Oil Leak at Gulf of Mexico Oil Well

[Guest Greg Palast]

Where was BP's containment barge and response crew? Why was the containment boom laid so damn late, too late and too little? Why is it that the US Navy is hauling in 12 miles of rubber boom and fielding seven skimmers, instead of BP?

 

Last year, CEO Hayward boasted that, despite increased oil production in exotic deep waters, he had cut BP's costs by an extra one billion dollars a year. Now we know how he did it.

 

As chance would have it, I was meeting last week with Louisiana lawyer Daniel Becnel Jr. when word came in of the platform explosion. Daniel represents oil workers on those platforms; now, he'll represent their bereaved families. The Coast Guard called him. They had found the emergency evacuation capsule floating in the sea and were afraid to open it and disturb the cooked bodies.

 

I wonder if BP painted the capsule green, like they paint their gas stations.

 

Becnel, yesterday by phone from his office from the town of Reserve, Louisiana, said the spill response crews were told they weren't needed because the company had already sealed the well. Like everything else from BP mouthpieces, it was a lie.

 

In the end, this is bigger than BP and its policy of cheaping out and skiving the rules. This is about the anti-regulatory mania, which has infected the American body politic. While the tea baggers are simply its extreme expression, US politicians of all stripes love to attack "the little bureaucrat with the fat rule book." It began with Ronald Reagan and was promoted, most vociferously, by Bill Clinton and the head of Clinton's deregulation committee, one Al Gore.

 

Americans want government off our backs ... that is, until a folding crib crushes the skull of our baby, Toyota accelerators speed us to our death, banks blow our savings on gambling sprees and crude oil smothers the Mississippi.

 

Then, suddenly, it's, "Where was hell was the government? Why didn't the government do something to stop it?"

 

The answer is because government took you at your word they should get out of the way of business, that business could be trusted to police itself. It was only last month that BP, lobbying for new deepwater drilling, testified to Congress that additional equipment and inspection wasn't needed.

 

You should meet some of these little bureaucrats with the fat rule books. Like Dan Lawn, the inspector from the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, who warned and warned and warned, before the Exxon Valdez grounding, that BP and Alyeska were courting disaster in their arrogant disregard of the rule book. In 2006, I printed his latest warnings about BP's culture of negligence. When the choice is between Lawn's rule book and a bag of tea, Lawn's my man.

 

This just in: Becnel tells me that one of the platform workers has informed him that the BP well was apparently deeper than the 18,000 feet depth reported. BP failed to communicate that additional depth to Halliburton crews, who, therefore, poured in too small a cement cap for the additional pressure caused by the extra depth. So, it blew.

 

Why didn't Halliburton check? "Gross negligence on everyone's part," said Becnel. Negligence driven by penny-pinching, bottom-line squeezing. BP says its worker is lying. Someone's lying here, man on the platform or the company that has practiced prevarication from Alaska to Louisiana.

[Guest David X.]

Louisiana Fishermen waiting for help from BP after the disaster. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who has been scathing of BP's response, warned on Saturday that his state's "way of life" is under threat as fishermen and coastal communities struggling back to their feet after 2005's Hurricane Katrina brace for yet more hardship.

 

[Guest HUMAN]

Law if I want to read the news? Then I will go to the news links. Unlike you I posted "before any of the news organizations did" who was in charge of this investigation.

 

http://www.mms.gov/offshore/

 

But if you want to repeat what the white house is saying? Go for it.

 

At least I educate the folks who read these posts.

 

Hey!! I got friends who are Hardcore Democrats and they are going back into politics.

They came to me for advice as to how to get back in, and I gave it to them.

 

Do I want the ones that I know back in? NO

 

Why? Because they really keep me honest, but I also keep them honest and the real winners in all of this WILL BE the American People.

 

Are they Good at what they can do? Oh Dear God!! Yes.

 

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Press Briefing by Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, 5/5/10

 

Q And on the oil spill, Senator Reid has said he would support a cap for liability of $10 billion. Is that a number that the White House would support, as well?

 

MR. GIBBS: I think $10 billion was in the legislation that Senator Menendez and others introduced on Monday. After I got the question here about the $75 million cap for -- obviously the three exceptions that we talked about, willful misconduct, gross negligence and not paying attention to -- or in violation of federal regulations that removes that cap -- OMB was working on -- in the process of working with the Hill on legislation to lift that cap.

