Gulf Watchers Friday - Still Waiting to Get Paid - BP Catastrophe AUV #475

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Oil supply workers get a shot at the claims process. (From the New Orleans Times-Picayune) The estimated 9000 workers who supplied and serviced oil rigs in the Gulf will now have their chance to apply for monies allocated by BP for coverage of losses after the summer's gusher. Boat operators and shipyard workers who load supplies and fix equipment, provide industrial chemicals and food for the rigs, along with diving and crew boat services will be able to apply starting March 15. These hardship grants will range from $3000 to $30,000. BP set aside $20 billion to cover economic losses stemming from the oil spill or the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig, as the oil giant and other responsible parties are required to pay by law. But there's no legal requirement for BP to pay for losses from Obama's moratorium. So, when BP agreed to create a Rig Worker Assistance Fund with $100 million, it was a donation. The oil giant tapped the Baton Rouge Area Foundation to administer the fund and initially limited it to employees who worked on the deepwater rigs. But the rig worker fund paid out a lot less than originally anticipated. Most oil companies kept deepwater rigs under contract, and in turn rig owners kept their people employed through the five-month moratorium, meaning that the workers targeted by the BP donation were not suffering as much loss of income. The Gulf Coast Restoration & Protection Foundation, a nonprofit established to administer the rig worker fund, said more than $88 million of the $100 million is still available after grants were sent to applicants who worked on the rigs. The foundation was expecting as many as 9,000 rig workers to apply and to spend all $100 million on financial hardship grants for them. But they got only 352 completed applications for the grants. So, only $5.3 million in grants went to 343 approved applicants, an average of just under $15,000 per recipient. The Offshore Marine Services Association has contended since the moment Obama imposed the moratorium on May 30, 2010, that supply and support companies -- many Louisiana-based firms like Chouest, Hornbeck, Otto Candies and Bollinger Shipyards -- would be hurt more by the moratorium than even the rig companies. The rigs could go idle and stay under contract while work continued on shoreside maintenance, but the companies that relied on multiple daily trips out to the rigs to deliver heavy machinery, drilling chemicals and tools, groceries and other items would see their business dry up, OMSA argued. Indeed, last year when rig operators steadfastly held onto their employees, supply boat and tugboat crew members saw their hours cut and salaries slashed. Sen. David Vitter, R-La., said he was happy the money is becoming available to moratorium victims, but the longer-term problem is getting those eligible for the aid back to work with new drilling permits for the deepwater rigs. "We're eight-plus months out (from the May 30 moratorium) and there's still a shutdown of the Gulf, and I'm all for helping people who need it, but the real reaction we need is to restart drilling activity in the Gulf," Vitter said. The moratorium was lifted in October, but the administration has not granted any deepwater permits because it says firms have not demonstrated that they can stifle future spills.

 

Feinberg's "no further review" may not be true...  (From the New Orleans Times-Picayune) Kenneth Feinberg couldn't have been clearer: In December, the oil spill claims czar told claimants who had already received emergency payments from him that they could sign away their right to sue, collect one more check within 14 days and be done with the whole process, with "no further review." But the truth is that some who sought the so-called quick payment -- $5,000 for individuals and $25,000 for businesses -- are definitely facing "further review." In fact, some are now under investigation for fraud, and not all deservedly so. The Gulf Coast Claims Facility's website clearly states quick payments will be made within 14 days with no further review, so the apparent contradiction is confounding for some claimants, especially given the program's admitted lack of transparency. On the other hand, critics have said that offering a quick payment with no further review almost invites fraud. Julie Queen of New Orleans, a housekeeping supervisor at Marriott's Residence Inn downtown who also works as a banquet hostess, has been cleared to get her quick payment, but not before she was kept in the dark for weeks for an investigation that contradicted the GCCF's "no further review" protocol and ultimately proved unnecessary. She says she sent in the information required, and waited. And waited. She was informed her file had been handed over to an anti-fraud investigator, Guidepost Investigations. She was eventually put in contact with Mark Weinstein, a paralegal in Feinberg's office.   "He said he can't give me any more information, but all he knows is it's not for fraud," Queen said. "Mark said they just pull some people out (for Guidepost review) at random, like when you're going through security at the airport." Feinberg later told The Times-Picayune that is "categorically untrue" and he didn't know why Weinstein was telling claimants that. "We only investigate those claims where the documentation or a whistleblower or a telephone call calls them into question," Feinberg said. Guidepost and Weinstein did not respond to requests for comment.

