tagged w/ Offshore Drilling
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Los Angeles Times...
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BP wins approval for new deep-water drilling in Gulf of Mexico
October 26, 2011 | 12:05 pm
BP
BP won approval from the Interior Department to drill its first exploratory oil well in the Gulf of Mexico since the blowout of its Macondo well a year and a half ago touched off the country’s worst offshore environmental disaster.
The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said that BP met more stringent safety requirements devised by the federal government in the aftermath of the disaster. The company also planned to follow even tougher voluntary standards that exceeded the government’s rules.
“This permit was approved only after thorough well design, blowout preventer, and containment capability reviews,” said bureau director Michael R. Bromwich.
At more than 6,000 feet, the proposed well would be in deeper water than the Macondo well. It is part of the company’s Kaskida prospect located in an area called the Keathley canyon about 250 miles south of Lafayette, La. The company submitted the application to drill in January.
Cleanup of gulf waters continues in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon explosion that killed 11 workers and spewed nearly 5 million barrels of oil into the sea over several months.
Last week, the Interior Department granted approval to a broader exploration plan from BP for the Kaskida prospect based on its adherence to the agency’s new rules.
Environmentalists have said that the new regulatory agency, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, is better than its predecessor, the Minerals Management Service, which had exercised uneven, sometimes lax oversight of offshore energy projects, investigations showed.
But they argue that more work needs to be done to improve offshore drilling safety, including a redesign of blowout preventers and modernization of cleanup procedures.
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Photo: BP corporagte logo. Credit: Oli Scarff / Getty ImagesLos Angeles Times...
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BP wins approval for new deep-water drilling in Gulf of... more
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Los Angeles Times...
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Gulf to open up for oil and gas leases
The Obama administration will hold its first auction since last year's BP oil spill. More than 20 million acres in the western gulf will be offered up in December.
PHOTO: A rig and supply vessel sit in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana. (Gerald Herbert, ASSOCIATED PRESS / August 20, 2011)
By Bettina Boxall, Los Angeles Times
August 19, 2011, 9:45 p.m.
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The Obama administration announced Friday that it would hold its first oil and gas lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico since the deadly Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill.
"This sale is an important step toward a secure energy future that includes safe, environmentally sound development of our domestic energy resources," said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. "Since Deepwater Horizon, we have strengthened oversight at every stage of the oil and gas development process, including deep-water drilling safety, subsea blowout containment, and spill response capability."
The Interior Department plans to offer in December more than 20 million acres in the western gulf for energy leasing — despite a recent Interior report that found companies were not exploring or producing oil or gas on about two-thirds of the 34 million acres they already lease in the gulf.
The administration came under sharp criticism from the oil industry and gulf state politicians for imposing a deep-water drilling moratorium after last year's BP spill — and then for not approving new drilling quickly after the ban was lifted.
"This lease sale is an important and encouraging step toward getting the Gulf of Mexico and its hardworking people back to work," Louisiana Sen. Mary L. Landrieu, a Democrat, said in a statement. "Unfortunately, the slow pace of new permits in the gulf places lingering uncertainty over this critical industry."
The conservation group Oceana condemned the move as premature. "Rushing this lease sale in the western gulf puts animals like turtles, dolphins and bluefin tuna at risk," said senior campaign director Jacqueline Savitz. "The Obama administration still hasn't addressed significant shortcomings in spill response and cleanup capabilities."
The Environmental Defense Fund was more positive. "This announcement proves that the Obama administration is serious about allowing oil companies to return to deep-water drilling in the gulf, as long as they follow essential new rules … to protect the environment, workers and the economy," said Elgie Holstein, the group's senior planning director and former chief of staff at the U.S. Department of Energy.
The new lease areas are located from nine to about 250 miles offshore in both shallow and deep water, and could, Interior officials said, produce 222 million to 423 million barrels of oil and as much as 2.65 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
Acknowledging that many existing leases were sitting idle, the Interior Department said it intended to increase the minimum bid amount for deep-water blocks to $100 per acre from $37.50 to "discourage companies from purchasing leases they are unlikely to explore in the near term."
The sale will include environmental safeguards for marine life and, "when conditions warrant," monitoring by trained observers to ensure compliance, the department added.
An Interior Department analysis released in the spring found that gulf lease auctions before the BP spill drew little interest. Of nearly 53 million acres offered in 2009 in the central and western gulf, only 2.7 million acres were leased. Last year, only 2.4 million acres were leased out of about 37 million acres offered.
.Los Angeles Times...
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Gulf to open up for oil and gas leases
The Obama... more
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Gulf sheen not from wells, Coast Guard says
'Natural seepage is very common,' official says after fears of another spill
msnbc.com staff and news service reports
updated 8/18/2011 4:58:11 PM ET
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The Coast Guard reported Thursday that none of the well heads or pipelines in the area of a sheen that appeared in the Gulf of Mexico were leaking and suggested the sheen was from a natural seepage.
"The sheen has dissipated," Cheri Ben-Iesau, Coast Guard commander for District 8 in New Orleans, told msnbc.com. "Samples collected returned negative for hydrocarbons."
"None of the well heads or pipelines in the area where found to be leaking," she said, adding "natural seepage is very common" in the Gulf.
The report didn't faze residents of the coast, where small spills are spotted hundreds of times a year and many people have come to see last year's BP catastrophe as a once-in-a-lifetime event.
Gulf Coast fishermen are back on the water and businesses are again packed with tourists on sandy shores since the disaster that hit last summer, when BP PLC's well blew out of control, spooking tourists away from normally packed communities when beaches were left coated in crude.
BP said Thursday that the shiny substance floating on the water's surface didn't come from its operations, and officials said it had since dissipated. Reports of sheen are common: More than 200 were called in last year in an area far from BP's well where the new sheen was reported, and 13 were reported Wednesday alone off Louisiana's coast.
Residents say they aren't afraid of a disaster like the one last summer, when millions of gallons of crude spewed into the Gulf and many scientists and fishermen wondered if the region would ever recover.
"This was probably a once-in-a-lifetime thing this spill here, the big BP oil spill," said Rocky Ditcharo, a 45-year-old shrimp dock owner in Plaquemines Parish, the finger of land south of New Orleans where the Mississippi River empties into the Gulf. He looked upon the oil industry favorably, even though last year's spill threatened to ruin his way of life.
"I'm not mad at the oil industry about what happened. You can't hate them unless they went out of their way to intentionally do something. Accidents happen. Nobody wants to kill off a bunch of wildlife, shrimp and fish."
BP said Thursday tests indicated the substance near an abandoned well in the Green Canyon — an undersea area encompassing thousands of miles far from the company's blown-out Macondo well — was silt from the Gulf floor.
