Louisiana Oil Rig Fire / Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill - Page 8 - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

Ourcrazymodern? · 05-30-2010, 09:56 AM

Mine, too, roachboy. Demonizing the well to distract from our mistake will probably work, but I think Byron King should have analyzed his speech a little better. Hell, our President might have, as well. Natural processes will clean up the mess, in due course. Compensating our fellows will probably be impossible.

"How do you hurt a man who's lost everything? Give him back something broken."

silent_jay · 05-30-2010, 10:25 AM

Seems it's the next part of this 'plan' the Lower Marine Riser Package, that still isn't going to stop anything, but will contain 'most' of the oil. The relief wells are still their big hope, but they won't be done until some time in August, I still have no idea how some can call this a plan, all these seem to me are stabs in the dark, and they're just hoping one actually does something, sure seems like drilling relief wells while drilling the producing well makes sense, but I guess after the fact is the best 'plan'.

Quote:

BP started the "top kill" operations to stop the flow of oil from the MC252 well in the Gulf of Mexico at 1300 CDT on May 26, 2010.

The procedure was intended to stem the flow of oil and gas and ultimately kill the well by injecting heavy drilling fluids through the blow-out preventer on the seabed, down into the well.

Despite successfully pumping a total of over 30,000 barrels of heavy mud, in three attempts at rates of up to 80 barrels a minute, and deploying a wide range of different bridging materials, the operation did not overcome the flow from the well.

The Government, together with BP, have therefore decided to move to the next step in the subsea operations, the deployment of the Lower Marine Riser Package (LMRP) Cap Containment System.

The operational plan first involves cutting and then removing the damaged riser from the top of the failed Blow-Out Preventer (BOP) to leave a cleanly-cut pipe at the top of the BOP’s LMRP. The cap is designed to be connected to a riser from the Discoverer Enterprise drillship and placed over the LMRP with the intention of capturing most of the oil and gas flowing from the well. The LMRP cap is already on site and it is currently anticipated that it will be connected in about four days.

This operation has not been previously carried out in 5,000 feet of water and the successful deployment of the containment system cannot be assured.

Drilling of the first relief well continues and is currently at 12,090 feet. Drilling of the second relief well is temporarily suspended and is expected to recommence shortly from 8,576 feet.

Below is the BP press release:

BP Halts “Top Kill” Attempt; Lays Out Next Steps

BP announced that it will case its unsuccessful attempt to use the “top kill” technique to cap the well—a decision made under approval and consultation with federal government scientists and engineers, including Energy Secretary Steven Chu. BP will now cut off a kinked portion of the riser and attempt to lower a device over the area that will allow them to try and capture a substantial amount of the oil leaking out.

The President issued the following statement: Today, I’ve spoken with National Incident Commander Admiral Thad Allen, as well as Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, and senior White House advisors John Brennan and Carol Browner regarding the ongoing efforts to stop the BP oil spill. From the beginning, our concern has been that the surest way to stop the flow of oil – the drilling of relief wells – would take several months to complete. So engineers and experts have explored a variety of alternatives to stop the leak now. They had hoped that the top kill approach attempted this week would halt the flow of oil and gas currently escaping from the seafloor. But while we initially received optimistic reports about the procedure, it is now clear that it has not worked. Rear Admiral Mary Landry today directed BP to launch a new procedure whereby the riser pipe will be cut and a containment structure fitted over the leak.

This approach is not without risk and has never been attempted before at this depth. That is why it was not activated until other methods had been exhausted. It will be difficult and will take several days. It is also important to note that while we were hopeful that the top kill would succeed, we were also mindful that there was a significant chance it would not. And we will continue to pursue any and all responsible means of stopping this leak until the completion of the two relief wells currently being drilled.

As I said yesterday, every day that this leak continues is an assault on the people of the Gulf Coast region, their livelihoods, and the natural bounty that belongs to all of us. It is as enraging as it is heartbreaking, and we will not relent until this leak is contained, until the waters and shores are cleaned up, and until the people unjustly victimized by this manmade disaster are made whole.

The President Dispatches Top Officials to Return to the Gulf Region

At the direction of the President, Department of the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson and NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco will return to the Gulf region next week as they continue their work, aggressively responding to the BP oil spill.

These officials’ actions on scene will be coordinated by National Incident Commander Admiral Thad Allen, who is leading the administration-wide response and directing all interagency activities.

Administrator Jackson will make her fourth trip to the Gulf Coast to inspect coastline protection and cleanup activities and meet with community members to discuss ongoing efforts to mitigate the oil's impacts on public health and the environment. A native of the Gulf region, Administrator Jackson will spend a total of six days on the ground, visiting Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama to review plans for cleanup of oil-impacted wetlands and marshes, analyze scientific monitoring of dispersant use, and ensure that recovery and cleanup plans are proceeding quickly.

Secretary Salazar will make his eighth trip to the area to meet with top BP officials, federal personnel and government scientists in Houston to get a firsthand account of the on-scene direction and oversight of BP's efforts to cap the leaking well. He will also participate in discussions with state, local and business leaders to discuss the ways the administration is supporting their communities during this catastrophe.

Administrator Lubchenco will make her third visit to the affected area to meet with top government and independent scientists and engineers who are working with BP and coordinating efforts across the federal government to ensure the best science is used to assess and mitigate the BP oil spill’s impacts to the environment.

Visits by Senior Officials to the Affected Region Total 28

In total, senior administration officials have visited the region 28 times since BP's oil rig exploded on April 20—including trips by the President, National Incident Commander Admiral Thad Allen, Interior Secretary Salazar, EPA Administrator Jackson, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, NOAA Administrator Lubchenco and SBA Administrator Karen Mills.

Progress Continues in Drilling Relief Wells

The Development Driller III and Development Driller II continue to drill the first and second relief wells, respectively.

By the Numbers to Date:

* Personnel were quickly deployed and more than 20,000 are currently responding to protect the shoreline and wildlife.

* More than 1,400 vessels are responding on site, including skimmers, tugs, barges, and recovery vessels to assist in containment and cleanup efforts—in addition to dozens of aircraft, remotely operated vehicles, and multiple mobile offshore drilling units.

* Approximately 1.9 million feet of containment boom and 1.8 million feet of sorbent boom have been deployed to contain the spill—and approximately 390,000 feet of containment boom and 1.27 million feet of sorbent boom are available.

* Approximately 12.1 million gallons of an oil-water mix have been recovered.

* Approximately 910,000 gallons of total dispersant have been deployed—720,000 on the surface and 180,000 subsea. More than 450,000 gallons are available.

* 17 staging areas are in place and ready to protect sensitive shorelines, including: Dauphin Island, Ala., Orange Beach, Ala., Theodore, Ala., Panama City, Fla., Pensacola, Fla., Port St. Joe, Fla., St. Marks, Fla., Amelia, La., Cocodrie, La., Grand Isle, La., Shell Beach, La., Slidell, La., St. Mary, La.; Venice, La., Biloxi, Miss., Pascagoula, Miss., and Pass Christian, Miss.

BP Oil Spill: Top Kill Is Killed, Lower Marine Riser Package Next

Baraka_Guru · 05-30-2010, 10:34 AM

If only there were already a relief well and/or an acoustic switch on the blowout preventer.

Hindsight is 20/20, as it were, but foresight is still undervalued, unless you're Norway and Brazil.

silent_jay · 05-30-2010, 10:55 AM

A relief well already being drilled isn't really hindsight, to me at least, it's more common sense when drilling at depths such as that, I mean they obviously knew if anything went wrong, it would be a chore to seal the leak as any method attempted wouldn't have been tried at that depth before, and that any fix they tried would be more of a hail mary pass than an actual 'plan'. You are right though foresight is still undervalued, or it gets blinded by dollar signs.

Edit: Not sure if this has been posted before, just noticed it on another site:

Quote:

WASHINGTON — Internal documents from BP show that there were serious problems and safety concerns with the Deepwater Horizon rig far earlier than those the company described to Congress last week.

The problems involved the well casing and the blowout preventer, which are considered critical pieces in the chain of events that led to the disaster on the rig.

The documents show that in March, after several weeks of problems on the rig, BP was struggling with a loss of “well control.” And as far back as 11 months ago, it was concerned about the well casing and the blowout preventer.

On June 22, for example, BP engineers expressed concerns that the metal casing the company wanted to use might collapse under high pressure.

“This would certainly be a worst-case scenario,” Mark E. Hafle, a senior drilling engineer at BP, warned in an internal report. “However, I have seen it happen so know it can occur.”

The company went ahead with the casing, but only after getting special permission from BP colleagues because it violated the company’s safety policies and design standards. The internal reports do not explain why the company allowed for an exception. BP documents released last week to The Times revealed that company officials knew the casing was the riskier of two options.

Though his report indicates that the company was aware of certain risks and that it made the exception, Mr. Hafle, testifying before a panel on Friday in Louisiana about the cause of the rig disaster, rejected the notion that the company had taken risks.

“Nobody believed there was going to be a safety issue,” Mr. Hafle told a six-member panel of Coast Guard and Minerals Management Service officials.

“All the risks had been addressed, all the concerns had been addressed, and we had a model that suggested if executed properly we would have a successful job,” he said.

Mr. Hafle, asked for comment by a reporter after his testimony Friday about the internal report, declined to answer questions.

BP’s concerns about the casing did not go away after Mr. Hafle’s 2009 report.

In April of this year, BP engineers concluded that the casing was “unlikely to be a successful cement job,” according to a document, referring to how the casing would be sealed to prevent gases from escaping up the well.

The document also says that the plan for casing the well is “unable to fulfill M.M.S. regulations,” referring to the Minerals Management Service.

A second version of the same document says “It is possible to obtain a successful cement job” and “It is possible to fulfill M.M.S. regulations.”

Andrew Gowers, a BP spokesman, said the second document was produced after further testing had been done.

On Tuesday Congress released a memorandum with preliminary findings from BP’s internal investigation, which indicated that there were warning signs immediately before the explosion on April 20, including equipment readings suggesting that gas was bubbling into the well, a potential sign of an impending blowout.

A parade of witnesses at hearings last week told about bad decisions and cut corners in the days and hours before the explosion of the rig, but BP’s internal documents provide a clearer picture of when company and federal officials saw problems emerging.

In addition to focusing on the casing, investigators are also focusing on the blowout preventer, a fail-safe device that was supposed to slice through a drill pipe in a last-ditch effort to close off the well when the disaster struck. The blowout preventer did not work, which is one of the reasons oil has continued to spill into the gulf, though the reason it failed remains unclear.

Federal drilling records and well reports obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and BP’s internal documents, including more than 50,000 pages of company e-mail messages, inspection reports, engineering studies and other company records obtained by The Times from Congressional investigators, shed new light on the extent and timing of problems with the blowout preventer and the casing long before the explosion.

Kendra Barkoff, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department, declined to answer questions about the casings, the blowout preventer and regulators’ oversight of the rig because those matters are part of a continuing investigation.

The documents show that in March, after problems on the rig that included drilling mud falling into the formation, sudden gas releases known as “kicks” and a pipe falling into the well, BP officials informed federal regulators that they were struggling with a loss of “well control.”

On at least three occasions, BP records indicate, the blowout preventer was leaking fluid, which the manufacturer of the device has said limits its ability to operate properly.

“The most important thing at a time like this is to stop everything and get the operation under control,” said Greg McCormack, director of the Petroleum Extension Service at the University of Texas, Austin, offering his assessment about the documents.

He added that he was surprised that regulators and company officials did not commence a review of whether drilling should continue after the well was brought under control.

After informing regulators of their struggles, company officials asked for permission to delay their federally mandated test of the blowout preventer, which is supposed to occur every two weeks, until the problems were resolved, BP documents say.

At first, the minerals agency declined.

“Sorry, we cannot grant a departure on the B.O.P. test further than when you get the well under control,” wrote Frank Patton, a minerals agency official. But BP officials pressed harder, citing “major concerns” about doing the test the next day. And by 10:58 p.m., David Trocquet, another M.M.S. official, acquiesced.

“After further consideration,” Mr. Trocquet wrote, “an extension is approved to delay the B.O.P. test until the lower cement plug is set.”

When the blowout preventer was eventually tested again, it was tested at a lower pressure — 6,500 pounds per square inch — than the 10,000-pounds-per-square-inch tests used on the device before the delay. It tested at this lower pressure until the explosion.

A review of Minerals Management Service’s data of all B.O.P. tests done in deep water in the Gulf of Mexico for five years shows B.O.P. tests rarely dropped so sharply, and, in general, either continued at the same threshold or were done at increasing levels.

The manufacturer of the blowout preventer, Cameron, declined to say what the appropriate testing pressure was for the device.

In an e-mail message, Mr. Gowers of BP wrote that until their investigation was complete, it was premature to answer questions about the casings or the blowout preventer.

Even though the documents asking regulators about testing the blowout preventer are from BP, Mr. Gowers said that any questions regarding the device should be directed to Transocean, which owns the rig and, he said, was responsible for maintenance and testing of the device. Transocean officials declined to comment.

Bob Sherrill, an expert on blowout preventers and the owner of Blackwater Subsea, an engineering consulting firm, said the conditions on the rig in February and March and the language used by the operator referring to a loss of well control “sounds like they were facing a blowout scenario.”

Mr. Sherrill said federal regulators made the right call in delaying the blowout test, because doing a test before the well is stable risks gas kicks. But once the well was stable, he added, it would have made sense for regulators to investigate the problems further.

In April, the month the rig exploded, workers encountered obstructions in the well. Most of the problems were conveyed to federal regulators, according to federal records. Many of the incidents required that BP get a permit for a new tactic for dealing with the problem.

One of the final indications of such problems was an April 15 request for a permit to revise its plan to deal with a blockage, according to federal documents obtained from Congress by the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental advocacy group.

In the documents, company officials apologized to federal regulators for not having mentioned the type of casing they were using earlier, adding that they had “inadvertently” failed to include it. In the permit request, they did not disclose BP’s own internal concerns about the design of the casing.

