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Friday news dump-

Bp Tony falls on his sword-  will anyone be surprised ?  But to an American named, of all things…..  Dudley?

We won’t have bp Tony of Deepwotter Spinmeister to slosh around anymore. Damn.

Things I couldn’t make up if I tried, continued, BP Oil Spill category, day 47 :

From the Florida Department of Tourism, Friday, June 4th, 2010

Pending castastrophe special:

http://www.visitflorida.com/fl…

Florida Travel Update

Updated June 4, 2010 1:45 p.m.

There have been confirmed tar ball sightings in widely scattered areas east of Pensacola. Additional impacts

are expected in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties within the next 72 hours.

At this time, there are no beach closures. Florida’s 825 miles of beaches, 1,260 miles of coastline and 14 seaports, including cruise ships, remain open for business.

At this time, Florida’s state waters remain open to recreational fishing. On June 5 and 6, both residents and nonresidents of Florida may fish for saltwater species around the state without a license. Go to http:/www.MyFWC.com/Fishing for more information.

VISIT FLORIDA believes that planning your Sunshine State vacation should be the beginning of a great experience.

If you’re concerned about any potential impact from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, we encourage you to check with local destinations in order to get the most up-to-date information. To make it easy, we’re providing you

links below.

For the state’s official response to the oil spill: http:/www.dep.state.fl.us/deep…

For official trajectory and forecast information, visit NOAA’s site.

If it gets noticeable, we’ll just go to catch and release

Vroom, vroom, vroom whirrr whirrr whirrrr ……

whoopsie !  

PORT FOURCHON, La.  The risky effort to contain the nation’s worst oil spill hit a snag Wednesday when a diamond-edged saw became stuck in a thick pipe on a blown-out well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said the goal was to free the saw and finish the cut later in the day. This is the latest attempt to contain, not plug,  the gusher. The best chance at stopping the leak is a relief well, which is at least two months from completion.

“I don’t think the issue is whether or not we can make the second cut. It’s about how fine we can make it, how smooth we can make it,” Allen said.

The saw and framework have now been freed from the BOP’s riser pipe, from what I have watched on the live feed, and are being hauled back up to the surface.  Here’s the photo sequence I took. The first photo is from last night, which shows the pipe saw in action on the BOP riser.  I added contrast to these pictures.

BP and Your Federal Government, welcome you to the Gulf of Mexico’s Dia de los Cortadores de Pipa celebration for the first day of Hurricane Season.  

His Tools Are Bigger Than Your Tools

And the sooner he can get this done:

ROV moving under the BOP with headlights as pincer arm prepares to grasp pipe for the saw to cut

*

*

June 1, 2010. Tues afternoon.   BP Starts Cutting the Pipes coming out of the BOP of the Deepwater Horizon.  Oil spill of the Deepwater Horizon, day 41.

*

The Sooner he can go on to getting his life back.

Poor Baby.  BP CEO Tony Hayward laments the distraction that 2 million gallons of oil a day can cause when it hits our nation’s biggest marine nursery for subtropical fish, mammals, and birds.

video transcript:

BP CEO Tony Hayward:  “We’re sorry.

We’re sorry for the massive disruption this caused to their lives.  I…. we’re….  there’s no on who wants this thing over more than I do.  I want my life back .”

narrator:   Life here may never be the same. The water and all that lives in and around (shows oiled pelican) could be harmed for years.  So on this holiday weekend some people in New Orleans protested.

bullhorn:  we’re trying to clean up this mess

woman with umbrella:   I’m  filled with anxiety every night and I hope that BP executives feel the same way, unfortunately I doubt that they do.

Meanwhile, Rear Admiral Mary Landry, lately famous for shepherding the Lost, er, BP’s hapless spokesperson Doug Suttles, thru the official press conferences,  has been put back on duty with the Coast Guard to prepare for Hurricane Season.    http://www.deepwaterhorizonres…

Just as Attorney General Eric Holder announces a criminal investigation into what BP was doing, and the President issues another sternly worded statement.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

“We will closely examine the actions of those involved in the spill. If we find evidence of illegal behavior, we will be extremely forceful in our response.” Holder said in New Orleans.    

The president said that if laws are insufficient, they’ll be changed. He said that if government oversight wasn’t tough enough, that will change, too.

Laws, schmaws.  What about policy. Who opened more coastal offshore areas to bidding leases?  And enforcement of existing safety checks. Who’s MMS signed off on the well design ?

This from the same guy who couldn’t find anybody doing anything criminally wrong with Jack Abramoff’s old unindicted co conspirators, nor from the mercenary and CIA rendition & torture crews since his boss has been in office.  Did I mention that Abramoff was a long time lobbyist for foreign energy interests ?

It’s all good !

Pass the candles.   Prepare the offerings.