The U.S. Coast Guard said the sheen was not large enough to warrant a cleanup; even small amounts of oil can lead to a large sheen on the water.
Sheens are frequently reported in the Gulf, many of them small and a result of the 3,200 oil and gas drilling operations in the Gulf. Leaked fuel from ships can also create sheens, along with oil that naturally seeps from the seafloor or leaks from abandoned or plugged wells. For instance, the Coast Guard said several sheens reported in the past two weeks came from natural seepage or releases from government-approved discharge points on offshore platforms.
Many sheens are never investigated and disappear before anyone determines where they came from. In 2010, for instance, there were 210 spills or sheens reported in the Green Canyon area. About a quarter of the calls described "unknown sheens," without a known source. More than half — 112 of those reported — originated from platforms, but many of the reports are unverified.
There are thousands of abandoned oil and gas wells in the Gulf that are not monitored for leaks after they're plugged.
But, according to Kenneth Arnold, a Houston-based offshore engineering expert, a dead well will leak only if the cement job to close it in was not done properly. He said offshore regulations for closing in wells are stringent.
Yet reports of sheen get much more attention since the BP oil spill, when a drilling rig explosion killed 11 men and sent millions of gallons of oil spewing into the Gulf in what became the worst offshore spill in U.S. history. The coastal tourism industry struggled amid images of tar-coated beaches and oil-stained birds. Many business owners had complained that people canceled vacation plans even in places where oil never washed ashore.
On Thursday, business groups affirmed the region was making a strong comeback.
"It's been a good summer," said Chris Laborde of the Gulf Coast Alliance, a regional business group set up after the BP spill to attract tourists and investors to the Gulf Coast. "From the tourism side, it's been good. Fishing has been superb. Everything is coming out clean (from the spill). It's a lot better than people anticipated."
He said Gulf Coast residents aren't worried a spill on the scale of the BP disaster would be repeated any time soon.
"This one serious accident was out of 40,000-50,000 drillings that have occurred over decades," he said.
And without evidence the BP spill ruined the Gulf's ecosystem, many people seem relaxed. Seafood sampling has found little to no contamination, and scientists have not found the kind of ecosystem-altering damage some predicted.
"All the tests are coming back that the seafood is safe, and that's blessing," said Bridgette Varone, the executive director of the Mississippi Gulf Coast Hospitality & Restaurant Association. The bigger challenge, she said, has been overcoming consumers' perceptions.
Laborde agreed, noting the spill was similar to the aftermath of 2005's Hurricane Katrina, "when people thought New Orleans was flooded years later."
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The Associated Press contributed to this report.
http://media.nola.com/2010_gulf_oil_spill/photo/gulf-oil-east-grand-terrejpg-0056cf933168f378.jpg.
Gulf sheen not from wells, Coast Guard says
'Natural seepage is very... more
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Los Angeles Times...
China moves to contain newly disclosed oil spills
By Jonathan Kaiman | 6:13 p.m.
The June incidents at two platforms that are jointly owned by U.S. energy giant ConocoPhillips in the Bohai Sea were only reported last week.
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By Jonathan Kaiman, Los Angeles Times
July 14, 2011, 6:13 p.m.
Reporting from Beijing—
China is moving to contain two oil spills in the Bohai Sea off the nation's northeast coast amid complaints from environmental groups and online activists that it took weeks for government regulators and an oil company to publicly disclose the incidents.
The spills occurred below two platforms jointly owned by U.S. energy giant ConocoPhillips' China subsidiary and the state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corp., or CNOOC, creating a 320-square-mile oil slick that's reportedly spreading.
The State Oceanic Administration, China's coastal regulator, on Wednesday ordered ConocoPhillips to shut down operations at the platforms located at an oilfield known as Penglai 9-13.
Though the first spill occurred June 4 and the second June 17, the incidents were not disclosed to the public until July 5 by the State Oceanic Administration.
Environmental activists said attempts to cover up the spills were thwarted when word leaked online, possibly from a whistleblower.
Officials at CNOOC have denied a cover-up. The coastal regulatory agency could not be reached for comment.
ConocoPhillips said in a statement that it estimates between 1,500 and 2,000 barrels have leaked into the sea due to seepage from a naturally occurring fault. The company said it has contained the spill to trace amounts, equal to a few liters a day and that no oil had reached shore.
Activists remain deeply skeptical about the severity of the spills given China's notoriously weak enforcement of environmental laws, which they say favor economic interests above all.
The spills come a year after one of the worst oil disasters in Chinese history, when explosions rocked two pipelines in the coastal city of Dalian. Although the government said 11,000 barrels of oil were spilled back then, independent experts put the amount at 650,000 barrels.
The Dalian incident came on the heels of another environmental disaster, in which the state-owned Zijin Mining Group Co. waited nine days before disclosing a chemical spill in Fujian province that polluted a river that had been heavily relied upon for its fish.
Ma Jun, head of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, a nongovernmental organization in Beijing, said China's disclosure laws for such disasters were vague and fines for polluting were too small.
"For decades, China's policy is to promote economic development," Ma said. "So all of these companies have enjoyed some special protection."
The stiffest penalty oil companies can face for polluting waters in China is about $30,000. By comparison, BP may face tens of billions of dollars in penalties after last year's spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
In recent days, Chinese state media have criticized regulators for being weak.
"We cannot help but wonder: Is the [State Oceanic Administration] a serious watchdog that exists to prevent bigger incidents from happening, or a loving parent who is overprotective of his own child?" read an editorial in the English edition of the Global Times.
Chinese oil demand has soared to fuel its sizzling economic growth. To keep up, the country has had to increasingly rely on foreign sources, including suppliers from some of the most volatile regions in the world.
Seeking a safer alternative, the government has invested billions of dollars in boosting its offshore oil production.
"With more and more interest invested into offshore oil exploration, there's a really urgent need to start improving" environmental safety measures, said Li Yan, the climate and energy campaign manager at Greenpeace East Asia.
If "measures are not taken, this could just happen again," Li said.
It remains to be seen how much damage to wildlife has been caused by the Bohai Sea spills.
Zhai Yuxiu, deputy director of the National Center for Quality Supervision and Testing of Aquatic Products, said that even slight differences in water temperature and quality could be catastrophic for the area's fishing industry.
"The pollution will absolutely have an influence," he said.
This week, a coalition of 11 Chinese environmental advocacy groups announced plans to file a joint lawsuit in hopes of garnering more transparency in the oil industry.
Alex Wang, a Chinese environmental law expert at UC Berkeley Law School, said there was little hope of the lawsuit reaching court.