Less than 10 minutes after the request was submitted, federal regulators approved the permit.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/us...pagewanted=all

roachboy · 05-31-2010, 07:40 AM

nice. what seems clear is that the relief wells are the best hope of actually stopping the geyser of oil. that's been clear from the start to some folks who seem to know things about oil wells and drilling and this sort of problem on the surface of the earth.

from the oil drum an interesting speculative narrative of how the explosion happened:

Quote:

THE critical question is how did the well blow out. If the story is correct it was due to displacing the heavy mud in the csg/riser with seawater before the cmt was properly tested. A judgment call. A very easy fix there: change the rules for testing cmt jobs before you displace. And how do make sure operators follow the new rule: independent third party observers on board. An insignificant cost compared to the price of a typical DW well. And even after the cmt failed and the oil/NG started flowing up BP could have still prevented the blow out had they known the well was kicking. And how hard is that to know that? Very easy and done dozens of times every day on all the other DW wells currently drilling in the GOM. You monitor the mud when you turn off the mud pumps. I know this sound stupidly simplistic but you just measure how much mud you have in the mud pits. If the oil/NG begins to flow it has to push the mud out of the hole. If you turn a faucet off tite and the water continues to flow out of the spigot do you think you might suspect a problem? We can debate till the cows come how the judgment of displacing the riser/csg given what was known at the time about the qualityof the cmt. And neither side of that argument will change their positions. That wasn’t the proven sin by BP. THE sin was not monitoring the mud returns. How much money did BP save by not insuring that the personnel responsible for watching the mud returns were doing their job? Not one damn penny. I’ve been on DW rigs when a well was in its last stage. A great rush to shut down, pack up and get on the boat. I’m sure those hands responsible for keeping an eye on the mud returns weren’t kicking back in the galley with a cup of coffee. They were busting their butts rigging down and not paying attention. And why pay attention? They were told the cmt was tested and all was safe. Another easy fix: mandatory monitoring the mud returns AT ALL TIMES. Cost? Completely insignificant. Last January I drilled an 18,000’ well in S. La. There was one hand responsible for watching mud returns. Did I trust him 100%? No…I had a second hand monitor him. Good enough, eh? No…when ever we turned the mud pumps off my company man made that 30 yard walk to double check the mud returns. Cost to my company for this redundancy = $0.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6531

the relief well is apparently not a panacea.
they won't necessarily do what they're being drilled to do.
but they're certainly the best hope for stopping the flow of new oil.

it's quite alarming, the information that's surfacing about the extent of the oil.
the use of dispersants to weight it down is curous. problematic.
this before anything like a coherent view on the damage that's being done is assembled.
more plumage:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/0..._n_591994.html

Charlatan · 05-31-2010, 03:51 PM

So the question: If all of this happened before (and we seem to have forgotten about it) why haven't our preparations for preventing and/or stopping this sort of disaster changed? Especially when it's the exact same company. Especially when the drilling is happening at even greater depths.

YouTube - Rachel Maddow- The more spills change_ the more they stay the same

roachboy · 06-01-2010, 04:25 AM

here's a widget that tracks the extent of oil:

Gulf Oil Spill Tracker

ARTelevision · 06-01-2010, 04:31 AM

roachboy, thanks for all your good info on this tragedy for us all. The oil drum site is a great resource.

I have been using these sites to track the spill each day:

Map and Estimates of Oil Spilled in the Gulf of Mexico - Interactive Map - NYTimes.com

See how the oil spill grows in the Gulf of Mexico - USATODAY.com

roachboy · 06-01-2010, 11:36 AM

here's an infographic that makes the extent of the oil spill and potentials for damage really quite plain:

CRUDE AWAKENING

edit: best that can be determined bp's suspended most meaningful operations to stop the flow of new oil.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6541#comments_top

it appears that an attempt that's detailed far better at the link above than i could hope to do here failed.
the consensus on the oil drum is that the next phase will be the relief wells.

what's curious about the viewpoints on that site is that while there's considerable engineering and oil experience, there's also a tendency to dismiss ecological considerations...well maybe to minimize them is more accurate a statement. it's peculiar. but it's also an indication of the scenario we're all in at the moment in terms of information. there's not a whole lot of data yet. there are persistent reports that bp and the coast guard have been obstructing attempts to get access to affected areas (see the infographic for alot about all this) & the bp has been trying to minimize the sense of amount of oil that's already out and the rate at which it is flowing because they're trying to minimize the fines they're apt to get whacked with, which are determined on a per/barrel basis.

when you hear about plumes of oil, as the people on the oil drum point out, there's no consistency in terms of what that means. they will write again and again that a plume can contain levels of oil in the parts per billion range or a saturation. there's no agreement about toxicities amongst these people, nor is there any agreement about the implications of the dispersants.

autonomous information sources appear to be working at a lag. it's less simple to say things about ecological damage than it is to estimate the number of gallons of oil blowing through a cracked pipe or 3 a mile below the surface of the ocean. and there are fewer visuals.

it's hard to get other information really. and it's difficult to know what to make of some of what information there is available.

maybe this is a significant dimension of how consent for the petroleum-economy is maintained--ignorance plus cheap gas. so the walmart way.

aceventura3 · 06-01-2010, 02:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Charlatan

So the question: If all of this happened before (and we seem to have forgotten about it) why haven't our preparations for preventing and/or stopping this sort of disaster changed? Especially when it's the exact same company. Especially when the drilling is happening at even greater depths.

YouTube - Rachel Maddow- The more spills change_ the more they stay the same

It begs the question who actually was or is in charge of this?

Quote:

According to the Mobile (Ala.) Press-Register (via al.com) , U.S. officials did not follow up on a 1994 oil spill response plan that recommended burning off oil in the event of a major spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The plan produced by federal agencies called for rapid deployment of fire-proof containment booms and setting controlled fires. The only problem? When the Deepwater Horizon oil well began spilling, there wasn't a single such specialized containment boom on the entire Gulf Coast.

Oil spill burn plan in place, but fire booms weren't

Quote:

Such arguments are likely to be eclipsed, however, by the claim that the Government’s own burn-off plan could not be put into action because the equipment was not available.

A single fire boom of the kind required by the “In-Situ Burn” plan drafted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for Gulf Coast spills can burn up to 75,000 gallons of oil an hour – roughly a third of the estimated daily leakage from the Deepwater Horizon site.

“They said this was the tool of last resort,” Jeff Bohleber, a supplier of the booms, said. “No, this is absolutely the asset of first use. Get in there and start burning the oil before the spill gets out of hand.”

So far federal officials have authorized only one test burn eight days into the disaster, using a boom obtained from Mr Bohleber in Illinois, when it became clear that none was available in the Gulf region. Instead of burning, emergency workers are relying on chemical dispersants being injected by submersibles directly into the leaks in the collapsed riser pipe that connected the wellhead to the rig.

US had burn-off plan for oil spills but the equipment wasn’t there - Times Online

roachboy · 06-01-2010, 03:22 PM

Quote:

Gulf oil spill: BP could face ban as US launches criminal investigation

Oil company's future in doubt as attorney general opens probe into worst oil spill in American history

The future of BP was in doubt tonight as the US government launched a criminal investigation into the Gulf of Mexico disaster and some commentators predicted the oil giant would face an operating ban in the country.

The US attorney general, Eric Holder, opened a criminal and civil probe into the worst oil spill in American history. Though he did not specify which companies would be in the cross-hairs of the investigation, the actions of BP are likely to come under close scrutiny.

"We will closely examine the actions of those involved in the spill. If we find evidence of illegal behaviour, we will be extremely forceful in our response," Holder said.

BP shares plummeted by 13% today, wiping £12bn off the company's value, as financial markets reacted to the news that oil is likely to continue spewing into the Gulf of Mexico for at least two more months. It was the worst one-day fall for 18 years for what was once Britain's most valuable company.

Political pressure is also mounting from the US, where BP's ongoing failure to stem the leak has led for calls to President Obama to take a more hardline approach.

Robert Reich, the former labour secretary under Bill Clinton, today called for BP's US operations to be seized by the government until the leak had been plugged. A group called Seize is planning demonstrations in 50 US cities this week and is calling for the company to be stripped of its assets.

Holder's criminal investigation was launched just hours after Barack Obama promised to prosecute any parties found to have broken the law in the lead up to the disaster.

The president dropped several threatening comments into a 10-minute address from the White House to mark the start of an independent commission he has convened to look into the causes of explosion at the Deepwater Horizon oil well.

City experts advised clients to sell shares following BP's admission over the weekend that the much vaunted "top kill" attempt to bung up the well had failed.

One stockbroker, Arbuthnot, captured the gloomy mood around the company, saying that the disaster "has a real possibility of breaking the company".

The key question, it added, was now "can BP survive?". It said that judging by the increasingly hostile rhetoric coming from the White House, BP might even be prevented from operating in the US, which could make it a takeover target.

BP is the largest oil producer in the Gulf of Mexico, and its production growth plans for the next decade are dependent in part on finding new deepwater reserves.

BP said today that its costs from the disaster had risen to $990m (£675m).

Although it is impossible to quantify the full financial impact of the disaster, it seems set to run into the tens of billions of dollars, and the costs will mount as long as the leak continues.

BP will attempt a riskier way of stopping the leak this week, but this could result in the amount of oil increasing and the chances of success appear slim. It hopes to plug the spill in two months, when the first of two relief wells are completed, but this operation could be hampered by the imminent hurricane season.

Today Obama called the oil spill the "greatest environmental disaster of its kind in our history" and said "if laws were broken leading to this death and destruction, my solemn pledge is we will bring these people to justice".

He added that for years the relationship between the oil companies and their regulators has been "too cosy" and said "we will take a comprehensive look at how the oil and gas industry operates".

The US justice department is expected to pursue a dual-track approach in its investigation of BP and the other main entities involved: Transocean and Halliburton.

One track will explore whether the company broke rules in the days and months before the explosion, and the other will look at whether it contravened any environmental laws.

So far the Obama administration has moved cautiously on the legal side of the oil disaster, aware of the awkwardness of issuing criminal proceedings against a company upon which the federal government continues to remain deeply dependent for the shutting off of the stricken well and for the clean-up operation.

But as political pressure has mounted on the administration, and with Obama himself coming under fire for being insufficiently aggressive in dealing with the catastrophe, the administration has shown renewed willingness to take on BP.

As for BP, it has taken steps in the past few days to beef up its PR operation, in an attempt to limit some of the massive damage that has been dealt to its reputation. The company has recruited as head of the firm's US media relations Anne Womack-Kolton, who was the then vice-president Dick Cheney's press secretary in the 2004 presidential election.

Gulf oil spill: BP could face ban as US launches criminal investigation | Environment | The Guardian

the financial times version:
FT.com / US / Politics & Foreign policy - US orders criminal probe into BP oil spill

so let's think about this for a second.
first, it's obvious that no-one buys attempts to shift responsibility onto the state. reality is in the way.
the question of which particular laws were broken is a technical matter that i'm not competent to comment on too much. but criminal negligence...that's clear from what we know of the period leading up to the explosion.

the irony is that there's probably no prosecution that can happen around what's among the worst combinations behind this disaster: mms decision to accept bp's claim an accident was "unlikely" enough that planning for disaster contingencies fitted to the specific conditions of drilling a mile below the surface were deemed an unnecessary bother. profit and fees uber alles. besides bidness knows best.
so the best we can hope for there is a wholesale reworking on the rules of the game that moves away from this illusion that profit seeking=a generalizable rationality.

what i'm curious about is: can officers of a corporation be brought up on criminal charges over this?

what happens if bp loses its ability to operate in the united states? that would effectively put them out of business if i understand the situation correctly. if bp goes out of business, who will pay the damages caused by the massive leak and disaster that their negligence--enabled by a conservative-oriented regulatory set up---have visited upon the gulf?

who will pay for the clean up?
where will the technologies required come from?

it seems to me that liability limitations are a real problem in a situation like this. why would it not make sense for bp already to be planning for it's own bankruptcy as a way to avoid the consequences of their action?

will any of these assholes do jail time?
will putting them in jail clean up the gulf? will it restore the marshlands or regenerate the food chain?

at the same time i am absolutely in favor of prosecuting all the people who operated or even hold shares in any of the three main corporate persons at the center of this nightmare.
but at the same time...it seems like this is a self-evident limit to any notion of corporate responsibility social or otherwise that it is a person until it encounters consequences for its own actions that are too big to bear at which point it becomes an abstract concern again and disappears.

but i am not a lawyer.
i rather hope i don't understand basic things about how this sort of prosecution would work.

ASU2003 · 06-01-2010, 03:29 PM

Burning the oil doesn't sound like the best plan. Regulations would have had a good chance of preventing something like this. As well as getting Americans to change the way they use oil.

Yet I doubt even this event will change the minds of people in that region to stop using oil/gas and become greener.

james t kirk · 06-02-2010, 06:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

who will pay for the clean up?
where will the technologies required come from?

.

The taxpayers of the United States.

The taxpayers of the United States.

Answers both your questions.

BP will probably declare bankruptcy in order to be able to simply walk away.

Will their fat-cats do time? Maybe. But it will take years and years to get them and a lot of money.

aceventura3 · 06-02-2010, 07:09 AM

I have an agenda, which is to increase domestic oil production to feed business growth and expansion in this country as we transition to increased use of non-fossil fuels. What I post supports my agenda.

From IBD editorial pages today:

Quote:

Energy Policy: To save the environment, a senator from Pennsylvania wants to shut off a major source of natural gas. Weren't the roads to the Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon disasters paved with equally good intentions?

Environmentalism did not cause the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, but it did help make it possible, just as 1989's Exxon Valdez disaster, which the Gulf Oil spill has now eclipsed, was also ironically made possible by a desire to protect the environment.

The original plan when oil was discovered at Prudhoe Bay on Alaska's North Slope was to build a pipeline directly to the northern border of the 48 contiguous states. Groups like the Sierra Club waged a major battle against both the Prudhoe Bay development and the pipeline.

They lost on the drilling but won a small victory in forcing the pipeline to not traverse the continent via a safer land route but to dead end at the port of Valdez, Alaska. The rest, as they say, is history.

Had the oil companies gotten their way, there would have been no tanker to be run aground by its captain on March 24, 1989, causing 10.8 million gallons of crude oil to be dumped into Alaskan waters.

On Sunday's "Meet The Press," NBC's David Gregory asked if environmental zeal might have also contributed to Deepwater Horizon. "Is the problem that we're drilling in water that's just too deep?" he asked Carol Browner, director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy and former EPA administrator in the Clinton administration.

"Should you even rethink your own approach to the environment to say, 'Maybe in the Arctic Wildlife Reserve, we ought to be drilling there. We ought to be going into shallower waters so that this can be done more safely?'"

Browner tap-danced around the question by saying it was one of the things to think about while we shut down the domestic oil industry. Browner et al. should indeed think about the fact that if British Petroleum and others were not barred from drilling in ANWR or in the shallower water of the Outer Continental Shelf, we might not be having this conversation.

Out west we may have what could be called a "Persia on the Plains." A Rand Corp. study says the Green River Formation covering parts of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming has the largest known oil shale deposits in the world, holding from 1.5 trillion to 1.8 trillion barrels of oil. It's all on dry land, but it's all locked up by federal edict.

Environmentalists, aided and abetted by Democratic Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, now want to stop us from unlocking our vast reserves of natural gas locked up in shale using a technique called hydraulic fracturing or "fracking." The technique involves injecting liquids under pressure, 95% of which is water, into the shale rock to release the trapped gas.

