Jonathan Tilove, a business reporter for the Times-Picayune lets the world know that BP is sticking with its dispersant choice

BP has told the Environmental Protection Agency that it cannot find a safe, effective and available dispersant to use instead of Corexit, and will continue to use that chemical application to help break up the growing spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

BP was responding to an EPA directive Thursday that gave BP 24 hours to identify a less toxic alternative to Corexit — and 72 hours to start using it — or provide the Coast Guard and EPA with a “detailed description of the alternative dispersants investigated, and the reason they believe those products did not meet the required standards.”

The real reason is that BP already bought a warehouse full of Corexit, which got dirt cheap after several countries banned it for toxicity, so, they have no interest in buying or using anything else, no matter who tells them to do it.

McClatchy reports on the impact of the oil on Grand Isle

GRAND ISLE, La. — The first wave of oil swept onto the beach. The tourists swept out.

The few people who bothered to visit Grand Isle Beach Friday came out of morbid curiosity, to see the proliferating drips and blotches and puddles and pools the color of Coca-Cola.

“My God, our beach should be crowded, the start of a big weekend,” said Lynette Anderson, surveying the ruinous mess along the surf line. “We kept hoping it was going to miss us. Should have known better.”

The gooey, adhesive stuff portended an economic disaster for Grand Isle, the only inhabited island on Louisiana’s Gulf Coast. Tourists keep this beach town alive. The tourists had vanished.

A town of 1500 that needs the summer tourists to survive, and their beach is covered in oil just before the season begins. It will take years to clean the beach, and the locals can’t wait years. If you get hit with a hurricane, you can come back, but not pollution.

Rick of the Independent News said that people in Destin have heard that BP and the state are talking to charter boat captains about job retraining. I think that what they heard about was the program that hires local boats for use in the operation, which does require some training. I’ll wait a few days, and if the shark-gnawed bodies of BP representatives start coming on-shore, I’ll accept that it was about job retraining.

No matter what happens, Southern Republcans are as predictable as buzzards returning to Hinckley, Ohio.

Sean Reilly reports” Alabama, Mississippi senators push for easing of drilling moratorium

WASHINGTON — Gulf Coast senators are pressing federal regulators to resume processing permits for off-shore drilling in shallow waters, saying that a moratorium imposed earlier this month is too broad.

In a letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar today, the lawmakers said that shallow-water wells mostly involve “natural gas resources with less environmental risks, and these wells are drilled in predictable and mature reservoirs.”

If the moratorium, which was imposed earlier this month in response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, is not lifted soon, most of the approximately 57 shallow-water rigs in the gulf “will be unable to work,” the letter states.

The letter was released late this afternoon by Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Oxford, who signed it along with the state’s other senator, Roger Wicker, R-Tupelo. The remaining eight signers include Alabama Sens. Jeff Sessions, R-Mobile, and Richard Shelby, R-Tuscaloosa, according to an accompanying news release.

It’s an election year and the scum wants to get their campaign cash. They just don’t care that oil companies have destroyed the economy of the Gulf Coast, once bought, they stay bought.

Rick over at Independent News doesn’t even pretend to be polite any more when reporting BP statements. BP now says that they are only getting 92,400 gallons [2200 barrels] through their “siphon tube”, not the 210,000 gallons [5000 barrels] they reported yesterday. I’m sure they have a wildly improbable reason for this claim, like every other. [BTW, the 210,000 gallon/day figure for the 3-inch tube is in line with the flow rate for a standard 2½-inch fire hose, just under 150 gallons/minute.]

From McClatchy’s story – Gulf oil spill: New figure on leak’s size will come ‘next week’

BP’s announcement implicitly criticized Werely’s higher estimates. BP said that the riser, the pipe between the wellhead and the drilling platform, is 19.5 inches in diameter, but the accident damaged it and reduced its diameter by 30 percent, and a drill pipe trapped inside it reduced the flow by 10 percent more, the company said. “Thus, some third party estimates of flow, which assume a 19.5 inch diameter, are inaccurate,” it said.

The only way they would know that damage had cause a “30% reduction” would be if they knew what the actual flow was and compared that to the flow of an undamaged riser. They have maintained that they are too busy to actually measure the flow. BP just throws around numbers to confuse the issue.