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Re: Oil leak in Gulf of Mexico off coast of LA
i heard a space laser destroyed the oil rig. anyone see that story?Comment
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Re: Oil leak in Gulf of Mexico off coast of LA
I thought it was due to aeroplane (?)
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Re: Oil leak in Gulf of Mexico off coast of LA
WASHINGTON - In the days since President Obama announced a moratorium on permits for drilling new offshore oil wells and a halt to a controversial type of environmental waiver that was given to the Deepwater Horizon rig, at least seven new permits for various types of drilling and five environmental waivers have been granted, according to records.
The records also indicate that since the April 20 explosion on the rig, federal regulators have granted at least 19 environmental waivers for gulf drilling projects and at least 17 drilling permits, most of which were for types of work like that on the Deepwater Horizon shortly before it exploded, pouring a ceaseless current of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
Asked about the permits and waivers, officials at the Department of the Interior and the Minerals Management Service, which regulates drilling, pointed to public statements by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, reiterating that the agency had no intention of stopping all new oil and gas production in the gulf.
Department of the Interior officials said in a statement that the moratorium was meant only to halt permits for the drilling of new wells. It was not meant to stop permits for new work on existing drilling projects like the Deepwater Horizon.
But critics say the moratorium has been violated or too narrowly defined to prevent another disaster.
Conflicting statements
With crude oil still pouring into the gulf and washing up on beaches and in wetlands, President Obama is sending Mr. Salazar and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano back to the region on Monday.
In a toughly worded warning to BP on Sunday, Mr. Salazar said at a news conference outside the company’s headquarters in Houston, “If we find they’re not doing what they’re supposed to be doing, we’ll push them out of the way appropriately.”
Mr. Salazar’s position conflicted with one laid out several hours earlier, by the commandant of the United States Coast Guard, Adm. Thad W. Allen, who said that the oil conglomerate’s access to the mile-deep well site meant that the government could not take over the lead in efforts to stop the leak.
“They have the eyes and ears that are down there,” the admiral said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program. “They are necessarily the modality by which this is going to get solved.”
Since the explosion, federal regulators have been harshly criticized for giving BP’s Deepwater Horizon and hundreds of other drilling projects waivers from full environmental review and for failing to provide rigorous oversight of these projects.
In voicing his frustration with these regulators and vowing to change how they operate, Mr. Obama announced on May 14 a moratorium on drilling new wells and the granting of environmental waivers.
“It seems as if permits were too often issued based on little more than assurances of safety from the oil companies,” Mr. Obama said. “That cannot and will not happen anymore.”
“We’re also closing the loophole that has allowed some oil companies to bypass some critical environmental reviews,” he added in reference to the environmental waivers.
Statutory requirement
But records indicated that regulators continued granting the environmental waivers and permits for types of work like that occurring on the Deepwater Horizon.
In testifying before Congress on May 18, Mr. Salazar and officials from his agency said they recognized the problems with the waivers and they intended to try to rein them in. But Mr. Salazar also said that he was limited by a statutory requirement that he said obligated his agency to process drilling requests within 30 days after they have been submitted.
“That is what has driven a number of the categorical exclusions that have been given over time in the gulf,” he said.
But critics remained unsatisfied.
Shown the data indicating that waivers and permits were still being granted, Senator Benjamin L. Cardin, Democrat of Maryland, said he was “deeply troubled.”
“We were given the clear impression that these waivers and permits were not being granted,” said Mr. Cardin, who is a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, where Mr. Salazar testified last week. “I think the presumption should be that there should be stronger environmental reviews, not weaker.”
None of the projects that have recently been granted environmental waivers have started drilling.
However, these waivers have been especially troublesome to environmentalists because they were granted through a special legal provision that is supposed to be limited to projects that present minimal or no risk to the environment.