Casey has introduced legislation to remove fracking's long-standing exemption in the Safe Drinking Water Act that allows energy companies to use the process. He claims the process endangers America's drinking water, though fracking is done thousands of feet below the groundwater table and there's never been a case of groundwater contamination caused by fracking.

"This 60-year-old technique has been responsible for 7 billion barrels of oil and 600 trillion cubic feet of natural gas," according to Sen. James Inhofe, ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee. "In hydraulic fracturing's 60-year-history, there has not been a single documented case of contamination."

Casey's Pennsylvania contains a major portion of the Marcellus Shale Formation covering 34 million acres in New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia and Kentucky. SUNY-Fredonia geologist Gary Lash and colleague Terry Engelder of Penn State estimate that Marcellus holds 1,300 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Those who would ban fracking also need to consider that if oil companies rather than environmentalists were allowed to decide how to drill for and deliver oil, neither the Exxon Valdez nor the Deepwater Horizon spills need to have happened.

Environmentalists Also To Blame For Exxon Valdez And Gulf Spills - IBD - Investors.com

There are consequences to actions taken - environmentalists should reflect on their strategy considering the current disaster.

roachboy · 06-02-2010, 07:30 AM

not much time at the moment to respond to the inverted world post above.

more activity at the leak site, another problem:

Quote:

Effort to contain Gulf oil spill stalls with stuck saw

By David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 2, 2010; 11:19 AM

SCHRIEVER, La. -- The latest attempt at containing oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico -- a plan to saw off a leaking pipe and slide a cap over it -- has been stopped because the saw is stuck, a Coast Guard official said Wednesday morning.

Admiral Thad W. Allen, who is in charge of the response to the massive deep-sea spill, said a "diamond-wire" saw had become hung up on the pipe it was supposed to cut. He said that crews using remotely driven submarines were trying to get it loose but that the solution might be to bring in another saw.

Allen said he would know more Wednesday afternoon.

"Anyone who's ever used a saw knows it can bind up," Allen told a news conference.

Overnight, Allen said, crews had managed to use powerful shears to cut a different section of the broken pipe, farther from the leaking well. But the cut closer in, using the diamond saw, is more important. It is supposed to allow oil giant BP, which owns the gushing well, to place a "cap" or "hat" device over the sawed-off pipe and begin collecting oil.

Allen spoke from a BP training facility outside Houma, La., that has been converted into a regional command post for the spill. Despite the location in a BP building, aides seemed to try to downplay the connection to the oil company. Minutes before Allen spoke, a Coast Guard member pried BP's green-sunflower logo off the podium, leaving behind two white strips of tape that had held it on.

Allen was joined by Jane Lubchenco, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Lubchenco said afterward that she was not convinced by other scientists' reports of large underwater "plumes" of oil.

"In the immediate vicinity of the well, there is undeniably a lot of oil sub-surface," Lubchenco said. "The real question is, is there a significant amount of oil beyond that?"

Other scientists have reported finding large areas of oil dissolved in water, or globs of oil that swirl like snowflakes across miles of the gulf. But Lubchenco said that tests had not ruled out the possibility that these were plankton, or the result of natural "seeps" expelling natural gas into the water.

She said new boats, several owned by NOAA, were either in the gulf or about to be, and would use new methods to determine what these other scientists had actually seen.

"People are envisioning, you know, lots of oil down there" in the plumes, Lubchenco said. "And we have yet to see if that is in fact the case."

In the news conference, Allen also said that Mississippi has reported its first contact with the oil spill, with crude reaching the Mississippi Sound. He said tar balls have also shown up in Alabama.

As BP hacked away at the pipe at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, investors sawed off 15 percent, or $21.1 billion, of the company's market value Tuesday.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., during a trip to the Gulf Coast, announced that the Justice Department had launched criminal and civil investigations, adding to pessimism among BP investors reeling from the failed attempt to plug the leaking well over the weekend.

BP, the world's fourth-largest company before the April 20 blowout on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, has lost a staggering $74.4 billion, or 40 percent, of its market value in six weeks.

washingtonpost.com

informed almost play-by-play from the oil drum here:

The Oil Drum | BP's Deepwater Oil Spill - The Saw is Stuck, Working on the Riser, and an Open Thread

meanwhile, bp's share values are vaporizing:
BP oil spill: Shares fall further | Business | guardian.co.uk

so hayward comes clean about bp's lack of adequate planning and technology and then talks about the need for a "rethink"

Quote:

Hayward urges oil industry rethink

By Ed Crooks in Houston

Published: June 2 2010 16:20 | Last updated: June 2 2010 16:20

The oil industry and BP need to “change the paradigm” for how they operate in order to continue developing hard-to-reach resources in deep water, the company’s chief executive has said.

Tony Hayward also admitted that the company had not had all the equipment it needed to control its leaking Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico, which has created the largest ever offshore oil spill in the US.

With BP and the rest of the industry threatened with being shut out of the deep waters of the Gulf, the most promising region in the US for oil development, Mr Hayward argued that the industry could reform itself to justify continued drilling in those challenging areas.

Speaking to the Financial Times in Houston as engineers worked on their latest bid to trap the escaping oil, he said BP was looking for new ways to manage “low-probability, high-impact” risks like the Deepwater Horizon accident.

The gas blow-out that caused a fatal explosion on the rig on April 20 and created the oil leak had been a “one in a million” chance, Mr Hayward said, but that risk had to be cut to “one in a billion or one in a trillion.”

Analysts believe the disaster could cost BP $20bn in clean-up costs, compensation, damages and fines, and has done incalculable damage to the company’s position in the US.

Mr Hayward said the industry needed to cut the risk of accidents, and to increase its capability to deal with leaks on the sea bed in a mile or more of water.

Reducing the risk of accidents could mean redefining the relationships between the companies involved in drilling a well.

BP believes that on the Deepwater Horizon there were seven separate problems that could have contributed to the accident, including failures of the cement in the well, the tests run on the well, and the blow-out preventer, intended to stop releases of oil and gas.

Those failures could have involved a number of different companies besides BP, including Transocean, which owned and operated the rig, Halliburton, which cemented the well, and Cameron International, which manufactured the blow-out preventer.

BP was in overall control of the project, but responsibility for safety was shared. That model, according to Mr Hayward, may have to change.

“We have been driving safe and reliable operations through the company within the existing industry paradigm,” he said. “What this causes us to question is whether that paradigm is right for the future.”

It was possible, he added, that in future BP could operate its own rigs working in deep water.

“This is not about BP and Transocean,” he said. “Transocean are a very very good drilling contractor… But we have to ask how much further we can drive the risk down.”

Mr Hayward also accepted it was “an entirely fair criticism” to say that the company had not been fully prepared for a deep water oil leak.

The containment effort on the surface, he said, had been “very successful” in keeping oil away from the coast. “Considering how big this has been, very little has got away from us,” he said.

However, BP had not had ready any equipment or even ideas for stopping the leak. It has been reaching for many of the same techniques used to control the Ixtoc 1 blow-out in the Gulf of Mexico 31 years ago.

“What is undoubtedly true is that we did not have the tools you would want in your tool-kit,” Mr Hayward said.

“After the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989, the industry created the Marine Spill Response Corporation to contain oil on the surface…. The issue will be to create the same sub-sea response capability.”

With BP’s hopes of future growth in the US riding on deep water development, it will be vital for Mr Hayward that the administration ultimately accepts that those reforms will be enough to allow drilling to continue.

FT.com / World - Hayward urges oil industry rethink

this is some of the stuff that's happening in the reality that people know about who read things that aren't the ibd editorial page.
but feel free to post more "relevant" materials.

aceventura3 · 06-02-2010, 07:46 AM

Our current administration often responds in ways that appears to lack much forethought, here is another example as it relates to this spill.

Quote:

HOUSTON (Dow Jones)--Oil and gas companies on Friday began halting exploratory drilling in the deepwater of the U.S. Gulf of Mexico following a federal government order. Meanwhile, they are bristling at a six-month exploratory drilling ban and its probable effects on the industry and the U.S. economy.

Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) and Marathon Oil Corp. (MRO) said they have stopped drilling two wells in the Gulf. Chevron Corp. (CVX), the second-largest publicly traded oil company after Exxon, warned that an offshore drilling moratorium extension will have a "lasting" negative impact in the U.S. economy and in the nation's efforts to enhance energy security. Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSA), Statoil ASA (STO), Eni Spa (E) and Anadarko Petroleum Corp. (APC), among others, are also seeing their drilling projects stalled.

Analysts say the ban isn't expected to hurt the short-term oil and gas output of the Gulf area, which produces about one quarter of U.S. hydrocarbons. But it will delay the massive, multi-billion-dollar projects major oil companies rely on for long-term growth. Deutsche Bank energy economist Adam Sieminski said Friday the pause on drilling ordered by President Barack Obama in the wake of a massive oil spill is expected to delay 160,000 barrels a day of oil in 2011, or about 8% of the Gulf's current production of crude.

The delayed production underscores the long-lasting impact the Deepwater Horizon incident, estimated to be the worst oil spill in U.S. history, will have on the global oil industry. Major oil companies consider the deepwater frontier Gulf of Mexico one of their prime areas for future growth, as it remained one of the last oil-rich areas of the globe still open to investment and subject to a stable tax regime.

The spill began more than a month ago after the explosion and sinking of Transocean Ltd.'s (RIG) Deepwater Horizon rig, which was leased by BP Plc (BP) to drill a deepwater well 40 miles off the Louisiana coast. On Thursday, Obama ordered 33 exploratory deepwater rigs currently operating in the deepwater Gulf to stop drilling and banned further exploration in the Gulf for six months. The president also put on hold the industry's foray into offshore Virginia and Alaska. The measures are perceived to be the first step towards an overhaul of offshore drilling laws.

The American Petroleum Institute, a lobbying group for the energy industry, said the drilling ban will hamper economic growth and job creation, especially in the Gulf states, and threaten U.S. energy supplies. "Deepwater development is a key component of domestic energy security," Jack Gerard, president of API, said in a prepared statement.

In 2007, the deepwater provided 70% of the oil and 36% of the natural gas from overall federal Gulf of Mexico production and the 20 most prolific producing blocks in the Gulf are located in deepwater, according to API.

Companies operating in the Gulf deepwater were still evaluating the impact of the government decision on their drilling plans, but they are expected to start moving rigs, which are leased at rates of around $500,000 a day, out of the region to keep them gainfully employed, according to a report by energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie.

Exxon said Thursday it has suspended drilling operations at the Hoover Diana well in the Gulf after the U.S. ordered a halt to current drilling in the area. It also delayed plans to drill a new exploration well at its Hadrian prospect. Marathon said it is in the process of temporarily abandoning the drilling of the Innsbruck well in the Gulf.

The drilling moratorium could be especially bad for Chevron, which is one of the largest oil and gas Gulf producers and whose future growth significantly depends on exploration in the area.

Chevron spokesman Mickey Driver said the company acknowledges the Obama administration's desire to fully understand the underlying cause of the oil spill, but that halting deepwater drilling will have lasting energy security and economic consequences for the U.S.

"We believe responsible drilling should be allowed to continue," Driver said. Exxon, Chevron and other companies are helping BP deal with the spill.

Offshore drilling contractors, which managed to weather most of the downturn in drilling that followed the recession, also stand to suffer. Switzerland-based Transocean, the world's largest offshore driller, gets 25% of its revenue from the U.S. Gulf, where it operates 14 rigs. Those rigs will receive a reduced "force majeure" rate because of the drilling ban, the company said Friday. Transocean shares have lost more than a third of their value, or about 38%, since the April 20 blast and recently traded at $57.11 apiece. Noble Corp. (NE), another large offshore driller, has seen its shares come down 30% since the incident, each trading at $29.19 on Friday.

Wood Mackenzie said the development of several existing oil discoveries in the area could also be jeopardized by delays and substantial cost increases resulting from new, stricter safety regulations. These delays and higher costs could defer as much as 19%, or 350,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day, of projected deepwater Gulf production in 2015 and 2016.

Wood Mackenzie said that a 10% increase in overall capital expenditure would drop the internal rate of return--a measure used by companies to compare profitability of investments--of deepwater Gulf of Mexico oil discoveries to 15% or less. This would put several of them close to, or below, the profitability rates required to proceed with a project, according to the report.

Oil Industry Starts To Halt Gulf Drilling, Raises Concerns - WSJ.com

Obama thinks he is hitting the major oil companies, but he is actually hurting the local Gulf states economies, the people who work in the industry and those who work to support the industry. So they get hit with an inadequate response by the government and now a knee-jerk reaction by the government.

roachboy · 06-02-2010, 08:20 AM

edit [[i deleted an earlier post. i thought better of it and replaced it with this]]

here's a nice compact-ish history of conservative and industry attempts to take over the category "environmentalist" and use it to discredit an entire set of concerns:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m.../ai_n29440361/

in ace's infotainment above, we aren't really talking about anything in particular when the word "environmentalist" comes up--it's just another conservative boogeyman, another evil faction of the liberal elite which sucks the blood of right-thinking americans and the corporate practices for which they stand. we're dealing with straight-up conservative ideology then that's being fobbed off as viable information.

i have an agenda in this thread. my agenda is trying to understand what the fuck is happening at the site of the deepwater horizon disaster. i am interested in its political and by extension regulation-based conditions of possibility. i am interested in the specific history of bp in the gulf and the ways in which these converge on the disaster itself, as explanations of it. i am interested in the politics that have taken shape around the attempts to stop the massive flow of oil into the waters of the gulf of mexico. i'm interested in the conflicts that are taking shape between the federal and state governments and bp around the clean-up, to the extent that there is one. i am interested in assessments of damage and proposals for remedies. i'm interested to see what, if anything, happens to the corporate persons involved with this mess. i'm interested to see what, if any, role other stakeholders in the gulf area are allowed to take in shaping what happens with the oil.

i'm interested in the appalling brand triage that bp's been running and that its starting to fall apart.
and i'm interested in the longer run to see how this disaster changes the regulatory framework first and more generally the politics of petroleum.

the information i gather and post here is shaped by this range of interests, but since the thread is a real-time research project, it's not shaped by the interests.

i say this to demonstrate why i consider what you are now doing, ace darling, to be a threadjack.

Cimarron29414 · 06-02-2010, 09:14 AM

rb-

As this thing drags on, I'm starting to think that the expense of the leak and the clean up are, in the near term, going to serve as a deterent against reckless behavior on the oil companys' part. I think that the bean counters are going to change their tune regarding "reasonable" preventative measures on future sites. I'll bet reasonable includes quite a bit more than it used to.

I still believe there needs to be complete reform in the process at the corporate/government levels, for the long run.

