Where’s the follow up on BP’s Alaska leak from May?

Lost in the shuffle of the deepening Gulf oil crisis was another significant BP spill.

On May 25, there were reports (“scarcely reported” said Newsweek) of 200,000 barrels of crude oil that leaked from the Alyeska Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which is majority owned by BP. According to Alyeska, the spill containment area has a capacity of 104,500 barrels, which is only slightly more than half of the leaked crude.

Alyeska said only that “several thousand barrels of oil spilled to containment.”

The leak was caused by a power failure DURING SCHEDULED TESTING at a pump station  just northeast of pristine Denali National Park which begs the question: weren’t there any backup generators on line? Looks like the same shoddy contingency planning as with BP’s offshore operations.