Dirty tricks campaign that led to oil 'lock out'

outspoken American critic. Today he says that events in US Congress will

explain why the oil industry has much to feel sorry about.

BRITISH Petroleum and six other oil companies have been shut out of a

huge American oilfield following a ''dirty tricks'' campaign against the

man who passed environmental complaints to the US government.

The ''lock-out'' will reduce the USA's reserves of domestic oil,

increasing reliance on imports from the North Sea and the Middle East.

In the long term it could increase world oil prices and boost plans to

extract Atlantic oil from BP's huge Clair field west of the Shetland

Islands.

US senators have voted to ban exploration drilling in Alaska's Arctic

National Wildlife Refuge after learning of an alleged $1m ''sting''

against Charles ''Chuck'' Hamel, a retired oil broker turned Green

campaigner.

Details of the corporate spy scandal will be revealed to a

Congressional committee today. But Congress has already heard enough to

doubt industry promises about caring for the environment.

Congressman George Miller, chairman of the House Committee on Interior

Affairs which called the hearings, is incensed that a BP executive,

James Hermiller, ordered a private espionage operation against oil

company employees who wanted Congress to know about alleged

environmental outrages in Alaska's existing oilfields.

Obstructing communications with Congress is a criminal offence.

Hermiller, on loan from BP as president of the Alyeska Pipeline

Service Company, has admitted hiring the Wackenhut security firm last

year, to find out where Chuck Hamel got his ''whistleblower'' leaks.

Hermiller says nothing illegal was done, but six weeks ago he made a

public apology to Alaskans for the spying which, he said, was ''wrong''.

Over the past 10 years, Hamel has passed information to federal

agencies about oil spills on the tundra, corrosion in the 800 mile

Trans-Alaska Pipeline, and air and water pollution from Alyeska's Valdez

tanker terminal. He also funnelled insider information about the causes

of the Exxon Valdez tanker disaster near Valdez in March 1989.

Congressman Miller's committee will be told by former Wackenhut

employees that they bugged Hamel's house and portable telephones,

searched his refuse sacks and tailed him day and night in an elaborate

''gumshoe'' operation.

According to the witnesses, Wackenhut even set up a bogus

environmental organisation, complete with Save The Whale posters, and

conned Hamel into confiding details of his network of contacts.

The outfit paid Hamel $4000 in expenses, which he says he passed on to

ecology groups. On one occasion, Hamel says, they tried to set him up

with a prostitute in an attempt to wreck his marriage but he proved too

faithful to his wife.

BP owns 50.1% of Alyeska's shares, in a partnership with six other

companies, but say they do not formally control the pipeline company. A

former BP chairman of the partnership, Fred Garibaldi, says he knew of

the Wackenhut campaign but did not ask for details.

BP's Hermiller says he now regrets the seven-month operation by

Wackenhut, the third largest security firm in the US, but admits to

''unease and concern'' about the methods employed. He had earlier tried

court action to force the US Environmental Protection Agency to reveal

Hamel's sources, but without success.

Surveillance of Hamel was stopped last September, Hermiller says, when

BP's partners were told what was going on.

Hamel, no bleeding-heart environmentalist on his own admission, has

axes to grind. He has been involved in litigation against the oil

companies since 1980, claiming that they forced him out of the Alaska

trade by dumping excess water in his oil cargoes. Alyeska says the

charges have been fully investigated by the Alaskan authorities and

found to be groundless.

Hamel also claims he was swindled by Exxon and Gulf Oil over drilling

leases he once owned in the huge, undeveloped oilfield at Point McIntyre

on the western boundary of the Arctic wildlife refuge. The companies

charge him with attempted extortion for $12m.

Hamel said yesterday that he would not settle his claims out of court

unless the environmental misdeeds he had exposed were put right and his

sources compensated for damage to their careers.

A former millionaire, Hamel said he was now broke because of his 12

year fight against the oil industry.

What the American Press is calling the ''Hamelgate'' affair was the

last straw for Senators, after a well-organised campaign against

drilling in the wildlife refuge by the influential Sierra Club and other

environmental organisations.

They oppose further oil developments on the shores of the icy Beaufort

Sea because of possible disruption to migrating caribou herds, wolves,

polar bears and traditional Eskimo life.

Alaska's new governor, Walter Hickel, is pro-development. So are

Alaska's two US senators, both Republicans. Many Alaskans believe the

refuge should be developed to provide much-needed jobs and to secure

Arab-free fuel for the USA's strategic oil supplies -- if the oil

industry can give binding assurances on the environment.