You are in the current Gulf Watchers BP Catastrophe - AUV #431. ROV #430 is here.
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On this coming 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
Part one of the digest of diaries is here and part two is here.
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There was an important document pulled at the last minute before the presidential commission presented their preliminary findings. A spokesman for the commission claimed that the document was pulled because the commissioners had not approved the document. Given the brevity of the document, that excuse doesn't even rise to the level of being laughable. The commission wanted the headline coming out of that hearing to be, "BP didn't make a trade-off between money and safety."
The document critical of BP and its subcontractors had been uploaded to the commission's website. Greenwire snagged a copy before it was pulled.
Document obtained by Greenwire (PDF)
Decision | Riskier Than Alternative? | Less Time Than Alternative? | Was Decision Necessary? | Decision-maker |
Not waiting for more centralizers | Yes | Saved Time | No | BP on shore |
Not reevaluating cement slurry design | Yes | Saved Time | No | Halliburton on shore |
Not running diagostics on float equipment to ensure conversion or seal | Yes | Saved Time | No | Halliburton (and perhaps BP) on shore |
Using combined spacer and not flushing from system | Yes | Saved Time | No | BP and Mi-Swaco on shore and rig |
Displacing muc from riser before setting plug | Yes | Unclear | No | BP on shore |
Setting cement plug 3000 deep in seawater | Yes | Unclear | No | BP on shore |
Not running cement evaluation log | Possibly | Saved Time | No | BP on shore |
Not installing additional plugs or barriers | Yes | Saved Time | No | BP on shore |
Undertaking simultaneous operations that could confound kick detection | Yes | Saved Time | No | Transocean (and perhaps BP) on rig |
Bypassing pits and flow out meter during displacement | Yes | Saved Time | No | Transocean (and perhaps BP) on rig |
The document (pdf) obtained by Greenwire shows BP PLC, Halliburton Co. and Transocean Ltd. made a series of 11 unnecessary decisions that may have increased the chances of disaster. The findings paint a harsher picture than statements made by the panel's chief counsel during a recent presentation that workers onshore and on the drilling rig didn't cut corners on safety to save money. And it may be a harbinger of stronger findings in the panel's final conclusions due out in January.
Before Fred Bartlit, the chief counsel, made those comments earlier this month during the commission's final set of hearings, other inquiries into the disaster had alleged that BP's bad decisions were driven by a desire to save money on the project, which was running behind schedule and costing the company about $1.5 million a day. And in preliminary findings released last week, the National Academy of Engineering also said BP failed to assess risks and chose less expensive actions on the project.
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Fred Bartlit, the committee's chief counsel, repeated statements that BP did not trade off safety for money eight times. Bartlit knew and every single member of the commission knew that Bartilt's statement would be the headline overwhelming anything critical of BP in the presentation.
"We have not seen a conscious decision where human beings favored dollars over safety," Bartlit said. "We have not found a situation where we can say a man had a choice between safety and dollars and put his money on dollars. We haven't seen it"
The committee may be trying to dig themselves out of Bartlit's disgraceful presentation by including the information in the missing document in their final report. However, anything short of firing Bartlit and condemning his outrageous defense of BP will come up short in restoring the commission's credibility.
"The commission continues to stand behind those findings," said Dave Cohen, a spokesman for the commission. "We wish that the slide had been part of the presentation, and the information will be used, I predict, in the future, either in our remaining meeting or in the final report. But it's supported entirely by our investigation."
A member of the Gulf Coast Ecology Working Group, Professor Steven Pennings, explains five myths about BP spill's ecological impact The Gulf Coast Ecology Working Group is supported by the National Science Foundation. Scientists voices concerning the consequences of BP's black monster are too little heard. It is more than worth reading the full op-ed.
Myth 1: Now that the well is capped, we no longer need to worry about oil on our Gulf shores.