Here's another thing that I don't understand. Keep in mind, I don't know crap about drilling: So, why does a relief well have to be drilled 20,000 or so feet deep? Why can't you drill a hole at an angle to a merge depth of 1000 feet and plunge into the current hole with a sort of diverter. Then, the new hole serves as the syphon/relief. Is there some technical reason this can't be done? Perhaps the casing of the current well is too tough to crack?

roachboy · 06-02-2010, 09:17 AM

cimmaron: the relief well question is answered a couple times on the oil drum site, but i haven't time at the moment to find it. i suspect you can search it up if you have a moment. if you do, please post it as i think this is one of the questions that will puzzle other drilling dilletantes. i'm another.

aceventura3 · 06-02-2010, 10:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

edit [[i deleted an earlier post. i thought better of it and replaced it with this]]

here's a nice compact-ish history of conservative and industry attempts to take over the category "environmentalist" and use it to discredit an entire set of concerns:

"Ecoterrorism"? A critical analysis of the vilification of radical environmental activists as terrorists | Environmental Law | Find Articles at BNET

in ace's infotainment above, we aren't really talking about anything in particular when the word "environmentalist" comes up--it's just another conservative boogeyman, another evil faction of the liberal elite which sucks the blood of right-thinking americans and the corporate practices for which they stand. we're dealing with straight-up conservative ideology then that's being fobbed off as viable information.

I have concerns about the environment, I want to preserve it and I want to protect it. I am also a capitalist and a conservative - seems to me that some take the position that what I describe is in conflict. It is not. "Environmentalists" are those who do believe what I describe is in conflict. It is not uncommon in normal discord for terms to be defined, it increases understanding.

Quote:

i have an agenda in this thread. my agenda is trying to understand what the fuck is happening at the site of the deepwater horizon disaster. i am interested in its political and by extension regulation-based conditions of possibility. i am interested in the specific history of bp in the gulf and the ways in which these converge on the disaster itself, as explanations of it. i am interested in the politics that have taken shape around the attempts to stop the massive flow of oil into the waters of the gulf of mexico. i'm interested in the conflicts that are taking shape between the federal and state governments and bp around the clean-up, to the extent that there is one. i am interested in assessments of damage and proposals for remedies. i'm interested to see what, if anything, happens to the corporate persons involved with this mess. i'm interested to see what, if any, role other stakeholders in the gulf area are allowed to take in shaping what happens with the oil.

i'm interested in the appalling brand triage that bp's been running and that its starting to fall apart.
and i'm interested in the longer run to see how this disaster changes the regulatory framework first and more generally the politics of petroleum.

the information i gather and post here is shaped by this range of interests, but since the thread is a real-time research project, it's not shaped by the interests.

i say this to demonstrate why i consider what you are now doing, ace darling, to be a threadjack.

Is a threadjack a posting that does not support your point of view?

BP failed, regulation failed. More or different regulation will not prevent regulation from failing. If you want to understand what happened you have to understand, why certain risks are being taken. If you are interested in a new regulatory frame work you have to understand the folly in emotion based knee-jerk reaction. Both are very relevant to the issue at hand.

Threadjack indeed! You want me silenced, you don't want your view-point challenged!

roachboy · 06-02-2010, 10:29 AM

ace:

there's alot of information in the thread already and if it keeps going there'll be alot more to come. it'd be good to make an concerted attempt to keep things on topic.
obscuring things with some grand declaration of Agenda followed by vague ibd editorial infotainment that tries to blame "environmentalists" for the deepwater and exxon valdez is not a good example of such an attempt.

but please, by all means, feel free to start other threads about broader questions if you think them important.

and don't you worry your pointy little head about anything you say challenging my viewpoint.

aceventura3 · 06-02-2010, 11:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

ace:

there's alot of information in the thread already and if it keeps going there'll be alot more to come. it'd be good to make an concerted attempt to keep things on topic.
obscuring things with some grand declaration of Agenda followed by vague ibd editorial infotainment that tries to blame "environmentalists" for the deepwater and exxon valdez is not a good example of such an attempt.

but please, by all means, feel free to start other threads about broader questions if you think them important.

and don't you worry your pointy little head about anything you say challenging my viewpoint.

I am assuming your concern is related to my posts #294 and 296.

Here is the OP:

Quote:

Last night a relatively new deep-water oil rig went up in flames. Looks like it's still burning, and no one is quite sure when the flames will subside.

Between this and the recent coal mine disaster in West Virginia, it looks like America is having a difficult time with extracting their fossil fuels safely. Interesting that this coincides with Obama's recent push for an increase off-shore drilling. Do you think that his plan will be thwarted by safety concerns?

Read more: http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/general...#ixzz0pj2BNJHp

My two posts are directly related to the issue presented in the OP.

Sincerely,

Ace, from my "pointy little head"

ring · 06-02-2010, 01:46 PM

I've been wondering about the Atlantis, since this Horizon incident.
I posted this first link a few pages back:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...4QtbQD9FNEG4G0

And now this:
Whistleblower Sues to Stop Another BP Rig From Operating - ProPublica

roachboy · 06-03-2010, 07:10 AM

interesting...i'm running late this morning but saw this in the guardian:

Quote:

Gulf oil spill: BP lacked the right tools to deal with crisis, chief executive admits

• New techniques needed to deal with crises - chief executive
• Paying dividend would be 'unfathomable' - US senators

* Graeme Wearden
* guardian.co.uk, Thursday 3 June 2010 10.49 BST

Oil cleanup workers hired by BP walk along the beach in Dauphin Island Oil cleanup workers hired by BP walk along the beach in Dauphin Island. Senators have demanded that BP suspends its dividend. Photograph: Dave Martin/AP

BP's under-fire chief executive Tony Hayward has admitted that the company was not adequately prepared to fight the Deepwater Horizon oil leak, as pressure mounted on the company not to pay its annual dividend to shareholders.

Hayward told the Financial Times it was "entirely fair" to criticise BP for not being better equipped to fight a leak 5,000 feet below the surface. He said the oil giant needed to develop new techniques for such crises, rather than using decades-old methods.

"What is undoubtedly true is that we did not have the tools you would want in your toolkit," said Hayward in an interview with the FT.

His comments came as US politicians demanded that BP should suspend dividend payments to shareholders while it battles the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

In an open letter to Hayward – who recently told the Guardian his job was on the line – Democratic senators Charles Schumer and Ron Wyden said it would be wrong for BP to pay investors a dividend until it knows the full cost of the disaster.

"We find it unfathomable that BP would pay out a dividend to shareholders before the total cost of BP's oil spill clean-up is estimated," they wrote.

The letter was written hours after it emerged that Hayward was telling BP's major shareholders that it planned to maintain dividend payments despite the ongoing environmental catastrophe off the coast of Louisiana.

"While we understand the need to reassure shareholders that the disaster in the Gulf will not substantially impact BP's long term financial health, we are concerned that such action to move money off of the company's books and into investors pockets will make it much more difficult to repay the US government and American communities that are working around the clock to stem the damage caused by this devastating oil spill," explained Schumer and Wyden.

The two senators had previously lobbied Transocean, owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded on 20 April, against paying dividends to its own shareholders.

Shares in BP rose by over 4% this morning to 448p, indicating that traders remain confident that the the annual dividend will be paid.

Clean-up costs uncertain

BP is part way through its latest attempt to cut the amount of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, by cutting the pipe that rises from the sea bed and placing a cap on top. This procedure hit problems yesterday when a robot-operated saw temporarily stuck, and even if it succeeds it will not capture all the oil.

The company told the stock market this morning that it will pay the $360m (£244m) cost of building six sand barriers to protect Louisiana's delicate marshes. This will push BP's total bill to date to around $1.4bn, including the cost of trying to stop the leak, mopping up oil that reaches the shoreline and compensating those affected by the disaster. The final cost is unclear, though, with President Obama insisting the company was responsible for the Deepwater Horizon leak and will be made to pay for it.

Although some City analysts believe BP can cover these costs, others calculate that the company may be forced to sell some assets – especially if it plans to maintain its dividend.

Douglas Ober, chief executive officer at Petroleum & Resources, suggested that BP's 26% stake in the Prudhoe Bay oil field in Alaska might have to be sold. Mining giant BHP Billiton has also named as a potential bidder for BP's interests in the Gulf of Mexico.

Other experts believe BP, whose market capitalisation has fallen to around £82bn, could be a takeover target.

BP has received thousands of suggestions on how it could fight the leak, from industry experts and concerned members of the public. One, filmmaker James Cameron, was disappointed that his offer of help was not better received. Cameron has significant experience of underwater filming using remote-operated submarines, having directed Titanic. Cameron attended a meeting with scientists and government officials yesterday to brainstorm ways of reducing the damage cauuse by the massive oil spill, and also revealed last night that BP had turned down his offer of help.

"Over the last few weeks I've watched, as we all have, with growing horror and heartache, watching what's happening in the Gulf and thinking those morons don't know what they're doing," Cameron told the All Things Digital technology conference in California, according to Reuters, who added it was not explicitely clear who "those morons" referred to.

Public anger against BP is growing in America as the crisis enters its seventh week. BP garage signs have been smeared with mud, and a Boycott BP campaign appears to be gathering pace.

Gulf oil spill: BP lacked the right tools to deal with crisis, chief executive admits | Business | guardian.co.uk

that bp lacked the technologies necessary to deal with this seems one of the more obvious statements in the history of statements, but still it's i suppose heartening to see such transparency from a corporation which has been transparency challenged these past weeks.

oil drum post about what's happening at the bottom of the ocean:

The Oil Drum | BP's Deepwater Oil Spill - The New Plan: Shears, Working on the Riser, and Wed. Open Thread 3

---------- Post added at 03:10 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:14 PM ----------

so two weeks later in the washington post the same information as was contained in the mother jones story about bp controlling media access to the coast of louisiana. because "it's bp's oil"

Quote:

As the oil spill spreads, BP battles to contain the media

By Dan Zak
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 3, 2010; 8:34 AM

NEW ORLEANS -- At first, it seemed like a British company might be trying to keep an American journalist off an American beach. Ted Jackson, a staff photographer for the Times-Picayune, drove two hours to Port Fourchon, La., to shoot photos of tar balls on public property but was stopped 100 yards from the surf by harbor police. After 30 minutes of phone calls to higher authorities, Jackson said, the police allowed him 15 minutes of obstructed photographing, out of view of workers who were taking samples from the beach.

Last week Jackson was also unable to book a flight over Grand Isle from a charter plane company in Belle Chasse, La., because the owner could not obtain permission from BP's command center to enter restricted airspace. BP, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Coast Guard were refusing access to planes carrying media, according to Southern Seaplane's secretary-treasurer, Rhonda Panepinto, who fired off a three-page letter to Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) on May 25.

"We strongly feel that the reason for this massive [temporary flight restriction] is that BP wants to control their exposure to the press," she wrote. "We are all at the mercy of BP, a British-owned company."

Then, on Tuesday, things got better. The FAA sent two special operations managers to the Gulf Coast to oversee flight access, according to Panepinto, whose company flew Jackson around Chandeleur and Ship islands Wednesday and is fielding requests from other media outlets, with no grief from authorities.

"It's almost like there's a new sheriff in town," Jackson said.

Perhaps the gulf operation is smoothing itself out after a month and a half of oil gush and media crush. Authorities had weathered criticism for a series of minor run-ins that gave the impression that BP was calling the shots.

Last week a Mother Jones reporter was told she couldn't see Elmer's Island without being accompanied by a BP representative, because it's "BP's oil." Two weeks ago Coast Guard officials cited "BP's rules" when demanding that a CBS News crew leave a beach area. (Representatives from CNN, ABC and local CBS affiliate WWL-TV in New Orleans said last week that their journalists had not encountered significant obstacles while covering the oil story.)

"Neither BP nor the U.S. Coast Guard, who are responding to the spill, have any rules in place that would prohibit media access to impacted areas and we were disappointed to hear of this incident," said Rob Wyman, a lieutenant commander for the Coast Guard, in a statement responding to the CBS episode. "In fact, media has been actively embedded and allowed to cover response efforts since this response began, with more than 400 embeds aboard boats and aircraft to date."

The FAA responded to initial criticism over air traffic restriction by citing security concerns and asserting that BP employees and contractors were not involved in those decisions.

Hundreds of media outlets are demanding access to a highly mutable, complex situation, and local, state and federal officials say they are working together -- under the majestic heading of Deepwater Horizon Unified Command -- to streamline the response to both reporters and the public.

"With regards to media, we follow an incident command system, a tried-and-true way of responding to crises," said a spokesman for BP from the Unified Command's headquarters in Robert, La. "You have public information officers and you have a joint information center that includes the responsible party, BP, as well as government agencies who have involvement and oversight for this spill, the Coast Guard being the federal on-scene coordinator. We have state people, NOAA, representatives from Transocean. We've had MMS. What we do is use information that comes in through our operations and create, if you will, the message to share."

That message, right now, is that the authorities want to provide access to the story while maintaining the proper safety parameters for both cleanup workers and the environment itself. But there might be more obstacles down the road if the situation intensifies, according to Chip Babcock, a trial lawyer specializing in media and First Amendment cases at Houston firm Jackson Walker, which brought suit against FEMA when it blocked journalists from covering the removal of dead bodies in the weeks after Hurricane Katrina.

"There's going to be, I think, a natural hesitancy to let journalists show images of the horrific scenes that are going to happen purely in the next few weeks," Babcock said. "You'll see these beaches clogged with oil, and animals suffering, and I think -- human nature being what it is -- there's going to be some people who don't want those images shown."

washingtonpost.com

aceventura3 · 06-03-2010, 07:48 AM

It is unlikely Tony Hayward will get through this and keep his job, he will address a group of shareholders and analysts on the 4th. BP's debt rating has been lowered by one rating agency. BP has to face the possibility of selling assets to cover costs of clean up, damages and stopping the leak. He has failed. Others have failed also, some within government - who should be held accountable? where does the buck stop? Who is in charge?

Quote:

June 3 (Bloomberg) -- BP Plc Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward faces rising speculation that the worsening oil spill will cost him his job as he grapples with worried investors, rating downgrades, U.S. politicians and public anger over the company’s inability to control the crisis.

Hayward will address London’s investors and analysts tomorrow, spokesman Mark Salt said by phone. Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch Ratings downgraded BP today because the costs from the accident will hurt finances. Two U.S. senators said yesterday it would be “unfathomable” for BP to pay a dividend.

Criticism of Hayward grew this week after BP’s failure to stem the flow from the damaged well caused the biggest share price drop in 18 years and raised the risk the London-based company may become a takeover target. Yesterday, he apologized for comments last week that he wanted his “life back.”

“The pressure is on Hayward at the moment, primarily from politicians,” said David Paterson, head of corporate governance at the National Association of Pension Funds in London. “Investors clearly will want some answers in order to understand what the long-term future for the company is.”

More than 40 billion pounds ($59 billion) has been wiped off the value of BP since the April 20 explosion that killed 11 workers on the Deepwater Horizon rig. Credit Suisse said yesterday the disaster may cost BP as much as $37 billion, almost double this year’s likely profit, risking a cut in dividends.

