Topic: Deepwater Horizon

[Nichi]

I read that since the Gulf disaster, 10 new rigs have been built in the Gulf. They aren't open for business yet, but they're waiting.

The Gulf is a poisoned wasteland ... the country has turned its back on it.

[Nichi]

There was a 3.5 earthquake in the Gulf a couple of days ago, off the coast of W. Florida (see attached.)  A highly unusual event. There are whispers of a connection to events vis a vis the oilrigs, but my question is, if the Gulf is growing more seismically active, is it a good idea to have all those rigs there?

Likewise in Arkansas, there have been 30 or more earthquakes recently - baby ones, but one has to ask, what in the world is going on?

[Nichi]

29 infant dolphin deaths in the past 2 weeks in Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida; a pygmy sperm whale washing up in Galveston, TX and another in Destin, Florida; a spike in manatee deaths; bloodwork on many Gulf residents -especially the clean-up workers - showing levels of chemical toxicity; increased illness all around the Gulf - some of it manifesting as hemorrhaging; dramatic illness and lesions manifesting after some have taken a swim; oil newly surfacing and coming ashore regardless of the dispersants; the disappearance of baby oysters; the exposure of highly flawed governmental testing on seafood (like cleaning and deveining shrimp PRIOR to testing); continued fish-kills and oiled birds still washing ashore; massive pile-up of dead portugese man-of-war's in Florida; oil and corexit are in the rain in the region; yet the tourism boards launch their seasonal invitations to come down and eat the seafood and take a swim.

The only story emerging in mainstream media is a study showing that the microbes are not eating the oil as desired.

Recently, a 54yo LSU professor died (cause was not stated...). He had spoken against BP's 3-year confidentiality clause in their recruitment of academics. It was his death which brought that story back to light.

There's the short version.

[Michael]

Thanks for keeping us informed Nichi. The issue has completely gone off the news here.

[Nichi]

It seems that NOAA outsources its labwork to Poland ...


http://www.floridaoilspilllaw.com/hustling-noaa-charge-investigating-baby-dolphin-deaths-will-months-remember-poland

[Nichi]

Scientists investigating dolphin deaths in gulf say BP oil spill is possible cause

By Craig Pittman, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Friday, February 25, 2011


Usually, a few dead dolphins wash ashore along gulf beaches in the first few months of the year. Some are killed by Red Tide or other toxic algae blooms, some by diseases, some by cold.

But this year something different is happening. Since Jan. 1, there have been 48 bottlenose dolphins washed up on the beaches of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida's Panhandle.

Most of them — 29, including two of the three found in Florida — were newborn, miscarried or stillborn calves. There were reports of five more washing ashore Thursday, but scientists had not yet verified them or added them to the official count.

The suspicion is that somehow the oil or chemical dispersants from summer's Deepwater Horizon disaster killed them. Activists from the National Wildlife Federation and other groups blogging about the deaths and posting items on Twitter have linked the spike in deaths to the oil spill. ABC and CNN have jumped on the story.

However, the culprit could turn out to be something else, scientists say.

"We shouldn't jump to conclusions," cautioned Randy Wells, a Mote Marine Laboratory scientist who has spent nearly 40 years studying dolphins.

Tests of the carcasses to pinpoint the cause will likely take months, said Blair Mase of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is overseeing the investigation.

Still, everyone acknowledges that the wave of dead dolphins signals something out of the ordinary.

"What's unusual is that there are so many, and so many of them are so young," said Mase, who is in charge of the NOAA's marine mammal stranding network for the southeastern states.

The gestation period for dolphins is between 11 and 12 months. That means dolphins dying now were likely conceived before the April 20 rig explosion off the Louisiana coast.

They were in the early stages of development as about 4.9 million barrels of oil gushed into the gulf, and BP was spraying 771,000 gallons of chemical dispersant on the flow.

Although federal officials and BP have scaled back the cleanup, Louisiana officials say they're still seeing oil washing ashore.

A recent study of the area around the spill by University of Georgia scientist Samantha Joye found dead corals, crabs and sea stars scattered on the sea floor, along with strings of bacterial slime that created what she called an "invertebrate graveyard."

