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BP Executive in Charge of Gulf Clean Up Killed in Plane Crash

Com­ment: The BP exec­u­tive in charge of a new­ly-cre­at­ed unit to deal with the clean up of the Gulf Coast fol­low­ing the Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon blowout was killed in the crash of a small plane.

As is always the case with the death of a strate­gi­cal­ly-placed indi­vid­ual at a time of con­tro­ver­sy, one must ask: was this tragedy as it seems on the surface–an unfor­tu­nate acci­dent?

Giv­en that the sab­o­tag­ing of small air­craft is child’s play for a skilled assas­si­na­tion orga­ni­za­tion, it is impor­tant to con­sid­er what the late, unfor­tu­nate Mr. Black might have learned or known that may have placed him in dan­ger. Had he learned some­thing incon­ve­nient for the polit­i­cal far right?

In this con­text, one should remem­ber BP is a major cen­ter of pow­er pol­i­tics, in both the Unit­ed States and the Unit­ed King­dom, with close con­nec­tions to the Bush polit­i­cal milieu.

“Gulf Oil Spill Recov­ery Exec Dead in Plane Crash” by Melis­sa Nel­son [AP]; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 11/24/2010.

Excerpt: An exec­u­tive help­ing to guide BP’s recov­ery from the Gulf of Mex­i­co oil spill, a top Texas lawyer and his moth­er-in-law were killed in a small plane crash in waters off north­ern Flori­da, offi­cials said Wednes­day.

James Patrick Black, 58, died about a mile from the Des­tin air­port in the Flori­da Pan­han­dle on Tues­day night, said BP spokes­woman Hej­di Feick. Those who knew them said the three were bound for a Thanks­giv­ing hol­i­day gath­er­ing in Flori­da.

Black was direc­tor of oper­a­tions for BP’s Gulf Coast Restora­tion Orga­ni­za­tion and had a key role guid­ing the busi­ness unit cre­at­ed after April’s Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon rig fire and explo­sion and month­s­long spill that spewed at least 200 mil­lions of crude oil from a blown-out BP well. . . .

Discussion

19 comments for “BP Executive in Charge of Gulf Clean Up Killed in Plane Crash”

  1. It seems pret­ty obvi­ous to me that the rig was sab­o­taged. All the clues are there while the offi­cial sto­ry, like it is often the case, does­n’t make sense. Acci­dents hap­pen but not on that scale. But the best clue remains the fact that the “acci­dent” hap­pened on April 20th...which is Hitler’s birth­day! Many moti­va­tions could have been at play in this scheme. Suf­fice it to say that the far right can’t stand the fact of hav­ing a “social­ist” and a black man, on top of that, as pres­i­dent! They will do any­thing to embar­rass him while try­ing to make it prof­itable at the same time.

    Posted by Claude | November 27, 2010, 12:37 pm
  2. @Claude: Hey there, Claude. I absolute­ly agree with you here; not only does it look like the rig was indeed sab­o­taged, but I also now sus­pect that a very deep con­spir­a­cy was also involved.

    Posted by Steven | November 27, 2010, 3:59 pm
  3. I won­der if Tep­co’s chief of dis­as­ter response should be “avoid­ing planes too:
    http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20111025p2a00m0na007000c.html

    Unedit­ed Fukushi­ma acci­dent man­u­al released, loss of pow­er sources not envi­sioned

    The gov­ern­men­t’s Nuclear and Indus­tri­al Safe­ty Agency (NISA) released part of an unedit­ed severe acci­dent man­u­al for the Fukushi­ma No. 1 Nuclear Pow­er Plant on Oct. 24, reveal­ing that Tokyo Elec­tric Pow­er Co. (TEPCO) had not envi­sioned the pos­si­bil­i­ty of all pow­er sources at the nuclear com­plex being lost.

    TEPCO, the oper­a­tor of the crip­pled nuclear pow­er plant, had ear­li­er sub­mit­ted to a spe­cial House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives com­mit­tee large­ly blacked-out emer­gency oper­a­tion man­u­als for the Fukushi­ma nuclear facil­i­ty. The man­u­als were in fact used when the Great East Japan Earth­quake and ensu­ing tsuna­mi struck the nuclear com­plex. On Oct. 24, NISA released part of an unedit­ed man­u­al after sub­mit­ting it to the same low­er house pan­el. The man­u­al revealed the fact that there was no oper­a­tional man­u­al that envi­sioned a loss of all pow­er sources need­ed to acti­vate emer­gency con­densers and back-up water injec­tion devices to cool down nuclear reac­tors. The rev­e­la­tion high­lights flaws in TEP­CO’s con­tin­gency plan in the event of a loss of pow­er sources.
    ...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 25, 2011, 12:31 pm
  4. Just FYI, if you hap­pen to spot any oil wash­ing up on the coast down there or in your seafood, it did­n’t come from BP:

    NOVEMBER 9, 2011, 11:27 A.M. ET

    BP Spill Cleanup Winds Down

    Asso­ci­at­ed Press

    NEW ORLEANS—BP PLC will no longer be respon­si­ble for clean­ing up oil that wash­es up on the Gulf Coast unless offi­cials can prove it comes from the com­pa­ny’s well that blew out in 2010, caus­ing the worst off­shore spill in U.S. his­to­ry, accord­ing to a plan approved by the Coast Guard.

    The plan marks the near-end of the cleanup phase of the oil spill, accord­ing to the Nov. 2 agree­ment obtained by the AP on Tues­day. Now, BP will turn its atten­tion to restor­ing areas dam­aged by the spill that began on April 20, 2010, when the Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon drilling rig explod­ed, killing 11 work­ers. About $1 bil­lion has been set aside for those projects, an offi­cial says.

    Rough­ly 90% of the Gulf Coast has been deemed clean, accord­ing to offi­cials. The plan spells out pro­to­col for when an area still needs to be cleaned and when BP’s respon­si­bil­i­ty for that ends.

    Louisiana offi­cials would­n’t give their approval because they were con­cerned about what they per­ceived as a lack of long-term mon­i­tor­ing in the doc­u­ment. They also com­plained that the Coast Guard gave them only five days to review the plan, accord­ing to a let­ter sent to the agency by Gar­ret Graves, a top aide to Gov. Bob­by Jin­dal for coastal affairs.
    ...

    On Flori­da’s Pan­han­dle, some peo­ple react­ed with skep­ti­cism. Ken­neth Collins, who rents fish­ing poles to tourists and spends his days with local fish­er­men at the Pen­saco­la Beach pier, said he does­n’t think the effects of the spill are over.

    “It’s not ok at all. We aren’t sci­en­tists or any­thing, but we are out there all the time and we can tell things aren’t right,” Mr. Collins said. Red­fish, cobia, grouper and oth­er species caught off the beach pier have oily deposits in their intestines when they are carved up for clean­ing, he said.

    “Every­thing is just not how it used to be. When you pull a fish up, it does­n’t look like it is sup­posed to look, like they did before” said Ryan John­son a fish­er­men on the pier. Mr. John­son said many fish now have an unnat­ur­al brown­ish col­or.

    Despite the con­cerns, the Coast Guard said its final­ized plan would apply to Louisiana and all the Gulf states.
    ...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | November 9, 2011, 10:13 am
  5. And they seemed like such a nice cou­ple:

    BP: Hal­libur­ton destroyed key oil spill evi­dence

    By CAIN BURDEAU, Asso­ci­at­ed Press
    12/05/2001

    NEW ORLEANS (AP) — BP in a high-stakes court fil­ing on Mon­day accused Hal­libur­ton of destroy­ing dam­ag­ing evi­dence about the qual­i­ty of its cement slur­ry that went into drilling the oil well that blew out last year and caused the worst U.S. off­shore oil spill.

    ...

    Also in the doc­u­ments filed in a New Orleans fed­er­al court, BP accused Hal­libur­ton of fail­ing to pro­duce incrim­i­nat­ing com­put­er mod­el­ing evi­dence. BP accused Hal­libur­ton of claim­ing the mod­el­ing is gone.

    BP asked U.S. Dis­trict Judge Carl Bar­bi­er to penal­ize Hal­libur­ton and order a court-spon­sored com­put­er foren­sic team to recov­er the miss­ing mod­el­ing results.

    ...

    In Mon­day’s court fil­ing, BP accused Hal­libur­ton employ­ees doing an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion of the Macon­do dis­as­ter of dis­card­ing and destroy­ing ear­ly test results they per­formed on the same batch of cement slur­ry used in the Macon­do well.

    BP said Hal­libur­ton’s chief cement mix­er for Gulf projects tes­ti­fied in depo­si­tions that the cement slur­ry seemed “thin” to him but that he chose not to write about his find­ings to his boss­es out of fear he would be mis­in­ter­pret­ed.

    “I did­n’t want to put any­thing on an email that could be twist­ed, and turned,” Rick­ey Mor­gan, the Hal­libur­ton cement expert, said in depo­si­tions. He worked at a lab­o­ra­to­ry in Dun­can, Okla­homa.

    “Upon review­ing these lat­est test­ing results, Hal­libur­ton employ­ees destroyed records of the test­ing as well as the phys­i­cal cement sam­ples used in the test­ing,” BP alleged.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 5, 2011, 9:37 pm
  6. Here’s anoth­er fel­low that might want to avoid small planes:

    TPM
    Law­suit Claims For­mer BP Employ­ee Was Fired For Refus­ing To Skew Clean-Up Data

    Jil­lian Ray­field Jan­u­ary 25, 2012, 8:56 AM

    Updat­ed Jan­u­ary 25, 2012 at 11:29 am.

    A for­mer employ­ee of BP Amer­i­ca is suing the oil com­pa­ny for wrong­ful ter­mi­na­tion, alleg­ing that he was canned for refus­ing to alter data about the progress of the clean-up of the Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon oil spill.

    In a suit filed in U.S. Dis­trict Court in Louisiana, August Wal­ter asks for dam­ages over his ter­mi­na­tion from BP, where he was employed for about a year as part of the Gulf Coast clean-up. Wal­ter served under BP’s Gulf Coast Restora­tion Orga­ni­za­tion (GCRO) as State Plan­ning Lead “for the pur­pose of devel­op­ing a descrip­tive plan to accom­plish the clean­ing of oil caused by the BP spill.”

    BP Amer­i­ca has been run­ning a clean-up oper­a­tion since the Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon oil rig explod­ed in April, 2010, killing 11 work­ers and dump­ing 4.9 mil­lion bar­rels of oil into the Gulf. The spill affect­ed the coasts of Louisiana, Mis­sis­sip­pi, Flori­da and Alaba­ma.

    Accord­ing to the suit, Walter’s job involved cre­at­ing plans for the clean-up, known as Shore­line Treat­ment Rec­om­men­da­tions (STR), which were pre­pared and approved with the over­sight of the U.S. Coast Guard Fed­er­al On-Scene Coor­di­na­tor (FOSC) “to be in com­pli­ance with fed­er­al and state envi­ron­men­tal rules and reg­u­la­tions.” BP would then be respon­si­ble for imple­ment­ing the plans.

    But, Wal­ter claims, in May and June of 2011 he “began to con­vey his con­cerns that BP Mis­sis­sip­pi oper­a­tions were inten­tion­al­ly not fol­low­ing the plans for clean up delin­eat­ed by U.S. Gov­ern­ment, the Coast Guard and the Depart­ment of the Inte­ri­or.”

    “Cory Brown, BP’s Deputy Oper­a­tions Branch Director/Response Lead con­veyed that he was defy­ing the [rec­om­men­da­tions] by insist­ing that BP was only pick­ing up tar balls and not oth­er small­er oil debris as required by the” Shore­line Treat­ment Rec­om­men­da­tions. In Sep­tem­ber of last year, Wal­ter told BP that he was required to inform stake­hold­ers that the com­pa­ny was not fol­low­ing his rec­om­men­da­tions.

    Short­ly after, Wal­ter claims that “BP began a mali­cious cam­paign to dis­cred­it him in retal­i­a­tion for his oppo­si­tion to BP refusal to rea­son­ably fol­low envi­ron­men­tal rules and reg­u­la­tions.” At one point, Wal­ter says, he was called in for a meet­ing with the VP of Oper­a­tions who said that the “focus was to have the [Coast Guard] be con­fi­dent in BP” so that they could more quick­ly tran­si­tion to a new plan for clean-up and over­sight that would be ben­e­fi­cial to BP stock prices. Wal­ter claims he was “specif­i­cal­ly threat­ened” and told that there were “peo­ple watch­ing him” that would report him if he con­tin­ued to hin­der BP’s plans.