 

I have not gotten from them a number whether it would be $10 billion or something in that neighborhood. We would be in favor of significantly -- lifting that cap, a cap put in place in the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 so at least 20 years old.

 

Q So you don't have a specific number?

 

MR. GIBBS: I don't have a specific number. I would reiterate, Jeff, that as the President said, BP is going to get a bill for the recovery, the cleanup and the damages cost.

 

Q Robert, does the White House believe it was a mistake for this categorical exemption to be granted to BP for Deepwater Horizon? MR. GIBBS: That’s part of the investigation. I don’t know the answer.

 

Q Okay. So that’s something that you’re looking into presently?

 

MR. GIBBS: I would say -- as the President asked Secretary Salazar to undertake a 30-day review of what happened, that would certainly be part of the process under which he would evaluate it.

 

Q Ed Markey said yesterday -- I'm quoting him here directly -- “I'm of the opinion that boosterism breeds complacency and complacency breeds disaster. That, in my opinion, is what happened.” Do you have any reaction to that? And he’s saying there was something complacent about the federal regulators, meaning Minerals Management Service, dealing with this particular granting of the exemption.

 

MR. GIBBS: I'll be honest with you, Major, I think it would be premature to know -- I'm unaware that we know exactly what happened, and I wouldn’t want to comment on that until we had a sense of exactly what happened.

 

Q -- happened?

 

MR. GIBBS: Again, I don’t know that it’s the -- I mean, again, you heard Secretary Hayes and others say that these -- that there were individual inspections of blowout preventers and rigs very recently. So I think that -- I think I'd wait until we had something more concrete from Secretary Salazar as to making a determination on that.

 

Suffice to say, though, that would certainly be part of, as I said, his review.

 

Q Some have noted that while senator and while running for President, Senator Obama received $77,000 in contributions from BP. Taking note of that --

 

MR. GIBBS: From employees.

 

Q From employees, and also the BP PAC.

 

MR. GIBBS: The President --

 

Q Not -- as a senator, he received PAC contributions; obviously not as a candidate. To any who might see that as a part of this equation, you would say what?

 

MR. GIBBS: I'm sorry?

 

Q Receiving money and a regulatory decision at the Interior Department during his presidency.

 

MR. GIBBS: I would say that’s silly and ridiculous.

[Luke_Wilbur]

Understand what the source of the investigation has to say.

 

On April 20, a fire and explosion occurred onboard our semisubmersible drilling rig Deepwater Horizon, working approximately 41 miles offshore Louisiana on Mississippi Canyon block 252. Of the 126-member crew, 115 were safely evacuated. Despite exhaustive rescue efforts, eleven crew members lost their lives, nine of which were Transocean employees. Our entire Transocean family has been saddened by this tragic event and our thoughts and prayers remain with all who have been affected by this horrible tragedy.

 

http://www.deepwater...ain/Home-1.html

 

I pray that our Dear Lord, our Almighty Creator help us all in this time of crisis.

 

There have been no conclusive statements on who, what, when, where, why.

 

We must come together and find the truth.

 

We have a Duty to protect our Constitutional rights as Citizens of this great country., only rumors.

 

This is a time when need to search and find the Truth together.

 

Not for gain, but for Our Country.

 

Tom Brokow called our Grandparents the Greatest Generation. They saved the world from Facism, and Industrial Domination.

 

I know what they made is built to last. What we get now is junk that breaks fast.

 

The Event Horizen oil rig was not made in America.

 

The Event Horizen was made in North Korea.

 

The Event Horizen oil rig was not managed in America.

 

The profits are leased out to a British Company.

 

Let's get to the source of this so taxpayers do not have to pay for this mess.

 

If we do it is our own DAMN fault.

 

 

Resources:

 

• For information about the response effort, visit www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com.

• To contact the Deepwater Horizon Joint Information Center, call (985) 902-5231 (985) 902-5231.

• To volunteer, or to report oiled shoreline, call (866) 448-5816 (866) 448-5816. Volunteer opportunities can also be found here.

• To submit your vessel as a vessel of opportunity skimming system, or to submit alternative response technology, services, or products, call 281-366-5511 281-366-5511.

• To report oiled wildlife, call (866) 557-1401 (866) 557-1401. Messages will be checked hourly.

• For information about validated environmental air and water sampling results, visit www.epa.gov/bpspill.

