Political Climate Articles
Another Alaskan fighting big oil? Murkowski Backs BP Bailout
Democrats this afternoon attempted to bring up their Big Oil Bailout Prevention Act, a measure that would raise the liability cap for major spills like that currently underway in the Gulf to $10 billion. Under the current law, BP could be on the hook for only $75 million total for the spill—which is far, far less than this spill is going to cost.
Even a $10 billion cap could still be too low; some analysts predict that the total cost of the BP spill could hit $14 billion. Raising the cap, one might think, would be a popular move for Congress. It would both force BP to pay up all it owes to the Gulf Coast, and also ensure that any companies that embark on risky drilling ventures do a better job of ensuring safety and adequate clean-up plans. BP could surely afford to pay the full costs; after all, the company pulled in $5.6 billion in profits in just the first quarter of this year. But Republicans objected to the move.
The block was led by Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski who valiantly stood up for the rights of oil companies, big and small, to dump oil into our waterways with little fear of liability:
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In Gulf Spill, BP Using Dispersants Banned in U.K.
The two types of dispersants BP is spraying in the Gulf are banned for use [1] on oil spills in the U.K. As EPA-approved products [2], BP has been using them in greater quantities than dispersants have ever been used [3] in the history of US oil spills.
BP is using two products from a line of dispersants called Corexit [4], which EPA data [2] appears to show is more toxic and less effective [5] on South Louisiana crude than other available dispersants, according to Greenwire.
We learned about the U.K. ban from a mention on the New York Times' website. (The reference was cut from later versions of the article, so we can't link to the Times, but we found the piece [6] elsewhere.) The Times flagged a letter [7] Rep. Edward Markey, Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, sent to the EPA yesterday. The letter pointed out that both the Corexit products currently being used in the Gulf were removed from a list of approved treatments for oil spills in the UK more than a decade ago. (Here's the letter [7].)
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What spill? Rig owner approves $1 billion dividend to shareholders
Five days after appearing before Congress to testify about its responsibility in one of the worst oil spills in US history, the Swiss company that owned and operated the oil rig that sunk into the Gulf of Mexico announced that it would shell out $1 billion in dividends to shareholders.
The revelation that Transocean is distributing a $1 billion profit to shareholders as one of its drill sites leaks millions of gallons of oil into the sea is sure to inflame an already smarting debate over offshore drilling and the company's role.
Transocean has passionately argued that they don't share financial responsibility for the disaster. A clause in a contract they had with BP says that the oil company is obligated to pay for any environmental damage, even though Transocean actually owned the rig. BP was leasing the rig from Transocean at the time of the accident.
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Gulf oil driller Transocean beefs up lobbying, PR team
An offshore drilling company tied to the massive Gulf oil spill is boosting its lobbying and public-relations team as the number of congressional inquiries expands.
Transocean Ltd. recently signed Capitol Hill Consulting Group, which includes a former Democratic congressman and a top energy adviser to then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), to lobby for an undisclosed sum, according to federal lobbying records.
Transocean, which has had only a small presence in Washington up to now, has also hired FD Public Affairs to help it deal with the media onslaught.
The firm owned the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that caught on fire on April 20 and eventually sank, triggering the spill, which has yet to be contained.
Eleven workers died in the explosion.
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Should you believe anything BP says?
As gigantic oil plumes form under Gulf, BP recklessly ignores scientists' pleas: "We're not going to take any extra efforts now to calculate flow there at this point. It's not relevant to the response effort, and it might even detract from the response effort."
If you had any lingering doubts about who was to blame for the disastrous undersea volcano of oil in the Gulf, last night's 60 Minutes utterly dispels them:
This makes clear that BP's cost- and corner-cutting caused this disaster. Equally shocking is the story of BP's willful and "fundamentally wrong" approach to safety on another well, the Atlantis. Part 1 is well worth watching too. A full transcript is here.
