Gulf Watchers Sunday - Feinberg (Finally) Meets with Louisana Tribes - BP Catastrophe AUV #480

You are in the current Gulf Watchers BP Catastrophe - AUV #480. ROV #479 is here.

Follow the Gulf Watchers tag by going clicking on the heart next to the Gulf Watchers tag at the bottom of this diary.

Follow the Gulf Watchers Group by going here and clicking on the heart next to where it says "Follow" in the Gulf Watchers Group profile on the right. You will have to scroll down a little to see the profile.

Bookmark this link to find the latest Gulf Watchers diaries.

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.

Please be kind to kossacks with bandwidth issues. Please do not post images or videos. Again, many thanks for this.

Prospects are grim after Feinberg's visit to Louisiana tribes. Even before oil began spewing into the Gulf of Mexico last spring, Louisiana's American Indian fishing villages were on the brink of collapse because of social change and the dramatic loss of coastal wetlands. Now, Indians who've known nothing but fishing all their lives find their futures tied to the man handing out checks for damages, paid from a multibillion-dollar fund started after the April 20 gulf spill. Kenneth Feinberg, the lawyer in charge of BP PLC's $20 billion compensation fund, met with them for the first time Friday night on the back bayous of south Louisiana at a gymnasium in Montegut, about an hour and a half from New Orleans. Dozens of fishermen showed up in shrimp boots and work clothes, speaking a mixture of French and English. They want Feinberg to compensate them not just for lost wages but for a way of life that relied on the bounty of the marshes and now is in jeopardy. "The people have been independent for so long, a lot of them will go trawling, they'll bring an ice chest (of seafood) to Maman, Grandpa, Auntie, the uncles and all that," said Thomas Dardar, the principal chief of the United Houma Nation, the largest Indian tribe with about 17,000 members. "With the oil, how long will it last? Oil isn't like a hurricane," he said. "You can't just pick up after it's over. The Indians in Alaska after Exxon-Valdez tell us they've been dealing with the oil for 20 years." ... There are about 20,000 American Indians in coastal Louisiana who trace their roots to Houma, Chitimacha, Choctaw and Biloxi tribes. Tribal leaders say they're worried many members won't be compensated fairly, so they've brought on a New York City law firm to help the tribes navigate the difficult claims process. All the paperwork and documentation isn't easy in these marshes, a place where some people can't read or write. ... Feinberg told those at his first meeting with Indian tribes Friday that he wanted to pay them claims for the value seafood and hunting plays in their everyday lives - so-called "subsistence claims." "It's a claim that my lifestyle has been adversely impacted by my inability to any longer live off the resources that I hunt or catch," [says Price Billiot, 63, who runs a seafood dock in Pointe-Aux-Chenes, a dilapidated and water-bound town that stretches along a bayou in the tall marshes near Montegut.]  "What I could go hunt or fish I now have to go buy. "Those claims should be paid." Even if they're paid, the spill has created even more uncertainty for people on the bayous, where life is a struggle. Families have been driven inland from their ancestral villages, battered by hurricanes and low seafood prices. And their coastal land is disappearing: About 2,300 square miles of marsh have converted to open water since the 1930s, largely because of the Army Corps of Engineers' construction of levees in the Mississippi River delta and thousands of miles of canals dug by oil companies. Now it's nearly impossible to turn a profit for any seafood caught by people like Anthony Dardar, a 28-year-old fisherman in Pointe-Aux-Chenes who's trying to get back to fishing. He'd just brought in a few sacks of oysters. "We can't hardly move the oysters, we could hardly move the shrimp, it's hard to move the crabs," he said. "Now they're finding all kind of freakin' dispersant in the water. Who knows about the future?"

