals important assessments of both BP’s sampling strategy and the overall data quality control during the environmental monitoring effort. The document exposes how BP’s approach undermined scientific integrity while field sampling failures compromised the reliability of data later used in scientific publications.

NOAA scientists documented “lots of instances where they [BP] didn’t make very informed decisions in their sampling” and specifically criticized BP’s “persistence in sampling clean areas.” The federal scientists expressed frustration with the one-sided collaboration, noting that “NOAA generally didn’t get to have any input on their plans (although BP had first review on NOAA’s).”

The review was particularly critical about papers published using BP’s compromised data: “Like [Paul] Boehm and [W]ade papers based on ‘publicly available data set’ – just data mining, and if it’s garbage in, it’s garbage out.” The scientists emphasized that without access to actual sampling personnel and detailed field documentation, it was impossible to properly interpret the data.

Despite the large number of environmental samples collected, the scientists characterized the sampling as “Too Wild West” with “Not enough focus on data quality.” The NOAA scientists also noted that the sampling program generally was “[d]efinitely not consistent in approach to field [quality control].”

Regarding BP’s involvement with federal agencies during the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, one scientist suggested they should simply “Perhaps just not have them involved.”

Relevance: This 2016 NOAA assessment provides federal scientists’ unfiltered evaluation of both BP’s role in environmental monitoring and the broader failures during the Deepwater Horizon response. The document reveals that scientists recognized BP’s sampling was flawed—focusing on clean areas rather than contaminated zones—while the entire monitoring effort suffered from “Wild West” practices. The combination of BP’s interference and systematic sampling failures means that scientific publications based on this data—including papers by BP’s litigation consultants—may be compromised and unreliable.

Description: In July 2010, BP’s contractors began discussing an alarming New York Times story that reported on oil spill cleanup workers’ exposure to toxic chemicals, “New BP Data Show 20% of Offshore Responders Exposed to Chemical That Sickened Valdez Workers.”

Discussing the Times article, BP employees emailed that some of BP’s data that appeared in the New York Times may have been wrong and would need to be re-issued. BP then began working with their legal department to change the numbers and rewrite the posted information.

“Can we raise the question about exactly what legal’s role is in all of this at one of our health calls?” a BP Regional Industrial Hygiene director emailed the following day. “We had issues last time I was here with legal insisting on re-writing technical information.” The employee warned that BP’s legal department could provide advice on regulatory requirements, but on “technical issues they are just one voice in the room.”

“In the past we have seen examples of Legal’s re-write, which have actually been technically incorrect!”
Relevance: These emails cast doubt on the independence of BP contractors and scientists, and question whether the company’s lawyers were making the final call on technical reports documenting worker exposure to dangerous chemicals.

Previous documents released on the BP Paper’s found that BP’s lawyers were marshalling scientific papers into the academic literature and approving studies published by an Australian government agency called CSIRO. “It’s concerning that you’d have [BP] legal teams involved in the review of scientific publications,” Dr. Nicholas Chartres of the University of Sydney told The Sydney Morning Herald.

Description: Through protective orders and multiple court filings, BP has sought to suppress public disclosure of documents produced during litigation. A BP attorney sent The Downs Law Group an email demanding the removal of a document published here on the BP Papers.

“It has come to my attention that your firm has published on its website a Confidential BP document,” a BP attorney emailed in April 2023, linking to the BP Papers. “If the document is not removed by close of business tomorrow, April 6, we will seek relief from the Court.” The document that worried BP is an excel spreadsheet the oil and gas company used as a publication tracker of studies that BP was apparently marshalling into scientific journals—studies that would benefit BP with regards to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
An attorney with The Downs Law Group responded the next day, thanking BP for showing interest in the BP Papers, and notifying them that BP’s spreadsheet had been made public and was no longer confidential. “Thank you for taking an interest in the Downs Law Group’s website.”

Science Magazine later reported, “The spreadsheets track the status of numerous scientific manuscripts and presentations, many apparently funded at least in part by BP,” while adding, “BP’s tracking forms record company lawyers monitoring and making notes on the studies.”

Relevance: The Downs Law Group has been waging a 7-year battle to uncover documents that BP continues to withhold, including millions of pages claimed as “trade secrets” or “attorney/client privilege.” While many documents hosted on the BP Papers website date back to over a decade, BP’s email highlights the company’s fears that court records, such as BP’s publication tracker, become available for public scrutiny.