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Wisconsin ranks high for reliance on coal
Wisconsin ranks fifth in the nation in the portion of its electricity derived from coal imported from other states, according to a new report published Tuesday by the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The report was released by the nonprofit group to emphasize investment in efficiency and renewable energy to reduce states' reliance on coal.
Wisconsin is home to new coal-fired power plants at a time when new coal plants across the country have been canceled because of escalating construction costs and concerns about potential regulation of greenhouse gas emissions.
The group's report found that Wisconsin imported 68% of its coal from other states in 2008. Ranking higher were Missouri, Iowa, Kansas and Delaware.
"Wisconsin spent $853 million on coal imports in 2008. About $700 million of that came from Wyoming," said Barbara Freese, UCS senior policy analyst. Wisconsin ranked 12th in terms of dollars spent on coal, the report found.
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Gingrich's book argues Obama poses Hitler-like threat
Former GOP Rep. Molinari says that's ‘crazy' and ‘outrageous'
Since retiring from Congress, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has devoted much of his time leading a pro-drilling front group with "resources" from the oil industry (see "Gingrich's ‘drill here, drill now' campaign continues as BP oil disaster grows").
Now, he is promoting his new anti-regulation, pro-drilling book, To Save America, which argues repeatedly that the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress are a "secular-socialist machine" that "represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union." TP has the story of Gingrich's defense of that hate speech — and how even people in his own party are attacking his extremist views.
Gingrich has repeatedly defended this claim, telling both NBC's Meredith Vieira and Fox News' Chris Wallace that he truly believes that the Obama administration is an equivalent "threat" to America as brutal dictators like Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin:
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Gingrich Won't Take Offshore Drilling In California & East Coast Off The Table
Yesterday, Newt Gingrich delivered a lecture in Davenport, Iowa's John Deer Auditorium to push his new book, To Save America: Stopping Obama's Secular-Socialist Machine. In light of the devastation wrought by the BP oil spill, which surpassed Exxon Valdez today as the worst in history, TP asked Gingrich whether it's time to reevaluate his support for increasing offshore drilling. (The Obama administration has announced a temporary moratorium on granting new drilling permits.) Gingrich, the brains behind the “Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less” campaign, continued to push for opening California and the East Coast to offshore drilling:
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Brit Hume shrugs off BP disaster: ‘Where is the oil?'
On Sunday, Fox News anchor Brit Hume scoffed at the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, wondering, "Where is the oil?" I guess he's using the same playbook as BP's Tony ‘Soprano‘ Hayward. TP has the story:
Hume followed the lead of Rush Limbaugh and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R), who have been aggressively downplaying the disaster and bristling at comparisons to the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill. During the Fox News Sunday roundtable, Hume dismissed the expert analysis that many times more oil have spilled already than the Exxon Valdez disaster, a point raised by fellow panelist Juan Williams:
WILLIAMS: First of all, don't you think, this spill now is going to be in excess of what happened with Exxon Valdez.
HUME: Let's see if that happens. There's a good question today if you are standing on the Gulf, and that is: Where is the oil?
WILLIAMS: "Where is the oil?"
HUME: It's not on — except for little of chunks of it, you're not even seeing it on the shore yet.
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Rep. Graves (R-MO) flees reality: BP oil disaster could have been averted if we were drilling in ANWR
Maybe you weren't surprised that Sen. Landrieu and Rep. Boehner called for expanding oil drilling in the face of BP's oil disaster. Maybe you are so jaded that you expected Newt Gingrich's "drill here, drill now" campaign to continue as the disaster grew and grew.
But I expect this statement from Missouri's Sam Graves (R) will make you wonder whether he has jumped to an alternate reality:
Like many of you, I've been following the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. This tragic environmental disaster is partly the result of America's unworkable energy plan. We wouldn't need to drill hundreds of miles off the coast, in thousands of feet of water if we had access to fossil fuel deposits located onshore in the United States.
