You are in the current Gulf Watchers BP Catastrophe - AUV #428. ROV #427 is here.
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On Thanksgiving weekend there won't be a morning Friday Gulf Watchers AUV diary but there will be a Gulf Watchers Friday Block Party.
Gulf Watchers Diary Schedule
Monday - evening drive time
Wednesday - morning
Friday - morning
Friday Block Party - evening
Sunday - morning
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Why - after an extended list of minor and major violations collected by April of 2010 when the Deepwater Horizon exploded, and taking with it eleven lives - was BP even allowed to continue to do business? A Federal probation officer is now asking a judge to revoke BP's probation in connection to a 2006 oil spill on Alaska's North Slope.
In a petition filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court, federal probation officer Mary Frances Barnes asserts that BP's conduct leading up to another North Slope spill, in November 2009, was criminally negligent. That constitutes a violation of BP's probation conditions set in 2007 for the spill the year before, the petition says.
The court filing sheds new light on the failures leading up to the 2009 spill, which was one of the biggest ever on the North Slope, though it didn't compare to the earlier spill.
BP disputes the government characterization of its operations.
BP spokesman Steve Rinehart says that after the 2006 spill the company made "measurable improvements in safety and reliability" by replacing corroded pipelines to the tune of $500 million dollars.
However, in 2007, BP resolved a misdemeanor violation of the Clean Water Act (bargained down from a felony) resulting in a three-year probation and $20 million in fines after poorly maintained pipes spilled 200,000 gallons of oil. The probation period was scheduled to end on November 28th, but Barnes says the case will now continue until resolved.
Unlike a revocation of probation for a person, "corporate personhood" violations do not often result in jail time. Kevin Feldis, chief of the criminal division for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Alaska, says no officers of BP were charged individually.
Scott West, a former criminal investigator with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, has sharply criticized the prosecution's decision to settle the case as a corporate misdemeanor, rather than seek felony charges against top officials. But prosecutors say they went after BP aggressively after the 2006 spill.
A decision on whether to revoke the probation will be up to U.S. District Judge Ralph Beistline. The judge could agree to extend BP's probation or could revoke it and impose a new sentence with an additional period of probation and new fine, up to the maximum allowed under the law, Feldis said. Or he could disagree with the government's assertion that BP acted negligently.
The U.S. Attorney's Office maintains that BP could be hit with five more years of probation, on top of the three already served, though BP is likely to contest that.
In November of 2009, another spill resulted in the release of about 13,000 gallons near Prudhoe Bay. In total, almost 46,000 gallons of crude and oily water erupted onto the tundra, according to the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation.
"(BP) operators failed to respond to the alarms and failed to investigate or troubleshoot the cause of the alarms," Barnes wrote. The alarm was set to low priority, or "informational," indicating that workers didn't need to respond.
On Nov. 14, after roughly 165 days of low-temperature warning alarms, BP found that ice had developed in the pipe, the court filing said. Fifteen days later, a BP operator discovered the rupture.
BP should have known better, the court filing said. In 2001, BP experienced a similar rupture in other frozen pipelines. In response, BP recommended that sensors be moved so that they are not inside heated areas, that flow line alarms be reset to "critical," and that oil flow in lines looped to other lines be monitored directly.
The behavior amounts to negligence under both state law and the federal Clean Water Act, the probation officer asserts in the court filing.
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From Bob Cavnar at The Daily Hurricane, The National Academy of Engineering chairman says BP failed to learn from previous near misses. On Wednesday, National Academy of Engineering committee chair Donald Winter submitted preliminary findings about BP's well blowout to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.
Though only preliminary, the report took issue with a number of BP's conclusions in its own report issued in September that attempted to spread blame over as many parties as possible, ignoring critical management decisions that it's own people had made that contributed to the blowout. Specifically, the report does point out that installing a long string, which runs from the top of the well all the way to bottom, rather than the safer liner that only covers the open hole and provides an additional downhole barrier and is better risk management. It seems that everyone but BP now agrees with that finding.
A common theme in the report was that poor decision making, complacency, over confidence, and the lack of checks and balances in BP's organization created an environment where rig and onshore managers failed to recognize the signs of an increasingly dangerous well. Failure to recognize the flow of hydrocarbons into the well above the blowout preventer was the fatal mistake, but many ingrained organizational factors contributed to that blindness. Hurrying to get off the well, too many decision makers, and simultaneous complex operations all contributed. As we have also pointed out, the committee has concluded that changing rig managers in the middle of these operations contributed to the confusion prior to the blowout.