Edging closer on permits: Regulators' visit brings word that approvals may be near Federal regulators' visits Friday to a pair of Houston sites where teams are developing new oil spill response systems could be a prelude to permitting new deep-water drilling, according to companies that met with the officials. If their interpretation is accurate, the systems passed the test, and the Gulf of Mexico is one step closer to the first deep-water drilling allowed since last year's Deepwater Horizon disaster. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and BOEMRE director Michael Bromwich, accompanied by a team of technical advisers, met with the two Houston companies that have designed emergency capping and containment systems for future (and inevitable) blowouts like the Macondo well.  Since the spill, new permit regulations require a clear plan for blowout containment, and the two companies are saying they've designed systems that meet those requirements. "We got a strong indication from them that they are ready to move forward," said Marty Massey, CEO of the Marine Well Containment Co., a consortium formed by Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp., Shell Oil Co., ConocoPhillips and later joined by BP that has developed one the response systems. ... "There's nothing I can see that prevents that from happening. They were very complimentary of the work that's been done by industry." Cameron Wallace, a spokesman for Helix Energy Solutions, said Salazar and Bromwich brought along a sizable technical team that asked detailed questions about the Helix response system. "It was not just another meet-and-greet," Wallace said. Helix is working with about 20 oil companies under the coordination of Clean Gulf Associates, a New Orleans-based oil spill response cooperative. Regulators were more circumspect in their comments. "We can't just say, 'This is a great system, and we'll bless every permit that uses them,' " Bromwich said at a news conference. "That's not the responsible way of moving forward." Rather, the bureau will consider permit applications and their associated response systems on a case-by-case basis, he said, looking at the characteristics of the proposed wells. Marine Well Containment Co. has designed a system that can cap a blown out well in a depth of 8,000 feet and handle collection via surface vessels of up to 60,000 barrels of oil per day.  They're working on a second version that will function in 10,000 feet of water and handle collection of up to 100,000 barrels of oil per day. The Helix Energy Solutions system can currently function in 5,600 feet of water, handle up to 10,000 barrels of oil per day, and flare 15 million cubic feet of gas.  The company expects that by the end of March it will be functioning at a depth of 8,000 feet, processing 55,000 barrels of oil per day, and flaring 95 million cubic feet of gas.  The Macondo, as many of you known all too well, was in 5,000 feet of water... and (allegedly) spewed up to 60,000 barrels per day of oil. There are other signs new deep-water permits may be on the way. Cobalt International Energy, a Houston-based exploration company and a member of the Helix group, won approval Thursday for its deep-water exploration plan, the first step toward winning a permit to drill. Earlier this month, Royal Dutch Shell submitted a similar plan that regulators are to rule on by March 24. ... Salazar said his office isn't acting in response to pressure from the industry or the public to put drillers back to work, or to the rise in oil prices because of turmoil in North Africa. "We don't respond to political pressure," Salazar said. "We are frankly doing what's right for America's energy program, making sure oil and gas are a part of our portfolio for the future, but, equally important, we have to do it in the safest way possible."

BP continues to hedge over making good on Louisiana oyster beds Last November, BP agreed to make early payments so that nearly decimated oyster beds could be swiftly rebuilt.  They also committed to repair damage to wetlands and build a hatchery to facilitate Louisiana's recovery from the collapse of their commercial fisheries. Now BP is claiming that no, it wasn't the airplanes; 'twas beauty killed the beast no, it wasn't the oil; 'twas fresh water killed the oysters. "BP has clearly changed their approach," [Department of Wildlife & Fisheries director Robert] Barham said. "All we've asked is for them to do what they said they would do in their commercials, be here for the long haul and make it right." Instead, he said, the company has clearly moved from a public relations strategy to one focusing on litigation over whether damage to the state's oyster beds was BP's fault. The state contends that its decision to open many freshwater diversions along the Mississippi River to full blast at the height of the oil spill kept oil from entering the oyster beds, though the fresh water killed the oysters, requiring the beds to be restocked with cultch, oyster shell deposited beneath the water on which oyster larvae grow. "Their response today was that we see no evidence of oil injuring the oysters," Barham said. ... Wildlife & Fisheries is financed by license fees, with little help from the state budget. And those fees were another casualty of the spill that BP has not acted on, Barham said. "We had made a claim for lost recreational license sales and BP had, quote, agreed to pay $2.5 million for our loss of license revenue back in December and we still haven't received a dime," he said. The reason is that the state has refused to sign an agreement with BP that would release the company from liability "for everyone they've ever done business with, an impossible release for us to sign." ... [Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority chairman Garret Graves] will be looking for money in other state coastal restoration programs to pay for planting wetland grasses and other repairs to stabilize banks of canals and streams damaged by oil from the spill. "We're looking for any emergency funds the state has," Graves said. "We're currently flipping couches over to figure out what change is there. To be clear, we don't have any expectation to find tens of millions of dollars that aren't already tied down to other important uses in the state budget, but we do think we can find several millions of dollars to pay for immediate actions to stop critical losses of wetlands and start the rebuilding of oysters." At the November news conference, Gov. Bobby Jindal and BP America Chairman and President Lamar McKay announced that BP would advance the state $218 million for seafood marketing, tourism promotion and barrier island restoration. Jindal also announced that the state was working with BP on a separate agreement to help finance construction of a fish hatchery and two fish grow-out facilities and to help underwrite the cost of the oyster seeding program. ... "They had talked favorably about it, but it's just another indication that they're now going to take the position of saying no to everything and go to court," Barham said. ... "BP a couple of weeks ago said they're now looking to natural processes to finish the degradation of oil," he said. "But at Elmer's Island refuge, there are new tar balls coming ashore. Apparently, a mat of oil is in the subtidal zone just offshore and now it's coagulating again and creating a fresh supply of oil." He said that LSU toxicologist Ralph Portier conducted tests on subsurface sand samples from the beach area and found troubling concentrations of carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, including benzene, xylene and toluene. "Cleaning the surface did not get rid of them," Barham said of the oil spill response cleanup efforts on the beach. "Before we can open that refuge and let little kids out there with buckets and shovels to build sand castles, we don't want them turning up PAHs. We want to know what their plan is to deal with it." BP, of course, had no comment at the time.  Two days later, however, they rustled up a response. BP spokesman Curtis Thomas claims they've never said they refuse to help. "We haven't reneged on anything," said Thomas. "We've been clear on our intent to fulfill our environmental an economic commitment to the Gulf." Thomas says BP needs more data on spill damage from the Natural Resources Damage Assessment process. "The Natural Resources Damage Assessment, or the NRDA process, will resolve many of the issues that remain," Thomas said. "Through the NRDA process, scientists and technical experts are gathering information about the extent and severity of the spill."

