Gulf Watchers Wednesday - Gulf Dolphin Infant Mortality 10x Normal - BP Catastrophe AUV #478

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Infant dolphins dying in high numbers (Those sensitive about photos of dead animals should not click through.) These heartbreaking deaths are extremely troubling. One hopes the Institute of Marine Mammal Studies has the funding to do necropsies and through tissue sampling of all the dead baby dolphins. While there is no proof positive as of yet that BP's black scourge was responsible it's very difficult to think of anything else that would would cause such a shocking rise in dolphin infant mortality Sperm whales, another Gulf marine mammal inhabitant had scarily small populations before BP's assault. It would be devastating to the Gulf population if their infants suffer the same horrible fate as the dolphins. Some scientists theorized when the deepwater gusher was going full tilt that the use of dispersants would make it more difficult for marine life to physically avoid the oil. There was also speculation that the dispersant would make it easier for the organisms at the bottom of the food chain to absorb oil. If their theories are correct this may be only a first chapter in the story of more marine life tragedies as the oil works its way up the marine food chain. h/t - khowell Baby dolphins, some barely three feet in length, are washing up along the Mississippi and Alabama coastlines at 10 times the normal rate of stillborn and infant deaths, researchers are finding. The Sun Herald has learned that 17 young dolphins, either aborted before they reached maturity or dead soon after birth, have been collected along the shorelines. The Institute of Marine Mammal Studies performed necropsies, animal autopsies, on two of the babies today. Moby Solangi, director of the institute, called the high number of deaths an anomaly and told the Sun Herald that it is significant, especially in light of the BP oil spill throughout the spring and summer last year when millions of barrels of crude oil containing toxins and carcinogens spewed into the Gulf of Mexico. Oil worked its way into the Mississippi and Chandeleur sounds and other bays and shallow waters where dolphins breed and give birth. ... “For some reason, they’ve started aborting or they were dead before they were born,” Solangi said. “The average is one or two a month. This year we have 17 and February isn’t even over yet.” Deaths in the adult dolphin population rose in the year of the oil spill from a norm of about 30 to 89, Solangi said. “We shouldn’t really jump to any conclusions until we get some results,” Solangi said. “But this is more than just a coincidence.”

Fourth baby dolphin found dead on Horn Island (Those sensitive about photos of dead animals should not click through.) This followup story brings the number of dead infant dolphins to eighteen. The loss is too sad for words. h/t Yasuragi The Institute for Marine Mammal Studies has confirmed that a fourth baby dolphin has washed ashore on Horn Island. ... Three baby dolphins were pinpointed Monday and a fourth was reported today by National Resource Advisory employees who are working with BP cleanup crews on the island. Researchers with the IMMS are headed to the island now to take tissue samples and possibly remove the bodies back for studies. These infant dolphins are among the 18 reported since January. The four are also among the 28 total adult and infant dolphins reported since the beginning of the year. None of the dead adults were pregnant females. The industry’s leading scientist on marine mammal strandings is concerned about these deaths. Blair Mase, NOAA’s marine mammal stranding coordinator for the Southeast region, confirmed that the number of baby dolphin deaths is high. She said the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies reports all its findings to her. ... “We run the gamut of causes,” she said, including human impact, which would include the oil spill; infectious disease and bio-toxins, IMMS has been conducting necropsies on the baby dolphins and sharing the findings with Mase.

