Tag: Oil Spill

2010 All Over Again

This is for those with short memories….

In 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig blew up and cause a massive oil leak that dumped about 200 million gallons of oil into the central Gulf of Mexico….it contaminated sea life, beaches and ruined the economy of many Gulf Coast states like Louisiana, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi beaches were spared the bad stuff for our barrier islands protected our beaches for the most part but Florida and Alabama were not so lucky.

In case your memory is not what it once was….here are some facts….

Fact #1: More than 200 million gallons of crude oil was spilled into the Gulf of Mexico during the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill.

Fact #2: Deepwater Horizon was a 9yr old semi-submersible, mobile floating, dynamically positioned drilling rig that could operate in water up to 10,000’ deep.

Fact #3: At 9:45am high pressure methane gas from the well expanded into the drilling riser and rose into the drilling rig, the rig ignited and exploded

Fact #4: Over 16,000 miles of coastline was affected during the spill. The coastlines of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida were all affected.

Fact #5: 5.5 million feet of oil spill containment boom was deployed to help collect the oil.

Fact #6: Over 8,000 animals were reported dead 6 months after the spill.

This spill effected the seafood industry as well….fish were not caught, shrimp were not fished, oysters were dead and crabs were contaminated…all of which is a mainstay of the Gulf Coast industry….so why am I going on about past doings that most have forgotten?

Easy.

Deja vu.

Just when the fishing grounds were on the rebound from the Deepwater fiasco….it is happening again….

A leak from an underwater pipeline released more than 1 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico before the flow was shut off, the Coast Guard estimated. The leak was spotted Thursday, about 19 miles offshore of the Mississippi River Delta southeast of New Orleans, Reuters reports. Main Pass Oil Gathering Co. turned off the 67-mile line the same day. On Friday and Saturday, overflights saw the oil moving to the southwest, away from the Louisiana shore, per WDSU. No injuries or shoreline impacts have been reported.

rews are searching for the source of the leak, which was near Louisiana’s Plaquemines Parish, using underwater remote-operated vehicles. The Coast Guard said three skimming vessels are trying to remove the oil on the surface. The National Response Team was activated, the Environmental Protection Agency said, which mobilizes 15 federal entities to help

While the spill is dwarfed by previous spills, like the Deepwater Horizon crisis that saw 130 million gallons of crude pouring into the Gulf in 2010, it’s nonetheless a grim environmental catastrophe that could have devastating effects on the local environment.

“Ocean wildlife will almost certainly pay a terrible price for this huge pipeline spill, which is less an accident than an entirely predictable consequence of offshore oil operations,” said Kristen Monsell, senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a statement.

This does not make national news….no one cares if I am honest  those mental midgets do not have to try a eek out a living from the Gulf.

How long must these crises go on before someone cares enough to put a stop tho this insanity?

Turn The Page!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

 

Deepwater Horizon

Closing Thought—14Feb20

Not some terrible movie that did a little to help change things but rather the real life disaster that is still adversely effecting the Gulf of Mexico……

Seafood is still not recommended for consumption….which is devastating to a region that depended on seafood for a livelihood….plus all the freshwater in the Gulf has killed the oyster harvest for a couple of years.

Back to the oil spill…..a decade on and the news it was worse than first reported……

The Deepwater Horizon spill was worse than thought, thanks to “invisible and toxic oil,” say researchers. Ahead of the 10th anniversary of the Gulf of Mexico disaster, a study out of the University of Miami suggests the spread of the spill was 30% larger than satellite data indicated, reports the Washington Post. “There was a substantial fraction of oil invisible to satellites and aerial imaging,” says study co-author Igal Berenshtein, per USA Today. Co-author Claire Paris-Limouzy explains that satellites easily detect oil that comes to the surface “as a thick layer” but miss smaller concentrations. The researchers used 3D computer simulations to identify a greater range of damage, one that stretches from Texas to the east coast of Florida, reports CNN.

What’s more, the “invisible” oil was so toxic it could have killed half of all marine life it touched, according to the study in Science Advances. “Oil in these concentrations for surface water extended beyond the satellite footprint and fishery closures, potentially exterminating a vast amount of planktonic marine organisms across the domain,” the authors write. The hope is that their approach will be used in conjunction with satellite imagery to detect the full extent of future spills. The Deepwater spill dumped somewhere between 168 million to 210 million gallons of oil into the Gulf.

After destroying the economy of the Northern Gulf of Mexico what did BP do to change things?

The changed their ad direction to make them sound all sunshine and unicorns and green tech…..

In 2014 BP asks the SCOTUS to let them off the hook….


