BP Wants You To Forget About Their Disasters

BP wants you to sleep and forget all their disasters.

BP wants you to forget about their plans to finish capping off the massive oil leak in the Gulf.

BP wants to hurl a few engineers into the BlameThrower Machine.

BP does not want to answer questions.

BP did not even tell anyone this Spring about a gas leak at a plant in Texas which lasted for 40 days until after it was over.

"Rather than taking the costly step of shutting down the refinery to make repairs, the engineers at the plant diverted gases to a smokestack and tried to burn them off, but hundreds of thousands of pounds still escaped into the air, according to state environmental officials.

Neither the state nor the oil company informed neighbors or local officials about the pollutants until two weeks after the release ended, and angry residents of Texas City have signed up in droves to join a $10 billion class-action lawsuit against BP. The state attorney general, Greg Abbott, has also sued the company, seeking fines of about $600,000."

Little To Celebrate In Latest BP 'Cap'

image via

They've done studies, you know. 60% of the time it works, every time.

And let's check out that tote board and see just how close we are the that magic number of unrecoverable disaster!!



Well, looky there -- as of 9 pm EST June 15, even the BP cameras show no oil or gases escaping.

Now, so long as this new pressure seal on top holds, and does not make the well bore explode some thousands of feet below the surface thus making an unhealable sieve of an endlessly leaking sea bed before they can successfully (and for a record-setting first) connect two relief wells down a couple of miles to seal off the endless Fountain of Filth ... so long as all those firsts and dozens more actually work, then maybe it will all stop for good.

At least, stop the leak, that is.

We still face massive years of millions of work hours (and billions of dollars) to clean and re-claim pretty much all the Southern coastline and many, many more miles of inland waterways.

And so very sad amid all of this -- Americans know much about the disaster, but so few know even the names of those 11 workers who lost their lives aboard the Deepwater Horizon for no reason other than a deep desire to make an oil well flow:

Donald Clark
Shane Roshto
Dewey Revette
Adam Weise
Wyatt Kemp
Dale Burkeen
Jason Anderson
Karl Kleppinger
Stephen Curtis
Gordon Jones
Blair Manuel

Republicans Protect BP From Subpoenas

If there is one, just one, good reason for the Senate Republicans to refuse to allow congressional investigators to have subpoena powers as they probe the potential crimes associated with the massive - and ongoing - oil spill in the Gulf by BP, then wouldn't they tell us what that reason was? Senator Jim DeMint refuses to even say out loud the names of the Republicans who want to protect BP.

Steve Benen at Washington Monthly says it best:

"Given the 420 to 1 vote [as it passed in the House] , Senate Democrats sought unanimous consent yesterday to resolve the issue and let the commission do its job. It's an easy one, right? Wrong. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) refused, objecting on behalf of others in the Republican conference that he would not name.

"I have to conclude by the objections that there are colleagues on the other side that either don't want to get to the bottom of this -- or are standing on the side of the oil companies and not of the victims and their families," Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) told reporters.

I've long since run out of adjectives to describe these folks. The commission can't get answers without subpoena power, and Congress has routinely extended subpoena power to related commissions -- including panels investigating the JFK assassination, the Three Mile Island disaster, and the 9/11 attacks. And yet, Senate Republicans yesterday blocked the authority for the BP commission, and wouldn't say why."

Gulf Apocalypse Now!

Time to check in with the Apocalypse Meter, aka the ongoing gallons-of-oil count via this handy ticker from PBS.



Worth noting that when I posted this on June 2nd, the low end was set to about 500,000 gallons leaked each day, and that estimated amount (the low end) has now tripled. And in the last few days, pretty much all the information I have been able to gather and discover tends to indicate that the good ol' US of A is poised most precariously over an abyss and the ultimate damage is going to be far beyond catastrophic and we may soon call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of Doom. (For more on the photo shown above, see Southern Beale.)

Sadly, only recently have news and other agencies begun to report what was being reported on your Cup of Joe back in May -- BP knew how unstable the geologic structure of the seabed they were drilling was, that leaks were prominent before the explosion, that officials with BP and Transocean and Halliburton all knew the interior well casings located thousands of feet below the seabed itself were improperly made and not working ... and really, all that info came from the interview on "60 Minutes" which aired May 16th:

"The tension in every drilling operation is between doing things safely and doing them fast; time is money and this job was costing BP a million dollars a day. But Williams says there was trouble from the start - getting to the oil was taking too long.

