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The AP has obtained a November Third letter from Transocean lawyer Steven Roberts, complaining about delays in forensic examination of the Blowout Preventer, and stating the company's concern that "because of the delays, the BOP and its components have not been preserved as Transocean and other parties requested, and the critical BOP components have been subject to the elements, corrosion and deterioration such that the results of any eventual testing may now be compromised."
He goes on to list the preservation methods requested but not employed, and concludes, "In summary, Transocean's fears have been realized, and it is now possible that any operational tests or measurements from critical BOP components may now be compromised. Please report at your earliest convenience when you expect forensic testing to begin."
Yeah, well. Sure would be convenient for Transocean to be able to able to claim any forensic findings are inadmissible. While the BOP was manufactured by Cameron, its maintenance was Transocean's responsibility.
But their complaints about delays are not without merit. At the heart of alleged heel-dragging appears to be a twelve-year-old, 40-person body called the Chemicals Safety Board.
Back in early June, House Committee on Energy an Commerce Chairmen Henry Waxman and Bart Stupak requested the involvement of the agency...
...because we believe CSB's past work on BP puts it in a unique position to address questions about BP's safety culture and practices. In March 2007, CSB concluded an extensive investigation into the root cause of the 2005 explosion at BP's Texas City refinery that took 15 lives. CSB identified cost-cutting, a lax safety culture, and production pressures from BP executives as factors that weakened process safety at the refinery and led to the explosion. CSB also compared the refinery explosion with the massive leak at a BP pipeline in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, in 2006. CSB found "striking similarities" between the reported causes of these two incidents, including a focus on budgetary concerns rather than sound risk analysis.
As part of your investigation, we ask that you address the following questions:
• Do the circumstances and events leading up to the Deepwater Horizon explosion reflect problems in BP's corporate safety culture?
• What role, if any, did cost-cutting and budgetary concerns play in BP's decisions about well design and testing?
• How did BP, Transocean, and other contractors apply "management of change" programs to assess the consequences of modifications to process, technology, and equipment on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig as well as organizational changes, including changes to personnel, training, and budget?
• Did BP provide adequate oversight of the contractors working on the well?
• Can the CSB draw any parallels between the root causes of the April 20 oil rig explosion
and the causes of the 2005 BP Texas City refinery explosion?
For this investigation, we request that CSB assign the investigative team that led the BP Texas City inquiry.
In addition, we understand that CSB evaluates incidents of significance according to ten criteria, such as death, injury, and environmental damage, and assigns each incident a "score" to help the Board determine whether an incident merits an investigation. Please score the Deepwater Horizon explosion and provide the Committee with the score and the scoring methodology by Monday, June 14,2010.
Even back then, in the face of this respectful request, CSB was a bit defensive -- even whiny -- in its response, which came a full four days after the Committee's requested deadline.
We... agree... that the CSB’s past work on BP’s safety culture and corporate safety oversight places us in a unique role to understand important aspects of this tragedy. In addition... we are of the opinion that we have the legal authority to investigate this accident. All of us share your hope that every possible lesson will be learned from this accident so that nothing similar ever occurs again.
For all these reasons, the CSB intends to proceed with an investigation of the root causes of the accidental chemical release that destroyed the Deepwater Horizon rig and took the lives of 11 workers. The investigation will include the key investigators who were involved in the CSB’s 2005-2007 investigation of the March 23, 2005, explosion at the BP Texas City refinery. We intend to prioritize this work and to apply all of our available resources to ensure the best possible investigation.
Although we will be vigilant for any similarities to the Texas City explosion, as suggested in your letter, we believe it is also important that this investigation be approached without any preconceptions and that all possible underlying factors and causes are thoroughly and objectively examined.
...
We further note that there are numerous other investigations of the April 20 accident that have either been announced or are underway, including those of your own committee, various federal regulatory agencies, and the presidential oil spill commission. To the extent possible, we will seek to coordinate and to avoid duplication of effort with those important activities, without compromising our statutory independence.
We would particularly welcome the Committee’s assistance in promoting cooperation with the other investigations that are currently underway, including help with obtaining relevant documents already collected from companies or other parties or otherwise in the possession of federal regulatory agencies.
