As I noted last week, Halliburton is in negotiations to reach a plea deal with Nigeria to drop its bribery charges against Dick Cheney. At that point, Nigeria was demanding $500 million for such a deal, which led Gregg to quip, “So, Cheney Halliburton is bribing Nigeria to drop bribery charges?” As Reuters reports, Halliburton [...]

Nigeria has made it official. Today, it charged Dick Cheney with 16 bribery-related charges. While that’s not unexpected, I’m amused by Dick Cheney’s Defense-Attorney-on-Call Terry O’Donnell’s response to the charges: Mr Cheney’s lawyer, Terence O’Donnell, said US investigators had “found no suggestion of any impropriety by Dick Cheney in his role of CEO of Halliburton”. [...]

[Ed. note: Mary provides some background on what may be up with Nigeria's announced plan to charge Dick Cheney.] … ready to sue your Vice President. Please send 130 Million Dollars by reply mail to …” After the news about charges against Dick Cheney relating to the Nigerian bribery scandal it may be worthwhile to [...]

Not for war crimes or torture, mind you. But for the bribery allegedly committed while at Halliburton that has been bubbling along for years. (h/t scribe) Nigeria will file charges against former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and officials from five foreign companies including Halliburton Co. over a $180 million bribery scandal, a prosecutor at [...]

Henry Waxman just put up a letter and a whole bunch of backup documents in preparation for a hearing with Tony Hayward Thursday. In it, he lists 5 shortcuts BP used in the days before the well explosion, all of them with real risks. But BP chose them to save money and time. Well Design. [...]

The eye-popping part of this exchange is the news that all the efforts to protect the Gulf Coast are only going to collect a fraction of it from reaching the shore. But the whole comment is worthwhile, because Capps expresses so well the outrage we should all be expressing about the inefficacy of oil spill [...]

One of the key moments of yesterday’s Environment and Public Works hearing on the BP Disaster came when Tom Udall tried to pin the CEOs down on whether, as reported by WSJ, at BP’s direction, Halliburton swapped out the drilling mud for seawater prematurely–something we’ve looked at as well. BP, the well owner, blames the [...]

As oil continues to gush into the Gulf, I’ve been haunted by the statement Halliburton put out about the Deepwater Horizon spill. Here’s the statement, dated April 30, in its entirety. Halliburton (NYSE: HAL) confirmed today its continued support of, and cooperation with, the ongoing investigations into the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig incident in the [...]

The one constant theme underlying all the elements that could have and/or did lead to the BP Gulf oil spill is the mendacious corporate servitude of the Republican party, their leaders and policies. The arrogance and recklessness of BP and its oily partners gestated wildly under the Bush/Cheney administration and little is changing significantly under Obama.

Another thing that happened while I was tromping around one of the most beautiful places on earth (Yosemite) is that the BP drilling rig that had an explosion and fire last week sunk and oil has started to spill into the Gulf (as this dramatic NASA picture makes clear). In the last day, the Minerals [...]