tagged w/ BP
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Despite Gulf oil spill, rig owner executives get big bonuses
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Despite Gulf oil spill, rig owner executives get big bonuses
By the CNN Wire Staff
April 3, 2011 10:23 p.m. EDT
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Transocean executives get pay raises, bonuses, SEC filing says
Cash awards based in part on company safety record
Despite Gulf oil spill, company claims 2010 "best year in safety"
(CNN) -- Declaring 2010 "the best year in safety performance in our company's history," Transocean Ltd., owner of the Gulf of Mexico oil rig that exploded, killing 11 workers, has awarded its top executives hefty bonuses and raises, according to a recent filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
That includes a $200,000 salary increase for Transocean President and Chief Executive Officer Steven L. Newman, whose base salary will increase from $900,000 to $1.1 million, according to the SEC report. Newman's bonus was $374,062, the report states.
Newman also has a $5.4 million long-term compensation package the company awarded him upon his appointment as CEO in March 2010, according to the SEC filing.
The latest cash awards are based in part on the company's "performance under safety," the Transocean filing states.
"Notwithstanding the tragic loss of life in the Gulf of Mexico, we achieved an exemplary statistical safety record as measured by our total recordable incident rate and total potential severity rate," the SEC statement reads. "As measured by these standards, we recorded the best year in safety performance in our Company's history."
The company called that record "a reflection on our commitment to achieving an incident free environment, all the time, everywhere," the SEC filing states.
The company did not respond to an e-mail from CNN seeking comment.
The April 20, 2010, explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig injured 17 workers and killed 11 others, including nine Transocean employees, according to the SEC filing. It has been called the worst spill in U.S. history.
The well was capped three months later, but not before millions of barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf.
In January, President Barack Obama's National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling released a report that spread blame for the accident among Transocean, BP -- which leased the rig -- and Halliburton, which installed the rig's cement casing.
The commission said problems with deepwater drilling are "systemic" and that only "significant reform" will prevent another disaster.
Another report released March 23 determined that the oil spill was caused by a piece of drill pipe trapped in the rig platform's blowout preventer, a device intended to stop oil from flowing into the Gulf. The report was commissioned by various U.S. agencies, including the Interior Department and the Department of Homeland Security.
The Interior Department has said a much broader report that relies on additional sources of data -- including eyewitness accounts and photographs -- will be released this summer.
The oil spill has prompted a flood of lawsuits against BP, Transocean and Halliburton from a variety of plaintiffs, including owners of Gulf shore businesses who claim they suffered heavy financial losses because of the spill.
The plaintiffs also include Transocean shareholders who contend the company falsely claimed it had remedied past safety problems with its blowout preventers, prior to the Gulf spill.CNN's Latest Headline...
Despite Gulf oil spill, rig owner executives get big... more
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The New York Times
April 3, 2011
BP Seeks to Resume Drilling in the Gulf of Mexico
By JULIA WERDIGIER and JOHN M. BRODER
LONDON — BP has asked United States regulators for permission to resume drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, two company officials with direct knowledge of the application said on Sunday.
The petition comes less than 12 months after a rig BP had leased there exploded, causing a huge oil spill and killing 11 workers.
BP is seeking permission to continue drilling at 10 existing deepwater production and development wells in the region in July in exchange for adhering to stricter safety and supervisory rules, said one of the officials. An agreement covering existing wells could be reached within the next month but would not include new drilling, the official said.
The other official said, “We’re making progress but it’s not a yes yet.” Both people spoke on the condition of anonymity because talks on a possible agreement were continuing.
Drilling in the Gulf of Mexico was halted last summer as a result of the accident involving BP’s Macondo well, which spilled 4.9 million barrels of oil into the ocean. The ban was lifted in October.
Melissa Schwartz, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, the federal agency that overseas the development of resources in the gulf, said on Sunday that there was no deal with BP. Toby Odone, a spokesman for BP, declined to comment.
The regulator had recently started to permit some deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Royal Dutch Shell won approval on Wednesday to drill off the coast of Louisiana on the condition that rigorous new safety standards were met. Other companies that have been allowed to continue drilling in the region include Exxon Mobil, Chevron and BHP Billiton.
Granting permission to BP would be more controversial because the British oil company is still paying for costs related to the oil spill, the cleanup and the continuing civil and criminal investigations into the accident. BP so far has set aside more than $40 billion to cover those costs.
The Obama administration has spent 11 months dealing with the aftermath of the Macondo well blowout and writing new rules to try to prevent similar accidents. But last week President Obama, in a major statement on energy policy, said the administration was seeking increased domestic oil production, both onshore and off, as a means of reducing dependence on imported oil.
Also last week, the Justice Department confirmed that it was considering a range of civil and criminal penalties against BP, including potential manslaughter charges for the deaths of the 11 rig workers, as part of its ongoing investigation into the accident.
Allowing BP to resume operations in the gulf would send a mixed message — that the administration was trying to increase the safety of offshore drilling and punish bad actors, while at the same time answering critics in Congress and the oil industry who say the administration is choking off production and driving up energy prices.
What seems clear is that the Gulf of Mexico will not return to full production until all the major players — and BP is one of the biggest — are allowed to resume drilling.
BP is eager for that to happen, and its chief executive, Robert Dudley, has repeatedly said the company remains committed to its operations in the United States. Mr. Dudley has pledged to make improving BP’s safety record his priority. He set up a new division last year to monitor safety and suspended some operations in Alaska and the North Sea after the projects failed to meet the new standards.