Additionally, we would appreciate the Committee’s help in ensuring the integrity and independence of the CSB investigation, as distinct from any criminal inquiries that may occur. Although we have the highest respect for those inquiries, it is important that law enforcement investigators collect information directly from the parties involved and not via the CSB investigative process, which requires an open exchange of information between key witnesses and our civilian safety investigators.
The CSB plans to focus on events prior to and including the explosion on April 20; we believe that an examination of the response to the disaster and the impact of the ongoing massive oil spill is beyond the CSB’s current resources and abilities.
To conduct this work, the Board will have to make some difficult choices and decisions. As you know, the CSB had a record-high caseload even before this disaster occurred. We already have a higher number of open investigations than we have actual investigators on staff. Accordingly, to investigate the rig disaster, we anticipate that certain extraordinary measures will be required, including:
• Bringing certain ongoing investigations to a very rapid conclusion, including investigations of the major explosions at the Kleen Energy power plant (Middletown, CT) and the ConAgra Slim Jim facility (Garner, NC)
• Terminating certain smaller investigations and placing other investigations on hold pending a further definition of the scope for the BP/Transocean investigation
• Temporarily reassigning personnel within the agency to support the new investigation
• Subject to existing Congressional and OMB notification requirements, drawing upon the Board’s $847,000 emergency investigative fund to put in place appropriate contracts and experts as rapidly as possible
• Requesting supplemental funding, as needed, to ensure a thorough and complete investigation. We note that the total cost of the CSB’s prior investigation on BP Texas City was approximately $2.5 million. However, the new BP/Transocean investigation presents in many respects an even higher level of cost and complexity.
Jump forward to last week, and suddenly we find these reports:
A tiny federal agency that investigates deadly chemical accidents said it was being thwarted in its probe of the Deepwater Horizon disaster by other federal agencies.
The bureaucratic dust-up between the Chemical Safety Board and the federal Joint Investigation Team probing the accident could complicate the team's final report and any federal prosecutions related to the accident.
Investigators with the Chemical Safety Board say they are being treated as a junior partner in tests scheduled to begin Monday on the Deepwater Horizon's blowout preventer.
...
The safety board has threatened to go to court to block the tests if it isn't permitted to have a larger role alongside the joint team, which is led by the U.S. Coast Guard and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement.
BOEM Chairman Michael Bromwich accused CSB of "creating disturbance and distraction."
Remember the Paris Peace Talks? And how long it took to decide on the shape of the table? At issue here are the number of seats available at NASA's Michaud Facility, where the BOP awaits the start of forensic testing, all these months after it was pulled off the Macondo wellhead and onto the decks of the Q4000.
Chief CSB investigator Don Holstrom said he believed other agencies were afraid his agency might reach different conclusions about the causes of the accident and what regulatory changes might be needed for offshore drilling.
The Chemical Safety Board is acting in character. With a tiny staff of 40 people and $10 million budget, it is a Chihuahua-sized federal agency. Independent of large government departments, it often has to fight for access to witnesses and evidence.
Starting last summer, safety board investigators met with representatives of the joint team, demanding equal standing. The safety board says it was largely ignored when test procedures were developed. Others involved in talks say the safety board was too confrontational.
Holstrom, apparently convinced the JIT wants to see one unified report emerge from all the individual investigations, went so far as to postulate that "the team appeared threatened by the possibility of other views, especially one that might find fault with government agencies that had oversight over offshore drilling."
In the past, the safety board has produced some reports that later were used by companies involved in accidents to defend themselves against prosecutions and fines. The safety board investigates but does not fine or prosecute individuals or companies.
Into these contentious debates stormed Transocean, declaring that, besides their complaints about delays in forensic testing, they wouldn't comply with the subpoena issued by the JIT.
"We question the jurisdiction and authority of the CSB to conduct an investigation in this matter," a lawyer for Stephen Bertone, Transocean’s chief engineer on the Deepwater Horizon, said in a letter to the U.S. Chemical Safety Board. Bertone's lawyer argued that the safety board doesn't have jurisdiction for accidents offshore.
