http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20120322/us-cuba-oil-drilling/

JENNIFER KAY | March 22, 2012 05:40 PM EST |

MIAMI – If a future oil spill in the Caribbean Sea threatens American shores, a new federal plan obtained by The Associated Press would hinge on cooperation from neighboring foreign governments. Now that Cuba is the neighbor drilling for oil, cooperation is hard to guarantee.

The International Offshore Response Plan draws on lessons from the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 and was created to stop offshore oil spills as close to their source as possible, even in foreign waters. The plan dated Jan. 30 has not been released publicly. The AP obtained a copy through a Freedom of Information Act request.
After crude oil stained Gulf Coast beaches, state and federal officials are eager to head off even the perception of oil spreading toward the coral reefs, beaches and fishing that generate tens of billions of tourist dollars for Florida alone.

The plan comes as Spanish oil company Repsol YPF conducts exploratory drilling in Cuban waters and the Bahamas considers similar development for next year. Complicating any oil spill response in the Florida Straits, though, is the half-century of tension between the U.S. and its communist neighbor 90 miles south of Florida.

Under the plan dated Jan. 30, the Coast Guard’s Miami-based 7th District would take the lead in responding to a spill affecting U.S. waters, which includes Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The district’s operations cover 15,000 miles of coastline and share borders with 34 foreign countries and territories.

Repsol’s operations in Cuban waters are not subject to U.S. authority, but the company allowed U.S. officials to inspect its rig and review its own oil spill response plan.

“We’ve demonstrated already and we continue to demonstrate that we’re a safe, responsible operator doing all in its power to carry out a transparent and safe operation,” Respol spokesman Kristian Rix said Thursday.

Rix declined to elaborate on the company’s response plans, but he did say two minor recommendations made by U.S. officials inspecting the rig were immediately put in place.
If an oil spill began in Cuban waters, Cuba would be responsible for any spill cleanup and efforts to prevent damage to the U.S., but the Coast Guard would respond as close as possible.

Though a 50-year-old embargo bars most American companies from conducting business with Cuba and limits communication between the two governments, the Coast Guard and private response teams have licenses from the U.S. government to work with Cuba and its partners if a disaster arises.

The U.S. and Cuba have joined Mexico, the Bahamas and Jamaica since November in multilateral discussions about how the countries would notify each other about offshore drilling problems, said Capt. John Slaughter, chief of planning, readiness, and response for the 7th District.

He said channels do exist for U.S. and Cuban officials to communicate about spills, including the Caribbean Island Oil Pollution Response and Cooperation Plan. That’s a nonbinding agreement, though, so the Coast Guard has begun training crews already monitoring the Cuban coastline for drug and migrant smuggling to keep an eye out for problems on the Repsol rig.

William Reilly, co-chairman of the national commission on the Deepwater Horizon spill and head of the EPA during President George H.W. Bush, said the Coast Guard generated goodwill in Cuba by notifying its government of potential risks to the island during the 2010 spill.

It would be hard for the Cuban government to keep any spill secret if Repsol and other private companies were responding, Slaughter said.

“Even if we assume the darkest of dark and that the Cuban government wouldn’t notify us, we’d hear through industry chatter and talk. If the companies were notified, I’m quite confident we would get a phone call before they fly out their assets,” he said.

Funding for a U.S. response to a foreign spill would come from the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund managed by the Coast Guard. As of Feb. 29, that fund contained $2.4 billion.

The plan covers many lessons learned from the 2010 spill, like maintaining a roster of “vessels of opportunity” for hire and making sure the ships that are skimming and burning oil offshore can store or treat oily water for extended periods of time. Other tactics, like laying boom, have been adapted for the strong Gulf Stream current flowing through the Florida Straits.

What the plan doesn’t cover is the research on how an oil spill might behave in the straits, said Florida International University professor John Proni, who’s leading a group of university and federal researchers studying U.S. readiness for oil spills.

