Crisis management cannot help ConocoPhillips: People's Daily

"Time after time, delays, negligence, cover-ups and cheating, ConocoPhillips China's oil field operation was finally stopped by China's maritime authority," said the article on the flagship newspaper of the Communist Party of China.

ConocoPhillips China (COPC), a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Houston-headquartered ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP), has complied with a suspension order, said a statement on the company's website.

The suspension order issued by the State Oceanic Administration (SOA) came last Friday after COPC failed to meet the SOA's requirements for finding potential oil spill sources and sealing existing oil leaks before an Aug. 31 deadline.

As the operator of the leaking Penglai 19-3 oil field in north China's Bohai Bay, COPC has been blamed for incidents that occurred on June 4 and June 17, respectively, and resulted in the release of approximately 700 barrels of oil into Bohai Bay and 2,500 barrels of mineral oil-based drilling mud onto the seabed.

However, on Aug. 31 the company submitted a report to the SOA claiming that all oil spills had been cleaned up.

Moreover, public condemnation grew stronger after a China Central Television (CCTV) report revealed on Friday that, during a conversation between a CCTV reporter and an anonymous COPC employee, someone told the reporter via the ship's intercom system that the company intentionally set out to deceive Chinese authorities when it announced that it had met the SOA's requirements. The company has since denied this charge; Kazinform cites Xinhua.

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