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska is a perfect example of how we can drill safely and in an environmentally responsibly way on land we already control...
Because of self-imposed onshore drilling limitations, America is more dependent than ever on foreign sources of energy. The only way we can become less dependent on overseas oil is to develop American sources of energy, like ANWR and our massive reserves of oil shale in other western states.
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Why China holds 'rare' cards in the race to go green
From electric cars to wind turbines, environmentally-friendly technology around the world needs rare earth metals. But China - where over 90% of these minerals are mined - is saying it now wants to keep more for its own industry.
The leafy banks of the Birmingham and Worcester canal may be an unlikely place to discuss a looming industrial crisis but it was here that Professor Rex Harris of Birmingham University took me on his hydrogen-powered electric barge.
The super efficient motor, like most electric vehicle motors, uses rare earth magnets.
Rex gave me two matchbox sized neodymium-boron magnets, offering me £50 to push them together.
His money was safe, the magnetic field was too strong. Such power is vital to green technology, so much of which is based on the efficient generation, use and storage of electricity.
So we need to be sure of good supply of rare earth magnets.
"We worry about peak oil," he says, "we should worry about peak magnets as well."
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Disputed renewable power bill signed
Gov. Jim Doyle on Wednesday signed into law a bill that wind power developers and environmental groups had asked him to veto.
The bill, known as the Renewable Resource Credits bill, would allow energy generation produced from waste such as garbage to be classified as renewable and qualify that electricity for the state's renewable power mandate.
The bill was drafted to grant renewable status to the Apollo light pipe, a a small glass skylight dome that, when mounted in a roof, reflects daylight inside to help cut energy use. The light pipe is a technology developed by Orion Energy Systems Inc. of Manitowoc, a maker of high-efficiency lighting systems.
Environmental and renewable energy groups had called on Doyle to veto the bill after it was amended to allow garbage-to-energy projects to be classified as renewable as well.
Doyle said he was torn on whether to sign the bill but said that, ultimately, Orion is the kind of business the state wants to see grow and succeed.
"I certainly didn't want to be in the position I was in. To me the (state) Senate's refusal to go ahead with the Clean Energy Jobs Act put everybody in a very difficult spot on this bill," he said.
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BP CEO Hayward Bets On ‘Very, Very Modest' Impact From Disaster
Tony Hayward, CEO of oil giant BP, is betting that the environmental impact of the Deepwater Horizon disaster will be "very, very modest." Even though a million gallons of crude have flooded into the Gulf of Mexico every day since the exploratory rig exploded nearly a month ago, Hayward told Fox News sister network Sky News on Tuesday that he is largely unconcerned:
I think the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to be very, very modest. It is impossible to say and we will mount, as part of the aftermath, a very detailed environmental assessment as we go forward. We're going to do that with some of the science institutions in the U.S. But everything we can see at the moment suggests that the overall environmental impact of this will be very, very modest.
Watch it:
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Fossil Fuel Industry's 65-Page Strategy to Sell Carbon and Capture Technology
A report shows how the coal, oil and tar sands industry, along with government plans to sell carbon and capture and storage technology to a skeptical public.
The 65-page report titled, Communication of carbon capture and storage: outcomes from an international workshop to summarize the current global position [pdf], was produced by the Global Carbon Capture and Storage (GCCS) Institute, an organization formally launched by US president Barack Obama and Australian president Kevin Rudd at the 2009 G8 summit.
Communications recommendations for selling carbon capture and storage in the report include:
"...when multiple stakeholders join forces to communicate a message the message is more likely to be well received and trusted, particularly if those communicating the messages are generally known to have opposing views. For example, when NGOs team up with industry partners..."
"Within each community there are various audiences that need to be considered, particularly for targeting engagement processes and key messages."