Gaining permission to resume drilling in the gulf would help Mr. Dudley to move BP beyond its painful and expensive recent history in the region, which has eroded shareholder trust. It would also give BP a boost of confidence.
The British oil company suffered a setback in its expansion strategy last month when a Swedish court blocked a $10 billion cooperation agreement with Rosneft of Russia, which was supposed to give the company access to the Arctic.
John M. Broder reported from Washington, D.C. Clifford Krauss also contributed reporting.The New York Times
April 3, 2011
BP Seeks to Resume Drilling in the Gulf of... more
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"It's so hot that Dick Cheney waterboarded himself." Stand-up comedian Chris Martin get topical and tropical August 3, 2010 at the Charlottesville Comedy Roundtable's open mic at the 12th Street Taphouse in Charlottesville, VA.
http://www.chrismartincomedy.com"It's so hot that Dick Cheney waterboarded himself." Stand-up comedian... more
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"Imagine my disappointment when I discovered that 'throw a shrimp on the barbie' is not a Verne Troyer sex tape." Stand-up comedian Chris Martin gets kinky at Refried Comedy @ Aztek Grill in Richmond, VA.
http://www.ChrisMartinComedy.com"Imagine my disappointment when I discovered that 'throw a shrimp on the... more
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Manslaughter and perjury are among possible charges that Justice Department investigators are exploring in the early stages of their probe into the Gulf oil spill, people familiar with the inquiry said Tuesday.
These people said the Justice Department is not ruling out the possibility of bringing manslaughter charges against companies or managers responsible for the explosion aboard the rig that killed 11 workers.
The department also is examining congressional testimony by company executives, including former BP CEO Tony Hayward, to determine whether their statements were untruthful, these people added.
They cautioned that the investigation is still far from complete and spoke on condition of anonymity about the ongoing investigation.
Justice Department spokeswoman Laura Sweeney declined to comment.
Earlier this month, the Justice Department reorganized its oil spill investigation. It created a unified task force so investigators from Justice's criminal and environmental divisions and from the U.S. attorney's office in New Orleans can coordinate overlapping work of looking into civil violations and criminal culpability, if any.
Deputy Attorney General James Cole ordered the move to avoid duplication of effort. Criminal division senior counsel John Buretta is leading the task force, and criminal division chief Lanny Breuer is supervising it.
The Deepwater Horizon rig explosion occurred on April 20, 2010. A month and a half later, Attorney General Eric Holder announced criminal and civil investigations of the disaster.
"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.
Bringing a manslaughter charge against a corporation is unusual but not unprecedented.
Two weeks after Holder announced the probe, Cole told Congress that prosecuting individual executives is the best deterrent when there is corporate misconduct.
Cole did not oppose charging corporations criminally, but added that doing so can unfairly penalize innocent shareholders and employees.
He added that charging any corporation is a sensitive subject within the Justice Department and that doing so can affect "thousands and thousands" of employees and shareholders with no role in the misconduct.
In the Enron scandal, Cole counseled Arthur Anderson LLP on revamping its document retention policies, then watched the accounting firm collapse after the Justice Department brought a criminal case.
In December, the Justice Department sued BP, oil rig owner Transocean and several other companies in the government's effort to recover billions of dollars for economic and environmental damage.
In January, a presidential commission found that the spill was caused by time-saving and money-saving decisions by BP, Halliburton and rig owner Transocean that created unacceptable risk.
According to an ongoing lawsuit in Houston, Kevin Lacy, BP's former senior vice president for drilling operations for the Gulf of Mexico, reached a mutual agreement with the company to resign in December 2009 because Lacy believed the company was not adequately committed to improving safety protocols in offshore drilling operations to the level of its industry peers.
The suit said Lacy, an experienced drilling engineer who had implemented a rigorous drilling safety program while at Chevron, had been recruited to join BP in 2007 to improve and standardize its drilling policies and protocols.
http://www.wwl.com/AP-sources--Manslaughter-charge-explored-in-spill/9503202Manslaughter and perjury are among possible charges that Justice Department... more
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BP’s former chief executive Tony Hayward could face manslaughter charges over his role in the Gulf oil spill.
The British boss may be quizzed by U.S. investigators on whether decisions he personally made cut corners on safety and caused America's worst environmental disaster in which 11 workers died.
Possible charges that he could face include manslaughter or seaman’s manslaughter, which carries up to 10 years in jail.
Such a move would be unusual as companies at fault in environmental catastrophes are usually hit with criminal probes, not individuals.
It would likely been seen as further evidence that the Obama administration is still going after BP, even though experts have said that the oil spill was nowhere near as bad as previously thought.
Investigators are said to be looking at Hayward's testimony before Congress in which he stonewalled dozens of questions to see if he has implicated himself.
They will also be examining e-mails and other documents to determine what BP officials and the company’s drilling partners knew and whether they withheld any information.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1371168/Former-BP-boss-Tony-Hayward-charged-manslaughter-Gulf-oil-spill.html#ixzz1I0Oc0MFTBP’s former chief executive Tony Hayward could face manslaughter charges over... more
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Los Angeles Times...
Greenspace
U.S. says Shell on track to start first new deepwater drilling in gulf since BP spill
March 21, 2011 | 6:49 pm
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Monday announced a step toward approval of the first new deepwater oil and gas exploratory drilling plan in the Gulf of Mexico since the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster.
The plan, submitted by Shell Offshore Inc., details how the company aims to meet more stringent safety requirements in its proposal to drill exploratory wells about 2,950 feet beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, roughly 130 miles off the coast of Louisiana, Salazar said in a statement.
