Tag: BP

I have 2 articles for your perusal this morning.

The first is a great article by David Mizner:

Don’t Blame Islam

Also in the New Yorker, Teju Cole wrote, “Violence from ‘our’ side continues unabated. By this time next month, in all likelihood, many more ‘young men of military age’ and many others, neither young nor male, will have been killed by US drone strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere. If past strikes are anything to go by, many of these people will be innocent of wrongdoing.”

That counts as progress. As does CNN’s decision to run a piece by Noam Chomsky that calls President Obama’s drone killings “the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times.” And as does Seamus Milne’s piece in the Guardian pointing out that violence like the Paris attack is an extension of Western wars.

Yet these pieces are still relatively kind to the United States and its allies. They downplay the role of the West in producing the violence that its “thought leaders” blame on Islam. The truth is not merely that Team USA’s violence is far greater than that of its enemies, or that the former triggers the latter, but that Western governments and their client states have actively empowered right-wing jihadist groups.

Jump!

I have 3 articles for your perusal this morning.

First, an accurate treatise on the state of ‘we the people’ in this country:

So Long, Liberty: 10 Ways Americans Have Lost Their Rights

Our most fundamental rights-to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness-are under assault. But the adversary is Big Wealth, not Big Government, as conservatives like to claim…

(snip)

These changes didn’t just happen. Wealthy individuals and corporations made it happen – and they’re still at it. Meanwhile, Corporate America’s wholesale theft of your individual liberties has been rebranded as a fight for … the corporation’s individual liberty.

Jump!

After scrapping stricter smog limit, President Barack Obama continues to throw the environment under the bus.

US regulator declines to enforce ‘death penalty’ on oil company despite environmentalists’ fury

The Obama administration has infuriated environmentalists by giving BP the green light to bid for new drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico.

The move – seen as a major step in the company’s political rehabilitation as an offshore driller following the Deepwater Horizon accident – was revealed by the head of the US safety regulator after a congressional hearing in Washington.

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BP declined to comment, but Friends of the Earth said it was appalled. “Governments should be administering the death penalty to all deepwater drilling rather than waiting for yet more devastating incidents like the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico or in any other part of the world,” argued Craig Bennett, director of policy and campaigns at the environmental group.

“It is not just BP operations that are deeply flawed,” he added. “There is not a single oil company that can say with a high degree of confidence that it can drill safely and how it will clear up if something goes wrong. It is clear in the context of climate change we need to develop new clean technologies, not hunt for fossil fuels in ever more remote and hard-to-reach areas.”

In May, the environmental writer and activist Bill McKibben – pondering a simmering energy issue – asked a NASA scientist to calculate what it would mean for the Earth’s climate if Canada extracted all of the petroleum in its rich Alberta oil sands region.

The answer to McKibben’s query came a month later: it would push atmospheric carbon concentrations so high that humans would be unable to avert a climate disaster. “It is essentially game over,” wrote James E. Hansen, who heads NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and is one of the nation’s leading voices against fossil fuel energy.

“This project represents a collision of multiple national interests and multiple political interests,” said P.J. Crowley, who served as spokesman for the State Department during part of the review process. “Energy security and environment normally go together, but in this case they are somewhat at odds. All have come together to make this a bigger deal than it might have appeared at first blush.”

Charles K. Ebinger, a senior fellow for energy at the Brookings Institution, said the issue has “become a test case for the Democrats” with two factions within the Obama camp asking the same question: “Is he with us or against us?”

“I do think it has become a defining political issue,” Ebinger said. “I don’t think he’s going to win any friends whichever way he goes.”

One year ago, there was this

Today there is still this:

A year after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the surrounding environment and those who depend on it are still facing an uncertain future. Nearby islands have seen visible land loss, and tar balls still roll onto coastal beaches occasionally. Federal plans on recovery projects are far from finalized, and President Obama said yesterday that while “significant progress has been made,” the “job isn’t done.”

Somehow, I have a feeling that BP will use this as a defense to stop any liability suits. Meanwhile the Obama regime, ever bowing to their corporate masters, continues to issue permits for deep water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico with absolutely no safe guards.

Tests on BP Well Blowout Preventer Confirm Redesign a Necessity

By Bob Cavnar at The Daily Hurricane

Yesterday, the Department of Interior released Det Norske Veritas’ (DNV) report on the forensic testing that it conducted on the blowout preventer (BOP) that failed to shut in BP’s blown out Macondo well almost a year ago.  I’m still going through the 500-plus page report to find answers to my many questions about the failed BOP, but I do agree with the over riding recommendation to the industry from DNV:

   “The finding of these studies should be considered and addressed in the design of future Blowout Preventers and the need for modifying current Blowout Preventers.”

DNV was addressing a recommendation to the industry that it study the causes and results of “elastic buckling” of the drill pipe within the Macondo BOP that pushed it to the side of the wellbore, preventing the blind shear ram, or the ram that is supposed to cut the pipe and seal the well, from doing so.  During the time of the blowout, the forces within the well were so strong that it lifted the drill pipe, causing it to buckle and push over to the side of the BOP bore, positioning it outside of the shearing faces of the rams.

BP Can Do More Tests on Deepwater Horizon Blowout Preventer, Court Rules

By Laurel Brubaker Calkins and Allen Johnson Jr. at Bloomberg News

BP Plc (BP/) can conduct additional tests on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig’s blowout prevention equipment now that government examiners have finished their own forensic testing, a judge ruled.

“The additional BOP testing shall be performed in a manner that preserves the evidence to the maximum extent possible,” U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier said in his order, referring to the blowout prevention equipment. He ruled that other companies involved in the disaster could also now run additional tests, so long as everyone is allowed to monitor the procedures and share in the results.

