GULF DISASTER ROUNDUP

From MSNBC courtesy of Eschaton:

Gulf spill balloons, could move east

The Deepwater Horizon well is at the end of one branch of the Gulf Stream, the famed warm-water current that flows from the Gulf of Mexico to the North Atlantic. Several experts said that if the oil enters the stream, it would flow around the southern tip of Florida and up the eastern seaboard.

"It will be on the East Coast of Florida in almost no time," Graber said. "I don't think we can prevent that. It's more of a question of when rather than if."

At the joint command center run by the government and BP near New Orleans, a Coast Guard spokesman maintained Saturday that the leakage remained around 5,000 barrels, or 200,000 gallons, per day.

But Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, appointed Saturday by Obama to lead the government's oil spill response, said no one could pinpoint how much oil is leaking from the ruptured well because of its depth — about a mile underwater.

And

"There's an equal amount that could be subsurface too," said Bea, who worked for Shell Oil Co. in the 1960s when the last big northern Gulf of Mexico oil well blowout occurred. And that oil below the surface "is damn near impossible to track."

Louisiana State University professor Ed Overton, who heads a federal chemical hazard assessment team for oil spills, worries about a total collapse of the pipe inserted into the well. If that happens, there would be no warning and the resulting gusher could be even more devastating because regulating flow would then be impossible.

"When these things go, they go KABOOM," he said. "If this thing does collapse, we've got a big, big blow."

BP has not said how much oil is beneath the Gulf seabed Deepwater Horizon was tapping, but a company official speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the volume of reserves, confirmed reports that it was tens of millions of barrels.

More here.

From the Government Accountability Project, again courtesy of Eschaton:

Troubling Details Emerge About BP's Oil Rig Explosion and Spill

The Wall Street Journal reports that the well lacked a remote-control shut-off switch that is required by Brazil and Norway, two other major oil-producing nations. The switch, a back-up measure to shut off oil flow, would allow a crew to remotely shut off the well even if a rig was damaged or sunken. BP said it couldn't explain why its primary shut-off measures did not work.

U.S. regulators considered requiring the mechanism several years ago. They decided against the measure when drilling companies protested, saying the cost was too high, the device was only questionably effective, and that primary shut-off measures were enough to control an oil spill. A 2001 industry report argued against the shut-off device:

"Significant doubts remain in regard to the ability of this type of system to provide a reliable emergency back-up control system during an actual well flowing incident."

However, a spokeswoman for Norway's Petroleum Safety Authority said the switches have "been seen as the most successful and effective option" in North Sea usage. Several oil producers, including Royal Dutch Shell, sometimes use the switch even when it is not required by country regulations.

Experts have said that the remote-control switch may have been able to shut off the Deepwater Horizon well, and critics of have said the lack of the remote control is a sign U.S. authorities have been too lax with the industry.

More here.

From the New York Times:

U.S. Missed Chances to Act on Oil Spill

The Obama administration has publicly chastised BP America for its handling of the spreading oil gusher, yet a review of the response suggests it may be too simplistic to place all the blame for the unfolding environmental catastrophe on the oil company. The federal government also had opportunities to move more quickly, but did not do so while it waited for a resolution to the spreading spill from BP.

The Department of Homeland Security waited until Thursday to declare that the incident was “a spill of national significance,” and then set up a second command center in Mobile, Ala. The actions came only after the estimate of the size of the spill was increased fivefold to 5,000 barrels a day.

And

Some oil industry critics questioned whether the federal government is too reliant on oil companies to manage the response to major spills, leaving the government unable to evaluate if the response is robust enough.

“Here you have the company that is responsible for the accident leading the response to the crisis,” said Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program. “There is a problem here, and the consequence is clear.”

But it is still the government, in this case the Coast Guard, that has the final say. A law passed a year after the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster makes the owner of a rig or vessel responsible for cleaning up a spill. But oversight of the cleanup is designated to the Coast Guard, with advice from other federal agencies.