Among the unknowns are the effect of dispersants on corals and mangroves, how oil travels in the major currents, the toxicity of Cuban and how to determine whether oil washing ashore in the U.S. came from Cuba.

“My view is that the Coast Guard has developed a good plan but it’s based on existing information,” so it’s incomplete, he said.

Former Amoco Oil Latin America president Jorge Pinon, now an oil expert at the University of Texas, said the Coast Guard had a solid plan.

He cautioned against recent congressional legislation introduced by one of South Florida’s three Cuban-American representatives to curtail drilling off Cuba by sanctioning those who help them do it. The bill is sponsored by Republican U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Miami.

Instead, Pinon said the U.S. needs to formalize agreements with Cuba about who would be in command if an oil well blew, because the U.S. has more resources available.

“The issue is not to stop the spill from reaching Florida waters, the issue is capping the well and shutting it down,” Pinon said. “We can play defense all we want, but we don’t want to play defense, we want to play offense, we want to cap the well.”

Reilly said the U.S. still needs to issue permits for equipment in the U.S. that would be needed if a Cuban well blew, Reilly said. For example, if a blowout occurred, the company would have to get a capping stack from Scotland, which could take up to a week.

“We know from Macondo that a great deal can happen in a week,” Reilly said. “I’ve been very concerned about getting the sanctions interpreted in a way that permits us to exercise some common sense.”

__________Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.platts.com/RSSFeedDetailedNews/RSSFeed/Oil/6084508

Washington (Platts)–22Mar2012/1237 pm EDT/1637 GMT
After defending his approach to oil and gas development for five weeks, President Barack Obama traveled to the heart of the US oil pipeline network Thursday and promised to accelerate permitting for TransCanada’s Oklahoma-to-Texas pipeline.

Obama signed a memorandum directing heads of executive departments and agencies to expedite their review of the southern section of TransCanada’s controversial Keystone XL pipeline. The Oklahoma-to-Texas line primarily needs local and state support, not approvals from the White House or from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which oversees siting of natural gas, not oil, pipelines. Obama did not explain how his executive order would speed the review. Oilgram News brings fast-breaking global petroleum and gas news to your desktop every day. Our extensive global network of correspondents report on supply and demand trends, corporate news, government actions, exploration, technology, and much more.

Obama spoke in front of sections of 36-inch pipe that TransCanada contractors will eventually string together across 485 miles from Cushing to Nederland, Texas. The line will link the Cushing crude hub to refineries along the Gulf Coast.

“We are drilling all over the place right now,” Obama said a day after visiting drilling rigs in New Mexico. “That’s not the challenge. That’s not the problem. The problem in a place like Cushing is that we’re producing so much oil and gas in places like North Dakota and Colorado and that we don’t have enough pipeline capacity to transport all of it to places it needs to go.”

Cushing calls itself the “pipeline crossroads of the world” and is the delivery point for the NYMEX crude contract.

TransCanada, which has taken a decidedly low profile during the president’s visit to its own pipe yard, has dubbed Keystone XL’s southern portion the Gulf Coast Project. The company expects it to cost $2.3 billion and hopes to start oil flowing in the second half of 2013.

In his speech, the president mentioned his rejection two months earlier of TransCanada’s application to build the full 1,700-mile system from Alberta to the Texas Gulf Coast, but again blamed that decision on Congress imposing an unreasonable deadline on the process.
ENERGY POLICY IN ELECTION YEAR SPOTLIGHT

Obama has devoted at least one speech a week to energy policy since February 23, when gasoline prices began setting record highs and started to threaten his election-year approval ratings.

The Cushing speech did not expand on standard White House talking points about energy that Obama has overseen an expansion of oil and gas drilling, shrinking dependence on OPEC and falling US consumption through fuel efficiency standards.

