Posts from — May 2010

The Pensacola News Journal reports that Suspected tar balls wash up on Pensacola Beach

Although about 100 suspected tar balls picked up on Pensacola Beach on Wednesday have not been linked to the oil spill, they have been sent to a lab for analysis.

A shoreline cleanup assessment team retrieved the material, and it likely will take a week to get the results.

The tar ball finds were part of an oil spill update county officials provided to Santa Rosa Island Authority board members Wednesday evening.

If any of these tar balls or the roughly 100 collected on Perdido Key over the weekend are associated with the BP spill, it’s the first evidence the oil spill has reached Northwest Florida shores, said Keith Wilkins, Escambia County deputy bureau chief for neighborhood and community services.

You will notice the use of the word “evidence”, an indicator that BP isn’t the only one thinking about law suits. Alas, past experience with BP says that any real settlements will require winning in court.

It’s hard to know whether the sightings of tar balls indicates something going on, or people taking the time to report the junk on the beach. Even if they do find that they contain oil from the spill, the oil could be from vessels working for BP going to and from the Bayou Chico facility, or vessels passing by in the Intercoastal Waterway.

Because of the massive use of dispersants, we really need submerged monitoring to warn us of the approach of the oil.

The CBC reports that Quebec forest fires force 1,300 from homes:

Forest fires have forced 1,300 people from their homes on the Wemotaci First Nation reserve, located about 300 kilometres north of Trois-Rivières in central Quebec.

Four forest fires are burning out of control on the territory, and smoke and burning sparks were starting to affect the village, according to SOPFEU, Quebec’s forest fire protection agency.

Many residents are staying at an emergency shelter set up at a school in La Tuque, where the Red Cross is providing assistance.

The area is a lot like the Adirondacks of New York and the original New World home of many of the French Canadians in my family tree. Lots of old growth in those forests.

Roads are in short supply and the water bombers don’t seem to be making much of an impression on the fires.

While this was a main story on the BBC and the CBC it was buried on US media sites. Apparently the “visuals” didn’t “grab” them.

Here’s the official version – NOAA: 2010 Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook.

Then’s there Dr Master’s version – NOAA’s forecast: a very active, possibly hyperactive Atlantic hurricane season.

My version is that there are a lot of good reasons to compare this year to 2005 [Dennis, Katrina, Rita, Wilma], and remember that the Greek alphabet goes alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon, zeta, because it is quite possible that the 21 names chosen for the season won’t be enough.

The Coast Guard and Minerals Management Service are conducting the standard accident investigation following the loss of the Deepwater Horizon. It is the same type of process that the NTSB conducts after a plane crash, and is not primarily concerned with the oil gushing in the Gulf.

Because they are concerned with the sinking of a vessel, they are talking to the people directly involved in the incident, and not having to put up with the spin from the executives of the companies involved. That is a failing of Congress.

McClatchy reports on todays’s session: BP worker takes 5th, making prosecution a possibility

WASHINGTON — A top BP worker who was aboard the Deepwater Horizon in the hours leading up to the explosion declined to testify in front of a federal panel investigating the deadly oil rig blowout, telling the U.S Coast Guard he was invoking his constitutional right to avoid self-incrimination.

The move Wednesday by BP’s Robert Kaluza raises the possibility of criminal liability in the April 20 explosion that killed 11 and five weeks later continues to spew hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico each day.

Wednesday’s government hearing in Louisiana, however, failed to determine why — despite unusual pressure and fluid readings on the rig — a BP official decided on the day of the explosion to proceed with removing heavy drilling fluid from the well and replacing it with lighter-weight seawater that was unable to prevent gas from surging to the surface and exploding.

BP made an incredibly stupid decision during Congressional testimony, and started pointing fingers at the other companies involved. Cops and DAs like to encourage this sort of thing as it provides them with a lot of information that there is no legal way of obtaining without the cooperation of the defendants. Even juveniles know better than to start pointing fingers, because those pointed at will respond.

