Topics: Environmentalists challenge Shell's deepwater permits. Transocean disagrees with report on Gulf disaster. Auburn University study finds traces of oil in sand. Gulf of Mexico fine agreement likely months away. Oil spill cleanups rely on decades-old technology. Plans finished to drill in other areas of the Gulf...thanks, Mexico. Tony Heyward makes some more money. LSU tests show new oil in Gulf not from Macondo wellhead.
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US challenged over approval of Shell drilling plan in Gulf.
Several environmental groups have filed a lawsuit challenging Shell Oil on their deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, coming just one day after ExxonMobil announced one of the largest discoveries ever in the Gulf.
The groups - Earthjustice, which filed the suit on behalf of the Sierra Club, the Gulf Restoration Network and the Florida Wildlife Federation - contend that federal regulators violated environmental laws when they approved Shell's plan to drill eight wells about 72 miles off the Louisiana coast last month and asked the Eleventh Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta to halt the process and retract the permit approvals.
The review of the Shell proposal under the new BOEMRE regulations was found to have little impact on the quality of the "human environment" but the groups contend that another spill such as Macondo, or a even larger blowout, does not come close to addressing the destruction of the Gulf ecosystem.
David Guest, an attorney for Earthjustice, says the regulations as they stand are useless.
"Before new deepwater Gulf drilling occurs, the government must make a realistic assessment of the risk to the Gulf's ecosystem, its communities, and the many jobs that depend on tourism, fishing and recreation. It has utterly failed to do so here."
Shell spokeswoman Kayla Macke says the regulations are fine as they are, and "reflects numerous improvements to enhance safety and to protect the environment."
The BOEMRE declined comment.
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Rig owner challenges report on Gulf disaster.
Transocean, the owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig, has urged the Coast Guard to revise a report that says the company was partly responsible for the blowout. Citing “overt errors” and “rank speculation,” the Swiss-based driller called for more than 230 changes and even suggested the joint Coast Guard-Interior Department board investigating the accident ignored evidence in pursuit of an agenda.
“The investigative staff has failed to carry out the mission they were assigned and, instead, have produced an advocacy document that disregards inconvenient facts in order to justify a pre-determined outcome,” Transocean said in a 216-page brief filed Wednesday with the Department of Homeland Security and Interior Department.
Transocean, saying that the Coast Guard review relied on speculation rather than facts in assembling the review, seeks to refute four major points.
First, it denied that poorly maintained equipment on the rig was responsible for igniting gas that escaped from the well. Rather, it was BP’s “risky, cost-saving decisions” that caused the blowout and made ignition “inevitable from any one of hundreds of properly functioning, well-maintained electrical devices,” the brief said.
Transocean also defended its upkeep of the huge blowout preventer, which failed to seal the well at the sea floor, allowing an estimated 5 million barrels of crude to gush into the Gulf. Transocean said crews performed routine maintenance of the critical well-control equipment according to established industry standards, government regulations and the manufacturer’s guidelines.
The brief also challenged the report’s finding that engines on the rig failed to shut down when gas was detected. The engines were not designed to shut down automatically when gas entered the engine room, and Transocean said it knows of no such systems on rigs comparable to the Deepwater Horizon.
And the company denied that the rig’s general alarm should have sounded automatically when gas reached the facility’s surface. Transocean said the general alarm was on the “manual” setting, a common practice that prevents repeated false alarms upon activation of gas or smoke detectors. But it was not “inhibited,” as the report suggests. When dangerous amounts of gas were detected, crews correctly activated the general alarm, which helped 115 workers survive the accident, the company said.
Lt. Sue Kerver, a Coast Guard spokeswoman, declined to comment on the substance of the Transocean brief, but she said the Coast Guard will consider it, along with other responses from parties of interest, as investigators compile a final investigation report due by July 27.
Transocean is expected to release its own internal report later this month.
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Auburn study finds traces of oil in sand, but beaches are 'remarkably clean' to the naked eye.
Okay. I guess if you can't see it, it isn't there...
A study conducted by Auburn University on Alabama beaches has determined the cleanliness of the sand to be visually acceptable, but as the remaining oil affects life in the sand...maybe not so much.
“It’s not clean from the point of view that there’s no oil there,” said Joel Hayworth, an associate research professor at Auburn. “But if you go and spend your holiday there, you will have no concept of oil. ... The reality is that Orange Beach samples are remarkably clean, so that requires a more sophisticated approach.”
The study compares the Orange Beach sands with the sand from the Bon Secour Wildlife Refuge, where the "deep-cleaning" process was not used due to the effect on wildlife.
“For a single event, we know the spatial variability between an Orange Beach site that was cleaned and a Bon Secour site that was not cleaned,” Hayworth said. “The reason that is important is that the beach is a very dynamic system and it’s turning over.”
Tarballs as big as a man’s hand are still found on the protected beach at the Bon Secour refuge. But Hayworth said that most tarballs are actually composed predominantly of sand.
“The amount of oil that one would imagine actually washed up on the beach is remarkably smaller,” Hayworth said. “But the opposite part of that problem is that there’s probably more offshore waiting.”
BP spokesman Ray Melick said the oil giant still has a cleanup crew of almost 70 people at Bon Secour every day.
“Ideally, we would continue this same study over many years,” Hayworth said. “It’s our opinion that there’s quite a bit of this remnant oil basically parked off shore that no one knows about.”