Commission scientists speak of management failures by BP Richard Sears, a visiting professor at MIT and senior science and engineering adviser for the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, agreed with Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Dean Cherry Murray that the fundamental cause of the well blowout and consequent spill was a management style that addressed one problem at a time, but failed to see the big picture: "They completely forgot they had before them a very complex system." ... There’s still a dispute about exactly how much oil spilled, said Cherry A. Murray, dean of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, who was the lead speaker. “It will be in litigation for 30 years,” and in the meantime as much as $30 billion will be required to restore the Gulf. Arguments about exactly what happened will go on for a long time too, but the root cause is clear, she said: “management failure.” ... The disaster had an immediate mechanical cause, said Sears — the failure of the foamed cement pumped into the exploratory underground well. But he agreed with Murray on the fundamental cause of the well blowout and consequent spill — a management style that addressed one problem at a time, but failed to see the big picture. Sears called this flaw “hyper-linear thinking.” ... The BP rig was nothing special, added Sears. There are about 4,000 offshore rigs in the Gulf of Mexico — and the technology remains a “huge part” of the oil business, used by more than a dozen countries worldwide. Blowouts on these water-sited oil rigs, most of them minor, are “a standard event,” he said — but this one was not. ... Murray, who visited a sister rig in the Gulf of Mexico in July, marveled at the force of the blaze required to consume the massive steel structure. “There’s nothing burnable on those rigs,” she said — “maybe paint.” The isolation of the rigs struck her too. “They are in the middle of nowhere,” said Murray. “You look in all directions and you can’t see a thing.” Pumping cement into a tapering pipeline deep into the sea and the ocean floor is challenging, and so is monitoring flow and pressure from trapped hydrocarbons, said Sears. “But it’s a challenge oil companies meet all the time.” Forensic investigation still (still, still, still) continues on the blowout preventer at NASA's Michaud facility.  But, echoing what National Oil Spill lead counsel Fred Bartlit said in his report, the results "almost don’t matter," according to Sears.  This recurring belief continues to baffle Gulf Watchers: if the BOP was the last line of defense against a blowout, and it had worked properly to release the Deepwater Horizon from the riser so that it could maneuver away, how does that not matter?  If the shear rams had worked, and sealed off the powerful torrent of oil and gas unleashed by the Macondo well, how does that not matter?  But Commission scientists and counsel continue to say the key mechanical failure was in the Halliburton cement job, while the critical managerial failure belongs jointly to BP, Halliburton, and Transocean.  "They completely forgot they had before them a very complex system," says Sears. Beyond management of drilling from the Deepwater Horizon, the commission’s report revealed systemic regulatory and safety flaws, said Murray. The longtime Minerals Management Service (now reorganized) had for decades been charged with competing missions: oil rig safety and environmental protection, but also selling drilling leases that are so lucrative that they are the federal government’s second-largest source of cash after the Internal Revenue Service. “They were paying more attention to bringing in the money,” she said. At the same time, the incident response plans “for the entire industry,” said Murray, “were laughable. No one ever looked at them.”