Obama’s promise to accelerate the Gulf Coast Project was not even uncharted ground. When TransCanada announced on February 27 its plans to push forward with the southern section despite the Keystone XL rejection weeks earlier, the White House said it looked “forward to working with TransCanada to ensure that it is built in a safe, responsible and timely manner, and we commit to take every step possible to expedite the necessary federal permits.”

The oil industry did not greet Obama’s visit to its home turf especially warmly.

“Mr. President, your words suggest you want the economic benefits American natural gas and oil can deliver,” chief executives of Oklahoma oil and gas exploration companies Continental Resources, Chesapeake Energy, Devon Energy and SandRidge Energy said in an open letter published Wednesday in The Oklahoman newspaper. “We hope your actions follow suit — to date they have not.”

Likewise, pipeline supporters and oil-state lawmakers in Congress have spent the week bashing the president’s energy record.

Senator Richard Lugar, Republican-Indiana, said Obama’s “public relations exercise” in Cushing does nothing to change his “incomprehensible obstructionism” against the larger project.

“I’m glad that President Obama went to Cushing to see the mess he has in part caused,” Lugar said in a statement ahead of the speech. “If the Obama administration had acted on Keystone XL within a reasonable time frame to approve the application, then it most likely would already be delivering surplus oil supplies from Cushing to Gulf Coast refineries and would soon be delivering Canadian and US Bakken oil to American motorists.”
KEYSTONE XL OPPONENT SAYS CUSHING STOP HIGHLIGHTS OIL ‘ADDICTION’

Bill McKibben, whose group 350.org turned Keystone XL into the environmental movement’s chief rallying point last summer, said Obama’s visit to the pipeline yard would become an icon for inaction on climate change.

“No movie producer, 50 years from now, will be able to resist a scene that explains the depth of our addiction to oil: the president coming to the state that just recorded the hottest summer in American history, in the very week that the nation has seen the weirdest heat wave in its history, and promising not to slow down climate change but instead to speed up the building of pipelines,” he said.

McKibben’s group encouraged Keystone XL opponents to protest Obama’s visit to Ohio State University Thursday afternoon.

TransCanada plans to reapply to the US government for a permit to build the cross-border section of Keystone XL, which would run 1,179 miles from Hardisty, Alberta, to Steele City, Nebraska. It would link up with the existing Keystone pipeline to connect to Cushing.

While it has not submitted the application, the company estimates approval of the key US permit in the first quarter of 2013. It twice pushed back its completion target, now set at early 2015. Obama also signed a more general executive order calling for quicker federal permitting of major infrastructure projects, including pipelines, renewable energy plants, electricity transmission, roads, ports, waterways and broadband.

–Meghan Gordon, meghan_gordon@platts.com

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/46840201/#46840201

NBC Nightly News
March 23, 2012

Dolphins still sick from BP oil spill

Scientists say the dolphin population in Louisiana’s Barataria Bay, one of the areas hit hardest and longest by the BP oil spill, are severely ill. NBC’s Anne Thompson reports.

__________________
http://blog.al.com/live/2012/03/louisiana_dolphins_are_very_si.html

Al.com

Louisiana dolphins are ‘very sick;’ study of ‘unusual mortality event’ continues
Published: Friday, March 23, 2012, 3:48 PM Updated: Friday, March 23, 2012, 5:48 PM
By Ben Raines, Press-Register

Dolphins swim off Dauphin Island during the summer of 2011. An ongoing die-off of dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico has resulted in 693 carcasses washing ashore. Scientists believe many more dolphins likely died but were never recovered. An investigation is underway to determine whether the BP oil spill is to blame. (Press-Register/Ben Raines)

Dolphins captured in Louisiana as part of a health study related to the BP oil spill were “very sick,” according to federal scientists.

Thirty-two dolphins caught in August in Louisiana’s heavily oiled Barataria Bay were found to suffer from a range of symptoms including anemia, low body weight, hormone deficiencies, liver disease, and lung problems.

Those symptoms are typical of mammals exposed to oil in laboratory experiments, scientists said.

