The Wall St. Journal Discovers Corporate Lawlessness

Many decades after 'environmentalists' raised the alarm, the WSJ has discovered that corporations can not be trusted to tell the truth about their environmental crimes.

"Even after BP PLC's broken well under the Gulf of Mexico stops spewing, we might never know how much oil spilled.The extent of earlier spills of comparable magnitude remains disputed, even though they were easier to analyze. Oil companies don't have much incentive to measure spills accurately, and government officials haven't always needed to get a reliable count.

"The BP spill is often contrasted with the 1989 Valdez disaster, above.Exxon knew how much oil its Valdez tanker held when it ran aground 21 years ago. And yet some Alaskan scientists and environmental advocates who have studied the spill say the true amount spreading through Prince William Sound was two or three times the commonly accepted total. 

"Determining the size of the BP spill will be crucial because under a federal law passed in the wake of the Valdez disaster, oil companies pay penalties that are directly proportional to the amount of oil released into the water."