At least six of the drilling projects that have been given waivers in the past four weeks are for waters that are deeper — and therefore more difficult and dangerous — than where Deepwater Horizon was operating. While that rig, which was drilling at a depth just shy of 5,000 feet, was classified as a deep-water operation, many of the wells in the six projects are classified as “ultra” deep water, including four new wells at over 9,100 feet.
In explaining why they were still granting new permits for certain types of drilling on existing wells, Department of the Interior officials said some of the procedures being allowed are necessary for the safety of the existing wellbore.
Pending the recommendations of the 30-day safety review, the officials said, drilling under permits approved before April 20 “may go forward, along with applications to modify existing wells and permits, if those actions are determined to be appropriate.”
But Interior Department officials have also explained that one of the main justifications of the moratorium on new drilling was safety. The moratorium was meant to ensure that no new accidents occurred while the administration had time to review the regulatory system.
And yet, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration has classified some of the drilling types that have been allowed to continue as being as hazardous as new well drilling. Federal records also indicate that there have been at least three major accidents involving spills, leaks or explosions on rigs in the gulf since 2002 caused by the drilling procedures still being permitted.
“The moratorium does not even cover the dangerous drilling that caused the problem in the first place,” said Daniel J. Rohlf, a law professor at Lewis & Clark Law School, adding he was not certain that the Interior Department was capable of carrying out the needed reforms.
The moratorium has created inconsistencies and confusion.
Bypass permits
While Interior Department officials have said certain new drilling procedures on existing wells can proceed, Mr. Salazar, when pressed to explain why new drilling was being allowed, testified on May 18 that “there is no deep-water well in the O.C.S. that has been spudded — that means started — after April 20,” referring to the gulf’s outer continental shelf.
However, Newfield Exploration Company has confirmed that it began drilling a deep-water well in 2,095 feet of water after April 20. Records indicate that Newfield was issued a permit on May 11 to initiate a sidetrack drill, with a required spud date of May 10. A sidetrack is a secondary wellbore drilled away from the original hole.
Among the types of drilling permits that the minerals agency is still granting are called bypass permits. These allow an operator to drill around a mechanical problem in the original hole to the original target from the existing wellbore.
Five days before the explosion, the Deepwater Horizon requested and received a revised bypass permit, which was the last drilling permit the rig received from the minerals agency before the explosion. The bore was created and it was the faulty cementing or plugging of that hole that has been cited as one of the causes of the explosion.
In reviewing the minerals agency, federal investigators are likely to pay close attention to how permits and waivers have been granted to drilling projects.
Even before the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the use of environmental waivers was a source of concern. In September 2009, the Government Accountability Office released a report concluding that the waivers were being illegally granted to onshore drilling projects.
This month, the Interior Department announced plans to restrict the use of the waivers onshore, though not offshore. It also began a joint investigation of the offshore waiver process with the Council on Environmental Quality, an environmental arm of the White House.
The investigation, however, is likely to take months, and in the meantime the waivers are continuing to be issued. There is also a 60-day statute of limitations on contesting the waivers, which reduces the chances that they will be reversed if problems are found with the projects or the Obama administration’s review finds fault in the exemption process.
At least three lawsuits to strike down the waivers have been filed by environmental groups this month. The lawsuits argue that the waivers are overly broad and that they undermine the spirit of laws like the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act, which forbid drilling projects from moving forward unless they produce detailed environmental studies about minimizing potential risks.
This story, headlined "Despite moratorium, drilling projects move ahead," first appeared in The New York Times.
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Re: Oil leak in Gulf of Mexico off coast of LA
so congress is going to add a 32 cents per barrel tax hike (quadruple the current tax) against the oild companies to help the cleanup... far beit from me to not support the cleanup, but this is ultimately a tax hike that is going to be passed on from the companies to the consumer. this really irritates me because 1) the companies are, somewhat, getting reprieve from THEIR mistake and 2) i really don't believe congress when they say this money is going towards clean up efforts. maybe a little... but i doubt much.Should I fuck you at that not until the ass, inject then tremendously hard bumschen and to the termination in the eyes yes?Comment
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Re: Oil leak in Gulf of Mexico off coast of LA
^^^the US govt has become so pathetic.
update:
BP said it would make another attempt to plug the leak Wednesday, but gave it only a 60percent chance of success. If short-term efforts fail, it will take BP several months to drill a relief well to stop the leak.
