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That most magnificent BP apologist and flimflam man, Joe Barton, is wrangling for the chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Trouble is, he's ineligible according to House rules, having served three terms on the Committee already. But, hey, rules were made to be bent to GOP wills, right?
Barton and his allies have called the term-limit rule "ambiguous." In the Senate, Republicans have interpreted the rule to mean that the limit resets when the chamber changes party hands -- making it especially meaningless in the upper house -- and Barton is hoping to get a similar deal.
That's unlikely. House GOP leadership aides have made it clear that the rules, as they interpret them, require Barton to receive a term-limit waiver, and they have no intention of granting him one.
The Texas Republican embarrassed the party in June with his infamous apology to BP during the Gulf oil spill, and the aides said Republican leaders have not forgiven him for ignoring their calls to replace his staff director, David Cavicke, who has served on the committee staff since 1995.
Never one to let reality get in the way of his aspirations, Barton says, "I think I have a very good chance of getting the rule clarified, and if that happens, I think I have a very good chance to be nominated."
But Barton, you'll remember, was the yutz who actually apologized to Tony Hayward at a Congressional hearing on the Deepwater Horizon explosion. "I'm ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday," Barton commiserated, and went on to say how sorry he was about what he called a government "shakedown" of BP, and called the $20 billion BP set aside under pressure from the White House a "slush fund."
You can watch Barton's dazzling performance here.
When John Boehner and Eric Cantor buttonholed him during a break, they demanded he immediately retract his remark. So Barton, visibly shaken, returned to the hearings and issued a weak and stumbling apology. Well, sort of. What said was, "If anything I have said this morning has been misconstrued to an opposite effect, I want to apologize for that misconstruction."
Now that's an apology.
So the Party demanded a written retraction of the allegedly misconstructed non-apology apology. With which he again complied:
"I apologize for using the term 'shakedown' with regard to yesterday's actions at the White House in my opening statement this morning, and I retract my apology to BP. As I told my colleagues yesterday and said again this morning, BP should bear the full financial responsibility for the accident on their lease in the Gulf of Mexico. BP should fully compensate those families and businesses that have been hurt by this accident. BP and the federal government need to stop the leak, clean up the damage, and take whatever steps necessary to prevent a similar accident in the future. I regret the impact that my statement this morning implied that BP should not pay for the consequences of their decisions and actions in this incident."
Barton's biggest contributor, according to fivethirtyeight's Nate Silver, is Anadarco Petroleum, twenty-five percent owner in the Macondo well. Gosh. Who've ever thought?
Barton, after issuing his written "retraction", then tweeted that "Joe Barton Was Right," citing a conservative article of the same title, which praised him to the skies for his initial apology to BP.
But wait, there's more! The tweet then vanished (Twitter, apparently, has magical powers), and one of his lackeys claimed responsibility for it. "I did it!" said Barton fall guy spokesman Sean Brown. "Without thinking about it much, I added a headline from one of the daily news clips to a website that is, in turn, linked to the congressman’s Twitter account. Mr. Barton was not aware of the Tweet."
But who agreed with him? Michelle Bachmann, of course, calling the BP escrow fund a "redistribution of wealth fund." And GOP Representative Tim Price of Georgia, who said it was a "Chicago political style shakedown." Nice talk. You can read more about who's backed by Big Oil money here.
Barton, who was facing long odds at becoming chairman again because of GOP term limits, is now looking at being able to make his case to the House GOP Steering Committee without going through a separate process of getting a waiver from House GOP rules.
According to several House Republican staffers, all of the candidates to chair the panel _ Reps. Fred Upton of Michigan, John Shimkus of Illinois and Cliff Stearns of Florida will be able to present their argument to be chairman when the steering panel meets the week after Thanksgiving. [Links not original to article.]
Barton was chairman for one term when the GOP had the majority, from 2004 to 2006, and ranking member for two terms from 2006 to 2010 when the Republicans were in the minority. The GOP rules limit service as the top Republican to three terms, or six years, unless the steering committee grants a waiver.