"In China, incidents of this magnitude are seldom ever handled in the courts," Wang said. "They'll almost always be handled by the government."
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Kaiman is a special correspondent. Nicole Liu in The Times' Beijing bureau contributed to this report.
.Los Angeles Times...
China moves to contain newly disclosed oil spills
By... more
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Ed. note: This is the final edition of the Mulch. To keep up with the best environmental coverage the progressive media has to offer, follow The Media Consortium on Twitter or connect with us on Facebook.
House Republicans passed a bill yesterday afternoon that would require the Obama administration to expand offshore oil and gas drilling. As oil prices shoot up, Republicans have pushing for more domestic drilling, even as oil companies report record profits.
As Mother Jones’ Kate Sheppard reports, oil companies have used those profits in record buybacks of company stock. “This spending spree comes not only as the gas price debate has resurged in Congress, but also as companies lobby to keep the $40 billion in tax breaks and loopholes that President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats want slashed from the 2012 budget,” Sheppard writes.
The long war
The most recent debates over off-shore drilling, oil profits, and oil subsidies are just one front in the long war to preserve the environment and push back against climate change. There are strategies available here that have yet to be deployed. At Grist, David Roberts offers four that could help fight climate change: put a price on carbon; deploy existing clean energy technology on a much more massive scale; invest large amounts of money in research and development; and invest in infrastructure.
As far as these four policy proposals go, he says, right now, “The U.S. is doing all of them poorly,” and he does not believe that it is possible any more to reverse climate change. As he writes, “Climate change won’t be solved, it will be managed, by us, by our kids, by our grandkids.”
Those kids, however, are not ready to accept their fate without a fight. Yesterday, a group of teenagers filed suit against the federal government for failing to guard a public trust—the atmosphere. As Alec Loorz, who is sixteen years old and a plaintiff in one suit, writes at Earth Island Journal, “The government has a legal responsibility to protect the future for our children. So we are demanding that they recognize the atmosphere as a commons that needs to be preserved, and commit to a plan to reduce emissions to a safe level.”
Loorz explains why he’s fighting the government on climate policy:
Our addiction to fossil fuels is messing up the perfect balance of nature and threatening the survival of my generation. If we continue to hide in denial and avoid taking action, my and I generation will be forced to grow up in a world where hurricanes as big as Katrina are normal, people die every year because of heat waves, droughts, and floods, and entire species of animals we’ve come to know disappear right before our eyes.
The future vs. now
That’s not a world that I’d want to live in. But the current state of affairs isn’t so pleasant, either. No matter what we do, it seems, we wreak havoc on the world around us. At Care2, for instance, Miranda Perry reports that sonar technology, which was known to harm sea mammals like whales and dolphins, also can damage invertebrate animals, like squid found dead on the shore:
Biologists speculated that the giant squid were affected by the sonar, which can range from 157 and 175 decibels and frequencies between 50 to 400 Hertz in marine activities such as oil and natural gas prospecting.
“[W]e hypothesized that the giant squid died in one of two ways: either by direct impact from the sound waves or by having their statocysts practically destroyed and [the squid] becoming disoriented,” marine biologist Angel Guerra told National Geographic. Now, that hypothesis is backed by proof.
And it’s not only animals that are damaged by human activities: it’s us, too. The toxins constantly filtering into the air, for instance, contribute to health problems like asthma. As Susan Lyon and Jorge Madrid write at Campus Progress:
Asthma rates are higher in places with bad air quality, and though asthma has no known cure it can be controlled by limiting exposure to asthma triggers such as smog and particulate air pollutants. Poor air quality caused by exhaust from cars, factory emissions, smoke, and dust can aggravate the lungs and can worsen chronic lung diseases, according to the EPA. Coal-fired power plants are also a big part of the problem.
Rolling back protections
It is clear that our way of living in the world is damaging it. But when governments all over the country should be pushing harder than ever to protect the environment, in many cases, they’re trying to roll back protections already in place.
Public News Service’s Glen Gardner reports that in Florida, a program called Florida Forever, which helped conserve water resources and wildlife habitat, may be sacrificed to the state budget crunch. And The Florida Independent’s Travis Pillow reports that, at the same time, “The Florida House of Representatives just gutted the power of ordinary citizens to challenge decisions made by environmental regulators….[C]hallengers would have less of a say in permitting decisions that affect water quality. The person or company seeking the permit would be able to rebut any of their arguments, with new evidence, without giving the challenger a chance to respond.”
On both the state and federal level, policy makers have failed to safeguard the environment and are leaving a mess for younger generations to clean up.
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.Ed. note: This is the final edition of the Mulch. To keep up with the best... more
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http://www.examiner.com/sites/default/files/styles/image_full_width/hash/radiation-poisoning.jpg
Human Rights Examiner...
Exclusive: Gulf Plague survivors being radiated
April 29th, 2011 3:20 pm ET
Deborah Dupre
PART ONE...
Corexit is not the only killer loose from the Gulf Operation, commonly called "BP's Oil Spill 2010." A new report by environmental attorney Stuart Smith emphasizes that radiation amounts from the Gulf oil gusher are larger than discussed. In an exclusive interview, head of Gulf Coast Barefoot Doctors, Delia Labarre reported that radiation poisoning signs are what suffering Gulf people typically exhibit.
Small traces of radioactivity can prove deadly.
Smith's report title reflects the Gulf state of affairs, "Chernobyl in the Gulf", an accurate term according to head of Gulf Barefoot Doctor, Delia LaBarre. For almost a year, LaBarre has been witnessing people with "Gulf Plague," also called "BP Flu," "BP Crud," or "Blue Plague." Most of them have radiation poisoning signs she said.
LaBarre has almost single-handedly provided approximately 300 Survival Kits to Gulf Plague victims over the past year.
Ongoing atrocities in the Gulf that Smith lists since on-start of the Gulf Operation, that former top oil executive Ian Crane evidences as planned for depopulation include:
Residents up and down the Gulf Coast report tar balls and mats continue to litter beaches
Re-oilings are common
The multi-billion-dollar Gulf seafood industry is reeling from contamination
Dead dolphins and sea turtles wash ashore at record-breaking rates
Oyster beds are devastated
Increasingly large numbers of Gulf coast people and clean-up workers 'are getting sick.'
Oil production produces radiation
Oil production releases radiation. Oil waste is ladened with radiation. These radioactive elements include but are not limited to radium, thorium and uranium, all now in the Gulf Region in unprecedented dangerous amounts according to Smith.
Radioactive elements are typically extracted from the ground with oil and gas and then separated from the fossil fuels, all part of the daily production process to make the array of oil-based goods westerners use daily, from plastic to car fuel.