    Wal­ter also claims that fol­low­ing a Deep Dive to assess the clean-up’s progress, BP’s Oper­a­tions Sec­tion Chief Mike Har­ri­son said he “did not like the data as to Mis­sis­sip­pi because as he stat­ed ‘it did not fit with the sto­ry’ he want­ed to tell” the Coast Guard. “[Har­ri­son] specif­i­cal­ly — with­out back-up data — insist­ed that the amount of seg­ments that need­ed to be cleaned had to be low­er than the data was show­ing.”

    Mike Har­ri­son basi­cal­ly demand­ed that Wal­ter fal­si­fy the data by chang­ing the num­ber of seg­ments that still need­ed to be cleaned to a low­er num­ber,” the suit alleges.

    In Novem­ber, Wal­ter was put on admin­is­tra­tive leave pend­ing inves­ti­ga­tion, and offi­cial­ly ter­mi­nat­ed on Decem­ber 9, which he believes was in “retal­i­a­tion’ for his refusal to skew the data.

    Tom Mueller, the Press offi­cer for BP Amer­i­ca Hous­ton denied the alle­ga­tions in an e‑mail state­ment:

    We do not believe that Mr. Walter’s alle­ga­tions have mer­it. We will inves­ti­gate the alle­ga­tions con­tained in his com­plaint, con­sis­tent with our per­son­nel poli­cies and Code of Con­duct. We believe we have demon­strat­ed good faith in meet­ing our oblig­a­tions in the Gulf and are com­mit­ted to treat­ing our employ­ees fair­ly.

    ...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 25, 2012, 9:50 am
  7. BP just had a nice day in court:

    BP Won’t Face Some E‑Mails in Gulf of Mex­i­co Oil Spill Tri­al, Judge Says
    Q
    By Mar­garet Cronin Fisk — Feb 8, 2012 1:10 PM CT

    Lawyers suing BP Plc (BP/) and oth­er defen­dants over the 2010 Gulf of Mex­i­co oil spill won’t be able to use sev­er­al inter­nal e‑mails in the tri­al over fault for the inci­dent, a judge said.

    One e‑mail includes a com­ment from a BP geol­o­gist two months before the April 2010 well blowout refer­ring to a “s—- y cement job” at the project. Hal­libur­ton Co. (HAL), which pro­vid­ed cement­ing ser­vices, asked that the e‑mail be barred from tri­al, say­ing the com­mu­ni­ca­tion was a joke and the geol­o­gist didn’t cre­ate it as a busi­ness activ­i­ty.

    The com­ment about the cement job isn’t a busi­ness record and “is not admis­si­ble,” U.S. Mag­is­trate Judge Sal­ly Shushan said in a rul­ing today in New Orleans. “It must be demon­strat­ed that the e‑mail at issue was not sent or received casu­al­ly, nor was its cre­ation a mere iso­lat­ed inci­dent.

    Shushan also exclud­ed an e‑mail from a Hal­libur­ton employ­ee who called tests before the blowout unsuc­cess­ful. Lon­don-based BP and Transocean Ltd. (RIG), own­er of the Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon rig that explod­ed, asked the judge to exclude the June 2010 e‑mail, call­ing it hearsay.

    In the e‑mail, Ryan Haire of Hal­libur­ton told anoth­er com­pa­ny employ­ee: “I read some report that stat­ed that the two neg­a­tive tests we did were con­sid­ered suc­cess­ful? I stat­ed that I found them to unsuc­cess­ful and I was check­ing to see if maybe you knew why Transocean and BP were call­ing them suc­cess­ful?”
    ‘No Evi­dence’

    “There is no evi­dence that Haire pos­sessed per­son­al knowl­edge that BP and Transocean called the two neg­a­tive pres­sure tests suc­cess­ful,” Shushan said today.

    She also barred use of sev­er­al e‑mails between man­agers at Anadarko Petro­le­um Corp. (APC), BP’s part­ner in the well, writ­ten in 2009 over storm dam­age to anoth­er deep­wa­ter drilling rig. The mate­r­i­al “is hearsay, and it is not admis­si­ble,” Shushan said.

    ...

    Let’s just hope Judge Shushan did­n’t ban any of these emails because they sound “high­ly rel­e­vant”:

    Judge: Lawyers suing BP can see engineer’s emails
    POSTED: 03:48 PM Mon­day, March 28, 2011
    BY: The Asso­ci­at­ed Press

    Lead attor­neys for peo­ple suing BP over last year’s oil spill can view emails exchanged between a key engi­neer for the oil giant and his wife, a fed­er­al mag­is­trate judge ruled today.

    Judge Sal­ly Shushan said the mar­i­tal priv­i­lege doc­trine does not pro­tect the emails Bri­an Morel exchanged with his wife, Jade.

    Both were BP employ­ees at the time of the Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon dis­as­ter, and they had exchanged the emails in ques­tion over the company’s inter­nal com­put­er sys­tem. The plain­tiffs’ lawyers have argued that the con­tent of the emails are “high­ly rel­e­vant” to BP’s lia­bil­i­ty for the dis­as­ter.

    Morel is the engi­neer who described BP’s blown-out well as a “night­mare well” six days before the rig explo­sion. In August, Morel assert­ed his Fifth Amend­ment right against self-incrim­i­na­tion and refused to tes­ti­fy before a fed­er­al pan­el inves­ti­gat­ing the April 20, 2010, dis­as­ter.

    ...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | February 8, 2012, 8:12 pm
  8. And BP scores again:

    Part of share­hold­er suit against BP tossed

    Reuters

    3:11 p.m. CST, Feb­ru­ary 13, 2012
    BP Plc on Mon­day won the dis­missal of part of a U.S. share­hold­er secu­ri­ties fraud law­suit seek­ing dam­ages relat­ed to the 2010 Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon oil spill in the Gulf of Mex­i­co.

    U.S. Dis­trict Judge Kei­th Elli­son in Hous­ton dis­missed claims by pur­chasers of ordi­nary shares, as well as claims by pur­chasers of Amer­i­can deposi­tary shares, against sev­er­al BP offi­cials, includ­ing cur­rent Chief Exec­u­tive Robert Dud­ley.

    But Elli­son refused to dis­miss claims by the ADS investors against the Lon­don-based com­pa­ny and for­mer Chief Exec­u­tive Antho­ny Hay­ward, say­ing the investors had ade­quate­ly plead­ed vio­la­tions of U.S. secu­ri­ties law.

    Investors led by sev­er­al New York and Ohio pub­lic pen­sion funds had accused BP of mis­lead­ing them about its safe­ty record before the April 20, 2010, explo­sion of the Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon drilling rig.

    The dis­as­ter killed 11 peo­ple, caused the largest off­shore oil spill in U.S. his­to­ry and led to BP set­ting aside more than $40 bil­lion for relat­ed costs.

    ...

    The law­suit is sep­a­rate from one sched­uled to go to tri­al Feb. 27 in a New Orleans fed­er­al court to assess blame for the oil spill.

    ...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | February 13, 2012, 1:37 pm
  9. And with two year anniver­sary of the Gulf dis­as­ter approach­ing, we learn that the worst-case sce­nario (of an unstop­pable leak on the sea floor) might be real­i­ty:

    AlJazeera
    BP set­tles while Macon­do ‘seeps’
    As BP pays bil­lions in set­tle­ments, sci­en­tists are con­cerned about a per­sis­tent oil seep near the Macon­do 252 well.

    Dahr Jamail Last Mod­i­fied: 04 Mar 2012 12:50

    New Orleans, LA — As BP set­tles out of court for the first phase of thou­sands of law­suits that could cost the com­pa­ny tens of bil­lions of dol­lars, Al Jazeera has spot­ted a large oil sheen near the infa­mous Macon­do 252 well.

    In Sep­tem­ber 2011, Al Jazeera spot­ted a large swath of sil­very oil sheen locat­ed rough­ly 19km north­east of the now-capped well.

    But now, on Feb­ru­ary 29, Al Jazeera con­duct­ed anoth­er over-flight of the area and found a larg­er area of sea cov­ered in oil sheen in the same loca­tion.

    Oil track­ers with the organ­i­sa­tion On Wings of Care, who have been mon­i­tor­ing the new oil since mid-August 2011, have for months found rain­bow-tint­ed slicks and thick sil­very globs of oil con­sis­tent­ly vis­i­ble in the area.

    “This is the same cres­cent shaped area of oil and sheen I’ve been see­ing here since the mid­dle of last August,” Bon­ny Schu­mak­er, pres­i­dent and pilot of On Wings of Care, told Al Jazeera while fly­ing over the oil.

    ...

    Schu­mak­er, a career physi­cist with NASA who retired in 2011, is deeply con­cerned because she has spot­ted oil in the same loca­tion now at least 15 times since last August.

    Edward Over­ton, pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus at Louisiana State Uni­ver­si­ty’s envi­ron­men­tal sci­ences depart­ment, exam­ined data from oil sam­ples tak­en from this area last Sep­tem­ber and con­firmed that the oil is from the Macon­do reser­voir.

    Experts believe the oil is like­ly to be from a seep in the seabed, but there is debate about what caused the seep, as many believe it may well have been caused by BP’s blowout well and the failed attempts to cap it dur­ing spring 2010.

    ‘Dead ringer’

    Over­ton, who is also a Nation­al Ocean­ic and Atmos­pher­ic Admin­is­tra­tion (NOAA) con­trac­tor, told Al Jazeera in Sep­tem­ber, “After exam­in­ing the data, I think it’s a dead ringer for the MC252 [Macon­do Well] oil, as good a match as I’ve seen.”

    He explained that the sam­ples were analysed and com­pared to “the known Macon­do oil fin­ger­print, and it was a very, very close match”.

    While not rul­ing out the pos­si­bil­i­ty that oil could be seep­ing out of the giant reser­voir, which would be the worst-case sce­nario, Over­ton believed the oil cur­rent­ly reach­ing the sur­face was prob­a­bly from oil that was trapped in the dam­aged rig­ging on the seafloor.

    How­ev­er, giv­en the fact that the oil sheen has exist­ed in this area since at least as ear­ly as August 2010 and is con­tin­u­ing, the like­li­hood of it being resid­ual oil from the Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon or dam­aged rig­ging is now slim.

    Oth­er sci­en­tists remain con­cerned that the new oil could be com­ing from a seep from the same reser­voir the Macon­do well was drilled into. The oil­field, locat­ed 64km off the coast of Louisiana, is believed to hold as much 50 mil­lion bar­rels of pro­ducible oil reserves.

    ...

    Shrimpers and oys­ter fish­er­men have seen their catch­es drop dra­mat­i­cal­ly, and in some areas entire oys­ter pop­u­la­tions have been anni­hi­lat­ed.

    ...

    New Orleans attor­ney Stu­art Smith, who lit­i­gates against major oil com­pa­nies, believes the bur­den of proof about where the oil is com­ing from lies on BP.

    “Our worst fears have proven true,” Smith said of the seep. “We have a chron­ic leak sce­nario caused by the Macon­do well, and it is time for the feds and BP to come clean and tell the Amer­i­can pub­lic the truth. Unless/until the gov­ern­ment and BP explain in a ver­i­fi­able man­ner what the source of this oil is, in my opin­ion any thoughts of set­tle­ment are way pre­ma­ture.”

    Nat­ur­al seep

    BP has denied that the oil is com­ing from their well.

    When reports sur­faced last August that a large swath of oil sheen was report­ed near the site of the oil dis­as­ter, BP offi­cials, in coor­di­na­tion with the US Coast Guard, deployed two sub­mersibles to inves­ti­gate the site.

    BP said their visu­al inspec­tion con­firmed there was­n’t any oil released from the Macon­do well.

    The Coast Guard also deployed a boat to the area and con­duct­ed an aer­i­al sur­vey of the site by heli­copter.

    “Both observed noth­ing,” Coast Guard Cap­tain Jonathan Bur­ton, who is based in Mor­gan City, Louisiana, told Al Jazeera in at inter­view at his office.

    Cap­tain Bur­ton said after see­ing footage from the sub­mersible of BP’s cap, he does not believe the Macon­do well, or the relief wells BP drilled to stop it, are leak­ing, and he feels the oil is from nat­ur­al seep­age.