Dividend Cut

“There is a question mark over the chief executive officer,” said Colin McLean, of SVM Asset Management Ltd. in Edinburgh, which holds BP shares. “The dividend will continue but be cut. A quarter or a third is quite possible.”

BP paid a dividend of 56 cents a share last year. If it maintains it, the ratio of dividend to the current share price would be 9.3 percent, more than any of the company’s 18 global peers, according to Bloomberg data.

Irish bookmaker Paddy Power offered even odds that Hayward will leave his post by the end of year. The New York Daily News yesterday called him “the most hated -- and clueless -- man in America” for his handling of the crisis.

“It looks increasingly likely that heads will roll, and Tony will be in the frame,” Dougie Youngson, an analyst at Arbuthnot Securities Ltd. in London, said in a Bloomberg Television interview. “The longer these things go on, the shakier things look for the company.”

Under Fire

Hayward, whose call tomorrow will be relayed on BP’s website, has come under fire from lawmakers after BP initially underestimated the size of the leak, starting with 1,000 barrels a day and then raising it to 5,000 barrels a day. U.S. Geological Survey and science adviser Marcia McNutt said May 27 the well may have been gushing 19,000 barrels a day.

BP sheared away the riser from its leaking Gulf of Mexico well today, a precursor to the company’s attempt to lower a cap onto the leak and divert oil to ships on the surface.

An attempt to plug the well with mud and debris failed last weekend. That means that the flow of oil from the well probably won’t be stopped until August, when the drilling of relief wells is scheduled for completion.

Hayward apologized yesterday for what he called “hurtful” comments saying that he wanted the spill to end in order to get “his life back.” That followed comments in which he said that the environmental impact of the spill would be “very, very modest” and that the amount of oil and dispersant is tiny compared to the size of the Gulf.

Improve Safety

Hayward spent much of his first three years as CEO working to improve BP’s safety record after a series of accidents, including the deadly March 2005 Texas City refinery explosion that helped bring down his predecessor, John Browne.

“Safety has been a major plank of Hayward’s tenure,” the National Association of Pension Funds’ Paterson said.

BP?s Hayward Faces Downgrades, Investors as Spill May Cost Job - Bloomberg.com

roachboy · 06-03-2010, 09:34 AM

the captains of industry and finance are perhaps considering and not considering bp:

Quote:

Talk of takeover swirls around BP

By Lina Saigol and Miles Johnson in London and Ed Crooks in Houston

Published: June 2 2010 23:49 | Last updated: June 2 2010 23:49

When a whale is wounded, it does not take long for the sharks to circle. With BP floundering in the Gulf of Mexico, the market has been abuzz with talk of a takeover of the British oil major.

The substantial erosion of BP’s market value – its shares have fallen 34 per cent since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20 – means the company looks affordable to rivals for the first time in decades.

BP’s market value, which surpassed Royal Dutch Shell at the start of the year, has fallen to $115bn, lower than ExxonMobil at $280bn, PetroChina at $278bn and Shell at $159bn.

Technically, any of these companies could afford to buy BP, but few would know what they were buying in an industry already fraught with regulatory and political risk.

The huge and indeterminate costs for clean-up, damages, fines and compensation – analysts’ forecasts of the cash cost to BP have so far typically ranged up to about $20bn – could spiral into tens of billions of dollars.

This means that few, if any, investment bankers are rushing to pitch the idea of buying BP to their clients.

bp-thumb.jpgOne banker likened the situation to Lloyds Banking Group’s takeover of HBOS two years ago.

The UK bank had always coveted HBOS, so when the global financial crisis struck it snapped up its smaller rival, only to find itself exposed to billions of dollars in risky loans and investments.

In spite of that, traders believe BP’s fall in market value presents Shell with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Earlier this year, Lord Browne, BP’s former chief executive, revealed in his memoirs that he tried in 2004 to merge his company with Shell.

But while that deal may have made some sense six years ago, bankers say it would not do so today. No matter how compelling a price BP may be now, it is not a strategic must-have for Shell.

“Becoming bigger would not solve the problem of resource access,” one oil M&A banker said. “Oil mega-mergers used to be about extracting costs and building synergies through scale, but today they are about growth,” the banker added.

The regulatory complexity along with competition issues posed by a mega-merger would make a deal for a company with large operations in the US and western Europe particularly difficult – particularly for downstream fuel distribution and marketing businesses.

A merger between ExxonMobil and BP, for example, would see the combination of the first and second-biggest gas producers in the US – an outcome unlikely to be palatable to regulators, even under normal circumstances.

Disposals could probably assuage the authorities’ concerns, but those forced sales would also destroy value.

However, with the Obama administration’s current hostility towards the industry, the prospect of Big Oil getting even bigger is unlikely to be well-received.

Some industry observers say BP could follow the example of some troubled financial institutions and split itself in two, creating a “bad BP” to carry all the liabilities and allowing a “good BP” to go on with its business, but this would similarly face huge political opposition in the US.

The suggestion from Robert Reich, labour secretary under President Bill Clinton, that the administration should take BP’s US business into receivership until the spill has been dealt with is a fringe idea at the moment, but could move to the mainstream if BP is seen to be trying to wriggle away from its responsibilities.

Bankers were also quick to dismiss the idea of Chinese buyers, such as PetroChina, given the political resistance in the UK and the US they would face.

After the bruising experience suffered by CNOOC of China in 2005, when it tried to buy Unocal of the US and ran into a storm of protest, Chinese groups have focused on buying assets, rather than companies.

The status of TNK-BP, a delicate joint venture between BP and a set of Russian tycoons which accounts for 10 per cent of BP’s profits and 25 per cent of its resources, is another poison pill to buyers, especially the Chinese.

BP’s Russian partners would be unlikely to look favourably on BP losing its independence.

“I don’t think Russia would have anyone other than BP in the venture,” said Jason Kenney, an analyst at ING, “so the TNK-BP part of the business would most likely have to be sold.”

But if any buyer does try to overcome all these enormous hurdles, it would still need to agree a deal. At the moment, there is no sign that BP is preparing to surrender.

Tony Hayward, its chief executive, has been savagely attacked in the US, but is determined to see the crisis through.

BP’s board and shareholders will also reject anything that looks like an attempt to exploit the company’s difficulties to get hold of its assets on the cheap.

“Shareholders want Mr Hayward focused on fixing this problem. They don’t want to know that he is preoccupied with trying to sort out a deal,” one banker said.

They may feel differently a year from now. Until that happens, bankers are unlikely to pull out their pitch books.

FT.com / Companies / Oil & Gas - Talk of takeover swirls around BP

i would expect that if bp is taken over or threatened with it, or if it tries to split itself, that the federal government would have little choice but to nationalize its us operations.

but they're having some pr trouble:
FT.com / Companies / Oil & Gas - BP faces public relations disaster

as is the louisiana fishing industry:

Quote:

Fishermen Wait on Docks as Oil Gushes
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.

DULAC, La. — This time of year, Eric Authement would normally be buying about 70,000 pounds of shrimp a day from the boats that line the Grand Caillou Bayou and spread their winglike nets in the bays, marshes, coastal waters and inlets along the coast.

But in the last month, the shrimp processing plant his family has run for generations has been much quieter. Some days, he has bought next to nothing.

“We can fly to the moon and back how many times?” he asked as he watched a video feed of oil spewing from the underwater leak. “And we cannot stop up a damn well.”

As vast sections of the sea and coast have been closed off to fishing because of the gushing oil leak, the normal haul of oysters, blue crab and finned fish has been halved, and shrimp production is about a quarter of what is usually is. The exceptions are tuna and red snapper, which are caught far out at sea.

Americans have yet to see major shortages or price increases at restaurants and markets because about 80 percent of the seafood consumed in the United States is imported, according to the National Fisheries Institute, a trade group. Louisiana provides only about 2 percent, the group says.

But the oil slick is wreaking havoc on the fishing industry here, which brings about $2.4 billion a year to the state, the state’s seafood marketing board says. At least 27,000 jobs depend directly on the fisheries.

So far, Louisiana’s official biologists have found no evidence that the oil has contaminated any seafood. But the precautionary closing of oyster beds, shrimping grounds and crab habitats where oil has been spotted has idled most of the fishermen.

And BP has hired so many fishing boats to help with the cleanup effort that the areas that remain open are not being fished intensively.

The images of oil slicks at sea and goopy oil in stands of cane along the state’s 7,700 miles of tidal coastline has presented the Louisiana fishing industry with a public relations nightmare.

Some buyers assume the catch is polluted; others simply would rather not buy a product now with the name Louisiana or gulf attached to it, seafood wholesalers say.

“The brand itself has been damaged,” said Ewell Smith, the executive director of the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board. “Every time they show the image on TV of the spill, people are thinking we don’t have safe seafood and that we are out of seafood.”

Some seafood processors say the biggest hindrance right now is not oil, but a lack of fishermen to haul in the catch in the areas still open to fishing.

Mike Voisin, the owner of Motivatit Seafoods in Houma, has been an oyster farmer and processor in Terrebonne Parish his entire life. He said the state had found no evidence the oysters have been contaminated, yet he cannot find harvesters to dredge up the crustaceans from their beds because the oil companies have hired so many boats.

“We are down to 10 or 20 percent of our harvesting ability,” he said.

In the meantime, the oil slick and chemical dispersants are getting closer to the oyster beds, and many in the business fear the pollution will be driven inshore by tropical storms and will kill the larvae on which the next year’s crop depends. Since nearly 4 of 10 oysters eaten in the United States come from Louisiana, shortages are inevitable if the closures persist, oyster farmers say.

One bright spot for seafood producers is that scarcity has driven up prices. Small brown shrimp, for instance, have tripled in price over this time last year. The price of oysters has also risen on spot markets in recent weeks, jumping more than 20 percent in some places.

Still, with the constantly changing plans to close certain fishing areas, some say it is not worth gambling the price of labor and fuel to go after shrimp that may have fled from the area or oysters that may have been contaminated.

Instead, many fishermen have taken the $5,000 check from BP — a down-payment on future damages the oil company has voluntarily paid to fishing operations — and are waiting on the docks to see what will happen.

Fishermen who concentrate on tuna and red snapper are still hauling in large catches far out beyond the oil slicks, but they are having a hard time convincing buyers their catch is clean.

David Maginnis, the owner of Jensen Tuna in Houma, said most of his tuna fleet was working around undersea canyons in the southwestern part of the gulf, a good 150 miles from Louisiana. He supplies high-end sushi bars across the country with fresh blue-fin and yellow-fin tuna. Some buyers have canceled orders, he said.

Only 6 of 10 tuna boats are going out now, he said, but “the ones that are going are banging them up,” Mr. Maginnis said, using slang for a large catch.

Despite the plentiful fish, many boat captains cannot find enough deckhands. “They are getting paid by BP to not go to work,” he noted.

The biggest impact of the spill has been felt by shrimpers and shrimp processors. Bo Thibodeaux, 43, a shrimp boat captain in Dulac, took a small boat out recently with his son Evan, 17. He said he had tried to go out twice in his 43-foot boat, the Bull’s Prize, since the spill started, but could not catch enough shrimp to pay for the gas.

“We are going to try to get what little is left,” he said, as he readied the boat and his son pulled on white rubber boots. He said that in past years, when the brown shrimp were out around this time of year, he could pull in 12,000 to 15,000 pounds of shrimp from the water.

Now his nets have been catching mostly water because the areas he shrimps have been closed.

“May is our time to make our money,” he said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. Go find a job, I guess.”

Oil Spill Idles Many Louisiana Fishermen - NYTimes.com

a story from a few days ago about the marshes:

Oil Cleanup Poses Risks In Louisiana's Fragile Marshes : NPR

and another element about bp's information management:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/6bwnjH...ummer-2010/r:f

roachboy · 06-03-2010, 12:44 PM

Deepwater Horizon oil spill - Encyclopedia of Earth

this is a quite good, comprehensive resource that outlines the situations that the thread has been tracking and puts things in context...it's particularly useful for understanding the oil leakage, the environmental concerns, who/which agencies are doing what with how many people and for how long they've been doing it, antecedent spills and so forth.

one reason this disengenuous "who's in charge" stuff can keep surfacing from the drill baby drill set is the lack of information co-ordination. it's the kind of thing that happens inside a short attention span media environment when it processes a long and complicated disaster. a made-for-tv disaster is much faster than this and has fewer moving parts.

roachboy · 06-04-2010, 06:05 AM

i put a couple central points from this 12 may abc article in bold. they show what's been clear through the thread.

(1) the most fully elaborated response to the disaster at the deepwater horizon is information control.
(2) the least elaborated response to the disaster at the deepwater horizon is the technologies required to address both the oil that continues to spill into the gulf and the clean-up operations.

Quote:

After Oil Rig Blast, BP Refused to Share Underwater Spill Footage
Message Control A Key Industry Focus During Oil Disaster Drills
By MATTHEW MOSK, AVNI PATEL, JOHN SOLOMON, and AARON MEHTA
ABC NEWS AND CENTER FOR PUBLIC INTEGRITY

May 12, 2010 —

During a series of dry-run exercises, where the U.S. Coast Guard, other agencies and oil companies practiced their response to major oil spill disasters, industry executives repeatedly pressed federal regulators to give them more say on what information would be released to the public if disaster struck.

Reports obtained in a joint investigation by ABC News and the Center for Public Integrity show oil companies targeted the potential release of "confidential" information as a key concern.

That behind-the-scenes lobbying effort helped foretell a tug of war this week over images that BP America did not want the public to see as the company struggled to try and contain the massive spill unleashed after one of the company's offshore oil rigs exploded in the Gulf of Mexico.

Throughout the clean-up effort, BP has monitored the spill site around the clock using submarine-mounted cameras at the mouth of the spill. An official at Oceaneering International, the company that operates the submarines under a contract with BP, told ABC News he "could walk right down the hall and watch it, but I can't share it without BP's express permission."

Eric Smith, a professor at Tulane University's Energy Institute said that footage could help in making independent assessments of the scope of the spill. But it also could do public relations damage to BP. It has remained closely guarded and cannot be made public under the argument that it is "proprietary," according to Coast Guard officials who have received repeated requests to release the images.

It is an argument that surfaced repeatedly during training exercises held jointly by the Coast Guard, other state and federal agencies, and major oil companies.

"Protecting proprietary information of private sector when merged with government information," was how the Coast Guard officials identified a key concern in a report filed after a 2002 war game, where they tried to plan out their response to a mock oil rig blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.

Wednesday, BP officials indicated that the company plans to release video of the underwater operations but did not provide a timeframe. On Tuesday, the company quietly added a photograph to their website showing oil gushing from the 12 inch riser pipe on the sea floor.

Smith, the Tulane professor, said the images "allow the engineers to develop mathematical models that can approximate the flow rate."

