Oil giant BP needs to be scrutinized to see if it should be allowed to continue to drill on any federal land or even hold onto existing leases, and not just because of the enormity of the Gulf of Mexico disaster, says a recently retired federal attorney who spent years dogging BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc.

"I have to conclude that there comes a point in time where we say enough is enough," said Jeanne Pascal, who worked 18 years as a Seattle-based attorney with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "Because BP has definitely turned into a major serial environmental criminal."

Pascal pointed to three BP environmental convictions dating back to 2000, including two in Alaska. Then came what President Obama calls the biggest environmental disaster in the nation's history. The April 20 well blowout in the Gulf killed 11 workers and is allowing as much as 2.5 million gallons of oil a day to spew from the ocean floor.

"I think the people involved in what's happened in the Gulf need to spend a good time in jail and think about it," Pascal said.

Pascal argues that BP got off far too lightly in a 2007 Alaska criminal case stemming from a record North Slope spill the year before. Initially investigated for felonies, BP Alaska entered a guilty plea to a misdemeanor in a plea bargain, and no individuals were charged.

Scott West agrees with Pascal. He was the EPA special agent in charge of the criminal investigation division in Seattle looking into BP Alaska.

"The people who are making the decisions, playing fast and loose on that (Gulf) rig -- 'hurry up, we are over time, we are over budget, let's take the shortcut' -- if they'd seen some of their peers go to jail for those kinds of decisions, maybe they would have said, you know my bonus this year just isn't worth it," said West, referencing information he's read and his knowledge of the industry.

But prosecutors defend their handling of the 2007 criminal case, and BP says it doesn't know of any evidence that individuals in the corporation broke the law.

ENVIRONMENTAL CRIMES

Both West and Pascal have been speaking out publicly since their retirements. West, who left in 2008 after almost 19 years with EPA, was featured in a Wall Street Journal story soon after and recently has been interviewed for stories by CBS, Fox News, Newsweek and Bloomberg News.

Pascal and West say that while BP talks about its environmental commitment, profit is its priority.

"BP keeps saying that they follow safety protocols and safety is their goal and health is their goal and the environment is their goal," Pascal said. "But look at their record."

It's a sorry environmental history, she said, including:

• A felony conviction in 2000 for failing to immediately report illegal dumping of hazardous waste by a contractor at its Endicott oil field in Alaska's Beaufort Sea. The punishment: Five years probation, $7 million in fines and civil penalties and another $15 million to create an environmental management system.

• A misdemeanor conviction in 2007 stemming from the biggest oil spill ever on the North Slope. In March 2006 a BP worker discovered crude leaking from a Prudhoe Bay corroded transit pipeline -- 200,000 gallons in all. BP, which admitted its system of monitoring and preventing corrosion was inadequate, was put on another three years of probation and ordered to pay $20 million in fines and penalties.

• A felony conviction last year for the 2005 Texas City refinery explosion that killed 15 people, injured another 170 and devastated a community. BP Products North America Inc. was fined $50 million and put on three years probation.

And there were other ruptures, explosions and near misses over the years, plus a propane price-fixing case in the Midwest settled with a deferred prosecution, Pascal said.

West said it appeared to him that BP made a conscious decision not to invest in aging infrastructure for North Slope fields with declining oil production. "We kept hearing a phrase called 'operate to failure.' The (federal) investigators down in Houston were hearing the same sort of thing." That meant critical systems and equipment were operated to the point of failure rather than maintained, he said. It's kind of like ignoring the "check engine" light on an old car until it won't run anymore.

In the Texas City case, West said, investigators were "finding the exact same patterns of neglecting worker safety and environmental concerns to save a few dollars. That, of course, indicated to us that it was corporatewide. It wasn't just isolated to a particular operating unit."

BP insists that it puts safety first and is following up on what it promised to do after the 2006 spill at Prudhoe.

"As we said at the time, BP holds its environmental responsibility as a core corporate value," BP spokesman Steve Rinehart said in an e-mailed response to questions. "We know that the privilege of working in Alaska comes with a responsibility to maintain high standards. We made, and continue to make, significant improvements in our integrity management programs."

BP previously has said it spends millions of dollars annually for North Slope oil field maintenance.

TOUGHER SANCTIONS

Before she retired in March, Pascal specialized in what's known as debarment, a process in which companies are evaluated for their suitability to do business with the federal government because of environmental crimes or performance issues. It's time consuming, complex and even when successful, might not stop a company from operating, Pascal said.