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edit update 5:30 pm PDT:

  Per the Alabama Dept of Health pdf link in the first comment, oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill has now officially reached the coastline of Alabama, near Dauphin Island,  closing the offshore oyster beds, and fishing grounds of that state.  You can beach, but don’t get in the water or swim, and seek medical advice if you have trouble breathing.   They didn’t say what legal advice to seek if you have trouble earning a living.

Warning. Not. Snark. BP has hired the former press secretary for ex VP Dick Cheney to be their new spokesperson for US media relations.  Anne Womack Kolton, formerly of the Brunswick Group , also defended Dick Cheney’s secret Energy Task Force,   http://emptywheel.firedoglake….   and ran public affairs in the Dept of Energy under George W Bush.

from Brunswick

http://www.prnewswire.com/news…

Before joining the Department of Energy, Ms. Kolton was Director of

Public Affairs for the U.S. Department of the Treasury, where she was the

primary spokesperson on issues and policy related to financial markets,

financial institutions and financial education. She has extensive

on-the-record experience with the media, particularly those covering energy

and finance. Ms. Kolton also served as an advisor to  Securities and

Exchange Commission Chairman William Donaldson, as a White House

spokesperson and on major state and national political campaigns.

Cheney, The Treasury, and the SEC.   Perfect.  If Darth Cheney didn’t have his sticky little fingers in it directly before, he does now.

Turned on the tube, there’s a live press conference with  Rr. Admiral Landry and BP’s Spokesperson Doug Suttles.

Top Kill is officially Not Working.  

Suttles

“We’ve tried and it scares everybody that we haven’t succeeded in getting this stopped.”

No. Kidding.

Admiral Landry.

Obviously we’re very disappointed in today’s announcement.

We will continue with a very aggressive response posture (to get this under control)

Have directed BP to to move forward with the next option, LMRP.  

(added later quote) The real solution has been and continues to be the relief well.  

Mmm, hmm. Yes.

They think that if they can get a good seal over the top, the LMRP  Cap, lower marine riser package Cap, might work, which is the option they are going for next.

This is a newly engineered object, different than what they have used before, which is going to go on top on what they have, with a sort of seal, not a mechanical seal, but a “sealing device” and methanol injection for antifreeze,  that Suttles says “should” capture a lot of the oil.   Will not be a tight fitting may not completely seal off like a flange.

Pipe will be cut with a large crimping device and a big saw to get it ready for its new LMRP CAP.   (this is not being done for the pathetic little “top hat” device they lowered to the marine floor, never to be seen again. this is a new thing.)

Wilberforce correctly anticipated this this morning.   Where I disagreed is that this was happening this am,  is that it is going to take at least 4 days to set up, per the Coast Guard and Suttles, right now.  Landry is saying now, more like 4 to 7 days, because people remember the smaller number, and they hit glitches in trying to execute this, she emphasizes this is cutting edge technology.  They are using the data they gather from the “sippy tube” other end of the broken pipe to help design this.   That is currently what is being shown on the live feed and what was being shown earlier today.  I’ve seen then playing around with cutting on this end before.

I thought they would be too timid and/or cautious to try actually cutting the mess on the top of the BOP, because this will release a huge amount of oil that is currently restricted, which they then must be able to get this new cap securely attached, unfrozen inside,  to capture, but they are going for it. This is letting more of the Genie out of the bottle, and he’s not going to go back in easier.

My intrepretation is that they fear the well casing is not in very good shape and they want to start siphoning asap in case the relief well fails or the vital structures of the well fails, which Adm. Landry said was a possibility earlier this week.  A major hole blow out is only good for the movies.  In really, that is a catastrophe which will be unstoppable until all the oil and gas have leached out, which could take….. years.  

Suttles is also still bullsh*tting people on the Corexit, says the monitoring shows no toxicity.  Says breaking the oil up into tiny droplets will allow the microbes to eat it more easily.  

More like it’s keeping under the surface and swirling around in the Gulf in vast swarms.

Suttles: 12,000 feet deep in the relief well, counting 5000 feet of water, best forecast for the relief well is early August.

This is still a very dangerous and risky operation, and if you are in the habit of praying, start doing it.

______

edit update, here’s a picture from Beyond Pathetic of what I shall be calling Oil Hat Sucker #3

We had the containment “outhouse” box that froze shut, the sippy tube stuck up its bum, the drill mud top kill that didn’t, the junk shot that wouldn’t clog the petrotoilet, and the the forlorn little cap that they sunk down there and never used.  And now,

Introducing BP’s Oil Spill LMRP Lower Marine Riser Package CAP,  aka Oil Hat Sucker #3.    

Which is going to use a pressure gasket with no hardware casing, as a fitting on a 12,000 pounds per square inch oil and methane gas wildcat well 5,000 feet under the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.

As the spoof twitter bpTerry of spoof twitter bpPublic Relations said yesterday, “I just bought a magic wand, and I’m going to start waving it. ”

__

second update.

fixed spelling in blockquote, added sentence by Landry which clarifies the relief well is the way they expect to finally get this under permanent control.   Suttles reiterated that the other oil gathering devices, the caps,  are to test and implement and prevent as much oil as possible from getting loose in the Gulf and washing ashore, while this solution is worked on.