We don’t know why it was done, but there is now no doubt that BP made the decision that resulted in the deaths of 11 people, the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon, and millions of gallons of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico.

The Anchorage Daily News headline is fairly tame, Alyeska ‘may have dropped ball,’ official says.

They could have said “Millions of gallons of oil spilled in Delta Junction” to give people a sense of what happened. The back-up power system at a pumping station failed a test, and while people were trying to find out what happened to the generator, they forgot that valves open automatically when the power goes out and everything flows into a storage tank. They figured it out after the storage tank overflowed and the oil started pouring out on the ground. They also discovered that the storage tank wasn’t in great shape, and was in fact bulging.

So, why is this in the “Gulf Gusher” category?

The companies that own Alyeska and the pipeline are BP (46.9 percent), Conoco Phillips (28.3 percent), Exxon Mobil (20.3 percent), Koch Industries (3.1 percent) and Chevron (1.4 percent).

Alyeska president Kevin Hostler is a career BP executive who took over the Alyeska job in 2005.

On land or sea, BP can’t seem to keep “fail-safe” systems from failing.

Remind me again why BP is in charge of anything in the United States.

If you are from this area the headline in the Local Puppy Trainer tells you everything you need to know: Peaden defends Crist after Gaetz blasts him over tourism.

State senator Durell Peaden, MD, Ob-Gyn, Esq., NRA, GOP represents North Okaloosa County, and was born in the area. He has sponsored most of Florida’s whacko gun legislation.

State senator Don Gaetz BA [religion and political science], GOP is Florida’s third wealthiest elected official and a retired health care industry executive from North Dakota via Jacksonville.

Charlie Crist is Florida’s orange Governor who recently became an independent when the RPOF [Republican Party of Florida] decided he was actually a communist for being publicly happy about receiving Federal stimulus funds, that enabled the Republican legislature to balance the state budget while pretending they weren’t actually raising any taxes.

The rest of the country when reading about this probably thinks it has something to do with the Gulf Gusher, but that’s the excuse, not the reason. Gaetz was acting as the spokesweasel for the state senate leadership who remembered at the last minute to pull the bill that would have authorized drilling within the 10½-mile limit in state waters in the Gulf of Mexico.

Charlie has proposed a special session to put a constitutional amendment on the November ballot that would ban drilling in Florida’s waters. The leaders of the legislature are counting on income from selling drilling leases to close the humongous gap in next year’s budget while still pretending they aren’t raising taxes. They are hoping that everyone forgets about the oil spill by next Spring, so they don’t want to go on the record as supporting oil drilling while BP is still poisoning the Gulf.

Peaden said it was about politics, and this is a rare event – he’s right. Gaetz knows that the state doesn’t have any money, and couldn’t do much in the way of media unless BP ponied up the cash. Charlie really squeezed to get Visitflorida to steal from another campaign to put out the ads it did. Hell, Gaetz was the one who told the local media that BP hadn’t sent the cash, despite promises. Florida finally got the cash yesterday.

Because I am cursed, Gaetz is my state senator, and his spawn is my state representative.

Halliburton warned of a pressure build-up, but was told that later tests showed that the situation improved. It didn’t. McClatchy has the story: Gulf well ‘shouted’ warnings for hours before BP rig explosion

WASHINGTON — The crew of the Deepwater Horizon had a number of warning signs extending over five hours that conditions were worsening deep underwater before the oilrig exploded in the Gulf on April 20, BP’s own investigators told a House inquiry into the cause of the deadly accident.

Details of BP’s internal investigation provide fresh information about the extent of failures on the ill-fated rig, but the oil company’s inquiry skirts the central question: why were those warnings ignored?

BP is looking for a scapegoat for something that took place while a significant number of BP executives were on the rig. People need to remember that BP was holding a party on the rig when the “defecation impacted the ventilation”. The bosses were there.

This is BP’s own investigation confirming Halliburton’s statement. Yes, the cementing failed. It failed because it wasn’t designed to work without the drilling mud holding it in place until it finished curing.

