Topics: Houston company accepts responsibility for oil spill off Louisiana, Shallow Gulf well is source of mysterious oil sheen near Grand Isle, state official says, Source of 30-mile oil spill in Gulf puzzles officials, Oil Spill in Gulf of Mexico Last Weekend - Questions Remain, Cleanup lingers off Grand Isle and Fourchon, BOEMRE's fourth deepwater permit is first with MWCC system, Letter cites dolphin deaths as part of a "criminal investigation, BP Spill Raises Concern U.K. Drillers Don’t Plan for Disaster, Public doesn't trust government to respond to BP environmental damages, BP Shuts Hydrotreater Unit At Carson, Calif, Refinery, BP Texas City Refinery Has Power Surges, State Filing Shows, Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange urges BP claims czar to "quit dragging your feet", Strong Words For BP From Alabama Leaders
UPDATE - The forensic examination report for the Deepwater Horizon has been released. h/t AnotherAmericanLie
The FORENSIC EXAMINATION OF DEEPWATER HORIZON BLOWOUT PREVENTER reports can be downloaded here.
The name of the documents are:
March 23, 2011
DNV BOP report - Vol 2 (2).pdf (4.91 MB) March 23, 2011
DNV Report EP030842 for BOEMRE Volume I.pdf (9.84 MB) March 23, 2011
|
You are in the current Gulf Watchers BP Catastrophe - AUV #490. ROV #489 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.
Oil spill stories in reverse chronological order
Houston company accepts responsibility for oil spill off Louisiana
After the Times-Picayune nailed them, Anglo-Suisse 'fesses up with the, "we never thought of that," excuse. Unsurprisingly, the company fibbed to the Coast Guard about the amount of oil they spilled.
One also wonders that if the rigs were damaged by Katrina what prompted Anglo-Suisse to start monitoring them in September.
A Houston-based oil company has accepted responsibility for a mysterious spill near Grand Isle, although it says it remains "surprised" that what it thought was a minor discharge from a long dormant well could have produced miles-long slicks.
Several hours after The Times-Picayune broke the story that state agents had traced the oil back to a well operated by Anglo-Suisse Offshore Partners, the Houston-based company put out a statement late Tuesday night.
...
The well is one the company was plugging for permanent abandonment, in the West Delta Block 117 west-southwest of Southwest Pass.
In three reports to the Coast Guard since Friday, the company had reported that less than 5 gallons of crude had escaped. But state Wildlife and Fisheries agents traced the oil to the Anglo-Suisse well at its Platform E facility on Monday afternoon and found a crew on a boat trying to close in the well with a remotely operated submarine.
The company said it had reconnected the wellhead structure Tuesday morning and fully shut it in by 8:30 p.m.
The company said it was the 12th well it owned in the area to undergo plugging and abandonment operations. All of those wells were shut in after Hurricane Katrina caused damage to platforms and haven't produced any oil since, the company said. Crews have been monitoring the site since September and didn't report any oil discharge until the end of last week, the statement said.
|
| Shallow Gulf well is source of mysterious oil sheen near Grand Isle, state official says
In this 3/22 story no one is willing to state a source officially for the Gulf oil spill from this weekend. However, an unnamed Louisiana official is claiming it came from a well capping operations gone bad for a well operated by Anglo-Suisse Offshore Partners LLC.
I don't know if the comment about "only" a quarter to a half mile of beach being oiled came from the reporter or the Coast Guard but it is offensive. The Gulf has been dying a death of a thousand cuts before BP's mega-assault. There isn't a good excuse about having a cavalier attitude about one more.
One also wonders why the oil was not boomed and skimmed before it had a chance to come ashore. Rough weather would be a legitimate excuse but none of the news articles mentions that as a factor. Could it be that polluters and officials simply don't think it's worth the effort?
A large sheen of oil that has confounded the Coast Guard and state officials for days has been traced to a well-capping accident about 20 miles southwest of Southwest Pass, a state official said.
A state official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of a continuing Coast Guard investigation, said the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries traced the emulsified oil to West Delta Block 117. He said tests by a state-contracted lab confirmed that was the source of the oil.
...
"Well-capping went out of control," the state official said.
The well in question is in shallow water, about 210 feet deep, but the specter of any well-capping accident comes at the worst possible time for federal regulators, who have just approved the first four deepwater drilling projects since last spring's BP oil disaster -- mostly predicated on the oil companies' assurances that they can now cap their wells quickly in case of a blowout.