By way of background, in the wake of the catastrophic Deepwater Horizon oil spill, BP sought to buy its way out of thousands upon thousands of lawsuits brought under the federal Oil Pollution Act. BP knew that defense of many of those cases would be nigh on impossible, and would take literally decades and untold billions of dollars in legal fees. The beleaguered business owners of the Gulf Coast states, who’d seen their businesses throttled by BP’s massive pollution, knew that protracted litigation would not serve their interests, either. After all, when your seafood restaurant in Jackson faces both a decline in sales due to a concern over safety and an increase in price for inferior replacement items, the prospect of money 5 years down the line is cold comfort.

Enter the class action settlement of all Business Economic Loss (BEL) claims.

https://cottonmouthblog.blogspot.com/2014/05/bp-to-ask-us-supreme-court-to-let-them.html

I spend time talking with locals and there are areas that they will not fish and their business is still suffering….

My small protest I do not sue BP products unless it is an emergency…..just my small voice.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–06Nov19

Remember back a couple of years ago and the XL Pipeline? Remember the protests? Remember the promises that this would be a completely safe endeavor?

The NAs continue to protests and the administration continues to tell the lies of the safety of the pipeline….

With all the silliness around the impeachment process…all the yelling and lying and denials….a story was under reported in the MSM….it seems that the Keystone XL pipeline has sprung a leak……

It just keeps happening over and over and over and……

“I wish I could say I was shocked, but a major spill from the Keystone pipeline is exactly what multiple experts predicted would happen,” Greenpeace USA senior research specialist Tim Donaghy said in a statement. “In fact, this is the fourth significant spill from the Keystone pipeline in less than ten years of operation. History has shown us time and again that there is no safe way to transport fossil fuels, and pipelines are no exception.”

The latest Keystone spill was first detected Tuesday night by TC Energy, the pipeline’s owner, and the extent of the damage to the surrounding areas is not yet known to the public. According to Greenpeace, the leak “is already the eighth-largest pipeline oil spill of the last decade.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/10/31/it-happens-over-and-over-and-over-and-over-keystone-pipeline-leaks-least-383000

But this sort of thing was not going to happen because of all the safety features incorporated in the design off the pipeline……and yet…..

the Keystone Pipeline spilled about 383,000 gallons of crude oil in North Dakota.

It’s nothing short of an environmental disaster — and it probably won’t be the last time that the particularly-leaky pipeline spills, experts told The New York Times. The pipeline, which the U.S. government said in 2011 would pose “no significant impact” to the area, has now flooded half an acre of wetland with toxic sludge.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/keystone-pipeline-spilling-crude-oil

Too late…..the spills happen as predicted but no one cared and the fix was in….and the spills continue….as well as the lies about the pipe line safety.

I Read, I Wrote, You Know

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

BP Oil Spill UpDate

Just over 4 years ago the Gulf was the site of the world’s worse oil spill….that is right the BP debacle….I live on the gulf Coast and had to live with the horrible pics of the day….my state was a bit luckier than the others because we have a chain of barrier islands that sort of protected our beaches from the gunk………but thanx to the spill the economy was crashed into the Gulf and it is slowly coming back….still not a 100% but it is trying……..

I bring this up because BP is still fighting the penalties that have been leveled at them……and new info has been reported……..

A federal judge has ruled that BP’s reckless conduct resulted in the nation’s worst offshore oil spill, leaving the company open to billions of dollars in penalties. US District Judge Carl Barbier’s ruling today could nearly quadruple the amount of civil penalties BP could face for polluting the Gulf of Mexico with its Macondo well blowout. Barbier presided over a trial in 2013 to apportion blame for the spill that spewed oil from April 20 to mid-July 2010. Eleven men died in the explosion; BP already has agreed to billions of dollars in criminal fines. Barbier says BP bears 67% of the blame for the spill, drilling rig owner Transocean Ltd. takes 30% of the blame, and cement contractor Halliburton Energy Services takes 3%.

I have said all along that BP will some how get out of these fines and penalties….why would I think that?  look at the Exxon Valdez spill from the 80’s…..Exxon has never paid what they were ordered to pay and BP will slither out of their responsibility somehow.

I will be watching this to see if I am predicting correctly or not……..what is your guess?

The British Are Coming!

Something wicked this way comes……..(Ray Bradbury)

Just outside my front door was the world’s worst environmental disaster ever……..the impact of the oil spill is still being felt and who knows what will be the results of future tests to determine water quality…..BP has ponied up about $50 billion in damages….and there is still NO definitive proof that all is okay…there are a wealth of opinions on the subject….most come from the American Petroleum Institute…..a think tank to convince the multitude that the oil industry is a somehow safe…….I have my doubts.

But thanx to the lame brain thinking of ‘drill baby drill’ the British (BP) are allowed to resume their work in the Gulf……..