Close ties between Britain and Libya get more and more creepy Prior to this past week's suspension of Libyan operations, BP had spent four years back in Libya, following a thirty-year absence there.  The exploration deal signed in 2007 -- and critically tied to Scotland's release of Lockerbie bomber al-Megrahi -- was reportedly worth at least $900 million. [Former government minister] Lord Trefgarne, chairman of the Libyan British Business Council and a minister in the Thatcher government, said: "We have about £1.5bn of trade in total, of which the largest part is imports of Libyan crude oil and gas into the United Kingdom, but we had visible exports of approaching £400m last year that I guess must be at stake." Defending British links with Libya, he said: "Trading with Britain is not a prize we award to nice nations who we like and admire. It's part and parcel of our whole life." ... British exports of goods to Libya have risen from £232m in 2007 to £377m in 2010, with imports more than doubling from £577m in 2007 to £1.29bn last year. "Invisible" trade in terms of services accounted for £399m in 2009. British businesses in Libya should "hold their nerve", said Lord Trefgarne, who was strongly criticised by the 1996 Scott inquiry for withholding information about the secret relaxation of the guidelines for arms sales to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. He added: "We're not at the top of their list and they're not at the top of our list either, but everything counts in the present circumstances. In these financial circumstances every bit of trade is valuable." Trade sanctions, in place since 1988 following the Lockerbie bombing, were lifted after al-Megrahi's release, and since then the British government has aggressively pushed Libya as a highly desirable market for the country's business. The then Prime Minister Tony Blair led the charge to do business with the regime in 2004, during a trip to meet Colonel Gaddafi, dubbed "the deal in the desert", in which Mr Blair announced a "new relationship" between the two countries. As the two met, Shell announced it had signed a deal worth up to £550m for gas exploration off the Libyan coast. That same year Lord (Charles) Powell, brother of Mr Blair's chief of staff Jonathan Powell, set up an offshore company to cash in on the new business opportunities. The former Downing Street adviser to Margaret Thatcher and John Major is chairman of Magna Holdings International – a Bermuda-based company that has signed a string of lucrative contracts with the Gaddafi regime. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair traveled to Libya in 2007 in order to help secure an exploration deal for BP currently worth approximately £900 million. He also helped to secure defense contracts for two British firms worth £350m. At the same time Col Gaddafi asked for a prisoner transfer agreement. Two years later the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, returned to Tripoli. Mr Blair is now a consultant to JP Morgan, the US investment bank that handles the Libyan Investment Authority's liquid funds. Some 150 UK firms operate in Libya, including British Airways and Marks & Spencer. High street stores including Next, Monsoon and Accessorize have opened in Libya and companies such as Amec, an engineering firm, and Biwater, a waste treatment company, have profited from Libyan investment. Some of Britain's biggest companies, including Barclays Bank, BP, Shell, GlaxoSmithKline and KPMG, belong to the Libyan British Business Council. ... Education and training has been another growing market, with more than 3,000 scholarships funded by the Libyan government for study in Britain – worth more than £160m to UK universities and colleges in fees each year. There were at least 8,000 Libyans studying at British universities last year, with more Libyan postgraduates studying in the UK than from any other Arab country. ... The links through business permeate all parts of British society – from academia to the Royal Family. Prince Andrew has made numerous visits to Libya promoting British trade, and the Libyan Investment Authority has invested millions into UK property. It owns millions of pounds' worth of property in the City of London. The LIA has also invested in companies such as Pearson Group, owner of the Financial Times. Just last year, the Libyan Foreign Bank bought out HSBC's stake in the London-based British Arab Commercial Bank. ~~~ As it turned out, the British government so badly bungled its efforts to evacuate its own citizens from Libya that they had to borrow a jet... from BP. The Foreign Office finally managed to load 300 Britons onto a plane at Tripoli, but only after it had borrowed the jet from BP. The plane the Government had intended to use to evacuate Britons waited on the runway at Gatwick airport for 10 hours before taking off late on Wednesday night. [Foreign Secretary William Hague] admitted the efforts had been a failure and said he would establish a review to investigate. Portugal, Turkey, France and the EU had already pulled out thousands of citizens. ... However, Mr Cameron said the regime could still respond to calls for change. “Sanctions are always an option for the future if what we’re seeing in Libya continues,” he said. ... [O]ne oil worker said he was stranded in a camp in the middle of the country. “We are living every day in fear of our lives as the local people are armed,” he said. “We are desperate for the British government to come and get us.” Douglas Alexander, the shadow foreign secretary,[...] said British nationals deserved to have had a senior Minister taking a grip of the Government’s response earlier. There is also an intriguing article on a speech given by Gaddafi's son Saif about the role oil will play in the future of the country here.