Investigative reporters at Follow the Money later reported on the document BP sought to hide “Slick operator: BP’s grip on science following the world’s largest oil spill.”

Description: In October 2010, an official in Exxon’s law department emailed Ron Atlas of the University of Louisville the revised draft of a “comment to the editor” that Atlas was working on to rebut an article by Venosa. Atlas’s rebuttal concerned a paper by EPA scientist Albert Venosa on the biodegradability of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
“Before you work on this draft any more, could you give me through Tuesday to workout some editorial suggestions that are roiling in my mind?,” Exxon wrote to Atlas. [See Venosa Rebuttal Document]

A couple months later, Exxon asked Atlas to turn in his December 2010 invoice, and Atlas disclosed he would be billing some hours dealing with the Venosa matter. “I am waiting on Jim Bragg to dinish [sic] his work on the paper with Gary so that we can get to the Venosa response paper and the legacy piece,” Atlas emailed. [See Venosa Response Billed Out Document] “I should have confirmed that there were no hours. My apologies. There will be a few hours in January that deal with responding to Venosa.”
Mr. Atlas’s email to Exxon is marked “Privileged and confidential” and was for “Oil spill litigation.”

Relevance: Professor Ron Atlas at the University of Louisville began consulting for BP on September 1, 2010, to help BP defend against federal and states litigation on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. These documents show that, in at least one instance, Atlas billed a scientific paper on oil spills to an oil and gas company.

Description: Congress held hearings in 2006 after BP’s pipeline in Alaska leaked 200,000 gallons, or 5,000 barrels of crude oil. During the hearing, Congress released a report with multiple BP internal documents showing the company’s history of cutting safety in Alaska for the sake of profits.

Congress released a 2001 report by the contracting company Coffman Engineers, which worked for the state of Alaska, to review BP’s pipeline corrosion program as seen in Coffman’s Draft Report.

When Coffman submitted their draft report to Alaska officials, BP countered with 5 pages of concerns and comments as seen in BP’s Concerns on Draft Report.

A member of Congress noted that multiple phrases and sentences in the Coffman draft report disappeared from the final Coffman report after BP got involved: “There are loads of language like this in this report that is gone after British Petroleum started to work on this report, and to use a bit of a British understatement, it turned an inspection report into a bit of a whitewash, and so we are here today.”

Relevance: The congressional hearing record and documents released by the committee show that BP seemed more concerned with profit than safety. After BP complained, language in a government draft safety report was removed from the final.

“British Petroleum’s marketing campaign claims that BP stands for Beyond Petroleum but today we are finding that BP stands for a company with bloated profits that failed to fix bad pipelines,” one Congressman stated, “And the consumer at the pump is responsible for paying the price.”

Description: On February 1, 2011, Professor Ron Atlas at the University of Louisville emailed BP his time sheet, travel receipts, and invoice for January 2011 (Invoice No.1-11). “Please confirm receipt and let me know if this should also be sent to anyone else,” Mr. Atlas wrote. “Copies have been sent to Jean Martin at BP and Brian Israel and Joseph Kakesh at Arnold and Porter.” A BP employee replied, “Dr. Atlas, It is my understanding that you have already submitted Invoice No.1-11 – $48,511.50, via email, to Steve Palmer (which has already been approved).”

Relevance: Professor Ron Atlas at the University of Louisville began consulting for BP on September 1, 2010, to help BP defend against federal and states litigation on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. BP’s one month payment to Mr. Atlas of $48,511.50 was only slightly less than the entire yearly median income for an American household—$50,054.

BP also maintained a publication tracker of talks and studies that BP was apparently marshalling into scientific journals and conferences, that would benefit BP with regards to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. BP’s attorneys tracked Atlas’s scientific presentations, sometimes editing them.

Description: BP consultant Ron Atlas at the University of Louisville also worked for ExxonMobil on the Exxon Valdez oil spill. After Atlas had been invited to give a keynote address on oil spills at a science conference, Atlas emailed Exxon’s Law Department in February 2011, to be sure the company did not object. Atlas then asked if Exxon would cover his expenses and pay him to give the keynote address.