Williams said they were told it would take 21 days; according to him, it actually took six weeks. With the schedule slipping, Williams says a BP manager ordered a faster pace. "And he requested to the driller, 'Hey, let's bump it up. Let's bump it up.' And what he was talking about there is he's bumping up the rate of penetration. How fast the drill bit is going down," Williams said.

Williams says going faster caused the bottom of the well to split open, swallowing tools and that drilling fluid called "mud."

"We actually got stuck. And we got stuck so bad we had to send tools down into the drill pipe and sever the pipe," Williams explained. That well was abandoned and Deepwater Horizon had to drill a new route to the oil. It cost BP more than two weeks and millions of dollars. "We were informed of this during one of the safety meetings, that somewhere in the neighborhood of $25 million was lost in bottom hole assembly and 'mud.' And you always kind of knew that in the back of your mind when they start throwing these big numbers around that there was gonna be a push coming, you know? A push to pick up production and pick up the pace," Williams said.

Asked if there was pressure on the crew after this happened, Williams told Pelley, "There's always pressure, but yes, the pressure was increased." But the trouble was just beginning: when drilling resumed, Williams says there was an accident on the rig that has not been reported before. He says, four weeks before the explosion, the rig's most vital piece of safety equipment was damaged."


The only hopeful note I can detect in this mad symphony is that perhaps one or both of the two relief wells being made which seek to connect with the escaping oil -- perhaps by the end of August, perhaps much later. And no guarantees. The Worst Case Scenarios that are now playing in the Gulf are too terrible to even consider ... and truth is, I sense no one involved really can say just how badly BP screwed up here - if the seabed above the current well collapses ...

Worth noting too is just how much methane gas is pouring into the ocean as well, up to 40% of the spill is made of methane, compared to a 5% level normally found in oil deposits.


"The question is what's going on in the deeper, colder parts of the ocean," he said. "Are the (methane) concentrations going to overcome the amount of available oxygen? We want to make sure we're not overloading the system."

BP spokesman Mark Proegler disputed Joye's suggestion that the Gulf's deep waters contain large amounts of methane, noting that water samples taken by BP and federal agencies have shown minimal underwater oil outside the spill's vicinity.

"The gas that escapes, what we don't flare, goes up to the surface and is gone," he said.

It appears that comment means an unknown quantity of methane gas is (daily) venting out over the surface of the Gulf. And people have become suddenly ill working in the region ....

I continue to wonder what horrifying tipping point is needed to push this nation into a total retreat from Fossil Oil Addiction - elected officials have trotted out enough empty words about "Energy Independence" for decades and still our science and our politics clings to the technologies of the 19th century.

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TVA abandons Green Power programs

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Sen. Alexander Says You Are Not Grown Up Enough to Understand Energy Policies

Senator Lamar Alexander spoke out this week on U.S. Energy issues and policies, and it's a fine example of "sound and fury signifying nothing". One East TN newspaper, The Daily Times thinks his ideas are sheer genius.

Sen. Alexander made his thoughts known on the floor of the Senate chamber, ideas he called "steps for Grown Ups". It's a mish-mash of nifty talking points, prompted by the massive destruction created by the BP oil gusher currently turning the Gulf of Mexico into a dead zone, and they really fall apart under scrutiny. (The Notes cited below are mine, not the Senators.)

1 - Figure out what went wrong and make it unlikely to happen again. We don’t stop flying after a terrible airplane crash, and we won’t stop drilling offshore after this terrible spill. Thirty percent of U.S. oil production (and 25 percent of natural gas) comes from thousands of active wells in the Gulf of Mexico. Without it, gasoline prices would skyrocket and we would depend more on tankers from the Middle East with worse safety records than American offshore drillers.

NOTE: Someone should notify the senator we know what went wrong in the BP disaster, as the company faked records detailing safety plans, moved too fast, and ignored warnings from workers on the rig itself. And those tanker spills He bemoans do not match the facts - "Thus, it is apparent from the table below that the number of large spills (>700 tonnes) has decreased significantly during the last 40 years, such that the average number of major spills for the decade (2000-2009) is about three. Most notably, for the first time since ITOPF began collating tanker spill statistics, the number of major oil spills involving tankers reached zero in 2009.

The average for the 2000s is less than half of the average for the 1990s and just an eighth of the average for the 1970s. The same is true for medium sized spills from tankers (7-700 tonnes) where the average number of spills occurring in the last decade was 14, half of that experienced during the previous decade."

2 - Learn a safety lesson from the U.S. nuclear industry: accountability. For 60 years, reactors on U.S. Navy ships have operated without killing one sailor. Why? The career of the ship’s commander can be ended by a mistake. (The number of deaths from nuclear accidents at U.S. commercial reactors is also zero.