According to federal government data, several wells in that 3-square-mile block were operated by Anglo-Suisse Offshore Partners LLC.
...
The state official said the spilling well is one that used to have a platform over it, but lost it during Katrina.
...
"We don't have any report of it actually being identified," said Coast Guard Petty Officer Steve Leeman.
At a news conference earlier Tuesday, Coast Guard officials said only between ¼- and ½-mile of beach was directly affected by oily material within the 30-mile stretch between Grand Isle and West Timbalier Island where the sheen and emulsified oil has been seen.
|
| Source of 30-mile oil spill in Gulf puzzles officials
It seems there are no plans in place to deal with spills in any sort of timely manner if the Coast Guard and state officials were having to scramble to deal with the last oil assault on the Gulf. Notice the article dated 3/21 says that skimmers "are being moved" not that they are there. Why weren't skimmers called in immediately? Why should anyone believe that industry and government officials are any better prepared to deal with a major oil spill if they allow oil from a much smaller one to go ashore because they don't have their act together well enough to boom and skim effectively offshore?
Also, notice that drill, baby, drill Louisiana doesn't have enough skimming and booming materials on hand without having to go groveling to the Coast Guard.
It's nice to see that the Louisiana Bucket Brigade is on top of this. Perhaps the government knowing that they have samples will keep them honest and forthcoming with lab results.
Emulsified oil, oil mousse and tar balls from an unknown source were washing up on beaches from Grand Isle to West Timbalier Island along the Gulf of Mexico, a stretch of about 30 miles, and it was still heading west Monday afternoon, a Louisiana official said. The state is testing the material to see if it matches oil from last April's BP Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Oil spill response workers under the direction of the U.S. Coast Guard and state officials were scrambling to block more of the material from coming ashore. ES&H Corp. has been hired to oversee the cleanup.
...
The news release said that when all areas where the material has washed ashore are combined, about a half-mile of shoreline was affected.
Workers have deployed about 10,000 feet of containment and sorbent boom to prevent damage to environmentally sensitive areas; two MARKO skimmers are being moved to the area and another two are available; and two barge boats and two drum skimmers are at the scene.
The state has requested more boom, sorbents, skimmers and other equipment from the Coast Guard, said Garret Graves, coastal adviser to Gov. Bobby Jindal.
...
A Coast Guard news release said a second, much larger area of sheen south of Grand Isle in the Gulf of Mexico contained small amounts of oil constituents mixed with sediment that seemed to be coming from the Mississippi River. The Coast Guard Cutter Pompano was deployed and gathered samples, which contained only trace amounts of petroleum hydrocarbons, oil and grease.
The samples were tested against state Department of Enviromental Quality standards, which call for no more than 65 parts per million of hydrocarbons and just under 10,000 ppm of oil and grease. One sample contained 8 ppm of total petroleum hydrocarbons and 86 ppm of oil and grease. A second contained 5 ppm of total hydrocarboms and 15 ppm of oil and grease.
"At this point, the dark substance is believed to be caused by a tremendous amount of sediment being carried down the Mississippi River due to high water, possibly further agitated by dredging operations," the Coast Guard release said.
A spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers, however, said none of the three dredges operating near the mouth of the Mississippi River has reported any oil in the material they're removing from the river bottom to keep the channel deep enough for ocean-going ships.
...
Betty Doud, a Grand Isle resident who volunteers with the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, said she monitored the oil moving along Grand Isle on Sunday.
...
Doud collected a sample of the material for Jefferson Parish President John Young, who was inspecting the area, and Young told her it would be tested at a laboratory in Lafayette. Doud has sent other samples to the Bucket Brigade, which will have them tested independently to determine if the oil matches that released last year from the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster.
|
| Oil Spill in Gulf of Mexico Last Weekend - Questions Remain
Anglo-Suisse is SkyTruth's top pick for being the culprit for the Gulf spill. They also bring up an excellent point that the Taylor Energy well continues to leak its black heart out. It would seem that big oil and the government subscribe to the notion that one should clean up current messes before starting new ones.
Some possibilities have been mentioned in various press accounts. This report claims the leaking well is at a hurricane-damaged platform operated by Anglo-Suisse Offshore Partners, LLC. A 2006 news release from the former U.S. Minerals Management Service shows that Anglo-Suisse had a cluster of five platforms in West Delta Block 117, about 30 miles southeast of Grand Isle, that were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Maybe the well was under one of those now long-gone platforms. That's our bet: it's close to Grand Isle, and satellite pics of the past few days show currents are sweeping masses of sediment-laden water from the Mississippi River through the West Delta 117 area and straight toward the beach. Any spilled oil at that location would most likely get caught up in that current.