Gulf Floor Fouled by Bacterial Oil Feast US News and World Report, a publication not known for taking an overt interest in environmental issues, has taken notice of Dr. Samantha's Joye's latest work. Joye's studies clearly show that oil gobbling bacteria does not necessarily render oil harmless as well as bringing into question the environmental impact of oil burning on the ocean floor. No mention is made in the story about whether the areas where Dr. Joye conducted her studies have been opened for bottom trawling fishing. Anyone up for some Gulf seafood pre-seasoned with soot and microbial spit? Huge quantities of oil that gushed from BP’s well blowout last spring and summer now taint the Gulf of Mexico’s seafloor, newly released video and chemical sampling data show. Within 40 miles of the damaged wellhead, the oil deposits appear extensive but patchy, and range from little spots of oil on the seafloor to localized blankets of goopy hydrocarbons several inches thick. New data suggest much of this oil may have rained down from the sea surface, fostered by what scientist Samantha Joye calls “microbial spit.” Joye, an oceanographer and biogeochemist at the University of Georgia in Athens, described her team’s findings on February 19 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Joye shared underwater images depicting eerie strings of bacterial slime—mucus streamers that ranged from one millimeter to almost two meters long. The key ingredient of the slime is what she terms bacterial spit, a material that, like laundry detergent, helps break apart large oil globules. Such surfactants are secreted by many oil-eating bacteria and render the oil easier for them to digest. ... To investigate, her team went back to the lab and added a milliliter of oil from the BP well to a liter of surface seawater that her group had collected from an oil-free part of the Gulf. After just one day, naturally occurring microbes in the water began growing on the oil. After a week, the cells formed blobs, held together by spit, that were so heavy they began sinking to the bottom of a jar. Two weeks later, large streamers of microbial slime and cells were evident. Brown dots visible inside the mix were emulsified oil. “This is the mechanism that we propose deposited oil to the [Gulf’s] bottom,” Joye said. ... The mucus streamers are also very clearly distinct from oil chemically dispersed with Corexit. Use of the commercial dispersant by cleanup crews created an oil-water emulsion that “looks like chocolate mousse under water,” Joye observed. When she and her colleagues extracted cores of sediment from the Gulf’s spill-impacted zones, the top sediment layers often showed signs of what appeared to be the microbial spit. That layer also was devoid of living animals, forming what Joye called an “invertebrate graveyard.” She often saw dead corals, crabs and sea stars in the affected seafloor areas. Absent were sea cucumbers that are normally abundant in parts of the Gulf where natural petroleum seeps occur. Damage was also evident above the seafloor: Mortality in free-floating jellyfish and sea squirts proved especially high, Joye said. And some worms had become nothing more than hollow tubes filled with the slimy goop that chemical fingerprinting methods would later show had contained BP oil. But oil wasn’t the only spill-related pollution to be raining down onto the seabed. Joye described data on two chemical indicators of remnants of the burning of oil by spill-cleanup crews. Soot, which is normally not present in ocean sediment, turned up in September water samples. Joye’s team also reports finding an elevated ratio of certain combustion byproducts known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, in sediments directly under burn sites.

BP Defends its Oil Spill Claims Process It's a mystery to me as to why the DOJ is joining BP in opposing judicial supervision of the Gulf claims process. Also, I have no earthly idea how the Gulf Coast Claims Facility and the $20 billion trust fund are legally distinct entities. It seems to me from the victims' perspective that they are one and the same. Kudos to Courthouse News who has provided the best legal coverage of BP's oil assault on the Gulf. They even went outside their normal practice of sticking to legal coverage to contact Dr. Samantha Joye to get comments contradicting Feinberg's nonsensical assertion that all will be well in the Gulf by next year. BP claims that its claims process for people injured by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill "far exceeds" the requirements of the Oil Pollution Act, and that court monitoring of the process will make it less effective. The oil company stood up for its Gulf Coast Claims Facility in a 29-page document it filed in response to statements by plaintiffs' attorneys and Gulf Coast attorneys general that the claims process needs court monitoring. U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier, who is overseeing more than 350 oil spill-related claims in the consolidated multidistrict litigation, called for arguments on whether the claims process administered by Kenneth Feinberg is effective enough. ... In a separate memo, the U.S. assistant attorney general for Environment and Natural Resources agreed with BP. Assistant Attorney General Ignacia Moreno wrote that it is not necessary for the court to monitor the Gulf Coast Claims Facility, whose success "can only be measured by whether the people of the Gulf feel fairly treated." The Justice Department's 8-page memo, over the names of 19 attorneys, claims that the Oil Pollution Act "does not envision court management of the claims process. Rather, the OPA claims process is intended as a mechanism by which parties may avoid litigation - not a mechanism that will generate litigation or open up new forums for disputes." The Justice Department adds that the fund overseen by Feinberg "provides neither a ceiling nor a floor on the Responsible Parties' liability," citing a phrase from the Oil Pollution Act. This memo adds that the GCCF and the $20 billion trust fund set up by BP "have been often confused in public discussion. The $20 billion trust fund is separate and distinct from the GCCF. The trust fund is established by a separate trust document and is overseen by three independent trustees, not Mr. Feinberg," according to the document. ... Alabama Attorney General Troy King submitted a letter that he wrote to President Obama in July. King's letter protested that BP and the Obama Administration initially excluded Gulf Coast leaders from having a say in GCCF protocol. ... Among other controversial GCCF protocols, final payments made through it will work from the assumption the Gulf will be completely back to normal by the end of 2012. Samantha Joye, a researcher from the University of Georgia, disputed claims that the Gulf would recover by the end of 2012, according to a Sunday report from the BBC. During a recent research expedition, Joye found a layer of oil and dead marine animals on the Gulf floor as deep as 4 inches thick. Last weekend Joye reported her findings to the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Washington, C.C. Death to the smallest animals in the food chain will produce results in much larger species over time, but the result may not be seen or understood fully for years, Joye said. ... Joye pointed out that after the Exxon Valdez spill it took years before it was fully understood that the herring industry had been completely wiped out by the spill. "I think it's going to be 2012 before we begin to really see the fisheries implications and repercussions from this," Joye told the conference.

