Super Moderator
Location: essex ma
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back to oil in the gulf of mexico:
so thanks in part to the reactive regulatory system and in part to obstruction and in part to the amount of time it takes to assemble a coherent research team and locate funding and all that, the implications of the following are not at all obvious:
Quote:
On the Surface, Gulf Oil Spill Is Vanishing Fast; Concerns Stay
By JUSTIN GILLIS and CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
The oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico appears to be dissolving far more rapidly than anyone expected, a piece of good news that raises tricky new questions about how fast the government should scale back its response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
The immense patches of surface oil that covered thousands of square miles of the gulf after the April 20 oil rig explosion are largely gone, though sightings of tar balls and emulsified oil continue here and there.
Reporters flying over the area Sunday spotted only a few patches of sheen and an occasional streak of thicker oil, and radar images taken since then suggest that these few remaining patches are quickly breaking down in the warm surface waters of the gulf.
John Amos, president of SkyTruth, an environmental advocacy group that sharply criticized the early, low estimates of the size of the BP leak, noted that no oil had gushed from the well for nearly two weeks.
“Oil has a finite life span at the surface,” Mr. Amos said Tuesday, after examining fresh radar images of the slick. “At this point, that oil slick is really starting to dissipate pretty rapidly.”
The dissolution of the slick should reduce the risk of oil killing more animals or hitting shorelines. But it does not end the many problems and scientific uncertainties associated with the spill, and federal leaders emphasized this week that they had no intention of walking away from those problems any time soon.
The effect on sea life of the large amounts of oil that dissolved below the surface is still a mystery. Two preliminary government reports on that issue have found concentrations of toxic compounds in the deep sea to be low, but the reports left many questions, especially regarding an apparent decline in oxygen levels in the water.
And understanding the effects of the spill on the shorelines that were hit, including Louisiana’s coastal marshes, is expected to occupy scientists for years. Fishermen along the coast are deeply skeptical of any declarations of success, expressing concern about the long-term effects of the chemical dispersants used to combat the spill and of the submerged oil, particularly on shrimp and crab larvae that are the foundation of future fishing seasons.
After 86 days of oil gushing into the gulf, the leak was finally stopped on July 15, when BP managed to install a tight-fitting cap on the well a mile below the sea floor, then gradually closed a series of valves. Still, the well has not been permanently sealed. Until that step is completed in several weeks, the risk remains that the leak will resume.
Scientists said the rapid dissipation of the surface oil was probably due to a combination of factors. The gulf has an immense natural capacity to break down oil, which leaks into it at a steady rate from thousands of natural seeps. Though none of the seeps is anywhere near the size of the Deepwater Horizon leak, they do mean that the gulf is swarming with bacteria that can eat oil.
The winds from two storms that blew through the gulf in recent weeks, including a storm over the weekend that disintegrated before making landfall, also appear to have contributed to a rapid dispersion of the oil. Then there was the response mounted by BP and the government, the largest in history, involving more than 4,000 boats attacking the oil with skimming equipment, controlled surface burns and other tactics.
Some of the compounds in the oil evaporate, reducing their impact on the environment. Jeffrey W. Short, a former government scientist who studied oil spills and now works for the environmental advocacy group Oceana, said that as much as 40 percent of the oil in the gulf might have simply evaporated once it reached the surface.
An unknown percentage of the oil would have been eaten by bacteria, essentially rendering the compounds harmless and incorporating them into the food chain. But other components of the oil have most likely turned into floating tar balls that could continue to gum up beaches and marshes, and may represent a continuing threat to some sea life. A three-mile by four-mile band of tar balls was discovered off the Louisiana coast on Tuesday.
“Less oil on the surface does not mean that there isn’t oil beneath the surface, however, or that our beaches and marshes are not still at risk,” Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said in a briefing on Tuesday. “We are extremely concerned about the short-term and long-term impacts to the gulf ecosystem.”
Thad W. Allen, the retired Coast Guard admiral who leads the government’s response, has emphasized that boats are still skimming some oil at the surface. Admiral Allen said the risk of shoreline oiling might continue for at least several more weeks.
“While we would all like to see the area come back as quickly as it can,” he said, “I think we all need to understand that we, at least in the history of this country, we’ve never put this much oil into the water. And we need to take this very seriously.”
Still, it is becoming clear that the Obama administration, in conjunction with BP, will soon have to make decisions about how quickly to begin scaling down the large-scale — and expensive — response effort. That is a touchy issue, and not just for environmental reasons.
The response itself has become the principal livelihood for thousands of fishermen and other workers whose lives were upended by the oil spill. More than 1,400 fishing boats and other vessels have been hired to help deploy coastal barriers and perform other cleanup tasks. Those fishermen are unconvinced that the gradual disappearance of oil on the surface means they will be able to return to work soon.
“Surface is one thing; you know that’s going to dissipate and all,” said Mickey Johnson, who owns a shrimp boat in Bayou La Batre, Ala., pointing out that shrimpers trawl near the sea floor.