The area was originally leased to the company in 1985. “This exploration plan meets the new standards for environmental review and marks another important step toward safer deepwater exploration,” Salazar said.
Michael Bromwich, director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, said his agency found no evidence that Shell’s plans would significantly affect the quality of the “human environment.” As a result, the agency determined that an environmental impact statement was not required and issued a “finding of no significant impact,” a step toward final approval of the plan.
Although Shell’s exploration plan will lead to the first new wells in the gulf since the worst offshore oil disaster in American history, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has already approved a number of permits to resume activity in shallow and deep water. The Deepwater Horizon disaster killed 11 workers and spewed more than 200 million gallons of crude into the gulf.
Facing growing pressure from the courts and Congress to speed up the approval process, the bureau has approved a permit for Houston-based Noble Energy to drill a so-called bypass well in 6,500 feet of water about 70 miles southeast of Venice, La.
The new well would track one started in April 2010 but plugged two months later, when the government established a moratorium on deep-water drilling in response to BP's well blowout. Noble's new drilling would go around the plugs to reach the oil.
Louis SahagunLos Angeles Times...
Greenspace
U.S. says Shell on track to start first new... more
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You won't see this in national headlines! Jennifer Rexford, a BP-hired oil spill cleanup worker has been documenting her condition that is getting worse by the day. Filming herself and her coworkers, all American workers, all are DYING and BP is NOT taking responsibility!!!! Severe neurological damage, paralysis, internal bleeding, death! Check out Jennifer's Youtube page, there are more videos. Watch her story. Watch her talk to BP claims line. Tragic!
SPREAD THE WORD TO GET THIS ON NATIONAL NEWS!!!! BP IS NOT PAYING FOR THEIR HEALTH CARE!!!!!
http://bpoil.wordpress.com/2011/02/24/ex-bp-cleanup-worker-speaks-people-are-sick-and-dying-in-the-gulf/You won't see this in national headlines! Jennifer Rexford, a BP-hired oil spill... more
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Posted March 19, 2011
The Coast Guard is investigating reports of a potentially large oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico not far from the Deepwater Horizon site. According to a knowledgeable source, the slick was sighted by a helicopter pilot on Friday and is about 100 miles long. A fishing boat captain said he went through the slick yesterday and it was strong enough to make his eyes burn.
According to the Times Picayune, the Coast Guard has confirmed they are investigating a potentially large 100 mile slick about 30 miles offshore. They are going to a site near the Matterhorn well site about 20 miles north of the BP Deepwater Horizon site, according to the paper. The Matterhorn field includes includes a deepwater drilling platform owned by W&T Technology. It was acquired last year from TotalFinaElf E&P.
Also, another Louisiana fisherman reports that fresh oil is coming ashore near South Pass, LA, and that cleanup crews are laying new boom near the beach. He also reports that cleanup crews in four-wheeled vehicles were patrolling the beaches near the marsh filled coast spraying a substance on the beach.
Cleanup crews are still operating along the marshes and beach areas of Louisiana and other gulf states. The Bay Jimmy of Louisiana's Barataria Bay remains heavily oiled.
Oil is also being discovered in more populated areas too. With spring break coming, students and tourists are already heading to the Gulf to escape the winter up north. Recently a group of Missouri college kids came across oil off the beaches of Pensicola. "We were fishing with nets for shells, we call it shelling, and it was just brown, I thought it was shark poop at first," one incredulous student told local Pensacola station WEAR-TV.
http://www.weartv.com/newsroom/top_stories/videos/wear_vid_14489.shtmlPosted March 19, 2011
The Coast Guard is investigating reports of a potentially... more
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Gulf Oil Spill Hits Louisiana's Largest Pelican Nesting Area
MATTHEW BROWN 07/14/10 11:50 PM AP
NEW ORLEANS — Biologists say oil has smeared at least 300-400 pelicans and hundreds of terns in the largest seabird nesting area along the Louisiana coast – marking a sharp and sudden escalation in wildlife harmed by BP's Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
The finding underscores that official tallies of birds impacted by the spill could be significantly underestimating the scope of damage.
The government counts only oiled birds collected for rehabilitation or found dead, for use as evidence in the spill investigation. Oiled birds in the many nesting areas that dot the Gulf coast typically are left in place and not counted in official tallies.
Researchers from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology said Wednesday that they had spotted the oiled pelicans on Raccoon Island over the past several days. The spit of land lines the Gulf outside the state's coastal marshes. An estimated 10,000 birds nest on the island in Terrebonne Parish.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Lisa Williams said state and federal observers had documented only 68 oiled pelicans on Raccoon Island.
Biologist Marc Dantzker with Cornell – considered one of the nation's premier institutions for bird research – said about 30 to 40 of the pelicans spotted by his group were oiled "head-to-tail." Many more had visible blotches of oil.
Dead birds also were seen, although no count was available for those.
"This is a major oiling event of an incredibly important seabird colony," Dantzker said. "Many of these birds will be dead soon – weeks and months. These blotches are deadly."
Even a small amount of oil can kill birds because it hampers their ability to regulate their body temperature.
The Raccoon Island colony was established by the state in the 1980s. Its successful expansion epitomized restoration efforts that brought brown pelicans off the endangered species list last year.
Oil from the spill 50 miles off the coast hit the island on July 10, after Hurricane Alex drove high seas into the region as it passed to the south, according to Louisiana officials. And with millions of gallons of crude still at sea it could be hit again.
"This is not like Exxon Valdez where you had tens of thousands of birds killed all at once," said Ken Rosenberg, director of conservation science at the Cornell laboratory. "It's more insidious because it is literally happening in waves and it's happening over and over again as the birds are moving around."