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The reality is that much oil persists in the environment, within or close to sensitive coastal and deep-water habitats, and this oil could be the source of long-term, persistent, low-level exposures to coastal life. We have learned from previous oil spills, such as the Exxon Valdez in Prudhoe Bay, that toxic oil can persist in the environment for decades. We now know that a significant amount of oil from the BP spill persists in deeper waters of the Gulf and in thick layers covering large areas of the sea floor. Though an impressive effort has been made to clear Gulf of Mexico beaches of surface oil, it has seeped into the sand and sediment and remains hidden below the surface of beaches and marshes.
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Myth 2: Dead animals reflect the most significant negative impacts from oil contamination.
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However, scientists have learned a surprising but important lesson from other very well-studied oil spills such as the Exxon Valdez: It is the nonlethal effects on wildlife that are most important for the long-term integrity of populations. Examples of such nonlethal effects include tissue damage that affects organ function, damage to the DNA that makes up the genetic code, disruption of hormone functions or decreased growth or hatching success of embryos.
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Myth 3: Attributing changes in the environment to the oil should be easy.
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As many fishermen know, however, coastal ecosystems are highly variable in space and time. That is, animals move around and their numbers change depending on many variables such as tidal cycle, season, ocean currents and food availability. Accordingly, it is hard to define what is "normal" for population densities at a particular place and time.
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Myth 4: Since scientists have learned much from studying other oil spills, nothing new is to be learned from studying the BP spill.
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But the chemical nature of crude oils varies extensively and each ecosystem is different. As a result of this variation, major oil spills require individually tailored research programs to document and learn about their effects.
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For example, the volume of oil spilled, the volume of dispersant applied, and the depth at which this all unfolded is unprecedented, and collectively these characteristics affect how the oil is distributed in the ecosystem.
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Myth 5: All oil cleanup activities are beneficial.
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It should be recognized that some well-intentioned interventions can have serious unintended consequences; these should be considered together with the risks of oiling. Occasionally, unusual oil spill responses are justified if they do some damage but have the overall effect of mitigating the risks of contamination to sensitive habitats. These interventions are not justified, however, when they are ineffective and cause more harm than good. For example, a freshwater pulse from the Mississippi River was intended to drive back the advance of oil by flooding coastal marshes, but it appears that this freshwater input was responsible for extensive oyster kills.
The press is all aflutter over the "hero" that gave Chu that data that persuaded him to keep static "kill" going. Of course none of the intrepid boy and girl reporters has asked if capping the well played any role in the mud line leak.
The truly disturbing thing about this state of affairs is that it seems no one is thinking in terms of safe containment strategies for a Gulf blowout where brittle geological formations as well as hurricanes are the norm.
A new study from the presidential oil spill commission describes the behind-the-scenes, excruciating tension and mistakes behind the three-month effort to cap the busted well. More than anything the report pulled back the curtain on what happened during hectic times as 172 million gallons of oil gushed into the Gulf from April 20 to July 15.
The 39-page report faulted BP and the federal government for being unprepared for a well blowout, but then lauded them for scrambling for different fixes after the disaster.
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Amid the messy meetings, came details about a lone scientist working from a cell phone photo who saved the day by convincing the government that a cap it considered removing was actually working as designed.
The cap that eventually stopped the oil from flowing was nearly pulled about a day after it was installed in mid-July because pressure readings looked so low that they indicated a leak elsewhere in the system. BP wanted the cap left in place and the well to stay shut, but government science advisers were firm and near unanimous in wanting the cap removed because of fear of a bigger, more catastrophic spill, the report said.
One scientist took a cell phone picture of pressure readings and e-mailed it to a government researcher in California for advice.
Just using that cell phone photo, Paul Hsieh, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist, created a model to explain what was happening under the cap and how - despite low pressure readings - there was no leak. He was convinced the containment cap wouldn't blow. He got more data, which bolstered his case.
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Hsieh laid out his case and it persuaded the other scientists to wait.
The government waited six hours, then a day. Nothing happened. The cap held.
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Also, the oil industry in general and the government have not spent the money they promised to improve clean-up equipment and technique for oil spills, a second commission report said. Despite billions of dollars in profits, oil companies spend only a few million dollars a year on clean-up technology. The federal government in 2010 spent $7.4 million on oil spill research. In 1993, when adjusted for inflation, the federal government spent $20.3 million on the subject.
