Tag: BP

Jun 14 2010

Oil Leaks From Gulf Seabed Cracks Around BP’s Well Site?

Crossposted from Antemedius

BP has a collection of ‘bots’ or ROV’s, remotely operated vehicles, tethered underwater robots operating in the Gulf of Mexico near the blown out Macondo Well site, while they attempt to either plug the leak or at least find ways to recover and siphon off the leaking oil.

Sitting on top of the well pipe projecting from the seabed is the BOP, or Blow Out Preventer, the large steel 450 ton apparatus that you may have seen in various photographs and videos from BP’s Live Feed as they recently cut off the top of the riser pipe that ran from the BOP to the Deepwater Horizon platform before it burned and sank.

There has been much speculation lately that the well bore is damaged below the seabed and that oil is leaking out of the well into the seabed underneath and around the BOP.

Keeping in mind that the BOP weighs 450 tons it would seem that if the seabed is becoming saturated with oil leaking through it that is only a question of time before the seabed will no longer have the structural strength to support the weight of the BOP and that it could fall off the top of the well pipe it is sitting on, releasing an uncontrolled and uncontrollable flow of oil into the gulf with no way of plugging or stopping it.

BP denies that oil or gas are leaking from cracks in the sea floor on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.

This video was recorded from the Viking Poseidon ROV 1 on June 13th, 2010, and appears to show bursts of oil leaking from cracks in the seabed.

BP’s live feed from the Viking Poseidon ROV 1 is here, with the disclaimer ” Please be aware, this is a live stream and may freeze or be unavailable from time to time.”

Jun 13 2010

Will the BP Oilpocalypse cause a Paradigm Shift – Not Really

Everyone is following the BP story. Everyone is witnessing the horror in the Gulf.

Dead birds. Dead fish. Dead turtles. Dead dolphins.

No more blue fin tuna.

No more domestic shrimp and oysters.

Fishermen out of work. Tourist industries decimated.

Bobby Jindal, Bob Riley, Haley Barbour, Charlie Crist feet stomping about BP’s and the government’s delayed response.

What does it all mean?

Nothing really. Here’s why….

Jun 13 2010

On Setting Things Straight, Or, An Open Letter To The United Kingdom

Dear The United Kingdom,

I just wanted to take a minute to say hello and to see how things have been for you lately, and to maybe bring you up to date on a bit of news from here.

Well, right off the bat, we hear you have a new Conservative Prime Minister and that his Party and Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems are in partnership, which I’m sure will be interesting; you probably heard that us Colonials are again having Tea Parties, which has also been very interesting.

I have a Godson who’s getting married this September, so we’re all talking about that, and I hear Graham Norton was even better than last year at hosting Eurovision, despite the fact that it’s…frankly, it’s Eurovision.

Oh, yeah…we also had a bit of an oil spill recently that you may have heard about-and hoo, boy; you should see how the Company that spilled the oil has been acting.

Jun 12 2010

Pissed off! (Surely, I’m not saying this out LOUD!

So, I receive this from Sen. Leahy today, as follows:

Dear …….

Figuratively speaking, what BP has done to the communities and ecology of the Gulf Coast is downright criminal.

Eleven workers lost their lives in the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion. Countless more have lost their livelihoods. The environmental devastation to marine life and coastal wetlands is unfathomable.

Yet under current law, if a jury finds BP criminally negligent, the company would not necessarily have to pay any restitution to the victims of the spill — not even to the families of rig-workers who perished or to the fishermen put out of work. Furthermore, criminal penalties are currently too lenient to adequately deter corporate wrongdoers from authorizing risky schemes that damage the environment.

That’s why this week I introduced the Environmental Crimes Enforcement Act (ECEA) to make restitution for violations of the Clean Water Act mandatory and increase criminal sentences for violators.

Urge your members of Congress to support the Environmental Crimes Enforcement Act (ECEA) to start treating preventable environmental catastrophes as serious criminal acts.

This legislation takes important steps towards deterring criminal conduct that leads to environmental and economic catastrophe.

Too often, big oil companies treat criminal fines and penalties as a mere cost of doing business. But passing ECEA would change all that, sentencing corporate wrongdoers to serious prison time and mandating restitution payments be made to the victims of corporate malfeasance.

So please, take a moment to support this important legislation by clicking here.

I fully support lifting the miniscule $75 million liability cap on corporations responsible for environmental disasters like the Deepwater Horizon spill, but I believe we must also go further to treat such acts as serious crimes against our communities, our economy, and our environment.

If you agree, please support the Environmental Crimes Enforcement Act (ECEA) today.

Thank you for taking action to hold corporate wrongdoers accountable and ensure something like this never happens again.

Sincerely,

Patrick Leahy

Jun 12 2010

Top 10 Reasons — Media Denied Access to the Gulf Spill

Let’s see, Maybe the NYTimes will help …

Last week, Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, tried to bring a small group of journalists with him on a trip he was taking through the gulf on a Coast Guard vessel. Mr. Nelson’s office said the Coast Guard agreed to accommodate the reporters and camera operators. But at about 10 p.m. on the evening before the trip, someone from the Department of Homeland Security’s legislative affairs office called the senator’s office to tell them that no journalists would be allowed.