The oil spill is a political hot potato for the Obama administration before a November election that is widely expected to erode Democrats' control of Congress. Analysts warn that voters may punish Democrats regardless of who is ultimately deemed responsible for the mess.
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who has been critical of the federal government's response, again called for more equipment, especially booms, to help stop the oil from making landfall. He said 70 miles of his state's coastline had been affected by the oil spill.
glbhycom27.jpgComment
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Re: Oil leak in Gulf of Mexico off coast of LA
Goldman Sachs Sold 44% of its BP stock three weeks before the Deepwater Horizon explosion
sounds like it wasn't an accident.Comment
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Re: Oil leak in Gulf of Mexico off coast of LA
This. I facepalmed at the gym today when I saw this.
Here's a great idea.
Add more taxes that's going to be passed on through to the consumer.
Put a moratorium on drilling in the gulf so that 1) we effectively put into employment even more americans and 2) jack the price of gas up in this country because we're having to supply this difference in oil output by foreign oil that costs more.
This will not end well.
Btw, when Toyota was having some problems with their cars, did we put a fucking moratorium on DRIVING FOR EVERYONE?????
goddamnit. so inept. so fucking inept.you could put an Emfire release on for 2 minutes and you would be a sleep before it finishes - Chunky
it's RA. they'd blow their load all over some stupid 20 minute loop of a snare if it had a quirky flange setting. - Tiddles
Am I somewhere....in the corners of your mind....
----PEACE-----Comment
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Re: Oil leak in Gulf of Mexico off coast of LA
what does everyone think of this method to plug the leak?
you could put an Emfire release on for 2 minutes and you would be a sleep before it finishes - Chunky
it's RA. they'd blow their load all over some stupid 20 minute loop of a snare if it had a quirky flange setting. - Tiddles
Am I somewhere....in the corners of your mind....
----PEACE-----Comment
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Re: Oil leak in Gulf of Mexico off coast of LA
hey to all the Pcola folks. i unfortunaly am hearing that the oil is only a few miles from the beach and tar balls are poppin up. so awful.
do u see a massive effort to protect the shorlines. its seems to me the govt has so far ignored florida.Comment
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Re: Oil leak in Gulf of Mexico off coast of LA
Obama is scheduled to make yet another appearance down here. Why? All he is doing is spending taxpayers money for his fucking entourage to travel with him. Gulf Coast folks are not liking him right now. Hell, I never liked him in the first place.
Music is the answer, to your problems. Keep on movin', till you solve them.
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Re: Oil leak in Gulf of Mexico off coast of LA
video http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?...ted;photovideo
Photos taken from around the country, Chicago, Washington, New York, Tampa, etc...
Anger over the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico is spilling into streets as protests are organized at BP’s offices and gas stations around the country.
A multi-group protest made up of environmental groups is planned for Friday in Washington D.C., for example, while a week of demonstrations in several cities was kicked off yesterday by a new campaign, Seize BP.
Besides the organized demonstrations, anti-BP Facebook accounts have popped up online. And in New York City, some one or several people have splattered what looks like brown paint on the logo of three different BP gas stations.
BP's inadequate response has left the public frustrated, said Allison Fisher, the energy organizer at Public Citizen, one of the groups organizing Friday's protest in Washington. “They’re looking for ways to express that.”
Friday’s protest organized by eight groups—Center for Biological Diversity, Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Energy Action Coalition, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Hip Hop Caucus, Public Citizen and 350.org—will take place in front of BP’s headquarters.