"Once the NORM [naturally occurring radioactive materials] is extracted, it is flushed directly back into the ocean in the waste-stream byproduct known as produced water. Their discharge into the Gulf of Mexico has been a daily reality since the 1950s – but the amount that was released into the water from the runaway Macondo Well is unprecedented."
Even a small amount of radioactive material can have a devastating impact on humans unfortunate enough to come into direct contact with it according to Smith.
Ground Zero workers familiar with radiation poisoning signs
"Reports of unexplained health problems are soaring... [f]rom flu-like symptoms to blindness to intense chest pain to severe sinus inflammation, people across the Gulf region are reporting debilitating illnesses in the wake of the spill."
Radiation poisoning symptoms include: neurological problems such as memory loss; headaches and balance problems; seizures; stomach and digestive problems such as diarrhea; sweating; dizziness; nosebleeds and bleeding from ears, rectum and urinary tract; trouble sleeping; and rashes or skin irritations.
"We've had reports on all these symptoms," LaBarre reported Friday. "They've been well documented."
Most people have assumed that Corexit has been the cause of the illnesses, but, LaBarre said that these "very well may be caused by radiation exposure, as Smith says," adding, "This information has definitely been covered up."
Smith's report was partially based on Dr. Chris Busby's research project.
As Dupré reported after the untimely death of oil guru Matt Simmons, "Heeding his call for evacuation soon after the explosion would have helped prevent ongoing chemical and radiation poisoning of thousands of children and adults now being poorly treated. It would have helped prevent the 'heavy resident death toll' that Simmons predicted. ("Gulf oil whistleblower, renewable energy guru Matt Simmons RIP (videos)", Examiner.com)
CONTINUED...http://www.examiner.com/sites/default/files/styles/image_full_width/hash/radiation-pois... 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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First Permit Since BP Catastrophe
February 28, 2011
Posted In: Oil Rig
By Injury at Sea on February 28, 2011 4:12 PM
The Department of the Interior has issued the first deep water drilling permit in the Gulf of Mexico to Noble Energy, Inc. since the BP Oil Spill, a senior official said Monday.
After a thorough vetting process, Noble Energy Inc. has been granted permission to resume drilling in 6,500 feet of water off the coast of Louisiana. Work on the well was suspended, along with virtually all other drilling activity in water deeper than 5,000 feet, immediately after the Deepwater Horizon accident last April 20, which killed 11 rig workers and spewed nearly five million barrels of oil into the ocean.
Michael R. Bromwich, director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, said that Noble Energy Inc. had been granted permission to resume drilling in 6,500 feet of water off the coast of Louisiana. Work on the well was suspended, along with virtually all other drilling activity in water deeper than 5,000 feet, immediately after the Deepwater Horizon accident last April 20, which killed 11 rig workers and spewed nearly five million barrels of oil into the ocean.
"Noble Energy's application has met the requirements of our new safety regulations and information requirements." Bromwich said in a conference call with reporters.
"This means among other things that Noble Energy has met new requirements to show that it is prepared to deal with a potential blowout and potential for a worst-case discharge scenario."
Bromwich said there were seven applications pending. "We are moving forward with deepwater drilling," he said, underscoring that all applications would be determined on "a well-by-well basis."First Permit Since BP Catastrophe
February 28, 2011
Posted In: Oil Rig
By Injury... 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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"Today is Canada Day - or as others refer to Canada, America's Mini-Me." Stand-up comedian Chris Martin delivers his final set before retiring due to Alzheimer's July 1, 2010 at Cozzy's Comedy Club's open mic in Newport News, VA.
http://www.chrismartincomedy.com"Today is Canada Day - or as others refer to Canada, America's... more
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"Today is Canada Day - or as others refer to Canada, America's Mini-Me." Stand-up comedian Chris Martin delivers his final set before retiring due to Alzheimer's July 1, 2010 at Cozzy's Comedy Club's open mic in Newport News, VA.
Chris Martin Comedy"Today is Canada Day - or as others refer to Canada, America's... more
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The Obama administration is setting aside 187,000 square miles in Alaska as a "critical habitat" for polar bears,
Greenspace (Los Angeles Times)
Obama administration moves to protect polar bear
November 24, 2010 | 9:02 pm
The Obama administration is setting aside 187,000 square miles in Alaska as a "critical habitat" for polar bears, an action that could restrict future offshore drilling for oil and gas. The total, which includes large areas of sea ice off the Alaska coast, is about 13,000 square miles, or 8.3 million acres, less than in a preliminary plan released last year.
Tom Strickland, assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks at the Interior Department, said the designation would help polar bears stave off extinction, recognizing that the greatest threat is the melting of Arctic sea ice caused by climate change.
"This critical habitat designation enables us to work with federal partners to ensure their actions within its boundaries do not harm polar bear populations," Strickland said. "We will continue to work toward comprehensive strategies for the long-term survival of this iconic species."
Designation of crucial habitat does not in itself block economic activity or other development, but requires federal officials to consider whether a proposed action would adversely affect the polar bear's habitat and interfere with its recovery.
Nearly 95% of the designated habitat is sea ice in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas off Alaska's northern coast. Polar bears spend most of their lives on frozen ocean where they hunt seals, breed and travel.
Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell and the state's oil and gas industry had complained that the preliminary plan released last year was too large and dramatically underestimated the potential economic impact. The designation could result in hundreds of millions of dollars in lost economic activity and tax revenue, they said.
Parnell said that the state is pleased that existing man-made structures will be exempted from critical habitat considerations. But, he said in a statement, the state is disappointed it was not consulted on other recommendations. "This additional layer of regulatory burden will not only slow job creation and economic growth here and for our nation, but will also slow oil and gas exploration efforts," Parnell said.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said reductions included in the final rule were mostly due to corrections that more accurately reflect the U.S. border in the Arctic Ocean. Five U.S. Air Force radar sites were exempted from the final rule, as were Native Alaskan communities in Barrow and Kaktovik, Alaska.
The Interior Department has declared polar bears "threatened," or likely to become endangered, citing a dramatic loss of sea ice. Officials face a Dec. 23 deadline to explain why the bears were listed as threatened instead of the more protective "endangered."
Kassie Siegel, a lawyer for the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group that has filed a lawsuit to increase protections for the polar bear, hailed the decision. "Now we need the Obama administration to actually make it mean something so we can write the bear's recovery plan — not its obituary," she said. Siegel called for a moratorium on oil and gas drilling in bear habitat areas. "An oil spill there would be a catastrophe," she said. "That seems like an understatement."