Finally, we come to this:
Beginning Monday, forensic engineers will put the blowout preventer retrieved from the Deepwater Horizon through a battery of tests designed to reveal why it failed to stop gushing oil and gas at BP's Macondo well this year.
A last-minute compromise among federal agencies will ensure that the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board has its own representative in the testing facility, along with five other experts from BP, rig owner Transocean, blowout preventer manufacturer Cameron International, the Justice Department and the plaintiffs in a multidistrict class action lawsuit tied to the oil spill.
The final deal puts an end to weeks of fighting between the CSB and the joint investigation team from the U.S. Coast Guard and the Interior Department over access to the testing.
And that's where Transocean tosses another spanner into the works:
The chief engineer on the Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico is refusing to comply with a subpoena from the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB), questioning the board's jurisdiction to investigate the April 20 accident.
A Nov. 5 letter to the board from the attorney representing Transocean engineer Stephen Bertone challenges the CSB’s legal authority to probe the accident in declining to appear before the body on Nov. 16.
Furthermore, calling the Deepwater Horizon incident "a marine oil spill outside the board’s oversight," Transocean...
...also questions whether the Deepwater Horizon was a "stationary source" under CSB’s purview even if the board had jurisdiction over incidents in federal waters.
"We question the jurisdiction and authority of the CSB to conduct an investigation in this matter," states the letter to Don Holmstrom, a top investigator with the CSB.
...[CSB spokesman Sandy Gilmour] said the rig is a "fixed facility" under its purview, and listed other factors that give the board a role, including the explosion of hydrocarbons and the fatalities. "This accident comes under the statutory purview governing when the CSB is not only authorized to, but required to investigate certain chemical accidents," he said.
With all this internecine conflict, it would seem that the next stage of the investigation and hearings will move forward with all the alacrity of BP's recent and long overdue Plug-and-Abandon on the Macondo well.
*****
Al Jazeera's Inside Story has a half-hour program on the BP Catastrophe.
BBC Two gives us three tantalizing minutes of Stephen Fry and the Great American Oil Spill, the full hour of which is not, at this time, available in this country.
*****
Apache Corp has completed its acquisition of deepwater Gulf of Mexico operator Mariner Energy Inc , putting to bed a deal struck five days before the BP blowout shook up the entire industry.
Apache, a leading shallow-water operator, made a concerted push into what had long been seen as the more promising deep waters of the Gulf when it secured agreement for the $2.7 billion acquisition on April 15.
Mariner, some may recall, was the site of the rig fire in the Gulf earlier this year.
Mariner Energy, the independent oil and gas producer that owned a platform that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday, has been involved in more than a dozen accidents in the Gulf of the last four years. Regulators say those mishaps include at least four fires and a well blowout.
We'll see if Apache improves their shockingly poor safety record.
*****
Oil isn't the only thing BP's left in the Gulf's troubled waters.
Hundreds of 80-pound anchors that once kept oil containment boom in place are now a hazard to boats and nets, and BP should remove them, says a Jefferson Parish Council resolution.
Some BP contractors removed boom by cutting it away from the anchors, which can stick up to 3 feet from the bottom, endangering boat hulls, motors and fishing nets, Councilman Chris Roberts said.
"You won't know where they're sitting in the water until you run into one of them," he said.
BP spokesman Joe Ellis estimated the number of abandoned anchors off the Louisiana coast at several thousand. The company is reviewing the matter, but doesn't think they're dangerous, he said.
...
"They're large anchors that could really do some damage to boats," [Lafitte Mayor Tim] Kerner said. "I don't know why in the world they decided to leave them in the water."
*****
It appears blood will once again flow like oil in Nigeria:
Nigeria's military threatened on Saturday to carry out raids against what it said were camps of criminal gangs in the creeks of the oil-producing Niger Delta, and told civilians in the vicinity to leave.
Any major offensive by the armed forces would be the first in the Niger Delta, the heartland of the OPEC member's energy industry, since an amnesty programme brokered by President Goodluck Jonathan began in August 2009.
Seven expatriate workers were kidnapped from an oil rig off the Niger Delta almost a week ago, while the home of President Goodluck Jonathan's main adviser on the region was attacked with explosives late on Thursday.
