June 16, 2010

Congressman Tim Bishop hailed the decision on June 16 by British Petroleum to suspend dividend payments in 2010 in response to a public demand from Congress. Last week, Bishop joined a coalition of 43 House Members in calling on BP to put their responsibility for the Gulf Oil Spill before shareholder payments.

“I’m pleased that my colleagues and I were able to prevail on the leadership of BP to do the right thing,” Congressman Bishop said. “The people of the Gulf Coast and the American taxpayer must come first. Taxpayers are not BP shareholders, we don’t share in their profits, we shouldn’t have to pay for their mistakes.”

On June 8, Congressman Bishop signed a letter with his colleagues to BP CEO Tony Hayward demanding that BP: “halt your planned dividend payout… until you have done the hard work of capping the well, cleaning up the Gulf Coast and making whole those whose very livelihoods are threatened by this catastrophe.”

Earlier in June, BP had announced that it was planning to proceed with an announced $10 billion disbursement of dividends to its shareholders. The decision to suspend dividend payments for the remainder of 2010 was announced by BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg after today’s White House meeting with President Barack Obama. At that meeting, BP announced a $20 billion accountability fund with independent, third-party oversight to pay claims from victims of the BP oil spill and $100 million fund to compensate rig workers.

“I hope this disaster will compel holders of energy exploration stocks to demand more accountability from the companies they invest in to make sure they are not behaving recklessly,” Bishop said. “This is how it’s supposed to work: you break it, you buy it, no bailouts.”

He noted the criticism executives from BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and Shell recently received in Congressional hearings for submitting virtually identical response plans for a potential oil spill in the Gulf despite the differences in their operations. Crafted in response to government regulations, several of the companies’ spill response plans included walruses, sea lions, and other animals not found in the Gulf and listed as a participant a scientist who died in 2005.

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