“Our whole big concern has always been the bottom,” Mr. Johnson said.
The scientific picture of what has happened at the bottom of the gulf remains murky, though Dr. Lubchenco said in Tuesday’s briefing that federal scientists had determined that the oil was primarily in the water column and not sitting on the sea floor.
States have been pushing the federal authorities to move quickly to reopen gulf waters to commercial fishing; through most of the spill, about a third of the United States part of the gulf has been closed. The Food and Drug Administration is trying to speed its testing, while promising continued diligence to be sure no tainted seafood gets to market.
Even if the seafood of the gulf is deemed safe by the authorities, resistance to buying it may linger among the public, an uncertainty that defies measurement and is on the minds of residents along the entire Gulf Coast.
“How do we get people to buy our food again?” Mr. Johnson asked.
While leaders on the Gulf Coast would welcome moves by the federal government that could put residents back to work, they are also wary of any premature declaration of victory. Officials in Grand Isle, La., met with the Coast Guard after the well had been capped to insist that no response equipment be removed until six weeks had passed.
Rear Adm. Paul F. Zukunft of the Coast Guard, coordinator of the response on the scene, said any decisions about scaling down the effort would be made only by consensus, and only after an analysis of the continuing threat from oil in each region of the gulf.
“I think it’s going to happen one day at a time,” Admiral Zukunft said.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/us...ef=global-home
an alternate version, with more weight on noaa:
washingtonpost.com
now this is quite strange. and none of us are in a position to second-guess anything, so basically we're all kinda....um....what?
the surface-level disappearance of oil originating a mile below the surface that's been heavily doused with a dispersant of controversial toxicity...it's just curious.
and you know other things sometimes have one appearance on the surface and another below. so it is that the captains of industry apparently plan on transferring the cost of compensating victims of this fiasco back onto you and i by deducting the amount from their corporate tax return.
Quote:
BP to cut U.S. tax bill by $10 billion because of losses in gulf spill
By Jia Lynn Yang
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 27, 2010; 11:56 PM
BP said Tuesday that it plans to cut its U.S. tax bill by $9.9 billion, or about half the amount pledged to aid victims of the disaster, by deducting costs related to the oil spill.
A portion of that could be refunded from taxes BP paid in earlier years.
The company disclosed its intentions as part of its second-quarter earnings report, in which it said it would record a $32.2 billion charge to reflect the costs of the spill.
Under U.S. corporate tax law, companies can take credits on up to 35 percent of their losses.
The credit for BP could mean, however, that taxpayers will indirectly foot part of the bill for the $20 billion fund that BP established to compensate people and businesses harmed by the disaster.
On Tuesday, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said U.S. taxpayers would not be responsible for the cost of the spill. When asked whether BP should be claiming a credit, Gibbs said, "I don't think anybody would prefer that they do that."
Gibbs would not say whether the president would press BP on the tax deduction. He said, though, that "there are tax laws in this country that have been written for quite some time."
Lawmakers called for BP to renounce any claim for a refund. "I call on BP to show, for once, a glimmer of humanity in this situation and halt its claim for this tax break immediately," said Rep. Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.).
Policymakers crafted the tax code this way so that companies can spread their profits and losses over more than just one calendar year. Let's say a company makes $100 billion one year and pays the U.S. corporate tax rate of 35 percent, or $35 billion. The next year, the economy goes south, and the company loses $100 billion. Over those two years, the company made nothing but still paid $35 billion in taxes.
From the tax code's perspective, the company overpaid in previous years. To rectify this, companies can claim a credit, also at the 35 percent rate. Companies can seek a refund for taxes paid from the previous two years or, if there's money leftover, carry the credit forward up to 20 years.
"What they're trying to do is take the arbitrariness of what you did this particular year over the life of the company, or over a long period of the life of the company," said Douglas Shackelford, a tax professor at the University of North Carolina.
It's how a company such as General Electric, which reported $408 million in losses at its U.S. operations last year, not only paid nothing in U.S. corporate income taxes last year but also received a refund.
Robert Willens, a corporate tax expert, said it's unlikely that BP will give up its tax credit, even if faced with public opposition. The company voluntarily established the $20 billion escrow account for victims of the spill and never promised the government that it would not seek any deductions associated with the spill, he said.
This month, Goldman Sachs promised not to ask for tax credits associated with the $535 million it paid in penalties to the Securities and Exchange Commission to settle a fraud charge. But as Willens says, that was specifically negotiated in Goldman's agreement with the SEC.
"The cost associated with the cleanup and the damage and all that -- that's just another cost of doing business from the tax perspective," Shackelford said. "It's viewed no different from paying salaries or other costs they might incur."
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washingtonpost.com
now isn't that special?
meanwhile in the investigation of (other) criminal activity, the nature of the petro-capitalist regulatory system is moving by degrees to the center of investigations. which is good. about time. conservatives have contempt for regulation, the bush administration was very conservative, so it follows that if you haven't got the votes or ambition to erase regulation, you can make them unenforcable by way of good old fashioned corruption.