Dantzker said he was surprised the government's number was so low and speculated that they used a different method to count oiled birds.
"Come out and look with us," he said. "If you're on the island and using binoculars you will see those birds."
Across the Gulf, roughly 3,000 killed or oil-covered birds have been collected by wildlife agencies since BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded and sank on April 20, killing 11 workers.
Williams, the wildlife official, declined to say how many more birds that were not collected might have oil on them. She said those figures were being compiled, but the results would not be available for some time.
As has been the case with other nesting colonies, Williams said her agency did not plan to rescue the oiled birds from Raccoon Island because that could disrupt other birds in the colony. Entering a colony can flush nesting birds and lead to adults inadvertently killing their young.
"We don't want to cause more harm than good," Williams said.Gulf Oil Spill Hits Louisiana's Largest Pelican Nesting Area
MATTHEW BROWN... more
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"I have critically high levels of chemicals in my body," 33-year-old Steven Aguinaga of Hazlehurst, Mississippi told Al Jazeera. "Yesterday I went to see another doctor to get my blood test results and the nurse said she didn't know how I even got there."
Aguinaga and his close friend Merrick Vallian went swimming at Fort Walton Beach, Florida, in July 2010.
"I swam underwater, then found I had orange slick stuff all over me," Aguinaga said. "At that time I had no knowledge of what dispersants were, but within a few hours, we were drained of energy and not feeling good. I've been extremely sick ever since."
BP's oil disaster last summer gushed at least 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, causing the largest accidental marine oil spill in history - and the largest environmental disaster in US history. Compounding the problem, BP has admitted to using at least 1.9 million gallons toxic dispersants, including one chemical that has been banned in the UK.
According to chemist Bob Naman, these chemicals create an even more toxic substance when mixed with crude oil. Naman, who works at the Analytical Chemical Testing Lab in Mobile, Alabama, has been carrying out studies to search for the chemical markers of the dispersants BP used to both sink and break up its oil.
Poly-aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from this toxic mix are making people sick, Naman said. PAHs contain compounds that have been identified as carcinogenic, mutagenic, and teratogenic.
"The dispersants are being added to the water and are causing chemical compounds to become water soluble, which is then given off into the air, so it is coming down as rain, in addition to being in the water and beaches of these areas of the Gulf," Naman told Al Jazeera.
"I'm scared of what I'm finding. These cyclic compounds intermingle with the Corexit [dispersants] and generate other cyclic compounds that aren't good. Many have double bonds, and many are on the EPA's danger list. This is an unprecedented environmental catastrophe."
more at http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/03/201138152955897442.html"I have critically high levels of chemicals in my body," 33-year-old Steven... more
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http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/02/24/gulf.dolphins/index.html?hpt=C1
Deaths of baby dolphins worry scientists
By Vivian Kuo, CNN
February 24, 2011 8:27 p.m. EST
Dead baby dolphins found on Gulf Coast
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Twenty-four dolphin calves have been found dead on shores of Alabama, Mississippi
Marine mammal experts say the number is very unusual
Total of 30 dolphins found dead; the cause remains a mystery
(CNN) -- Baby bottlenose dolphins are washing up dead in record numbers on the shores of Alabama and Mississippi, alarming scientists and a federal agency charged with monitoring the health of the Gulf of Mexico.
Moby Solangi, the executive director of the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies (IMMS) in Gulfport, Mississippi, said Thursday he's never seen such high death numbers.
"I've worked with marine mammals for 30 years, and this is the first time we've seen such a high number of calves," he said. "It's alarming."
At least 24 baby dolphins have washed up on the shores of the two states since the beginning of the year -- more than ten times the normal rate. Also, six older dolphins died.
In January 2009 and 2010, no calf strandings were reported, compared to four in January 2011, the institute said. During the month of February for those years, only one calf stranding was reported each year.
Blair Mase, lead marine mammal stranding coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), echoed Solangi's concern.
"It's not common for this time of year to recover such young animals. When you put the numbers together, it's quite high compared to previous years."
The occurrence has prompted NOAA to designate these deaths as an "unusual mortality event" -- defined as a stranding incident that is unexpected or involves a significant loss of any marine mammal population.
While bottlenose dolphins are actually the most-frequently found stranding animal, the season usually begins in March, according to Mase.
"We receive reports of stranding year round. We get an average of 700 total every year in the Southeast," she said.
While scientists have seen baby dolphins wash up in the past, "This is not during the months that they should be," said Solangi. "We keep getting reports of new ones all the time, and February isn't over yet."
There have been 13 unusual mortality events involving dolphin deaths in the Gulf of Mexico since 1991, Mase explained.
Marine mammals are particularly susceptible to harmful algal blooms, infectious diseases, temperature and environmental changes, and human impact, she said.
"Unfortunately we don't have a smoking gun here. We're looking at the possibility of an algal bloom but we don't see any evidence of a bloom going on in the water. Temperatures are a bit cooler, so we're looking into water temperature data and seeing if that has a role, but it's a little bit too early to tell."
The IMMS said it has been able to perform full necropsies on a third of the 24 calves. The majority of the calves were too decomposed for a full examination, but the institute has taken tissue samples for analysis.
The institute does not have conclusive results on the causes of death.
Following the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion last April, which killed 11 workers and caused the worst oil spill in U.S. history, there has been heightened concern over the environmental impact.
Due to the government's ongoing litigation with BP, which owned the oil well that erupted into the Gulf of Mexico, NOAA said it must operate under specific protocol in handling the dead dolphins. That might mean a delay in seeing the necropsy results.