Kenneth Feinberg's releases go too far, violate oil spill law, plaintiffs argue. The Times-Picayune lays out what all the current legal fuss is about. Let's hope that Judge Barbier takes a dim view of Feinberg claiming that interim payments he is not actually making is a satisfactory alternative for financially desperate victims signing away their right to sue. The documents that oil spill claims czar Kenneth Feinberg is making people sign in exchange for their final damage settlements are illegal and should be voided by a federal judge, according to the plaintiffs in the massive federal civil case against BP and others. U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier ruled earlier this month that Feinberg must stop representing himself as independent of BP. The oil giant owned the deepwater oil well that exploded last April, fouling the Gulf of Mexico for three months, and pays Feinberg's law firm $850,000 a month to dole out money from a $20 billion compensation fund. Now, Barbier is considering whether Feinberg, who was jointly appointed by BP and President Barack Obama, has set up a claims payment procedure that properly follows the law. The central issue is a release, or waiver, that claimants must sign before receiving a final settlement from Feinberg. To qualify for a final payment to cover all past and future losses, claimants must sign away their right to sue BP or other responsible parties for any spill-related damages that may emerge later. The plaintiffs say the releases go too far and shouldn't keep claimants from seeking payments for damages from the spill that they don't yet know about. "Certainly (Feinberg) can devise a methodology to pay future payments, and he's done that, arguably, for some cases," said Brian Barr of Pensacola, Fla., one of four lawyers in charge of the plaintiffs' side of the case. "But if he ends up being wrong, he can't come back and say, 'Well, you've released that.' He has to pay that (additional) claim if it turns out his forecast is wrong." ... Feinberg said those quick payments are specifically designed to pay people who don't contemplate any future losses, making it senseless to preserve their right to pursue more money down the road. But the plaintiffs believe some of the people taking quick payments actually will face larger losses, but signed the waivers out of desperation when they saw Feinberg wasn't paying interim claims in a timely manner. He has paid just one of the 54,000 interim claims filed since mid-December. ... But claimants and their advocates are worried about what will happen if a hurricane whips up oil deposits from the seabed or if the largely unstudied effects of chemical dispersants applied a mile below the sea end up hurting fisheries more than anticipated. Even Feinberg and the experts he's hired to help establish a method for determining future losses acknowledge that what they came up with is based on assumptions of how long fisheries and the Gulf economy will take to recover and is, therefore, imprecise. The plaintiffs, echoing an argument already made by the state attorneys general of Florida and Mississippi, contend that the law governing oil spills, the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, ensures a claimant's right to "settlement of a claim for interim, short-term damages" without giving up the ability to later collect "the full amount of damages to which the claimant ultimately may be entitled." But Feinberg, in his own brief posted on the court's website Tuesday, takes a totally different view of the law. He contends his critics are misconstruing it to forbid releases for final claims when it really only deals with interim claims. He contends he already complied with it by offering quarterly interim payments that don't require recipients to sign a release. He also contends that Barbier's court has no power to regulate his claims process at all. Still, he goes on to defend it, saying it complies with the law because the Oil Pollution Act "has no mandates" regarding methods of calculating claims or what can or can't be included in a settlement release. ... His filing also defends the transparency of his process, even though he admitted for months that he needed to make it more open. Although the U.S. Justice Department has been critical of some of Feinberg's procedures and even warned him at one point about straying from the Oil Pollution Act, the government filed its own brief that largely supports Feinberg's process and contends the court shouldn't interfere in a process set up to make victims whole without resorting to litigation.

