Reuters: Scientists link oil on dolphins to BP spill

Reuters reports oil has been found on a handful of dead dolphins that washed ashore along the U.S. Gulf Coast last year.

“Fifteen of the 406 dolphins that have washed ashore in the last 14 months had oil on their bodies, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists said during a conference call with reporters,” according to the article.

More at http://on.msnbc.com/hQlZnj

Should We Be Surprised? Commission Says Firms Knew of BP Well Flaws

Can’t say this is a shocker:

Fromhttp://www.nytimes.com?emc=na”> the New York Times:

Firms Knew of Cement Flaws Before Spill, Panel Says

Halliburton and BP knew weeks before the fatal explosion of the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico that the cement mixture they planned to use to seal the bottom of the well was unstable but still went ahead with the job, the presidential commission investigating the accident said on Thursday.

In the first official finding of responsibility for the blowout, which killed 11 workers and led to the largest offshore oil spill in American history, the commission staff determined that Halliburton had conducted three laboratory tests that indicated that the cement mixture did not meet industry standards.

The result of at least one of those tests was given on March 8 to BP, which failed to act upon it, the panel’s lead investigator, Fred H. Bartlit Jr., said in a letter delivered to the commissioners on Thursday.

Read More:
http://www.nytimes.com?emc=na

Watch “The Spill” Tonight at 9 p.m. on PBS

We urge you to watch this program tonight at 9 p.m. on PBS about BP, and its practice of choosing money and marketing over safety.

From the PBS press release:

Long before the Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf, BP was widely viewed as a company that valued deal making and savvy marketing over safety, a “serial environmental criminal” that left behind a long trail of problems — deadly accidents, disastrous spills, countless safety violations — which many now believe should have triggered action by federal regulators. Could the spill have been prevented? Through interviews with current and former employees and executives, government regulators, and safety experts, FRONTLINE correspondent Martin Smith joins with the investigative non-profit ProPublica to examine the trail that led to the disaster in the Gulf. From BP’s vast oil fields in Alaska to its refineries in Texas and its trading rooms in New York and London, the film raises new questions about whether BP’s corporate culture will finally be forced to change.

More information here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/the-spill/

If you watch, let us know what you thought!

Mission Accomplished?

Beware proclamations trumpeting the official “end” of somethings. Unless it’s the end of a book, it’s hard to imagine. From the New York Times

In Drilling, Timing is Everything

Chalk this one up to good timing. Employees from the Apache Mariner, the rig that exploded today, were laying into President Obama yesterday about his deepwater drilling moratorium. Will we ever learn the lessons of low-regulatory policy?

From the blog Think Progress, quoting a piece from the Financial Times:

Companies ranging from Chevron to Apache bussed in up to 5,000 employees to the Houston convention centre to underline to Washington the industry’s contribution to the country. […]

“I have been in the oil and gas industry for 40 years, and this administration is trying to break us,” said Barbara Dianne Hagood, senior landman for Mariner Energy, a small company. “The moratorium they imposed is going to be a financial disaster for the gulf coast, gulf coast employees and gulf coast residents.”

While the well, owned by Mariner Energy Inc., was too shallow to be affected by any drilling moratorium, TP goes on to cite a report in The Washington Post that references a recent SEC filing that was critical of any anticipated, increased drilling regulations.

The company said the Interior Department’s moratorium on deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico had affected Mariner’s operations. It said its operations “may be impacted in the future by increased regulatory oversight, which may increase the cost of” Outer Continental Shelf wells “and delay drilling and production therefrom.”

Coast Guard: Another Rig Explodes in the Gulf

From the Associated Press:

GRAND ISLE, La. (AP) — An offshore oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday, west of the site of the April blast that caused the massive oil spill.
A commercial helicopter company reported the blast around 9:30 a.m. CDT Thursday, Coast Guard Petty Officer Casey Ranel said. Seven helicopters, two airplanes and four boats were en route to the site, about 80 miles south of Vermilion Bay along the central Louisiana coast.