• For National Park Service updates about potential park closures, resources at risk, and NPS actions to protect vital park space and wildlife, visit http://www.nps.gov/aboutus/oil-spill-response.htm.

• To file a claim, or report spill-related damage, call BP’s helpline at (800) 440-0858 (800) 440-0858. A BP fact sheet with additional information is available here. For those who have already pursued the BP claims process and are not satisfied with BP’s resolution, can call the Coast Guard at (800) 280-7118 (800) 280-7118. More information about what types of damages are eligible for compensation under the Oil Pollution Act as well as guidance on procedures to seek that compensation can be found here.
   
   
   
   
   
  

[Guest LAW]

What is wrong with letting people know the statements of the Executive Branch or any agency? This information needs for distributed to everyone. You can go ahead and just be a pundit. No one is stopping you.

 

The head of BP Group told CNN's Brian Todd on April 28 that the accident could have been prevented, and focused blame on rig owner Transocean.

 

Transocean is the second-largest offshore drilling contractor in the world (by market cap). In the third quarter of 2009, the company owned 136 mobile offshore drilling platforms, including 42 high-specification floaters, 26 midwater floaters, 10 high-specification jackups, and 55 standard jackups. Transocean's rigs are floating, mobile drillships that the company rents, along with the equipment and personnel needed for operations, to oil and gas companies at a daily rate. The company manufactures drilling rigs for all depths, including deepwater, and has ten ultra-deepwater vessels in production - and it has higher dayrates and a vastly larger fleet than competitors like Noble and Diamond Offshore Drilling.

 

The hot trend in the oil industry is deepwater drilling - with shallower wells yielding less, oil and gas companies are paying large amounts of money to oilfield services companies who can drill where they previously could not. In 2009, oil prices took a dip, due to the financial crisis, averaging $62 per barrel, and unfortunately, as oil prices drop, demand for deepwater rigs slows, and even as day-rates drop, more and more deepwater rigs will sit idle. However, oil prices are rising again, averaging at $79 per barrel during first quarter 2010. Transocean has 48, with 8 ultra-deepwater rigs in construction.

 

Trans Ocean Hotline 1-832-587-8554

[Guest DCpages]

Attorney General Holder Dispatches Justice Department Team to Monitor British Petroleum Oil Spill

 

Attorney General Eric Holder announced today that he is dispatching a team of attorneys from multiple divisions within the Justice Department to New Orleans to meet with the U.S. Attorney and response teams and to monitor the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

 

"The British Petroleum oil spill has already cost lives and created a major environmental incident," said Attorney General Holder. "The Justice Department stands ready to make available every resource at our disposal to vigorously enforce the laws that protect the people who work and reside near the Gulf, the wildlife, the environment and the American taxpayers."

 

The team will be led by Ignacia S. Moreno, Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division, and Tony West, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division, and will include relevant United States Attorneys. The combined group from the Department plans to make a site visit and meet with representatives from federal agencies working on the response.

 

A coordinated response continues with a comprehensive oil well intervention and spill-response plan following the April 22, 2010 sinking of the Transocean Deepwater Horizon drilling rig 130 miles southeast of New Orleans. More than 1,000 personnel from federal, state and local agencies are involved in the response effort both on and offshore, with additional resources being mobilized as needed.

[Guest CSA]

UK SAFETY officials warned Transocean in 2006 about a defect in one of its rig's blowout preventers – the same safety device being blamed in the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

 

Oil is continuing to spill into the Gulf of Mexico from a well leak caused by an explosion on Transocean’s Deepwater Horizon rig last month, which has been linked with the failure of its blowout preventer.

 

The fatal blast took place four years after the UK’s Health & Safety Authority issued an improvement notice to Transocean relating to one of its other rigs.

 

“The multipurpose tool used in blowout preventer pressure testing was not so constructed as to be suitable for the purpose for which it was provided: and failed in service, exposing persons to risks that endangered their safety on 29th April 2006,” the authority said in the notice dated 9 June 2006.

 

The company successfully complied with the notice by the authority's November deadline.

Earlier that year, the authority also issued a notice pointing out that the removal of the rig’s forward secondary de-ballast pump had "prejudiced the integrity of the installation, and you have failed to put in place suitable arrangements for ensuring the pump is replaced in timely manner.”

 

Geneva-based Transocean also complied with this notice.