"In a world when we wouldn't be dealing with oil-spill protocols, we'd typically get results in about three weeks to a month," Mase said. "We aren't going to see results as quickly as we'd like to. We will be making sure these samples are collected, taken back and analyzed, but it could take several months."
While none of the 30 dolphins were found with any oil on them, Mase said the agency is not ruling anything in or out on the cause of death.
"Frankly, it's just too early to tell at this point. It's obviously on everyone's radar screen. Everyone's concerned about any impact of the BP oil spill, but we have to be very cautious as to identify any particular cause. We won't know until we have these samples analyzed and be able to identify the source."
The most worrisome concern is that dolphin stranding season has yet to officially begin, according to Solangi.
"Whatever it is, I hope it is just an anomaly. It certainly has connotations on reproduction and the population," he said.
"Unfortunately, I think this is not the end of what we will be seeing."http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/02/24/gulf.dolphins/index.html?hpt=C1
Deaths of baby... more
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One of the quickest ways to bring down the U.S. economy would be to dramatically increase the price of oil. Oil is the lifeblood of our economic system. Without it, our entire economy would come to a grinding halt. Almost every type of economic activity in this country depends on oil, and even a small rise in the price of oil can have a dramatic impact on economic growth. That is why so many economists are incredibly alarmed about what is happening in the Middle East right now. The revolution in Libya caused the price of WTI crude to soar more than 7 dollars on Tuesday alone. It closed at $93.57 on Tuesday and Brent crude actually hit $108.57 a barrel before settling back to $105.78 at the end of the day. Some analysts are warning that we could even see 5 dollar gas in the United States by the end of the year if rioting spreads to other oil producing nations such as Saudi Arabia. With the Middle East in such a state of chaos right now it is hard to know exactly what is going to happen, but almost everyone agrees that if oil prices continue to rise at a rapid pace over the next several months it is going to have a devastating impact on economic growth all over the globe.
Right now the eyes of the world are on Libya. Libya is the 17th largest oil producer on the globe and it has the biggest proven oil reserves on the continent of Africa.
Libya only produces 2 percent of the oil in the world, but with global supplies so tight at the moment even a minor production disruption can have a dramatic impact on the price of oil.
Before this crisis, Libya was producing approximately 1.6 million barrels of oil per day. Now the rest of the world is wondering what may happen if revolution spreads to other major oil producing nations such as Kuwait (2.5 million barrels of oil per day) or Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia produces 8.4 million barrels of oil a day. It produces more oil than anyone else in OPEC.
If revolution strikes in Saudi Arabia and a major production disruption happens it could be catastrophic for the global economy.
David Rosenberg, the chief economist at Gluskin Sheff & Associates, is warning that if there is major civil unrest in Saudi Arabia we could end up seeing oil go up to $200 a barrel….
“If Libya can spark a $10-a-barrel response, imagine what a similar uprising in Saudi Arabia could unleash. Do the math: we’d be talking about $200 oil.”
200 dollar oil?
Don’t laugh – it could happen.
In fact, if it does happen the global economy would probably go into cardiac arrest.
The truth is that if the flow of oil from Saudi Arabia gets disrupted there is not enough spare capacity from the rest of the globe to make up for it.
Paul Horsnell, the head of oil research at Barclays Capital, recently said that the world does not currently have enough spare capacity to be able to guarantee that an oil “price shock” will not happen….
“The world has only 4.5m barrels-per-day (bpd) of spare capacity, which is not comfortable.”
Horsnell also said that even in the midst of potential supply problems, the global demand for oil continues to grow at a very robust pace….
“In just two years, the world has grown so fast as to consume additional volume equal to the output of Iraq and Kuwait combined.”
For now, Saudi officials are saying all the right things. They say that there will be no revolution in Saudi Arabia and that there are not going to be any supply problems.
For example, Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi recently announcedthat the rest of the world should not worry because his country is definitely going to be able to make up for any shortage in the global supply of oil….
“What I would like you to convey to the market: right now there is absolutely no shortage of supply.”
But what happens if revolution comes to Saudi Arabia?
Suddenly the whole game would change.
But even with a peaceful Saudi Arabia the price of gasoline in the United States is already rising to alarming levels.
The average price of gasoline in the United States reached $3.14 a gallonlast week. This closely mirrors what happened back in 2008. Three years ago at this time the average price of gasoline was right around $3.13 a gallon.
Let’s certainly hope that we don’t see a repeat of what happened to oil prices back in mid-2008. The price of oil reached an all-time record of $147 a barrel and gas prices in the United States absolutely skyrocketed.
So how high will the price of gas in the U.S. go in 2011?
We haven’t even come close to 4 dollar gas yet, but a large number of analysts believe that it is coming this summer.
Is there even a possibility that we could see 5 dollar gas in America at some point in the next couple of years?
Well, there are some in the oil industry that are convinced that it could actually happen. Just consider the following quotes….
Darin Newsom, senior analyst at energy tracker DTN….
“If this thing escalates and there’s a good chance that there’d be a shift in supplies, $5 gas isn’t out of the question.”
Peter Beutel, president of energy adviser Cameron Hanover….
“If you are looking at the disruption of movement and production in countries such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE, you’re easily talking $5 gas.”
John Hofmeister, the former president of Shell Oil, on his belief that we could see 5 dollar gas by 2012….
“I’m predicting actually the worst outcome over the next two years which takes us to 2012 with higher gasoline prices.”
So why is everyone so concerned about gas prices?
Well, because it affects the price of almost everything else in the economy.