Two more individual lawsuits against BP... and counting The chief mechanic of the doomed Deepwater Horizon seeks punitive damages from BP, Transocean, Halliburton and others who ran the "unseaworthy" oil rig until it exploded. Charles Cochran[...i]n his federal complaint... says Transocean's repeated acts of negligence and carelessness in operating the Deepwater Horizon indicates the rig manufacturer's "evil motive or intent." ... "Amid the panic and screaming of the crew, while the rig fell into pieces around him, (Cochran) made his way to a lifeboat for evacuation. He was placed into a lifeboat which was lowered to the Gulf of Mexico, from which he was transferred to a workboat, while experiencing severe pain in his neck and shoulder area. These injuries have since required a long and arduous course of medical care and treatment, which will continue throughout his life, including but not limited to surgical procedures," according to the complaint... "While aboard the workboat for the remainder of the night, and throughout the next day, he witnessed the crew all about him, screaming, and visions of the rig burning and disintegrating, which impressions, in addition to the physical injuries and their consequences caused by the same events subject of the suit, caused him to suffer extreme emotional damages which will not abate. As a result of his injuries, Charles Cochran is and will remain permanently and totally physically, functionally and anatomically disabled, impaired and disfigured." Cochran sued all the major defendants in the Deepwater Horizon litigation. Because Cochran was an employee of Transocean, he brought additional Jones Act violations against the rig manufacturer, listing 30 "nonexclusive particulars." Among them: "Failing to properly operate the Deepwater Horizon; "Operating the Deepwater Horizon in such a manner that a fire and explosion occurred on board ... "Negligent implementation of policies and procedures to safely conduct offshore operations in the Gulf of Mexico; "Employing untrained or poorly trained employees and failing to properly train the employees ... [and] "Failure to react to danger signs." He adds: "the unseaworthy conditions aboard the Deepwater Horizon demonstrate Transocean's grossly negligent, callous, willful, wanton, reckless and indifferent disregard for the plaintiff's federally protected rights to a seaworthy vessel, and evil motive or intent." Named as defendants are BP plc; BP Products North America; BP America; Transocean; Transocean Offshore Deepwater Drilling; Transocean Deepwater; Halliburton Energy Services and Cameron International Corporation fka Cooper Cameron Corporation. ~~~ A Mississippi consulting company says BP hired out its boats and services and turned its land into a staging area for oiled birds during the oil spill - then stopped paying for any of it. American Consulting & Development seeks more than $5 million in damages. Warren Doussan Jr. and his company claim that in addition to hiring out boats, they "were informed that their duties would include transporting U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services teams to various locations on the Mississippi Sound, Gulf of Mexico and to various Barrier Islands to rescue oiled birds." BP told them that their 6½-acre peninsula in Pass Christian, Miss., was perfect for bird rescue and staging, according to the federal complaint. "Shortly thereafter plaintiffs' crews began to build docks, install water lines, install limestone driveways and parking pads, construct wildlife holding pen, construct the wall of frame board, install commercial ice-maker, construct dry docks, install canopies," the complaint states. Doussan says he also hired nighttime armed security guards. As many as 36 people a day used the staging area, coming by boat or car, "including seven to nine fish and wildlife teams, including but not limited to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services, U.S. Wildlife and Fisheries, Wildlife Services, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, MMS Mississippi State University, U.S. Government Wildlife Museum, Parson's Construction, and Matrix Response Team, which utilized the staging area daily," the complaint states. ... Doussan says that BP has failed to pay more than $26,100 for material to build the staging area, more than $51,200 for labor, more than $4.24 million to use the 6.46 acres and staging area, and more than $820,000 for boat charters. He seeks $5.1 million plus costs, for breach of contract.

Exxon, Shell, BP Said to Have Been Hacked Through Chinese Internet Servers Computer hackers working through Internet servers in China broke into and stole proprietary information from the networks of six U.S. and European energy companies, including Exxon Mobil Corp., Royal Dutch Shell Plc and BP Plc, according to one of the companies and investigators who declined to be identified. McAfee Inc., a cyber-security firm, reported Feb. 10 that such attacks had resulted in the loss of “project-financing information with regard to oil and gas field bids and operations.” In its report, Santa Clara, California-based McAfee, assisted by other cyber-security firms, didn’t identify the energy companies targeted. The attacks, which it dubbed “Night Dragon,” originated “primarily in China” and occurred during the past three years. ... In some of the cases, hackers had undetected access to company networks for more than a year, said Greg Hoglund, chief executive officer of Sacramento, California-based HBGary Inc., a cyber-security company that investigated some of the security breaches at oil companies. Hoglund, who was cited by McAfee as a contributor to its report, declined to identify his clients. “Legal information, information on deals and financial information are all things that appear to be getting targeted,” Hoglund said, summing up conclusions his firm made from the types of documents and persons targeted by the hackers. “This is straight up industrial espionage.” Hackers targeted computerized topographical maps worth “millions of dollars” that show locations of potential oil reserves, said Ed Skoudis, whose company, Washington-based InGuardians Inc., investigated two recent breaches of U.S. oil companies’ networks. He declined to name his clients or the origin of the hackers. The McAfee report described the techniques used to get into the energy company computers as “unsophisticated” and commonly used by Chinese hackers. The attacks began in November 2009, McAfee said. Two cyber investigators familiar with the probes said the attacks began even earlier -- in 2008 -- and involved several well-financed groups. The investigators asked not to be identified because the company investigations are private. ... The thefts of oil company data like those in the McAfee report match the profile of industrial espionage operations that have the backing or consent of the Chinese government, said Joel Brenner, former head of U.S. counterintelligence during the Bush and Obama administrations and now a lawyer with Cooley LLP in Washington. In his former post, one of Brenner’s jobs was tracking spying efforts against U.S. companies from foreign countries. “The Chinese are on the hunt for natural resources to fuel this massive economic leap forward,” Brenner said.   ... The thefts might trigger legal liability for companies that chose not to disclose them to investors, said Blair Nicholas, a San Diego-based partner at law firm Bernstein Litowitz Berger and Grossman. “To the extent that there aren’t adequate procedures in place to protect the companies’ crown jewels and somebody gets the key to jewelry box, there is certainly potential for shareholder derivative liability,” Nicholas said. Investors might also argue they had a right under U.S. securities laws to be informed of the thefts, which a judge might construe as a “material” fact that should have been disclosed, Nicholas said. ... Some aspects of the attacks were disclosed in internal e- mails made public after a February security breach at HBGary. The e-mails were stolen from HBGary’s computer network by the group of hacker activists called Anonymous, which posted them on the Internet. ... Analysts who assessed the attacks on energy companies said the source of the breaches was easier to pinpoint than in previous hits by Chinese hackers, including an attack against Google Inc. that that company disclosed in January 2010. The hackers used tools prevalent in China’s underground hacking forums, the McAfee report said, and they appeared to work from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Beijing time. McAfee traced the hackers’ command-and-control operations to servers operated by a company in China’s Heze City in Shandong province. The owner of the company, Song Zhiyue, said he wasn’t aware of any hacking taking place from his servers and that he always seeks to verify the activities of customers who rent server space from him. “There are so many servers in the world,” Song said. “This has nothing to do with me. This is very unfair.”