    “Research shows the Macon­do area is ripe for seeps, and I think that’s what we’re look­ing at here, and it’s com­ing from the same reser­voir,” Bur­ton said.

    Bur­ton is also the Fed­er­al On-Scene Coor­di­na­tor for this region of the Gulf of Mex­i­co that includes the Macon­do area.

    Bur­ton, who was some­what defen­sive for BP, added that he thinks that “the seep was there all along”, and “does­n’t know why BP has been silent on it.”

    ...

    Dur­ing the Sep­tem­ber over flight of the oil, Al Jazeera spot­ted two BP research ves­sels in the area in ques­tion.

    “These ves­sels are con­duct­ing research on nat­ur­al oil seeps as part of the Nat­ur­al Resources Dam­age Assess­ment [NRDA] process,” Tom Mueller, a press offi­cer with BP Amer­i­ca, told Al Jazeera. “They were parked over a known nat­ur­al seep on the bot­tom of the Gulf, col­lect­ing sam­ples and doc­u­ment­ing the nat­ur­al seep activ­i­ty in that area using a remote oper­at­ed sub­ma­rine and acoustic sens­ing equip­ment.”

    Accord­ing to Mueller, the intent of the NRDA study is to learn more about the loca­tions of nat­ur­al seeps and test sam­ples tak­en from them.

    “We can tell you that we recent­ly sent a remote oper­at­ed sub­ma­rine down to inspect the Macon­do well cap and the relief well cap,” Mueller, added, “Both are intact and show no evi­dence of any oil leak. So no oil is leak­ing from the Macon­do well.”

    But experts believe that is exact­ly the prob­lem, since the work BP con­duct­ed to cap the gush­ing well could have caused oil to begin seep­ing from the reser­voir in an area away from the capped well.

    Anthro­pogenic seeps

    Leifer remains con­cerned that the seep, giv­en its prox­im­i­ty to the Macon­do well, could be oil in the reser­voir that entered a lay­er of mud and has migrat­ed into a nat­ur­al path­way that leads to the seabed.

    “I see these new obser­va­tions [of the seep] as the canary in the coal mine that indi­cates some­thing could be chang­ing at the seabed and should not be ignored and hope it goes away,” he said.

    Giv­en Over­ton’s find­ings that the oil does appear to be from Macon­do, Leifer added, “It’s not nec­es­sary to be alarmist, but this is some­thing that deserves set­ting an alarm off to inves­ti­gate”.

    Of Cap­tain Bur­ton’s com­ments about the oil com­ing from the Macon­do reser­voir, Smith had this to say:

    “What is sig­nif­i­cant in my mind, as an attor­ney, is that a US gov­ern­ment offi­cial admit­ted this is Macon­do oil, and to me, absent BP pro­duc­ing evi­dence this seep exist­ed pri­or to their drilling, they there­fore must have caused it.”

    Leifer­’s con­cerns are that if the seep increas­es in vol­ume, “It could be a per­sis­tent, sig­nif­i­cant, con­tin­u­ous oil spill again, and that would require BP to go back and re-drill, and block off the pipeline even deep­er than they already did, or else they would be liable for what­ev­er the emis­sions are, for­ev­er, because it’s not going to stop for a very long time”.

    ...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | March 15, 2012, 8:06 pm
  10. Dou­ble Whoops! That was the wrong link! Here’s the CORRECT link to the above arti­cle.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | March 15, 2012, 8:10 pm
  11. The lat­est inno­va­tion in human­i­ty’s end­less quest to cre­ate hell on earth: Scot­t­land’s “Well From Hell”, an oil AND gas off­shore well. And it’s more like a gate­way to hell, with hydro­gen sul­phide and methane now bub­bling up from the sea floor so agres­sive­ly that work­ers can on longer safe­ly work at the rig. For­tu­nate­ly, Total has some options ready for their way­ward rig. My favorite is the “do noth­ing and hope it fix­es itself” option or, as Total calls it, the “Dream Option”:

    ‘Well from hell,’ leak­ing cloud of explo­sive nat­ur­al gas, forces evac­u­a­tion of Scot­tish coast

    Reuters Mar 27, 2012 — 11:58 AM ET | Last Updat­ed: Mar 27, 2012 9:11 PM ET

    By Oleg Vuk­manovic and Gwla­dys Fouche

    LONDON/OSLO — A cloud of explo­sive nat­ur­al gas boil­ing out of the North Sea from a leak at Total’s aban­doned Elgin plat­form forced wider evac­u­a­tions off the Scot­tish coast on Tues­day as the French firm warned it may take six months to halt the flow.

    Dubbed “the well from hell” by a Nor­we­gian envi­ron­men­tal­ist who said the high pres­sure of the under­sea reser­voirs in the field made it espe­cial­ly hard to shut off, a plume of gas was vis­i­ble over the plat­form, offi­cials said, and a sheen of oil, also pro­duced from the rig, was spread­ing over the water.

    Offi­cials imposed an air and sea exclu­sion zone around the plat­form, which had been pump­ing 9 mil­lion cubic metres of gas per day or 3% of Britain’s nat­ur­al gas out­put, and lies some 240 km east of the city of Aberdeen.

    A senior Total man­ag­er said the firm was look­ing at two main options — drilling a relief well, which could take six months, or the faster — poten­tial­ly riski­er — alter­na­tive of send­ing in engi­neers to “kill” the leak affect­ing a plat­form that also accounts for some 5.5% of Britain’s total oil pro­duc­tion.

    But, Total man­ag­er David Hainsworth added: “The well itself could die on its own. This is the dream option.”

    Oth­er­wise, “There are two options for inter­ven­ing,” said Hainsworth, who is health, safe­ty and envi­ron­ment man­ag­er at Total Explo­ration and Pro­duc­tion UK Ltd. “One is drilling a relief well which could take about six months. The oth­er is a plat­form inter­ven­tion to kill the well,” he told Reuters.

    “This would be a faster option,” he added, say­ing a deci­sion on how to tack­le the prob­lem would be tak­en in the com­ing days.

    ...

    OIL AND GAS

    As well as gas, Total said Elgin also pro­duces 60,000 bar­rels per day (bpd) of light crude oil, export­ed via the BP-oper­at­ed For­ties pipeline sys­tem. Britain’s total out­put last month was 1.09 mil­lion bpd.

    Britain’s ener­gy min­is­ter Charles Hendry played down the extent of leak­ing oil, which is a light form known as con­den­sate, spread­ing over the sur­face: “Some tonnes of con­den­sate have escaped,” he told Reuters. “The size of the sheen is one-six­teenth of the size of an Olympic swim­ming pool.”

    “Any leak we take very seri­ous­ly and I think the right mea­sures have been tak­en What we’ve iden­ti­fied, pro­ce­dures appear to have been fol­lowed prop­er­ly.”

    ...

    Hainsworth said that some weeks ago Total engi­neers had decid­ed to pump in mud to pip­ing on a gas reser­voir that had been plugged about a year ago. This recent oper­a­tion appeared to have been result­ed in the escape of gas: “We believe the leak is com­ing out of the out­er cas­ing of the well,” Hainsworth said.

    The leak­ing reser­voir is above the pro­duc­tion reser­voir, which lies 6,000 metres — near­ly four miles — below the seabed.

    “WELL FROM HELL”

    British offi­cials said the gas, con­tain­ing poi­so­nous hydro­gen sul­phide — famil­iar from the smell of rot­ten eggs — should dis­perse in the atmos­phere. But it pos­es a risk to any­one close to the source, mak­ing cap­ping the well com­plex.

    Poi­son in the gas could also threat­en fish and oth­er marine life near­by, although the rate at which it dis­si­pates in air and water meant it was not a sig­nif­i­cant threat to peo­ple on land.

    Envi­ron­men­tal cam­paign­ers have been crit­i­cal.

    “This is the well from hell,” said the activist, Fred­er­ic Hauge, head of Bel­lona, a lead­ing Nor­we­gian group that close­ly mon­i­tors the oil indus­try. “This prob­lem is out of con­trol.”

    Plat­form staff had strug­gled for 14 hours to con­tain the leak before hav­ing to evac­u­ate ear­ly on Mon­day, said Hauge cit­ing anony­mous sources involved in the inci­dent whom he said Bel­lona had spo­ken to. “They saw the sea bub­bling with gas under the plat­form,” he said. “This is quite shock­ing.

    “This sit­u­a­tion is only going to get big­ger and big­ger.”

    ...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | April 1, 2012, 4:11 pm
  12. @Pterrafractyl: If that gas well explodes, there could be a Fukushi­ma tsuna­mi sit­u­a­tion all over again......

    Posted by Steven L. | April 1, 2012, 6:57 pm
  13. I not sure the shrimp are the only blind species talked about in this arti­cle.

    Get your new and improved shrimp: Now with nat­ur­al lubri­cants!

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | April 18, 2012, 11:46 am
  14. More “jus­tice” for the Big Fish:

    Hal­libur­ton admits destroy­ing Gulf oil spill evi­dence
    Michael Win­ter, USA TODAY 8:57 p.m. EDT July 25, 2013
    Com­pa­ny will plead guilty to a crim­i­nal charge in Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon dis­as­ter.

    Hal­libur­ton has admit­ted destroy­ing evi­dence in the Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon oil spill dis­as­ter in the Gulf of Mex­i­co and will plead guilty to a crim­i­nal charge, the Jus­tice Depart­ment announced Thurs­day.

    Under the plea agree­ment, which requires court approval, Hous­ton-based Hal­libur­ton will also face three years’ pro­ba­tion, pay the max­i­mum fine of $200,000 and con­tin­ue to coop­er­ate in the Jus­tice Depart­men­t’s crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion of the April 2010 explo­sion and fire on the drilling plat­form, which killed 11 rig work­ers off Louisiana.

    The Jus­tice Depart­ment said it would not pur­sue fur­ther crim­i­nal charges against Hal­libur­ton or its sub­sidiaries.

    Sep­a­rate­ly, Hal­libur­ton made a $55 mil­lion “vol­un­tary con­tri­bu­tion” to the Nation­al Fish and Wildlife Foun­da­tion.

    In a state­ment Thurs­day night, Hal­libur­ton not­ed that the Jus­tice Depart­ment “acknowl­edged the com­pa­ny’s sig­nif­i­cant and valu­able coop­er­a­tion dur­ing the course of its inves­ti­ga­tion, and the com­pa­ny has agreed to con­tin­ue to coop­er­ate ... in any ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion relat­ed to or aris­ing from the inci­dent.”

    The spill was the largest in U.S. his­to­ry: Near­ly 5 mil­lion bar­rels of crude oil poured into the Gulf before the sea-floor gush­er was capped three months lat­er.

    Hal­libur­ton’s ener­gy-ser­vices sub­sidiary designed and built the well for BP. In ear­ly May, the com­pa­ny began an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion to deter­mine whether the num­ber of “cen­tral­iz­ers” — met­al col­lars that help keep the well pipe cen­tered — played a role in the blowout. Hal­libur­ton rec­om­mends installing 21, but BP chose to use just six.

    Hal­libur­ton ran 3‑D com­put­er sim­u­la­tions in May and June 2010, and both times the results indi­cat­ed there was lit­tle dif­fer­ence between the two sce­nar­ios. Employ­ees were then direct­ed by uniden­ti­fied indi­vid­u­als to destroy the sim­u­la­tions, the Jus­tice Depart­ment said.

    The Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon Task Force was unable to recov­er the com­put­er sim­u­la­tions.

    ...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | July 26, 2013, 7:06 am
  15. This rul­ing against Hal­libur­ton rais­es some impor­tant ques­tions: Since Hal­libur­ton was appar­ent­ly cov­er­ing up the fact that the sim­u­la­tion mod­els used for anti-blow-out work was faulty, was that a mod­el used across the indus­try? And are they still using the sim­u­la­tion mod­el? Because that should be a prob­lem:

    Hal­libur­ton pleads guilty to destroy­ing Gulf spill evi­dence

    Prepa­ra­tions to drill a relief well con­tin­ue at the Macon­do oil spill site in the Gulf of Mex­i­co, in this aer­i­al pho­to­graph tak­en from a coast guard heli­copter on August 21, 2010. REUTERS/Ann Dri­ver

    NEW ORLEANS | Thu Sep 19, 2013 2:33pm EDT

    (Reuters) — Hal­libur­ton Co plead­ed guilty on Thurs­day to fed­er­al charges of destroy­ing evi­dence, stem­ming from its role in the 2010 BP oil dis­as­ter that killed 11 men and sent more than 4 mil­lion bar­rels of oil spew­ing into the Gulf of Mex­i­co.