That came as government officials told reporters they were trying to persuade the company to be more forthcoming.

Asked if the White House could compel the company to release the video, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Tuesday the decision rests with BP, which controls the tapes. When Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-California) pressed a top BP executive on the question during congressional hearings Tuesday, she was told the videos are under joint government and industry control at the incident command center in New Orleans, where they are teaming up to orchestrate the spill response.

"Our understanding is there's far more than has been released," Boxer pressed after the BP executive told her it could not be retrieved." Will you get back to this committee? We would be interested in viewing those and making those public."

BP America President Lamar McKay told senators the company is "making every effort to keep the public and government officials informed of what is happening."

"BP executives have regularly briefed the President's Cabinet and National Security Council team, members of Congress, the governors and attorneys general of the Gulf Coast states, and many local officials."

Carefully guarding the flow of information has been a hallmark of BP's response to oil field disasters, according to Brent Coon, a lawyer who represented victims of a BP oil refinery explosion in Texas City.

"Less than three hours after the BP Texas City plant erupted in fire, blasting out windows miles away, BP already had their PR and damage control team in place," Coon said, citing an internal corporate email in which BP officials predict coverage of the explosion would subside after the holiday weekend.

Attention to handling the media response to a major oil spill was just one focus of the four elaborate exercises staged by the U.S. Coast Guard over the past decade, the after action reports show.

As early as 2002, the practice runs also indicated that oil companies lacked updated equipment to mount an effective response to a spill, and would need to be forced by the government to invest in better technology.

"Without requirements in place to require use of new response technologies they will not be developed and deployed adequately," said an after-action report from the summer 2002 drill that simulated an oil leak from a sunken rig in the Gulf of Mexico that was eerily similar to the current disaster. "There is little incentive for [oil companies] to invest in them and therefore, little incentive for technology companies to develop or refine these technologies further."

Those requirements were never forced on the companies and, as a result, the oil spill response underway in the Gulf is being mounted with booms and skimmers that some industry experts described as antiquated and of limited value.

"The technology that's being used on the surface is over 30 years old," said Jerome Milgram, a professor of marine technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "I can say this. I don't see any practical effect for putting out booms when the sea conditions are such that the booms are totally ineffective."

BP's "worst case" scenario for a huge oil spill in the Gulf relies heavily on being able to boom and skim a half million barrels a day, according to the oil spill response plan the company filed with federal regulators.

Carl Pope, chairman of the Sierra Club, called that "fantasy." "These are not serious plans, and yet the government accepts them as a basis for drilling," he said.

The nation has been gripped by scenes of a massive oil slick spreading across the Gulf of Mexico since the BP-operated Horizon Deepwater rig exploded April 20 and sank two days later leaving behind a massive oil leak that has yet to be contained.

Oil industry officials told members of Congress Tuesday that new technology is being used to combat the ongoing spill. In response to questions, they identified the use of dispersants to attack the spill under water as a new approach that had been honed over the past several years. But they also acknowledged that a spill at this depth has presented them with problems they weren't prepared for.

"I think, after this is under control and thought about in hindsight, there will be some ideas about how to make the subsea intervention and response better," said BP America's chairman and president, Lamar McKay. "I think we're learning right now as we go."

U.S. officials said in interviews that the elaborate dry runs taught them important lessons that are making the ongoing response stronger and more effective. But they also acknowledged that they have yet to resolve some of the persistent problems related to communication, coordination and technology problems that surfaced during the drill conducted March 24-25 in New England, simulating a response to an oil tanker leaking 18 million gallons of crude after a collision off the coast of Maine.

"Every exercise you do, you come out with the question of whether your communication skills are up to the challenge," Coast Guard Lt. Kelly Dietrich said in an interview.

But Dietrich said the Coast Guard and its federal allies have made steady improvement through the training exercises and don't deserve some of the criticisms that have been raised by lawmakers and residents in the Gulf.

"We always go out with full force," she said. "It always seems to the public that it seems slow because most people aren't involved in the preparatory work."

BP Oil Spill: After Oil Rig Blast, BP Refused to Share Underwater Spill Footage - ABC News

meanwhile, the drama surrounding bp's newest attempt to divert the flows from around the riser are best tracked here:

The Oil Drum | BP's Deepwater Oil Spill - Capping the Riser - Part 1 (Cap on, but leaks) - and Open Thread

there's a serious disconnect between what's being issued publicly and what's happening underwater.
so what you look at depends on what you want to know, i suppose.

and while that's going on, balls of tar are washing up on florida panhandle beaches

Waves of oil tar mount on Fla. Panhandle beaches | NOLA.com

and elsewhere:

Recent oil sightings, and bird rescues, in four coastal Louisiana parishes | NOLA.com

Baraka_Guru · 06-04-2010, 06:20 AM

Here's another way to show the scale of the disaster.

Find out how much of your neighbourhood would be affected by a spill of that size: IfItWasMyHome.com - Visualizing the BP Oil Disaster

roachboy · 06-04-2010, 09:21 AM

here's a new-ish page with streams for 12 rov things that are operating around the deepwater riser.

Live feeds from remotely operated vehicles | Response in video | BP

it's kinda hard to imagine the basis for saying things are going well given what i'm seeing.
have a look:

Live feeds from Skandi ROV1

---------- Post added at 05:21 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:25 PM ----------

===========================================

a little later:

http://mxl.fi/bpfeeds/

9 simultaneous feeds.

pretty surreal.

roachboy · 06-04-2010, 11:30 AM

good old b fucking p:

Quote:

BP hives off 'toxic' Gulf spill operation to dilute anti-British feeling in US

Chief executive Tony Hayward hands responsibility for clean-up to American as new containment cap is placed on top of leak

* Terry Macalister
* guardian.co.uk, Friday 4 June 2010 18.15 BST

BP is to hive off its Gulf of Mexico oil spill operation to a separate in-house business to be run by an American in a bid to isolate the "toxic" side of the company and dilute some of the anti-British feeling aimed at chief executive Tony Hayward, the company said today.

The surprise announcement was made during a teleconference with City and Wall Street analysts in which Hayward attempted to shrug off the personal criticism saying words "could not break his bones".

BP has faced mounting anger in the US over the accident on 20 April when the Deepwater Horizon rig blew up and sank with the loss of 11 oil workers' lives.

The Macondo well continues to spew out oil although a containment cap was placed on top of the leak today. Hayward said it would take a further 48 hours to know whether it was successful.

Responsibility for the leaking well and the clean-up strategy will placed in the hands of Bob Dudley, one of the company's most able directors.

Dudley, a US citizen, has been looking for a suitable role in the company since he was thrown out of Moscow in a battle with the Russian shareholders of the TNK-BP joint venture in the middle of 2008.

Hayward said the clean-up business would be run separately by Dudley with his own staff but the finances and budget would come from the main BP group. The BP chief executive said the purpose of the split was to allow Dudley to concentrate on the Gulf problem while he and other directors were not distracted from keeping the main business on track.

Hayward stressed, however, that his priority was sorting out all the wider fallout from the rig disaster and he apologised repeatedly for the loss of lives and ongoing damage to the beaches of the southern United States.

"Everyone at BP is heartbroken by this event, by the loss of life and by the damage to the environment and to the livelihoods of the people of the Gulf coast," he said. "It should not have happened and we are bound and determined to learn every lesson to try and ensure it never happens again."

"We will stand by our obligations. We will halt this spill and put right the damage that has been done. We will rebuild the confidence of the American people and the world in BP."

While the spill has brought verbal attacks on BP from everyone up to Barack Obama, there has also been a lot of popular anger aimed at Hayward over a string of verbal gaffes, and what has been seen as his inappropriate stiff-upper-lip British attitude. But he told the supportive group of financial analysts that he was happy to be the "lightning rod" for frustation over the spill.

He had a "thick jacket", he said, adding: "They've thrown some words at me, but I'm a Brit. Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me."

Hayward denied there was tension between him and BP's new Swedish chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg, saying both he and the wider board had been extremely supportive. Svanberg has been accused of keeping himself out of the line of fire but has denied that, saying it was important for the purpose of a clear message that one person took the main role in explaining actions of the company.

Svanberg also ignored demands from two US senators that the company should halt the payments of any dividends to shareholders until the extent of its clean-up liabilities were known.

The chairman said no decision would be taken on future dividends until they had to, but stressed his belief that the company was in good financial shape, indicating it could do both.

He said: "We fully understand the importance of our dividend to our shareholders. Future decisions on the quarterly dividend will be made by the board, as they always have been, on the basis of the circumstances at the time. All factors will be considered and the decision taken in the long term interests of the shareholders."

Hayward's gaffes

"This was not our accident … This was Transocean's rig. Their systems. Their people. Their equipment." 4 May

"The Gulf of Mexico is a big ocean. The amount of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume." 14 May

"No one wants this over more than I do. I would like my life back." 30 May

"So far I'm unscathed ... Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me." 4 June

BP hives off 'toxic' Gulf spill operation to dilute anti-British feeling in US | Environment | The Guardian

so the splitting of operations is already being floated, a containment move which i would be surprised is being done not to deal with some imaginary anti-british sentiment but as a way of separating off the main operations from an entity that the us government can seize---and in the process enable bp to shed responsibility. maybe.

financial times seems to have a bit of an infotainment lag, but posted this:
BP’s investor call: what are the prospects for the dividend? | FT Energy Source | FT.com

Ourcrazymodern? · 06-04-2010, 12:15 PM

Ain't that pretty? The b's run away when you p your pants. As's been stated, we'll pay.
It's happened before. Not to be political, as money is: I shy away from acknowledging my many failures, so how much more so should "one" with the means to? Allowing bp the freedom to operate in the gulf seems to me an acceptance of the burden of their failure.

roachboy · 06-05-2010, 07:00 AM

more information about the cavalier approach to basic safety and environmental considerations embodied by bp enabled by the nature of petroleum industry regulation.

Quote:

BP's Spill Plan: What they knew and when they knew it
Written by Karen Dalton Beninato | Friday, 04 June 2010

NEW ORLEANS | I have obtained a copy of the almost-600-page BP Regional Oil Spill Response Plan for the Gulf of Mexico as of June, 2009, thanks to an insider. Some material has been redacted, but these are the three main takeaways from an initial read. The name of the well has been redacted, but if it's not Deepwater Horizon, then there's another rig still out there pumping oil and aimed at Plaquemines Parish.

For crowdsourcing here's the link, but it's 29 mb so make sure you have the room to download:

http://www.neworleans.com/images/med...Redactedv2.pdf

1) In the worst case discharge scenario (on chart below), an oil leak was expected to come ashore with highest probability in Plaquemines Parish within 30 days (see map above from the Advance Response Plan). This makes it clear that BP could have stored adequate boom there before a rig failure like the Deepwater Horizon, and workers could have been mobilized to apply the boom in the 30 days that the response plan predicted oil would hit our wetlands.

2) Spokespersons were advised never to assure the public that an ecosystem would be back to normal after the worst case scenario, which we are now living through. "No statements shall be made concerning any of the following: promises that property, ecology, or anything else will be restored to normal." Even in BP CEO Tony Hayward's new television commercial his assurance is an ambiguous, "We will make this right," which does not specifically address preserving or restoring America's Wetlands.

3) Corexit oil dispersant toxicity has not been tested on ecosystems, according to the Oil Spill Response Plan. "Ecotoxilogical effects: No toxicity studies have been conducted on this product." It is contradictory that the question and answer section discusses the choice of a dispersant with: "Have environmental tradeoffs of dispersant use indicated that use should be considered? Note: This is one of the more difficult questions" and "Has the overflight to assure that endangered species are not in the application area been conducted?" Brown pelicans and sea turtles would have been the answer to the latter.

When it comes to Corexit, it is allowed in the Green Zone, not in the Red Zone without a waiver, and the Yellow Zone is a maybe. Yellow "includes any waters designated as marine reserves, National Marine Sanctuaries, National or State Wildlife Refugees or proposed or designated critical habitats; the waters are within three miles of a shoreline and/or fall under state jurisdiction; the waters are less than ten meters deep; and the waters are in mangrove or coastal wetland ecosystems or directly over coral reefs which are less than ten meters of water. Coastal wetlands include submerged algal and sea grass beds."

President Barack Obama is in Louisiana today, so these findings bear repeating: BP knew in all probability where a Gulf of Mexico oil leak would go; the company knows it is pouring millions of gallons of chemicals untested for ecotoxicity near endangered wetlands; and BP knew it could not assure us that our environment will ever be back to normal. America deserves an immediate, comprehensive response funded by BP and administered by the government to clean, protect and restore our environment because it will be under chemical assault for months.

Even if it's never back to normal, we must make sure that it comes back. If we can't do it for this generation, then we need to make it happen for the next one.

BP's Spill Plan: What they knew and when they knew it

here's a kind of mea culpa piece from an oil industry person. it's interesting stuff

http://dailyhurricane.com/2010/06/my...of-itself.html

last night i was in a publick house with a comrade having a conversation about petro-capitalism, which doesn't seem an extraordinary thing to call it once you start looking around your living space or spaces that you move through and inventory even if quickly the commodites that contain petroleum or petroleum by-products. like everything thats plastic. paint. lubricants that allow clocks to turn. insulation on cables. or widen it out and link each commodity back to the production processes. leaving aside the obvious areas of transportation.
it's kind of amazing how pervasive oil is. it's e.v.e.r.y.w.h.e.r.e. in this model of capitalism, everywhere in the mode of production (the forms of social being that correspond to the narrower modes of social being that cluster around economic activity.

think about it, though.

and your car is just the tip of it, the obvious commodity. and it needs fuel, so you're locked into continuous consumption of more.
ride a bike you need tires. and a bike is a mass produced object. just saying.

ring · 06-05-2010, 07:23 AM

Mr. McGuire: I just want to say one word to you -just one word.
Ben: Yes sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Ben: Yes I am.
Mr. McGuire: 'Plastics.'
Ben: Exactly how do you mean?
Mr. McGuire: There's a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?
Ben: Yes I will.
Mr. McGuire: Shh! Enough said. That's a deal.

Thanks for all the good info, roach.

Oh, and I am all for the immediate seizure of BP's assets.

Tully Mars · 06-05-2010, 03:20 PM

I can't watch or read any more about this... too damn depressing.

roachboy · 06-06-2010, 02:45 PM

i hear that tully. i really do.

for example---when bp cut the riser off the wrecked drilling rig, they increased the oil flow by about a quarter. so capture of 20% of the oil leaking out of the pipe with the new cap thing means that the amount going into the ocean is more or less the same as before except now there's a cap in place. and less than 25% capture represents an increase in the amount of oil heading into the water.

The Oil Drum: Europe | Deepwater Oil Spill - Pressure Tutorial - and Open Thread

but it does let bp and the coast guard say something upbeat-seeming during this news cycle:

BP capturing '10,000 barrels of oil' a day from Gulf of Mexico | Business | guardian.co.uk

roachboy · 06-07-2010, 09:36 AM

this we know. i sometimes wonder if the onion is joking or not, though.