Bob Cavnar, a 30-year veteran of the oil and gas industry, is the author of Disaster on the Horizon: High Stakes, High Risks, and the Story Behind the Deepwater Well Blowout
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More on the National Academy of Engineering's report from the New Orleans Times-Picayune: Among the failures the report places squarely on BP are:
Changing key supervisors days before critical procedures began;
Combining difficult cementing steps at the end of the process;
Using a single central tube to line the whole length of the well, rather than doing it in shorter segments with more barriers against natural gas seepage;
Ignoring models that called for more safety devices called centralizers;
Declining to run various tests that could have warned the crew of problems; and
Removing heavy drilling mud before locking down the well's components.
The report, drafted by a joint committee of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Research Council, goes further than others in questioning the knowledge of rig workers and supervisors as they tried, and failed, to correctly interpret key tests that should have warned them of the impending disaster.
Paul Bommer, an engineering professor at the University of Texas and a member of the joint committee, said the most critical mistake was the misinterpretation of a key test of pressure in the well just hours before the April 20 incident. It's still unclear whether BP officials or personnel from Transocean, which owned the rig, ultimately made the decision to accept the test results as a success.
The Academy scientists seemed floored that the BP rig supervisors apparently accepted without question the explanation given by Transocean for high pressure readings before the blast.
"We're still waiting for an explanation from somebody that that exists," Bommer said.
The report questions why the test results, which were at the very least confusing to the rig personnel, were never reviewed by onshore BP engineers, who theoretically would have had better knowledge to assess the situation.
It also takes a much more skeptical view of the insistence by BP and other oil and gas companies that they are guided by a "culture of safety" in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
The report says, "The failures and missed indications of hazard were not isolated events. Numerous decisions to proceed ... despite indications of hazard ... suggest an insufficient consideration of risk and a lack of operating discipline."
Apparently Halliburton was tweaking the mud after weight of a normal mud had caused some problems downhole...
The panel found that the rig was forced to use a lighter drilling mud than normal at one section three miles below the sea floor because heavier mud apparently caused the rock formation to cave in accidentally, a key point that hasn't been emphasized in other investigations and was apparently missed by the rig crew at the time.
And the well wasn't properly closed? Compromised areas around the casing? Something was wrong? Now just what would make you think that?
Later tests showed materials pumped into the well were getting lost in the hole, a sure sign that something was wrong. The scientists say that should have been a warning to the rig crew and engineers in Houston that the well wasn't properly closed.
If the well wasn't closed properly then, what's to lead us to believe the P&A was properly done now...
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And on that happy note, something actually happy: Don't forget the Gulf Watchers Friday Block Party! Your hostess with the mostest for this evening's festivities is ursoklevar, who promises a TRAVEL edition!
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==== ROV Feeds =====
20876/21507 - Development Driller II's ROV 1
32900/49178 - Development Driller II's ROV 2
39168/39169 - Chouest Holiday's ROV 1
40492/40493 - Chouest Holiday's ROV 2
58406/21750 - Iron Horse ROV 1 (Original feed which is still active)
If Iron Horse won't load in VLC or Quicktime with the above link try this one.
23211/23803 - Iron Horse ROV 1 (New feed designations)
22070/22936 - Iron Horse ROV 2 (New feed designations)
24301/24309 - West Sirius' ROV 1 (New feed)
They cemented the still leaky Macondo well and put on a memorial cap in the wee hours of November 8. The Marine Traffic site hasn't had any type of accurate information around the Macondo site since they pulled the BOP so we don't know what skimmers and support ships may have been on site. Feeds have been up for pulling and deploying equipment since the well was capped.
==Multiple stream feeds (hard on browser/bandwidth)==
German multiple feed site that updates once a minute—Does not crash browsers and loads really fast.
Belgian multi-feed site, Mozaiek Webcam – BP Olielek Olieramp Deepwater Horizon
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.
PLEASE visit Pam LaPier's diary to find out how you can help the Gulf now and in the future. We don't have to be idle! And thanks to Crashing Vor and Pam LaPier for working on this!
Previous Gulf Watcher diaries:
Gulf Watchers Wednesday - BP Bribes Schools to Brainwash Kids & NOAA Helps - BP Catastrophe AUV #427 - peraspera
Gulf Watchers Monday - Afternoon Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #426 - shanesnana
Gulf Watchers Sunday - Bickering Delayed Testing of BOP - BP Catastrophe AUV #425 - Yasuragi
Gulf Watchers Friday - The More Things Change... - BP Catastrophe AUV #424 - Lorinda Pike
Gulf Watchers Wednesday - Commission Takes a Dive for BP & Big Oil - BP Catastrophe AUV #423 - peraspera
Gulf Watchers Oil Spill Hearings - Liveblog - Phil S 33
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.