Nelson wants investigation on AP story that claims BP has been “making it up as they go along “

Florida Democratic Senator Bill Nelson is seizing on an Associated Press story published today that blasts BP's 582-page regional spill plan for the Gulf and it's 52-page, site-specific plan for the Deepwater Horizon rig.  The AP reports that those plans were  "riddled with omissions and glaring errors."

As the story, co-written by St. Petersburg based AP correspondent Tamara Lush, reports, "BP officials have pretty much been making it up as they go along."

The story begins:

Professor Peter Lutz is listed in BP's 2009 response plan for a Gulf of Mexico oil spill as a national wildlife expert. He died in 2005.

Under the heading "sensitive biological resources," the plan lists marine mammals including walruses, sea otters, sea lions and seals. None lives anywhere near the Gulf.

The names and phone numbers of several Texas A&M University marine life specialists are wrong. So are the numbers for marine mammal stranding network offices in Louisiana and Florida, which are no longer in service.

This article appears in Jun 3-9, 2010.