Disaster Capitalism at the Local Level: Tar Sands to Toledo Democratic leaders in Congress are as likely to cavalierly embrace the destruction of the environment, including global warming, as readily as any of the basest congressional members of the other party. Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, who represents Northern Ohio's Ninth Congressional District, is celebrating a deal that will allow BP - yes, BP, the epitome of environmental tragedies - to retrofit their Toledo refinery so the 91-year-old facility can process heavy oil extracted from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, never bothering to tell the public of the details of her deal. In her press release, Kaptur only said she had been in close contact with both the company (BP) and the Canadian government in recent months, as the project had been stalled, but is now "moving ahead full throttle, and that's good news for us." Clearly, Ms. Kaptur's referral to "us" doesn't include those devastated by BP's greed-compelled negligence in the deaths of people, wildlife, sea life and gulf coastal regions or the devastating effects that BP's continued greed will have on the environment and people in Alberta. ... Kaptur told her public, "Continentally, the Alberta sands deposits hold vast potential to yield new reserves as large as two Gulfs of Mexico. This is likely to mean substantial jobs and economic development in our community for many years to come." But BP has said, "The local project is expected to generate hundreds of construction jobs but not add many jobs at the plant." Construction is time-limited, no matter the amount of "oil" in the Alberta sands. Promising jobs while allowing BP to retrofit their refinery is only a stop-gap measure, like the junk-shot BP used to try to stop the oil flowing into the Gulf. At the time BP's first attack on our planet, Kaptur was politically-correct in criticizing BP's oil spill in the Gulf, though she had voted in support of off-shore drilling. Yet she felt compelled to add a spin to highlight her protest of drilling in the Great Lakes: "To prevent a similar ecological disaster in our region, I remain a staunch supporter of the permanent ban on oil and gas exploration on the Great Lakes as crucial for protecting the sensitive environmental nature of our ecosystem." No explanation as to why "our" ecosystem is more valuable than that of the Gulf of Mexico or the Alberta boreal forests where the tar sands are located. ... Ms. Kaptur's office was contacted repeatedly for a comment on her position on environmental issues, and refused to respond.

Findings will be delayed again A federal panel investigating the Deepwater Horizon disaster said Friday that its probe might not be complete until July 27 - 15 months after the well blowout that killed 11 workers and triggered the nation's worst oil spill. The joint inquiry by the Coast Guard and the Interior Department had already received one extension and had planned to wrap up work by the end of March. Further delays have forced the commission to ask for more time to investigate. "The condition of the BOP, as well as additional unanticipated events, were the reasons for the delay," the joint investigation said in a statement. A lawmaker and the Chemical Safety Board have questioned whether the integrity of the BOP testing has been damaged by the involvement of a Transocean employee who served as the subsea supervisor on the rig that was drilling the Macondo well. ... The results of the BOP examination will be scrutinized during public hearings the week of April 4. Separate investigations of the Deepwater Horizon disaster are ongoing, including probes by the National Academy of Engineering and the Chemical Safety Board.

Rise in domestic violence may be linked to oil spill, claims frustrations, officials say A recent rise in domestic violence cases across southwest Alabama could be linked to stress from the BP oil spill and the claims process, according to officials analyzing the data. In Foley, for example, where many of those who found work during the oil spill were left searching for jobs when the Deepwater Horizon well was capped, police have reported a "significant" jump in calls and arrests during the last three months. Police officials were reluctant to tie the rise directly to the spill, but Paige Rucker, a state director of Project Rebound, responsible for Baldwin and Mobile counties, said that much of the tension in homes across the area is because of financial stress caused by the spill. "It does go hand-in-hand with the oil spill," Rucker said. "They're in a situation they've never been in before, never had to think about. They're independent, prideful people, and they have all this stress going on in the home, and it finally hits a boiling point. They're frustrated, they're angry, they're trying to deal with this all at once." ... Because of the rise in Foley, police have devoted an investigator to oversee all domestic violence cases, according to Lt. David White. From August through October last year, police received 154 calls for domestic violence, and from November through January, police received 178 calls. That's an increase of more than 15 percent. White admits that there is no direct evidence to indicate the increase in domestic violence cases is related to the spill, they do believe the increased stress across the region is a key factor. In Gulf Shores, meanwhile, police provided statistics for 10 months prior to the spill and 10 months following the spill. From July 2009 to April 2010, there were 215 calls for domestic violence, and from April 2010 to this month, there were 287 calls. That represents a 33 percent increase. The number of reports taken by officers in response to those calls jumped by 53 percent, to 223 from 146. But police spokesman Lt. Bill Cowan said, "We did not drill down into the narratives of the reports for direct references to the disaster." Wish Lt. Cowan had chosen a different metaphor. Project Rebound started receiving an increased number of calls late last year, Rucker said, and "a lot of times when you help those families with the resources, the tensions are eased in the household."