...
Meanwhile, oil is continually leaking from the site of a Taylor Energy platform (Platform 23051) that was destroyed by Hurricane Ivan way back in 2004, and the Ocean Saratoga rig is back on site working to plug the leaks. You may recall we "discovered" that chronic leak during the massive BP spill last summer. Here's a pic that Greenpeace took on Sunday of the oil slick there.
Lots of questions. Here's one more: In the wake of the world's worst accidental oil spill, can't we manage our offshore resources better than this?
|
| Cleanup lingers off Grand Isle and Fourchon
It's heartbreaking that oil is now fouling a sensitive marsh area because Anglo-Suisse did not report the size of their spill accurately and that the Coast Guard didn't seem to be in much of a hurry to deal with the problem.
Workers combed the beach on Elmer's Island Monday, cleaning oil that washed ashore over the weekend. State and federal officials are trying to determine the oil's source.
“When it first happened, I'll be honest with you, they were very concerned. I got a lot of calls and people thought, you know, here we go again,” Grand Isle Fire Chief Aubrey Chaisson said.
He and parish leaders spotted a sheen on the water two miles off the island during a Sunday flight, Chaisson said.
“We found what they call wind roves, light sheening, rainbow sheening, kind of emulsified. It reacts with the surf,” Chaisson said.
The U.S. Coast Guard laid fresh boom Monday, both hard and soft, to protect three key cuts in the marshes. It is an area that Chaisson said the massive BP oil spill never touched.
“We fought very hard during the whole spill to protect what we could. We accomplished something here, and we don't want to lose it. That's the most important thing,” he said.
Four skimmers are working with two barge boats to clean the substance from the water, Coast Guard officials said. Nearly two miles of absorbent boom have been deployed to prevent damage to “environmentally sensitive areas,” according to a Coast Guard news release.
commanding officer of the Marine Safety Unit in Houma That effort includes about 60 workers armed with shovels and plastic bags on the beaches at Grand Isle.
...
commanding officer of the Marine Safety Unit in Houma McManus [commanding officer of the Marine Safety Unit in Houma] said.
...
The substance was first reported washing ashore Sunday along Grand Isle, Fourchon Beach and Elmer Island. Altogether about one half mile of shoreline has been affected.
Marine traffic is “highly encouraged to avoid the spill area, and vessels that must transit through the affected zone should make every effort to avoid pockets of oil,” said Capt. Jonathan Burton, on-scene coordinator.
|
| BOEMRE's fourth deepwater permit is first with MWCC system
Undaunted by the fact that no one could competently cope with the most recent Gulf spill the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement charges full steam ahead with issuing deepwater permits and plans to pick up the pace.
Industry and government proved last weekend that they can't even handle the relatively simple task of booming and skimming in a timely manner. Now they are trying to sell us more of their snake oil that they can handle the much more complex task of curtailing a deepwater blowout.
We're still waiting for the first intrepid boy or girl reporter to ask either industry or the government how they plan to handle a deepwater blowout with a damaged formation during hurricane season. The geology in the Gulf is known for being brittle so this isn't an unlikely eventuality.
The US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement approved the fourth deepwater exploration permit under its new regulatory regime, and the first to use the Marine Well Containment Co.’s system. The revised permit is for ExxonMobil Corp.’s Well No. 3 on Keathley Canyon Block 919 in 6,941 ft of water 240 miles off Louisiana.
...
ExxonMobil confirmed it had received a permit for the well, which is also known as Hadrian North, and said it has a newly built, state-of-the-art rig, the Maersk Developer, standing by. “We support BOEMRE’s efforts to restart safe drilling in the gulf so that tens of thousands of Americans can return to work,” a spokesman told OGJ in an e-mail message.
BOEMRE Director Michael R. Bromwich noted that the deepwater drilling permit was the fourth to be approved since the oil and gas industry confirmed that it was capable of containing a deepwater loss of crude oil from a well blowout.
“As we have seen, the rate of deepwater permit applications is increasing, which reflects growing confidence in the industry that it understands and can comply with the applicable requirements, including the containment requirement,” Bromwich said, adding, “We expect additional permit approvals in the near future.”
...