The steering committee, made up of about 27 members from leadership, committee chairs, regional and freshman representatives, is effectively controlled by incoming House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, who has five votes.
...
However, another senior staffer not affiliated with his competitors said, "They’re not going to pick him. He’s a loose cannon."
Change.org does have a lovely petition you can sign to let Joe B know just how you feel about him.
*****
There's a fresh, shiny new argument against rescinding BP's probation... but will it make any difference? This past Friday, federal probation officer Mary Frances Barnes presented evidence of yet another BP spill into Prudhoe Bay, this one just last year. 46,000 gallons of crude and oiled water were dumped into the Bay when a pipeline ruptured at the Lisburne oil field, which BP owns and operates.
The response was painfully familiar:
After roughly 165 days of low-temperature warnings, BP found ice in the pipe. Fifteen days later, operators discovered the rupture.
Investigators said BP operators had "failed to respond to the alarms and failed to investigate or troubleshoot the cause of the alarms" and argued that BP should have known better, as it had suffered a similar ruptures in other frozen pipelines as far back as 2001.
BP took exception to the criticism. "We've made measurable improvements in safety and reliability," whined responded a company spokesperson.
When ProPublica reported that no fewer than 148 North Slope pipelines were, according to BP's own maintenance records, rated as "F-Rank" based on their degree of corrosion, BP whined argued back that and F-Rank doesn't indicate immediately impending failure. No. But "...[i]t does prompt a higher priority repair plan depending on technical details and engineering review." This according to the same BP spokesperson, Steve Rinehart.
Still, the ruling will only increase scrutiny of the British firm[...] But the latest ruling is unlikely to affect the firm's Alaskan operations, which the company plans to sell as part of a $30bn programme to raise money to meet costs relating to Deepwater Horizon spill.
BP said it will respond to the government's legal filings at a hearing on December 20.
Which leads us, unexpectedly, from Alaska to Kazakhstan.
The residents of the shoreline of the oil rich Caspian Sea are probably not much reassured by the statements from BP in Azerbaijan. Given BP's track record on safety in recent years, I would think that Azerbaijanis would be somewhat skeptical of BP's new found environmental and safety concerns.
"I assure you that we have done and will continue to do everything possible to ensure the full technical security of all our operations in the Caspian," says Tamam Bayatli, public relations manager for BP Azerbaijan, which is involved in a number of exploration and production projects in the country."
The Caspian Sea is the largest landlocked body of water, and the largest salt lake, on earth. Its surface area is roughly 371,000 square kilometers (231,000 miles). It is surrounded by Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Russia, Iran, and Kazakhstan, which is the site of the Tengiz oil field, "one of the largest discoveries in recent history," and containing an estimated 25 billion barrels of oil.
Kazakhstan's oil fields are no stranger to crisis.
The oil from Tengiz field comes out of the wells hot and at a very high pressure, believed to be the highest in the world. It also contains large proportion of gas which is rich in the compound hydrogen sulfide yielding poisonous sulfur. A 1985 explosion in which one man was killed caused a 200-metre (660 ft)-high column of fire visible from 140 kilometres (87 mi). The deadly gas made it impossible for Soviet firefighters to quickly extinguish the fire. The well burned for a period of one year and was finally capped.
The government of Kazakhstan imposed stricter guidelines for handling the sulfur. In 2006, Kazakh government threatened TengizChevroil with imposing fines. In 2007, the government imposed a $609 million (74.4 billion tenge) fine on TengizChevroil. The violations included a slow progress in dealing with vast sulfur stocks at Tengiz. The company had reportedly been fined $71 million in 2003 for open air sulfur storage as well, which was then reduced to $7 million on an appeal. According to the Environmental Protection Ministry, over 10 million tonnes of sulfur was accumulated near Tengiz oil field as a by-product of crude oil production.
[The] government had also set a requirement to relocate the village of Sarykamys which had 3,500 residents to new homes in the vicinity of Atyrau. The relocation program was funded by TengizChevroil and was done in 2004-2006. It cost the company $73 million.
Three million tons of oil, and billions more cubic meters of various gasses burned during the '85 fire, doing untold damage to the population and wildlife of the Atyrau region.