The Arctic Slope Regional Corp., which advocates for Alaska native business interests, said in a statement that the decision disproportionately affects Alaska natives and called the designation the "wrong tool" for conserving the polar bear because it does nothing to address climate change.
"The burden of the impacts will be felt by the people of the Arctic Slope," said Tara Sweeney, vice president of external affairs for ASRC, which is based in Barrow, Alaska. "This is a quality-of-life issue for our people."
Kara Moriarty, deputy director of the Alaska Oil and Gas Assn., said the action would hurt oil and gas exploration in Alaska by creating more delays and added costs to projects in what already is a high-cost environment.
"The companies and the industry will be required to go through more permitting and create mitigation measures without a direct benefit to the polar bear or oil and gas development," Moriarty said. "The Fish and Wildlife Service has found over and over again our activities pose no threat to the polar bear."The Obama administration is setting aside 187,000 square miles in Alaska as a... more
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Ted Danson urges more science before exploration
Published on November 12th, 2010 5:12 pm
By MARGARET BAUMAN (The Seward Phoenix LOG)
Alaska Native groups and environmentalists opposed to offshore drilling in the Arctic found support this week in testimony offered at a federal hearing by actor Ted Danson, while state, union and industry officials asked for the project to proceed.
Danson, who is in Anchorage filming "Everyone Loves Whales" with Drew Barrymore, told the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement that its revised environmental impact statement still needs work.
"It would be a mistake for the train to leave the station ... to lease and then do the science," he said. "If you're going to drill in environmentally sensitive areas, make sure you've got it right. And we haven't gotten it right yet," said Danson, a board member of the ocean advocacy group Oceana.
"Our suggestion is to stop this draft, do the real science, the base science, and it would take maybe four or five years to do that, $20 million per year, would be well worth that effort," he said.
Danson was among 78 people signed up to testify in the standing-room-only crowd Nov. 9 before BOEMRE, formerly the federal Minerals Management Service, in a midtown Anchorage office building.
BOEMRE officials listened for some three hours to a steady stream of people arguing for and against allowing offshore drilling to proceed in the traditional sea mammal hunting grounds of the North Slope's Inupiat Eskimo hunters.
The hearing was the last of four hearings held in Alaska on the supplemental environmental impact statement for oil and gas lease sale 193 in the Chukchi Sea, which would be conducted by Shell Oil. Others were scheduled earlier at Kotzebue, Point Hope, Point Lay, Wainwright and Barrow. Shell contends that there is little chance that a blowout would occur in this relatively shallow area of the outer continental shelf, but that if it did, that the spill could be contained and cleaned up.
Danson, who was among the first signed up to testify, had visited just days earlier in Barrow, with North Slope borough Mayor Edward Itta.
"The people he represents have been lifted up economically from oil money into a place where they can live in a much more sustainable way," Danson said. "And at the same time, their spiritual and cultural life depends on whaling, bowhead whale, and they feel that may or may not be in jeopardy from this drilling."
"This is a high risk gamble," said marine scientist Rick Steiner, who followed Danson in giving testimony. Steiner, who has served as an advisor on oil spill disasters worldwide, said the oil industry is not ready to handle a spill in arctic waters. "Oil spill response never ever worked anywhere," he said. "If an oil spill occurred right before freeze up (in the arctic) there would be no chance of clean-up."
Supporters of proceeding with offshore drilling said that if the leases are rescinded it would mean a loss of one of the greatest opportunities in the nation to create jobs, contribute to the reduction of the huge federal deficit, and wean America off of the grip of foreign oil.
"To be able to produce oil estimated at 29 billion barrels, and another possible 200 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, the Chukchi may hold the key to helping us solve a significant part of our country's energy woes," said Vince Beltrami, president of the Alaska AFL-CIO, which he said represents some 60,000 working families in Alaska.
"To rescind these leases would be to remove the potential of 35,000 year-round jobs and a payroll of more than $72 billion."
Beltrami said concerns about the safety of the environment are paramount. "Shell should be held to the highest safety accountability standards possible, as everyone knows we can ill afford a Gulf Coast style catastrophe in our Arctic waters," he said. "But this company has an excellent track record. Shell has a robust safety plan and has been safely drilling in Alaska for 50 years."
Kevin Banks, director of the state Division of Oil and Gas, complimented BOEMRE for the work they put into the supplemental environmental impact statement. "We believe that it provides more than sufficient support for the decision to affirm the Feb. 6, 2008 Sale 193 and that it is well past time to proceed to the next phase of exploration."
Banks that what is often lost in the debate about OCS development is "the simple fact that when we fail to develop our own domestic resources, we export our nation's wealth through deeper trade imbalances and the costs to maintain our international energy security. Failure to develop our domestic resources 0065acerbates the impacts on the environment in other parts of the world where values about environmental protection and the laws that minimize the impact of industrial activity are non-existent," he said.
Rebecca Noblin, Alaska director of the Center for Biological Diversity, also testified, speaking of an Arctic in trouble, warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world, with Arctic summer sea ice disappearing more rapidly than climate models predicted.
Noblin said Chukchi species, including polar bears and Pacific walrus, are already showing signs of stress due to loss of sea ice habitat, but that the loaming industrial oil drilling also threatens these species.
"No one, no one has the technology to clean up oil in broken ice conditions," Noblin said. "There is no way to mobilize even a fraction of the response required for the Gulf disaster in the remote Arctic. And the truth is that a large oil spill could mean the difference between survival and extinction for struggling Arctic species."
Noblin told BOEMRE that in order to comply with the law the agency must analyze the substantial gaps in scientific information in the current EIS. "And most importantly, you must not allow drilling to go forward unless you have the scientific knowledge to say, truthfully, that drilling in the Arctic is safe," she said.
BOEMRE will continue to accept testimony through Nov. 30.
http://thesewardphoenixlog.com/thumb_srv.php?gallery=news_1011&img=all_11-18_lease_sale_193.jpg&capWid=750&capHt=350¢er=1&sharpen=1
http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTmeySEP08HG_2CA1WuVZgzlQjJJeqSGTwyljFM4-qkxBT-_IG44wTed Danson urges more science before exploration
Published on November 12th, 2010... more
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Tony Hayward: BP Was Unprepared For Gulf Oil Spill, 'We Were Making It Up Day To Day'
JILL LAWLESS | 11/ 9/10 06:06 AM | AP
Photo: Outgoing BP CEO Tony Hayward appears before the Energy and Climate Change Committee in the House of Commons, London in this image taken from TV Wednesday Sept. 15, 2010. Hayward gave evidence to the British parliamentary committee studying the fallout of the Gulf of Mexico spill and the future of deep water drilling. (AP Photo/PA)
LONDON — Former BP PLC chief Tony Hayward has acknowledged that the company was unprepared for the disastrous Gulf of Mexico oil spill and the media frenzy it spawned, and said the firm came close to financial disaster as its credit sources evaporated.