Under the federal Clean Water Act, BP was debarred in 2008 as a result of the 2007 Alaska conviction, but the action simply meant that it couldn't get any new federal contracts at Prudhoe Bay. It didn't lose its state-issued leases or ability to operate the field. The only contracts that might be affected relate to its selling of fuel to the military, and a different BP company refines the oil and sells the fuel.

"So it did not have any (significant) impact on its business," Pascal said of the 2008 EPA debarment action.

Because of the Gulf spill, the federal agencies involved with BP -- EPA; the Department of Interior, which oversees federal drilling leases; and the Department of Defense, which buys the fuel -- need to evaluate whether a more sweeping debarment covering BP, is in order, she said.

EPA already had been looking into such an action because of continued problems with BP operations, she said.

BP had no comment on any pending legal proceedings.

PUSHING TO NAIL EXECUTIVES

The 1990s and first part of the next decade were a time of upheaval in the global oil industry. Countries such as Russia that had been off-limits to western oil companies were opening their borders. Oil prices wavered, then plunged below $10 a barrel for periods of 1998 and 1999.

Concerns about the future sparked some of the biggest mergers in corporate history: Exxon and Mobil in 1999, Chevron and Texaco in 2001, Conoco and Phillips in 2002.

BP joined the merger frenzy, acquiring Amoco in 1999 and Arco -- except for Arco's Alaska properties, which went to Phillips -- in 2000.

BP also took full control of running day-to-day operations of Alaska's giant Prudhoe Bay field in 2000, a job that previously was shared with Arco.

These moves led to large layoffs and cost cutting, particularly for BP, whose London CEO at the time, John Browne, had a reputation for squeezing costs out of company operations.

The investigation into BP's 2006 spill at Prudhoe was targeted at bringing felony charges against corporate executives on the theory they knew pipes were dangerously corroded and didn't act, say West and others from EPA.

In a June 12, 2007, e-mail to other prosecutors and investigators, assistant U.S. Attorney Andrea Steward assessed the criminal investigation and prospects for prosecution. West later released Steward's e-mail.

In it, Steward indicated that she could see a case charging negligent behavior, even though BP officials contended "they had changed their attitude of aggressive cost cutting in 2005 and that they were changing how they did things."

Not enough reason to avoid prosecution, Steward wrote.

"It was all, however, too little too late. Like trying to turn the titanic. Managers at BP have said that things were so tight at BP from the 90s through 2004 that even after things began to change in 2005 the mentality of employees was still so entrenched in cost cutting that the first response to any proposal is 'we'll never get the money for that.' "

Steward referenced the 2000 felony conviction in Alaska and the 2005 Texas City explosion, which she said "got BP's attention."

"Tony Hayward (BP's chief executive in London) traveled to Ak after the explosion to see if there were similar problems in ak as in tx (Texas) such as overly aggressive cost cutting and a lack of communication between mgmt and employees and found that there were. Thus, the changes at BP did not come about because they were being good corporate citizens, it was because they were already felons and had recently killed a bunch of people."

PREMATURE SETTLEMENT?

Two months later, 17 months into the investigation, prosecutors decided that if a misdemeanor was what they could prove at that point, that's where the case would end up, West said. He felt blindsided, he said.

"Here we had a case where we had the potential to go way high. Even to the London headquarters of BP ... and we're settling for a corporate misdemeanor?" said West, who wanted another two years to investigate.

His team had only begun to examine 62 million pages of documents BP provided. They had more workers to interview, he said, and other records yet to get from BP.

Three years of probation and $20 million in fines and penalties wasn't enough to deter bad behavior from a corporation with revenues in the multibillions, according to West.

Nonsense, say the prosecutors.

"I disagree with him (West) completely," said Karen Loeffler, now the U.S. attorney for Alaska and in 2007 head of the office's criminal division. "The case was fully vetted and prosecuted to the best of our ability in analyzing the appropriate facts."

Loeffler said she and Nelson Cohen, who was the U.S. attorney in 2007, both were comfortable with the settlement and that ultimately Cohen made the call. She said it was "aggressively prosecuted."

"We knew everything that we were going to be able to prove," she said. And the $20 million fine, she said, "sent a very strong message."

The critics aren't budging.

"I know that everybody was very frustrated about the low fine and the fact that there was no support to hold managers accountable," said Pascal, who worked down the hall from the criminal investigators.

West called the fine "paltry."

"To me the message has been given to BP loud and clear. You are protected. You are beyond prosecution."