Industry and government have spent only a pittance on oil spill research. We are not close to being prepared for the next Macondo nor do there seem to be any concrete plans or money in place to get prepared. This seems to be an indelicate subject that industry, the government nor the press wish to discuss.
In the other report, the staff of the presidential commission said that a lack of preparedness, a dearth of research and insufficient investment in new techniques hindered the cleanup once the oil had spilled into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
The report said federal agencies consistently spent less than they were authorized to spend on improving cleanup technology. In addition, two of the five biggest oil companies - Conoco Phillips and Chevron - spent no money at all in the past 20 years on developing better in-house ways to clean up after a spill. Two companies spent only modest amounts, and BP's letter to the commission was not clear on whether the company spent money on cleanup technology.
Exxon Mobil, whose tanker the Exxon Valdez tanker crashed and spilled oil off the Alaska coast in 1989, told the commission that its investments in containment and cleanup technology amounted to about $60 million over the past 20 years.
Citing phrases used in an industry report, the draft report said "neither boom design and construction, nor the 'principles behind skimming systems,' nor the 'basics of mechanical recovery systems,' have significantly changed."
It added: "Existing response equipment was not up to the challenge of such a large spill."
Oyster producers can't afford appraisals to seek compensation from BP. This type of Catch 22 is just plain wrong.
Oyster growers along the Louisiana and Mississippi Gulf Coast are facing special challenges as the deadline arrives Tuesday to file for compensation from short-term damage from the BP oil spill.
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Oyster beds were virtually untouched by encroaching oil from the BP spill, but suffered massive mortality from two freshwater diversions — openings along the Mississippi River that allowed fresh water from the river to flow into surrounding estuaries to push the oil away, he [Voisin, member of Oyster Advisory Committee and the state Oyster Task Force] says.
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Half of Louisiana's 390,000 acres of privately leased oyster beds are expected to die off in the next two years, Voisin says.
Putting an accurate price tag on the damage to oyster beds requires hiring a state-certified assessor who charges between $100 and $1,000 per acre, fees oyster fishermen will need to pay out of pocket, Voisin says.
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Kenneth Feinberg, administrator of the BP compensation fund, has said the fund will not pay for those assessors.
"It puts the oyster farmer in a predicament," Voisin says.
"Farmers who have gone through a very difficult summer already are struggling to be able to afford any kind of appraisal or assessment."
Shallow water drillers threaten to pick up their toys and go play abroad. They think Salazar is being a big, bad meanie because he won't roll over and start shoving out drilling permits hand over fist.
Gulf Coast offshore drilling companies, hoping for a stronger partnership with the Obama administration to make drilling safer without hobbling major plans, came away disappointed from a meeting Monday with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.
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In fact, companies and rig servicers raised the stakes by saying they're now actively looking to step up bidding for projects outside US waters as losses pile up.
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President Obama's proposal to expand deepwater drilling just a month before the Deepwater Horizon explosion was in large part a political concession to gain Republican support for climate-change legislation. But those political dynamics have fallen apart since the spill, leaving the White House with little motivation to appease the oil industry, says Joshua Busby, a public policy professor at the University of Texas at Austin. "There's nothing to be gained ... politically by rushing to get back out there and drill again."
House Democrats, led by Grijalva, pressure Interior to complete investigation of BP's Atlantis operation. The report was supposed to be done in October.
House Democrats are pressing the Interior Department to complete a probe of BP’s massive Atlantis oil-and-gas platform in the Gulf of Mexico — an operation some fear is vulnerable to an accident rivaling BP’s oil spill last summer.
Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) is the point person for a broader Democratic effort to force the department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement (BOEMRE) to quickly wrap up its investigation over whether BP illegally ran the Atlantis platform.
Grijalva — a senior member of the House Natural Resources Committee — and his fellow Democrats suspect BP did not get proper sign-off before starting up the Atlantis platform in the Gulf in 2007. The Atlantis is the largest oil and gas platform in the world and is in deeper waters than BP's ill-fated Macondo well that sparked this summer’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
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“The suspicion is the inspections weren’t done, so as a consequence … it operated without any jurisdiction or any approval, i.e. illegal,” Grijalva told The Hill last week.