But not for BP.

With the deep Gulf closed to fishing and no accurate information on where the oil that BP has been hiding with dispersants is actually located, the Pensacola News Journal reports that the Billfish tourney is a no go

The 40th annual Pensacola International Billfish Tournament is the latest casualty of the oil spill.

The tournament, which was to take place July 4 at Palafox Pier Marina, has been canceled because the federal government has closed most of the blue water fishing areas, the Pensacola Big Game Fishing Club announced Tuesday.

The tournament was held for four decades with no regard for “special weather events”, but BP’s cost cutting has killed it. It was a major event for deep-sea fishing fans and pulled a lot of people from all over to Pensacola for the Fourth of July celebration.

We’ll probably have to cancel the fireworks, as they are set off on barges off-shore for safety reasons. People will worry about starting a fire.

Y’all know I’m just a guy with a website, so what do I know. McClatchy talks to the Experts: Legal issues driving BP’s oil spill stance. They had to talk to “experts” because people with websites couldn’t just read the publicly available information and realize immediately that BP was taking its orders from their legal department. OTOH, the lawyers actually work for BP, while all of their technical people come from “body shops”.

Rick Outzen of the Independent News blogging at The Daily Beast has a BP memo that was part of the discovery when their refinery blew up in Texas and killed 15 workers. It shows the “fun loving” side of BP.

Melissa Block of All Things Considered was down in Louisiana’s Plaquemines Parish talking to fishermen about the effects of the spill.

If you listen pay attention to the end where a boat collecting water samples has come back. He has a bucket of water pulled up from the 30-foot bottom. The oil is on the bottom of the bucket under the water. That’s what the dispersant does, it makes the oil heavier than water so that it sinks and isn’t seen. Who cares about the oysters and crabs on the bottom? Who cares about the plants that the fish and turtles eat? No one can see it until the sea-life starts dying in what looks like clear water. Out of sight, out of mind.

I don’t think that people, including myself, have been calmly accessing what has occurred and what should be done. Too often when you see birds and eggs covered in oil, petroleum covered sea turtles washing up dead, dolphins beaching themselves, you become angry and want to drown boards of directors in their own oil. We must look at this logically to ascertain the correct actions to take.

The Miami Herald says that the Gulf oil spill has ‘perfect precedence’ in 1979 disaster. It was very close, but there was one difference – the water depth.

The Bay of Campeche is only 170 feet deep and has the warmest water in the Gulf. That difference accelerates the evaporation of the oil and increases the ability of the microbes to break it down. Admittedly, other than that the Ixtoc I, the worst accidental oil spill ever, and the Deepwater Horizon blow out followed the same script.

It was something that came to mind when the New York Times decided to print this profile, Expert Is Confident About Sealing Oil Well. Mr. Campbell’s “well yeller” schtick might impress the Times, but the Ixtoc I didn’t listen to Mr. Campbell’s mentor, Red Adair, and continued to flow after Mr. Adair’s attempts to cap it.

Every industry develops through experience what are known as “best practices”. These are the procedures that, if followed, almost guarantee success. The oil business has them and if they had been followed there is a high probability that this accident would never have happened. The record shows a series of things that were done to speed up the process of switching the well from the drilling mode to the production mode. It is fairly obvious that if regulations were written requiring that “best practices” be used when drilling off the coast, the number of spills would be radically reduced.

So, we should require “best practices” be used and continue drilling, right? No, we should ban drilling.

When you look at the abysmal record of those charged with regulating drilling it is obvious that government regulations are not going to work. The oil companies are going to do whatever they want to maximize short term profits and don’t care about fines. If they were interested in the future they would already be using “best practices” to safely create wells that would be productive. The people in charge are only concerned with the price of the stock in their portfolios, and don’t have any reason to be concerned with the long term survival of the company. The management of BP has proved this repeatedly.

Banning drilling off the coast is the only way to prevent what has happened. The oil companies have repeatedly demonstrated that they can’t be trusted and won’t follow the regulations. Banning them is all that is left.