BP plans to survey the surrounding waters next week for submerged oil and tar mats.
“Once we identify and delineate the submerged oil mats, then we’ll mark them and — after tourist season — use the best technology to retrieve them,” Melick said.
Tar mats close to shore could be pulled up sooner, he added.
Gulf Shores Mayor Robert Craft said locating offshore tar mats could help formulate a plan on how to deal with oiled debris in the wake of a hurricane. Officials need the make-up of the tar mats and the distance from the shore, Craft added, but BP has not revealed how many tar mats there might be in Alabama waters.
“It’s an important part of trying to determine the ongoing exposure that we face,” Craft said.
The Auburn study is also addressing the use of dispersants after the blowout, and whether chemicals associated with that use still exist in the environment.
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Gulf of Mexico oil spill fine agreement likely months away.
Gulf Coast lawmakers are likely months away from coming to an agreement on a plan to send what could be billions of dollars in oil spill fine money to the region, according to Rep. Jo Bonner, R-Mobile.
Bonner said that talks among lawmakers have been "positive," and "progress is being made, a little bit at a time." But the effort has been hamstrung, he added, by disagreements over how to dole out the fine money, and delayed as Congress focuses on other matters, such as the federal budget and debt ceiling.
"I would probably describe it as conversations rather than negotiations," Bonner said. "To suggest that we are in the negotiating phase would probably be overly optimistic."
...aaahh, the traditional legislative circle-jerk...
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Oil-spill cleanups rely on decades-old technology.
Of course we already know this...
The industry maintains progress has been made in the decades since the 1989 Exxon-Valdez spill and the Gulf disaster. After the Exxon Valdez disaster, the oil industry formed the Marine Spill Response Corporation to help it battle catastrophic spills.
"The cars we drive today are much different from a Model T, but they have the same principle, they still have four tires and an engine," said Judith Roos a spokeswoman for the corporation. "There have been improvements, but we are still using the same processes and techniques."
During the BP oil spill, the MSRC deployed some 42 skimmers, 65,000 feet (19,800 metres) of boom, as well as dozens of other vessels and equipment. The corporation, which buys equipment and is not involved in research and development, said it trains for oil spills in open waters to prepare for conditions its staff will face during an accident.
Still, Roos said the public shouldn't expect response technology to advance as quickly as the latest smart phone.
"There's not a broad market for spill response resources," she said. "It's not like industry isn't out looking for how to improve spill response technology. Industry is looking for better ways, but it's not market driven."
That's not good enough for environmental groups, who decry the lack of attention on response technology.
"Once the oil is in the water, it's pretty much all over as far as containment," said David Pettit, senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council. "It's pretty much a joke."
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Just drill everywhere...who gives a s**t. There's money to be made!
Pemex to include offshore Gulf fields in contract proposals.
Petroleos Mexicanos, Latin America’s biggest oil producer, is preparing a pair of offshore contracts allowing companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp. and BP Plc to gain access to the Mexican side of the Gulf of Mexico.
Pemex, as the Mexico City-based company is known, plans to announce in August a second round of performance-based contracts that may include offshore fields for the first time, Carlos Morales, head of exploration and production, said yesterday in an interview in Puebla, Mexico.
“I estimate that in July or August we’ll be presenting the proposals to the board,” Morales said. The company board may approve “from four to seven fields. The offshore blocks that we’re proposing for this round are Arenque and Atun and are located in shallow waters.”
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Excuse the pounds for dollars please...it's a shitpile of money...
Tony Hayward to cash in on Valleres investment .
Mr Hayward, along with financier Nat Rothschild, ex-banker Julian Metherell and financier Tom Daniel, could share in the substantial return as a result of an advantageous investment set-up designed to reward the quartet for creating added value.
News of the potential windfall, revealed in documents shown to potential investors in Vallares, comes less than a year after his infamous departure from BP and will sweeten his return to the top flight of UK plc.
Speaking to The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Hayward said he intended to use Vallares to buy growth assets in emerging countries, rather than "picking up the tail properties of the Shells or BPs of the world".
But he brushed off any concerns over the possible returns available, pointing out that the details of the share scheme which will allow the returns are near-identical to those contained within Vallar, Mr Rothschild's coal vehicle that just completed a reverse takeover of Indonesia's Bumi. Mr Rothschild and James Campbell are sharing in a £162m windfall as a result of that takeover.
"The structure to some looks like it might be a bit rich. But people see it for what it is," Mr Hayward said.
And we see you for what you are, Tony...a weaselly little asshole who should be in jail for murder...
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Just a seep, or something more? Wish I knew.
LSU tests show oil washing up on Louisiana coast is new oil, not from BP well.
Laboratory tests on an oil sheen found this week in the Gulf of Mexico near the Louisiana coast indicate the crude is not stirred-up remnants of last year's BP spill but a small, fresh spill.
Louisiana State University chemist Ed Overton tested oil taken from a mile-long sheen in Breton Sound. He said it did not match the chemical signature of oil from the Deepwater Horizon incident.
The Coast Guard says it is investigating the source of the sheen, which is breaking up. It says oil has not damaged any shoreline but for protection, boom was placed around an island where birds nest.
Oil spills are common in coastal waters, where merchant ships, offshore oil vessels and fishing boats ply the Gulf and often don't report small spills.
I'm not saying I don't trust Overton - he's a capable scientist - but sometimes his position smells a bit "off" to me. Or bought, rather than off... Or bought off...
But that's just me...
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