The National Institutes of Health is preparing to launch a study on the health effects of the BP spill. This is providing the GOP does not succeed in eliminating the NIH in their proposed scorched-earth budget cuts. (From the New Orleans Times-Picayune) The study aims to interview 55,000 people along the upper Gulf Coast who have had varying levels of exposure to crude oil and the dispersant Corexit in the months following the Deepwater Horizon explosion last April. The target is cleanup workers and those who had direct exposure to the crude and dispersant. The plan calls for 20,000 to 25,000 of those initial interviews to be tracked in the succeeding 10 years, as researchers attempt to document their health, track various biological indicators and any maladies, new and old, attempting to draw conclusions about causes and effects. Dale Sandler, an epidemiologist who is leading the study for the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, said the first 2,000 recruiting letters will go out later this month. The initial outreach targets 100,000 people in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida to guarantee enough eventual participants. The large numbers, she said, are necessary to track participants in enough groups that distinguish by variables including level of exposure, medical history, job history and lifestyle. The differentiation is necessary to establish the best conclusions about correlations with the spill. "We will be talking about probabilities and likelihoods, not certainties," Sandler said. Multiple grass-roots groups representing Gulf Coast residents and cleanup workers offer anecdotes of struggles with respiratory and gastrointestinal ailments that can generally be associated with toxins. At a recent public forum featuring Subra, several residents complained that their physicians are not willing to link their problems to the spill. "I understand there is fear and frustration," Sandler said. President Barack Obama's National Oil Spill Commission acknowledged in its final report, released in January, that health concerns and the perception of inadequate government action are of concern. "Whether allegations that the spill created health problems for responders and Gulf Coast residents are warranted does not change the perception among some that government has not been responsive to health concerns," the report says. The commission recommended that the Environmental Protection Agency establish a more thorough protocol to monitor health effects of major spills.

Would you like a little cheese with that whine?  BP argues oil spill claims overstated. (From The Street) BP is taking aim at the Gulf Coast oil spill claims fund, arguing that the method being used by the government claims chief, Kenneth Feinberg, overstates the actual damages to claimants. On Thursday morning, a 25-page letter was posted on the web site of the claims funds, laying out BP's case. "The GCCF's Proposed Methodology adopts a future loss factor for most claims of 1.0 times actual demonstrated 2010 losses, assuming future losses in 2011 equal to 70% of actual demonstrated 2010 losses and future losses in 2012 equal to 30% of actual demonstrated 2010 losses. Thus, the proposed methodology assumes both (1) that full economic recovery will not occur until the end of 2012, and (2) that the GCCF's proposed future loss factor is a reasonable measure of the likely future loss to claimants. But the available economic data do not support either of these assumptions," BP writes in its letter.

You're kidding, right?  Could undersea nuclear stations be coming to the English Channel? (From the Guardian / UK)     Since the oil shocks of the 1970's the French government has invested heavily in nuclear power. At that time, most of the electricity in France came from oil fired power stations, and the oil was imported mostly from the Middle East. With no oil or gas fields of its own and coal fields almost exhausted, it began a large-scale nuclear energy program. There are now 58 nuclear reactors in France, which provide nearly 80 per cent of the country's electricity supply. Now, in a bid to bring dependable energy to remote coastal communities, the French government has decided to give the green light to a different kind of nuclear power program - smaller nuclear reactors to be based on the ocean floor. In January, France's naval construction firm DCNS agreed on a joint two-year study of a concept for submerged nuclear power plants together with French company Areva, Electricité de France and the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA). Promoters say these could provide energy for millions of people in coastal locations worldwide. The concept for the nuclear submarine, known as FlexBlue, involves a cylindrical vessel about 100 meters long and 15 meters in diameter that would encase a complete nuclear power plant with an electrical capacity of between 50 MW and 250 MW. By comparison Sizewell B power station in Suffolk has an output of almost 1200MW. The reactors would be adapted for continuous power generation. Flexblue would use power plants of a standard design requiring very limited site-specific tailoring. This makes these plants fundamentally different from land-based nuclear power plants, which must be tailored in terms of civil engineering to accommodate local site constraints. Flexblue nuclear plants would be stationary subsea installations with no independent means of propulsion. They would be transported by purpose-built vessels similar to those currently used to install offshore platforms. These same vessels would carry Flexblue plants to approved shipyards for refuelling, major maintenance and eventual dismantling.

Quick Hits...   The End to All Oil Spills. (From The Street) Exxon Mobil and its big oil peers unveiled their so-called "end to all oil spills" containment technology on Thursday. The Marine Well Containment Company was created by Exxon and other integrated oil majors during the BP oil spill crisis as a way to ensure politicians and the U.S. public that the industry would be prepared in the event of another oil spill.  On Thursday, the culmination of the first phase of big oil's oil spill project -- for which companies including ExxonMobil have invested $1 billion -- had its photo op: the Marine Well Containment Interim Containment System.   GOP duo, supported by the energy industry, seeks to strip the EPA of more regulatory powers. (From the Center for Public Integrity). For months now, political pressure has mounted against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to regulate for the first time the disposal of coal ash — an environmental hazard fouling water supplies and threatening communities across the country. The impact of coal ash has been highlighted by the Center for Public Integrity in a series of stories. This week, the pressure on regulators took a new turn as two Republican congressmen inserted language in a must-pass spending bill that would stop the EPA from moving forward to protect the public and the environment from the hazards of coal ash. Reps. David McKinley of West Virginia and Cliff Stearns of Florida say they added the language because of concerns about lost jobs and other consequences of overregulation.

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:

2-16-11 06:01 AM	Gulf Watchers Wed. - BP Exec Resigned Over Safety Months Before Blowout - BP Catastrophe AUV #474	peraspera
2-14-11 06:34 PM	Gulf Watchers Monday/Tuesday - “He preys on the poor and the helpless” - BP Catastrophe AUV #473	Yasuragi
2-11-11 19:33:50	GW Block Party --- The Last Harrah?  Some Memories	Phil S 33

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.