In an interview with the BBC to be broadcast Tuesday, Hayward said company's contingency plans were inadequate and "we were making it up day to day."
"What was going on was some extraordinary engineering," he said in extracts released in advance by the BBC. "But when it was played out in the full glare of the media as it was, of course it looked like fumbling and incompetence."
An April 20 explosion aboard a Gulf oil rig killed 11 workers and kicked off the worst oil spill in U.S. history.
Hayward said BP was "not prepared to deal with the intensity of the media scrutiny" it faced as millions of barrels of oil poured into the ocean and washed up on shore.
Hayward left his post last month after taking much of the flak for BP's poor public handling of the disaster. Gaffes including his statement that "I want my life back" were ridiculed in the U.S. media and seized on by critics of BP.
Hayward said he was "pretty angry" at the personal vilification.
"If I had done a degree at RADA (The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) rather than a degree in geology, I may have done better, but I'm not certain it would've changed the outcome," he said.
He defended his much-criticized decision to take part in a yacht race with his family at the height of the crisis, saying he had not seen his son for three months and had only been aboard for six hours.
"I'm not certain I'd do anything different," Hayward said.
Hayward said BP had found itself unable to borrow from international investors during the spill crisis, threatening its finances. He said that before a meeting with President Barack Obama at the White House in June, "the capital markets were effectively closed to BP."
"We were not able to borrow in the capital markets, either short or medium term debt at all, " he said. "It was a classic financial crisis issue."
Hayward's successor, Bob Dudley, told the program that "these were frightening days" for BP.
"With a company the size of BP, its reputation, what it does – you almost can't quite believe how close you are" to financial disaster, he said.Your request is being processed...
Tony Hayward: BP Was Unprepared... more
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Don't Let Carly Fiorina drill the California coastline! We've seen what happens when politicians win in their chants of, "Drill, Baby, Drill" and the last thing that California needs is a diaster like we saw in the Gulf. Let's protect California from being the next disaster.Don't Let Carly Fiorina drill the California coastline! We've seen what... more
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Workers rescued after oil platform fire in Gulf of Mexico
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/09/02/louisiana.oil.platform.explosion/index.html?hpt=T1
Oil platform fire reported in Gulf of Mexico
By the CNN Wire Staff
September 2, 2010 4:58 p.m. EDT
13 survivors of the oil and gas production platform fire await rescue on Thursday.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
* Louisiana governor says one worker is injured
* Coast Guard reports a "sheen" from platform that produced oil and gas
* The incident did not cause a spill, says company that owns rig
* Thirteen people are accounted for after the fire, the Coast Guard says
(CNN) -- A well connected to an oil and gas production platform caught on fire in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday, engulfing the vessel in flames about 100 miles off the central coast of Louisiana and forcing 13 people overboard, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said.
All 13 people have been accounted for, said Petty Officer Bill Colclough of the Coast Guard. They were found floating in the Gulf, officials said.
Mariner Energy, which owns the Vermilion Oil Rig 380, said none of the crew members was hurt in the incident, despite earlier reports of a single injured worker. But Jindal said one worker was injured.
Jindal said the 13 were transported to Terrebonne General Hospital for evaluation.
Also, Mariner indicated that the fire -- which was first reported to the Coast Guard by workers on a nearby rig around 9:20 a.m. (10:20 a.m. ET) -- was not sparked by an explosion. It started at one of the platform's seven active wells, the company said, though its cause is under investigation.
The cause is not yet known, Jindal said Thursday afternoon.
The company said an initial flyover of the site indicated "no hydrocarbon spill."
However, Coast Guard Petty Officer Elizabeth Bordelon said there is a sheen on the water at the site of the platform, measuring about 100 feet wide and stretching for one mile. Jindal said the sheen can't be confirmed.
The fire at the platform is not out yet, but it has been contained, Bordelon said.
"Mariner Energy recently told us that they shut in the production platform, I want to stress that neither the state nor the U.S. Coast Guard have verified that information at this time," said Jindal. "We are working with the Coast Guard to ensure that the platform is indeed shut in and not leaking anything into the water."
Jindal said that Mariner has told him that all seven wells have been closed off and that what is burning now is from fuel in storage, and not from an active leak.
During the last week of August, production from the platform averaged approximately 9.2 million cubic feet of natural gas a day and 1,400 barrels (58,800 gallons) of oil, the company said.
David Reed, a paramedic on board a nearby oil rig, said he suddenly saw "a bunch of smoke" from the direction of the Vermilion platform, and radios in his rig's control room started "lighting up like a Christmas tree" soon after.
The first report of the fire came from Rotorcraft Leasing, a company that provides helicopter services for the industry, the Coast Guard said.
The incident comes nearly five months after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded April 20, killing 11 people and causing a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico -- one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history.
That oil rig, contracted by BP, had 126 workers. It burned for three days before finally sinking.
Thursday's incident took place aboard a production platform, which is built after a well is drilled and remains in place for years. Oil rigs drill the wells. The platforms pump pressure down the hole to keep the well flowing, and sometimes collect the oil or gas, or both.
U.S. agencies and BP capped the ruptured Deepwater Horizon well July 15, stopping the flow of oil into the Gulf. The effects of the huge spill could hurt the region for years.
The failure of the well's blowout preventer triggered the April 20 explosion, and crews are expected to remove the equipment from the well since it may hold valuable forensic evidence as to why it failed.
The Obama administration tried to impose a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling in the wake of the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon in April, but the ban is in legal limbo.
A group of companies that provide boats and equipment to the deepwater drilling industry sued to overturn the ban and won in June.
The government tried again in July, imposing a new moratorium and asking for the suit to be thrown out. A federal judge refused this week to dismiss it.
The Vermilion platform did not violate the moratorium, said Melissa Schwartz, spokeswoman for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, which replaced the Minerals Management Service.
"This was an oil and gas production platform in approximately 340 feet of water, 102 miles offshore Louisiana (80 nautical miles)," she said. "This platform was authorized to produce oil and gas at this water depth. The current suspension involves drilling rigs in water depths greater than 500 feet," she said.
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Thursday that the federal government has "assets ready" to respond to any environmental problems resulting from the fire on the Vermilion structure.
Mariner Energy describes itself as one of the leading independent oil and gas exploration and production companies in the Gulf of Mexico. The company said it had interests in about 350 federal offshore leases last year, with more than 110 of the 350 in development.
The company has about 300 employees. Its most recent quarterly net income was $1.7 million.