“I have been asked to give the keynote address at the Goldschmidt conference in Prague for the session Giant Oil Spills and Environmental Impact: Past Lessons and Future Predictions,” Atlas emailed a contact in Exxon’s Law Department. “I am assuming that Exxon would not object to my making this presentation based upon what we generate for the legacy book. But I am also wondering if Exxon would be willing to cover my travel expenses since the meeting does not cover travel.”

Atlas then detailed his expenses for the conference, which included charges to Exxon of $500/hr for travel time and $500/hr for attending the meeting.

Travel expenses about $1250
Travel time 7 hours $3500
Meeting time 8 hours $4000

This comes to $8,750 that Atlas asked Exxon to pay him for giving the keynote address at the Goldschmidt conference.

“We’ll support your participation and speaking at the Goldschmidt Conference,” Atlas’s contact in Exxon’s Law Department emailed back.

Relevance: BP stated in a March 22, 2023, letter that BP had hired Ron Atlas on September 1, 2010, to help BP with Deepwater Horizon oil spill litigation. BP also maintained a publication tracker of talks and studies that BP was apparently marshalling into scientific journals and conference, that would be benefit BP with regards to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. This tracker shows that BP’s attorneys tracked Atlas’s scientific presentations, sometimes editing them.

This ExxonMobil document shows that, in at least one instance, Atlas billed a scientific talk on oil spills to an oil and gas company.

Description: BP has designated over 3,500 Emails between their academics and third-party science consultants as “Attorney-Client Privilege” or “Attorney Work Product.” This hides the scientific views and findings of these academics and science consultants from both the court and the public.

Here are 4 examples:

1. Paul Boehm of the consulting firm Exponent sent an email on June 27, 2011, to attorney Emma Lewis at Arnold & Porter and Ronald Atlas at the University of Louisville. The email subject line read, “RE: shoreline biodegradation sites.”BP has marked that email “Attorney-Client Privilege; Attorney Work Product.” BP claims the email contains “Communication between client, counsel and consultant regarding materials for study and interpretations undertaken at request of counsel in connection with, and/or anticipation of potential litigation arising from the Deepwater Horizon Incident, including but not limited to the NRDA.”BP stated in a March 22, 2023, letter that BP had hired Ron Atlas on September 1, 2010, to help BP with Deepwater Horizon oil spill litigation. On May 20, 2010, Exponent’s Paul Boehm signed a contract with Arnold & Porter that legally restrained him from “any activities that are adverse to the interests of BP Exploration or Arnold & Porter’s representation” on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, even after termination of your consulting work.”
2. Paul Boehm of Exponent sent an email on April 12, 2011, to several BP employees and an attorney at Arnold & Porter, and copied the email to Ronald Atlas at the University of Louisville, and two other BP consultants. The email subject line reads, “Revised SETAC Presentation.”BP has marked that email “Attorney-Client Privilege; Attorney Work Product.”BP claims the email contains “Communication between client, counsel and consultant regarding materials for study and interpretations undertaken at request of counsel in connection with, and/or anticipation of potential litigation arising from the Deepwater Horizon Incident, including but not limited to the NRDA.”
3. William Stubblefield at the University of Oregon sent an email on October 20, 2010 to several BP employees and Paul Boehm of Exponent, and cc’d BP attorney Jean Martin and an attorney at Arnold & Porter. The email subject line reads, “Re: Proposed radiometer survey plan for nearshore waters Oct 24- 25 – Confidential Attorney Work Product.” BP has marked that email “Attorney-Client Privilege; Attorney Work Product.” BP claims the email contains “Communication between client, counsel and consultant regarding materials for study and interpretations undertaken at request of counsel in connection with, and/or anticipation of potential litigation arising from the Deepwater Horizon Incident, including but not limited to the NRDA.”BP stated in a March 22, 2023, letter that Arnold & Porter had hired William Stubblefield on September 20, 2010, to help BP with Deepwater Horizon oil spill litigation.
4. Karen Murray at Exponent sent an email on October 18, 2011, to BP employees, and cc’d Damian Shea of North Carolina State University about revising a scientific presentation. The email subject line is “SETAC partitioning presentation, revisions.” BP has marked that email “Attorney Work Product.” BP claims the email contains “Communication between client, counsel and consultant regarding materials for study and interpretations undertaken at request of counsel in connection with, and/or anticipation of potential litigation arising from the Deepwater Horizon Incident, including but not limited to the NRDA.”