    A for­mer Hal­libur­ton cement­ing tech­nol­o­gy direc­tor in Texas also was charged on Thurs­day with destroy­ing evi­dence.

    U.S. Dis­trict Judge Jane Triche Milaz­zo in New Orleans accept­ed the com­pa­ny’s guilty plea from Hal­libur­ton legal coun­sel Marc Mukasey, imposed the agreed-upon max­i­mum fine of $200,000 and placed the com­pa­ny on a three-year pro­ba­tion term.

    Mukasey did not make a state­ment on the com­pa­ny’s behalf.

    The Macon­do dis­as­ter, the worst-ever off­shore oil spill in U.S. his­to­ry, so far has cost BP about $42.4 bil­lion in charges on its bal­ance sheet from pay­outs, cleanup and restora­tion costs and ongo­ing lit­i­ga­tion.

    The plea deal with Hal­libur­ton was first announced by the com­pa­ny and the U.S. Depart­ment of Jus­tice on July 25. The U.S. Jus­tice Depart­ment revealed the sin­gle count of destroy­ing evi­dence filed against the for­mer Hal­libur­ton man­ag­er, Antho­ny Badala­men­ti, of Katy, Texas, on Thurs­day.

    In its plea, Hal­libur­ton admit­ted to the mis­de­meanor charge of “inten­tion­al­ly caus­ing dam­age with­out autho­riza­tion to a pro­tect­ed com­put­er.”

    Hal­libur­ton pro­vid­ed cement­ing ser­vices for BP at the ill-fat­ed Macon­do drilling oper­a­tion. Those ser­vices includ­ed plac­ing “cen­tral­iz­ers,” or huge plugs, at var­i­ous points in pip­ing as it was placed inside the drilled well. Cen­tral­iz­ers help ensure cement prop­er­ly seals a well.

    Hal­libur­ton had rec­om­mend­ed BP use 21 cen­tral­iz­ers in the Macon­do well, and BP chose to use six. Hal­libur­ton lat­er claimed that if BP had fol­lowed its rec­om­men­da­tion to use more, the well would have been more sta­ble.

    Accord­ing to court doc­u­ments, the gov­ern­ment alleged that in May 2010, as part of Hal­libur­ton’s review of the dis­as­ter, Badala­men­ti direct­ed anoth­er man­ag­er to run com­put­er sim­u­la­tions com­par­ing per­for­mance of 21 cen­tral­iz­ers with that of six. In June that year, Badala­men­ti alleged­ly direct­ed a sec­ond man­ag­er to run a sim­i­lar com­par­i­son.

    Both times, the sim­u­la­tions indi­cat­ed there was lit­tle dif­fer­ence between use of 21 cen­tral­iz­ers as opposed to six. Pros­e­cu­tors allege that both times, Badala­men­ti ordered the man­agers to delete the sim­u­la­tion results from their com­put­ers, and both com­plied.

    The judge not­ed that a com­pa­ny exec­u­tive had direct­ed employ­ees to pre­serve mate­r­i­al relat­ed to Macon­do.

    In an ongo­ing, mul­ti-phase civ­il tri­al over the cause of the well explo­sion in fed­er­al court in New Orleans, both the gov­ern­ment and BP con­tend that faulty cement work by Hal­libur­ton con­tributed to the dis­as­ter.

    BP also con­tends that Hal­libur­ton destroyed com­put­er evi­dence that would have shown those errors.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | September 19, 2013, 1:45 pm
  16. What’s more heart­warm­ing than BP’s pub­lic dis­plays of affec­tion for the ‘small peo­ple’ of the Gulf coast? BP’s treat­ment of its own:

    BP Employ­ees, Out­raged by Lack of Com­pen­sa­tion, Warn Vic­tims
    Tues­day, 21 Jan­u­ary 2014 09:41 By Dahr Jamail, Truthout | Report

    Long-term employ­ees accuse oil giant BP of greed, exploita­tion and lying about their pen­sions.

    Ear­li­er this month BP’s attempts to curb com­pen­sa­tion pay­outs to those impact­ed by its 2010 Gulf of Mex­i­co dis­as­ter failed after its appeal was reject­ed by a US court.

    Dozens of peo­ple and busi­ness­es that have claims against the oil giant have told Truthout they are infu­ri­at­ed at the com­pa­ny’s ongo­ing attempts to avoid pay­ments, and they are not alone.

    Sev­er­al long-term senior BP employ­ees are incensed at what they believe is BP’s attempt to short-change them on their pen­sions.

    Rus­sel Stauf­fer worked for BP for 32 years, but left in 2012 in “dis­gust.”

    “I quit the com­pa­ny as ‘Head of Finance for the Gulf of Mex­i­co’,” Stauf­fer told Truthout. “I had a sweet job, but I could no longer stand the injus­tice and lies at work.”

    Stauf­fer, who worked for BP in Hous­ton, used these strong words to describe what he and at least 450 oth­er BP Amer­i­ca employ­ees are out­raged over — what they describe as their com­pa­ny reneg­ing on their pen­sion plans by up to 75 per­cent, lying about it, and active­ly work­ing against them in order not to pay them retire­ment ben­e­fits that were promised.

    Accord­ing to Stauf­fer, the issue has grown large enough and been ongo­ing long enough that BP’s vice pres­i­dent of the Hous­ton region sup­port­ed him in lead­ing a group to con­duct con­ver­sa­tions with BP’s Human Resources depart­ment to resolve the issue.

    “HR instead cooked up pre­var­i­ca­tions and took them to BP’s CEO Bob Dud­ley so that he would for­ev­er close the book on this issue,” Stauf­fer said.

    Fritz Guen­ther, a BP employ­ee and Unit­ed Steel­work­ers Union mem­ber work­ing in Alas­ka, who has worked for BP for 35 years, said he and his col­leagues are “cur­rent­ly fight­ing to get back the pen­sion plans that BP promised us in writ­ing in 1989.”

    “We were open­ly lied to by BP man­agers and HR peo­ple that when we were con­vert­ed to the “new” plan that it would be as good or bet­ter than the exist­ing and indus­try com­pet­i­tive plan,” Guen­ther told Truthout. “Now that many of us are reach­ing retire­ment age, we are find­ing out that we have less than 50 per­cent of what we would have had if BP’s promise was true or if we had remained in the old plan.”

    “Don­ald Vidrine, the high­est rank­ing BP rep­re­sen­ta­tive on the Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon, was report­ed­ly in bad health for years lead­ing up to the Macon­do dis­as­ter,” said a cur­rent BP employ­ee. Speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, he asked to be referred to as an ‘engi­neer’ and told Truthout, “Fol­low­ing the dis­as­ter, his tes­ti­mo­ny is con­fir­ma­tion regard­ing the con­di­tion of his health.”

    Work­ing Past Retire­ment

    “BP’s com­mit­ment to Amer­i­ca does not extend to a small group of its longest-serv­ing, most loy­al employ­ees,” Guen­ther said. “The way we have been treat­ed and repeat­ed­ly lied to in no way comes close to fol­low­ing BP’s much tout­ed Code of Con­duct and Ethics and could very well have been the root cause of the Macon­do inci­dent.”

    Guen­ther, Stauf­fer, the engi­neer, and oth­er pre­vi­ous and cur­rent BP employ­ees, with whom the news orga­ni­za­tion Al Jazeera spoke, are frus­trat­ed because they all belonged to Stan­dard Oil of Ohio (Sohio), a com­pa­ny BP bought out­right in 1987 and made the cor­ner­stone of its new nation­al oper­a­tion, BP Amer­i­ca. At the time, BP promised these new employ­ees in writ­ing that their pen­sion plan would main­tain equal val­ue to the old plan, or would even increase in val­ue.

    “When BP bought Amo­co they brought in thou­sands of Amer­i­cans and let them keep those high­er val­ue pen­sions, so at that point, I’m work­ing shoul­der to shoul­der with peo­ple who came from oth­er com­pa­nies and their pen­sion is worth two to two and a half times as much as mine,” Stauf­fer said.

    In 2011, BP fur­ther enhanced the pen­sion plans of employ­ees from oth­er com­pa­nies it had acquired, but not those from Sohio.

    “So this was when all the Sohio peo­ple burst a gas­ket,” Stauf­fer said. “We asked why the worst off among us weren’t even men­tioned when the best off were get­ting a sweet­er deal. I’ve a finance back­ground, I man­aged econ­o­mists and accoun­tants and did the num­bers and knew the num­bers we had were cor­rect . . . but [BP’s] HR played hard­ball and ignored us and affect­ed the CEO’s think­ing on this once and for all so they’d nev­er give in.”

    Kirk Ward­law worked for BP for 31 years before retir­ing over this issue two years ago.

    He’d known of the pen­sion dis­par­i­ty for more than 15 years and knows of more than 50 of his for­mer col­leagues who were dis­grun­tled over the issue as well.

    Ward­law told Truthout that BP’s actions over this issue show that BP is “A com­pa­ny that does­n’t keep their word,” in addi­tion to being “unwill­ing to step up and do what’s right unless required by law or forced to do it.”

    The employ­ees are accus­ing BP of not fol­low­ing their own code of con­duct as it is out­lined on the com­pa­ny web­site, where it states, “We say what is true” and “We do what is right.”

    ...

    So much for­give­ness. So much grace.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 22, 2014, 12:55 pm
  17. Here’s an exam­ple of just how scary nuclear pow­er plants are when you fac­tor in the worst case sce­nar­ios:
    Uh oh, a nuclear plant sit­ting on Lake Michi­gan has been leak­ing for the past two months. Oh phew, it’s only leak­ing oil and not radi­a­tion. Good news:

    Think Progress
    A Nuclear Plant Leaked Oil Into Lake Michi­gan For Two Months Straight

    by Emi­ly Atkin Post­ed on Jan­u­ary 5, 2015 at 3:51 pm

    A cool­ing sys­tem attached to a nuclear pow­er plant in south­west Michi­gan was steadi­ly spilling oil into Lake Michi­gan for about two months, the Detroit Free Press report­ed Sat­ur­day.

    Approx­i­mate­ly 2,000 gal­lons of oil from a cool­ing sys­tem at the Don­ald C. Cook Nuclear Plant leaked into the lake last year, accord­ing to an event noti­fi­ca­tion post­ed on the Nuclear Reg­u­la­to­ry Com­mis­sion web­site. The leak start­ed on Octo­ber 25, and was iso­lat­ed on Decem­ber 20, the report said. Plant offi­cials report­ed­ly noti­fied the State of Michi­gan of the leak on Decem­ber 13.

    Bill Schalk, com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er for the Cook Nuclear Plant, assured the Detroit Free Press that there would be no impact on the lake.

    “One of the first things we did when we looked at the poten­tial for a leak is exam­ine the lake,” he said. “Oil floats on top of the water and you see a sheen, but we could find no evi­dence of oil in our reser­voirs, in the lake or on the beach. It has been dis­persed.”

    Oth­ers dis­agree that just because the oil is dis­persed, there no threat to the lake and its ecosys­tems. Michael Kee­gan, direc­tor of the non­prof­it Coali­tion for a Nuclear-Free Great Lakes, lament­ed that the oil would not be recov­er­able, and ques­tioned whether plant offi­cials tru­ly knew how much oil had spilled into the lake, con­sid­er­ing they didn’t know the leak had been hap­pen­ing for two months.

    “What’s con­cern­ing is they don’t real­ly know the extent of the leak,” he said. “Near­ly two months lat­er is the first deter­mi­na­tion they make that they have an oil leak? It speaks to the qual­i­ty assur­ance of all of their oth­er sys­tems.”

    Lake Michi­gan is the sec­ond-largest of the Great Lakes by vol­ume, and the only one locat­ed entire­ly in the Unit­ed States. The EPA describes Lake Michi­gan, seem­ing­ly uniron­i­cal­ly, as “a source of drink­ing water, as a place for swim­ming and fish­ing, as a scenic won­der­land, and as a sink for munic­i­pal and indus­tri­al waste and runoff from the sur­round­ing lands.”