It will include an inflatable oil barrel and an actor portraying BP CEO Tony Hayward in a prison jumpsuit.
Those organizations also hope their protest will bring attention to their foremost cause: reducing global warming and stopping offshore drilling.
“We’re hoping to capture that attention, get people engaged at this corporate level and channel it into climate work as well,” said Fisher.
After several protests in May, Seize BP kicked off a week of demonstrations on Thursday in Washington, New York and Chicago and has plans to continue into next week in 26 cities and towns across the country.
The group is pushing for the U.S. government to seize BP’s funds and place it in trusts now to help reimburse those affected by the oil spill, said Carl Messineo, spokesperson of Seize BP.
“We’re seeking urgent and immediate resolution,” said Messineo.
BP did not return a call for comment.
The lengthy time frame for the slowly unfolding disaster—the leak started on April 20—“is a long enough time for people to get angry,” said Juliet Huck, CEO of TheHUCKGroup, a communications firm. Besides not finding a fix to the leak, a lack of communication with the public is also to blame for festering frustration. “The silence is what is creating this anger,” said Huck.
Anger has also turned to rage. Aside from the protests, at least three BP gas stations in New York City were vandalized with what appears to be black or brown paint on their signs.
“I think somebody got mad or something,” said Lucky Singh, the manager of a gas station in Manhattan's Harlem neighborhood. He said that the splattered paint appeared on the stations highest signage two days ago, adding that someone was expected to stop by to clean it off on Thursday.
Despite the vandalism, Singh said business is still the same. “No one has complained or anything,” he said.
It was fun while it lasted...
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Re: Oil leak in Gulf of Mexico off coast of LA
I'd be shocked if BP isn't done as a company after this... there's just no way they'll be able to continue under the "BP" name once the mess is cleaned up.
It is truly difficult for me to personally fathom the amount of damage this has done and will do in weeks, months and years ahead.
Who else wants their next car to be a hybrid? I know my wife and I are set on it and I'm looking to sell my car asap so that I can buy one.
It was fun while it lasted...Comment
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Re: Oil leak in Gulf of Mexico off coast of LA
Deadliest Catch Captain: Spill Impact Could Be "Tenfold" Worse Than Valdez
Captain Keith Colburn is best know as captain of the Wizard on the Discovery Channel's hugely successful series, "Deadliest Catch." He's been a commercial fisherman for 25 years, and he's even participated in an oil spill cleanup in Dutch Harbor, Alaska. Colburn also testified before Congress against off-shore drilling in Bristol Bay. Captain Keith spoke with the LKL Blog and gave a unique, fisherman's perspective on the oil spill.
LKL Blog: You're a fisherman. How have you reacted to the Gulf oil spill?
Colburn: Being an Alaska fisherman, there is grave concern about what is exactly going to happen to the food chain in the Gulf. The fish inside the Gulf, and also a lot of the predator fish outside, are all going to be impacted dramatically. Especially the oil down in the water column, down in the bottom where these species live. As a fisherman it's pretty dramatic, and it could have widespread implications.
When the Exxon Valdez hit the rocks in Prince William Sound, the biggest thing that impacted us in the Bearing Sea, and there wasn't a drop of oil in the Bearing Sea, was the public perception of anything Alaskan that was seafood. That dramatically impacted our pricing, and impacted all fisherman in the state of Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. The perception from the public was that all seafood coming out of Alaska was tainted, which was not the case.
Unfortunately, what I think we're starting to see now is consumers are concerned that anything coming out of the Gulf States is tainted seafood products. So it's unfairly hurting these fisherman in advance of their fishing grounds being tainted by oil. That could have lasting effects on the shellfish and the fishing industry throughout the US.
