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His latest book is "The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s." Filed under Web Exclusive * Web Exclusive Part II: Jeremy Scahill on Blackwater Owner Erik Prince's Rumored Move to UAE and Obama Admin's Expansion of Special Forces Operations Abroad Pt2scahill Jeremy Scahill is an independent journalist, Democracy Now! correspondent, and author of "Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army." Watch Part I of this interview HERE. Filed under Web Exclusive * Xml More Blog Posts » Podcasting & Torrents * DN! Audio & Video Podcasts * Democracy Now! by BitTorrent Post this story to a social networking site Include this video in your blog or website « Previous Story | Next Story » July 09, 2010 Photographer Harassed by BP Security, Detained by Police While on Assignment at BP Texas RefineryPhotographer Harassed by BP Security, Detained by Police While on Assignment at BP Texas Refinery

We speak with Lance Rosenfield, a freelance photographer who was hired by ProPublica to take pictures of BP’s Texas City refinery that had spewed thousands of pounds of toxic chemicals into the skies. While on assignment Rosenfield was followed by BP Security and then detained by local police.JUAN GONZALEZ: We now turn to look at a story about the oil giant BP that has received nearly no national attention. Just over three months ago, thousands of pounds of toxic chemicals began spewing into the skies from BP’s massive oil refinery in Texas City. The release began on April 6, two weeks before the explosion on the deepwater horizon oil rig, but it took BP weeks to even realize there was a problem. BP now estimates 538,000 pounds of chemicals and escaped from the refinery over 40-day period.

AMY GOODMAN: The journalist Ryan Knutson of ProPublica and Frontline recently traveled to Texas City to investigate what happened. He joins us here in New York. His reporting on the story appears on the website ProPublica.org. Welcome, Ryan, tell us what you found.

RYAN KNUTSON: Thanks, well we sorta went at this with the question of well, you know, in 2005 BP had a disaster at this Texas City refinery where 15 people were killed. And after that event, you know BP made—said it was a transformational of event, they would make a lot of changes to the organiz-, or to their company. The deep water horizon happens—we wanted to examine, well what was the lead up to that explosion and what has been the outcome of the promises to improve the company. And, it didn’t take long to start finding that there has still been a lot of issues at the Texas City refinery. And most notably, what I thought was interesting was – this was a story that was actually in the Daily News of Galveston County on June 5 that hadn’t received any attention elsewhere, that there had been this 538,000 pound release.

And what happened in that circumstance was there was something called an ultracracker at this refinery, and it takes—it’s an, an important step in the process to produce gasoline. And there’s a hydrogen compressor on this ultracracker and it broke down. And what it does is it, it captures a lot of pollution that’s emitted from this and it, it disposes of it safely. Now when that broke down, BP had a choice: do we shut down the ultracracker and lose an important part of producing gasoline that we’d have to buy elsewhere or maybe reformulate the gasoline, or do we send everything to a flare and burn it off into the atmosphere? Now flares at best case can destroy 98% of the chemicals that are sent to it. So 2% they know is gonna release. At best case there’s also studies that show that as much as 20% of what is sent to a flare doesn’t get destroyed and is, sent off into the atmosphere.

So they decided to send it to a flare and, it took them 40 days to make the repairs. And once they were finished, by the time they had, finished analyzing all the data they had collected during the emissions event, they determined that 538,000 pounds of chemicals released into the atmosphere, most notably, 17,000 pounds of Benzene. Now in the state of Texas, if you emit more than 10 pounds in a 24-hour period, you’re supposed to report that as an emissions event. In this case, 425 pounds of Benzene were being released, every 24 hours for 40 days, ultimately leading up to 17,000 pounds.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And this is already a plant that already a plant that has one of the highest Benzene release rates in the country, isn’t it?

RYAN KNUTSON: Right, the Sierra Club did a study, that, from, looking at reportable in emissions events from 1997-2007 and found that the Texas City refinery was the number one releaser of Benzene in the United States. BP says that it has reduced, its Benzene emissions there by I believe 23% over each year, or 50% from last year. So the numbers have gone down significantly, since that 2007 study was completed. But, as you know, environmental advocates make the case, well there’s already a lot of Benzene coming from that refinery, there’s a lot of Benzene because—in the Texas City community because there’s a couple of other refineries there.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And how is it possible for this release to go on for so long? You would assume that if they know that they, they were trying to burn some of these gases off with a flare that they would have a likelihood of a potential for extra releases that they’d be monitoring it on a daily basis.

RYAN KNUTSON: Right, and that the thing I had a hard time pinning down from the, the BP people I spoke with. Because I know that, what they said originally is they’ve got a, a method that’s approved by Texas regulators to monitor this along the way. And what they—I know that they have fence line monitors that are about 6 feet high. And so if there—if it reaches any sort of threshold, then it pages officials at the refinery and they make a decision. And so apparently, the fence line monitors—didn’t go off. Now the, the flare is 300 feet tall. So clearly, this is gonna kinda go out and sorta spread around. And so there’s various signs about what the concentration is once it reaches the ground. It depends on the wind and things like that.

AMY GOODMAN: What does Benzene do?

RYAN KNUTSON: Well, Benzene is a known carcinogen. So it doesn’t necessarily have immediate…I don’t know – I imagine if you’re in a room full of it you’d start coughing and wheezing and that sort of thing. But, it’s proven that it’ll increase your cause or your likelihood of getting cancer.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Especially Leukemia, right?

RYAN KNUTSON: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Last year the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA, fined the company, BP, $87 million for failing to address safety problems from 2005 when they killed 15 people.