The Coast Guard said initial reports indicated all 13 crew members from the rig were in the water. One was injured, but there were no deaths.

The platform owned by Mariner Energy (NYSE:ME) is in about 2,500 feet of water, the Coast Guard said, and was not currently producing.

About 206 million gallons of oil from an undersea well spilled into the Gulf after BP’s (NYSE:BP) Deepwater Horizon rig exploded April 20, killing 11 workers.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/09/02/us/AP-US-Gulf-Rig-Explosion.html?_r=1&emc=na

Drilling for Hyperbole

For all intents and purposes, at least in the foreseeable future, the BP oil spill did nothing to change the hearts and minds of Americans, or the people that represent them. Comprehensive energy legislation, once a potential hallmark of this Congress, is going nowhere because of a palpable lack of political will, as well as careful capitalization off the anti-everything sentiment.

But remember all the fire & brimstone about the so-called job-killing drill moratorium? I’m no fan of policy moratoriums: I think they’re kind of gimmicky, and often do nothing to add to a sound, comprehensive review process, but the job killing part of the drill, baby, drill narrative didn’t pan out as promised, according to a report in the New York Times:

“[T]he worst of those forecasts has failed to materialize, as companies wait to see how long the moratorium will last before making critical decisions on spending cuts and layoffs. Unemployment claims related to the oil industry along the Gulf Coast have been in the hundreds, not the thousands, and while oil production from the gulf is down because of the drilling halt, supplies from the region are expected to rebound in future years. Only 2 of the 33 deepwater rigs operating in the gulf before the BP rig exploded have left for other fields.”

The article goes on to say that even the “government’s estimate of the impact of the drilling pause — 23,000 lost jobs and $10.2 billion in economic damage — is proving to be too pessimistic.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/us/25drill.html

No Political Will

The New York Times, on its Caucus blog tonight reports that Congressional Democrats have abandoned not only sweeping clean energy policy but also a whittled down version that would serve as a response to the BP oil spill, which was recently determined to be the largest accidental spill in history.

The piece quotes Sen. John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, who worked on comprehensive energy legislation, characterizing America’s so-called oil addiction as a non-partisan issue:

“Ask anyone outside of Washington, and they’ll tell you that this isn’t a Democrat or a Republican issue, it’s an American issue,” Mr. Kerry said. “It’s American troops whose lives are endangered because we’re dependent on oil companies in countries that hate us. It’s American consumers who are tired not just of prices at the pump that soar each summer, but sick and tired of our oil dependency that makes Iran $100 million richer every day that Washington fails to respond.”

He’s right on all counts except for one: it’s very much a partisan issue when the obstacle facing clean energy legislation–the Republican Party–has absolutely no interest in clean energy.

Read more here:

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/03/energy-bill-a-no-go-in-the-senate/?src=twt&twt=nytimes

Five Hours of Oil Consumption?

NPR just reported that the five million gallons of oil that spilled in the Gulf of Mexico since April 20—the largest accidental oil spill in history—is equal to five hours of oil consumption in the U.S.

NYT: BP Spill Largest Accidental Spill in History

The five million barrels of oil that have flowed from BP’s Deepwater Horizon well since rupturing on April 20 now represents the largest “accidental release of oil” in history, according to the New York Times, out-polluting the Ixtoc 1, the Mexican rig that collapsed in June 1979.

From the New York Times:

“Federal science and engineering teams estimated that 53,000 barrels of oil per day were pouring from the well just before BP was able to cap it on July 15. They also estimated that the daily flow rate had lessened over time, starting at around 62,000 barrels a day and decreasing as the reservoir of hydrocarbons feeding the gusher was gradually depleted.

The teams believe that the estimates are accurate to within 10 percent. They also reported that of the roughly 4.9 million barrels that had been released from the well, about 800,000 had been captured by BP’s previous containment efforts. That leaves over four million barrels that gushed into the Gulf of Mexico between April 20 and July 15.”

More at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/03/us/03flow.html?_r=1&hp