Apparently, BP doesn't care how badly it behaves As many as four Russian oligarchs , one former German Chancellor and mixed group of other TNK-BP board members and executives sat fidgeting their thumbs in a meeting room in Berlin yesterday after the BP-nominated representatives nominated by BP did not make it to the meeting. BP said four board members asked last Thursday that a meeting to discuss BP's $10 billion investment in Rosneft be pushed back a week, but the rest of AAR's oligarch-controlled board went ahead and met as originally planned. The unsuccessful meeting is just the latest bend in the tale of BP and Rosneft. AAR commenced a legal challenge within weeks of the announcement of the deal, which includes five billion dollars worth share-swap and plans to explore the Arctic South Kara Sea. AAR claimed that the proposal breached the agreement of TNK and BP shareholder and specified that all business in Russia should be conducted through the joint venture. A British judge sustained the injunction and formal negotiation is fixed to conclude next month. But in the meanwhile TNK-BP pushed for details of the deal, and a preliminary board meeting held in the last week agreed that the company should push for a piece of the action. BP downplayed the holdup yesterday terming it simply a reflection of the complexity of the proposal. But sources close to AAR were talking darkly of taking terms like disappointment, delay or even sabotage.

Scottish Greens welcome challenge to UK deepwater drilling The Scottish Green Party has welcomed a High Court ruling giving permission for a challenge to UK energy minister Chris Huhne's decision to grant licenses for deepwater drilling off the coast of Shetland. The decision follows admissions by companies with licenses for deepwater drilling that they are unprepared for a blowout on the scale of the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Green MSP and leader Patrick Harvie MSP declared: "This is a significant decision. The UK Government granted these licenses even before the investigations into BP's Gulf of Mexico disaster had finished." "Since then even some of those already given licenses to drill in deep waters off Shetland have admitted that they are not prepared for a similar disaster in Scottish waters. The courts will now hear the case, and I hope they send Chris Huhne back to the drawing board," said Harvie. He added: "Events in Libya and the subsequent spike in oil prices have illustrated again how over-dependent our economy is on oil. Rather than take unjustifiable risks exploring for yet more reserves in even harsher environments, we should be moving urgently to clean energy sources for transport, heat and power. Neither our economy nor our environment can afford to stick with business-as-usual."

And now for something completely different... BP has asked Prince William and Kate Middleton if there is any chance they could invite Colonel Gaddafi to their wedding in April. The oil giant hopes the Libyan leader can be squeezed in beside the King of Bahrain or, if space is tight, he could even just come to the evening reception 'for a drink and a boogie'. BP head of corporate affairs and former MP for Sedgefield, Tony Blair, said Gaddafi was fine with the no-kids rule but he is lactose intolerant, doesn't eat fish and he's a psychopath. Blair added: "He doesn't mean to be a pain but if he has dairy products his face swells up and he gets this really nasty rash under his arms. "If you could ditch the cheese course and replace the chocolate mousse with honey-glazed pears that would be brilliant. "Also, if anyone says anything he doesn't like he will shoot them right in the face, so if you can put him on a table with people he knows that should prevent a horrifying bloodbath. "The last thing you want is Colonel Gaddafi sat next to some marketing arsehole asking him what he does." A spokesman for Clarence House said: "If we invite Colonel Gaddafi then we have to invite Brian and Susan and if we invite Brian and Susan then Gemma has to come and before you know it you've invited Robert Mugabe, Kim Jong-il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And we really don't want to invite Gemma." Across Britain opinion was divided with some insisting realpolitik required Britain to invite Gaddafi while others said what in the name of the fuck is wrong with you, he's a murdering psychopath and if some people at BP lose their jobs they can always spend a couple of years working out whether unemployment is better or worse than being machined gunned in the head. ~~~ How often do you get not one but two satirical stories on BP?  Must be something in the stars.  Another harmonic convergence. Haywood BP's EX-CEO to be US envoy in Libya Reports are coming out of Washington DC that Mr Tony Haywood the disgraced ex BP supremo has been appointed the US special envoy forthwith in Tripoli. Obama said "he is the man for the job and has excellent experience in dealing with angry protesters". The President added:  "Mr Haywood has the Middle East experience and he has excellent contacts within Libya and has a good rapport with Mr Gaddafi and his son. We feel he can come out of there with an excellent deal for all people concerned, he can certainly oil the wheels, and he certainly isn't a nodding donkey." Mr Haywood was unavailable for comment.