Gulf Coast rally demonstrates the damage from BP's black monster is far from over. Residents of the affected area will be forced to live with uncertainty about the ugly consequences for years to come.
Actor Stephen Baldwin made a surprise appearance, describing his experiences in the area while filming a documentary. "I just want to do what I can to be part of the solution," he said.
And while many coastal residents and business owners have received money from BP, Blanchard said, "How do we know if it is enough? They try to pressure you into taking a small amount of money when you don't know what the future holds."
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Some of the day's most disturbing accounts related to the testing and safety of Gulf seafood and the health problems many claim are a result of the oil or of the unprecedented amounts of dispersant sprayed to help control it.
Numerous people reported staph infections, rashes, headaches, respiratory problems and some more serious conditions they suspect were linked to the oil or dispersants.
"Till this day, we have not gotten anyone to do anything regarding health issues," said Clint Guidry of the Louisiana Seafood Association.
Guidry cited the damage he said can be caused by a highly toxic ingredient in the dispersant Corexit. "It takes out your liver, kidneys and lungs, and the neurotoxins eat up the brain," Guidry said. "This is a big, big issue. It's not something to play around with."
"We feel like we are being lied to on so many levels," said Mac MacKenzie of NOLA Emergency Response, a volunteer group formed after the spill. MacKenzie told the crowd about troubling results of independent tests she said were conducted on a batch of shrimp she bought at a dock in Venice.
Some of the official tests for seafood safety looked only at shrimp that had been deveined and did not test the heads or shells, she said. When she made a stock from the shrimp she bought, she said, there was "sludge" on the bottom of the pan.
In 8,403 square miles of Gulf waters opened last week, MacKenzie said, only 50 individual shrimp were tested before shrimp from the waters were declared safe for consumption.
The Final Settlement phase of the the fund Feinberg administers has begun. If people accept a final settlement they will be required to sign away their rights to sue.
That emergency program came to an end Tuesday, and now the next phase begins: the negotiation of lump-sum final settlements for those affected by the spill. The rules for those settlements will be announced on Wednesday by Mr. Feinberg, after consulting with lawyers, state attorneys general, the Department of Justice and BP.
“I have received a wide range of views about every issue under the sun,” he said.
A copy of a 12-page document laying out the claims process, obtained by The New York Times, describes in detail a program that will run for three years. It does not require those seeking reimbursement to give up their right to sue BP or other companies involved with the spill until they accept a final offer.
Anyone accepting the final settlement, however, will give up the right to file future claims against BP or any other company involved in the disaster. The fund will also allow people to continue to receive money while weighing a final settlement. And there will be an appeals process for those unhappy with their offer.
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The rules also allow people to ask for expenses they paid to estimate their damages — another point requested by Mr. McCollum [Florida’s attorney general], Ms. Copes [McCollum's communication director] said.
Lawyers involved in federal litigation against BP expressed skepticism about the new rules, however.
Stephen J. Herman, a member of the steering committee of plaintiffs’ lawyers in the litigation, said that people filing claims needed to know more details about how the process would work — “these are the claims we pay or don’t pay, this is the basis we use to determine compensation,” he explained.
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The Department of Justice has also urged Mr. Feinberg to provide those filing claims with more information about how the process will be conducted.
In letter dated Friday, Associate Attorney General Thomas J. Perrelli evaluated a draft of the rules and appeals process and told Mr. Feinberg that “additional transparency about the claims process is critical.”
Mr. Feinberg said it was a “fair criticism” that the claims process had been opaque, and he pledged to improve the information available. “A detailed description of the methodology and the process will be posted in the next few weeks,” he said.
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:
11-22-10 04:21:52 Gulf Watchers Monday - Change in Oil Spill Fund Rules: Will BP Benefit? - BP Catastrophe AUV #430 - shanesnana
11-21-10 09:35:21 Gulf Watchers Sunday - New Charges Against BP; Barton Eyes Energy Chair - BP Catastrophe AUV #429 - Yasuragi
Gulf Watchers Block Party - Traveling Boomers - ursoklevar
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
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.