As an Alaska fisherman, I'm not concerned about my resource because it won't be impacted environmentally, but, especially the fisherman down there in the gulf - Florida, Texas, Mississippi - they're all going to be impacted because of the consumer misconception that it's all tainted seafood. Hopefully by the end of the day there will still be fishing grounds that will be open, productive, and able to sustain at least some of the resource that has been harvested previously, but we'll have to wait and see.
LKL Blog: Do we know yet how much the overall catch will be affected?
Colburn: My concern is some of the Gulf fisherman I've talked to think this may affect them one, two, three years. They need to realize that this could dramatically impact and affect their way of life permanently.
The herring stocks in Prince William Sound 20 years later have never recovered, never. They have basically almost been completely decimated, and so this spill, which I believe has tracked to be already larger than the Valdez spill, has the potential because its moving slower and moving in and spreading out over a wider area, to be two to three times as devastating to that marine ecosystem as the one that happened in Alaska 20 years ago.
LKL Blog: Do you feel a kinship to the Gulf fisherman?
Colburn: Without question. I was in New Orleans not even a year ago and did a function with the Louisiana Shrimpers Association in the Gulf. It was to basically help them out because the shrimpers were already struggling with the high price of diesel to actually make a living.
They were struggling already with diesel prices and with imported farm shrimp, so now you are going to double that up with decreased quotas, decreased areas to fish, public skepticism about the quality of the product. It could have lasting and detrimental effects to not only the guys that fish.
All fisherman feel a kinship to each other, whether its lobsterman back on the east coast, or sailors fishing for herring in the bay area in San Francisco, we all make our living from the sea, we are all a little different breed of guys and gals. At the end of the day we are all hard working guys to make a living off the sea without damaging it at the same time.
LKL Blog: After the Valdez spill, what did the fisherman do? Obviously your life, your economic well-being is turned upside down.
Colburn: You're right, your economic well-being is turned upside down, you have no idea what the future holds for you. Some fisherman will be impacted greater than others, but in the near-term the thing that is scary is that what occurred during the Valdez spill is that fisherman all of a sudden became spill response personnel.
They basically took their fishing vessel, because the fisheries were closed, and went right into working on spill response cleanup. So for a year they managed to see good returns and good revenue based on a changing lifestyle for one year. But after that one year, and after they decided "well we have done as much as we can for the cleanup, that’s the best we’re going to do," the next season reality set in and it was "well wait a second, what am I going to do now? My herring fishery is closed, my salmon run that I use to fish is now closed, what am I going to do to get by this year?"
Now that’s what these guys need to look at, how am I going to be impacted long-term? If I do get through this season working on the spill as opposed to working on my boat catching shrimp, what am I going to do in the future after that.
LKL Blog: What can the government do to help these guys?
Colburn: Well you know, I don’t know. What I would like to see, to this point we are 36 days into this and it seems to me, and I'm not talking about the government, I'm talking about the oil industry - Halliburton, and Transocean - just keep this revolving door passing the buck and assessing blame. Instead of assessing blame lets find a realistic way to get this thing capped.
That’s that most disappointing thing. You've got these billions of dollars that go into research and development to tap wells and to pump. It's a thousand times greater than the amount of research and development to goes into capping these things. I mean, the oil industry is great at tapping wells, let's learn how to cap them as well in the event that we have something like that in the future.
LKL Blog: From what we know now, would you assess this as having a far greater impact than Valdez?
Colburn: With the information that is coming out now I think this will have an impact that could be tenfold what Valdez was. You are looking at heavily populated areas, ports and everything from tourism to sport into commercial fishing to transportation. All kinds of things could be impacted on the entire Gulf region and down the coast of Florida. This stuff might even make it up the east coast to the Atlantic coast.
We’re talking about heavily populated areas with lots of infrastructure, lots of jobs that are related in one way or the other to the ocean, to the beaches. Whether its tourism or guys fishing for little restaurants and mom-and-pop chains, it’s going to have a domino effect through the entire high depths of financial infrastructure of the southeast region of the U.S.
It was fun while it lasted...Comment
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