Shares of Mariner Energy fell 60 cents to $22.75 on Thursday.
The company is in the process of a planned merger with a larger company, Apache Corp. The merger is about four to six weeks away from completion, an Apache spokesman said.
CNN's Vivian Kuo, Sarah Edwards, Mike Ahlers and Steve Hargreaves contributed to this report.Workers rescued after oil platform fire in Gulf of Mexico... more
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Another oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico has injured at least one worker and thrown over a dozen more overboard.
According to the U.S. Coast Guard, the explosion occurred on a rig about 80 miles south of Vermilion Bay at approximately 9 a.m. Thursday morning. As of 10:15 the rig was still on fire.
Injured workers are being taken to Terrebonne General Medical Center in Houma, officials said.
The rig is owned by Mariner Energy, and it is still unclear whether it is leaking any oil as a result of the explosion.
Updates on this event: http://ow.ly/2yC0FAnother oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico has injured at least one worker and... more
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U.S. to Tighten Reviews for New Offshore Drilling Plans
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/science/earth/17drill.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
August 16, 2010
Drilling Permits for Deep Waters Face New Review
By JOHN M. BRODER
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said Monday that it would require significantly more environmental review before approving new offshore drilling permits, ending a practice in which government regulators essentially rubber-stamped potentially hazardous deepwater projects like BP’s out-of-control well.
The administration has come under sharp criticism for granting BP an exemption from environmental oversight for the Macondo well, which blew out on April 20, killing 11 workers and spewing nearly five million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
The more stringent environmental reviews are part of a wave of new regulation and legislation that promises to fundamentally remake an industry that has operated hand-in-glove with its government overseers for decades.
Many oil industry officials worry that the new environmental, safety, technical and financial requirements will drive some companies out of business, discourage future exploration and worsen the nation’s dependence on imported oil. The highly competitive oil industry has always operated under tremendous cost and time pressures; the new rules will most likely slow the development of new wells while raising costs.
Bruce H. Vincent, chairman of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, said the industry feared that the BP accident would be a turning point for oil exploration the way the Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident in 1979 contributed to a virtual 30-year moratorium on nuclear plant construction.
“Let’s hope it’s not our Three Mile Island,” said Mr. Vincent, who is also president of Swift Energy, a midsize oil company based in Houston. “It all depends on whether government adopts the wrong policies in response. The country can’t afford that.”
Drillers are already chafing under a moratorium on deepwater drilling in the gulf and strict new rules on shallow-water wells. The new environmental rules provide a foretaste of what the regulatory climate will be once the moratorium is lifted later this year. The House and Senate are moving legislation that will tighten regulatory standards for offshore drilling and put a higher multibillion-dollar limit on liability for damages from any future oil spill.
The administration is moving on a parallel track. After three months of review of federal environmental law, the White House Council on Environmental Quality on Monday recommended that the Interior Department suspend use of so-called categorical exclusions, which allow oil companies to sink offshore wells based on environmental impact statements for supposedly similar areas, while the department reviews the environmental impact. Permits for the Macondo well were based on exemptions written in 1981 and 1986. The waiver granted to BP in April 2009, as part of the permitting process for the doomed well, was based on the company’s claim that a blowout was unlikely and that if a spill did occur, it would cause minimal damage.
The Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service, recently renamed the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, issued hundreds of these exemptions in recent years to reduce the paperwork burden for oil companies seeking new wells and for government workers. As a result, there was no meaningful plan in place to cope with the BP spill and its impact on aquatic life and gulf shorelines.
The White House and the Interior Department announced in mid-May that they would review all actions taken by the minerals agency under the National Environmental Policy Act, known as NEPA. The law, a foundation of environmental policy enacted after a 1969 oil spill off Santa Barbara, Calif., requires federal agencies to complete a detailed environmental assessment before approving any potentially damaging project like an offshore oil well.
Ken Salazar, the interior secretary, and Michael R. Bromwich, director of the offshore energy service, said Monday that they would conduct a thorough environmental review of all future drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere on the Outer Continental Shelf. The moratorium on most deepwater drilling in the gulf will continue as the study proceeds, they said.
The new policy will require much more extensive environmental scrutiny once the moratorium is lifted and will lengthen the process of granting new drilling permits. Under current policy, the agency has only 30 days to decide whether to approve a drilling application, and few are denied. The new policy will also suspend the issuing of automatic exemptions from environmental review for virtually all new wells in the gulf. Such waivers have become common in recent years.
“In light of the increasing levels of complexity and risk — and the consequent potential environmental impacts — associated with deepwater drilling, we are taking a fresh look at the NEPA process and the types of environmental reviews that should be required for offshore activity,” Mr. Salazar said.
An Interior Department spokesman said the agency would not grant environmental waivers for potentially risky wells while the environmental policy was being reviewed, a process that he said would take several months. It was not clear how much time the new policy, when completed, would add to the permit process for new wells.
Mr. Salazar and Mr. Bromwich said drilling in shallow waters would be allowed to continue if operators met certain new safety and environmental standards, like certifying that the blowout protectors in use had been recently inspected and tested.
The Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group that has drawn attention to the use of categorical exclusions for offshore oil wells, called the new Interior Department policy a step in the right direction.
Bill Snape, senior counsel for the center, said in an e-mail that it should be broadened to include shallow-water wells and wells that have already been granted permits but have yet to be started. Mr. Snape also said that in many instances, the government should produce an environmental impact statement, which is more detailed than the environmental assessment the new policy requires.
Erik Milito of the American Petroleum Institute, the lobby for big oil companies, said the new rules could slow approval of new wells and cost jobs. “We’re concerned the change could add significantly to the department’s workload, stretching the timeline for approval of important energy development projects with no clear return in environmental protection,” Mr. Milito said.
Representative Nick J. Rahall II, Democrat of West Virginia and chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, said the White House report highlighted one of many problems with the Interior Department’s regulation of offshore drilling.
He called for enactment of his bill, the Consolidated Land, Energy and Aquatic Resources Act, to change the agency and tighten oversight of oil operations. It would eliminate the use of categorical exclusions for all exploration and development wells.
“I applaud Secretary Salazar for the steps he is taking,” Mr. Rahall said, “but permanent reform requires passage of my Clear Act, which would put the last nail in the coffin to the practice of allowing Big Oil to jam through offshore drilling projects with minimal review.”
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This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: August 16, 2010
An earlier version of this article misstated the flow of oil that had spewed into the Gulf of Mexico. It was nearly five million barrels, not gallons.