    Though it may seem counter-intu­itive, small oil leaks at nuclear pow­er plants are fair­ly com­mon, usu­al­ly com­ing from pow­er gen­er­a­tors. Approx­i­mate­ly 70 gal­lons of oil leaked out of a pow­er trans­former at the Pal­isades Nuclear Pow­er Plant in Michi­gan this past May. The Beaver Val­ley nuclear plant in Penn­syl­va­nia spilled five gal­lons of oil into the Ohio Riv­er this Sep­tem­ber. And in Feb­ru­ary 2013, the Susque­han­na nuclear pow­er plant was tem­porar­i­ly shut down after a small hydraulic oil leak.

    The Cook Nuclear Plant itself had been sus­pect­ed of spilling 8,700 gal­lons of oil this past August, but plant offi­cials told the Nuclear Reg­u­la­to­ry Com­mis­sion that an employ­ee had just made an error when read­ing the lev­el of oil in a diesel gen­er­a­tor.

    While arguably every instance of hydro­car­bon pol­lu­tion into the Great Lakes is of con­cern to envi­ron­men­tal­ists, oil from nuclear plants are not usu­al­ly their main focus when it comes to oil con­t­a­m­i­na­tion. The Great Lakes pro­vide drink­ing water to more than 40 mil­lion peo­ple and con­tain near­ly 20 per­cent of the world’s sur­face fresh­wa­ter, and envi­ron­men­tal­ists say one of the biggest oil-relat­ed threats are aging oil pipelines that run below the Straits of Mack­inac, direct­ly between Lake Michi­gan and Lake Huron.

    Every day, about 23 mil­lion gal­lons of Cana­di­an tar sands crude oil pass through the Straits of Mack­inac in the pair of 61-year-old under­wa­ter oil pipelines owned by Enbridge, accord­ing to the Free Press. Tar sands oil is hard­er to clean up than con­ven­tion­al oil, main­ly because it does not float on top of water like con­ven­tion­al crude. Instead, it grad­u­al­ly sinks to the bot­tom, mak­ing nor­mal cleanup tech­niques and equip­ment of lit­tle use. And because tar sands oil needs chem­i­cals like ben­zene to liq­ue­fy it, those chem­i­cals evap­o­rate into the air while the oil sinks.

    Just two weeks ago, a pin­hole-sized leak was dis­cov­ered in one of the two Enbridge pipelines under the Straits of Mack­inac, rais­ing ques­tions about their integri­ty and reviv­ing wor­ry about a large spill.

    ...

    And, of course, here’s a reminder how just how scary the oil indus­try is:

    ...The Great Lakes pro­vide drink­ing water to more than 40 mil­lion peo­ple and con­tain near­ly 20 per­cent of the world’s sur­face fresh­wa­ter, and envi­ron­men­tal­ists say one of the biggest oil-relat­ed threats are aging oil pipelines that run below the Straits of Mack­inac, direct­ly between Lake Michi­gan and Lake Huron.

    Every day, about 23 mil­lion gal­lons of Cana­di­an tar sands crude oil pass through the Straits of Mack­inac in the pair of 61-year-old under­wa­ter oil pipelines owned by Enbridge...

    Just two weeks ago, a pin­hole-sized leak was dis­cov­ered in one of the two Enbridge pipelines under the Straits of Mack­inac, rais­ing ques­tions about their integri­ty and reviv­ing wor­ry about a large spill.
    ...

    Although note that the pin­hole sized leak was­n’t leak­ing oil. It was liq­uid nat­ur­al gas, although Enbridge uses the pipeline to trans­port nat­ur­al gas and crude oil. Also, accord­ing to Enbridge’s spokesman, it was­n’t a leak. It was a
    “pin­hole-sized defect, observed in the weld of the pipe,” that was releas­ing stuff. But it total­ly was not a leak so don’t wor­ry:

    The Detroit Free Press
    ‘Pin­hole’ leak in U.P. gas pipeline rais­es fears
    The inci­dent height­ened con­cerns among some peo­ple about a 61-year-old stretch of the pipeline that runs under­wa­ter through the Straits of Mack­inac, and what a spill could do to the Great Lakes.
    By Kei­th Math­e­ny, Detroit Free Press 12:45 a.m. EST Decem­ber 17, 2014

    A pin­hole leak in a con­tro­ver­sial petro­le­um pipeline run­ning through the Upper Penin­su­la released an unde­ter­mined amount of nat­ur­al gas liq­uid that dis­persed into the atmos­phere north of Man­is­tique, near the Indi­an Riv­er, Michi­gan Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bill Schuette announced Tues­day.

    A spokesman for Cana­di­an oil trans­port giant Enbridge, which oper­ates the Line 5 pipeline, how­ev­er, said it was not a leak, but a “pin­hole-sized defect, observed in the weld of the pipe,” dur­ing a planned inves­ti­ga­tion of the pipeline Dec. 8.

    Leak or defect, the inci­dent height­ened con­cerns among some peo­ple about a 61-year-old stretch of the pipeline that runs under­wa­ter through the Straits of Mack­inac, and what a spill there could do to the Great Lakes.

    Enbridge trans­ports light crude oil, light syn­thet­ic crude, and nat­ur­al gas liq­uids through the line.

    “This small leak is a wake-up call,” said David Holtz,chair of the Michi­gan Chap­ter of the non­prof­it Sier­ra Club. State and fed­er­al agen­cies should pub­licly dis­close the full extent of poten­tial envi­ron­men­tal threats from the pipeline, he added, and open a pub­lic debate “about whether the threat to our state’s waters and land are too great a risk to take.”

    Enbridge spokesman Jason Man­shum said the weld defect “cre­at­ed a small, dime-sized stain on the pipe,” and that there was “no impact from the release to the air or the soil.” Reg­u­la­tors were noti­fied when the planned pipeline repair met report­ing cri­te­ria, he said.

    ...

    It was an Enbridge oil trans­mis­sion line that burst near Mar­shall in July 2010, caus­ing the largest inland oil spill in U.S. his­to­ry, dec­i­mat­ing Tal­madge Creek and pol­lut­ing about a 35-mile stretch of the Kala­ma­zoo Riv­er.

    The $1‑bil­lion-plus cleanup took more than four years; some area res­i­dents still ques­tion its com­plete­ness.

    Gilbert Bak­er, super­vi­sor of School­craft Coun­ty’s Hiawatha Town­ship, where the Line 5 pin­hole leak occurred, said he was not informed about the inci­dent — and he’s not hap­py about it.

    “It’s very easy to make a phone call and let us know,” he said, adding he also ques­tions the com­pa­ny’s assur­ances that pub­lic health and the envi­ron­ment were not impact­ed.

    “If they don’t know how much leaked, how do they know?” he said.

    Line 5 should be rerout­ed away from the Great Lakes, Nation­al Wildlife Fed­er­a­tion vice pres­i­dent for con­ser­va­tion action Andy Buchs­baum said.

    The Dec. 8 leak dis­cov­ery “demon­strates that even­tu­al­ly, all pipelines leak — the ques­tion is when and how much,” he said. “Know­ing that soon­er or lat­er Line 5 will leak again, it’s sim­ply unac­cept­able for a por­tion of that pipeline to be lying on the bot­tom of the Straits of Mack­inac.”

    Yep, spills are indeed inevitable. It’s just a mat­ter of time. We should prob­a­bly plan for that.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 5, 2015, 3:09 pm
  18. When a major dis­as­ter strikes your area, the reper­cus­sions can be felt for years...unless you close your eyes, cov­er ears, and yell “blah, blah blah, noth­ing bad hap­pened before, every­thing is fine, and noth­ing bad will hap­pen in the future”. That should do the trick:

    The Charleston Gazette
    Bills would weak­en water pro­tec­tions
    By Ken Ward Jr., Staff writer

    CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A year after a tox­ic leak con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed drink­ing water for 300,000 res­i­dents, West Vir­ginia law­mak­ers are con­sid­er­ing a series of pro­pos­als that would weak­en a new chem­i­cal tank safe­ty law, remove stronger pol­lu­tion pro­tec­tions for streams across the state, and pro­tect the coal indus­try from enforce­ment actions over vio­la­tions of water qual­i­ty stan­dards.

    Mem­bers of a coali­tion of cit­i­zen groups called the West Vir­ginia Safe Water Round­table held a news con­fer­ence Mon­day at the Capi­tol to draw atten­tion to their con­cerns and to urge law­mak­ers not to roll back the state’s clean water laws.

    On Tues­day, one broad bill backed by the West Vir­ginia Coal Asso­ci­a­tion is up for pas­sage in the Sen­ate, and efforts to attach indus­try-backed amend­ments to a Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion rules bill are expect­ed in a House com­mit­tee.

    ...

    The DEP rules bill, on the agen­da Tues­daythis morn­ing before the House Indus­try and Labor Com­mit­tee, pro­pos­es to add drink­ing water pro­tec­tions to the part of the Kanawha Riv­er that flows through down­town Charleston.

    Last week in the Sen­ate, a com­mit­tee began con­sid­er­ing an amend­ment from the GOP-con­trolled major­i­ty that would not only remove the drink­ing water pro­tec­tions the DEP wants for the Kan­wa­ha from the Sen­ate ver­sion of the bill, but also end the DEP’s long­stand­ing pol­i­cy of enforc­ing the state’s so-called “Cat­e­go­ry A” drink­ing water stan­dards on all rivers and streams across the state.

    DEP Sec­re­tary Randy Huff­man has pushed for drink­ing water stan­dards to be applied to the Kanawha, to pro­vide for a pos­si­ble loca­tion for a sec­ondary intake for West Vir­ginia Amer­i­can Water’s Kanawha Val­ley plant on the Elk Riv­er, and Huff­man has also spo­ken strong­ly against the West Vir­ginia Man­u­fac­tur­ers Association’s effort to end the statewide appli­ca­tion of drink­ing water rules.

    Mean­while, the Sen­ate is set dur­ing Tuesday’stoday’s floor ses­sion to con­sid­er pas­sage of the “Coal Jobs and Safe­ty Act” being pro­mot­ed by the coal asso­ci­a­tion as a way to make West Virginia’s mine oper­a­tors more com­pet­i­tive as cheap nat­ur­al gas, com­pe­ti­tion from oth­er coal regions, the min­ing out of qual­i­ty reserves and tougher fed­er­al envi­ron­men­tal stan­dards chip away at the local indus­try.

    ...

    Among oth­er things, the bill (SB 357) as aimed at stop­ping suc­cess­ful cit­i­zen suits brought over min­ing com­pa­ny vio­la­tions of Clean Water Act stan­dards where those stan­dards were not specif­i­cal­ly writ­ten into state DEP per­mits and pro­hibit­ing the DEP from incor­po­rat­ing those stan­dards into future coal per­mits. It also includes a long-sought change the coal indus­try wants to West Virginia’s water qual­i­ty lim­it for alu­minum.

    The leg­is­la­tion has come under crit­i­cism, though, from the Unit­ed Mine Work­ers union, which says it also weak­ens safe­ty stan­dards for coal min­ers.

    “As long as min­ers con­tin­ue to die in West Virginia’s mines, we need to be look­ing for ways to strength­en health and safe­ty pro­tec­tions, not gut them,” UMW Pres­i­dent Cecil Roberts said Fri­day.

    Com­pan­ion bills in both hous­es (HB 2574 and SB 423) would exempt from the state’s new chem­i­cal tank safe­ty stan­dards the vast major­i­ty of above­ground stor­age tanks that reg­is­tered with the DEP to com­ply with the law passed in the wake of the Jan­u­ary 2014 leak at the Free­dom Indus­tries facil­i­ty on the Elk Riv­er.

    “Leg­is­la­tors on both sides of the aisle are intro­duc­tion bills that would effec­tive­ly gut the pro­tec­tions that were gained for us last year,” Ross­er said.

    And here’s a bit more on West Vir­ginia bold leg­isla­tive push to make the state safe for mass poi­son­ings and lethal neg­li­gence:

    GOP-led West Vir­ginia House clears con­tentious legal reform
    Post­ed: Feb 10, 2015 5:58 PM CST Updat­ed: Feb 10, 2015 5:58 PM CST

    CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — The GOP-led state House of Del­e­gates has cleared a con­tentious legal reform pro­pos­al.

    Law­mak­ers vot­ed 59–38 Tues­day to scale back delib­er­ate intent law­suit pro­tec­tions. When there’s a known unsafe work­ing con­di­tion that hurts or kills some­one, the law­suits are avail­able, in addi­tion to mak­ing work­ers’ com­pen­sa­tion claims.

