Tag: BP

BP has reported today yesterday (-Sunday- Monday) that they collected 6100 10,000 barrels of oil in the past 24 hours.  This is stupendous!  (Note:  the volume changes.  It was over 10,000 in 24 hours now, but that just reinforces my point).

If this is correct, and it seems to be, if they can tune their collection device a bit more, they can collect more, perhaps much more.  You do not understand the ramifications of this development.  If correct, BP will go down in history as the most important cog in the wheel of energy independence ever for the United States.  Please allow me to elaborate.

(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)

President Obama, speaking from Louisiana today, criticized BP for spending big money on television advertising and shareholder dividends, suggesting the company was prioritizing its own interests over those of Gulf residents.

Every day it’s something different! Yesterday it was TV ads, last week it was crime!

“We have an obligation to investigate what went wrong,” Obama said. “If our laws were broken, leading to this death and destruction, my solemn pledge is that we will bring those responsible to justice.”

If our laws were broken?

BP was cited by OSHA for 760 egregious willful violations between June 2007 and February 2010!

Egregious! Meaning “flagrant, outstandingly bad!”

Willful! Meaning it wasn’t some sort of “oopsie, we didn’t mean to do it!”

760!

That’s 97 percent of all flagrant violations found in the refining industry by government safety inspectors over the past three years!

My solemn pledge is that we will bring those responsible to justice.

So what are you waiting for?

Round ’em up! Lock ’em up in Guantanamo! Throw away the key!

BP also killed 15 people in Texas in 2005, and the case was still pending when Obama walked into the Oval Office in 2009.

In 2009, the British-based company paid $87.43 million for a single Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) violation for willful negligence that led to the deaths of 15 workers in a 2005 explosion at a Texas refinery. BP handed over $50 million to the Department of Justice (DOJ) for the same crime.

BP paid Obama a couple of fines for the criminally negligent homicide of 15 workers, and the $137 million total of those fines amounted to BP’s profits for two whole days, at $6 billion per quarter, $2 billion per month, $66 million per day!

So Barack Obama isn’t exactly a hanging judge when it comes to punishing corporate criminals, even for homicide, and I guess it isn’t suprising that all he does is bitch, bitch, bitch, while the Gulf of Mexico fills up with oil.

But wasn’t this a perfect time to turn around the Republican meme that the federal government is always the problem, and never the solution for any problem?

Wasn’t this a perfect time to put the best and brightest in one big room, and keep them locked up until they solved this goddamned problem?

The federal government of the United States put a man on the moon!

And now all Obama can do is bitch, bitch, bitch?

The federal government of the United States defeated two enormous industrial and military powers in WWII!

And now all Obama can do is bitch, bitch, bitch?

The Environmentalist’s Climate page has a live feed panel of all twelve cameras from the Gulf floor. The page may take a while to load, but it’s worth looking at all cameras at once.  Most feeds only show the one BP sends out – rather than the entire working ROV cameras.  It shows the impact, the amount of oil and gas and the dispersant they’re shooting into the well head.

The feed panel is at this link: http://climate.the-environmentalist.org/2010/06/live-video-feeds-of-gulf-oil-disaster.html

You may need Windows Media Player’s plugin to view it (that’s the format the ROV subs use).  There’s also a link to a plugin for Macs on the page.  

Oil Booms & Bird Habitat – NWF visits important bird rookery

copyright © 2010 Betsy L. Angert.  BeThink.org

Americans acknowledge there is a problem.  Petroleum pours out from a broken pipe.  Thousands of barrels of fuel flow freely through the Gulf of Mexico, just as they have for more than a month.  Plants, animals, and people are affected.  People express distress.  Millions are dismayed. What can BP do. Indeed what can any company or citizens do? Most call upon the President. Mister Obama, the electorate pleads, please, protect us.  These same citizens ignore that the protection we need is from ourselves.  Our present circumstances are a reflection of our past.  Many Americans have forgotten an earlier time, when another of this country’s Chief Executives attempted to avoid the nightmare we experience today.

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!

Outraged at devastation in the Gulf, yet?

Do you want to take action?

Maybe even not that much action?

All you Photoshoppers, PowerPointers and Mac users – here’s your chance.

Submit your BP Logo redesigns to Greenpeace.

Once again, my hair’s on fire.

These are the salient facts. The BP oil leak continues unabated.  Oil has transformed the Gulf Coast into the largest man made ecological disaster in history.  It may be impossible to stop the leak.  Even if it’s possible to stop the leak, it may take months and luck to do so.  Neither the Government nor BP apparently has the resources to stop the leak quickly.  Flying over the leak and visiting the Gulf Coast and making repeated speeches about the leak and trying not to look completely helpless or to cry on camera is apparently all that Government can do for us.  There has not been an all out, dramatic, gigantic mobilization of human and other resources to capture oil or to contain it.  Oil has arrived and more is expected on beaches in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida.  There’s no end in sight.

My hair’s on fire.  I’m not really able to be with the situation.  The Gulf has turned into an oil gumbo with dead animal croutons, and my emotions are a boiling, raging, oil stew.  There is no real relief, no real change in sight.  There is no comfort.  Even thinking about impermanence, which can be an ally at times like this, doesn’t help.  Because there’s my ever present dread that while the current situation cannot continue forever, it just might become much, much worse.  What would that look like?  It would be the death of an ecosystem.

At the moment there seem to be only two real possibilities.  These are not disjunctive.  Choice one: pick up my shovels and drive to the coast.  Do whatever I can to be of help there.  Choice two: ceremony and prayer.  Beg Santa Madre Tierra, Pachamama, Mother Earth for forgiveness and healing.  I don’t have anything else.

——————-

simulposted at The Dream Antilles

We’re now into day way too many of the BP oil spill, and the President has just yesterday been down on the Louisiana coast-again.

There have been suggestions that the Administration should take action to essentially push BP out of the way and take over the work itself, particularly as it relates to the cleanup.

It may have even occurred to you that an official declaration of some sort might be needed, in order to bring the full power of the Feds into play.

That’s some good thinking, but before we go jumping right into declaring things we better understand the law, because if we don’t, we could actually make things worse.

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…