David Wyss, the chief economist at Standard & Poor’s, says that every extra dollar that is spent on gasoline is a dollar that will not be spent somewhere else….
“The money that you spend filling up your car is money you don’t have to spend at the shopping mall.”
Not only that, but when gasoline costs more it has a negative effect on economic growth. Almost all economic activities involve the use of oil in one form or another. When the price of oil starts getting really high it motivates people to start cutting back on many of those activities.
The truth is that our whole economic system is based on the ability to use massive amounts of very cheap oil. Now that the price of oil is rapidly rising again, many economists are becoming very alarmed.
FULL STORY HERE:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/5-dollar-gas-get-ready-to-pay-an-arm-and-a-leg-for-gasoline.htmlOne of the quickest ways to bring down the U.S. economy would be to dramatically... more
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Baby dolphins, some barely three feet in length, are washing up along the Mississippi and Alabama shorelines at about 10 times the normal number for the first two months of the year, researchers are finding.
Seventeen young dolphins, either aborted before they reached maturity or dead soon after birth, have been collected on the coasts of the states in the past two weeks, both on the barrier islands and mainland beaches.
This is the first birthing season for dolphins since the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico; however, Moby Solangi, director of the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Gulfport, said it’s too early to tell why they died.
“For some reason, they’ve started aborting or they were dead before they were born,” Solangi said. “The average is one or two a month. This year we have 17 and February isn’t even over yet.”
It’s the most that Solangi has seen in the two states and he’s been watching the Gulf for 30 years, recording dolphin data in Mississippi for 20. The institute has collected 13 infant dolphins in the last two weeks and three more on Monday along the Gulfport and Horn Island beaches.
Read more: http://www.sunherald.com/2011/02/21/2881674/spike-reported-in-number-of-stillborn.htmlBaby dolphins, some barely three feet in length, are washing up along the Mississippi... more
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By Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
An Ecuadorian judge ordered Chevron this week to pay $8.6 billion in damages for polluting the Amazon rainforest from 1964 until 1990. The payout is the second largest ever in an environmental case, with only the damages BP agreed to pay in the wake of last summer’s Deepwater Horizon spill being higher.
Environmental lawyers and advocates hailed the case as a landmark victory, but as Rebecca Tarbotton reports at AlterNet, Chevron is still planning to fight the case.
“In fact, the oil giant has repeatedly refused to pay for a clean up even if ordered to by the court,” she writes. “In one chilling statement, Charles A. James, Chevron’s vice president and general counsel, told law students at UC Berkeley that Chevron would fight ‘until hell freezes over, and then skate on the ice.’”
The Cost of Doing Business
Chevron can continue to fight the case because it’s cheaper for them to fund their lawyers than to cough up billions. Like so many environmental issues, this one comes down to money, which environmentally destructive corporations always seem to have and activists, regulators, and victims simply don’t.
In Washington, the newly empowered Republican Party is doing its darndest to make sure that remains the case. It’s budget season, and the Environmental Protection Agency is one of the prime targets for cutting in Republicans’ budget proposals. Kate Sheppard reports at Mother Jones that House Republicans are not only trying to take away $3 billion from the agency, but also are pushing to bar the EPA from regulating carbon or other greenhouse gasses. Putting this in context, Sheppard writes:
The National Wildlife Federation says the cuts amount to a “sneak attack” on existing environmental laws like the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, because they would make it basically impossible for the EPA to do its job. The huge cut—the biggest in 30 years—”would jeopardize the water we drink and air we breathe, endangering the health and well-being of all Americans,” Gene Karpinski, the president of the League of Conservation Voters, said Monday.
The need for green
But environmentalists have their backers, too. At Grist, Bill McKibben, the author and climate activist who co-founded the climate group 350.org, has an interesting look at how the Sierra Club’s National Coal Campaign, led by Bruce Nilles, banded together with other environmental activists to successfully shut down proposals for coal-fired power plants across the country. One of the keys, of course, was money:
A consortium of foundations led by the Rockefeller Family Fund helped provide not only resources for the fight but crucial coordination. By the summer of 2005, RFF’s Larry Shapiro, David Wooley from The Energy Foundation, Nilles, and others formed a loosely organized “coal cadre.”
The coordination was crucial not only for the advocacy groups involved, which each have different strengths and geographical bases, but for the money men as well:
“I first went to Florida in 2005 to meet with several groups fighting coal plants,” said Shapiro. “I thought I would figure out who we could give $50,000 to. After my trip, I realized it wasn’t a $50,000 project — it was a million-dollar project. Over time, the Energy Foundation and others got into the game, so we ended up with some real money.”
In the end, McKibben reports, RFF gathered together, from its own pockets and from other foundations, $2.8 million.
Windfall
On top of the type of advocacy work that McKibben details, there’s another reason why more communities and companies are moving away from coal-fired power plants: they have a choice. Plants fueled with natural gas are a popular alternative, but as Gina Marie Cheeseman writes at Care2, in some areas, onshore wind power can compete with coal on costs.
“In some areas of the U.S., Brazil, Mexico and Sweden, the cost of wind power ($68 per megawatt hour) generated electricity is competitive with coal-fired power ($67 a megawatt hour),” Cheeseman writes. Wind power is also, she notes, competitive with natural gas, according to the American Wind Energy Association.
Close to home
These sort of adjustments make it easier for consumers to make sustainable choices. And in the end, personal choices do impact the amount of carbon humanity is spewing into the atmosphere. As two recent European studies showed, men make choices that generally produce more carbon emissions than women, Julio Godoy reported for Inter Press Service.