Relevance: Many of the academics and science consultants whose emails remain hidden later gave public presentations at science conferences and published studies in peer-reviewed journals that downplayed the dangers of BP’s oil spill. However, hidden emails may show what these scientists actually believed to be true about the toxicity and dangers of BP’s spilled petroleum.

Description: On May 20, 2010, Boehm signed an agreement with Arnold and Porter to work on behalf of BP Exploration. That agreement concerned natural resource damages (NRD) potentially arising out of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Potentially adverse parties named in the contract signed by Boehm included: Alabama, Florida, and Louisiana, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Commerce, and the U.S. Department of the Interior. BP hired Paul Boehm and others with the consulting firm Exponent to help them defend future legal matters involving the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Relevance: BP hired contractors to generate sampling data and publish scientific literature used to promote their defense. After signing the contracting agreement with BP Exploration, Boehm gave presentations at scientific conferences and published research in peer reviewed journals on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill that contained no disclosure of the following: Boehm was a contractor retained to defend and advocate for BP; Boehm’s work on Deepwater Horizon matters was property of BP Exploration and “Works Made for Hire”; Boehm’s contract with BP legally restrained him from “any activities that are adverse to the interests of BP Exploration or Arnold & Porter’s representation” on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill “even after termination of your consulting work.”

Description: A biologist with the State of Louisiana emailed BP and several government officials that the protocol for detecting spilled oil close to the shore “is not sufficient to sample the submerged oil that is present.” The email set off a round of discussion among government officials.

“I did not want the finds of this study to say ‘no oil’ when infact [sic] there is oil,” a biologist with the State of Louisiana emailed, regarding oil he found at one site where BP contractors had already sampled. “The oil that is present is significant, not just minor sheening. The pictures I showed you does no justice to the actual problem. It is significant! I am now more concerned than I was before. This is a real threat.”

Relevance: These emails provide further evidence that the program for monitoring the BP oil spill failed to detect all the oil. Protocols were not adequate and federal officials appeared more concerned with protecting their own reputations than protecting the public.

A NOAA scientist forwarded the email to his federal colleagues, writing that complaints from Louisiana state scientists could threaten NOAA’s oil spill program with allegations that “They got it all wrong!”

“This is a big one!” the NOAA scientist wrote.

Description: Independent industrial hygienists were reviewing the same publicly available data and raising the alarm that the data was “dangerously deficient” and drawing attention to the number of Benzene and Corexit (2-Butoxy ethanol) samples that were exceeding occupation exposure limits.

Relevance: BP has faced serious criticism since 2010 from independent industrial hygienists regarding how BP’s  “chemical exposure air sampling data [is] incomplete, unrepresentative, poorly documented, untimely, and misinterpreted.” However, to date, BP and BP’s experts ask the court to blindly accept their monitoring Data, making claims that the data is the “best in the world.” The underestimations in the data, combined with the lack of transparency in the BP’s publicly available data, has prevented critics from validating the data BP’s experts rely on in their court filings to date.

Description: Email from BP’s Manager of Regulatory Affairs questioning how Exponent’s samples taken in Bon Secour could be “very clean,” when he was personally out at Bon Secour and what he observed was “definitely oil.” He questions whether Exponent took the samples “directly behind a Beach Tech or similar mechanical sifting machine.”

Relevance: Even BP’s own internal communications show that BP employees questioned how Exponent–a consulting firm hired to help collect sampling in preparation for defense in future litigation–was conveniently not detecting oil where oil was visible. BP’s own admissions in this document questioning Exponent’s sampling raise major concerns regarding all of Exponent’s Deepwater Horizon sampling efforts. These clean samples, in areas where oil was visible, evidence Exponent’s attempts to under-report the chemical exposures clean-up workers and the community actually faced.

Description: Email from Exponent’s Vice President informing BP that “[w]hat is needed (needed by the industry) is to hammer on the environmental context and how, even if you believe the lab data, the PAH concentrations seldom get high enough to cause any effect and if they do, the duration is very short.”

Relevance: This document provides further evidence that BP’s contractors actively focused on publications in the “environmental” context because it was better for “industry”. Exponent was directing BP to downplay the impacts to the environment of high PAH exposure due to the “short duration” of exposure. Despite high PAH concentrations, it was better for industry “to hammer on the environmental context,” rather than presumably, evaluate the human health concerns.

