BP Oil Spill Articles cont'd
The Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill: An Accident Waiting to Happen
The oil slick spreading across the Gulf of Mexico has shattered the notion that offshore drilling had become safe. A close look at the accident shows that lax federal oversight, complacency by BP and the other companies involved, and the complexities of drilling a mile deep all combined to create the perfect environmental storm.
It's hard to believe now, as oil from the wrecked Deepwater Horizon well encroaches on the Louisiana marshes. But it was only six weeks ago that President Obama announced a major push to expand offshore oil and gas drilling. Obama's commitment to lift a moratorium on offshore drilling reflected the widely-held belief that offshore oil operations, once perceived as dirty and dangerous, were now so safe and technologically advanced that the risks of a major disaster were infinitesimal, and managing them a matter of technocratic skill.
But in the space of two weeks, both the politics and the practice of offshore drilling have been turned upside down. Today, the notion that offshore drilling is safe seems absurd. The Gulf spill harks back to drilling disasters from decades past - including one off the coast of Santa Barbara, Calif. in 1969 that dumped three million gallons into coastal waters and led to the current moratorium. The Deepwater Horizon disaster is a classic "low probability, high impact event" - the kind we've seen more than our share of recently, including space shuttle disasters, 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina. And if there's a single lesson from those disparate catastrophes, it's that pre-disaster assumptions tend to be dramatically off-base, and the worst-case scenarios downplayed or ignored. The Gulf spill is no exception.
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VIDEO: As House opens hearings to investigate BP oil disaster, House GOP gathers at oil industry fundraiser
Yesterday, executives including BP's chairman Lamar McKay, Transocean CEO Steve Newman, and Halliburton's Timothy Probert appeared before a hearing in the House Energy and Commerce Committee to dodge responsibility for their respective roles in the Deepwater Horizon Gulf Coast oil spill.
About an hour before the investigation began, House Republicans gathered a few blocks away for an "oil and gas breakfast" fundraiser with the oil and gas industry to benefit Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX). View a screenshot of the invitation from the Political Party Time blog below:
ThinkProgress reported from the fundraiser and spoke with several lawmakers as they went in and out of the building. We asked Brady, who praised the environmental record of the oil industry shortly after the spill, if he still believed that oil drilling still has a "very positive" record. He replied, "you know, I do."
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Gulf Oil Spill Update: Way Worse Than They Told Us
When estimates of the size of BP's oil spill in the Gulf quickly shifted from no leak [1] to 1,000 barrels [2] a day to 5,000 barrels a day-with BP telling members of Congress the daily flow could rise up to 60,000 barrels-it was pretty obvious the estimates weren't entirely reliable [3].
As it turns out, after BP finally released 30 seconds of video footage [4] of the spill on Wednesday, one expert told NPR that crude was gushing out at a rate of 70,000 barrels a day [5], which is even worse than the worst-case estimate [6] BP gave lawmakers. According to the experts cited by NPR, the spill is "already far larger [5] than the 1989 Exxon Valdez accident in Alaska, which spilled at least 250,000 barrels of oil."
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How Bad Could the BP Spill Get?
How much oil is gushing into the Gulf of Mexico? No one knows for sure, but the answer is likely far, far worse than what BP has admitted. One outside calculation estimates that the Gulf has already experienced the equivalent of six Exxon Valdez spills. And without an accurate number, there's increasing fear that the response may fail.
BP says approximately 210,000 gallons of oil are spilling into the Gulf per day. But John Amos, a geologist at the West Virginia-based nonprofit SkyTruth, says that at least 1.1 million gallons of oil is leaking out of the well every day. His calculation is based on early NASA images of the slick that showed it covering 2,200 square miles of the Gulf, and on the estimated thickness of oil needed for the slick to be visible from space. "If it really is just 210,000 and they can't handle that-you've got to be kidding me," says Amos, who has tracked the changing estimates of the spill on his blog. "One of the world's biggest oil companies plus the Coast Guard has been beaten by 210,000 gallons a day-do they really want us to think that?"
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Whistleblower Sues to Stop Another BP Rig From Operating
A whistleblower filed a lawsuit today to force the federal government to halt operations at another massive BP oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico, alleging that BP never reviewed critical engineering designs for the operation and is therefore risking another catastrophic accident that could "dwarf" the company's Deepwater Horizon spill.
The allegations about BP's Atlantis platform were first made last year, but they were laid out in fresh detail in the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Houston against Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and the Minerals and Management Service, the agency responsible for regulating offshore drilling in the Gulf.