Alabama could split from national oil spill response effort, says official Dumping 20 pounds of tar mats on a table in front of their faces doesn't seem to be enough to persuade BP and the Coast Guard nitwit on-scene coordinator, Capt. James Hanzalik, that Alabama beaches are still under BP assault. I'd say that this is proof positive that the Coast Guard has joined No Oil At All in redefining "willful ignorance." Might I gently suggest to the good people of Alabama that the front yards of BP and Coast Guard officials would make excellent waste dumps for tar balls and mats found on their beaches. ORANGE BEACH, Alabama -- Concerns that beach cleanup work could stop before all potential oil is gone had a key state official saying Monday that Alabama could break away from the national spill response effort and take its own actions. ... If federal and BP representatives announce, however, that the cleanup is done when state officials feel otherwise, Alabama might pursue recourse using state environmental laws, Jenkins said after a meeting Monday between the oil company, the Coast Guard and a range of government agencies at all levels. ... Dispute over tar mats Officials from Orange Beach, Gulf Shores, Dauphin Island and Baldwin County were among the 60 participants at the meeting, held to discuss the status of cleaning up from the April 20 Deepwater Horizon spill. The 90-minute meeting at the Orange Beach City Council chambers was closed to the public and media. After the meeting, Orange Beach Mayor Tony Kennon said BP officials pledged that any oil that washed up in the future would be cleaned. He said, however, that BP declined to remove a "loophole" in a recent federal report that would allow cleaning to halt if a determination is made that the cleanup would create more problems than the oil. He said officials also would not agree that large areas of solidified oil, or tar mats, are still in the Gulf, even though city officials brought samples found in local waters to the meeting. "They did not acknowledge that there were any tar mats out there and told me to call them if I found one," Kennon said. "We had 20 pounds of tar mat on the table to show them." ... Coast Guard official wants beaches "clean before the tourist season" Oil will be cleaned if it washes onto local beaches, Coast Guard Capt. James Hanzalik, who was named the new federal on-scene coordinator last week, said after the meeting. ... Hanzalik said Coast Guard, BP and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officials conducted a study of the Gulf, taking more than 120,000 samples. He said the oil still in the water is on the bottom, far offshore and poses little threat to coastal areas.

Gulf oil spill claims chief rejects BP criticism Feinberg says the checks are in the mail. He is also saying these many months later that he will finally get around to affording people the common courtesy of telling them why their claims were denied. Feinberg promised Florida AG, Pam Bondi, that he would beef up staffing and will offer free accountants for claimants. He claimed 80 percent of claims have no documentation. - h/t shanesnana The embattled administrator of a $20 billion fund to compensate Gulf oil spill victims on Friday disputed BP's complaint that he's being too generous with its money. Kenneth Feinberg also told state lawmakers during a visit to the Florida Capitol that he expected to approve rules for interim and final claims later in the day and that checks should begin going out this weekend. Feinberg said the rules will help him fix his "Achilles' heel," which has been the Gulf Coast Claims Facility's failure in many cases to tell applicants why their claims have been denied or delayed. He also said he's sticking to a proposed formula for determining future damage estimates that BP says will artificially inflate those payments. The spill followed the explosion last year of the company's Deepwater Horizon well off Louisiana. Lawmakers and spill victims had just the opposite complaint, saying he's being too stingy. That included a group of hotel owners who protested by getting up and walking out in the middle of Feinberg's appearance before the House Economic Affairs Committee. "I'm getting hit both ways," Feinberg told the panel. "I've done my best to come up with a methodology that is as fair as possible." He's assuming claimants will experience losses equaling 70 percent of their 2010 damages this year and 30 percent next year. BP filed a public comment with Feinberg's office Wednesday arguing that he lacks a factual basis for his assumptions. ... "We're wasting our time," one man said loudly as about two dozen hoteliers got up and left the committee meeting after Feinberg told lawmakers they'd need to wait for the final rules to get answers to some of their questions. ... "They look, they analyze, they get the data from all these hotel businesses and then they determine the best way to give them the least amount of money," Patel said [Pensacola hotel owner]. ...

