http://www.fws.gov/home/dhoils…
594 birds
250 turtles
30 mammals
11 humans
Tag: Oil spill
Jun 08 2010
Body Count Continues
Jun 08 2010
Beyond Paradox & Look, We’re Dealing With Criminals
07 June 2010 – Attorney General Eric Holder announced that he would be launching a criminal investigation into the activities of BP that led to the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. But can we trust an AG who worked at one of the biggest corporate defense firms in the world? Mike Papantonio appears on The Randi Rhodes Show to take on BP, as well as explain the basics of his class action suit against BP.
Jun 07 2010
Take action on the BP disaster: protests near you (including national events on 6/12 and 6/26)
(Image from Greenpeace)
Hello all – hopefully I can make this into some kind of a short series or get someone to help me with this, but if not you’ll probably see at least one more diary on the subject from me. Basically, here’s a post where I’m trying to assemble all the information for protests that you need to know in order to take action against BP and for some kind of a clean energy future.
Go below the fold for a list of events/websites/facebook pages/etc.
(Just because of my own time constraints, I’ve only listed events in the US)
Jun 06 2010
Scientists confirm it — Massive Underwater Oil Plumes are There
Lab tests confirm underwater layers of oil
Cain Burdeau, AP — June 4, 2010
Laboratory tests confirmed that oil from a spewing Gulf of Mexico well has accumulated in at least two extensive plumes deep under the surface, scientists with the University of South Florida said Friday.
USF researchers at a meeting in Baton Rouge said lab tests showed their initial findings, based on field instruments, were correct. The extensive layers of oil are sitting far beneath the surface miles from the site of the Deepwater Horizon explosion. The university is collecting data for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The lab tests are the most conclusive evidence yet in a vigorous scientific debate about where much of the oil from the growing spill in the Gulf of Mexico has ended up.
BP spokesman Mark Proelger said the company was awaiting further analysis of what is in the plumes from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“It’s too early to say whether any data indicates the plumes contain oil or not,” Proelger said.
Well then WAKE UP and smell the petro, Mark!
Jun 05 2010
The Sword’s Edge: Obama And Big Oil
I posted this video interview almost 2 years ago here on November 29, 2008, and after the recent and ongoing poisoning of the Gulf of Mexico caused a least I think in part by the regulatory corruption of MMS and the US government by BP and the other oil companies, maybe it’s time to revisit the predictions made in this so long ago.
Antonia Juhasz is the author of The Bu$h Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time and most recently, The Tyranny of Oil: The World’s Most Powerful Industry, and What We Must Do To Stop It.
Juhasz is a policy-analyst and a Fellow with Oil Change International, “a research and advocacy organization that exists to force progress in the energy industry towards an environmentally and socially sustainable energy future”, and the Institute for Policy Studies, a policy studies non-profit think-tank for progressive or liberal causes based in Washington, D.C. IPS work is organized into over a dozen projects, all working collaboratively and strategically to pursue three overarching policy goals: Peace, Justice and the Environment.
She has taught at the New College of California in the Activism and Social Change Masters Program and as a guest lecturer on U.S. Foreign Policy at the McMaster University Labour Studies Program in a unique educational program with the Canadian Automobile Workers Union, and lives in San Francisco.
Antonia talked with Sharmini Peries of the The Real News about whether or not Barack Obama is likely to buck, or back, the most powerful corporations in the world, and whether he’ll continue the same foreign policies that have over the past 60 odd years of “pragmatic” conservative US imperialism nearly brought the empire to it’s knees, drastically lowering the amount of expenditures on liberal social policies.
Real News: November 29, 2008 – 7 min 37 sec
Will Obama rein in big oil?
Antonia Juhasz: Clinton-era deregulation helped big oil get bigger
Jun 05 2010
The Florida Coral Reefs may be Next …
If BP, along with the ‘Best and the Brightest’ can’t manage to turn off the spigot … The Florida Coral Reefs may be Next
Group Records Florida Coastal Environment Before Oil Arrives
Creighton Team Helps Oil Spill Study
MSNBC June 3, 2010
A research team from Creighton University is gathering data along Florida’s Gulf Coast and trying to stay ahead of the oil spill.
The team’s leader, John Schalles, said recovery crews aren’t the only ones scrambling against the resulting environmental disaster.
Creighton Professor John Schalles on the Oil Spill
Jun 03 2010
Gulf Oil Could Leak For Years
Well known CUNY Physics Professor Michio Kaku appeared on NBC’s Today Show with some disturbing comments.
