Category Archives: Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

BP Oil Co. News — this time in Alaska

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Once again the company is in the news, but this time it has to do with risks in the oil operations in Alaska. With All Eyes on the Gulf, BP Alaska Facilities Are Still at Risk. Pro Publica, Nov.3, 2010.

The extensive pipeline system that moves oil, gas and waste throughout BP’s operations in Alaska is plagued by severe corrosion, according to an internal maintenance report generated four weeks ago.

The document, obtained by ProPublica, shows that as of Oct. 1, 2010 at least 148 BP pipelines on Alaska’s North Slope received an “F-rank” from the company. According to BP oilworkers, that means inspections have determined that more than 80 percent of the pipe wall is corroded and could rupture. Most of those lines carry toxic or flammable substances. Many of the metal walls of the F-ranked pipes are worn to within a few thousandths of an inch of bursting, according to the document, risking an explosion or spills.

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BP’s history reveals chronic problems

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Orca Inlet from the Coast Guard dock, Cordova,...

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ProPublica has done some digging into BP’s past accident history and the results are both a report and TV special on the findings. See Furious Growth and Cost Cuts Led To BP Accidents Past and Present. A ProPublica and PBS FRONTLINE investigation; October 27. “The Spill,” a PBS FRONTLINE documentary,drawn from the reporting, airs tonight.

Jeanne Pascal turned on her TV April 21 to see a towering spindle of black smoke slithering into the sky from an oil platform on the oceanic expanse of the Gulf of Mexico. For hours she sat, transfixed on an overstuffed couch in her Seattle home, her feelings shifting from shock to anger.

Pascal, a career Environmental Protection Agency attorney only seven weeks into her retirement, knew as much as anyone in the federal government about BP, the company that owned the well. She understood in an instant what it would take others months to grasp: In BP’s 15-year quest to compete with the world’s biggest oil companies, its managers had become deaf to risk and systematically gambled with safety at hundreds of facilities and with thousands of employees’ lives.

“God, they just don’t learn,” she remembers thinking.

 

Science and Politics — sand berms off LA coast

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Progress on Louisiana Sand Berm

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Once again in LA we see an example of the conflict between objective science and state level politics. Louisiana Builds Barriers Even as Oil Disperses, NYTimes, Oct. 22.

In late May, at the height of the spill, Adm. Thad W. Allen of the Coast Guard did authorize the berms as an oil-spill countermeasure and directed BP to pay for them. But since then, the Coast Guard and the unified command, charged with responding to the oil spill under federal law, have had virtually no oversight or involvement in the project.

Rather, the state is proceeding with the permission of the Army Corps of Engineers, which regulates offshore engineering projects yet has little oil-spill expertise.

But as the dredging and construction press on, opposition from federal agencies and environmental groups is growing.

Some conservation groups and scientists assert that the project has not only been ineffective but could also threaten wildlife. They warn that the intensive dredging associated with the berms has already killed at least a half-dozen endangered sea turtles and could kill many more.

They have also repeatedly raised concern that further dredging may squander limited sand resources needed for future coastal restoration projects.

Thanks to Bill Cumming for pointing this out.

More details re BP Oil Spill outcomes: financial and personal

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Today there have been several important articles about the effects of the spill on individuals and businesses.  In the Washington Post, there are two stories about the financial payments made to ease the effects of the massive oil spill.  Six months after the spill, BP’s money is changing the gulf as much as its oil

Today, it is BP’s money, not its oil, that is most visibly altering the Gulf Coast. The company has been trying – on federal orders – to protect not just the water but the way of life there. But BP’s waterfall of cash has changed people’s lives profoundly.

The second one is an interview with attorney Kenneth Feinberg, who is in charge of payments to business owners. Overseer of BP’s gulf oil spill fund gets his hands dirty

Today the Wall St. Journal commented on the many problems and discrepancies in the payouts. Bumpy Start to BP Fund Puzzles Gulf. From what I read, Feinberg truly has a thankless job, given the large number of undocumented claims.  I for one would not want to be in his shoes.