RYAN KNUTSON: Yeah, in ‘05, they were, they, they settled with OSHA for $21 million and they agreed to a number of improvements at the plant. And one of the, the main things that they agreed to is they were gonna hire an independent auditor to come in and do an examination of the plant, point out things that need to be improved. OSHA says that, BP should have made all those improvements by the end of 2009. BP says that it was under the impression that they just needed the auditor point these things out by September 2009 and that they could make these improvements as they made maintenance upgrades along the way.

AMY GOODMAN: Well I wanted to go to the issue of the difficulty of reporting this. I want to bring in Lance Rosenfield, the freelance photographer hired by ProPublica to take pictures of BP’s Texas City refinery. While on assignment, he was followed by BP security, then detained by local police. He joins us now from Austin, Texas. Lance Rosenfield, welcome to "DEMOCRACY NOW!" Describe what happened to you.

LANCE ROSENFIELD: Simply put, I was hired by ProPublica to augment the story that’s Ryan Knutson is speaking of, and I was taking photographs. It was a two-day assignment so I had various parts to cover, including, basically giving a portrait of the town itself. So I’d found a decorative ‘Welcome to Texas City’ sign on a public highway south of town near the refinery. And, simply put, I was taking pictures of that sign. I pulled off the shoulder like I would normally do, of the public street, walked over to the median, took the pictures, and then walked back to my car. And I was going to go back to my hotel to file the pictures and I noticed I was being followed by security truck.

So I needed gas anyway. I did not feel like going—letting this guy, you know, follow me to my hotel. So I pulled into the gas station. He continued on, so I thought really nothing of it. Then police pulled in and essentially, you know, blocked me in as if I was gonna to try to go anywhere. And, got out, asked who I was. They had got reports that I was taking photographs. And I said, ‘Yes, I’m a photojournalist.’ And they said, ‘We need to see your pictures.’ I said, well, you know, ‘Without a warrant, I don’t feel like I need to show you the pictures.’ And he said, ‘Well, we can, we can – you can show ‘em to us now or we can do this later with Homeland Security.’ It seemed to me like a, some sort of additional threat.

So because I was on deadline, I made the decision to show them the pictures. I just wanted to get this over with, I knew I had nothing, you know, threatening on my photographs. I showed them the pictures and he took my information. At this time the, the security guard that was following me had turned back around, pulled into the parking lot. He was a BP security guard. And the BP security guard asked for my information as well. And I, I declined because he’s a corporate security guard. So he turned to the police officer who had just taken my information, including my Social Security Number, and gave—I’m not sure exactly what of the information that the police officer took—what of that he gave to the BP officer, but he gave him whatever he needed.

And, so I protested. I said I didn’t understand why that was happening. I didn’t – I was never on BP property. And, and so I asked, ‘Under what, what grounds he was able to share my information with a private corporation?’ And basically, I didn’t get a straight answer. I just got, ‘Well, this is Homeland Security procedure. We can call Homeland Security agent Tom Robison down here, you know, if you have a problem with it.’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m just trying to understand what legal grounds you have to do this, because I was never on BP property.’ So he said, ‘Well, I’ll just call Tom Robison.’

So he called Tom Robison, who at time I didn’t know who he was, of course. I’ve found out since that he’s, he’s a local police corporal who is a liaison to the FBI and Homeland Security. So—and he heads the local joint terrorism task force there in Texas City, and I guess, maybe the region. So, but at that time I did not know who he was—they just referred to him as FBI and Homeland Security.

They called Tom Robison. He actually gave me the phone, which I thought was a little unusual, but my natural reaction is to take the phone. Tom Robison got on the phone and asked what my problem was. And I said, ‘I’m just kind understand why this is happening with BP getting my information.’ He said, ‘You’re staying there. Don’t go anywhere until I get there.’ So I gave the phone back to the police officer. He said, you know, ‘You need to stay.’

And at that point, I felt like, you know, the police officer had looked at my photographs on my camera, he had determined that there was no threat. And at this point, why was I being detained? It wasn’t clear to me, other than the fact that Tom Robison wanted to come down. So he showed up and basically approached me in a very antagonistic and aggressive manner. Um, he was shaking, he was worked up, he was loud, he was boisterous, he asked what my problem was. He said his main concern was my attitude. And, you know, all I was trying to do was find out why BP was getting my information. And, you know, it was his antagonistic behavior that I had a problem with. I felt like he was harassing me. The BP security guard stepped in and they both, you know, were trying to relate my activity as a photojournalist to terrorist activity—



JUAN GONZALEZ: And Lance, was there any follow up by ProPublica to find – to understand why this was happening or under what basis? ‘Cause obviously if you had been with one of those automated cameras of Google in car, just driving down the road taking photos, there wouldn’t have been any problem, would there?

LANCE ROSENFIELD: [Laughs] I guess not. You know, I don’t know. There was follow-up. And the statement that we got from BP said that they were following federal law. And there was a, there was another statement that BP followed up with, with once this sort of hit the blogosphere and airwaves. Um, BP sent another, reaction to ProPublica that gave the actual federal code that they were following. So—that was my answer, I mean, there was, in fact, a federal code that says BP is required by federal law to submit a report to NRC. My question then is, and I’m not a lawyer, but my question then is, well if I was never on BP property and there were no infractions—I was not arrested—then still why was BP getting my information? That to me is still unclear.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re gonna leave it there and we’re gonna continue to follow this from Texas City to the Gulf of Mexico where new rules have been laid down for journalists, making it much more difficult for photographers, videographers to get close to clean-up areas. This is an issue we’ll continue to cover. Lance Rosenfield, thanks for joining us, freelance photographer who is working for ProPublica, and Ryan Knutson for your piece, the latest piece called, "BP Texas Refinery Had Huge Toxic Release Just