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Once again the Trans Alaska Pipeline system has been forced to shut down due to leakage. BP owns the majority share of the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company, the pipeline operator. The 800 mile pipeline carries about 10 per cent of the oil produced domestically. The spill occurred at a pumping station and was discovered Saturday morning.About 10 barrels of oil were recovered from the basement of the pumping station, and there appeared to be minimal environmental impact according to their spokesperson.
The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation reported that the cause of the spill was under investigation, and that oil vapors were being ventilated from the pump building so that leaking oil could be removed.
"Neither the booster pumps nor other facility infrastructure suffered damage from the oil release," according to the report. "Vacuum trucks are on scene for oil removal."
The closure of the pipeline could,however,impact oil prices.
"The significance is having to shut the pipeline system down," said Michelle Egan, an Alyeska spokeswoman. "We want to make sure we can restart the line safely and without any damage."
BP owns the largest share of the consortium that runs the pipeline and depends on revenue from North Slope production to pay for damages caused by the blowout of a BP well in the Gulf of Mexico last year. BP officials said they hoped the pipeline could reopen in four to six days, but that would depend on the approval of government regulators.
So could BP once again profit despite its poor safety and maintenance policies?
Crude oil prices have risen about 7 percent in the last year and now hover just below $90 a barrel in the United States, with supplies tightening around the world primarily because of growing demand in China and other developing countries. ..."The market was already in the mood for oil to go to $100 a barrel," said Amy Myers Jaffe, an energy specialist at Rice University, "so any disruption of a major size — like stopping Alaskan oil from coming to market — is going to give instantaneous momentum to prices."
According to AAA the average price of gasoline at $3.08 a gallon is high for January and energy analysts have already predicted a price of $3.50 by summer.
The pumping facility where the leak occurred is the northernmost of 12 such stations that sustain the pressure to push the oil down to the port of Valdez. The leak was in piping just outside the station, possibly caused by water buildup inside the concrete casing, causing corrosion. The leak backed up into the basement of the pumping building. In March 2006 corrosion in BP's feeder lines caused a spill of more than 260,000 gallons of oil, the worst in the history of the North Slope.
The North Slope is one of BP’s most important oil fields, and provides a vital income stream. BP produces nearly two-thirds of the 600,000 barrels a day that come from the North Slope, a giant oil field that has been in decline for many years but still produces about 3 percent of the oil consumed by the United States.
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While the environmental impact of this latest "small" spill might not be great, the impact of this summer's spill into the Gulf of Mexico is still being determined. BP proposes to pay $500 million over the next 10 years for research investigating the impact of the spill on the environment. Should the biggest payout go to the state that was most severely affected? An LSU professor claims Louisana got shortchanged. This first payout of $25 million gave LSU half of what was paid to institutions in Florida and Mississippi.
Members of the Board of Regents on Thursday complained about the funding inequity for a state whose valuable fisheries were jeopardized by the massive oil leak
Christopher D'Elia, LSU professor and dean of the School of Coastal Environment, said that politics, and not academic research ability or level of impact, appear to have weighed heavily on BP's distribution decision in the first year of a $500 million 10-year grant.
"What was lacking in our state was political leadership, not academic leadership," D'Elia told the board.
Former Florida governor Charlie Crist "probably put the most pressure on BP," D'Elia said. But Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and Alabama Gov. Bob Riley also were "very aggressive" in pushing BP to provide funding.
Like Crist, they showed "political support at all levels of academia."
"I don't have the same sense here," he said. "I'm not trying to disparage any part of government" but "we haven't been as effective as we need to be."
The next round of funding will be competitive, based on research proposals.
A four-university consortium consisting of LSU, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, the University of New Orleans and Tulane has been working on a plan. It recently included the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, which is a coastal research facility utilized by several universities and staffed by biologists, fisheries and ecosystem experts...
"We want the best science, wherever it comes from," D'Elia told the board. "But we don't want Louisiana to be left out."
Louisiana has "some of the best researchers and coastal fisheries experts," he said. "I'm sure we will be competitive."
(h/t yasu)
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A Louisana shrimper fights both BP and Coast Guard
Sometimes the little guy does win! Barry Rodgers, like many of his fellow shrimpers, worked for BP cleaning up oil. Along with all the other boats his 65 foot trawler was sent to Port Fourchon for decontamination. When he was presented with a letter saying the decontamination was complete on September 30, he refused to sign it and vowed to stay there with his boat until he was satisfied that all the oil was gone.
Rogers is not the first local fisherman to complain about how thoroughly a boat was cleaned and decontaminated. He is the only one known to have refused to accept the BP decontamination certificate. Some fishermen had to have paint stripped from their boats and still had oil on decks and hulls that they cleaned themselves.
The Coast Guard contends that it is a misunderstanding about what "decontamination" means. The standard they set is that the boat is no longer a threat to the environment, however, as Rodgers explained, the remaining oil threatened his livelihood.