Another request for relocation due to a poisoned environment came from Berezovka:
Since 2002, residents from the village located closest to the Karachaganak Field have been campaigning for relocation and compensation. The villagers, led by the local organization Zhasil Dala (Green Steppe), maintain that they are suffering a host of illnesses and environmental degradation due to exposure to toxic emissions from the Karachaganak Field, situated five kilometers away.
Independent Bucket Brigade air monitoring conducted by the villagers from September 2004-August 2005 registered more than 25 toxic substances in the air, including hydrogen sulfide, methylene chloride, carbon disulfide, toluene and acrylonitrile. In 2005, Karachaganak’s regional environmental authority temporarily revoked the operating license of KPO B.V. due to environmental violations, including emitting 56 thousand tons of toxic waste in the atmosphere in 2004, improper storage of toxic solid waste on the field, and dumping toxic effluent into the water table. The consortium was found to have dumped an excess of waste in 2008, resulting in a $21 million fine in early 2010.
The villagers contend that they should have been relocated upon the start of field operations as Kazakhstani law stipulates a five-kilometer Sanitary Protection Zone (SPZ) around the field. However, in 2003, the government reduced the SPZ to three kilometers, effectively barring the villagers from relocation. After three years of protest from the villagers, Kazakhstan’s Public Prosecutor found the 2003 decision to reduce the SPZ to be illegal, and the five-kilometer SPZ was reinstated in 2006. However, the village has not been relocated.
In 2002, the private sector arm of the World Bank Group, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), provided $150 million in loans to [Russian company] Lukoil for development of the Karachaganak Field. These loans were repaid by Lukoil in January 2009. From 2004-2008, three complaints were filed with the IFC’s Compliance, Advisor/Ombudsman’s office regarding the IFC’s violations of its own environmental standards in financing the Karachaganak Field. One of the complaints results in a report by the Auditor, published in April 2008, which documented numerous non-compliances with IFC standards at Karachaganak. One of the revelations was that no results for hydrogen sulfide monitoring had been reported between 2003 and 2006—years during which the Berezovka residents maintain they were suffering health problems due to hydrogen sulfide exposure.
Clearly, the lesson is if you must be poor, don't live near an oil field.
But drilling in the Caspian goes on, ever wider and deeper. As of a report from May of this year, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan were already deep into oil production, and:
Oil exploration and production work have also developed in the remaining three littoral states. LUKoil last month kicked off commercial oil production in the Russian sector of the sea, launching the Yury Korchagin platform. Iran earlier this year started drilling its first exploratory well in the southern Caspian Sea -- the deepest part of the sea -- to search for oil. Meanwhile, Turkmenistan is continuing exploration of Caspian shelf deposits along with foreign partners.
To their credit, the Kazakhstan government is trying to be stern about regulations and penalties, but we in the States know how that works.
In February, a Kazakh court fined the onshore Karachaganak natural-gas venture, which includes BG, Eni, Chevron, and LUKoil, for environmental violations including excessive waste dumping. The village of Berezovka, which is situated less than 5 kilometers from the field and is exposed to the field's toxic emissions, has been fighting for justice for years.
Environmentalists say energy development is also threatening already endangered species of fish such as the Beluga, Stellate, and Russian sturgeon, the kilka (Caspian sprat), as well as the Caspian seal. In Turkmenistan, energy development is causing particular risk to the Krasovodsk Nature Reserve, home to hundreds of thousands of birds and more than 40 mammal species.
And into all of this comes the familiar whine call of the BP spokesperson:
"I assure you that we have done and will continue to do everything possible to ensure the full technical security of all our operations in the Caspian," says Tamam Bayatli, public relations manager for BP Azerbaijan, which is involved in a number of exploration and production projects in the country.
"It has been and will remain our No. 1 priority to ensure technical safety and security of the people as well as to protect the environment."
Yeah, yeah, we've heard it all before.
The governments, as governments are wont to do, are talking a good game:
At a conference in Astrakhan on April 28, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said all work related to the development of fields in the Russian sector of the Caspian is being conducted "in strict compliance with international environmental standards," applying zero discharge technology. This means that waste resultant of production activities is not discharged into the sea, but is collected before being rendered harmless and reprocessed. Putin also voiced hope that companies from other countries operating in the region will join in this initiative.
On the regional level, the five countries around the Caspian Sea have ratified the Framework Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Caspian Sea, or Tehran Convention, and thus established a framework to jointly address and solve environmental problems in and around the sea.
But Kate Watters[...] executive director of Crude Accountability[...] is skeptical, saying the absence of public participation in the convention's preparation resulted in a relatively meaningless document.
Says Watters, who believes the Kazakh government is doing the right thing, "My question would be: 'Do they have the capacity to take care of an accident, should one happen?' And I think the answer is likely 'no.'"
Yesterday, six months after the above story was filed, the Kazakhstan News Agency reported:
The environmental damage from the operations of oil companies in Kazakhstan for 2010 has been estimated at over 5 billion tenge[... according to]
the head of the state environmental control department of the Ministry of Environment Daniyar Aliyev on Friday in Astana.
"Actions have been brought against the companies to recover damages through amicable collection or through courts," he said. [5 billion tenge, by my crude and no doubt inexact reckoning, is around $34 billion, but if you feel like double-checking me, please do!].
Kazakhstan seems on top of things, but Watters' warnings make it difficult to be too comfortable about it:
"Driven by the intensity of oil operations in the Kazakh sector of the Caspian Sea and the need to prevent accidents similar to that in the Gulf of Mexico, the government has decided to tighten control over oil operations at sea and improve the regulatory framework," the Xinhua news agency cited Emergency Minister Vladimir Bozhko as saying.
The minister told Kazakhstan’s lower house of Parliament, the Majilis, that over the last month his ministry investigated the safety controls at 273 Caspian shelf oil production facilities owned by 34 companies.
"We found 617 violations of safety regulations and prosecuted 56 officials," he said.
Bozkho told the lawmakers the Emergency Ministry is in the process of creating emergency response measures.
*****
And finally, on our whirlwind world tour of oiled and soiled places on earth, we go to the North Sea, where BP's partnership with Iran... what? Iran?
Oh, yes. Iran.
Back in June came this report:
The US has imposed sanctions on an Iranian oil company working with BP in the North Sea – listing it as a body that "persons should not do business with".
...
US officials this week added the Iranian Oil Company UK to its banned list. BP has a 50-50 joint venture with the business that US authorities now allege is "owned or controlled by the Government of Iran".
...
The joint venture is at the Rhum field, off the coast of Scotland – a £350m gas field, which has 800bn cubic feet of recoverable reserves. BP confirmed it has a joint venture with Iranian Oil Company UK, but declined to comment further.
American officials refused to say how the sanctions would affect BP. Although the rules apply only to transactions involving "US persons", the joint venture partnership is likely to further strain diplomatic relations between the US and the embattled British oil company.
And now comes the news that:
BP has stopped production at a North Sea platform co-owned with Iran, as it works out whether it is breaching any European sanctions.
However, following weeks of speculation, production has finally halted [at the Rhum field, discovered in 1977, but which only started producing five years ago] while the oil giant seeks "clarification" on whether its relationship with the Iranian state-owned partner is allowed.
New European sanctions bring the Continent into line with the tough US stance on businesses that trade with the controversial Middle Eastern regime.
"BP confirms that, pending clarification from the UK Government on certain aspects of the new European Union regulations concerning restrictive measures against Iran, production from the Rhum gas field in the central North Sea has been suspended," the company said.
"Once we obtain such clarification from the Government, we will review the situation and will take whatever action is appropriate in light of that clarification."
Meanwhile, in another part of the North Sea...
The British government will review their environmental regulations concerning North Sea rigs following the Macondo blowout.
The move comes as oil giants from Chevron to BP prepare to launch ambitious deep-water drilling campaigns in sensitive areas west of Shetland for the first time.
Chris Huhne, the Energy Secretary, insisted following the accident eight months ago that Britain's "safety and environmental regulatory regime is fit for purpose". But now that investigations have shed light on some causes of the Gulf of Mexico incident, his department will begin a wholesale review of environmental precautions in the New Year.
Following the Macondo blowout, England's Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) upped their number of health and safety inspectors, and increased the frequency of environmental inspections of rigs by one hundred percent. There is also a move to "improve" their responses to leaks by the industry's "Oil Spill Prevention and Response Advisory Group (OSPRAG). That last acronym sounds so very reassuring. And I'm sure they'll be careful of all the tropical creatures in the freezing North Sea, just as BP et al were so concerned about walruses and polar bears in the Gulf. In fact, that's very nearly the sad truth:
Greenpeace has criticised the reaction as inadequate and is suing the Government at the High Court to try to stop it authorising new deep water drilling in the North Sea on environmental grounds.
It argues that a failure to review protection the area's eco-system in the aftermath of the Gulf of Mexico means new permits should not be handed out.
Chevron, the US oil giant, was the first to begin a deep water drilling at Lagavulin, 160 miles north of Shetland, as part of a huge increase in exploration in the area.
However, Greenpeace has taken issue with its most recent version of the company's spill response plan. In the document, Chevron claims that dolphins and whales should naturally avoid oil leaks because of their "good swimming abilities".
Chevron admitted last month it had undertaken to revise upwards its "worst case scenario" forecasts for potential oil spills in the West of Shetland field to 77,000 barrels per day – a higher flow rate than BP saw in the Gulf of Mexico.
*****
The Houston Chronicle has a good piece on 5 myths about BP spill's ecological impact. Specifics are at the link, but they five myths cited are:
Myth 1: Now that the well is capped, we no longer need to worry about oil on our Gulf shores.
Myth 2: Dead animals reflect the most significant negative impacts from oil contamination.
Myth 3: Attributing changes in the environment to the oil should be easy.
Myth 4: Since scientists have learned much from studying other oil spills, nothing new is to be learned from studying the BP spill.
Myth 5: All oil cleanup activities are beneficial.
*****
Representative Luis Gutierrez has some outstanding points to make about the spill. And he says them like true Gulf Watcher:
These 11 brothers, fathers, sons, and husbands died because BP's culture of recklessness, a corporate approach willingly accepts significant risk to BP's employees, the environment, and countless innocent individuals whose livelihoods could be lost by the company's actions.
...
Today, we are no longer inundated with images of the oil slick or shuttered businesses. Today, the nightly news no longer contains B roll of cleaning crews and oil booms attempting to contain this massive spill. Personally, I can't forget the pained face of Mike Williams, Chief Electronics Technician for the Deepwater Horizon, as he recounted the terrors of his escape from the burning rig. As he recalled thinking, "all these things that are supposed to protect us are failing. And nothing is going right." And I can't get the images of oil soaked birds, weighed down and choking, stranded on the Louisiana shoreline, out of my mind.
Gutierrez observes that the massive amount paid in fines for, as examples, the Texas City plant and a Toledo refinery (appalling in its resemblance to the Texas City violations that led to the explosion there), which cost them over $90 million, neither intimidated nor inspired BP to change their ways.
I say enough is enough, which is why I introduced and won an amendment to the Department of Defense Authorization bill which would require that the Secretary of Defense consider debarring BP from Defense Department contracts if he finds that BP is not a "responsible source." The definition of "responsible source" includes the provision that a prospective contractor must have "a satisfactory record of integrity and business ethics" and I am confident that the evidence will show that BP does not meet this requirement.
...
The oil companies need to chill and acknowledge that the pre-Deepwater Horizon status quo is unacceptable. We simply cannot continue approving permits that are rife with false claims such as support from experts who have long since passed away or environmental impact reports on animals that don't even reside in the region.
...
Part of moving away from BP's culture of recklessness is to understand and accept that the DOI must have the tools and time it needs to properly review permit requests. I strongly support Secretary Salazar's efforts to make the permit review process more demanding and I hope that the oil companies will step up and realize that rig safety starts with them.
*****
==== 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 Friday - Criminal Negligence - BP Catastrophe AUV #428 - Lorinda Pike
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
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.