Still, Mase said that many things can lead to animal deaths. "Since 1990, we have had 13 unusual mortality events in the Gulf of Mexico. … So the oil spill is one of the things we're looking into."

There are arguments to be made, though, against some of those other possible causes.

If the dolphins were killed by the winter cold, other species would likely be affected, too, said Moby Solangi, director of the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies, which has collected a majority of the dolphin carcasses, all of them from a 130-mile stretch of beach in Alabama and Mississippi.

So far, all Solangi's staff has been finding have been very young dolphins.

"The usual thing with strandings is that we see a mix of old and young dolphins," Solangi said. "But these all appear to be stillborn or they survived just a day or two before dying."

A Red Tide bloom hasn't been reported in the northern gulf, so that seems unlikely as a cause. That still leaves bacterial or viral infections among possibilities.

Steve Shippe of the Emerald Coast Wildlife Refuge in Fort Walton Beach led the group that picked up the two young dolphins found in the Florida Panhandle — one Jan. 5 in Gulf Breeze, one Jan. 25 on Pensacola Beach.

Although Shippe is studying the oil spill's impact on dolphins, he's reluctant to blame those two on BP. "This is kind of a historical average for our part of the gulf coast," he said.

But the large numbers washing ashore on the Alabama and Mississippi beaches could be a sign of something strange at work, he said.

Shippe, Mase and Solangi all pointed out one thing: The dolphin birthing season hasn't hit its peak yet. That begins at the end of February/beginning of March — so the tide of dead dolphins may not be over.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/environment/wildlife/scientists-investigating-dolphin-deaths-in-gulf-say-bp-oil-spill-is/1153647

[Nichi]

Marriage of oil and fisheries in Louisiana is not so happy: Bob Marshall
Editorial
Published: Friday, February 25, 2011, 8:07 AM
By Bob Marshall, The Times-Picayune
 
Imagine this. A reporter is invited on a state-funded fishing trip by the Louisiana Charter Boat Association. One caveat: His story must inform readers the oil industry lives in harmony with recreational fishing and, in fact, is beneficial to that sector.

Shocked?

So was Eric Sharp of the Detroit Free-Press.

"Of course, I told him I couldn't do that -- I couldn't accept any trip with pre-conditions," he said. "When he told me the money and the conditions had come from your Department of Natural Resources, I was really surprised." I wasn't. Not even after the story was confirmed by DNR Undersecretary Robert Harper. His agency is spending $10,000 on that campaign, he said.

There are several things wrong with this program, starting with the most obvious: It's not true. In fact, the opposite is true.

Government studies show energy development caused at least 38 percent of the 2,100 square miles of coastal wetlands Louisiana has lost over the past 70 years -- and the erosion continues at the rate of 25 square miles a year. Most of that loss has been in estuaries scientists say are responsible for 80 percent of all the fish in the Gulf.

Sure, some rigs act as artificial reefs that attract fish, but when the habitat that produces those fish is destroyed the rigs will become pretty lonely places.

Those losses would have been far less if the industry hadn't spent millions controlling the political system to prevent tighter protections for wetlands. They didn't like the extra cost.

So the truth is that the so-called marriage between oil and fisheries in Louisiana resulted in a battered spouse. Guess which one it is.

The second problem with this campaign is that it uses public funds to benefit one of the most profitable industries on the planet. It can afford to pay for its own media bribes.

Finally, there's the fact most of these companies make their profits from publicly-owned resources. Our government agencies are supposed to represent us in those business relationships, not them. It's like having your Realtor working for the prospective buyer.

Of course when Harper says the DNR was just doing its job, he's not far off.

The DNR's stated mission is "to preserve and enhance the nonrenewable natural resources ... through conservation, regulation, management and development" and to ensure that the state of Louisiana realizes "appropriate economic benefit." It is also charged with enforcing the regulations governing those activities. But it says (admits?) "The department strives to facilitate an excellent working relationship with industry, with a strong emphasis on reaching mutual goals." Well it's certainly been successful there. While Louisiana leads the nation in annual oil spills (4,000 a year according to the U.S. Coast Guard), the DNR seldom collects fines. According to a recent report from Bloomberg News, since 2006 the DNR took part in only 46 spill enforcements and collected penalties in just 28. The average fine these wealthy companies paid for polluting our environment was $10,496.