 

Meanwhile, Transocean said yesterday that the US Department of Justice has asked it to preserve evidence from the explosion, fire and sinking.

 

In addition to the DoJ, the Department of Homeland Security and the Interior Department also investigating the disaster, the company said in a public filing, while the US House of Representatives and Senate have asked it to participate in hearings.

 

As for BP, its BP spokesman Robert Wine told Fairplay: "A blowout feeder on the seabed didn't manage to stop a surge of pressure from coming up from the well in the Gulf of Mexico. We don't know why it happened.

 

"We have been doing our best to respond to the incident from a safety-at-sea point-of-view."

[Guest Wile-E-Coyote]

The old three legged floating units always sank when one leg flooded.

[Guest LAW]

On May 4, 2010, remotely operated vehicles capped the riser pipe that used to lead from the well to the rig with a valve. While this stopped one of the three leaks, oil continues to enter the Gulf of Mexico at a rate of approximately 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons) per day. Additional efforts to contain the spill include:

 

* The testing and monitoring of a technique that injects dispersants at the oil’s source (5,000 feet below the surface) to tell whether the sub-sea dispersants are having an effect and to ensure effects in the water column are not worse than those from oil.

* The drilling of a relief or cut-off well to intercept and isolate the leaking oil well. The drilling is estimated to take three months.

* The placement of a containment dome, a large cofferdam-like structure that collects oil at the sea floor and funnels it for collection at the surface. The dome was deployed on May 5, 2010, and will take about a week to be fully rigged and functional.

[Guest HUMAN]

Fine with that. You got a link to share with all of us on that one "Law"?

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What is wrong with letting people know the statements of the Executive Branch or any agency? This information needs for distributed to everyone.

[Guest LAW]

Here is link to all the MMS Gulf of Mexico Region

Planning Areas and Active Leases

January 22, 2010

 

http://www.gomr.mms.gov/homepg/lsesale/mau_gom_pa.pdf

 

Can you enlighten us with the lease contract?

[Guest HUMAN]

By the way; I already posted in here usa.gov

 

Lets see what you got?

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Fine with that. You got a link to share with all of us on that one "Law"?

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What is wrong with letting people know the statements of the Executive Branch or any agency? This information needs for distributed to everyone.

[Guest HUMAN]

Okay Law, tell you what I will do. I will leave my ego at the door; concentrate on getting America back to work.

 

Will you do the same?

[Guest greezen]

Here is link to all the MMS Gulf of Mexico Region

Planning Areas and Active Leases

January 22, 2010

 

http://www.gomr.mms.gov/homepg/lsesale/mau_gom_pa.pdf

 

Can you enlighten us with the lease contract?

 

NH16-10 MISSISSIPPI CANYON is the answer to your question.

 

Here is a real good NOAA map that I was looking at:

 

http://deepwaterhorizon.noaa.gov/bookshelf/1923_TMF24-2010-05-06-1300.pdf

[Guest Chewy Shrimper]

Mississippi Canyon Block 252 is located within the designated Eglin Water Test Area EWTA-1F near Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. The well head is about 48 miles from LA shoreline. It is near Port Fourchon, LA. The C-Port Fourchon is owned by Chouest. The next closest is Houma, LA. That area is known to have alot of ship wrecks. I have heard that the US Army corp of engineers and LA. government officials are wanting to open the flow of Mississippi river to push the oil away from their shores. Will this make the containment more difficult?

[Guest DEP]

As a native to Washington. I found your web site and thought you might like this information

 

Current Situation:

• Unified Command estimates release rate of oil from Deepwater Horizon at 5,000 barrels per day.

• This event has been designated a Spill of National Significance.

• Unified Command continues with a comprehensive oil well intervention and spill response plan following the April 22 sinking of the Transocean Deepwater Horizon drilling rig 130 miles southeast of New Orleans.

• Controlled burns successfully burned up to 1,000 gallons of oil yesterday. Additional burns will be conducted today.

• 6,700 personnel are working the on and offshore response, with an additional 2,500+ trained volunteers.

• To date, approximately 1.2 million barrels of an oil-water mix has been recovered.

• Response vessels used: 270

• Dispersant (in gallons): 190,285 deployed/ 55,611 available

• Oil containment boom (barrier in feet): 788,171 deployed/ 1,460,724 available.

