The Wall Street Journal speculates on possible punishments for BP, saying that the government could go beyond fines and bar the company from receiving federal contracts. BP is the single biggest supplier of fuel to the Department of Defense, with Pentagon contracts worth $2.2 billion a year, the Journal reports.
BP has plenty to be worried about right now, but losing the right to bid on U.S. government contracts is probably fairly low on the list. The Gulf spill doesn’t have anything to do with a federal contract, so a suspension or debarment action would just be vindictive — and the government has shown it’s able to forgive and forget, as it still hands out hundreds of millions of dollars worth of contracts annually to ExxonMobil.