Meanwhile, federal regulators involved in the same cases collected $148,496 on each issue.

In fact, our DNR doesn't restrict its oil industry cheerleading to the state. Over the past year it has issued statements echoing the American Petroleum Institute, the lobbying arm of the oil and gas business, urging Congress to: preserve $36 billion in incentives taxpayers will give oil companies over the next decade; prevent the EPA from regulating carbon pollution, a key factor in sea level rise that is swamping more of our coast; stop stricter safety regulations and higher royalty payments. Naturally, it also thought halting deep-water drilling until the industry proved it could stop another BP disaster was outrageous.

The standard reason given by DNR is that that industry is vital to the state economy, producing 50,000 jobs.

Well, what about the other 1.9 million jobs in the economy? Or the reality that oil and gas interests often conflict with the reforms and programs we need to survive on these dying deltas? Or the lessons learned when the old Minerals Management Service became a support arm for the oil industry?

That's the accurate story, and the one our tax dollars should be used to spread.
Now, I would be shocked if that happened.

http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2011/02/marriage_of_oil_and_fisheries.html

[Nichi]

Angela expressed it well in the 6/11 thread, so I'm going to quote it here:

The truth is always 'simple' ... when boiled down, just follow the money. It's all in plain sight. Those who control our nation, and probably have a strong hold on other countries as well, are greedy, power hungry bastards. They promote their 'causes' under the guise of religious and personal freedoms, when in fact, they want just the opposite. They want Total Control. This is our Patriarchal reign ... this is the 'good 'ol boys ... it's a modern day legal mafia, just as our Wall Street is legalized gambling.

Do you know that there is a hedge fund for snow precipitation? I heard it about two months ago on NPR (National Public Radio), and of course now,  I can't find it on the internet. It's insane ... again, legalized gambling.

I swear I live in the land of the zombies ... everyone sleepily following their orders that have been implanted, programmed ... brainwashed ...  And when a truth is revealed, it's quickly washed away, removed from public view, until a 'Jesse Ventura', or a 'Julian Assange' force it into the forefront. Then the 'witch hunt' begins to persecute the messengers ... or, are they really messengers ... 

I feel the same reactions to the oil spill and climate change. In speaking to my brother the other day, who said he was going to be at Mardi Gras in New Orleans this year, I was cautioning him about the seafood. He said, "Oh, I thought that the whole thing about the spill wasn't as bad as they first thought... [that everything was ok]..." I shared a little of the content of this thread, and you would've thought I was telling him about little green men from Mars.

Back in the 70's, we had all those lies, a 'wrong' war, assassinations, Watergate, and the killings at Kent State. It drove me from reading much further.  I would only occasionally follow a story thereafter. I'm back there now, and I know it's all wrong - the timing of withdrawal is wrong, especially per M's recent post:

We, who value spiritual aspirations, should be watching these movements intensely. Why? Because we need two things:

1. Time. The most precious thing - this path requires sufficient time to mature, and thus to throw it over for some emotional allegiance or sense of injustice, or out of head-in-the-sand ignorance, is insanity.

2. Goad-task. Without a powerful task relevant to our current life-world situation, we stagnate in our own juices. The current upheavals in all areas of our world are exactly what we need to push us over the final line.

Be in the world but not of it.

The trouble is, I don't think I have the energy any more to weed through all the bullshit. We have a controlled, not a free, press... God knows what the truth is, anymore, anywhere. Or is this the desired conclusion, by the powers-that-be?  Perhaps I simply need a break from pouring into every detail.

I definitely need to decorate the walls of my own time-capsule.

Edited to add: I'm sure this weariness will pass. Meanwhile, thanks for letting me share my frustration.

[Michael]

 

[Nichi]

Another Oil Spill, in the South Atlantic

[Nichi]

...