BP’s Tony Hayward is quoted by CNN as being “disappointed”  top kill failed.   Yeah, we are too.  Especially since it was more of a test round and you never did cap off the sippy tube open end.

The CNN guy is so excited he just said the Top Tail Method did not work to kill the well. You could see him wondering if he should correct himself, he just went on.

 

The Senate broke early, this past Thursday,  for their 11 day long vacation, kicked off with the Memorial Day Holiday upcoming on Monday.   They aren’t coming back into session until June 7 th.   They can’t “do” anything because of their arse kissing fillibuster rules until June 11th, 15 days after that.

HuffPo.  You need to read the entire story, but here’s a taste:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

On June 1, several programs, including extended unemployment benefits, will expire. By the end of the week, 19,400 people will prematurely stop receiving checks, according to data from the Department of Labor. How long will it take the Senate to finish the bill? With Republicans promising to stand in the way, leadership will need to file at least one time-consuming “cloture” motion to break the filibuster and to set up a vote by the end of the week in the best-case scenario. By the end of the following week, the number of premature unemployment exhaustions will climb to 323,400. The week after that, 903,000. By the end of the month, 1.2 million.

It will be the third time this year that lawmakers have allowed extended unemployment benefits to lapse, and the second time they’ve decided to leave town for recess fully knowing the lapse would cause panic and confusion among blameless layoff victims — not to mention what Katz calls a “huge” administrative burden on state workforce agencies.

But this is the first time the Democratic Party can’t even half-plausibly blame the Republicans for the lapse. “This isn’t being done because of Republicans, believe me.  This is done because there’s a group of us, we don’t have a majority, but they listen,” said Rep. Dutch Ruppersburger (D-Md.), who fought to shrink the size of the bill. “I think it’s really symbolic. We have a very diverse party and the party has come together… This is a real victory for the moderates and the Blue Dogs and the freshmen, that our party leadership is working with us to let this happen.”  

The difference between the Blue Dogs and the Progressive Caucus, as I have repeatedly pointed out, is that the Blue Dog contingent is already a sell out to the established domestic energy, pharma, and tobacco industries, from which it takes donations, and said industries also are the financial backers of the Tea Party movement, which is the Republican Party’s astroturf for non thinking, feel good libertarian type older voters already on government benefits.

The House sucked up to the Blue Dog contingent to get their version ready for the Senate, and the Senate, as usual, skeedadled out the door, without taking any action on it,  laughing at them again.   The House also just left the entire month of December 2010 out of the bill, so the budget “deficit hawks” in the flyover states, like Sen. Kent Conrad  (D, ND, Middle East Warmonger, Domestic Budget “hawk”) can look at it again.

“It’s so hard to know what the economic conditions will be at that point,” he said.

Remember that “health insurance reform” bill these clowns just passed with great fanfare a few months ago ?

They are cutting the unemployed COBRA’s benefits, too.  Any person laid off after this Monday, May the 31st, will not be able to get COBRA subsidies to continue to purchase health insurance.  Welcome to the open market and the Emergency Room, folks !  

edit update(See Thursday morning update at bottom of diary)

Rr. Admiral Landry granted approval for BP to begin plugging the well. (Wednesday am)

5/26/10  11:53 am CST

http://www.deepwaterhorizonres…

Federal On-Scene Coordinator Rear Admiral Mary Landry, acting on the validation of government scientists and in consultation with the National Incident Commander Admiral Thad Allen, has granted approval for BP to begin proceeding with their attempt to cap the well using the technique known as the “top kill.”

This expedited step provides the final authorization necessary to begin the procedure.

Per the Joint Information Center Unified Command,  http://twitter.com/Oil_Spill_2…   “TOP KILL” is a Go at the blown out BP Oil rig a mile under the Gulf of Mexico, and the oil company will attempt to block the well with drill mud pumped in thru new lines connected to the Blow Out Preventer on the well head, which run up to the ships above.

I will be updating this diary during the day as news progress.

I just turned off the television idiots who could not tell me whether or not this was happening.  If there is a delay, it is because BP feels like they are not ready or have hit a technical problem, but the Govt says “go.”  

Source:

http://www.deepwaterhorizonres…

A Press Conference w/ EPA Admin Lisa Jackson & USCG Rr Adm Mary Landry on Monday 5/24/10 3:30 pm Central DT to discuss dispersants.  There’s a transcript of the live blog.

Last week EPA ordered BP to stop using Corexit and look for something less toxic.  BP is still using Corexit.  From the following transcript, it appears that BP will continue to be using Corexit and EPA “will be conducting their own tests  to find the least toxic dispersants.”

Then the conference call goes over to Rr Admiral Landry at 3:58 pm.  “In a crisis mode still, never dealt with a well releasing oil 5000 feet below the water.”