Description: BP sent a letter on March 22, 2023 that provided details of the academics and scientific consultants they, their law firm, or private contractors had hired to help BP with litigation.

The letter reads: With respect to the “academics” and “third party consultants” referenced in your letter, the table below includes information about certain of those individuals, including their affiliations, when they were retained, and by whom. These consulting experts were retained to prepare for and respond to natural resource damages litigation initiated by the federal and state governments.

Many of academics were retained indirectly, by BP’s outside counsel or consultants, to act as “non-testifying” experts for the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill under the direction of BP attorneys.

Relevance: This letter provides evidence that BP hired academics and scientific consultants for litigation purposes, not for purposes of science. A significant number of these academics and consultants later gave scientific presentations or published studies in peer reviewed journals without disclosing they had been hired to help BP with litigation against the federal and state governments.

Description: Three months after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April, 20, 2010, a BP industrial hygienist sent BP officials a July 31email with the subject “Pulling The IH [industrial hygiene] Monitoring Plug.” BP officials discussed industrial hygiene operations to protect cleanup workers as more of a “political/public relations decision.” The email was addressed to a BP executive who was in Alabama as “Mobile’s Deputy Incident Command Chief” although a LinkedIn account now lists his title as “Crisis Management at BP America.” BP officials discussed facing the same safety dilemma in the 2005 Texas City explosion disaster but wrote that monitoring “adds value in the eyes of public perception” and in “defending potential future litigation.”

Relevance: This email string provides further evidence that scientific monitoring to protect worker safety may have been for public relations and litigation purposes. The fact that the BP official in charge of Mobile handles crisis management for BP lends further credence to this opinion. After the BP’s 2005 Texas City explosion—which CNN reported left 15 people dead—an email surfaced in a lawsuit in which BP discussed the heavy loss of life, but that media coverage would disappear over the weekend.

Description: In the summer of 2010, BP exchanged communications containing a memorandum from an independent Certified Industrial Hygienist regarding obvious deficiencies in BP’s Industrial Hygiene (Worker Safety) monitoring and sampling. The “non-detections” that BP and its contractors found when monitoring for worker and community safety were relied on by BP, OSHA, and government agencies to make a “steady stream of sweeping reassurances that the air in the Gulf poses no health hazard to Gulf cleanup workers.” This BP email and memo highlights various reasons why BP’s worker sampling during the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill was flawed and biased.

Relevance: According to the document, chemical exposure sampling for Gulf Cleanup workers sampled too few chemicals, too few locations, too few number of number of workers, and sampling was poorly documented. Additionally, BP and OSHA did not provide enough information or data to show that the “worst exposures” (or worst-case exposures) to chemicals were sampled or ever accounted for. Additionally, the document demonstrates that BP misinterpreted the air sampling to mean that the air quality in the Gulf of Mexico was safe for workers, everywhere, at all times. BP knew or should have known based on this document that its chemical exposure monitoring program was not only flawed but “dangerously deficient.”

Description: These documents are two examples of Health, Safety, and Environment (HSE) training courses that BP gave to its clean-up workers prior to sending them out during the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. As is typical with many dangerous work environments, Oil Spill clean-up workers during the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill were required to take various HSE training courses prior to starting their first day of work. These HSE Training courses were intended to educate workers on the types of dangers they may be exposed to during their clean-up work. According to these training modules, shoreline cleanup workers would only work with weathered oil, which no longer released volatile components. Similarly, exposure to dispersants was “very unlikely,” and there are “no ingredients [in dispersants] that cause long-term health effects.”

Relevance: BP misrepresented the type of harm response workers were truly facing and misdirected their attention to lesser dangers, such as heat exhaustion and dangerous wildlife. BP even went as far as to state that exposure to dispersants would be the same as “exposure to any mild detergent” and “dispersants used in the Gulf have no ingredients that cause long-term health effects, including cancer.” Further, BP actively trained shoreline clean-up workers to believe that they would not need breathing protection because they were only exposed to weathered oil. The information in the training module stands directly against a universe of scientific literature regarding the harmful effects of exposure to oil. In fact, many clean-up workers relied on these representations from BP to the point that they did not associate their health conditions to their exposure during the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill until many years after they developed their medical conditions.