[Builder]

The Gulf of Mexico is not as clean as they say

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthcomment/geoffrey-lean/8454859/The-Gulf-of-Mexico-is-not-as-clean-as-they-say.html

The task of assessing the true toll of the Deepwater Horizon blow-out is only now starting, says Geoffrey Lean.

So is it now safe to go back into the Gulf of Mexico? A year after the Deepwater Horizon blow-out – which killed 11 workers and spilled 4.9 million barrels of oil – it might seem so.

Beaches along the coast look like they're back to their breathtaking normal, the ecologically sensitive Louisiana wetlands seem full of life again, and resorts are hoping that tourists will start flocking back. Only 0.4 per cent of American waters there are still closed to fishing – down from more than a third last summer – and prawn catches were actually nearly 10 per cent higher in January and February than at the same time last year.

Two weeks ago, the Obama administration gave the first go-ahead for a new deep water well since the disaster (it had already issued permits for six previously approved ones). The clean-up force has been cut from 52,000 to 6,000, and, two months ago, the head of the government's special claims fund said research he had commissioned showed that the area would have almost fully recovered by next year.

And yet we are still only near the beginning of the story – for oil spills, like other environmental emergencies, have a short acute phase, followed by a long chronic one. As so far at Fukushima, the acute phase has gone better than once seemed possible – but the long-term consequences remain unknown.

Mercifully, even miraculously, the Gulf has been spared the devastation that looked all too probable in the early weeks of the crisis, when the gushing oil seemed unstoppable, and the winds were blowing an ever-growing slick straight towards the wildlife-rich marshes of the Mississippi Delta. The winds changed just in time and – together with favourable currents and the flow of the great river itself – held the oil offshore long enough for it to dissipate: BP's spraying of 1.84 million gallons of dispersants also helped.

But while catastrophe was averted, the task of assessing the true toll is only now starting. It is highly charged, both commercially – since the result may decide how much may have to be paid in compensation – and politically, since Barack Obama, damaged by his hesitant handling of the crisis, has been over-eager in declaring it over.

It is worth bearing in mind that the effects of the acute stage are more serious than they might appear. One hundred dead cetaceans, for example, washed ashore – but, as a rule of thumb, 50 times as many such whales and dolphins sink at sea, making the likely toll around 5,000. Similarly the 8,065 oiled birds recovered are bound to be only a small fraction of those affected; in a ghoulish exercise, researchers will dump avian carcasses overboard this summer to see what proportion make it to land through the shark-infested sea.

Nor are all the beaches as idyllic as they appear to be. Many have an oil layer beneath the sand, while others are strewn with tiny fragments of tar balls. Huge mats of weathered oil are plaguing surf zones where the waves crash in. Parts of the wetlands are seriously contaminated, too.

There may be other surprises in store. For several years after the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska's Prince William Sound, the herring population seemed to have survived – but then crashed, never to recover. Birds that fed on affected shellfish in the area have had trouble breeding. And follow-up studies after a 1969 spill off Massachusetts found crabs still badly affected four decades later.

The biggest – and most hotly contested – issue is particular to this accident, which uniquely took place nearly a mile beneath the sea. Scientists increasingly expect that the greatest effects will take place in the deep ocean, but determining them, in the words of one US government expert will be "probably one of the most challenging things ever".

The official American position is that "most of the oil is gone" and, indeed, Department of Energy research suggested that naturally-occuring microbes did a good job of gobbling it up. But Prof Samantha Joye, of the University of Georgia – who has actually been to the sea floor in a submarine many times before and after the accident – tells a different story after finding an enormous "graveyard" covered in a thick coat of pollution. She reckons that the microbes managed to munch up only a tenth of the oil.

Perhaps most ominously is anecdotal evidence of illnesses among clean-up workers and other Gulf Coast residents, with blood containing elevated levels of the chemicals found in oil. A $19 million official study of 55,000 people has been launched to determine any health effects.

True, it could all have been so much worse. But, a year on, the story of Deepwater Horizon is still far from coming to a close.