One study focused on France, the other on Germany, Greece, Norway, and Sweden. The second study, conducted by researchers at the Swedish Defence Research Agency, found that men ate more meat, drank more processed beverages, and drove more frequently and for longer distances. Annika Carlsson-Kanyama, one of the study’s authors, has argued that their results apply more broadly, too.
“These differences are not specific to the four countries studied, but are generalised across the European Union and have little to do with the different professional activities of men and women,” she told Godoy.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.By Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
An Ecuadorian judge ordered Chevron... more
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Fury is building over rolling nationwide blackouts triggered by the Obama administration's deliberate agenda to block the construction of new coal-fired plants, as local energy companies struggle to meet Americans' power demands amidst some of the coldest weather seen in decades.
- As we reported yesterday, four hospitals in Texas reacted furiously after they were hit with planned outages despite being promised they would be spared even as power to Super Bowl venues remains uninterrupted.
- Thousands in New Mexico have been left without natural gas as Gov. Susana Martinez on Thursday declared a state of emergency. "Due to statewide natural gas shortages, I have ordered all government agencies that do not provide essential services to shut down and all nonessential employees to stay home" on Friday, Martinez said after meeting with public safety personnel in Albuquerque," reports the Associated Press.
- Borderland residents have been asked to limit their use of natural gas as the Texas Gas Service asks that larger commercial facilities voluntarily close their doors to save supplies.
- People in Tucson have been asked to limit their use of hot water and moderate their thermostat levels to save on energy.
- Shortages of natural gas in San Diego County has forced utility companies to "cut or reduce the gas supplied to some of their largest commercial and industrial customers," reports North County Times.
- In El Paso, "Hundreds of thousands of electricity customers continue to face periodic blackouts, and nearly 900 gas customers still have no heat," reports the El Paso Times, with El Paso Electric resorting to using generators in a struggle to meet demand while still having to implement forced outages.Fury is building over rolling nationwide blackouts triggered by the Obama... more
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BP reports annual loss after Gulf spill
By the CNN Wire Staff
February 1, 2011 6:13 a.m. EST
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
* NEW: BP is in court over a deal with Russia to explore for oil
* It resumes paying dividends, giving out 7 cents a share for the fourth quarter
* BP is selling off two American refineries, Texas City and Carson
* The oil giant set aside $40.9 billion to cover charges related to the undersea gusher
London (CNN) -- Oil giant BP suffered an annual loss for 2010 because of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, it announced Tuesday.
It reported a loss of $4.9 billion, but that includes $40.9 billion set aside pre-tax in charges related to the spill.
It will also start paying dividends to shareholders again, it announced. They'll get 7 cents a share for the fourth quarter of 2010.
Dividends were suspended in June 2010 amid a torrent of bad publicity about the undersea gusher.
Separately, BP is in court in London Tuesday over a deal with Russia's state-controlled Rosneft to explore for oil in the Russian Arctic. BP's Russian partner TNK-BP is seeking to block the deal.
An independent report into the spill ordered by President Barack Obama found that the Gulf of Mexico "disaster was both foreseeable and avoidable. The industry failed to manage the risk of an inherently dangerous operation," one of the commissioners told CNN last month.
"More than 14 million Americans live along the Gulf of Mexico. They have paid a grievous price for this disaster. Thousands were thrown out of work. Many have lost their homes," commissioner Frances Beinecke wrote in a special piece for CNN.
"2010 will rightly be remembered for the tragic accident and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and it is clear that as a result BP is a company in transition," said chief executive Bob Dudley, who took over after the spill.
He said the company would "emerge from this episode as a company that is safer, stronger, more sustainable, more trusted and also more valuable."
The company also announced it is selling off two American refineries, Carson and Texas City, which was the site of a disaster in 2005.
Fifteen people were killed and about 170 injured in an explosion at the Texas City, Texas, refinery in March of that year.
BP agreed last year to pay $15 million in fines to resolve Clean Air Act violations related to two fires and a leak at the refinery, unrelated to the 2005 explosion the Environmental Protection Agency and Justice Department said in September.
It was the largest penalty ever recovered for Clean Air Act violations, the EPA said.
The sale of the two refineries is part of a plan to sell off $30 billion in assets this year, after setting out to divest itself of about $22 billion in assets in 2010.
CNN's Per Nyberg contributed to this report.BP reports annual loss after Gulf spill
By the CNN Wire Staff
February 1, 2011... more
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"I ran into a black guy in Shockoe Bottom and asked him how he was doing. He said, 'I'm just hanging.' In other words, things haven't changed that much in 200 years." Stand-up comedian Chris Martin takes a stroll through time and ground zero for the trans-Atlantic slave trade July 25, 2010 in the Buckin' Comedy Throwdown at Gibson's Grill in Richmond, VA. Kenny Wingle is the MC."I ran into a black guy in Shockoe Bottom and asked him how he was doing. He... more
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The latest development in the Gulf is how an incomprehensible bacterium is remarkably eating up the methane gas. It appears that engineered designer genes have also been used to remove the gas just as they have been used to consume the oil. The common denominator is that neither of these microbes are natural microorganisms. This should come as no surprise.
Microbiologist David Valentine at the University of California at Santa Barbara stated,
“Within a matter of months, the bacteria completely removed that methane. The bacteria kicked on more effectively than we expected.”
It sounds to me that this created synthetic genome microbe far exceeded the engineering and programming expectations.
According to a Fox Business report,
“This discovery offered a rare glimpse into the remarkable abilities of an obscure family of microbes in the depths of the Gulf”.