On the same topic, but with a different take — one that covers the personal stories and hardships– see the account in the Huffington Post, Oct. 20: Six Months later, An Oil Spill Spread Across the Gulf. The writer quotes my friend, Laura Olson, who has devoted years to studying the effects of both Hurricane Katrina and the Oil Spill on the local residents.

What did we learn from the BP Oil Spill?

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Fire on the offshore drilling rig Deepwater Ho...

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Six months later, what did we learn from the oil disaster in the Gulf? CNN, Oct. 19. The reporter notes some improvements in emergency response and some other advances:

Much of the focus has been on preventing another oil spill.

The Obama administration has issued a number of rules that aim to prevent offshore drillers from chasing petrol profits at the expense of safety.

The Department of the Interior, for example, now requires oil companies to get independent audits of their blowout prevention systems, those hulking metal contraptions that are supposed to snap oil risers in the case of an underwater explosion, and which failed on the Deepwater Horizon rig. Oil rigs also will be subjected to surprise inspections by federal regulators, according to Reuters.

The administration also restructured the Minerals Management Service, the federal regulatory agency charged with making offshore drilling safe.

Review of U.S. approach to offshore oil drilling

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Deepwater Horizon Drill Rig

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The Wall St. Journal, on October 9, provides an interesting long-term look at U.S. offshore oil drilling, over the past few decades and political administrations. See
An Oil-Thirsty America Barreled Into ‘Dead Sea.’

Former Florida Sen. Bob Graham., co-chairman of the president’s oil-spill commission, blamed the BP disaster on what he called “an enormous and shared failure of public policy.” The causes of the spill, he said in recent testimony before the commission, “go back decades and are attributable across the spectrum to government, to industry, to the White House, to Congress, to Republicans, to Democrats.”

Now, in the wake of the spill, people across the political spectrum are drawing different lessons from it.

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Questions raised re federal agency oil spill assessments

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Spill Panel Faults Obama Response Effort , WSJ, Oct. 6. and White House Suppressed Worst-Case Oil-Flow Estimates, Fed. Commission Reports, WSJ, Oct. 6. Another take from the Homeland Security Digital Library.

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Change of Leadership for BP Oil Spill Response/Recovery

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Allen Steps Down From Oil Spill Response, N.Y. Times, Oct. 2, 2010.

Retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen stepped down from his position as leader of the response and clean-up of the BP oil spill on Friday as planned, transferring oversight duties to Rear Admiral Paul Zukunft, who is based in New Orleans.

Long-Term Recovery Plan issued for Gulf after BP Oil Spill

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America’s Gulf Coast; A Long Term Recovery Plan after the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, 130 pp. Sept.29, 2010. The report does not have a table of contents or an executive summary. The only summary I could find was the press release.

The first 20 pages are the body of the report.  A series of Recovery Planning Checklists are included in the report, which are interesting.  This is more specific guidance than has been offered to state and local officials than provided to date by any federal officials, to my knowledge. The BP Oil Spill disaster is important, since it is the only example we have of all phases of emergency management taking place under the authority of the Oil Pollution Act/National Contingency Plan rather than the  Stafford Act /National Response Framework for major-to-catastrophic size disaster.

I welcome comments and feedback.

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Oil Spill Science and Gulf State Politics – probably not a good mix

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According to the LA Times, Sept. 24, Planned Distribution of  BP research funds worries some scientists. The article goes on to not that BP is about to dispense $500 million for scientific research to an alliance of research organizations overseen by Gulf state governors and that critics feat that ocean science expertise in other than Gulf state locations will be overlooked. Some details from the article follow:

With its well finally shut down, BP is close to agreement on funneling a promised $500 million in research funds through an organization overseen by Gulf Coast governors, not the nation’s scientific community. The pending decision has stirred concern among some scientists who fear most of the money will be doled out to institutions in the governors’ home states — in effect making the distribution of research grants more like pork-barrel projects, rather than pure scientific pursuits.

Critics worry the expertise of distinguished oceanographic organizations such as the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California could be excluded from the complex task of determining the full effects of the massive spill.

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