[Nichi]

It is far from over... And frankly, I hope it gets driven home and placed right in Obama's path, to the point that he can't get re-elected, that he was actively complicit in covering up and dismissing the real troubles there. Personally, I can't even look at him without feeling a twinge of outrage.

[Nichi]

Oil spill response hindered by infighting between public officials, says Thad Allen
Published: Sunday, April 17, 2011, 6:00 AM     
By George Altman, Washington Bureau



Gulf Oil SpillVessels gather at the Deepwater Horizon oil spill site over the Gulf of Mexico, in July 2010. Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the incident commander for the spill, said fights for authority between government officials hampered the effort. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

ARLINGTON, Va. — Efforts to combat the Gulf oil spill were plagued by wrangling for authority among government officials, withering public criticism and sometimes-haphazard operations in the air and on the water, according to the man who led the fight during the height of the disaster.

But one of the biggest obstacles, said retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, was the impulse that many people had to abandon the response plan entirely in the face of such an extraordinary crisis.

While some changes are necessary, the overall plan dictated by the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 served the Gulf Coast well during the spill, according to Allen.

"The magnitude of the problem started driving doubts in everybody’s minds, and there were these political urges to act beyond the doctrine," Allen said.

It’s an issue, he said, that’s likely to arise in future such events: Whether to "wing it," or "have the courage to believe in ourselves and the decisions we’ve made."

Gulf leaders suffered from 'cognitive dissonance'

With the anniversary of the spill approaching, Allen spoke with the Press-Register about the successes and failures of the response effort and what lessons it holds.

The most important lesson, Allen said during an hour-long interview at his RAND Corp. office near Washington, D.C., is that getting extra help through a federal response also means local leaders must give up some of their power.

"You have to subordinate, sometimes, your organization and your political position in favor of becoming part of that larger response that is integrated and best serves the people," Allen said. "The question is, do we have the personal, civil and political will to do that when we’re being pressured?"

During the oil spill, the answer was sometimes no, according to Allen, who said leaders across the Gulf Coast suffered from "cognitive dissonance," wanting the aid of federal resources but then expecting to control them.

Despite the federal Oil Pollution Act, or OPA, being more than two decades old, it’s still a very useful tool, according to Allen. Enacted in August 1990 following the Exxon Valdez disaster, the law mandates many aspects of the handling of oil spills.

Last year’s spill, spawned by an April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig that killed 11 workers, sent 206 million gallons of crude into the Gulf, according to government estimates. The Valdez spill was paltry by comparison, at 11 million gallons.

The massive scale of the Gulf crisis led some to panic and want to discard the OPA plans unnecessarily, Allen said.

As an example, he mentioned the provision making the spill’s "responsible party" liable for the cleanup. In the case of the Gulf gusher, many didn’t trust BP PLC to fix the mess.

Still, he said, the size of the Gulf spill highlighted various defects in the law, whose authors anticipated a small and centralized leadership group guiding the response.

Last year’s effort was more akin to warfare, "a major theater operation, or a siege," requiring a larger-scale command structure, according to Allen. He said that the law should be changed to address this possibility.

He also expressed support for removing OPA’s liability limit of $75 million per spill. BP agreed to exceed this amount without a change in the law.

Additionally, Allen said, the president should have the power to declare a "spill of national significance," which, like an emergency declaration, would automatically grant important powers to responders, such as control of airspace and ability to relocate essential equipment.

Allen said the Gulf response demonstrated the efficiency of situational burning to remove spilled oil floating on the water.

But rather than relying on an ad-hoc amateur fleet to corral oil, as happened with a BP program that paid private boat owners to aid in the spill response, Allen said that oil companies should have certified response boaters in place before the next spill occurs.

Despite some controversy and questions, the Unified Command structure, in which Coast Guard, federal government and BP officials jointly coordinated response efforts, proved effective, he said.

And if a similar gusher breaks open a mile underwater tomorrow, Allen said, those in charge should be better prepared to handle it, having acquired more knowledge, better equipment and a greater ability to coordinate operations.

"I don’t think there’s any doubt about that," Allen said. "I think, in general, we’d be much better positioned."

[Nichi]