Editorial: More promises, more disappointment The Mobile Press-Register remains justifiably cranky with Feinberg and his Gulf claims process. ... Mr. Feinberg says people who are unhappy with his final payment offer have an alternative: They can simply file for quarterly interim payments. But there’s nothing simple about the interim payments process, as coastal claimants and their accountants will tell you. It is prohibitively difficult to navigate. As a result, many claimants feel that they have no choice but to agree to whatever Mr. Feinberg offers them in the final payment. In the 10 months since the oil spill, some people have lost their businesses and others have drawn out their lines of credit. All are suffering, and many are desperate. BP knows this full well. So even as Mr. Feinberg made a few revisions to the initial plan — including promises of more eligible businesses and better explanations of the way claims are evaluated — he didn’t really change much of its basic substance. No wonder claimants and their elected officials are so discouraged. They’re getting tired of promises and disappointments, followed by more promises and more disappointments. If the pattern sounds familiar, it should. It’s all part of the roller-coaster ride that BP and Mr. Feinberg have subjected claimants to for months. These people didn’t ask for the spill, however, and they shouldn’t be victimized twice.

Feinberg Sends Out 1,489 Final Offers for BP Gulf Spill Claims The first of the quick settlement payment checks has gone out. However, it's still too soon to get a feel for why people have chosen that option. There is great concern that many will simply accept final payments, giving up their right to sue, out of financial desperation. Kenneth Feinberg said he has sent 1,489 offers for final payment to victims of BP Plc’s oil spill, the first round since completion of a methodology for calculating future losses. Feinberg, who administers a $20 billion claims fund paid by BP, said in an interview today that he also has distributed 466 interim checks since making the payment formula final on Feb. 18. He didn’t disclose the amounts involved. Lack of documentation for claims continues to be an obstacle to compensation, according to Feinberg, a Washington lawyer. The fund has sent letters to about 130,000 claimants asking for additional documentation to demonstrate losses. So far only 17 percent have responded, he said. ... Claimants can now also receive interim payments every three months and retain their right to sue, or they can seek larger, final lump-sum payments that require a longer review and an agreement not to go to court.

US Launches Environmental Assessment of Deepwater Horizon Spill If anyone can attend one of these meetings please do us all a favor and ask the folks at No Oil At All why they are incapable of finding oil in the Gulf when every independent scientist in the universe hasn't seem to have had the slightest problem finding plenty of it. It would also be interesting to know why the government is not using seafood testing designed by independent toxicologists who have absolutely no relationship with big oil, the seafood industry or political agendas. U.S. officials are scheduling public meetings along the Gulf Coast as they launch an effort to frame the environmental damage caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The meetings, part of the statutory process that the government is using to plan the restoration, are planned for 11 locations in Louisiana, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, and Washington, D.C., the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said last week. The government's final damage assessment will explore difficult-to-measure impacts like the spill's affect on marine life deep under the surface of the Gulf. More than four million barrels of oil leaked from a BP PLC (BP, BP.LN) well in the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon rig sunk last April. It was the largest oil spill in U.S. history. ... The agency will be accepting public comments through May.