BP is taking a big step in its recovery following 2010’s massive oil spill. The US has agreed to lift the 2012 ban that kept the oil company from doing business with the US government—including seeking contracts in the Gulf of Mexico. That means the company can begin competing for new contracts and leases as early as next Wednesday’s scheduled Gulf auction—though its path to the Gulf isn’t quite as neat as that. Per the agreement, it will have to meet increased ethics, corporate governance, and safety requirements, and must foot the bill for annual reviews by an independent auditor for the next five years. Those results will be handed over to the EPA, which can take action should the agreement be “breached,” the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal report. It’s “the best news BP has gotten since the accident,” notes an oil company analyst; to wit, the Journal points out that the 2012 injunction saw the company lose the opportunity to renew military fuel contracts valued at $2.3 billion. “BP has to get back into the hunt in order for them to score.” Others, unsurprisingly, aren’t as thrilled with the news. Activist group Public Citizen says the decision “lets a corporate felon and repeat offender off the hook for its crimes against people and the environment.” Craig Hooks at the EPA, however, says it’s “a fair agreement that requires BP to improve its practices in order to meet the terms we’ve outlined together.”

Wonder what this piece of good news cost BP?  Cash was undoubtedly passed around…but the big question should be….who got the cheddar?

Is It Happening Again?

Remember a couple of years ago and the BP oil rig disaster?  Well, guess what?  Off the coast of Louisiana there is another situation that could be a disaster in the making……..

Crews worked Wednesday to seal an old oil and gas well off the Louisiana coast that began leaking during work to plug it permanently.

Eileen Angelico, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, said the bureau is reviewing plans to seal the well. She said it’s most likely that drilling mud will be pumped in to stop the small flow.

The well and production platform, in the Gulf of Mexico about 75 miles southwest of the oil depot at Port Fourchon, are owned by a subsidiary of Houston-based Talos Energy LLC. The company said the well had not been producing for years.

Talos President Timothy S. Duncan said saltwater and small amounts of natural gas and the light oil-and-water mixture called condensate escaped the well. A light sheen is expected to evaporate.

Duncan said Wild Well Control Inc. has been brought in to seal the leak.

The well did not blow out, and there was no explosion or fire on the platform, Coast Guard Lt. Lily Zepeda said.

The well is one of three on a platform in water 144 feet deep. Production from the other two wells has been shut down.

Talos acquired the platform and wells in its February 2013 acquisition of Energy Resources Technology GOM, which also is based in Houston.

But we still will have the whack-a-doodles yelling “drill baby drill” (a post to come) and no t one of them will pay any attention to the possible problems there support could cause……but what do you expect from clowns owned by the banking clan?  They are trained animals that do as they are instructed like any good beat down animal…….good boys!

Deepwater Horizon: The Result

I live on the gulf coast and was around for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill….that spill that few want to remember thanx to the high price of gas…….I am sure that all my readers saw the horrific oil goo that was all over the estuaries and the oil sheen that covered much of the northern Gulf of Mexico……and now we have BP spending like a bitch to make everything appear to be okay and that life goes on and the peasants danced!

But sports fans, is everything okay?

A recent study has confirmed that toxic compounds derived from oil that was released in the Deepwater Horizon spill that occurred in the Gulf of Mexico nearly two years ago has entered the ocean’s food chain through microorganisms.

The study, funded by the National Science Foundation and led by a team of researchers from East Carolina University, the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, Oregon State University, Georgia Institute of Technology, and the U.S. Geological Survey, detected chemical compounds found in oil called hydrocarbons, some known to be carcinogenic, within the bodies of microscopic crustaceans called zooplankton.

“Our research helped to determine a ‘fingerprint’ of the Deepwater Horizon spill–something that other researchers interested in the spill may be able to use,” Dr. Siddhartha Mitra of East Carolina University said in a statement. “Furthermore, our work demonstrated that zooplankton in the Northern Gulf of Mexico accumulated toxic compounds derived from the Macondo well.”

Read More…

So now the question is….is the seafood truly okay to consume?  And is everything truly okie-dokie in the waters of the northern Gulf?

Never Ask What Could Be Worse

I live on the Gulf Coast…a lovely place if you are in a coma…..but enough of that….in 2005 Hurricane Katrina kicked our ass…in case you are not aware Katrina hit the Mississippi Gulf Coast, NOT New Orleans…..NO was a man made disaster…the levies could not hold….the after math of the storm was a complete breakdown in the community and an environmental nightmare….

And just when things were getting a bit better…BP gave us a real cool piece of news….yet another environmental disaster was heading our way……the seafood and fishing industries were one of the major employment blocks  in the are…..hopefully, everyone will remember just how really great that disaster was for about a 100 days before BP put a cork in the leak…..