BOEMRE previously approved three permits for deepwater wells using technology developed by the Helix Well Containment Group, a separate consortium of deepwater well operators in the gulf whose membership grew to 22 companies with the addition on Mar. 22 of W&T Offshore Inc. and Stone Energy Corp. HWCG members Noble Energy Corp., BHB Billiton Petroleum, and ATP Oil & Gas Corp. received those permits.
|
| Letter cites dolphin deaths as part of a "criminal investigation
Let's hope the plaintiff's attorneys hang very tough on this to ensure that these tissue samples go to truly reputable labs that are not beholden to BP and/or big oil.
- The number of dead dolphins washing up along the Gulf Coast continues to climb.
As of Tuesday, 70 dolphins, including 52 calves, have died in Mississippi and Alabama waters. The cause of their deaths remains a mystery, and samples taken from dead animals still have not been tested.
WLOX News has now obtained a letter from NOAA, which we first told you about last week. The letter was sent to marine institutes and orders researchers to hold the samples they've taken until federal officials decide their next step.
The letter cites an active criminal investigation by the Justice Department against BP and others involved in the spill. It also details a civil lawsuit the department has filed, which seeks civil penalties under the Clean Water Act and the Oil Pollution Act.
Click here to read the original letter from NOAA.
|
| BP Spill Raises Concern U.K. Drillers Don’t Plan for Disaster
It will be interesting to see if the U.K. parliament shows any more enthusiasm for sensible drilling regulation than the U.S. Congress has. I found it curious that the reporter could not resist the irony of including the blind leading the blind tidbit about the U.K. oil industry hiring BP and the builder of the Macondo's failed BOP, Cameron, to build a well capping device.
The Gulf of Mexico oil spill last year raised concern among U.K. lawmakers that drillers in British waters aren’t making sufficient plans for accidents.
Parliament’s Energy and Climate Change Committee recommended rules requiring that offshore crew members are able to halt operations without getting permission from someone onshore. The governments should require that wells have blow-out preventers with two blind sheer rams to avoid a blowout similar to the one at BP Plc (BP/)’s Macondo well last year that started the worst U.S. spill, according to the advisory committee.
“Despite the high regulatory standards in the U.K., we are concerned that the offshore oil and gas industry is responding to disasters, rather than anticipating worst-case scenarios and planning for high-consequence, low-probability events,” the committee wrote in a report published in London today.
The lobby group for U.K. oil producers said last week that companies are building a well cap designed by BP to use in British waters in case of a spill. Oil Spill Response Ltd. has commissioned the device that will be built by Cameron Ltd., Oil & Gas U.K. said.
|
| Public doesn't trust government to respond to BP environmental damages
Quite sensibly, long-suffering Gulf residents are no longer buying what the government is selling. Totally ignoring the human health impact of the BP's assault on the Gulf should go down as one this country's most shameful acts. The government couldn't even be bothered to send people in to collect baseline health data let alone trying to care for the people who were getting ill or protect the health of spill workers.
Federal and state officials trying to gather comments Tuesday night for an environmental study concerning the BP Deepwater Horizon oil disaster heard instead that Louisiana residents don't trust them any more to respond to the effects of the uncontrolled oil release.
"Distrust of NOAA, EPA, the Coast Guard and even their own state governments is endemic on the Gulf Coast," said Robert Sullivan with the First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans. "The lack of credibility for these agencies is profound."
The Natural Resource Damage Assessment process for which the environmental study is being prepared is flawed because it does not adequately address human health issues, said Elizabeth Cook, a New Orleans resident and spokeswoman for the Emergency Committee to Stop the Gulf Oil Disaster.
"There's an indelible link from the oil release to the health of the people, and their health problems shows that the ecosystem is badly, badly damaged," Cook said. She said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other federal and state agencies should not be publicly saying that tourists should visit the state's beaches or eat seafood.
"We come here to these meetings and hear the same lies every time," she said.
Other commenters complained that the damage assessment process does not adequately take into account the oil's effects on commercial fishers. Fishers actually are required to file for their financial losses under a separate provision of the federal Oil Spill Act, but the effects on commercial fisheries are being measured as part of the studies, said Cheryl Broadnax, a NOAA scientist.
One way to help regain the public's trust is to create a stakeholder advisory council that includes representatives of the public, like one that advises restoration efforts in Alaska in the aftermath of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, said Matt Rota of the Gulf Restoration Network.
...