NOTE: A reactor aboard a ships would never create the amount of destruction of a nuclear power plant on land. Plans now exist to start establishing seven floating nuke plants off Russian coastlines. Of course, I am sure their safety measures are beyond reproach (cough, cough).


3 - What was the president’s cleanup plan and where were the people and equipment to implement it? In 1990, after the Exxon Valdez spill, a new law required that the president “ensure” the cleanup of a spill and have the people and equipment to do it. President Obama effectively delegated this job to the spiller. Is that a president’s only real option today? If so, what should future presidents have on hand for backup if the spiller can’t perform?

NOTE: Senator, the real question for grown ups is what was BP's plan, where was their equipment? Should Americans expect the President, whomever that might be, to be the the point man on massive industrial disasters? What are the plans for ALL the corporations now engaged in offshore drilling to address disastrous events?

4 - Put back on the table more on-shore resources for oil and natural gas. Drilling in a few thousand acres along the edge of the 19-million-acre Alaska National Wildlife Refuge and at other on-shore locations would produce vast oil supplies. A spill on land could be contained much more easily than one mile deep in water.


NOTE: The Prudhoe Bay pipeline spill in Alaska in 2006 (an operation headed by BP, of course, took place despite 8 years of warnings. Press reports at the time said "another black eye to a firm that has fashioned an image as a responsible, environmentally concerned company, and it drew new criticism from pipeline experts and environmentalists who have been saying for years that the company had failed to do the maintenance needed to keep the pipeline free from sludge and protect it from corrosion in the harsh Alaska conditions. The Environmental Protection Agency has launched a criminal probe to determine whether the company was negligent in managing the pipeline, said sources who had talked to government investigators. However, then President Bush shut down the criminal investigation by the Department of Justice.

5. Electrify half our cars and trucks. This is ambitious, but is the best way to reduce U.S. oil consumption, cutting it by one-third, to about 13 million barrels a day. And a Brookings Institution study says we could electrify half our cars and trucks without building one new power plant if we plug in our cars at night.

6. Invest in energy research and development. A cost-competitive 500-mile battery would virtually guarantee electrification of half our cars and trucks. Reduce the cost of solar power by a factor of four. Find a way for utilities to make money from the CO2 their coal plants produce.

7. Stop pretending wind power has anything to do with reducing America’s dependence on oil. Windmills generate electricity — not transportation fuel. Wind has become the energy hula hoop of the 21st century and a taxpayer rip-off. According to the Energy Information Administration, wind produces only 1.3 percent of U.S. electricity but receives federal taxpayer subsidies 25 times as much per megawatt hour as subsidies for all other forms of electricity production combined. Wind can be an energy supplement, but it has nothing to do with ending our dependence on oil.

NOTE: I'll let The New Republic answer the senator on those topics -- " ... if half our cars are electric, then electricity would be transportation fuel. Still with me? No? Okay, I'll break it down. The wind would turn the windmills round and round. This would generate electricity, which would be sent to people's houses through wires. The electricity could then be used to run electric cars.

This is not the only problem with Alexander's piece. He outlines goals, like increasing conservation and electrifying half the automobile fleet -- but he has absolutely nothing about how to obtain these goals. His electric car plan is literally what you read above: "Electrify half our cars and trucks." Who would do this? How? He does not say. Cars and trucks run on gasoline because gasoline is the cheapest fuel available. If you wanted half the cars to run on electric power, you'd have to change this so that gasoline was no longer the cheapest fuel available. It could be a tax on carbon emissions, enormous subsidies for electric batteries, regulatory fiat, something. Likewise, if you want people to conserve energy, you need to increase the cost of using energy.

I'm not sure how you have a debate with people like this."

Steve Benen comments too:

"What a great idea! Kevin Drum explained, "There's just gotta be something we can do with all that CO2! I dunno. Freeze it and sell it to Spinal Tap for their live shows? Mount a campaign to increase soda sales a hundred million percent? Build a time machine and then hire some alchemists to figure out how to turn it into liquid gold? Honest to God, where does this stuff come from?

Remember, Lamar Alexander is not only supposed to be one of the more responsible members of the Senate Republican caucus, but the piece was labeled, "An Energy Strategy for Grown-Ups."

Grown-ups who don't really understand energy policy and brush over inconvenient details, perhaps?"

8. If we need more green electricity, build nuclear plants. The 100 commercial nuclear plants we already have produce 70 percent of our pollution-free, carbon-free electricity. Yet the U.S. has not broken ground on a new reactor in 30 years, while China starts one every three months and France is 80 percent nuclear. We wouldn’t put our nuclear Navy in mothballs if we were going to war. We shouldn’t put our nuclear plants in mothballs if we want low-cost, reliable green energy.