I agree. It is scientifically incomprehensible that any natural microorganism could do this and synthetically engineered microbes are definitely obscure by comparison.
University of Georgia microbiologist Samantha Joye, who has been independently analyzing methane from the Gulf of Mexico, also agrees with me. She said,
“It would take a superhuman microbe to do what they are claiming.”
So it has, Samantha. It was specifically engineered and its “superhuman” genetics were created synthetically.
In a January 7, 2011 article, the UK Register wrote how the scientists were particularly
“surprised at the speed with which the bacteria consumed their enormous meal”.
They also brought up the fact that earlier studies elsewhere in the world suggested methane levels around Deepwater Horizon would be well above normal for years ahead. It’s remarkable what highly engineered designer genes can do.
On January 6, 2011, the Christian Science Monitor reported how the study’s leaders boldly stated that rates of methane decomposition after the Gulf oil spill
“were faster than had ever been recorded in any other place on the planet.”
That’s because these are not natural microbes. You can’t compare apples to grapefruit.
TRACE ELEMENTS ADDED TO THE GULF
In the same CS Monitor report, University of Georgia microbiologist Samantha Joye stated how
“[The Gulf] is not well stocked with trace elements the bacteria need to survive – among them, copper, which bacteria specifically use to deal with the methane. Shortages of copper, as well as other trace elements, likely would have slammed the brakes on the exponential growth in bacterial populations needed to get rid of the methane in fewer than four months.”
The same applies to hydrocarbon-eating bacteria that consume oil, except that iron is needed more than the other trace elements. Since copper and iron are not prevalent mineral elements normally found in the Gulf of Mexico, the synthetic bacterium eating both the oil and the methane would not be able to do so at the remarkable speed they have without such essential earth elements. The only possible way these synthetic bacterium could have done this is by adding the required elements to the Gulf. Spraying a highly dissolved or colloidal mixture of trace elements onto and into the Gulf of Mexico would be absolutely required to accomplish this.
In our October 21, 2010 research article The Gulf BLUE PLAGUE (BP): It’s Not Wise To Fool Mother Nature, we had revealed the abnormally high amounts of elements found in the Gulf and that it was being sprayed along with or separately from the oil dispersants. In August 2010, rain water samples were tested by the Coastal Heritage Society of Louisiana where rain coming directly from the Gulf had unusually high concentrations of iron, copper, nickel, aluminum, manganese, and arsenic.
Without a doubt, the synthetically created bacterium introduced into the Gulf of Mexico to consume the oil and gasses were – and continue to be – fed these essential trace elements. Otherwise, they could not have thrived or reproduced at the accelerated rate they have. The continued spraying in the Gulf by aircraft and by boat is not Corexit or other oil dispersal chemicals. Consider the current spraying to have the same effect of adding liquid fertilizer to your crops.
SYNTHETIC MICROBES MUTATING NATURAL MICROORGANISMS
In early December, 2010 the research vessel WeatherBird II, owned by the University of Southern Florida (USF), went back to the Gulf of Mexico for follow-up water and core samples. As reported by Naomi Klein on January 13, 2011 in Hunting the Ocean for BP’s Missing Millions of Barrels of Oil,
“…these veteran scientists have seen things that they describe as unprecedented …evidence of bizarre sickness in the phytoplankton and bacterial communities…”
This “bizarre sickness” in the indigenous Gulf microorganisms is the direct result of the synthetic microbes that are still creating genetic sicknesses by mutating the DNA of the natural microbes. We had alerted our readers to this in DNA Mutations Confirmed in Gulf of Mexico on September 28, 2010 when we stated,
“DNA mutations are occurring within the Gulf of Mexico at a microscopic cellular level. The obvious effect this has on marine life as well as humans is a Pandora Box of unknowns.”
Tampa Bay Online gave further insight to this in an interview with Dr. John Paul, an oceanography biology professor at USF, regarding the oil plume they had discovered 40 miles off the Florida Panhandle:
It was found to be toxic to microscopic sea organisms, causing mutations to their DNA. If this plankton at the base of the marine food chain is contaminated, it could affect the whole ecosystem of the Gulf.
“The problem with mutant DNA is that it can be passed on and we don’t how this will affect fish or other marine life,” he says, adding that the effects could last for decades.
In Naomi Klein’s article, she describes how Paul introduced healthy bacteria and phytoplankton to Gulf water samples and what happened shocked him. The responses of the organisms “were genotoxic or mutagenic”. According to Paul, what was so “scary” about these results is that such genetic damage was “heritable,” meaning the mutations can be passed on.
Genotoxins pass on genetic changes to successors who have never been exposed to the original gene. Healthy microorganisms are then genetically changed and will pass on their DNA mutations to their descendants. This is a genetic chain-reaction as each mutated microbe interacts with and affects other microorganisms, especially with regards to the food chain:
“…the phytoplankton, the bacteria, and the [microorganisms] that graze on them – the zooplankton – seem to be the most potentially impacted.” – Dr. David Hollander, USF Marine Geochemist: December 6, 2010: Video interview on WeatherBird II.The latest development in the Gulf is how an incomprehensible bacterium is remarkably... more
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"By applause, who's for Team Jacob? By applause, who's for Team Edward? By applause, who's on Team I don't give a rat's ass." Stand-up comedian Chris Martin sucks the life out of the audience by talking Twilight July 15, 2010 at Cozzy's Comedy Club's open mic in Newport News, VA. Slim Bloodworth is the MC.
http://www.ChrisMartinComedy.com"By applause, who's for Team Jacob? By applause, who's for Team Edward?... more
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