Description: In late 2015, BP documented a list of 16 studies that Exponent proposed publishing to help BP deal with environmental problems from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Several examples from this proposal below:

“Paper is related to one that will flow out of GOMRI,” states one proposed Exponent study. GOMRI is an independent group of researchers studying the BP oil spill. This shows that BP was carefully tracking GOMRI studies as they were being developed to either counter or support them.

“Key strategic paper that will present an empirical model and results as applied to DWHOS as an alternative to SIMAP,” states another proposed Exponent study. SIMAP is modeling system that simulates oil spills and evaluate spill responses and impacts, and is used by various government agencies. Exponent’s proposed research could be used to counter government models.

“The importance of examining alternative causes to observed environmental effects after oil spills,” states another proposed Exponent study. Several studies published by Exponent helped BP point away from their own oil as the reason for environmental harm.

“This paper will illustrate, through a review of the key sea turtle stressors, that at any given time and place multiple stressors are influencing sea turtles in the Gulf,” states another proposed Exponent paper. By magnifying other environmental stressors, BP could downplay the harms to sea turtles caused by BP fossil fuels.

Relevance: This document implies that BP planned to use Exponent studies to advance their scientific agenda to downplay the harms of spilled oil or buttress studies that supported their legal goals. Exponent provided these services in the past for Exxon Mobil.

For example, after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, Exxon sponsored dozens of Exponent studies. This included a study titled, “Are Sea Otters Still Being Exposed to Subsurface Intertidal Oil Residues from the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill?” Exponent’s study alleged that sea otters were not dying from oil poisoning as Exxon’s oil was not found where they fed. A subsequent study found that Exxon’s oil was in the area otters were feeding

Description: Leaders for the 2011 SETAC Gulf Oil Spill Focused Topic Meeting emailed several BP consultants, notifying them that they had overwhelmed the conference with submissions.

“We have a few parties that have submitted numerous (6 or more) abstracts. Exponent falls into this category.”

The email was sent to several Exponent employees, including Paul Boehm, as well as Ron Atlas, a professor at the University of Louisville, who was working with BP. Exponent’s submissions to the conference detailed how to measure BP’s oil in the water column and in sediments. Mr. Atlas alleged that BP’s oil was rapidly degrading.

“Therefore, we discussed with the SETAC Office the challenges here and agreed that we need to ask these parties, such as yourselves, to review their respective bodies of submitted abstracts to see where they could be combined to more integrative presentations (a way to reduce the number of presentations per institution without diminution of the science).”

Relevance: This email documents that BP consultants were playing an enormous role in setting the early scientific narrative for evaluating the impact of BP’s oil spill.

Months prior to this email, Exponent’s Paul Boehm signed a contract with Arnold and Porter to work on behalf of BP Exploration. Boehm’s contract with BP legally restrained him from “any activities that are adverse to the interests of BP Exploration or Arnold & Porter’s representation” on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill “even after termination of your consulting work.”

Some years after this email, Ron Atlas appeared on a BP publication tracker that documented studies and presentations that BP was apparently marshalling into the scientific community for legal purposes, not for the purposes of science. In one example, BP discussed a Ron Atlas presentation on Deepwater Horizon oil biodegradation that BP’s legal team was sent for final review.

Description:
BP maintained a publication tracker that is an excel spreadsheet dated from early 2014. However, this 2014 date may be wrong as one note in the spreadsheet mentions activity in 2013. This publication tracker is an excel spreadsheet of studies that BP was apparently marshalling into scientific journals—studies that would be of benefit to BP with regards to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. This tracker documents 9 steps in the process of publishing the 23 named studies, beginning with “paper submitted by author” and includes “final legal review” and “final bp approval.” After BP’s legal team reviewed the study and approved it, the next step states, “submitted to journal.”

Relevance:
This publication tracker provides further evidence that BP was seeding the scientific literature with studies for legal purposes, not for purposes of science. BP tainted the scientific literature by funding and overseeing purportedly neutral or independent studies in support of its litigation defense. While the studies referenced in this “Publication Tracker” may acknowledge funding from BP, there is no disclosure that this paper was apparently legally reviewed, edited, and then approved by BP, before it had even been submitted to a journal.