    Bill pro­po­nents, large­ly Repub­li­cans>, said the pro­pos­al would help busi­ness­es, but still be fair for plain­tiffs.

    Oppo­nents, most­ly Democ­rats, said changes would make the bur­den of proof so high that wrong­do­ing com­pa­nies and exec­u­tives could more eas­i­ly get off the hook. Sev­er­al law­mak­ers men­tioned mine dis­as­ters, includ­ing the 2010 Upper Big Branch Mine explo­sion that killed 29 men.

    One pro­vi­sion says employ­ers would be liable for actu­al knowl­edge, not what they should have known, about unsafe con­di­tions.

    ...

    If it seems like West Vir­gini­a’s leg­is­la­ture is try­ing to kill its con­stituents, keep in mind that, thanks to West Vir­gini­a’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nor, the state actu­al­ly accept­ed the Med­ic­aid expan­sion, so at least there should be some health­care avail­able to the casu­al­ly poi­soned. Could be worse!

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | February 10, 2015, 7:33 pm
  19. Giv­en all the renewed spec­u­la­tion about Pres­i­dent Trump’s men­tal health fol­low­ing the release of Michael Wolf­f’s book that makes it sounds like every­one in the White House thinks Trump is men­tal­ly ‘los­ing it’, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that the GOP and its cor­po­rate back­ers have been ‘los­ing it’ on a broad array of pol­i­cy fronts for quite some time. Some­times the par­ty has be ‘los­ing it’ from an eth­i­cal stand­point, some­times from a prac­ti­cal stand­point, and often times from both at the same time.

    For exam­ple, should­n’t poli­cies that threat­en vir­tu­al­ly all of the coastal waters of the US with the kind of eco­log­i­cal dev­as­ta­tion we saw in the 2010 BP Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon oil cat­a­stro­phe be con­sid­ered a form of ‘los­ing it’ moral­ly and prac­ti­cal­ly? It seems like it. It’s not like that dis­as­ter was good for the BP or the indus­try in gen­er­al. Encour­ag­ing a repeat is both greedy and insane. And yet here we are, with the Trump admin­is­tra­tion open­ing up almost ALL coastal US waters to drilling involves simul­ta­ne­ous­ly rolling back the new safe­ty reg­u­la­tions that were put in place fol­low­ing the 2010 spill. And this isn’t a Trump-only pol­i­cy. This is some­thing the GOP has want­ed all along. That’s a form of col­lec­tive­ly ‘los­ing it’, right?:

    E&E News
    Cli­matewire

    Trump Opens Vast Waters to Off­shore Drilling

    Areas in the Pacif­ic Ocean, the east­ern Gulf of Mex­i­co, the Arc­tic Ocean, and much of the East­ern Seaboard are includ­ed in the new plan

    By Brit­tany Pat­ter­son, Zack Col­man, Cli­mateWire on Jan­u­ary 5, 2018

    In a strik­ing about-face, the Inte­ri­or Depart­ment announced yes­ter­day that it wants to allow drilling in near­ly all U.S. waters, the sin­gle largest expan­sion of off­shore oil and gas leas­ing ever pro­posed by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment.

    The agency said it will hold 47 lease sales in every region of the out­er con­ti­nen­tal shelf but one between 2019 and 2024. The updat­ed five-year plan, required by Pres­i­dent Trump in an exec­u­tive order in April, puts regions that were long off-lim­its to oil and gas devel­op­ment back in play.

    Plan­ning areas in the Pacif­ic Ocean and the east­ern Gulf of Mex­i­co are includ­ed in the new plan, as well as more than 100 mil­lion acres in the Arc­tic and along much of the East­ern Seaboard. For­mer Pres­i­dent Oba­ma placed the lat­ter two regions under a drilling mora­to­ri­um in the last weeks of his pres­i­den­cy.

    “This is a start on look­ing at Amer­i­can ener­gy dom­i­nance and look­ing at our off­shore assets and begin­ning a dia­logue of when, how, where and how fast those off­shore assets should be or could be devel­oped,” Inte­ri­or Sec­re­tary Ryan Zinke said in a call with reporters.

    Indus­try groups applaud­ed the vast expan­sion and said the plan, which opens 90 per­cent of the out­er con­ti­nen­tal shelf to drilling, places Amer­i­ca on its way to achiev­ing Trump’s desired “ener­gy dom­i­nance.”

    “This is going to be an amaz­ing plan. This real­ly is a state­ment to the entire world,” said Tim Char­ters, senior direc­tor of gov­ern­men­tal and polit­i­cal affairs with the Nation­al Ocean Indus­tries Asso­ci­a­tion.

    While the oil and gas indus­try cheered, ana­lysts and even some indus­try rep­re­sen­ta­tives cau­tioned that the plan’s sig­nal may not imme­di­ate­ly boost off­shore devel­op­ment.

    Low oil prices and plen­ti­ful sup­ply from onshore plays in Texas’ Per­mi­an Basin and in North Dako­ta remain a quick­er and cheap­er bet for oil com­pa­nies, experts said. While the new drilling plan pro­vides a pletho­ra of options for devel­op­ment, invest­ing in regions like the Atlantic Ocean — where lit­tle drilling has occurred — could cost bil­lions of dol­lars in new infra­struc­ture. Addi­tion­al costs could also come from lit­i­ga­tion ini­ti­at­ed by state attor­neys gen­er­al and envi­ron­men­tal groups, which fier­cly oppose the expan­sion.

    “If you do think you have a dis­cov­ery there, how are you going to get it to shore? Are you going to tanker it in? Are you going to build a sub­sea pipeline?” an oil and gas indus­try source said. “You’re look­ing at poten­tial­ly bil­lions and bil­lions of dol­lars in some of these fron­tier areas that don’t have any exist­ing infra­struc­ture.”

    That also rais­es a fun­da­men­tal ques­tion for oil and gas com­pa­nies: Are they will­ing to invest in expen­sive projects with long time­lines as some ana­lysts project con­strained glob­al oil demand and an emer­gence of cli­mate poli­cies?

    In the draft pro­posed plan, Inte­ri­or’s Bureau of Ocean Ener­gy Man­age­ment (BOEM) not­ed that major indus­try play­ers, includ­ing Chevron Corp., Anadarko Petro­le­um Corp., Sta­toil ASA and BP PLC, have expressed inter­est in unex­plored areas. But it could take years to tap those regions for oil.

    “You want to be able to get the resources to the mar­ket,” the oil and gas indus­try source said. “The demand is going to be there, for sure — maybe 15 to 20 years down the road; it’s hard to say. It will be inter­est­ing to see how that all plays out giv­en the long time­lines you need for these projects.”

    Some share­hold­ers have pushed major oil and gas com­pa­nies to dis­close the risks their assets face due to cli­mate poli­cies. The idea is that as gov­ern­ments become increas­ing­ly con­cerned about ris­ing tem­per­a­tures, poli­cies to restrict car­bon emis­sions may fol­low. Reserves that com­pa­nies had been bank­ing on for future rev­enue could poten­tial­ly be deval­ued, becom­ing so-called strand­ed assets.

    Char­ters said he thinks the pro­jec­tions of a down­ward trend in oil demand are overblown. He point­ed to a Wood Macken­zie study released last month that showed the emer­gence of elec­tric vehi­cles would dis­place 1.8 mil­lion bar­rels per day of oil demand in 2035. Com­bined with insta­bil­i­ty in oil-pro­duc­ing coun­tries like Iran and Venezuela, Char­ters said, there’s plen­ty of rea­son to believe new invest­ments will be need­ed.

    “I think every­body has been deal­ing with that stuff dif­fer­ent­ly,” Char­ters said of strand­ed assets.

    For now, oil and gas com­pa­nies are putting the issue of strand­ed assets on the back burn­er. They would rather have the option of bid­ding on leas­es and decid­ing whether to explore and pro­duce at a lat­er date. After all, the under­stand­ing of oil mar­kets and the pol­i­cy pic­ture could change sig­nif­i­cant­ly between now and 2024, the final year cov­ered in the draft plan float­ed yes­ter­day.

    “While gen­er­al assump­tions about declin­ing future oil demand are con­sis­tent with our long-term view of the ener­gy tran­si­tion that is under­way, declin­ing oil demand is not a con­di­tion we are expe­ri­enc­ing today,” Roy­al Dutch Shell PLC spokesman Cur­tis Smith said in an email. “In fact, it’s quite chal­leng­ing to keep up with cur­rent demand while pro­duc­tion from off­shore fields nat­u­ral­ly declines year over year. Even if glob­al demand were to remain flat, con­tin­u­ous invest­ment — includ­ing robust lease sales and new explo­ration — will be required to keep pace.”

    That said, some of the lease sales and new explo­ration con­sid­ered in the draft plan come with siz­able chal­lenges. The Atlantic Seaboard is one of them. There is strong oppo­si­tion to open­ing the coast­line to oil and gas devel­op­ment, with more than 1,200 local, state and fed­er­al offi­cials hav­ing raised con­cerns that it could jeop­ar­dize fish­ing and tourism.

    Oppo­nents include the gov­er­nors of New Jer­sey, Delaware, Mary­land, Vir­ginia, North Car­oli­na, South Car­oli­na, Cal­i­for­nia, Ore­gon and Wash­ing­ton; more than 150 coastal munic­i­pal­i­ties; and an alliance of more than 41,000 busi­ness­es and 500,000 fish­ing fam­i­lies.

    Pavel Molchanov, an ener­gy ana­lyst at finan­cial firm Ray­mond James, said those are just some of the fac­tors that could deter most oil com­pa­nies from invest­ing in “fron­tier explo­ration” or places like the Atlantic where devel­op­ment has been lim­it­ed.

    “Com­pa­nies are not going to drill just because the gov­ern­ment said those areas are avail­able to drill,” he said. “There has to be an eco­nom­ic jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for com­pa­nies to invest cap­i­tal, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it comes to high-risk oppor­tu­ni­ties.”

    Smith said Shell pur­sues “eco­nom­i­cal­ly resilient projects that are scoped, designed and safe­ly oper­at­ed to with­stand the unpre­dictable ups and downs of the oil mar­ket” and added that “deep water is a growth pri­or­i­ty.”

    The main point of the draft plan is that it’s impor­tant to main­tain an oppor­tu­ni­ty to bid on leas­es and explore untapped areas, said Christo­pher Gui­th, senior vice pres­i­dent of the U.S. Cham­ber of Com­merce’s Glob­al Ener­gy Insti­tute.

    “This isn’t about Jan­u­ary 4th, 2018,” Gui­th said. “I think it’s point­less to look at today’s prices and think they have any mate­r­i­al impact on indus­try inter­est 15 or 20 years from now. But as a mat­ter of pol­i­cy, that’s not the gov­ern­men­t’s job. ... The fed­er­al gov­ern­men­t’s job is to pro­vide a more ener­gy-secure future, and mak­ing more fed­er­al ener­gy sources avail­able does that.”

    Gui­th said some areas are like­ly to be more attrac­tive than oth­ers.

    The Arc­tic already has drawn suit­ors, as the Trump admin­is­tra­tion gave Eni US, a sub­sidiary of the Ital­ian ener­gy firm, per­mis­sion to explore for oil in the Beau­fort Sea. The Atlantic might be a tougher sell, though. Drilling has been off-lim­its there for near­ly four decades, so there’s a dearth of infor­ma­tion on what’s actu­al­ly beneath the ocean floor.

    Inte­ri­or has tak­en addi­tion­al steps to reduce the finan­cial bur­dens fac­ing off­shore devel­op­ers in the hope of boost­ing invest­ment. Last month, the agency announced it intends to rescind key safe­ty reg­u­la­tions enact­ed by the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion in 2016 to pre­vent anoth­er Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon oil spill dis­as­ter. Ear­li­er this year, BOEM slashed roy­al­ty rates from 18.5 per­cent to 12.5 per­cent for leas­es in water less than 200 meters deep in the Gulf of Mex­i­co. It was an attempt to “reflect recent mar­ket con­di­tions,” accord­ing to a press release.

    Molchanov is uncon­vinced that dereg­u­la­to­ry mea­sures could increase inter­est in off­shore oil and gas devel­op­ment.

