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No records found linking BP to Lockerbie bomber:
A State Department official said Wednesday that a review of government records found no evidence that oil company BP sought to secure the early release of the Lockerbie bomber from a Scottish prison.
The release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi last year outraged families of U.S. victims of the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is investigating whether the British-based oil company had sought his freedom to help get a $900 million exploration agreement with Libya off the ground.
In prepared testimony, Nancy McEldowney, a principal deputy assistant secretary, told lawmakers that the State Department has "not identified any materials, beyond publicly available statements and correspondence, concerning attempts by BP or other companies to influence matters" related to al-Megrahi's release.
BP has acknowledged that it had urged the British government to sign a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya, but stressed it didn't specify al-Megrahi's case.
Salazar receives report on deepwater drilling moratorium from Director of Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement Michael Bromwich.
The six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling, imposed in May after the April 20 blowout of the Deepwater Horizon well, and reimposed in July after the original was struck down by a federal judge in New Orleans, is now due to expire at the end of November.
Bromwich was charged by Salazar to undertake a series of hearings to assess the moratorium, and when -- with an eye to workplace safety, spill containment and spill response -- it could safely be lifted.
Salazar had given Bromwich until Oct. 31 to submit his report. But facing pressure from Louisiana and other Gulf Coast lawmakers about the economic impact of the ban, Bromwich said he planned to get the report to Salazar by the end of September.
Bromwich has indicated it might be possible to lift the moratorium early given a new regulatory regime and heightened standards for drilling including two new rules that went into effect this week. The new regulations, however, likely mean that operators will not be able to immediately resume drilling when the formal suspension ends.
NOAA declares 5,000 more miles of Gulf waters "safe." This, from NOAA's own report:
NOAA today reopened to commercial and recreational fishing 5,628 square miles of Gulf waters off eastern Louisiana, just west of the Mississippi River delta. This is the seventh reopening in federal waters since July 22.
This reopening was announced after consultation with U.S. Food and Drug Administration and under a re-opening protocol agreed to by NOAA, the FDA, and the Gulf states.
["]Reopening these critical fishing grounds signals progress and is important for the long-term recovery of the Gulf’s commercial and recreational industries," said Jane Lubchenco, Ph.D., under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator. "Our tests continue to reveal that Gulf seafood is safe for consumption. We will not reopen an area until we are certain the seafood from it is safe."
The total area reopened today is about two percent of federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico and 18 percent of the current closed area, as last modified on September 21. No oil or sheen has been documented in the area since August 6. At its closest point, the area to be reopened is about 75 statute miles south of the BP Deepwater wellhead.
...
NOAA conducted a second and complete sampling of the area between August 15 and September 19 for finfish and shrimp once the area was known to be completely free of oil. Sensory analyses of 89 finfish and 25 shrimp samples, and chemical analyses of 188 finfish in 15 composites and 75 shrimp in 15 composites collected after August 15, followed the methodology and procedures in the reopening protocol. Sensory analysis found no detectable oil or dispersant odors or flavors, and the results of chemical analysis were well below the levels of concern.
NOAA will continue to take samples for testing from the newly reopened area. The agency will also continue dockside sampling to test fish caught throughout the Gulf by commercial fishermen.
The FDA protocols, linked in the article, are worth giving a read, if only for amusement. Another report, however, cites major concerns:
Officials opened more than 5,600 square miles of federal fishing waters off the southeast coast of Louisiana Friday, prompting some optimism from some local seafood businesses. But there was also continuing concern from an environmental consultant about the standards the government is using to determine the safety of seafood and the presence of contamination in fishing waters that were closed for nearly five months by BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil disaster.
...[S]ome scientists, like New Iberia chemist Wilma Subra, who is working with the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, question the standards used by the government to pronounce seafood safe.
"We’ve been doing sampling along the coast and we’ve found a large amount of oil still there," she said.
The FDA set special standards for seafood testing for the Deepwater Horizon disaster, which include higher-than-usual thresholds for hydrocarbons, she said.
"They are higher concentrations than are normally allowed by the FDA for opening and closing water bodies," she said.