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Former President Bill Clinton says green energy can grow the nation's economy
Former President Bill Clinton on Wednesday pushed for retrofitting aging buildings to make them more energy efficient and promoted alternative sources of energy as a way to create jobs and grow the economy.
Clinton came to Las Vegas to dedicate the retrofitting of a building at 302 E. Carson, a 46-year-old, 11-story office tower in downtown Las Vegas.
It received the state's first retrofitted building gold certification by the U.S. Green Building Council, which recognized the improvements for decreasing energy usage by 30 percent and water consumption by 40 percent.
Clinton said studies show a large amount of greenhouse gases that need to be cut can be eliminated simply by being more efficient. In large cities, buildings can account for up to 70 percent of carbon emissions, and older buildings waste massive amounts of energy, he said.
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Valero, Tesoro fightlaw in California
San Antonio's two homegrown refining companies, Valero Energy Corp. and Tesoro Corp., have ponied up hefty sums this spring as part of a campaign to suspend a California law that's designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Valero is leading the charge, saying California's Global Warming Solutions Act — which would reduce greenhouse-gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 — is bad policy that will cost California jobs.
Valero and Tesoro, along with others of like mind, expect to get an initiative on California's ballot in November that would put the law, AB 32, on hold until California's 12.6 percent unemployment level falls to 5.5 percent, and stays at that level or below for a full year.
The measure became law in 2006, but its main provisions don't take effect until Jan. 1, 2012.
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White House to announce energy-loan plan
The White House is expected to soon announce a multibillion-dollar package of new loan guarantees for nuclear and renewable energy projects to be supported by adding $180 million to a pending war funding bill.
The proposal follows talks Wednesday between Energy Secy. Steven Chu, White House officials and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.), who used her leverage to ensure solar would share in the funding together with the nuclear industry.
The administration has already proposed a greatly expanded loan guarantee program for nuclear as part of its 2011 budget. But Chu would like to advance a quarter of the planned increase into 2010 to make $9 billion more immediately available.
In Senate testimony last month, the secretary said his goal is to put three reactor projects on a faster track and believes this can be done for a relatively small up-front cost of $90 million to satisfy congressional budget rules.
South Carolina and Texas, two Republican-leaning states, have a direct stake in the outcome, and Chu has a valuable ally in House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, whose own state of Maryland is home for a proposed new reactor with financing helped by the same loan guarantee program.
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Robert Redford tells President Obama it's time to lead "America on a path to cleaner, safer energy"
Robert Redford calls on the President to get off his butt and start leading America away from dirty fossil fuels toward a clean energy future — in a video and blog post:
Okay, the "get off his butt" part was my interpretation of the video and this blog post:
Mr. President: Now is the Time For Clean Energy
Thursday, May 20, 2010, marks one month since BP's oil rig exploded off the Gulf Coast, killing 11 people and unleashing one of the worst environmental disasters our nation has ever seen.
Since then, millions of gallons of oil have gushed into the ocean, poisoning marine life and threatening hundreds of miles of coastal waters, beaches and estuaries from the mouth of the Mississippi to the Florida Keys.
This is the clearest picture we could have of our failed national energy policy, which extends over many decades and administrations. Yet, shockingly, our elected officials in the Senate continue to drag their feet on enacting the policies that would bring the real change we need to shift our country from dirty to clean energy sources, while creating jobs and cutting our dependence on oil.
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While BP's Oil Gushes, Company Keeps Information to a Trickle
BP hasn't yet been able to stop the flow of oil, but it's been more successful at controlling the information coming out about the Gulf disaster.
McClatchy reported on Tuesday that BP has been withholding the results of [1] "tests on the extent of workers' exposure to evaporating oil or from the burning crude over the Gulf." The data is important to determining whether current conditions are safe for workers in the Gulf, researchers told McClatchy. BP said it's sharing the data with "legitimate interested parties," but would not release it publicly:
"Why would one do it? Any parties with a legitimate interest can have access to it," BP spokesman Toby Odone told McClatchy [2].