Federal Natural Resource Trustees Announce Next Step in BP Deepwater Horizon Spill Gulf Restoration Process The link in the No Oil At All press release for public comments simply goes to their home page. The link to submit comments is here. No government agency should ever be party to the utter and complete hogwash that any area so severely impacted by an oil spill can ever be put back as it once was. That simply can't happen. h/t shanesnana & Yasuragi To advance the ongoing natural resource restoration planning process following the BP Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico, NOAA and the Department of the Interior (DOI) today announced plans to develop a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) in cooperation with state co-trustees as part of the ongoing Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA). The first step in the PEIS process will be public scoping meetings in each of the affected Gulf Coast states. In a notice published in the Federal Register, NOAA, DOI, DOD, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Texas are taking the next step in the ongoing effort to restore the Gulf of Mexico environment to its pre-spill condition. This comes as scientists from those agencies are conducting a comprehensive assessment of the injury to the Gulf Coast region’s fish, wildlife and habitats caused by last year’s oil spill. The public scoping process will evaluate a range of activities and alternatives that could restore, rehabilitate, or replace injured resources and compensate the public for the loss of human uses of those resources. “The overall goal of this process is to hold the parties responsible for the spill fully accountable to restore, rehabilitate, replace or acquire the equivalent of natural resources and services injured by the oil spill,” said Jane Lubchenco, Ph. D., under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator. “The PEIS will build a framework for future restoration actions, ensuring that the public’s voice is incorporated into those designs.” At these PEIS meetings, members of the public will learn about the environmental impacts of the spill, get an early picture of the region’s natural resource restoration needs, and may submit comments on the types of programs and projects they would like to see incorporated in future restoration strategies in response to the oil spill. Members of the public also may submit their comments online where the full meeting schedule will be posted by the end of February.

Libya: BP Evacuating Expat Oil Workers Amid Unrest BP's Bob Dudley says that BP remains committed to doing business in Libya. Since he didn't mention the subject one presumes that BP will be happy to do business in Libya even if Gaddafi's regime remains in charge. BP has said it was evacuating families of workers and non-essential staff from Libya in the wake of political unrest. The company has around 140 staff in total in the country. Most are local employees but the families of some 40 expats are now being helped out. The evacuation of BP staff also now looks likely. BP chief executive Bob Dudley told Sky's Jeff Randall the company was watching the situation closely. "We have operations there that are very limited, its the early stages of exploration," he said. "We have some people there. Dependants [sic] have left the country but we remain committed to doing business there." Any collapse in relations between Britain and Libya would have implications far beyond who runs the North African country and the people's quest for democracy. ... But as things stand now, years of diplomatic and economic progress looks like it has been torn up. ... There were defence, missile and communications deals worth hundreds of millions of pounds. Former business secretary Peter Mandelson and UK trade envoy Prince Andrew courted one of Colonel Gaddafi's sons Saif. Ironically he has now accused Britain of fermenting the dissent and of harbouring imperialist ambitions to invade the country.

Russia may tweak Arctic park border for oil firms: WWF Regrettably, environmentalists in Russia have no political clout so there is literally no chance that environmentally sensitive Russian Arctic areas will have any protection from BP's and the Russian oligarch's filthy oil drilling ways. - h/t Yasuragi Russia's Natural Resources Ministry wants to set an Arctic nature reserve's borders in a way that environmentalists say will subvert existing boundaries to accommodate the oil drilling plans of BP and Rosneft. Last month BP -- seeking to recover from the impact of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill -- and Russia's state-run major Rosneft said they would drill for oil in three huge offshore blocks in the Arctic Kara Sea. Two of these blocks, according to a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) map, encroach on waters that are part of a protected national park and are home to polar bears and whales. The government ministry argues that the border has yet to be demarcated, while the environmental group said it was fixed when the park was created in 2010. "The boundaries of the Russian Arctic national park are not blurred. They were demarcated with all the precise coordinates, which formed the basis of the government's executive order that established the park last year," Aleksey Knizhnikov of WWF - Russia told Reuters on Friday. Earlier in the day the ministry released a statement saying the location and borders of the national park and its waters are now going through an approval process with the ministry's various departments. "The executive order defined the park's area and territory but did not set precise borders," a ministry spokesman told Reuters. ... The conservation group says the area off the coast of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago, licensed to the oil majors for exploration through 2040, snips off some 45 square km (17 square miles) of protected waters. It also said that government documents define limits of the national park's protected area according to territorial water boundaries, which extend 12 nautical miles from the coast. ...

WWF: Russia, BP Offshore Oil Drilling in Protected National Park The Russian government is arguing the point that boundaries for protecting wildlife in the Russian Arctic have not been set with the WWF arguing they have. Kudos to the Russian WWF for speaking up but their chances of prevailing are nearly zero. h/t Yasuragi The WWF has had numerous conflicts with the Ministry of Natural Resources and claims that the ministry often awards oil and natural gas licenses without taking any aspect of environmental health and protection into account. ... The WWF says the oiling drilling licenses cut off about 45 square kilometers of water that was designated as protected area and that the government is attempting to redefine the boundaries to suit their oil drilling interests. The Russkaya Arktika National Park was created back on June 15, 2010, but licenses for the Kara Sea were granted to Rosneft, an integrated oil company mostly owned by the Russian government, only four months later.