• 10 staging areas are in place to protect sensitive shorelines:

o AL – Dauphin Island

o FL – Pensacola

o LA – Port Fourchon, Port Sulphur, Shell Beach, Slidell, Venice

o MS – Biloxi, Gulfport, Pascagoula

• The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) has issued a Declaration of Regional Emergency, allowing motor carriers transporting response-related materials exemption from hours of service requirements.

• NOAA restricted offshore fishing (more than 20 miles off the coast) in Federal Waters between the mouth of the Mississippi River to Pensacola for a minimum of 10 days.

Florida Specific:

• The 72-hour NOAA trajectory shows no oil landfall in Florida.

• Oil Containment Boom (in feet)

o Pensacola: 145,200 deployed/ 20,000 staged/ 60,000 ordered

o Panama City: 45,000 staged/ 53,000 ordered

• In accordance with established plans, protective booming is now being deployed in the coastal areas of Escambia and Santa Rosa counties.

• There are 285 British Petroleum (BP) and contract personnel working on the effort in the Pensacola area.

• BP issued a 25 million dollar block grant to Florida, which is being used for booming costs.

• An additional unified command planning section is established in the U.S. Coast Guard’s Sector St. Petersburg for the west coast of Florida. A virtual planning section is set up for Sector Key West.

 

 

Okaloosa County, Florida is looking for volunteers with boats to help place booms in hopes of protecting the coastline from oil.

 

Those able to help are asked to contact BP at (425) 745-8017.

 

As many as 500 people could be hired to fill positions necessary for oil spill cleanup.

 

Advanced Employment Solutions has said it will be hiring to fill general labor, crew leader, site supervisor, safety representative and other positions. Jobs pay between $10 and $18 an hour and may require extensive travel, a news release said.

 

A Workforce Escarosa spokeswoman said approximately 1,700 applicants had shown up to fill the general labor positions available.

 

Advanced Employment Solutions is presently focusing its search for people with HAZWOPER and TWIC certifications.

 

Workforce Escarosa, based out of Pensacola, will host hiring events at the Pensacola one-stop building, 850-607-8700 and Century one-stop, 526-6259, through Wednesday from 9 a.m. until 1 p.m. http://www.workforceescarosa.com

 

See job descriptions at http://www.employflorida.com and see job search numbers: 9481666, 9481677, 9481718, and 9481331.

 

Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill #4-Jobs

[LAW]

Here is an updated graphic depiction of BP's plan to drill two wells designed to intersect the original wellbore above the oil reservoir and allow heavy fluid to be pumped into the well and stop the oil from flowing, May 6, 2010. The operation is in response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill following the explosion, April 20, 2010. Graphic provided by BP.

 

[Guest Faith]

For those who want you can call 866-448-5816 and get on the volunteer list to help with the clean up. lets protect our beaches and get this resolved so that we can minimize the effect from this tragedy.

[Guest Sue Lang]

We can all learn from this event and work collectively to keep it from happening again. My thoughts and prayers go out to the families who lost loved ones in this event.

[Guest Misty]

I wish more people were getting actively involved. We are going to need thousands of people to find animals and clean shoreline.

[Guest Pete]

We need to think about improving the the hundreds of other drilling rigs that are out there.

[Guest greenzen]

Here is a photo of Members of Elastec/American Marine Inc., a marine science engineering company, prepare to deploy a lighting agent on oil contained in a boom, May 5, 2010. The controlled burn was conducted by contracted fishing vessels working in partnership with the U.S. Coast Guard, BP, and other federal agencies to aid in preventing the spread of oil following the April 20 explosion on the Mobile Offshore Drilling Unit Deepwater Horizon. U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Jeffery Tilghman Williams.

 

[Guest Martin Creech]

I think BP and our government is doing a great job considering. But we need to really start thinking about manufacturing and managing these rigs again. That is the only way we will really know how safe these vessels are.

[Guest Luke]

Here is an AP raw video showing workers easing a giant concrete-and-steel box into the Gulf of Mexico late Thursday, starting the long process of lowering the contraption over the blown-out oil well.

 

[Guest HUMAN]

http://www.tescocorp.com/bins/index.asp

 

Tesco Corporation is an Industry leader in the development and commercialization of drilling technology and services. The Corporation’s mission is to change the way wells are drilled; by reducing drilling risk and increasing operational efficiency TESCO generates real value for its customers.