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Ocean Conservancy's Takahashi-Kelso discusses environmental, economic impacts of spill
Today's OnPointAs Alaska Commissioner of Environmental Conservation during the Exxon Valdez oil spill, Dennis Takahashi-Kelso was involved with the environmental assessment of that spill and subsequent policy changes. Should the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, created after the Exxon spill, be amended? How does the recent BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico compare to Exxon Valdez? During today's OnPoint, Takahashi-Kelso, now executive vice president at the Ocean Conservancy, discusses the latest developments from the Gulf and Washington.
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Washington Times Debuts Dale ‘N-Word Sign' Robertson as Tea Party Columnist
According to a press release, self-described "Tea Party Founder" Dale Robertson has joined the Washington Times' "Tea Party Report" blog. Robertson, you may recall, was thrust back into the limelight in March, when he was quoted by the paper as never having seen any racial slurs at Tea Parties, despite having been photographed holding a sign that featured the N-word. He told us the photo was a fake, which our expert then disputed, before a sea of journalists came forward to point out that Robertson had already admitted to holding the sign.
Robertson's critics within the Tea Party paint him as a pure opportunist who did nothing more than try to squat on Tea Party domain names to turn a quick buck. He did try, unsuccessfully, to sell his website (Teaparty.org), but he says it was to defend against attacks on him by the Republican establishment.
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Oil companies fund initiative to repeal California's landmark climate law
Big Oil is nothing if not brazen, so while BP works to protect its tattered reputation in the Gulf, two Texas oil companies are on the attack in California. Their target is Assembly Bill 32, the most ambitious cap-and-trade climate plan in the nation, which was signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) in 2006 and is set to really kick into gear next year. Their weapon is a ballot initiative that would mothball the plan until state unemployment drops to below 5.5 percent for four consecutive quarters (from a current 12.6 percent), which would effectively kill the plan for the time being.
Last week, a group turned in 800,000 signatures in support of the initiative, ensuring it a place on state ballots in November. Texas refinery companies Tesoro and Valerog and private donors have poured more than $1 million into the campaign. Clean-air advocates worry that figure could reach $50 million by year's end.
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DeMint And The Right Want A New Cold War
Years after the end of World War II there were cases of Japanese troops scattered around the Pacific that were unaware or refused to believe that the great war had ended. Well it seems that in the United States there are an isolated group at the Heritage Foundation and in the Senate GOP that seem to have no idea that the Cold War ended 20 years ago.
It was revealed in this week's hearing on the New START treaty that GOP Senators, as articulated by Senator Jim DeMint, are opposing START because they want to build a missile defense system that even George W. Bush opposed. DeMint at the hearing said that "obviously, we're agreeing to keep our missile defense to the point where it does not render their weapons useless." Peter Baker noted that:
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Massey CEO defends safety record in first Capitol Hill grilling since accident
Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship on Thursday denied placing profits above safety as he faced his first Capitol Hill hearing since last month's explosion at the coal giant's Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia that killed 29 workers.
"We never have, and we never will," states his testimony submitted to a panel of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
"From the day I became a member of Massey's leadership team 20 years ago, I have made safety my number one priority," Blankenship states in remarks prepared for the hearing, which is about federal resources needed to improve mine safety.
But the top federal mine safety official highlighted a history of problems at the Upper Big Branch mine, and vowed to investigate claims that workers at the mine who reported hazards to the company or regulators risked losing their jobs.
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Senate climate bill a jobs creator: study
A climate change bill unveiled last week in the Senate would create hundreds of thousands of jobs as the country moves away from fossil fuels toward more nuclear energy and renewable sources of power, according to a nonpartisan study released on Thursday.
"Between 2011 and 2020, average annual employment in the U.S. increases by 203,000," concluded the study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
The study is the first to assess the economic impact of legislation sketched out by Democratic Senator John Kerry and independent Senator Joseph Lieberman.