Wikipedia on A.B. “Tony” Hayward, CEO of BP:

Hayward has stated that his job might be at risk as a result of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, admitting that “We made a few little mistakes early on.” Hayward also called the oil spill “relatively tiny” in comparison with the size of the Gulf of Mexico. During an interview with UK based satellite news television channel Sky News, broadcast on May 17th, 2010 Hayward stated that the environmental impact of the gulf spill will likely be “very very modest.”

McClatchy notes that BP has a long record of legal, ethical violations. [When did corporations have ethics to violate?]

Even the AP is taking notice that BP had a key role in the Exxon Valdez disaster. BP’s role was to screw up so badly in the first 24 hours that Exxon felt compelled to get involved before things got any worse. BP brought the same level of “expertise” to the Gulf.

McClatchy notes that BP’s plans were so bad that Jindal sounding alarm as oil bypasses booms in Louisiana. The oil got to the Louisiana wetlands because the booms weren’t deployed where they were needed, and weren’t maintained. Booms actually will stop floating oil, so they obviously weren’t in place.

The Orlando Sentinel looks at the “why”: Documents show BP chose a less-expensive, less-reliable method for completing well in Gulf oil spill. The key words are “BP chose”. BP was the one making the decisions that others carried out.

If you read the material at the links, this should come as no surprise: BP internal probe focuses on other companies’ work as cause of explosion, oil spill. Halliburton knew it was going to happen and has been covering itself from the beginning which is why they had data recorders on that well. That would indicate that they expected trouble and wanted proof to back up their testimony.

Towel Day

The EPA should go to Federal Court and apply for a cease and desist order against BP for polluting the Gulf of Mexico. If BP fails to stop the flow, they will be fined every day until they stop.

It has been obvious for some time that BP has no real interest in stopping the flow, only in recovering what oil they can from the gusher. You have to wonder if there is an insurance company somewhere that will go bankrupt trying to cover the costs.

Thad Allen: Only BP has expertise to stop oil spill

WASHINGTON — The U.S. official leading the response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill said Sunday that only BP had the expertise to plug the gaping hole in its deepwater well and that he trusted the oil company was doing its best.

The comments by Adm. Thad Allen, the commandant of the Coast Guard, signaled that the U.S. government wouldn’t take a larger role in stopping the five-week-old spill even as frustration in the Gulf coast grows over the Obama administration’s policy of letting BP run the cleanup.

BP rents its expertise, it doesn’t own it. It leases everything and uses contract workers, like all major corporations. Transocean owned the rig, but it is doubtful that many of the crew on the rig worked for Transocean, as most oil rig employees are considered independent contractors and get their jobs through third party “body shops”.

If BP was so competent, why didn’t their crack team realize immediately that the BOP plans they received weren’t for the configuration used on the Deepwater Horizon? If they are such masterful performers, how did they permit a device with a dead battery and leaking hydraulic line be put under a mile of water?

And the Pensacola city council isn’t going to take it any more.

Rick Outzen has the outline in Tempers flare at City Council

The Pensacola City Council cut off BP Civic Affairs Director Liz Castro three pages into her PowerPoint presentation after the community liaison failed to answer simple question about the boom decontamination operation BP wants to establish at Pensacola Shipyards on Bayou Chico.

Ms Castro didn’t even know if the Florida Department of Environmental Protection had issued a permit for this operation, and she wanted the council to approve it. The council is wasting its time even considering the issue if DEP hasn’t given its approval.

I would think that the council is of the opinion that, since the oil hasn’t reached Pensacola, it would be stupid to start importing it, and there has been a hell of a lot of money spent cleaning up Bayou Chico from past abuse.

There is another problem with some of what BP is trying to do, and that is the Florida Sunshine Law. If they take the entire council on a tour of their operation, the media has to go along and a record has to be kept, which I feel sure would make BP unhappy. You have to understand that the people of Florida assume that politicians are crooks, so they demand written records and public access to any meetings where something may be decided.