But seafood processor Allen Estay, owner of Bluewater Shrimp in Dulac, said the problem is perception, not contamination, at least for the shrimp he buys.
"Our seafood is tested more now than ever before," said. "There’s nothing wrong with the seafood. It’s fine."
And in more cuddly news, more baby turtles are on the move:
Loggerhead nesting season started this year, as usual, in May. Across the northeastern coast of the Gulf of Mexico, female sea turtles began plodding out of the water and up the beach, each burying a clutch of a hundred or more leathery eggs beneath the sand. The eggs incubate for about 60 days. Then a throng of tiny black loggerhead hatchlings, each only about two inches long, frantically boils out of the ground, all paddling clumsily with their outsize, winglike flippers. They scuttle down the beach en masse, capitalizing on a one-time frenzy of energy to rush into the water and push past the breakers into offshore currents.
The hatchlings from this season’s first nests, however, were on schedule to scramble into the Gulf of Mexico only a few months after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig, at what looked to be the height of one of the worst man-made environmental disasters in history. By June, the sargassum in that part of the gulf was heavily oiled. Soon, it appeared to be largely gone: incinerated in controlled burns, maybe, or hauled up by skimmer boats. And so state and federal wildlife agencies came up with a radical plan. Sea-turtle eggs laid on beaches in Alabama and the Florida Panhandle would be dug up during their very last days of incubation, packed into Styrofoam coolers and shipped to a climate-controlled warehouse at the Kennedy Space Center on the opposite coast of Florida. There, after hatching, the baby turtles would be released into the oil-free Atlantic. When I arrived in Alabama in late July, tens of thousands of turtle eggs, from hundreds of nests, were already in the process of being relocated — all during a point in their development when even a slight jolt to the egg could be lethal. In short, America was orchestrating the migration of an entire generation of sea turtles, slow and steady, overland, in a specially outfitted FedEx truck.
The government called this effort a set of "extraordinary measures being taken in direct response to an unprecedented human-caused disaster." And as one U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist told me, "We immediately knew it was more work than we could do on our own." Fortunately, a vast and well-organized infrastructure of volunteers was already in place: people who, for years, happened to have been honing some of the very skills that the survival of these imperiled animals suddenly hinged on — not because they saw such a crisis coming, but basically because they really loved turtles.
==== ROV Feeds =====
20876/21507 - Development Driller II's ROV 1
32900/49178 - Development Driller II's ROV 2
41434/41436 - Olympic Challenger's ROV 1
40788/40789 - Olympic Challenger's ROV 2
39168/39169 - Chouest Holiday's ROV 1
40492/40493 - Chouest Holiday's ROV 2
47146/47147 - Development Driller III's ROV 1
43698/43699 - Development Driller III's ROV 2
==Multiple stream feeds (hard on browser/bandwidth)==
BP videos All the available directly feeds from BP.
Bobo's lightweight ROV Multi-feed: is the only additional up to date multiple feed site.
See this thread for more info on using video feeds and on linking to video feeds.
Previous Gulf Watcher diaries:
Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #399 - Gulf Watchers/peraspera/story/
Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #398 - Gulf Watchers/peraspera/story/
Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #397 - Gulf Watchers/peraspera
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #396 - Gulf Watchers/peraspera
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #395 - Condition: transition - BP's Gulf Castastrophe - David PA
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #394 - Transitions - BP's Gulf Castastrophe - Lorinda Pike
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #393 - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - Lorinda Pike
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #392 - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - When Can we Share a Soda? - khowell
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #391 - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - Talking about Change - khowell
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #390 - Drips Redux - Lorinda Pike
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #389 - Night of the Living Drips - Lorinda Pike
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #388 - Sittin' Up With the Dead - khowell
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #387 - Time for a Wake? - khowell
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #386 - The Coroner Won't Pronounce - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - Yasuragi
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #385 - Is it Dead? - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - Lorinda Pike
The last Mothership has links to reference material.
Previous motherships and ROV's from this extensive live blog effort may be found here.
Again, to keep bandwidth down, please do not post images or videos.