More here.

Again from the New York Times:

Tax on Oil May Help Pay for Cleanup

The federal government has a large rainy day fund on hand to help mitigate the expanding damage on the Gulf Coast, generated by a tax on oil for use in cases like the Deepwater Horizon spill.

Up to $1 billion of the $1.6 billion reserve could be used to compensate for losses from the accident, as much as half of it for what is sometimes a major category of costs: damage to natural resources like fisheries and other wildlife habitats.

Under the law that established the reserve, called the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, the operators of the offshore rig face no more than $75 million in liability for the damages that might be claimed by individuals, companies or the government, although they are responsible for the cost of containing and cleaning up the spill.

And

But damages in oil spills can run to big money.

“One billion dollars sounds like a lot of money, but it really might not be,” said Mr. LeVine, who is based in Juneau, Alaska.

Companies that lose business — fishermen who cannot fish, or hotel owners who cannot rent out rooms — can seek damages. So can governments that see tax revenues decline.

More here.

And again from the New York Times:

New Technique Holds Hope for Oil Spill Cleanup

Among the various weapons employed against the gushing crude has been the distribution of chemical dispersants on the water’s surface to break down the oil. The new approach involves the deployment of the dispersants underwater, near the source of the leaks. Officials said that in two tests, that method appeared to be keeping crude oil from rising to the surface. They said that the procedure could be used more frequently once evaluations of its impact on the deepwater ecology were completed.

More here.

The news on this just keeps getting more depressing. That, or anger inducing. Choose your poison.

The Gulf Stream may take a significant portion of all that oil--nobody appears to know how much, even though BP, of course, claims that they know--around the Southern tip of Florida and start creating havoc on the East coast. And this issue about how much oil is actually being spilled is definitely worth considering: BP, of course, continues to downplay the amount, for PR reasons, I guess; but government officials and an anonymous BP source predict that it could end up being tens of millions of barrels.

Meanwhile, it now appears that the oil industry talked the federal government out of requiring offshore rigs to use equipment that could have stopped this spill in its tracks. Equipment that Brazil and Norway already require, that at least one major oil company uses simply because it thinks it's a good idea to do so. But we don't require it because the oil industry, in its collective wisdom, said it was a bad idea. In related events, the feds took the word of BP as God's truth that the oil giant had things under control, which consequently delayed government action.

It's tempting to lay all of the blame for this at the feet of BP, or the entire oil industry, or Obama's White House. But I can't really see much of a difference between the oil industry and the government. So I don't really know who to blame.

Ah, but there's hope! The feds long ago established a big oil spill fund worth a billion and a half. Unfortunately, it's increasingly looking like the damages are going to greatly exceed such a princely sum. There's just no way American taxpayers can avoid taking a major hit on this. I'm sure that BP lawyers are already discussing ways to reorganize under bankruptcy laws that will allow them to avoid the lion's share of costs, just as Union Carbide did with the Bhopal disaster back in the 1980s. But don't lose hope just yet! There's a new technique for dispersing the oil at its source that might, might, be effective. They think. Maybe.

This is so fucked up. I'm really having trouble getting a handle on it. All I can think is that we've known since the early 70s how bad it is for our economy to be so utterly dependent on oil, and we've had all kinds of really promising research into alternative forms of energy, but we've done nothing. Nothing. And most of that is because the oil industry seems literally to be a part of the government, an unelected and apparently unaccountable part. They own a big piece of Obama and even bigger pieces of Congress.

And all we can do is sit here and watch the oil start coating the coastlines.

The growing oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico is captured in this image from NASA's
(MODIS) instrument aboard the Terra satellite. This natural-color image acquired
April 29, 2010 shows a twisting patch of oil nearly 125 km (78 mi) wide.
(NASA Earth Observatory/Jesse Allen/University of Wisconsin SSEC)

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$