Quote:

Massive Flow Of Bullshit Continues To Gush From BP Headquarters

June 7, 2010 | ISSUE 46•23

LONDON—As the crisis in the Gulf of Mexico entered its eighth week Wednesday, fears continued to grow that the massive flow of bullshit still gushing from the headquarters of oil giant BP could prove catastrophic if nothing is done to contain it.

The toxic bullshit, which began to spew from the mouths of BP executives shortly after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in April, has completely devastated the Gulf region, delaying cleanup efforts, affecting thousands of jobs, and endangering the lives of all nearby wildlife.

"Everything we can see at the moment suggests that the overall environmental impact of this will be very, very modest," said BP CEO Tony Hayward, letting loose a colossal stream of undiluted bullshit. "The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean, and the volume of oil we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total volume of water."

Hayward's comments fueled fears that the spouting of overwhelmingly thick and slimy bullshit may never subside.

According to sources, the sheer quantity of bullshit pouring out of Hayward is unprecedented, and it has thoroughly drenched the coastlines of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, with no end in sight.

Though no one knows exactly how much of the dangerous bullshit is currently gushing from BP headquarters, estimates put the number at somewhere between 25,000 and 70,000 words a day.

"We're looking at a truly staggering load of shit here," said Rebecca Palmer, an environmental scientist at the University of Georgia, who claimed that only BP has the ability to stem the flow of bullshit and plug it at its source. "And this is just the beginning—we're only seeing the surface-level bullshit. It could be years before we sift through it all and figure out just how deep this bullshit goes."

Congressional hearings aimed at stopping the bullshit have thus far failed to do so, with officials from BP and its contractors Halliburton and Transocean only adding to the powerful torrents of bullshit by blaming one another for the accident.

Along with the region's wildlife and fragile ecosystem, countless livelihoods have been jeopardized by BP's unchecked flow of corporate shit. Those who depend on fishing or tourism for their income are already feeling the noxious effects of the bullshit firsthand, as out-of-control platitudes begin to reach land and seep ashore.

Dense streams of shit are expected to continue spreading throughout the region and the entire United States.

"This bullshit, it's everywhere," said Louisiana fisherman Doug LaRoux, who lost his house to a tide of government bullshit following Hurricane Katrina. "It reeks. Big buckets of disgusting shit are oozing everywhere you look and I don't know if it's ever going to stop. I feel helpless"

Added LaRoux, "I never thought I'd be the victim of so much bullshit."

Observers have noted that after the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989, corporate bullshit gushed up like a geyser for two decades and didn't wane until the oil company had bullshit its way through an exhaustive process of court appeals that ultimately reduced payouts to victims by 90 percent.

Despite Hayward's denials that BP is at fault for the environmental disaster and his concern that it will result in "illegitimate" American lawsuits, the embattled CEO has still managed to trickle out a few last drips of bullshit sympathy for Gulf Coast residents.

"I'm as devastated as you are by this," Hayward said after a meeting with cleanup crews on Louisiana's Fourchon Beach. "We will clean every last drop up and we will remediate all of the environmental damage."

"There's no one that wants this thing over with more than I do," he added a week later, just absolutely defying belief with the thickest, most dangerous bullshit yet. "I'd like my life back."

Millions of Americans reported feeling ill and disoriented upon contact with that particularly vile plume of bullshit.

Many environmentalists, including Palmer, have called for a boycott of BP until the bullshit stops or is at least under control, but they emphasize that in the long term, Americans will have to change their habits if they wish to avoid future catastrophes.

"We must all work together if we're going to cure our nation of this addiction," Palmer said. "The sad fact is, the United States has been running on bullshit for decades."

Massive Flow Of Bullshit Continues To Gush From BP Headquarters | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

aceventura3 · 06-07-2010, 11:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ring

Oh, and I am all for the immediate seizure of BP's assets.

How do you explain Tony Hayward's (CEO of BP) swagger?

Not only is he not thinking about being fired or resigning, he is positioning himself to be the greatest corporate leader of all time. Is he clueless? Simply arrogant? What is the deal? Questions I have been thinking about.

First, BP has as of 12/31/09 balance sheet - $8.3 billion in cash. $30 billion in receivables. $22 billion in inventory. and about $7 billion in other current assets. These numbers are just their current assets not total some of which would be illiquid. Total shareholder equity is at $102 billion.

In 2009 their net income was $21 billion. The market cap of the company (shares outstanding x share price) is $117 billion even after the dramatic drop in the share price.

Let's assume about $20 billion to clean up the Gulf, that is about a one time hit to one year's profits. But, they are recovering 6,000 barrels of oil per day even with an ineffective "cap". Oil trades at about $70 per barrel. Even today they are getting $420,000 per day or $153,300,000 per year before costs.

The well has not been shut down, the government has not taken any steps to remove BP from the "project"...

...know this is the kicker...

Quote:

June 7 (Bloomberg) -- The oil market is signaling that prices have nowhere to go but up as the biggest spill in U.S. history curbs drilling and makes it more expensive to develop new fields.

Crude’s premium for delivery in eight years compared with today’s price rose 86 percent since the BP Plc-leased Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded April 20. Oil for December 2018 is $21 a barrel more than next month, compared with $11 before the disaster. More regulation may add $5 to the contracts in coming years, according to Deutsche Bank AG.

President Barack Obama extended a ban on new deepwater permits and exploration by Royal Dutch Shell Plc in the Alaskan Arctic for six months, putting off-limits as much as 23.2 billion barrels of potential resources, equal to 76 percent of all reserves proven in the U.S. The number of rigs drilling in the Gulf of Mexico plunged 50 percent last week to the lowest level in 16 years, Baker Hughes Inc. reported June 4.

BP Spill Shows a Profit Buying 2018 Oil, Selling Spot (Update2) - Bloomberg.com

...the long-term value of all of their oil producing assets went up. Do you think the future value will be grater than the cost of "clean-up"? I am betting it will be.

Not only will BP not get "fired", they are not going to have assets seized, they are going to get through this, run ads for positive PR, pay dividend when things settle down, and thanks to Obama make... mo' money, mo' money, mo' money...you got to love it when government takes care of big business while pretending to be really, really mad...so mad that Obama even clinched his jaw in a meeting once - according to his press secretary.

Oh, and how many times do you we get to say BP lied to us before it simply sounds silly? And who do we want creating a new regulatory system, is it the folks getting lied to???

This is all why the CEO of BP walks and talks with a swagger.

roachboy · 06-07-2010, 01:02 PM

wow ace. what a display of conservative submissiveness. ceo worship. i'm not surprised. and i don't see a whole lot of substance to your post, really. it's obvious that bp's interests are only 40% invested in the gulf. it's obvious that they can pay a quite considerable sum for the clean-up and survive.

it's also obvious that they've been entirely irresponsible in developing safety and/or environmental procedures to accompany deep-water drilling. it's also obvious that they knew there were potential problems in these areas for quite some time before the deepwater horizon. it's obvious that they had a business model that was predicated on avoiding making the requisite investments in the plans and technologies that would have been good to have in place before the deepwater horizon disaster.

it's also obvious that neo-liberal style regulation played a very significant role in enabling that business model...it was structured around the regulatory system, in a symbiotic relation with it, presupposed it.

it's also obvious that bp was far more prepared to deal with spills of information than spills of oil and it is obvious that haywood has been a central mouthpiece for the corporate damage control apparatus just as it's obvious that you like the damage control because it speaks to some bizarre-o attachment to manly man corporate types who appear to be Doing Things.

but in reality, ace, bp's ability to continue doing business in the gulf is under review by the epa and much hinges on a story that's not finished unfolding yet and despite your fact and analysis free assurance that nothing will happen, it is not at all given that nothing will happen. nor is bp buying futures a real indication of a reality beyond the internal perceptions of bp as to the future.

that said, even as there's reason to think that the cap had reduced the actual flow of oil by about 25% given the increase in flow into the gulf caused by cutting the riser, i still hope they figure out a way to do better in containing the oil. unlike you, who seems to rely on pollyanna stories from bloomberg, folk with more approximate information about reality aren't terribly optimistic. but you don't particularly seem to care about the leak or the damage or what is or is not being done to clean the oil---you're interested in whether bp can make money off the spill. which is perverse. but whatever floats your boat. it's surely easier that looking at the ugly realities in the gulf. but ecological concerns are for sissies, and your on your knees in front of an image of tony haywood, the greatest ceo of all times.

roachboy · 06-08-2010, 06:12 AM

this speaks for itself:

Quote:

BP buys Google, Yahoo search words to keep people away from real news on Gulf oil spill disaster

June 6, 1:48 AM · Maryann Tobin - Political Spin Examiner

In their most tenacious effort to control the ‘spin’ on the worst oil spill disaster in the history, BP has purchased top internet search engine words so they can re-direct people away from real news on the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe.

BP spokesman Toby Odone confirmed to ABC News that the oil giant had in fact bought internet search terms. So now when someone searches the words ‘oil spill’, on the internet, the top link will re-direct them to BP’s official company website.

This would not be the first time that BP has tried to control information to protect the company’s public image.

Shortly after the Deepwater Horizon exploded on April 20, 2010, BP executives quickly underestimated the size of the disastrous oil spill. Some suggest they did it to avoid costly EPA per-gallon spill fines. The less oil spilled, the lower the fines.

A month into the spill, the public learned through independent science, that the spill was in fact a million gallon a day gusher. BP got caught in their own lie when the used a syphon pipe in one of the broken riser pipes and proudly proclaimed that they were capturing 5,000 barrels of oil a day. With the oil obviously still gushing, they had to up their spill rate to explain the reported discrepancy in their earlier estimates.

As the dead bodies of birds, turtles and dolphins began showing up on land, BP used a private security company as their ‘oil spill police’ to try to keep photographers and reporters away from the true death toll from their spill. Tides of black goo lapping a shore lined in corpses did not portray the company image Tony Hayward and his oil rich executives wanted.

BP can spend millions on advertising campaigns, and they can try to misdirect people on the internet. But no matter how hard BP tries or how much money they spend on public relations, they will never be able to hide the apocalypse unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico. You just can’t buy or smile your way out of a multi-billion gallon oil spill disaster.

The world is watching the Gulf of Mexico from airplanes, boats and satellite images. Sending people to the BP company website when they click on the words ‘oil spill’ is not going to erase the horrors of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, nor will the trickery of British Petroleum.

BP buys Google, Yahoo search words to keep people away from real news on Gulf oil spill disaster

here are some counter-images, altered bp logos submitted to greenpeace uk:

Behind the Logo - a set on Flickr

i think this an interesting space of what amounts to information war.

meanwhile, back under the water:

Quote:

Rate of Oil Leak, Still Not Clear, Puts Doubt on BP
By JUSTIN GILLIS and HENRY FOUNTAIN

Staring day after day at images of oil billowing from an undersea well in the Gulf of Mexico, many Americans are struggling to make sense of the numbers.

On Monday, BP said a cap was capturing 11,000 barrels of oil a day from the well. The official government estimate of the flow rate is 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day, which means the new device should be capturing the bulk of the oil.

But is it? With no consensus among experts on how much oil is pouring from the wellhead, it is difficult — if not impossible — to assess the containment cap’s effectiveness. BP has stopped trying to calculate a flow rate on its own, referring all questions on that subject to the government. The company’s liability will ultimately be determined in part by how many barrels of oil are spilled.

The immense undersea gusher of oil and gas, seen on live video feed, looks as big as it did last week, or bigger, before the company sliced through the pipe known as a riser to install its new collection device.

At least one expert, Ira Leifer, who is part of a government team charged with estimating the flow rate, is convinced that the operation has made the leak worse, perhaps far worse than the 20 percent increase that government officials warned might occur when the riser was cut.

Dr. Leifer said in an interview on Monday that judging from the video, cutting the pipe might have led to a several-fold increase in the flow rate from the well.

“The well pipe clearly is fluxing way more than it did before,” said Dr. Leifer, a researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “By way more, I don’t mean 20 percent, I mean multiple factors.”

Asked about the flow rate at a news conference at the White House on Monday, Adm. Thad W. Allen, the Coast Guard commander in charge of the federal response to the spill, said that as BP captured more of the oil, the government should be able to offer better estimates of the flow from the wellhead by tracking how much reaches the surface.

“That is the big unknown that we’re trying to hone in and get the exact numbers on,” Admiral Allen said. “And we’ll make those numbers known as we get them. We’re not trying to low-ball it or high-ball it. It is what it is.”

Speaking at a briefing in Houston on Monday, Kent Wells, a BP executive involved in the containment effort, declined to estimate the total flow and how much it might have increased. He said that video images from the wellhead showed a “curtain of oil” leaking from under the cap.

“How much that is, we’d all love to know,” Mr. Wells said. “It’s really difficult to tell.”

He said that more than 27,000 barrels of oil had been collected, and that engineers were working to optimize the collection rate.

On Sunday, engineers halted their efforts to close all four vents on the capping device, because even with one vent closed, the amount of oil being captured was approaching 15,000 barrels a day, the processing capacity of the collection ship at the surface.

Mr. Wells reiterated that a second collection system, involving hoses at the wellhead, would be implemented “by the middle of June.” That oil would be collected by another rig with the ability to handle at least 5,000 barrels a day, he said.

The success of the containment device has cast new doubts on the official estimates of the flow rate, developed by a government-appointed team called the Flow Rate Technical Group. Before the riser pipe was cut, the group made estimates by several methods, including an analysis of video footage, and the overlap of those estimates produced the range of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day that the team reported on May 27. That was two to four times as high as the government’s previous estimate of 5,000 barrels a day, a number that had been widely ridiculed by scientists and advocacy groups.

Yet the scientists who produced that new range emphasized its uncertainty when they presented it. In fact, a subgroup that analyzed the plume emerging at the wellhead could offer no upper bound for its flow estimate, and could come up with only a rough idea of the lower bound, which it pegged at 12,000 to 25,000 barrels a day.

The Flow Rate Technical Group is scheduled to release a new estimate this week or early next, though it is not clear whether that report will take into account the changed circumstances of recent days.

Some scientists involved in the Flow Rate Technical Group say that they would like to produce a better estimate, but that they are frustrated by what they view as stonewalling on BP’s part, including tardiness in producing high-resolution video that could be subjected to computer analysis, as well as the company’s reluctance to permit a direct measurement of the flow rate. They said the installation of the new device and the rising flow of oil to the surface had only reinforced their conviction that they did not have enough information.

“It’s apparent that BP is playing games with us, presumably under the advice of their legal team,” Dr. Leifer said. “It’s six weeks that it’s been dumping into the gulf, and still no measurements.”