Quote:
Criminal probe of oil spill to focus on 3 firms and their ties to regulators
By Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 28, 2010; A01
A team of federal investigators known as the "BP squad" is assembling in New Orleans to conduct a wide-ranging criminal probe that will focus on at least three companies and examine whether their cozy relations with federal regulators contributed to the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, according to law enforcement and other sources.
The squad at the FBI offices includes investigators from the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Coast Guard and other federal agencies, the sources said. In addition to BP, the firms at the center of the inquiry are Transocean, which leased the Deepwater Horizon rig to BP, and engineering giant Halliburton, which had finished cementing the well only 20 hours before the rig exploded April 20, sources said.
While it was known that investigators are examining potential violations of environmental laws, it is now clear that they are also looking into whether company officials made false statements to regulators, obstructed justice or falsified test results for devices such as the rig's failed blowout preventer. It is unclear whether any such evidence has surfaced.
One emerging line of inquiry, sources said, is whether inspectors for the Minerals Management Service, the federal agency charged with regulating the oil industry -- which is itself investigating the disaster -- went easy on the companies in exchange for money or other inducements. A series of federal audits has documented the MMS's close relationship with the industry.
"The net is wide," said one federal official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.
The Justice Department investigation -- announced in June by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and accompanied by parallel state criminal probes in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama -- is one of at least nine investigations into the worst oil spill in U.S. history.
Unlike the public hearings held last week in Kenner, La., by a federal investigatory panel, the criminal probe has operated in the shadows. But it could lead to large fines for the companies and jail time for executives if the government files charges and proves its case.
Justice Department officials declined to comment Tuesday. Holder, in an interview with CBS News this month, confirmed that investigators are conducting a broad probe. "There are a variety of entities and a variety of people who are the subjects of that investigation," Holder said.
In an additional avenue of inquiry, BP disclosed in a regulatory filing Tuesday that the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission are looking into "securities matters" relating to the spill, although no more details were included.
Scott Dean, a spokesman for London-based BP, said the company "will cooperate with any inquiry the Justice Department undertakes, just as we are doing in response to other inquiries that are ongoing."
Brian Kennedy, a spokesman for Transocean, a former U.S. firm now based in Switzerland, declined to comment, as did Teresa Wong, a spokeswoman for Houston-based Halliburton.
Halliburton informed its shareholders about the Justice Department probe in its July 23 quarterly report to securities regulators. It also noted that the department warned the company not to make "substantial" transfers of assets while the matter is under scrutiny.
The probe is in its early stages, with investigators digging through tens of thousands of documents turned over by the companies, beginning to interview company officials and trying to determine the basics of who was responsible for various operations on the rig.
Although lawyers familiar with the case expect that environmental-related charges -- which have a low burden of proof -- will be filed, some doubted that investigators can prove more serious violations such as lying or falsifying test results.
"That's hard to prove," said one lawyer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because details of the investigation are not public. "It's hard to show that somebody who could have died on the rig was malicious and reckless and intentionally did something that jeopardized their own life."
The emerging focus creates potentially awkward interactions on several levels. Investigators are probing companies, especially BP, which the government has been forced to work with in cleaning up the oil that cascaded into the gulf. And the former Minerals Management Service, which sources said has attracted the attention of criminal investigators, is helping to lead the federal panel that conducted last week's hearings in Louisiana.
Federal auditors have in recent years documented a culture at the MMS in which inspectors improperly accepted gifts from oil and gas companies, moved freely between industry and government and, in one instance, negotiated for a job with a company under inspection.
After the most recent investigation was released in May, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said he had asked his department's acting inspector general, Mary Kendall, to expand her inquiry to include whether MMS failed to adequately inspect the Deepwater Horizon rig or enforce federal standards.
One law enforcement official said criminal investigators will look for evidence that MMS inspectors were bribed or promised industry jobs in exchange for lenient treatment. "Every instinct I have tells me there ought to be numerous indictable cases in that connection between MMS and the industry," said this official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is unfolding.
Melissa Schwartz, a spokeswoman for the former MMS (now called the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement), declined to comment.
FBI agents and other investigators are working with prosecutors from the environmental crimes section of the Justice Department, along with local U.S. attorney's offices. Officials would not provide details about the new squad starting in the FBI's New Orleans office. Sources said it is known internally as "the BP squad," though it will examine all companies involved with the Deepwater rig.
After learning what is in the thousands of documents, investigators plan to "start trying to turn one witness against the other, get insider information," said the law enforcement official.
The official said that no decisions on criminal charges are imminent and that "you can bet on it being more than a year before any kind of indictment comes down."
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washingtonpost.com
meanwhile, at the oil drum:
The Oil Drum | BP's Deepwater Oil Spill - Restarting Progress - and Open Thread
things just get getting curiouser and curiouser.
__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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