"There was oil all on the back deck and under the brine tank," Rogers said. "It would have been on the shrimp if I had gone shrimping. If I had dumped a bag on the deck it would have been in oil. Every inspector that came I said, ‘knowing what you know now would you eat shrimp that came off this deck and every one of them said, ‘Hell no.’ "
Advocates for Rogers, like dock owner and shrimper Kimberly Chauvin, who organized the first fishing vessels responding to the BP spill after the April Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, said his steadfast stance deserves applause. It is a further example, she said, of the difficulties fishermen continue to have with BP.
Rodgers had initially been given a letter saying that his boat was decontaminated on September 30. According to contract, BP will have to pay him for the time he waited for the boat to be decontaminated. He finally signed off on January 5.
(h/t yasu)
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Fishing industry consultant blasts Lubchenco This one is for hester.
Last year's BP oil spill resulted in 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 million gallons of petroleum products being released into the Gulf of Mexico every day for three months.
It was the largest accidental oil spill that has ever been inflicted on any ocean anywhere. It resulted in floating oil slicks and subsurface oil plumes that were hundreds of miles in extent.
Exacerbating a horrendous situation, with the blessing of the feds the people at BP sprayed and injected millions of gallons of chemical dispersants, chemicals the use of which has been outlawed abroad because of their toxic environmental effects, into the Gulf waters that they had already done such a thorough job of contaminating to "break up" the oil in some totally misguided effort based on "out of sight, out of mind."
Needless to say, none of this was particularly good for the flora or fauna of the Gulf. This fact was brought home by the 600 or so dead turtles that were collected from the areas affected by the spill and by the dispersants used to "control" it.
However, according to Jane Lubchenco, head of NOAA, in a statement in the Miami Herald on Dec. 30, in her estimation it wasn't BP and the biggest accidental oil spill that the world has ever seen or the wanton use, with her approval, of toxic chemical dispersants that was responsible for the dead turtles.
It was fishermen.
Nils Strope is a longtime industry consultant and investigative reporter.
Her statement about the turtle deaths and fishing was "while nearly all the rescued sea turtles were visibly oiled, to our surprise, most of the dead stranded sea turtles had no observable oil on their bodies and were in good health prior to their death. Necropsies (autopsies on animals) on more than half of 600 carcasses point to the possibility that a majority may have drowned in fishing gear."
So we have thousands of Gulf fishermen who, because of BP's actions and the government's lack of effective oversight, lost their markets and at least half a year's worth of fishing and were actually getting some well-deserved public sympathy.
Yet Ms. Lubchenco appears unwilling to put up with that, so with the careful use of words that no one will be able to hold her accountable for, she seems to be doing what she can to stop that sympathy its tracks.
As is becoming increasingly evident, it's well past the time when the powers that be in the Department of Commerce, the Obama Administration and in Congress should give serious consideration to the real-world implications of having someone with such a profound bias against fishermen and fishing as Ms. Lubchenco so obviously does at the helm of the NOAA.
After decades of demonstrating that they are world leaders in the conservation of species after species, our fishermen deserve more from Washington than a target painted on their collective backs
(h/t yasu)
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Kenneth Feinberg returns to the Gulf today and
tomorrow. No word yet on on the 'transparency' issue.
The administrator of BP's $20 billion oil spill claims fund returns to the Gulf Coast this week amid continued complaints that he's not compensating victims enough and that payments are coming to slowly.
Attorney Kenneth Feinberg will meet with residents in Mississippi and Louisiana on Monday and Tuesday. Feinberg is in charge of the Gulf Coast Claims Facility, which was set up to dole out BP PLC's money to oil spill victims.
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Just in from the Mobile Press Registar
- Oil spill claims czar Ken Feinberg said Monday that he will give the public a chance to weigh in on the guidelines he'll use for calculating claims payments across the Gulf Coast , but will wait until Feb. 1 before processing 92,000 requests already in hand.
Feinberg made the announcement following a testy town hall meeting here during which some people accused him of lying and scamming Mississippi fishermen.
Sounds like he doesn't really mean "public"
Adjusters will wait until after Feb. 1 to begin processing the interim and final claims requests, he said. First, local, state and federal officials, as well as seafood associations and other business groups on the Coast, will all have a chance to see the formulas he plans to use .
Hope the creditors will be willing to wait.
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Oil Commission report due out tomorrow.
More than seven months later, the commission will present its final findings Tuesday about the disaster -- its causes and lessons -- in a very different environment.
The well was long ago sealed. The story has receded from the front pages. Oil prices have replaced oiled pelicans as a source of public concern. The parade of congressional hearings is over, and Republicans, with a far more benign view of the oil industry and a more jaundiced view of regulation, have wrested control of the House. Spending new money on just about anything -- including a beefed-up regulatory agency -- will be difficult.
Just as it was early on, the BP spill is once again primarily a concern of folks in the Gulf states and especially Louisiana, where the industry and the political establishment want nothing more than to get back to business as usual: drilling, baby, drilling.
Stay tuned to this channel. I"m sure you hear about the report first at Gulf Watchers....
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:
The last Mothership has links to reference material.
Previous motherships and ROV's from this extensive live blog effort may be found here.
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