    “It’s sim­ply the fact that the eco­nom­ics of drilling shale resources in places like the Per­mi­an Basin and in North Dako­ta, those areas offer bet­ter geol­o­gy and there­fore bet­ter eco­nom­ics than explor­ing in areas no one has explored before,” he said. “When com­pa­nies drill in these shale areas, those wells begin to gen­er­ate cash flow almost instan­ta­neous­ly with­in weeks, where­as if com­pa­nies were to drill hypo­thet­i­cal­ly off the coast of Flori­da, let’s say, there is no infra­struc­ture, and all of the equip­ment would have to be brought in from scratch.”

    ...

    ———-

    “Trump Opens Vast Waters to Off­shore Drilling” by Brit­tany Pat­ter­son, Zack Col­man; E&E News Cli­mateWire; 01/05/2018

    “The agency said it will hold 47 lease sales in every region of the out­er con­ti­nen­tal shelf but one between 2019 and 2024. The updat­ed five-year plan, required by Pres­i­dent Trump in an exec­u­tive order in April, puts regions that were long off-lim­its to oil and gas devel­op­ment back in play.”

    Every sin­gle region of the out­er con­ti­nen­tal shelf is going to be open for drilling but one. That’s the plan for “ener­gy dom­i­nance”. And yet, as the arti­cle notes, with rel­a­tive­ly low oil prices it’s not clear that the indus­try is actu­al­ly going to be mak­ing big invest­ments in off­shore infra­struc­ture any time soon. What the indus­try will be inter­est­ed in, how­ev­er, is buy­ing up the long-term rights to drilling in these regions so, say 15–20 years from now, if prices are high­er, those drilling rights will already be in indus­try hands:

    ...
    “This is a start on look­ing at Amer­i­can ener­gy dom­i­nance and look­ing at our off­shore assets and begin­ning a dia­logue of when, how, where and how fast those off­shore assets should be or could be devel­oped,” Inte­ri­or Sec­re­tary Ryan Zinke said in a call with reporters.

    Indus­try groups applaud­ed the vast expan­sion and said the plan, which opens 90 per­cent of the out­er con­ti­nen­tal shelf to drilling, places Amer­i­ca on its way to achiev­ing Trump’s desired “ener­gy dom­i­nance.”

    “This is going to be an amaz­ing plan. This real­ly is a state­ment to the entire world,” said Tim Char­ters, senior direc­tor of gov­ern­men­tal and polit­i­cal affairs with the Nation­al Ocean Indus­tries Asso­ci­a­tion.

    While the oil and gas indus­try cheered, ana­lysts and even some indus­try rep­re­sen­ta­tives cau­tioned that the plan’s sig­nal may not imme­di­ate­ly boost off­shore devel­op­ment.

    Low oil prices and plen­ti­ful sup­ply from onshore plays in Texas’ Per­mi­an Basin and in North Dako­ta remain a quick­er and cheap­er bet for oil com­pa­nies, experts said. While the new drilling plan pro­vides a pletho­ra of options for devel­op­ment, invest­ing in regions like the Atlantic Ocean — where lit­tle drilling has occurred — could cost bil­lions of dol­lars in new infra­struc­ture. Addi­tion­al costs could also come from lit­i­ga­tion ini­ti­at­ed by state attor­neys gen­er­al and envi­ron­men­tal groups, which fier­cly oppose the expan­sion.

    “If you do think you have a dis­cov­ery there, how are you going to get it to shore? Are you going to tanker it in? Are you going to build a sub­sea pipeline?” an oil and gas indus­try source said. “You’re look­ing at poten­tial­ly bil­lions and bil­lions of dol­lars in some of these fron­tier areas that don’t have any exist­ing infra­struc­ture.”

    That also rais­es a fun­da­men­tal ques­tion for oil and gas com­pa­nies: Are they will­ing to invest in expen­sive projects with long time­lines as some ana­lysts project con­strained glob­al oil demand and an emer­gence of cli­mate poli­cies?

    In the draft pro­posed plan, Inte­ri­or’s Bureau of Ocean Ener­gy Man­age­ment (BOEM) not­ed that major indus­try play­ers, includ­ing Chevron Corp., Anadarko Petro­le­um Corp., Sta­toil ASA and BP PLC, have expressed inter­est in unex­plored areas. But it could take years to tap those regions for oil.

    “You want to be able to get the resources to the mar­ket,” the oil and gas indus­try source said. “The demand is going to be there, for sure — maybe 15 to 20 years down the road; it’s hard to say. It will be inter­est­ing to see how that all plays out giv­en the long time­lines you need for these projects.”
    ...

    “The demand is going to be there, for sure — maybe 15 to 20 years down the road; it’s hard to say. It will be inter­est­ing to see how that all plays out giv­en the long time­lines you need for these projects.”

    And that’s one of the key ele­ments of this pro­pos­al: while there’s lit­tle imme­di­ate eco­nom­ic incen­tive to drill in these areas today, this is the kind of indus­try with mul­ti-decade time­lines so there’s still going to be plen­ty of demand for buy­ing the long-term drilling rights that might be put to use decades from now. And don’t for­get that if you’re buy­ing the drilling rights, it prob­a­bly helps to buy those rights when oil prices are rel­a­tive­ly cheap. In oth­er words, it’s not just a future eco­log­i­cal dis­as­ter in the mak­ing, it’s also anoth­er round of fleec­ing the pub­lic.

    So while it’s unclear how much of the new­ly avail­able regions will actu­al­ly be devel­oped any time soon giv­en the rel­a­tive­ly low price of oil, rais­ing ques­tions about the fea­si­bil­i­ty of the “ener­gy dom­i­nance” strat­e­gy the GOP and and ener­gy indus­try is tout­ing, the fact that this sweep­ing new rule passed in the first place and the rights to drill in all these regions are about to get sold off for cheap does point towards a very real form of “ener­gy dom­i­nance” that exists today: the polit­i­cal dom­i­nance of the ener­gy sec­tor in US pol­i­cy-mak­ing.

    And as the arti­cle not­ed, this sweep­ing new change fol­lowed anoth­er round of sweep­ing changes to the off­shore drilling indus­try last month: rescind­ing the key safe­ty reg­u­la­tions put in place to avoid anoth­er Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon dis­as­ter:

    ...
    Inte­ri­or has tak­en addi­tion­al steps to reduce the finan­cial bur­dens fac­ing off­shore devel­op­ers in the hope of boost­ing invest­ment. Last month, the agency announced it intends to rescind key safe­ty reg­u­la­tions enact­ed by the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion in 2016 to pre­vent anoth­er Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon oil spill dis­as­ter. Ear­li­er this year, BOEM slashed roy­al­ty rates from 18.5 per­cent to 12.5 per­cent for leas­es in water less than 200 meters deep in the Gulf of Mex­i­co. It was an attempt to “reflect recent mar­ket con­di­tions,” accord­ing to a press release.
    ...

    But as one indus­try ana­lyst not­ed, even with these reg­u­la­tions lift­ed, it’s still unclear why off­shore drilling would be deemed prof­itable at this point com­pared to oth­er forms of avail­able oil pro­duc­tion

    ...
    Molchanov is uncon­vinced that dereg­u­la­to­ry mea­sures could increase inter­est in off­shore oil and gas devel­op­ment.

    “It’s sim­ply the fact that the eco­nom­ics of drilling shale resources in places like the Per­mi­an Basin and in North Dako­ta, those areas offer bet­ter geol­o­gy and there­fore bet­ter eco­nom­ics than explor­ing in areas no one has explored before,” he said. “When com­pa­nies drill in these shale areas, those wells begin to gen­er­ate cash flow almost instan­ta­neous­ly with­in weeks, where­as if com­pa­nies were to drill hypo­thet­i­cal­ly off the coast of Flori­da, let’s say, there is no infra­struc­ture, and all of the equip­ment would have to be brought in from scratch.”
    ...

    And while that might sound some­what reliev­ing to hear that, even with reg­u­la­tions lift­ed, it’s still prob­a­bly not going to be prof­itable to invest in these kinds of off­shore oper­a­tions until prices climb high­er, it’s actu­al­ly hor­rif­ic news. Why? Because if lift­ing these reg­u­la­tions still does­n’t make off­shore drilling prof­itable enough, that just means flout­ing pre­cau­tions and engag­ing in every cost-cut­ting mea­sure imag­in­able is prob­a­bly going to be one of the paths to prof­itabil­i­ty. It’s a plan for prof­it-induced demen­tia:

    The Con­ver­sa­tion

    Trump’s off­shore oil drilling plans ignore the lessons of BP Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon

    Don­ald Boesch, Pro­fes­sor of Marine Sci­ence, Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land Cen­ter for Envi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence
    Jan­u­ary 5, 2018 1.14pm EST

    The Trump Admin­is­tra­tion is propos­ing to ease reg­u­la­tions that were adopt­ed to make off­shore oil and gas drilling oper­a­tions safer after the 2010 Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon dis­as­ter. This event was the worst oil spill in U.S. his­to­ry. Eleven work­ers died in the explo­sion and sink­ing of the oil rig, and more than 4 mil­lion bar­rels of oil were released into the Gulf of Mex­i­co. Sci­en­tists have esti­mat­ed that the spill caused more than US$17 bil­lion in dam­ages to nat­ur­al resources.

    I served on the bipar­ti­san Nation­al Com­mis­sion that inves­ti­gat­ed the caus­es of this epic blowout. We spent six months assess­ing what went wrong on the Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon and the effec­tive­ness of the spill response, con­duct­ing our own inves­ti­ga­tions and hear­ing tes­ti­mo­ny from dozens of expert wit­ness­es.

    Our pan­el con­clud­ed that the imme­di­ate cause of the blowout was a series of iden­ti­fi­able mis­takes by BP, the com­pa­ny drilling the well; Hal­libur­ton, which cement­ed the well; and Transocean, the drill ship oper­a­tor. We wrote that these mis­takes revealed “such sys­tem­at­ic fail­ures in risk man­age­ment that they place in doubt the safe­ty cul­ture of the entire indus­try.” The root caus­es for these mis­takes includ­ed reg­u­la­to­ry fail­ures.

    Now, how­ev­er, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion wants to increase domes­tic pro­duc­tion by “reduc­ing the reg­u­la­to­ry bur­den on indus­try.” In my view, such a shift will put work­ers and the envi­ron­ment at risk, and ignores the painful lessons of the Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon dis­as­ter. The admin­is­tra­tion has just pro­posed open­ing vir­tu­al­ly all U.S. waters to off­shore drilling, which makes it all the more urgent to assess whether it is pre­pared to reg­u­late this indus­try effec­tive­ly.

    Sep­a­rat­ing reg­u­la­tion and pro­mo­tion

    Dur­ing our commission’s review of the BP spill, I vis­it­ed the Gulf office of the Min­er­als Man­age­ment Ser­vice in Sep­tem­ber 2010. This Inte­ri­or Depart­ment agency was respon­si­ble for “expe­di­tious and order­ly devel­op­ment of off­shore resources,” includ­ing pro­tec­tion of human safe­ty and the envi­ron­ment.

    The most promi­nent fea­ture in the win­dow­less con­fer­ence room was a large chart that showed rev­enue growth from oil and gas leas­ing and pro­duc­tion in the Gulf of Mex­i­co. It was a point of pride for MMS offi­cials that their agency was the nation’s sec­ond-largest gen­er­a­tor of rev­enue, exceed­ed only by the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice.

    We ulti­mate­ly con­clud­ed that an inher­ent con­flict exist­ed with­in MMS between pres­sures to increase pro­duc­tion and max­i­mize rev­enues on one hand, and the agency’s safe­ty and envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion func­tions on the oth­er. In our report, we observed that MMS reg­u­la­tions were “inad­e­quate to address the risks of deep­wa­ter drilling,” and that the agency had ced­ed con­trol over many cru­cial aspects of drilling oper­a­tions to indus­try.

    In response, we rec­om­mend­ed cre­at­ing a new inde­pen­dent agency with enforce­ment author­i­ty with­in Inte­ri­or to over­see all aspects of off­shore drilling safe­ty, and the struc­tur­al and oper­a­tional integri­ty of all off­shore ener­gy pro­duc­tion facil­i­ties. Then-Sec­re­tary Ken Salazar com­plet­ed the sep­a­ra­tion of the Bureau of Safe­ty and Envi­ron­men­tal Enforce­ment from MMS in Octo­ber 2011.

    Offi­cials at this new agency reviewed mul­ti­ple inves­ti­ga­tions and stud­ies of the BP spill and off­shore drilling safe­ty issues, includ­ing sev­er­al by the Nation­al Acad­e­mies of Sci­ences, Engi­neer­ing and Med­i­cine. They also con­sult­ed exten­sive­ly with the indus­try to devel­op a revised a Safe­ty and Envi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Sys­tem and oth­er reg­u­la­tions.