The fix, the cork as it were has worked well for a time now….but just when we thought things would start to return to a chaotic norm we have this bit of news……

An offshore petroleum platform exploded and was burning Thursday in the Gulf of Mexico about 80 miles off the Louisiana coast, west of the site where BP’s undersea well spilled after a rig explosion.The Coast Guard says no one was killed in the blast, which was reported by a commercial helicopter flying over the area Thursday morning. All 13 people aboard the rig have been accounted for, with one injury. The extent of the injury was not known.

Seven Coast Guard helicopters, two airplanes and three cutters were dispatched to the scene from New Orleans, Houston and Mobile, Ala., Ben-Iesau said. She said authorities do not know whether oil was leaking from the site.  (Thanx to AP for the story)

While writing this post it is being reported that the Coast Guard has found a small oil sheen 100 feet wide and about a mile long……the Gulf Coast may have dodged a bullet on this rig explosion….but it is still early and as we know a lot can go wrong….

I will update this post as needed……

“Live With It…Life’s Hard!”

Recently I wrote a piece on the new “claim czar” and how he was NO friend to the people that he was suppose to be helping and few thought I was a bit hard on him and his new rule as the “claims czar……but as usual I was RIGHT!

From the horse’s mouth comes the news for Gulf residents…..

Gulf fishermen have reacted in anger to a decision made Friday by Obama’s appointee to oversee the “independent” claims escrow account funded by BP. Millionaire lawyer Kenneth Feinberg announced that he would subtract from any damage award the fishermen ultimately receive from BP money they have been paid for participating in the Vessels of Opportunity (VoO) cleanup program.

Through VoO, BP contracts local vessels in order to assist in highly dangerous oil containment and cleanup activities. Vessel owners reportedly earn about $5,000 per month through their participation in the program. Fishermen say that BP is rejecting their boats over arbitrary requirements and that even among those declared eligible to participate, only a fraction have been put to use.

Feinberg announced the ruling at a meeting with fishermen in Biloxi, Mississippi on Friday. Fishermen protested from the floor and some stormed out of the meeting in anger, declaring that it is now “pointless to work under the Vessels of Opportunity program, set up by BP to help clean up the damage” from the disaster, Reuters reported.

Did you really think that BP would pay the whole cost of the clean-up?  No!  Really?

The timing of Feinberg’s decision is revealing. It came the day after BP claimed initial success in capping its runaway Macondo well and in the midst of an Obama administration campaign to drive the disaster “off the front page,” as one Republican critic complained on Sunday.

Should the well be capped, the fishermen and others affected by the disaster can only expect Feinberg to draw a harder line as the blowout fades from media attention.

Bend over Gulf Coast….the screwing has just begun!

Clean Up We Can Believe In

From the desk of the Scriptorium

May I see a show of hands…..How many recall  the early days of the Obama presidency and he called for a Civilian Response Corps?…..volunteers in service to America, if you will….if you recall then you will also recall that some on the Right were calling this the attempt to take over the US by organizing an army that is indoctrinated in “socialism” or Fascism or whatever other pipe dream they had at the time…..any way, the CRC was a group of volunteers that would be first responders to problems across the world, the volunteers would come from many different agencies and would provide “expert” assistance.  It was a big deal on Right nutcase radio for awhile, Limbaugh, Beck, Bachmann and the rest of the pea brains…..

And then nothing…it has  gone silent…..

Before Obama’s CRC there was Clinton’s AmeriCorps which was put together to assist in education to environmental clean up…..GW Bush even went along for the ride and the program was expanding by 50%.

Okay, enough of the history lesson…where are you going with this, Professor?

Why have not the “volunteers” been used in the clean up?  Presidents have called on Americans to volunteer in service to the country, but yet NOTHING concerning the spill.  Why?  We are asked to donate to every situation that crosses the wire…it is Summer…school is out….why not ask Americans to do their part and volunteer in the Coast region?

What happened to the “Case for National Service”?

Obama’s position has considerable support. Last year Time magazine profiled the calls of a number of prominent Democrats in a cover story, “The Case for National Service,” supporting a plan to mandate universal service and establishing a cabinet-level Department of National Service. The plan envisioned 419,000 jobs annually for young people between the ages of 18-25 doing one year of “national or military service.”

What happened to this “plan”?  It is like all other ideas that come out at election time….once said, soon forgotten…..and you wonder why I have little use for today’s politicians?

The pundits want jobs…then use the “volunteers” to assist in the clean-up in the Gulf….granted it would be temp jobs but at least people could feed their families….

BTW, there is a phone scam going on asking for donations to assist in the oil spill clean-up…..sick bastards!