Measuring the injuries requires figuring out the size of the release, identifying the pathways for exposure of a wide variety of natural resources, and then determining the value of those injuries.
Once that's done, the federal and state agencies will determine how to compensate for those losses, which is likely to be in the form of a variety of restoration projects in the Gulf and the affected states.
...
Public comments to help direct the environmental study will be accepted through May 18. Comments can be submitted at future public meetings, including Monday at 5:30 p.m. at the Grand Isle Community Center, 3811 Louisiana 1, or on the web at www.gulfspillrestoration.noaa.gov. Meetings also are planned in Houma on Thursday and in Morgan City on Tuesday, and at several locations in other coastal states
|
| BP Shuts Hydrotreater Unit At Carson, Calif, Refinery
BP still seems to be maintaining their perfect track record of pollution and shoddy maintenance.
BP PLC (BP) recently shut a hydrotreater unit at its oil refinery in Carson, Calif., for unplanned maintenance, a person familiar with operations at the plant said Monday.
The unit, which removes sulfur in order to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions from refined products, experienced an upset on Saturday that caused an unplanned release of emission into the atmosphere, a filing to California state environmental regulators said. BP characterized the upset as a breakdown of equipment in that filing.
|
| BP Texas City Refinery Has Power Surges, State Filing Shows
More of the same from BP.
BP Plc (BP/) experienced power surges that caused several units to become unstable at its Texas City refinery in Texas yesterday, according to a filing with state regulators.
The units were stabilized and resumed operation, according to the filing with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Emissions associated with the incident occurred between 3 a.m. and 8 a.m. local time yesterday.
|
| Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange urges BP claims czar to "quit dragging your feet"
Let's all hope that Judge Barbier will see fit to offer BP's victims some relief from the callous, uncaring way that Feinberg and the GCCF has treated them.
MOBILE, Alabama -- The Gulf Coast Claims Facility "appears inappropriately proud" of having processed half of BP oil spill claims while it has rejected many applicants for no apparent reason, Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange wrote in a letter today.
"Our anxiety has reached a boiling point," Strange wrote in the letter to oil spill claims czar Ken Feinberg. "In the summer of 2010, thousands of Alabamians desperately awaited compensation. As the summer of 2011 approaches, most are still waiting, more desperate than ever. And to be blunt, the Gulf Coast Claims Facility is largely -- if not primarily -- to blame."
Strange said the claims operation has failed to be fully transparent, overplayed the issue of fraud in the system and offered many claimants "meager payments."
...
"Quit dragging your feet and stalling the large majority of claims to a point where victims are so desperate that they settle for anything," he wrote.
...
Feinberg and BP are also waiting a federal judge's ruling on whether his court will take a supervisory role in the oil spill claims process.
Plaintiffs lawyers and attorneys general from the Gulf Coast states have asked New Orleans-based U.S. District Court Judge Carl Barbier to rule that the Gulf Coast Claims Facility violates the federal Oil Pollution Act of 1990.
They want Barbier to force a number of changes onto the Gulf Coast Claims Facility, ranging from throwing out any lawsuit waiver that the facility has received to appointing monitors to review the decisions of its adjusters.
...blockquote>
|
| Strong Words For BP From Alabama Leaders
Deadline for victims to join Alabama's lawsuit against BP is April 20.
Governor Robert Bentley and Attorney General Luther Strange made a stop in Bayou La Batre Monday to encourage Alabamians devastated by the Gulf oil spill to get in on the state's lawsuit against the oil giant.
As we approach the year anniversary of the worst environmental disaster in American history, Alabama's leaders want to assure oil spill victims we will get through this and they promise to make sure BP makes communities like Bayou La Batre whole again, " it's part of the lawsuit in New Orleans where all the cases are consolidated, it's an important deadline, you can go to Alabama oil spill dot info, all the information is there, if you are a business, municipality, an individual, you can file there to preserve your rights," said Alabama Attorney General, Luther Strange.
That deadline to get involved in the state's lawsuit against BP and the companies responsible for the Gulf oil spill falls on the year anniversary of the disaster, April 20th, 2011.
|
PLEASE visit Pam LaPier's diary to find out how you can help the Gulf now and in the future. We don't have to be idle! And thanks to Crashing Vor and Pam LaPier for working on this!
Previous Gulf Watcher diaries:
The last Mothership has links to reference material.
Previous motherships and ROV's from this extensive live blog effort may be found here.
Again, to keep bandwidth down, please do not post images or videos.