President Obama has repeatedly criticized BP’s handling of response efforts. He has been criticized for his seeming lack of outrage over the spill, but he took an angrier tone Monday in an interview to be broadcast Tuesday morning on NBC’s “Today” show.

“I don’t sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar,” Mr. Obama told the show’s host, Matt Lauer, in an interview in Kalamazoo, Mich. “We talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answer so I know whose ass to kick.”

On Monday, Mr. Wells, the BP executive, said that engineers had always felt that the oil traveling through the damaged riser created some back pressure that reduced the flow rate. “We always expected to see some increase in flow” when the riser was cut, he said. “It’s difficult to do any calculations on that.”

The company, which for several weeks had publicly rejected the idea of using subsea equipment to measure the flow rate, now says it is up to the flow-rate group itself to decide whether to undertake such a step.

“We are fully cooperating with the Flow Rate Technical Group,” said Anne Kolton, a spokeswoman for BP. “We are working very closely with their experts.”

The difficulty adds one more item to the government’s long to-do list as it begins planning its response to future oil spills: creating some kind of technology that can produce accurate numbers in a deep-sea blowout.

The lack of a reliable measurement system “opens the door to all this speculation and uncertainty,” said Elgie Holstein, oil spill coordinator for the Environmental Defense Fund, an advocacy group, “and we’re all reduced to staring at grainy video footage from the ocean floor.”

The success of the cap has prompted commentators on cable networks and the Internet to ask what BP intends to do with the oil, whether the company should be allowed to profit from it or even whether the federal government should confiscate it.

BP officials have said previously that they intend to refine the oil and sell it, although the oil may require special handling. They have also pointed out that any money to be made — at current prices the oil collected by the cap so far would be worth about $1.9 million — would pale in comparison with the costs of the spill, currently $1 billion and counting.

Rate of Oil Leak, Still Not Clear, Puts Doubt on BP - NYTimes.com

so yeah bp. a great bunch. and tony haywood, the greatest ceo of all times.

one thing is clear at least: any illusion that privatization increased freedom at the level of information anyway should be entirely out the window thanks to the brand triage antics of this corporate person....

05-30-2010, 09:56 AM	#281 (permalink)
Ourcrazymodern? still, wondering. Location: South Minneapolis, somewhere near the gorgeous gorge	Mine, too, roachboy. Demonizing the well to distract from our mistake will probably work, but I think Byron King should have analyzed his speech a little better. Hell, our President might have, as well. Natural processes will clean up the mess, in due course. Compensating our fellows will probably be impossible. "How do you hurt a man who's lost everything? Give him back something broken." __________________ BE JUST AND FEAR NOT

05-30-2010, 10:34 AM	#283 (permalink)
Baraka_Guru warrior bodhisattva Super Moderator Location: East-central Canada	If only there were already a relief well and/or an acoustic switch on the blowout preventer. Hindsight is 20/20, as it were, but foresight is still undervalued, unless you're Norway and Brazil. __________________ Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing? —Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön Humankind cannot bear very much reality. —From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

06-01-2010, 04:25 AM	#287 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	here's a widget that tracks the extent of oil: Gulf Oil Spill Tracker __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

06-01-2010, 04:31 AM	#288 (permalink)
ARTelevision I change Location: USA	roachboy, thanks for all your good info on this tragedy for us all. The oil drum site is a great resource. I have been using these sites to track the spill each day: Map and Estimates of Oil Spilled in the Gulf of Mexico - Interactive Map - NYTimes.com See how the oil spill grows in the Gulf of Mexico - USATODAY.com __________________ create evolution

06-01-2010, 11:36 AM	#289 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	here's an infographic that makes the extent of the oil spill and potentials for damage really quite plain: CRUDE AWAKENING edit: best that can be determined bp's suspended most meaningful operations to stop the flow of new oil. http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6541#comments_top it appears that an attempt that's detailed far better at the link above than i could hope to do here failed. the consensus on the oil drum is that the next phase will be the relief wells. what's curious about the viewpoints on that site is that while there's considerable engineering and oil experience, there's also a tendency to dismiss ecological considerations...well maybe to minimize them is more accurate a statement. it's peculiar. but it's also an indication of the scenario we're all in at the moment in terms of information. there's not a whole lot of data yet. there are persistent reports that bp and the coast guard have been obstructing attempts to get access to affected areas (see the infographic for alot about all this) & the bp has been trying to minimize the sense of amount of oil that's already out and the rate at which it is flowing because they're trying to minimize the fines they're apt to get whacked with, which are determined on a per/barrel basis. when you hear about plumes of oil, as the people on the oil drum point out, there's no consistency in terms of what that means. they will write again and again that a plume can contain levels of oil in the parts per billion range or a saturation. there's no agreement about toxicities amongst these people, nor is there any agreement about the implications of the dispersants. autonomous information sources appear to be working at a lag. it's less simple to say things about ecological damage than it is to estimate the number of gallons of oil blowing through a cracked pipe or 3 a mile below the surface of the ocean. and there are fewer visuals. it's hard to get other information really. and it's difficult to know what to make of some of what information there is available. maybe this is a significant dimension of how consent for the petroleum-economy is maintained--ignorance plus cheap gas. so the walmart way. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 06-01-2010 at 12:37 PM..

06-01-2010, 03:29 PM	#292 (permalink)
ASU2003 immoral minority Location: Back in Ohio	Burning the oil doesn't sound like the best plan. Regulations would have had a good chance of preventing something like this. As well as getting Americans to change the way they use oil. Yet I doubt even this event will change the minds of people in that region to stop using oil/gas and become greener.

06-02-2010, 08:20 AM	#297 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	edit [[i deleted an earlier post. i thought better of it and replaced it with this]] here's a nice compact-ish history of conservative and industry attempts to take over the category "environmentalist" and use it to discredit an entire set of concerns: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m.../ai_n29440361/ in ace's infotainment above, we aren't really talking about anything in particular when the word "environmentalist" comes up--it's just another conservative boogeyman, another evil faction of the liberal elite which sucks the blood of right-thinking americans and the corporate practices for which they stand. we're dealing with straight-up conservative ideology then that's being fobbed off as viable information. i have an agenda in this thread. my agenda is trying to understand what the fuck is happening at the site of the deepwater horizon disaster. i am interested in its political and by extension regulation-based conditions of possibility. i am interested in the specific history of bp in the gulf and the ways in which these converge on the disaster itself, as explanations of it. i am interested in the politics that have taken shape around the attempts to stop the massive flow of oil into the waters of the gulf of mexico. i'm interested in the conflicts that are taking shape between the federal and state governments and bp around the clean-up, to the extent that there is one. i am interested in assessments of damage and proposals for remedies. i'm interested to see what, if anything, happens to the corporate persons involved with this mess. i'm interested to see what, if any, role other stakeholders in the gulf area are allowed to take in shaping what happens with the oil. i'm interested in the appalling brand triage that bp's been running and that its starting to fall apart. and i'm interested in the longer run to see how this disaster changes the regulatory framework first and more generally the politics of petroleum. the information i gather and post here is shaped by this range of interests, but since the thread is a real-time research project, it's not shaped by the interests. i say this to demonstrate why i consider what you are now doing, ace darling, to be a threadjack. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 06-02-2010 at 09:15 AM..

06-02-2010, 09:14 AM	#298 (permalink)
Cimarron29414 Still Free Location: comfortably perched at the top of the bell curve!	rb- As this thing drags on, I'm starting to think that the expense of the leak and the clean up are, in the near term, going to serve as a deterent against reckless behavior on the oil companys' part. I think that the bean counters are going to change their tune regarding "reasonable" preventative measures on future sites. I'll bet reasonable includes quite a bit more than it used to. I still believe there needs to be complete reform in the process at the corporate/government levels, for the long run. Here's another thing that I don't understand. Keep in mind, I don't know crap about drilling: So, why does a relief well have to be drilled 20,000 or so feet deep? Why can't you drill a hole at an angle to a merge depth of 1000 feet and plunge into the current hole with a sort of diverter. Then, the new hole serves as the syphon/relief. Is there some technical reason this can't be done? Perhaps the casing of the current well is too tough to crack? __________________ Gives a man a halo, does mead. "Here lies The_Jazz: Killed by an ambitious, sparkly, pink butterfly."

06-02-2010, 09:17 AM	#299 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	cimmaron: the relief well question is answered a couple times on the oil drum site, but i haven't time at the moment to find it. i suspect you can search it up if you have a moment. if you do, please post it as i think this is one of the questions that will puzzle other drilling dilletantes. i'm another. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

06-02-2010, 10:29 AM	#301 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	ace: there's alot of information in the thread already and if it keeps going there'll be alot more to come. it'd be good to make an concerted attempt to keep things on topic. obscuring things with some grand declaration of Agenda followed by vague ibd editorial infotainment that tries to blame "environmentalists" for the deepwater and exxon valdez is not a good example of such an attempt. but please, by all means, feel free to start other threads about broader questions if you think them important. and don't you worry your pointy little head about anything you say challenging my viewpoint. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 06-02-2010 at 10:34 AM..

06-02-2010, 01:46 PM	#303 (permalink)
ring ░ Location: ❤	I've been wondering about the Atlantis, since this Horizon incident. I posted this first link a few pages back: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...4QtbQD9FNEG4G0 And now this: Whistleblower Sues to Stop Another BP Rig From Operating - ProPublica Last edited by ring; 06-02-2010 at 01:49 PM..

06-03-2010, 12:44 PM	#307 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	Deepwater Horizon oil spill - Encyclopedia of Earth this is a quite good, comprehensive resource that outlines the situations that the thread has been tracking and puts things in context...it's particularly useful for understanding the oil leakage, the environmental concerns, who/which agencies are doing what with how many people and for how long they've been doing it, antecedent spills and so forth. one reason this disengenuous "who's in charge" stuff can keep surfacing from the drill baby drill set is the lack of information co-ordination. it's the kind of thing that happens inside a short attention span media environment when it processes a long and complicated disaster. a made-for-tv disaster is much faster than this and has fewer moving parts. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

06-04-2010, 06:20 AM	#309 (permalink)
Baraka_Guru warrior bodhisattva Super Moderator Location: East-central Canada	Here's another way to show the scale of the disaster. Find out how much of your neighbourhood would be affected by a spill of that size: IfItWasMyHome.com - Visualizing the BP Oil Disaster __________________ Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing? —Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön Humankind cannot bear very much reality. —From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

06-04-2010, 09:21 AM	#310 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	here's a new-ish page with streams for 12 rov things that are operating around the deepwater riser. Live feeds from remotely operated vehicles \| Response in video \| BP it's kinda hard to imagine the basis for saying things are going well given what i'm seeing. have a look: Live feeds from Skandi ROV1 ---------- Post added at 05:21 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:25 PM ---------- =========================================== a little later: http://mxl.fi/bpfeeds/ 9 simultaneous feeds. pretty surreal. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

06-04-2010, 12:15 PM	#312 (permalink)
Ourcrazymodern? still, wondering. Location: South Minneapolis, somewhere near the gorgeous gorge	Ain't that pretty? The b's run away when you p your pants. As's been stated, we'll pay. It's happened before. Not to be political, as money is: I shy away from acknowledging my many failures, so how much more so should "one" with the means to? Allowing bp the freedom to operate in the gulf seems to me an acceptance of the burden of their failure. __________________ BE JUST AND FEAR NOT

06-05-2010, 07:23 AM	#314 (permalink)
ring ░ Location: ❤	Mr. McGuire: I just want to say one word to you -just one word. Ben: Yes sir. Mr. McGuire: Are you listening? Ben: Yes I am. Mr. McGuire: 'Plastics.' Ben: Exactly how do you mean? Mr. McGuire: There's a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it? Ben: Yes I will. Mr. McGuire: Shh! Enough said. That's a deal. Thanks for all the good info, roach. Oh, and I am all for the immediate seizure of BP's assets. Last edited by ring; 06-05-2010 at 07:49 AM.. Reason: added

06-05-2010, 03:20 PM	#315 (permalink)
Tully Mars Living in a Warmer Insanity Super Moderator Location: Yucatan, Mexico	I can't watch or read any more about this... too damn depressing. __________________ I used to drink to drown my sorrows, but the damned things have learned how to swim- Frida Kahlo Vice President Starkizzer Fan Club

06-06-2010, 02:45 PM	#316 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	i hear that tully. i really do. for example---when bp cut the riser off the wrecked drilling rig, they increased the oil flow by about a quarter. so capture of 20% of the oil leaking out of the pipe with the new cap thing means that the amount going into the ocean is more or less the same as before except now there's a cap in place. and less than 25% capture represents an increase in the amount of oil heading into the water. The Oil Drum: Europe \| Deepwater Oil Spill - Pressure Tutorial - and Open Thread but it does let bp and the coast guard say something upbeat-seeming during this news cycle: BP capturing '10,000 barrels of oil' a day from Gulf of Mexico \| Business \| guardian.co.uk __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

06-07-2010, 01:02 PM	#319 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	wow ace. what a display of conservative submissiveness. ceo worship. i'm not surprised. and i don't see a whole lot of substance to your post, really. it's obvious that bp's interests are only 40% invested in the gulf. it's obvious that they can pay a quite considerable sum for the clean-up and survive. it's also obvious that they've been entirely irresponsible in developing safety and/or environmental procedures to accompany deep-water drilling. it's also obvious that they knew there were potential problems in these areas for quite some time before the deepwater horizon. it's obvious that they had a business model that was predicated on avoiding making the requisite investments in the plans and technologies that would have been good to have in place before the deepwater horizon disaster. it's also obvious that neo-liberal style regulation played a very significant role in enabling that business model...it was structured around the regulatory system, in a symbiotic relation with it, presupposed it. it's also obvious that bp was far more prepared to deal with spills of information than spills of oil and it is obvious that haywood has been a central mouthpiece for the corporate damage control apparatus just as it's obvious that you like the damage control because it speaks to some bizarre-o attachment to manly man corporate types who appear to be Doing Things. but in reality, ace, bp's ability to continue doing business in the gulf is under review by the epa and much hinges on a story that's not finished unfolding yet and despite your fact and analysis free assurance that nothing will happen, it is not at all given that nothing will happen. nor is bp buying futures a real indication of a reality beyond the internal perceptions of bp as to the future. that said, even as there's reason to think that the cap had reduced the actual flow of oil by about 25% given the increase in flow into the gulf caused by cutting the riser, i still hope they figure out a way to do better in containing the oil. unlike you, who seems to rely on pollyanna stories from bloomberg, folk with more approximate information about reality aren't terribly optimistic. but you don't particularly seem to care about the leak or the damage or what is or is not being done to clean the oil---you're interested in whether bp can make money off the spill. which is perverse. but whatever floats your boat. it's surely easier that looking at the ugly realities in the gulf. but ecological concerns are for sissies, and your on your knees in front of an image of tony haywood, the greatest ceo of all times. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite