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Salazar lifts moratorium on deepwater drilling. Crickets on the issue of improved government and industry response plans for blown out offshore wells. Mary Landrieu continues her fierce competition to be big oil's favorite lap dog.
The Obama administration lifted its moratorium on deepwater drilling for oil and gas on Tuesday, after imposing new rules intended to prevent another disaster like the Gulf of Mexico rig explosion that led to the largest offshore oil spill in American history.
“We have made and continue to make significant progress in reducing the risks associated with deepwater drilling,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in announcing the step. Therefore, he said, “I have decided that it is now appropriate to lift the suspension on deepwater drilling for those operators that are able to clear the higher bar that we have set.”
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Ms. Landrieu has single-handedly blocked Mr. Obama’s nomination of Jacob Lew to be White House budget director, in protest over the moratorium. She said on Tuesday that she would not release her hold yet.
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Michael R. Bromwich, the director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, who led the effort to develop the new rules, said it was not yet clear how long it would take for energy companies to comply with the new rules and obtain new permits.
“It will clearly not be tomorrow, and it’s not going to be next week,” Mr. Bromwich said. “My sense is that we will have permits approved before the end of the year, but how much before the end of the year and how many permits before the end of the year, I can’t say.”
BP gives their independent BP ombudsman the boot. Mark Bly was in charge of BP's safety when the Deepwater Horizon blew up and was responsible for the universally criticized, finger-pointing internal "investigation."
BP is disbanding the external safety ombudsman it set up after a fatal explosion at a company refinery in Texas in 2005 despite a growing number of concerns raised by the oil company's employees.
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The move comes less than a fortnight after the company announced it was setting up a new internal safety function, led by its head of safety and operations, Mark Bly.
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The number of concerns received by the ombudsman have risen almost fourfold between its inception and last year.
Shell tries to distance itself from BP at the Oil & Money summit in London. More crickets on the topic of adequate response plans for offshore blowouts.
Peter Voser, the chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell, has strongly criticised BP's well design and internal inquiry into the causes of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
BP's report into how the Deepwater Horizon exploded and sank on April 20, killing 11 men, cleared the company of any serious negligence.
But Mr Voser said to "correctly investigate" the company ought to have looked more closely at its own well design.
The oil executive sought to distance the industry from BP's mistakes, saying his own company would have had more safety barriers in place.
"From what I know today, Shell clearly would have drilled this well in a different way and would have had more options to prevent the accident," Mr Voser said at the Oil & Money summit in London.
However, the Shell boss acknowledged that all oil companies failed to prepare properly for a major accident, adding that he expects tighter regulation.
BP did not send any representatives to the major annual conference and declined to comment on Shell's criticism.
Billy "line my pockets" Nungesser unsurprisingly thinks local officials should be in charge of oil spill response. Nungesser got BP to lease and make capitol improvements to his marina. Nungesser's wealth enhancing plan for himself certainly would have done even better if he had the authority he proposes.
A vocal critic of the Coast Guard and BP since the early days of the rig explosion and oil spill that polluted the Gulf and the Louisiana coastline, Nungesser told the Press Club of Baton Rouge that the states or a regional FEMA-like response organization should have the first shot at dealing with such a disaster because they know the affected areas better than a removed federal bureaucracy.
Bluefin tuna will be considered for listing on the Endangerd Species List. The Center for Biological Diversity has been very busy fighting legal battles for wildlife.
The National Marine Fisheries Service will study whether the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has depleted the population of Atlantic bluefin tuna to the point that the food fish should be placed on the endangered species list.
The fisheries service will make a recommendation by May 24, 2011 - a year after The Center for Biological Diversity filed its petition. The center provided enough scientific information to warrant protecting the fish under the Endangered Species Act, the fisheries service said on its website in September.
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The center and other environmental groups say bluefin had been headed for extinction long before the April 20 rig explosion that unleashed the spill, though other researchers counter that the fish's numbers remain strong. Numerous studies have been done on the bluefin's population, though few are universally accepted.
Farmer's flooded land under federal program to create clean marshes for migrating birds. USDA Wetlands Reserve Program, which is a similar program, has a backlog in many states of farmers who wish to participate.
Alabama and Mississippi are paying landowners $6.75 million in total to create artificial marshes, typically by flooding farm fields, for birds deprived of natural marshland by the oil spill, according to government information.
Top conservation officials in both states said that the decision to launch the federal program, dubbed the Migratory Bird Habitat Initiative, was made in the early stages of the spill, when no one knew how much oil would gush or for how long.
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In south Baldwin County, John Foley said he signed up about 10 acres of his family farm for the program. He would not say how much money officials gave him, but he estimated that it paid for only 50 percent to 60 percent of what it cost to create the artificial marshland.
Still, Foley said he believes that the program was worthwhile because it helped restore natural habitats that people took over long ago.
“I guess maybe we’re undoing some of the things that we did wrong before,” Foley said.
Videos are finally up on CSPAN for the latest round of hearings by the Joint Coast Guard and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management hearings into the Deepwater Horizon calamity.
Deepwater Horizon Joint Investigation 10/04/10, James Hanzalik Capt. James Hanzalik, chief of incident response for the Coast Guard's 8th District testimony. Hanzalik testified that he didn't think there was anything more the Coast guard could have done to prevent the rig from sinking.
Deepwater Horizon Joint Investigation 10/04/10, Doug Martin, Part 1 Testimony from Doug Martin, Smit Salvage Americas. BP interfered and delayed with attempts by Smit Salvage to put down an ROV.
Deepwater Horizon Joint Investigation 10/04/10, Doug Martin, Part 2
Judge Barbier appoints judges to the Plaintiff's Steering Committee for BP lawsuits. David Boies, who represented Al Gore in the 2000 election case, applied but was not appointed.
Four attorneys from Texas, Louisiana and Florida were appointed on Friday to a committee to lead the hundreds of oil spill-related lawsuits against BP Plc and its partners, according to court documents.
The committee will coordinate the activities of the 15-member plaintiffs' steering committee that was also appointed on Friday by Judge Carl Barbier.
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The executive panel is made up of Jim Roy and Steve Herman, Louisiana lawyers who had already have been acting as the plaintiffs' co-liaison counsel, which can be a largely administrative role coordinating with the court.
Joining them will be Texas attorney Scott Summy of the Baron and Budd law firm based in Dallas and Brian Barr of Levin Papantonio Thomas Mitchell Rafferty & Proctor, which is based in Pensacola, Florida.
The 15-member steering committee includes Elizabeth Cabraser, a California attorney who led the fight against Exxon over the company's Valdez spill in Alaska. She is also playing a lead role in lawsuits against Toyota Motor Corp over claims its cars raced out of control.
The committee also includes Mike Espy, the Agriculture Secretary for former U.S. President Bill Clinton. Espy is now a Mississippi lawyer.
A seat on the committee gives the lawyer the power to shape the direction of the case as well as command a larger slice of the settlement.
Attorneys left off the committee essentially lose control of the lawsuits they have filed against BP and others.
Industry financial analyst questions whether or not the feds will enforce regulations to plug abandoned wells.
In the middle of the regulatory uncertainty that has sprung from this summer's Gulf of Mexico oil spill, offshore services companies are touting a federal mandate to plug thousands of abandoned wells and remove hundreds of unused platforms as a likely source of steady income.
Starting Oct. 15, companies must permanently seal wells that haven't produced oil or gas in five years as part of the government's reaction to BP PLC's (BP, BP.LN) Deepwater Horizon blowout. Federal regulators estimate that throughout the Gulf there are some 3,500 non-producing wells and about 650 idle platforms whose owners must move to dismantle.
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James West, an analyst with securities researchers Barclays Capital, said the industry dismantles about 150 platforms a year and, barring the arrival of new equipment, can probably handle 250 platform removals a year. The number of wells permanently plugged each year could grow from a high now of about 1,200 to as many as 2,000, West said.
"The key here is whether the government actually enforces these regulations, which they never have before," he said.
BP's COO promotes Alabama seafood safety: FAIL. BP continues their normal arrogant idiocy.
"The seafood in the Gulf of Mexico is the most tested seafood. It is safe. It is sound. I eat it everywhere I go almost everyday," said Utsler during a press conference on Tuesday.
But, the media event, which included a tour of a local processing facility, may do little to quash the concerns of those skeptical of the fresh catch. When News Five asked the restaurant where today's lunch came from we found out it isn't exactly what BP had promoted.
The crab claws, which were bought from a local distributor, were shipped in from Baltimore, Maryland. The mullet was caught in Florida. The oysters came from Texas and Florida. And, the shrimp, though it is local, was caught before the oil spill, then frozen and served up daily.
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The owner of the Lighthouse tells us they don't know when they'll start bringing in local, post oil-spill products, and they say BP never asked where their seafood came from.
==== 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
Iron Horse ROV 1
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 #407 - shanesnana
Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #406 - Sunday Wrap - Lorinda Pike
Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #405 - bleeding heart
Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #404 - peraspera
Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #403 - Darryl House
Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #402 - Yasuragi
Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #401 - Lorinda Pike
Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #400 - Yasuragi
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.