    In April 2016, BSEE issued a new well con­trol rule that required stan­dards for design oper­a­tion and test­ing of blowout pre­ven­ters, real-time mon­i­tor­ing and safe drilling pres­sure mar­gins. Pri­or to the Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon dis­as­ter, the oil indus­try had effec­tive­ly blocked adop­tion of such reg­u­la­tions for years.

    About-face under Trump

    Pres­i­dent Trump’s March 28, 2017 exec­u­tive order instruct­ing agen­cies to reduce undue bur­dens on domes­tic ener­gy pro­duc­tion sig­naled a change of course. The Amer­i­can Petro­le­um Insti­tute and oth­er indus­try orga­ni­za­tions have lob­bied hard to rescind or mod­i­fy the new off­shore drilling reg­u­la­tions, call­ing them imprac­ti­cal and bur­den­some.

    In April 2017, Trump’s Inte­ri­or Sec­re­tary, Ryan Zinke, appoint­ed Louisiana politi­cian Scott Angelle to lead BSEE. Unlike his pre­de­ces­sors – two retired Coast Guard admi­rals – Angelle lacks any expe­ri­ence in mar­itime safe­ty. In July 2010 as inter­im Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor, Angelle orga­nized a ral­ly in Lafayette, Louisiana, against the Oba­ma administration’s mora­to­ri­um on deep­wa­ter drilling oper­a­tions after the BP spill, lead­ing chants of “Lift the ban!”

    Even now, Angelle asserts there was no evi­dence of sys­temic prob­lems in off­shore drilling reg­u­la­tion at the time of the spill. This view con­tra­dicts not only our commission’s find­ings, but also reviews by the U.S. Chem­i­cal Safe­ty Board and a joint inves­ti­ga­tion by the U.S. Coast Guard and the Inte­ri­or Depart­ment.

    Few­er inspec­tions and loos­er over­sight

    On Decem­ber 28, 2017, BSEE for­mal­ly pro­posed changes in pro­duc­tion safe­ty sys­tems. As evi­denced by mul­ti­ple ref­er­ences with­in these pro­posed rules, they gen­er­al­ly rely on stan­dards devel­oped by the Amer­i­can Petro­le­um Insti­tute rather than gov­ern­ment require­ments.

    One change would elim­i­nate BSEE cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of third-par­ty inspec­tors for crit­i­cal equip­ment, such as blowout pre­ven­ters. The Chem­i­cal Safe­ty Board’s inves­ti­ga­tion of the BP spill found that the Deep­wa­ter Horizon’s blowout pre­ven­ter had not been test­ed and was mis­wired. It rec­om­mend­ed that BSEE should cer­ti­fy third-par­ty inspec­tors for such crit­i­cal equip­ment.

    Anoth­er pro­pos­al would relax require­ments for onshore remote mon­i­tor­ing of drilling. While serv­ing on the pres­i­den­tial com­mis­sion in 2010, I vis­it­ed Shell’s oper­a­tion in New Orleans that remote­ly mon­i­tored the company’s off­shore drilling activ­i­ties. This site oper­at­ed on a 24–7 basis, ever ready to pro­vide assis­tance, but not all com­pa­nies met this stan­dard. BP’s coun­ter­part oper­a­tion in Hous­ton was used only for dai­ly meet­ings pri­or to the Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon spill. Con­se­quent­ly, its drillers off­shore urgent­ly strug­gled to get assis­tance pri­or to the blowout via cell­phones.

    On Decem­ber 7, 2017 BSEE ordered the Nation­al Acad­e­mies to stop work on a study that the agency had com­mis­sioned on improv­ing its inspec­tion pro­gram. This was the most recent in a series of stud­ies, and was to include rec­om­men­da­tions on the appro­pri­ate role of inde­pen­dent third par­ties and remote mon­i­tor­ing.

    ...

    Some aspects of the Trump administration’s pro­posed reg­u­la­to­ry changes might achieve greater effec­tive­ness and effi­cien­cy in safe­ty pro­ce­dures. But it is not at all clear that what Angelle describes as a “par­a­digm shift” will main­tain “a high bar for safe­ty and envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty,” as he claims. Instead, it looks more like a shift back to the old days of over-rely­ing on indus­try prac­tices and pref­er­ences.

    ———-

    “Trump’s off­shore oil drilling plans ignore the lessons of BP Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon” The Con­ver­sa­tion; 01/05/2018

    “Our pan­el con­clud­ed that the imme­di­ate cause of the blowout was a series of iden­ti­fi­able mis­takes by BP, the com­pa­ny drilling the well; Hal­libur­ton, which cement­ed the well; and Transocean, the drill ship oper­a­tor. We wrote that these mis­takes revealed “such sys­tem­at­ic fail­ures in risk man­age­ment that they place in doubt the safe­ty cul­ture of the entire indus­try.” The root caus­es for these mis­takes includ­ed reg­u­la­to­ry fail­ures.

    That’s what the inves­ti­ga­tors of the Deep­wa­ter dis­as­ter found: sys­tem­at­ic fail­ures in risk man­age­ment that place in doubt the safe­ty cul­ture of the entire indus­try.

    But it was­n’t just the indus­try cul­ture. It was also the cul­ture of the Min­er­als Man­age­ment Ser­vice gov­ern­ment agency, which con­tained an inher­ent con­flict of inter­est in simul­ta­ne­ous­ly pro­mot­ing max­i­mum rev­enues via gov­ern­ment leas­es while also pro­mot­ing safe­ty and envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion. And this con­flict appear to be resolved by ced­ed con­trol of most aspects of the drilling oper­a­tions to the the indus­try:

    ...
    Dur­ing our commission’s review of the BP spill, I vis­it­ed the Gulf office of the Min­er­als Man­age­ment Ser­vice in Sep­tem­ber 2010. This Inte­ri­or Depart­ment agency was respon­si­ble for “expe­di­tious and order­ly devel­op­ment of off­shore resources,” includ­ing pro­tec­tion of human safe­ty and the envi­ron­ment.

    The most promi­nent fea­ture in the win­dow­less con­fer­ence room was a large chart that showed rev­enue growth from oil and gas leas­ing and pro­duc­tion in the Gulf of Mex­i­co. It was a point of pride for MMS offi­cials that their agency was the nation’s sec­ond-largest gen­er­a­tor of rev­enue, exceed­ed only by the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice.

    We ulti­mate­ly con­clud­ed that an inher­ent con­flict exist­ed with­in MMS between pres­sures to increase pro­duc­tion and max­i­mize rev­enues on one hand, and the agency’s safe­ty and envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion func­tions on the oth­er. In our report, we observed that MMS reg­u­la­tions were “inad­e­quate to address the risks of deep­wa­ter drilling,” and that the agency had ced­ed con­trol over many cru­cial aspects of drilling oper­a­tions to indus­try.
    ...

    So, in response to this con­flict of inter­est, the gov­ern­ment inves­ti­ga­tors rec­om­mend­ed sep­a­rat­ing the agency tasked with enforc­ing safe­ty and envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion from the Min­er­als Man­age­ment Ser­vice.

    And that hap­pens, with the sep­a­ra­tion of the Bureau of Safe­ty and Envi­ron­men­tal Enforce­ment (BSEE) in 2011. And in 2016 that new­ly inde­pen­dent bureau final­ly issues new rules intend­ed to pre­vent the Deep­wa­ter dis­as­ter. Rules that the indus­try had been protest­ing for years. But flash for­ward to April of 2017, and the head of the BSEE is a guy who protest­ed all these new reg­u­la­tions even after the Deep­wa­ter dis­as­ter:

    ...
    In response, we rec­om­mend­ed cre­at­ing a new inde­pen­dent agency with enforce­ment author­i­ty with­in Inte­ri­or to over­see all aspects of off­shore drilling safe­ty, and the struc­tur­al and oper­a­tional integri­ty of all off­shore ener­gy pro­duc­tion facil­i­ties. Then-Sec­re­tary Ken Salazar com­plet­ed the sep­a­ra­tion of the Bureau of Safe­ty and Envi­ron­men­tal Enforce­ment from MMS in Octo­ber 2011.

    ...

    In April 2016, BSEE issued a new well con­trol rule that required stan­dards for design oper­a­tion and test­ing of blowout pre­ven­ters, real-time mon­i­tor­ing and safe drilling pres­sure mar­gins. Pri­or to the Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon dis­as­ter, the oil indus­try had effec­tive­ly blocked adop­tion of such reg­u­la­tions for years.

    About-face under Trump

    Pres­i­dent Trump’s March 28, 2017 exec­u­tive order instruct­ing agen­cies to reduce undue bur­dens on domes­tic ener­gy pro­duc­tion sig­naled a change of course. The Amer­i­can Petro­le­um Insti­tute and oth­er indus­try orga­ni­za­tions have lob­bied hard to rescind or mod­i­fy the new off­shore drilling reg­u­la­tions, call­ing them imprac­ti­cal and bur­den­some.

    In April 2017, Trump’s Inte­ri­or Sec­re­tary, Ryan Zinke, appoint­ed Louisiana politi­cian Scott Angelle to lead BSEE. Unlike his pre­de­ces­sors – two retired Coast Guard admi­rals – Angelle lacks any expe­ri­ence in mar­itime safe­ty. In July 2010 as inter­im Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor, Angelle orga­nized a ral­ly in Lafayette, Louisiana, against the Oba­ma administration’s mora­to­ri­um on deep­wa­ter drilling oper­a­tions after the BP spill, lead­ing chants of “Lift the ban!”

    Even now, Angelle asserts there was no evi­dence of sys­temic prob­lems in off­shore drilling reg­u­la­tion at the time of the spill. This view con­tra­dicts not only our commission’s find­ings, but also reviews by the U.S. Chem­i­cal Safe­ty Board and a joint inves­ti­ga­tion by the U.S. Coast Guard and the Inte­ri­or Depart­ment.
    ...

    Even now, Angelle asserts there was no evi­dence of sys­temic prob­lems in off­shore drilling reg­u­la­tion at the time of the spill. This view con­tra­dicts not only our commission’s find­ings, but also reviews by the U.S. Chem­i­cal Safe­ty Board and a joint inves­ti­ga­tion by the U.S. Coast Guard and the Inte­ri­or Depart­ment.”

    That’s the guy cur­rent­ly run­ning the BSEE: a guy who, even now, asserts there was no evi­dence of sys­temic prob­lems in off­shore drilling reg­u­la­tions at the time of the Deep­wa­ter cat­a­stro­phe. And now the reg­u­la­tions he was tasked with enforc­ing have been severe­ly gut­ted and basi­cal­ly replaced with reg­u­la­tions designed by the Amer­i­can Petro­le­um Insti­tute.

    So, to sum­ma­rize, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion is about to unleash a mas­sive fire sale of off­shore drilling rights at the same time it guts the very same reg­u­la­tions designed to pre­vent the Deep­wa­ter mega-dis­as­ter. And the guy over­see­ing the enforce­ment of these new­ly weak­ened reg­u­la­tions basi­cal­ly thinks the indus­try should be reg­u­lat­ing itself. It’s still unclear how much new drilling will take place any­time soon giv­en the rel­a­tive­ly high costs of off­shore drilling. But that rel­a­tive­ly high costs also dou­bles as an incen­tive for the indus­try to cut every cost pos­si­ble in order to make those pur­chased drilling rights eco­nom­i­cal­ly prof­itable. And those costs to be cut are obvi­ous­ly going to include safe­ty reg­u­la­tions because that’s what the indus­try keeps call­ing for even after the Deep­wa­ter night­mare.

    In oth­er words, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion just mas­sive­ly incen­tivized gam­bling on eco­log­i­cal cat­a­stro­phe along almost all US coastal waters in order to max­i­mize the ener­gy indus­try’s prof­its. And while dement­ed peo­ple might take such risks, there are plen­ty of oth­er malig­nant per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­ders that could encour­age that kind of risk tak­ing too. It’s all a reminder that demen­tia isn’t the only men­tal ill­ness we need to be wor­ried about impact­ing peo­ple with great pow­er. Although demen­tia is obvi­ous­ly a sig­nif­i­cant con­cern in spe­cial cas­es.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 6, 2018, 3:47 pm

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