The Kerry-Lieberman bill, like one passed by the House of Representatives nearly a year ago, aims to cut U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for global warming by encouraging use of alternative fuels such as natural gas, nuclear, wind, biomass and solar power.
U.S. government agencies are in the midst of their own economic analyses, which might not be completed until mid-June.
Some private studies last year concluded the House-passed bill could generate up to 1.9 million jobs over 10 years.
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Climate sceptics rally to expose 'myth'
In the Grand Ballroom Of Chicago's Magnificent Mile Hotel, dinner was over.
Beef, of course. A great pink hunk of it from the American Mid-West.
At the world's biggest gathering of climate change sceptics, organised by the right-wing Heartland Institute, vegetarians were an endangered species.
Wine flowed and blood coursed during a rousing address from Heartland's libertarian president Joseph Bast. Climate change is being used by governments to oppress the people, he believes.
After years of opposing government rules on smoking and the environment, Mr Bast now aims to forge a global movement of climate sceptics to end the "myth" that humans are endangering the atmosphere.
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Obama sends top chiefs to monitor spill response
ROBERT, La. – Three top Obama administration officials are returning to the Gulf Coast to monitor the massive oil spill that seems to have no end in sight — the devastation underscored by oil-stained pelicans and their eggs on an island where hundreds of the birds nest.
On Saturday, the pelican colony off Louisiana's coast was awash in oil. An Associated Press photographer saw several birds and their eggs coated in the ooze. Nests rested in mangroves precariously close to the crude that had washed in. Workers had surrounded the island with oil-absorbing booms, but puddles of oil had seeped through the barrier.
Anger with the government and BP PLC, which leased the rig and is responsible for the cleanup, has boiled over as more wildlife and delicate coastal wetlands are tainted. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency chief Lisa P. Jackson was headed Sunday to Louisiana, where she planned to visit with frustrated residents.
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano were to lead a Senate delegation to the region on Monday to fly over affected areas and keep an eye on the response.
Meanwhile, the official responsible for the oversight of the month-old spill response said he understands the discontent among residents who want to know what's next.
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How Big is the Oil Spill?
We got a small bit of good oil spill news the other day when BP announced that its attempt to insert a smaller pipe inside the broken end of the main undersea pipe had succeeded. But it turns out there's bad news too:
BP said Thursday that it is now capturing 5,000 barrels a day of crude oil and 15 million cubic feet of natural gas from a leaking pipe at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, the first official admission that earlier estimates of the amount of oil spilling into sea were too small.
The amount of oil being captured is only a portion of the total because the company is catching oil from only one of two leaks. BP has also released a video that shows additional unquantified amounts of oil continuing to spurt out of the damaged pipe where the company is capturing oil through a new tube insertion. The smaller of the two leaks continues to spill unobstructed and accounts for 15 percent of the total flow, BP officials reiterated Thursday.
If BP's siphon is catching 5,000 barrels a day, the main pipe must be spilling a whole lot more than that. How much more?
The latest glimpse of video footage of the oil spill deep under the Gulf of Mexico indicates that around 95,000 barrels, or 4 million gallons, a day of crude oil may be spewing from the leaking wellhead, 19 times the previous estimate, an engineering professor told Congress Wednesday.
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Oil Makes Landfall, Cops Blocking Beaches, MoJo on the Scene [Video and Photos]
MoJo reporter Mac McClelland is getting one hell of a chilling story in Louisiana right now. This morning she headed down to the area where, according to online maps, oil from the BP fiasco was headed. Wherever she turned, she found sheriff's deputies blocking the beach access roads—until she hit a beach at Grand Isle, and literally stepped into the mess. (Follow Mac on Twitter here.)
Here's what unfolded in her tweetstream:
Has oil made landfall in port fourchon, LA? Can't look, bc cops turned us around at bridge to beach. about 3 hours ago
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