...
The Niger Delta had been hit by years of militant attacks on oil infrastructure prior to the amnesty. At its peak, the unrest prevented Nigeria from pumping much above two thirds of its 3 million barrels per day (bpd) oil production capacity and cost it an estimated $1 billion a month in lost revenues.
The main militant group, the Movement of the Emancipation for the Niger Delta (MEND), kidnapped seven foreign crew members from an Afren oil rig on Sunday, including two Americans, two Frenchmen, two Indonesians and one Canadian.
The group said on Friday the seven men were in good health but would be in its custody "for a while".
It said the two Americans and one of the Frenchmen were employees of Swiss-based Transocean, the second Frenchman worked for France's Sodexo, the Indonesians worked for Century Energy Ltd and the Canadian worked for local firm Petroleum Projects International (PPI).
The government has insisted the amnesty is still on track.
*****
Finally, the likelihood that serious changes will be made to the oil industry's "culture of complacency" is looking like a rather dim possibility.
Florida knows all too well the kind of insidious risks that lie ahead once oil drilling resumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, marred this summer by the biggest offshore spill in U.S. history.
...
"When you bore down a little bit deeper, you don't find any there, there," retired Adm. Harold Gehman said at the time. "There's no people, money, engineering, expertise, analysis."
...
When those drillers return to lobby Florida and rekindle the fierce debate over whether oil rigs should be allowed anywhere near the state, Floridians will have good reason to wonder whether — and how — the industry has sufficiently conquered the odds of another spill.
"This is an inherently high-risk operation with lots of moving parts, any one of which can contribute to or cause a major accident," said former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, co-chairman of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. The former Florida governor is also a longtime proponent of keeping rigs "as far as possible" from the state's shoreline.
...
...[O]ffshore oil drillers are already warning of obstacles other than budget cuts when it comes to revamping how the industry prevents fatalities and spills in the Gulf. Many experts say the business is too driven by competitive forces to apply the types of cooperative safety measures adopted by the nuclear-power industry, commercial passenger airlines and even offshore drillers in Europe.
Key to those industries' culture of safety: They freely share data about trends, anomalies and possible remedies.
"Oil and gas has been historically extremely competitive," Michael Bromwich, director of the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, said in addressing the presidential commission last week in Washington. "There would be issues about technical and proprietary and confidential information that companies may be reluctant to share."
...
Elmer "Bud" Danenberger, who retired early this year as chief of offshore-regulatory programs for the U.S. Minerals Management Service, [says] "This industry was riding high before Macondo," Danenberger said, using BP's name for the blown-out well. "The Atlantic was going to be opened up for the first time since 1985. Alaska was probably going to see expanded operations there. Even the state of Florida was looking at drilling in state waters.
"But you're only as good as your weakest link," said Danenberger, who has chronicled the BP disaster in his Bud's Offshore Energy blog. "So they have to think in terms of what can they do collectively, and not just within their company. They tend not to work together very well."
Robert Bea, a drilling and marine-industry expert at the University of California at Berkeley, said drillers' advance into deeper and deeper waters during the past 20 years has produced a risky combination of factors: The oil reservoirs are more potent, the technologies employed are more complex, but the industry hasn't advanced its risk management in ways that might have prevented the Deepwater Horizon tragedy.
"Did any one of them want to die? Did any one of them want to be injured or to injure someone? I think the answer is clearly no," Bea said of the crew aboard the drilling platform April 20. "But did they understand the consequences of what they were doing and what was acceptable to the American public? I think the answer is clearly no."
*****
==== 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.
Previous Gulf Watcher diaries:
http://www.dailykos.com/... - 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
Gulf Watchers Monday - Finale or beginning of Fireworks - BP Catastrophe AUV #422 - shanesnana
Gulf Watchers Sunday - BP Fails Big (Again) But Probation May Be Lifted - BP Catastrophe AUV #421 - Yauragi
Gulf Watchers Special Report - BOP is Off; P&A coming up? - Yasuragi
Gulf Watchers Friday - Another Spill is Certain - BP Catastrophe AUV #420 - 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.