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Damaged Equipment, Feuding Between BP and Transocean in Lead up to Explosion
In the weeks before the Deepwater Horizon spill, an accident on the rig damaged a crucial piece of safety equipment [1], according to last night's CBS News' 60 Minutes. [2]
According to a Transocean worker who survived and was interviewed by 60 Minutes, part of the blowout preventer's seal broke, and when this was brought to the attention of a supervisor, the response was that it was "no big deal." Another part of the blowout preventer-the control pod that connects the device to the surface-also had problems weeks prior to the accident, according to the worker, Mike Williams.
Despite these troubling signs, operations continued. Williams said that in safety meetings, BP and Transocean managers feuded over how to proceed, with BP pushing to move quicker. BP ultimately won.
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BP Turns Down Offers to Better Measure Gulf Disaster
Even as BP has succeeded in siphoning off some of the oil [1] gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, the company has continued to resist calls for more accurate measurements [2] of the oil flow, according to The New York Times.
The government continues to use the 5,000-barrels-a-day estimate, which comes from satellite images of the ocean's surface-a method that is not recommended for measuring spills as large as this one [3].
The current method of measuring the disaster seems particularly ill-suited to the task, now that scientists have found enormous plumes of dispersed oil forming in the deep waters of the gulf-and not on the surface of the water. (As we reported, the EPA approved the use of dispersants [4] to break up the crude, making oil droplets linger longer in the water without floating to the surface.)
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EPA Officials Weigh Sanctions Against BP's U.S. Operations
Officials at the Environmental Protection Agency are considering whether to bar BP from receiving government contracts, a move that would ultimately cost the company billions in revenue and could end its drilling in federally controlled oil fields.
Over the past 10 years, BP has paid tens of millions of dollars in fines and been implicated in four separate instances of criminal misconduct that could have prompted this far more serious action. Until now, the company's executives and their lawyers have fended off such a penalty by promising that BP would change its ways.
That strategy may no longer work.
Days ago, in an unannounced move, the EPA suspended negotiations with the petroleum giant over whether it would be barred from federal contracts because of the environmental crimes it committed before the spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Officials said they are putting the talks on hold until they learn more about the British company's responsibility for the plume of oil that is spreading across the Gulf.
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Coast Guard Flagged Potential Problems With Spill Response in 2004
Although much has been made of problems with BP [1], rig-owner Transocean [2] and drilling regulators [3], the Coast Guard has largely been described as a helper in the Gulf cleanup, even if in doing so it hasn't exactly helped the cause of transparency [4].
But the Wall Street Journal, the Alabama Press-Register and others have raised points about the Coast Guard that I think are worth flagging.
Today, the Alabama Press-Register noted that Coast Guard officials have known for years about potential problems with federal and industry response to an oil spill [5]. In 2004, the Coast Guard produced a report after a training exercise that came to some damning conclusions about preparations for a big spill. For example, according to the Press-Register, the report noted, "Oil spill response personnel did not appear to have even a basic knowledge of the equipment required to support salvage or spill clean up operations." (Unfortunately, the Press-Register doesn't seem to have posted the report itself.)
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BP: Oil Flow "Might Be a Little More" Than Earlier Estimate
Until now, BP hasn't officially updated its 5,000-barrels-a-day estimate of the flow of crude oil into the Gulf. As we've pointed out, the company has said it's too busy trying to stop the spill [1] to measure it. Today, BP made some time to update the public about its effort to siphon up some of the oil that's spewing into the Gulf, announcing that it's now collecting about 5,000 barrels of oil a day [2]through a smaller tube that was inserted into one of two leaks.
In doing so, the company also acknowledged that oil was still spilling into the Gulf, and that earlier estimates were off.
"Now that we are collecting 5,000 barrels a day, it might be a little more than that," BP spokesman Mark Proegler told AFP [3]. "We said from the beginning, our experts have been saying there really is no reliable way to estimate the flow."
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NWF: BP cover-up begins to unravel
BP admits the obvious, sort of, and the smoking gun reappears
The news is coming fast and furious now - well, it's coming fast, and all of us should be furious:
BP Admits They Underestimated The Amount Of Oil Leaking As More Washes On Shore
A BP spokesman "said a mile-long tube inserted into a leaking pipe over the weekend is capturing 210,000 gallons a day the total amount the company
[has] estimated is gushing into the sea but some is still escaping. He would not say how much."
Duh. At least they can still do simple math.
BP Smoking Gun? Oil Giant Skipped Critical Testing Hours Before Explosion
BP hired a reputable oilfield service company to test the strength of cement linings on the well, but then sent the company's workers home 11 hours before the explosion on April 20 - "without performing a final check that a top cementing company executive called the only test that can really determine the actual effectiveness' of the well's seal," reports the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
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