TNK-BP ditches BP "green" colors after Gulf spill This should be more snark.  Sadly, it isn't. BP's Russian arm, TNK-BP, has done away with BP's trademark eco-friendly colors on its website in favor of a dark, severe Siberian theme, a move branding experts say speaks to the post-Gulf spill investor. "The design seems to better reflect their real identity. It's about communicating that they are about energy, strength, engineering and product delivery and not about making other claims that got BP into trouble," said Joseph Bona, the head of retail for New York-based branding firm CBX. ... The firm's online makeover debuted in January, half a year after BP's catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico undermined the company's environmentally sensitive "beyond petroleum" image underpinned by its ubiquitous green and yellow sunflower logo. On its new website, TNK-BP swapped out some of its BP-influenced light blues, greens and images of picture-perfect trees blooming under clear summer skies for orange, black and dark, imposing clusters of snow-covered Siberian pines. "BP's eco-friendly marketing campaign worked beautifully, but it was saying it was something that is was not. They've now been exposed. It was beyond petroleum, now it is back to petroleum," said Derrick Daye, a branding consultant who runs the website Branding Strategy Insider. Daye said TNK-BP's move to highlight its strong oil production capabilities with dark tones and step away from colors and imaging associated with BP, could help the company position itself with investors. "For an oil company, website branding is about communicating with investors. The new design where the black is immediately associated with oil, signals that TNK-BP is moving back to something that is believable and defendable with the industry," he said. ... Bona, of CBX, who designs branding, identity and positioning campaigns for global oil companies, said that in the wake of the BP oil spill, hydrocarbon producers will think twice about making environmental initiatives dominate their brand. "Green, sunshine, flowers and trees are a hard sell if you are an oil company because the product you produce is not green. Would BP have still gotten hammered if they didn't use the eco-friendly strategy? Of course. But the fact that they made that claim and stuck a stake in the ground, they were held to a higher standard," he said.

Quick Hits Transocean CEO: Internal Deepwater Horizon Probe Out In 'Month Or Two' Transocean Ltd. (RIG) Chief Executive Steven Newman said the contract driller's internal investigation into April's Deepwater Horizon disaster should be complete and released within the next two months. Transocean was leasing the Deepwater Horizon to BP PLC (BP, BP.LN) when the rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico and sank, killing 11 and unleashing the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history. "Our internal investigation into the events of that tragedy is nearing completion," Newman told investors during a conference call to discuss Transocean's fourth-quarter earnings. "In light of continuing delays and obtaining information on the third-party testing of the Horizon's (blowout preventer), we expect to release findings in the next month or two." Update: Dolphin Mortality figures 31 infant or stillborn dolphins washed ashore in Mississippi and Alabama as of Saturday afternoon. 67 Dolphins of all ages dead this year in the four states that make up the northern Gulf. LSU coastal scientist dies at 54 The LSU community is reeling after the sudden death Thursday of prominent LSU coastal scientist Gregory Stone. Stone, who was quoted extensively in many publications internationally after last year’s BP oil leak, was the director of the renowned Wave-Current Information System. BP goes with new rig designer UK oil major BP and its partners have awarded Worley Parsons of Australia a contract to provide conceptual design, front-end engineering design (feed) and project management services to boost production at the Rumaila oil field in southern Iraq. Death By Reorganization — Literally — at BP, Per the Gulf Oil Spill Report An excellent report that contains one of the most lucid summaries of the managerial changes at BP leading up to the explosion. New Orleans-based nonprofit Operation REACH Inc. ...is recruiting prospective students affected by the BP oil spill to enroll in the spring session as part of its Gulfsouth Youth Biodiesel Project. The session is receiving funding from a Department of Labor National Emergency grant through the Louisiana Workforce Commission and Jefferson Paris Workforce Investment Board. The spring session begins March 10 and participants will engage in extensive hands-on training that includes certification by the National Center for Construction Education and Research and enrollment at Delgado Community College, which houses a lab-scale transesterification unit for students to learn about biodiesel production from used cooking oil, according to Operation REACH chief development officer Hamilton Simons-Jones.

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:

2-25-11 05:55 PM	GW Friday Block Party-TV Edition	Phil S 33
2-25-11 07:54 AM	Gulf Watchers Friday - Greenpeace Gets Permission to Sue - BP Catastrophe AUV #479	Lorinda Pike
2-23-11 06:00 AM	Gulf Watchers Wednesday - Gulf Dolphin Infant Mortality 10x Normal - BP Catastrophe AUV #478	peraspera
2-21-11 17:03 PM	Gulf Watchers Monday -BP Partners with India's Richest Man - BP Catastrophe AUV #477	shanesnana

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.