RawStory reports:
After six methods for stopping the [Deepwater Horizon] leak failed, BP is now trying a seventh method: “cut and cap.”
[snip]
If this seventh attempt fails, the next option will be to wait on one of two relief wells to intercept and block the original well. This is considered the best hope for permanently stopping the flow, but those wells won’t be in place until August at the soonest. Some predict that it could take until Christmas.But Kaku thinks that even those predictions could be too optimistic.
“You would have to win the lottery to get on the first try an exact, an exact meeting at the bottom of the well in order to pump cement to shut it off,” Kaku told NBC’s Matt Lauer Wednesday.
If the attempt fails, the drill will be reversed, the hole will be filled with cement and they will try again.
“You have to do this over and over again until you get it just right,” Kaku said. “It takes many tries. So August is optimistic.”
“So this could be spewing oil for months. Could it last for a year?” asked Lauer.
“It could last for years, plural. Okay? If everything fails and all these different kinds of relief wells don’t work, it could be spewing stuff into the Gulf until we have dead zones, entire dead zones in the Gulf. For years,” Kaku said.
This video is from NBC’s Today Show, broadcast June 2, 2010.
Jun 02 2010
Wednesday: Saw Now Stuck in Pipe
Vroom, vroom, vroom whirrr whirrr whirrrr ……
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.
Jun 01 2010
“Feds open criminal probe of Gulf oil spill”
Full text of speech below
PORT FOURCHON, La. – Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday that federal authorities have opened criminal and civil investigations into the nation’s worst oil spill, and BP lost billions in market value when shares dropped in the first trading day since the company failed yet again to plug the gusher.
Investors presumably realized the best chance to stop the leak was months away and there was no end in sight to the cleanup. As BP settled in for the long-term, Holder announced the criminal probe, though he would not specify the companies or individuals that might be targeted.
“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.
Jun 01 2010
Stop BP and big money from buying Congress – take action for public campaign financing
Not much has changed since Will Rogers said “We have the best Congress money can buy.”
Wealthy special interests still trade big campaign contributions for special treatment from Congress on a regular basis.
One example is BP, the corporation responsible for the Gulf oil spill, which has given over 6 million dollars to candidates in the last 20 years.
It’s time to change the system so that Congress will work for the people – not the big-money special interests.
Tell your members of Congress to support the Fair Elections Now Act today.
The Fair Elections Now Act would set up a public financing system for qualified congressional candidates.
Public campaign financing would break big money’s stranglehold on our government, by helping candidates to run competitive campaigns without taking money from corporate lobbyists and PACs.
Many of America’s problems can be traced to our poorly regulated campaign finance system – where candidates for Congress take money from wealthy special interests in return for political favors.
The BP oil spill disaster is just one example of the harm caused by big money in politics. The oil industry’s political contributions helped BP avoid having to install crucial safety features on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that could have stopped the spill.
Outrageously, BP may avoid paying for the damage it caused thanks to a liability cap passed by Congress after the devastating 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.
It’s not hard to understand why Congress lets the oil companies have their way – the oil and gas industry gave a whopping $22.9 million to congressional candidates in 2008, and has already given $9.7 million in the 2010 election cycle.
Elected officials should be accountable only to the voters and the public good – not big corporations scheming behind the scenes to purchase political outcomes.
Tell your members of Congress to support the Fair Elections Now Act today.
May 31 2010
Tony Hayward issues Executive Order: Plumes do not Exist.
Since everything they try, to clean up the mess in the Gulf fails, BP CEO Tony Hayward has decided to take a different tact.
CEO Hayward has decided to “will away” the Oil by some sort of Divine Executive Fiat!
(Managing Billions of Dollars can inflate a person’s Ego sometimes, it seems.)
BP CEO disputes claims of underwater oil plumes
Associated Press — 05/30/2010
VENICE, La. – Disputing scientists’ claims of large oil plumes suspended underwater in the Gulf of Mexico, BP PLC’s chief executive on Sunday said the company has largely narrowed the focus of its cleanup to surface slicks rolling into Louisiana’s coastal marshes.
During a tour of a BP PLC staging area for cleanup workers, CEO Tony Hayward said the company’s sampling showed “no evidence” that oil was suspended in large masses beneath the surface. He didn’t elaborate on how the testing was done.
Hayward said that oil’s natural tendency is to rise to the surface, and any oil found underwater was in the process of working its way up.
“The oil is on the surface,” Hayward said. “There aren’t any plumes.”
So that’s, THAT, then.