Exclusive: TNK-BP Directors Brace For Crunch Vote It looks like more power games are being played over the BP-Rosneft deal. Let's hope they all decide to choose feuding over drilling in the fragile Russian Arctic. The trio of TNK-BP independent directors, who include Gerhard Schroeder, the former German chancellor, have appointed Perella Weinberg Partners, an independent financial advisory outfit, and Macfarlanes, the law firm, to advise them on the situation. The appointments come ahead of Friday’s extraordinary general meeting in Berlin at which TNK-BP directors will vote on whether it should pursue a formal involvement in the deal announced last month between BP and Rosneft. That transaction comprised a long-term oil exploration agreement in the Arctic and a £10bn share swap between BP and Rosneft, which is controlled by the Russian government. The Russian partner in TNK-BP is Alfa Access Renova (AAR), a group of oligarchs who include Mikhail Fridman, one of the country’s wealthiest men and who also serves as TNK-BP’s chief executive. Last month, AAR won a court order in London preventing the consummation of the BP-Rosneft alliance, alleging that it breached the terms of the TNK-BP shareholder agreement. ... If BP and AAR cannot reach agreement on the Rosneft deal before March 7, the case will go to arbitration. Any ruling which unravels the BP-Rosneft deal would represent a severe blow to Bob Dudley, BP’s new chief executive (who has just now announced a significant-looking exploration deal with Reliance Industries in India).

Russia’s Sechin Sees BP-Rosneft Deal as ‘a Priority,’ WSJ Says - Bloomberg I'll take it as some small good news that the feuding between BP and the Russian oil oligarchs has the Russian Deputy Prime Minister concerned enough to speak out publicly. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin described the agreement between BP Plc and OAO Rosneft as a “strategic priority” and warned both companies to avoid letting differences get in the way, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing an interview with him. Sechin, who is also chairman of Rosneft, said legal action would be taken against BP if it tried to sabotage the $16 billion deal, under which BP will bring its offshore drilling experience to Russia’s Arctic coastal areas, the newspaper said.

BP Oil Spill: The Cause & Prevention « Chicago Council on Science and Technology The NAE comprises only the brightest and the best in the engineering field. This will probably be a fascinating program to attend. However, the report cited in the press release is an interim report. The final report has yet to be released. Feb 24, 2011 BP Oil Spill: The Cause & Prevention Filed under: Programs - C²ST — Sharon @ 4:01 pm BP Oil Spill: The Cause & Prevention Thursday February 24, 2011 Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) McCormick Tribune Campus Center McCloska Auditorium 3201 South State Street 5pm Reception & Registration 6pm Presentation $10 Advance Reg / $15 Door / $5 Student Dr. Arnold Stancell The April 20th BP Deepwater Horizon Macondo well blowout, explosion, fire and oil spill was the most significant economic, environmental and societal disaster of 2010, what were the causes? At the request of the US Secretary of the Interior, Kenneth Salazar, the National Academy of Engineering investigated and released a report on the causes of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig blowout and suggested ways to prevent such a disaster from happening again. C²ST is pleased to present Dr. Arnold Stancell, former Mobil Oil senior executive and co-author of the National Academy of Engineering report, as he discusses the details of what happened on April 20, 2010 and how similar disasters in the future might be prevented.

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:

2-21-11 17:03 PM	Gulf Watchers Monday -BP Partners with India's Richest Man - BP Catastrophe AUV #477	shanesnana
2-20-11 12:00 PM	Gulf Watchers Sunday - Feinberg Can't Catch a Break - BP Catastrophe AUV #476	Yasuragi
2-18-11 06:36 PM	Gulf Watchers Block Party - Our First on DK4: Whine and Roses	ursoklevar
2-18-11 08:18 AM	Gulf Watchers Friday - Still Waiting to Get Paid - BP Catastrophe AUV #475	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.

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