“They said it was the Department of Homeland Security’s response-wide policy not to allow elected officials and media on the same ‘federal asset,'” said Bryan Gulley, a spokesman for the senator.

[…]

Capt. Ron LaBrec, a Coast Guard spokesman, said that about a week into the cleanup response, the Coast Guard started enforcing a policy that prohibits news media from accompanying candidates for public office on visits to government facilities, “to help manage the large number of requests for media embeds and visits by elected officials.”

 

Reason 10) Elected officials and Media on the same ‘federal asset,’ are not allowed.

Reason 9) Easier to manage requests for ‘media embeds’ and visits by elected officials.

Jun 10 2010

Flow Rate Technical Group ups the Ante for BP

Hot off the Presses …

Scoop: Gulf well may be gushing 25,000 to 30,000 barrels

By Joel Achenbach, washingtonpost.com — June 10, 2010; 4:00 PM ET

Just filed to the web some new figures we obtained this afternoon from the federal government that suggest the Deepwater Horizon well is gushing more oil than previously estimated.

The Flow Rate Technical Group has about five subgroups, and the one that is looking at the video of the leak, the so-called plume team,

has come up with an estimate of 20,000 to 40,000 barrels a day,

with the most likely range being 25,000 to 30,000 barrels.

The team had earlier estimated the flow at 12,000 to 25,000 barrels.

Jun 10 2010

BP’s Perjury Corner – Papantonio on Hardball

The other day we saw in Beyond Paradox & Look, We’re Dealing With Criminals Attorney Mike Papantonio talking with Randi Rhodes explaining the basics of his class action suit against BP after Attorney General Eric Holder announced that he would be launching a criminal investigation into the activities of BP.

As oil continues to gush from the BP site in the Gulf of Mexico, so do the lies coming from the BP spin machine.

Mike Papantonio is working to hold British Petroleum accountable for the damage that they are causing the environment, and working on a class action suit against BP on behalf of families suing BP, as well as to expose the lies that BP continues to feed the news media.

Here’s Mike’s latest appearance on Hardball with Chris Matthews…

Jun 09 2010

Rollingstone article – “The Spill, The Scandal and the President”

http://www.rollingstone.com/po…

Tim Dickinson at Rollingstone has done some fine and much needed investigative journalism.  He reveals that BP and the government anticpated a much higher volume of flow from the first:

   From the start of its operation in the Gulf, BP had found itself struggling against powerful “kicks” from gas buildup, just as MMS had warned. Now, on April 20th, the pent-up methane exploded in a fireball that incinerated 11 workers. Like a scene out of a real-life Jerry Bruckheimer film, the half-billion-dollar rig – 32,000 tons and 30 stories tall – listed over and sank to the bottom two days later, taking a mile of pipe down with it.

   Within hours, the government assembled a response team at the “war room” of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle. The scene, captured by a NOAA cameraman and briefly posted on the agency’s website, provides remarkable insight into the government’s engagement during the earliest hours of the catastrophe, and, more troubling, the role of top administration figures in downplaying its horrific scope.

Jun 09 2010

Underwater, the Water’s Fine — Anyone want to take a Dip?

Photographer Rich Matthews takes a closer look at oil

Journalist dives into Gulf, can only see oil

It takes 30 minutes to clean off after diving into ocean 40 miles from shore

By RICH MATTHEWS, Associated Press Writer June 9, 2010

Eeewwwh!!   WHAT was he thinking!

Hope you have a De-tox tank, handy, Rich Matthews — you’re going to need it!

Photo Credit: June 7, 2010 photo, APTN photographer Rich Matthews takes a closer look at oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill, in the Gulf of Mexico south of Venice, La.. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

View related Photos

APTN photographer Rich Matthews takes a closer look at oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill, in the Gulf of Mexico south of Venice, La.. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

MSNBC – Updated: 5:54 a.m. ET June 9, 2010

but wait this intrepid Reporter goes deeper …

Jun 09 2010

Paint it Black

“When the hurricanes arrive, a hurricane actually blows this oil onshore, it will basically paint the gulf coast black. It will shut down the refineries and power plants and it will be America’s worst catastrophe nightmare.”

Matthew Simmons on Dylan Ratigan

Jun 09 2010

Dystopia 22: Gerry Revisited

Invictus (Unconquered)

Out of the night  that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my  unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of  circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under  the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond  this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the  shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and  shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait  the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I  am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

—William Ernest Henley

A favorite poem of Nelson Mandela

Jun 08 2010

For Sale: Blackwater

Reuters and other news outlets are reporting that the company formerly known as Blackwater is pursing a sale of the company.

Xe Services announced its decision in a brief statement that gave few details, the agency said.

Owner and founder Erik Prince said in a statement that selling the company is a difficult decision, but constant criticism of Xe helped him make up his mind, according to the agency.

I think it isn’t so much that Prince couldn’t stand the constant criticism, but rather after Blackwater mercenaries massacred 17 Iraqi civilians in Nisoor Square in Baghdad on the September 16, 2007, he couldn’t shake public attention to his once-fly-below-the-radar operation.  

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