NOTE: I like how the senator says "IF we need more green electricity ..." which clearly shows he considers TVA customers as quaintly confused thinkers. Also, the massive costs of building new nuclear plans is so large, it would likely triple the rate of current U.S. utility rates. Which is simply more proof that Sen. Alexander's 'grown up' ideas are fine examples of meaningless blather. Honesty and tough decisions lay ahead of us, and the senator's suggestions offer no real solutions.

9. Focus on conservation. The Tennessee Valley Authority could close four of its dirtiest coal plants if the region reduced its per capita use of electricity to the national average.

NOTE: IN other words, it is YOUR fault, Tennessee, for needing electricity. And just what Mr. Senator have you done to address the horrible destruction from TVA in Roane County's toxic ash spill??

10. Make sure liability limits are appropriate for spill damage. The Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, funded by a per-barrel fee on industry, should be adjusted to pay for cleanup and to compensate those hurt by spills. An industry insurance program like that of the nuclear industry is also an attractive model to consider.

NOTE: Limiting liability for oil companies was always a bad idea. But the real failure was that army of bureaucrats who signed off on non-existent or wildly inflated claims from companies like BP. Adding a layer of more and more forms and promises are utterly meaningless when those requirements are purposefully ignored.

Coming Apart At Every Nail, or The BP Deepsh*t Disaster

Given the constant failure of "blowout preventers" in offshore oil wells, and a lack of technology to create reliable fail-safe methods of capping an endlessly oil spewing mess, one simple and very old tactic almost always works.

It's a relief well, just like the two being drilled now in the Gulf of Mexico. Some online folks began talking last week about how Canada requires oil companies to create a relief well for all offshore drilling before said companies are allowed to drill.

Except that is not quite true and even today, BP is pushing Canada to drop that requirement, citing the costs involved.

"• Canadian regulations about relief wells are not quite as simple as the Reuters story suggested. • Oil companies do not actually have to drill relief wells in advance. Rather, in order to get a drilling permit they have to satisfy the National Energy Board that they have the capability to drill a relief well the same season as the exploratory well.
---
"In 2008, BP paid C$1.2 billion ($1.8 billion) for rights to explore three parcels in Canada's Beaufort Sea, north of the Arctic Circle.

It has yet to announce plans to drill in the region but shortly before the U.S. disaster, BP and other oil companies urged Canadian regulators to drop a requirement stipulating that companies operating in the Arctic had to drill relief wells in the same season as the primary well."

So many who previously moaned about the intrusion of government now see government as superhero.

Confusion grows in times like these. Getting information is important, but a recent transcript of a Q and A with reporters and Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen offers mostly confusion.

"Q: (Inaudible) - (inaudible) (expect that 2,000 acres to fill in), but it's more like 30 acres, do you have any updates on that and how (inaudible)?

ADM. ALLEN: We're beginning conversation of what I would call linear versus top (inaudible). And I think probably the best thing for us to do is - (inaudible) - folks a couple of days to - sit down and come up with a (inaudible) (metric). (Inaudible) - miles of shoreline doesn't necessarily equate the impact you're looking at with the half-mile in the marsh. And I understand the difference there and we will reconcile - (inaudible).

And today I read where the underwater robots bedecked with diamond-edged saws which BP is using to try and cut off part of the leaking pipe so they can contain some of the spill is stuck in the pipe.

Yearly Spill Larger Than Gulf Oil Disaster

Am I the only one who can hear the damn clue phone ringing away like mad?

"In fact, more oil is spilled from the delta's network of terminals, pipes, pumping stations and oil platforms every year than has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico, the site of a major ecological catastrophe caused by oil that has poured from a leak triggered by the explosion that wrecked BP's Deepwater Horizon rig last month.

That disaster, which claimed the lives of 11 rig workers, has made headlines round the world. By contrast, little information has emerged about the damage inflicted on the Niger delta. Yet the destruction there provides us with a far more accurate picture of the price we have to pay for drilling oil today."

---

"With 606 oilfields, the Niger delta supplies 40% of all the crude the United States imports and is the world capital of oil pollution. Life expectancy in its rural communities, half of which have no access to clean water, has fallen to little more than 40 years over the past two generations. Locals blame the oil that pollutes their land and can scarcely believe the contrast with the steps taken by BP and the US government to try to stop the Gulf oil leak and to protect the Louisiana shoreline from pollution."

More here and here.

Oh, and those "blowout preventers" are famous for failing on a constant basis, and officials lied to cover it up.