The 300-ton stack of valves failed to seal off BP’s runaway well last April, triggering a fatal rig explosion and the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history. BP asked Barbier for permission to partially dismantle and conduct laser scans on the blowout preventer, which was recovered from the sea floor off the Louisiana coast last year.

“BP is clearly looking for any liability they can pin on the BOP,” said Houston lawyer Brent Coon, one of the lawyers marshalling evidence for the consolidated oil-spill damages lawsuits against BP and other companies involved in the failed drilling operation, referring to the blowout preventer.

(emphasis mine)

In an exclusive investigation Rachel Maddow shows how the Department of the Interior is issuing deep water drilling permits despite a report finding the blow-out preventer design is flawed and despite drilling companies submitting emergency response plans that pre-date the Deep Water Horizon spill and therefore reflect none of the lessons of that disaster

Kenneth Feinberg’s plan to settle oil-spill claims met with opposition

By Steven Mufson, Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, November 22, 2010; 7:16 PM

Tuesday (TODAY!) is the day that Feinberg wants to end emergency payments by BP’s Gulf Coast Claims Facility to individuals and businesses for damage inflicted by the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. After Thanksgiving, Feinberg will start offering lump-sum payments to people ready to settle all present and future claims – giving up their rights to file lawsuits.

…

Earlier this month, Alabama Gov. Bob Riley (R) called Feinberg’s claims process “extortion,” and outgoing Alabama Attorney General Troy King issued a “consumer alert” warning people that Feinberg “works for BP.” Feinberg was named by President Obama, though BP is paying him and four other lawyers at his firm $850,000 a month to run the fund.

BP Gulf-Leak Estimates Slowed Efforts to Kill Well

Jim Efstathiou Jr., Bloomberg News

11/22/10

BP Plc “impeded” efforts to kill an out-of-control well in the Gulf of Mexico by underestimating the amount of oil gushing into the water, the staff of a presidential panel investigating the disaster said in a report.

Estimates of a 1,000-barrel-a-day leak after a drilling rig exploded April 20 delayed planning for techniques to seal the well, staff of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill said today. A U.S. government-appointed team of scientists in August said the well was gushing about 62,000 barrels a day after the blowout and 53,000 barrels when it was capped on July 15.

…

“Had BP not shown such aggressive indifference to the size of the disaster, and the oil industry to preparing for such an event, then perhaps early actions could have made a difference in stopping this spill,” Representative Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, said today in a statement.

…

The Obama administration blocked release of worst-case government estimates of the spill rate, the commission staff said in an Oct. 6 report. The move undermined public confidence in the U.S. response and may have hindered efforts to staunch the flow.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration “wanted to make public some of its long-term, worst-case discharge models for the Deepwater Horizon spill, and requested approval to do so from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget,” according to the staff paper. “The Office of Management and Budget denied NOAA’s request.”

Do you think Darrell Issa is going to want to investigate this?  Do you think the Obama Administration is blameless?

Well, it took me a while but I finally tracked down the Wall Street Journal article on the BP Blowout Disaster that every one-

• AFP
• Reuters
• AP
• The New York Times
• The Washington Post
• Bloomberg
• Business Week
• USA Today

is referencing.

I didn’t think it was much of a much in terms of things we didn’t know already, but it sure got the print media’s attention and since it did take so long to find I thought I’d share it with you.

Gulf Spill Linked to BP’s Lack of ‘Discipline’

By STEPHEN POWER, BEN CASSELMAN And RUSSELL GOLD, The Wall Street Journal

NOVEMBER 17, 2010

Engineers’ Report Blames Oil Giant for Failing to Ensure That Safety Trumped Cost; Regulators’ Technical Acumen Is Panned

An “insufficient consideration of risk” and “a lack of operating discipline” by oil giant BP PLC contributed to the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, according to a report due for public release Wednesday from a team of technical experts.

…

The report provides little new information on the specific causes of the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig, instead providing a long list of decisions by BP and other companies that it says may have played a role in the disaster.

…

But the panel also identifies non-technical factors that it says likely contributed to the accident. The panel cites off “a lack of management discipline” and a “lack of onboard expertise and of clearly defined responsibilities.”

The report doesn’t attempt to assign blame to individual workers or companies, and it doesn’t directly address one of the key questions raised by Congressional and other investigators: whether BP cut corners to save money. It does say that many of BP’s choices “were likely to result in less cost and less time relative to other options,” and it criticizes the lack of processes to ensure that safety didn’t take a back seat to cost.

One nice thing about it is that it does have a link to a .pdf version of the preliminary report.

BP and the Feds have fooled America and the entire world into thinking the BP Gulf Oil Spill is over, that the beaches are clean and that the seafood is safe, and everything is OK.

Titled “The Gulf Oil Spill isn’t over!” here’s a little bit of mournful Louisiana blues to tell the real story.

Let’s make this one viral…

Hat tip to Alexander Higgins who for months on his blog has been collecting every bit of news you can imagine about the BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil catastrophe.

About 500 years ago, Cortez landed in Mexico. He told the people who were already living there that they had to become subjects of the King of Spain. But, they told him, they were already subjects of Montezuma, the Emperor who was in Tenochtitlan. Cortez told them that Montezuma had to become a subject of the King of Spain, too, and he took Montezuma prisoner. As if that weren’t enough, he told the People that they had to give up their Old Gods and accept his God. Cortez’s God, he told them, was far more powerful than their Gods, and if they didn’t accept his God and abandon their own Gods and abandon their practice of having idols and human sacrifices and ceremonies and dances to their Gods, they would be killed. Also, Cortez told them, they had to deliver to Cortez all of their gold and silver. So it was that the Spanish foothold came to what is now Mexico in 1517.