Photo Caption: Permits for offshore drilling rigs will be subjected to new environmental, safety, technical and financial requirements.U.S. to Tighten Reviews for New Offshore Drilling Plans... more
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'Static kill' under way in effort to seal Gulf oil well
By the CNN Wire Staff
August 3, 2010 8:53 p.m. EDT
Houston, Texas (CNN) -- BP is conducting a long-awaited procedure to permanently seal its crippled well in the Gulf of Mexico.
It's proceeding with a complex operation known as a "static kill," pumping heavy drilling mud down from above to push oil back into the well reservoir.
The effort could take "something in the range of a bunch of hours to a couple of days," BP Senior Vice President Kent Wells said Tuesday afternoon in a telephone conference. "We're extremely focused at this point in making sure we execute the static kill as best we can."
The operation started about 4 p.m. ET.
BP may pause the procedure from time to time to measure pressure and evaluate how it's working, Wells said.
It's still unclear whether the mud will be followed by cement, according to Wells. Engineers will evaluate that as they proceed. They may decide to wait until a relief well is completed in an accompanying well-killing effort known as a "bottom kill" -- intended to serve as an insurance policy that the well is sealed. That could happen about a week from now.
The static kill is the biggest development in the long-running saga involving BP's well since a tightly fitting cap was placed on it in mid-July, stopping oil from flowing into the Gulf for the first time in almost three months. It represents the beginning of the end of the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.
Some reporters were allowed on the Q4000, the ship that is pumping the mud, as the static kill got under way.
The operation took place under blue skies in clear blue seas -- in sharp contrast to scenes in the Gulf weeks ago, when oil covered vast swaths of water.
"All I can say is that everything looks good. Everything is going the way we want it to," said Bobby Bolton, a BP representative on the ship.
In previous operations, when BP was testing the "integrity" of the well, it wanted to see rising pressure readings, indicating the capped well was holding up. But in the static kill, declining pressure is a good sign, indicating the mud is proceeding down the well without seepage.
That was indeed the case Tuesday, according to Bolton. He said pressure was dropping steadily. In late afternoon, it had dropped from more than 6,900 pounds per square inch to about 4,500 pounds per square inch.
The ship's captain, Keith Shultz, said it also was important to keep the ship very stable during the static kill, and the vessel was being kept within a meter of its position.
BP proceeded with the static kill after conducting a crucial test to determine if oil in the capped well could actually be pushed back down into the reservoir and it was safe to proceed. In the "injectivity" test, a surface ship slowly injected small amounts of mud into the well at several different rates to make sure the mud would reach the reservoir.
Senior Vice President Wells said the test was "textbook. It went exactly as we would have expected."
BP said that all the operations are being carried out with the approval of the federal official overseeing the response to the oil spill, retired Adm. Thad Allen.
The injectivity test had been delayed because of a small hydraulic leak discovered in the capping stack hydraulic control system. But BP and Allen said earlier Tuesday the leak had been fixed by crews overnight.
"The leak involved two valves that are on the kill side of the capping stack and they started to lose pressure. We found that out in time and locked the valve shut. And, had the valves failed for any particular reason, that might have caused hydrocarbons to go into the environment and that's not good," Allen said.
Allen emphasized that relief wells being drilled are the "answer" to plugging the ruptured well.
"I think all of our hopes and aspirations are that this thing will come to an end," Allen said, discussing the entire spill ordeal. "It's been an agonizing period for the people of the Gulf and the United States in general."
Meanwhile, scientists charged with determining the flow from the leaking well said Monday that roughly 4.9 million barrels (205.8 million gallons) of oil have seeped from it. About 800,000 barrels of that were retrieved by siphoning vessels on the surface over the leak. Previously, the same group had put the total estimate of oil leaked from the well before it being capped on July 15 at between 3 million and 5.2 million barrels.
According to CNN data, this makes it the worst-ever accidental oil spill in marine waters.
It all started when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded April 20, killing 11 workers and launching the relentless oil spill. That prompted a wide-ranging response that involved dispersants, burning oil on the surface of the water and gathering it with skimming ships, trying to prevent it from reaching shore with booms and collecting oil debris from beaches across the Gulf with an army of BP workers.
The BP spill surpassed the 1979 Ixtoc 1 blowout in the Bay of Campeche off the coast of Mexico, which resulted in 140 million gallons of oil being spilled.
The worst oil spill of all time was intentional. During the Gulf War, the Iraqi Army purposely released 240 million gallons of oil into the Persian Gulf.
When the BP well was capped in the Gulf of Mexico in July, scientists said some 53,000 barrels of oil per day were leaking from it, while roughly 62,000 barrels of oil were likely gushing from it each day at the beginning of the incident.
"We knew from the start it was a catastrophic spill," Allen said.
Meanwhile, BP said Wednesday it has started "a series of actions to expedite claim payments to businesses" affected by the spill.
"We heard from many business people who are suffering, so we acted. These changes are designed to cut through paperwork and expedite payments," said Darryl Willis of the BP claims team.
The company said about 2,600 business claims were processed over the past three days with new guidelines.
"As a result, business claims totaling $9 million were approved Saturday, Sunday and Monday. These payments will be mailed to businesses this week," BP said in a press release.
CNN's Vivian Kuo contributed to this report.'Static kill' under way in effort to seal Gulf oil well
By the CNN Wire... more
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Gulf journals: Accounts of a tragedy
Since April 20, millions of barrels of oil have spilled into the Gulf of Mexico, devastating Gulf Coast communities and ecosystems. Here are nine stories from the people affected by the disaster.
Gulf journals: Documenting a disaster
July 28, 2010 1:54 p.m. EDT
(CNN) -- Wednesday marks the 100th day of the worst oil disaster in U.S. history. Since April 20, the catastrophic Deepwater Horizon explosion has allowed millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, devastating many communities of the Gulf Coast and its ecosystem.
CNN iReport quickly realized that we had a unique opportunity to profile and share the stories of concerned Gulf residents. As the oil disaster continued to worsen, we received dozens of heartbreaking stories with photos and videos of oil-covered beaches and wildlife.
Once the threat of oil became a serious reality to Gulf Coast residents, we started to showcase both the powerful images and stories together on our blog, through a series of profiles of iReporters on the forefront of the disaster. We've heard stories from tattoo artists in Grand Isle, Louisiana, a lifelong Pensacola, Florida, resident, and a woman who's driven hundreds of miles to tell the story of a suffering Louisiana town.
These stories help us look into the lives of the hardworking people of the Gulf as they watch this disaster take its toll. Click through the gallery to read nine personal accounts of this catastrophe, and visit the iReport blog for a complete archive.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/IREPORT/07/28/gulf.journals.irpt/index.html?hpt=C1Gulf journals: Accounts of a tragedy
Since April 20, millions of barrels of oil... more
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