“The dolphins we sampled from Barataria Bay are not in good health. Some are very sick,” said Lori Schwacke, who led the dolphin study for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “We are concerned that many of the Barataria bay dolphins are in such poor health they may not survive.”

Scientists recorded abnormally low levels of cortisol and other hormones produced by the adrenal gland. Those hormones work together to control immune function, metabolism, and the body’s response to stress.

“These low levels of hormones suggest adrenal deficiency,” Schwacke said, explaining that adrenal issues are also associated with low blood sugar, low blood pressure and heart conditions. “These health concerns have not been observed in other parts of the south Atlantic and Gulf coasts.”

Since February 2010, the number of dead dolphins washing ashore in the Gulf has been much higher than normal, scientists said. A total of 693 dolphins have washed up in the last two years.

The “unusual mortality event” continues in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, though the number of dead animals found along the Florida Panhandle has returned to normal.

While Schwacke said it was too soon to confirm a connection to the oil spill, she noted that the health issues in the Barataria Bay population are similar to problems seen in mink that were exposed to fuel oil during laboratory tests.

The testing was conducted as part of the ongoing Natural Resources Damage Assessment, which will form the heart of the government’s legal case against BP.

The NOAA testing involved 32 dolphins out of a total population of about 1,000 living in Barataria Bay. The area was selected because it was one of the most heavily oiled areas on the Gulf Coast.

So far, 180 dolphins have washed up dead in Barataria, or about 18 percent of the population there, including some of those that had been caught and tested by NOAA.

Teri Rowles, the NOAA veterinarian in charge of investigating dolphin strandings, said the agency was trying to gain similar information about the health of dolphins in Alabama and Mississippi but had not yet studied live animals. Many of the tests conducted in Louisiana required live animals.

“Most of the animals that come in dead are more decomposed. Only 73 of the 693 have been live or freshly dead where we could get a good body condition,” Rowles said.

Rowles said NOAA had ruled out biotoxins, such as algae blooms related to red tide, and a measles-like virus common in dolphins, as being responsible for the ongoing die off.

Based on the findings in Barataria Bay, the agency has advised scientists in the Gulf States to be on the lookout for similar symptoms.

______________________________

http://www.fox8live.com/news/local/story/Dolphins-from-oiled-bay-show-health-problems/MOKQqihGTk6RWjhhyHNMFQ.cspx

Fox 8 Live/WVUE

Dolphins from oiled bay show health problems
One of the dolphins at the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies

NEW ORLEANS (AP) – Scientists say 32 dolphins taken from Louisiana’s Barataria Bay were in overall poor health, though they say their studies don’t yet definitely tie the illnesses to the 2010 Gulf oil spill.

Lori Schwacke of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Friday that the dolphins – caught in August 2011 – were underweight, anemic and showed signs of liver and lung disease.

Another common problem was a low level of stress-fighting hormones. Thirty-one of the 32 are still alive.

Schwacke said the hormone problem cannot be surely tied to the oil spill but is “consistent with oil exposure to other mammals.”

Scientists have been investigating an unusually large number of dolphin deaths in the Gulf of Mexico since February 2010 – two months before the BP oil spill began.

(Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

_______________________

http://planetoceannews.com/

Planet Ocean News

Barataria Bay Dolphins Exposed to Oil Are Seriously Ill

According to The New York Times, dolphins exposed to the Deepwater Horizon Disaster’s combined effects of crude oil and chemical dispersants, “are seriously ill.”

In August of 2010, just after the wellhead was capped, I joined The Sea Turtle Restoration Project’s Dr. Chris Pincetich, Captains Al Walker and Terry Palmisano, and Scott Porter of Ecorigs to see how much oil was still in Barataria Bay, in the Mississippi Delta. We found much more than we expected, with crude oil and sheen seemingly everywhere we checked.

In one area we found a pod of dolphins poking their noses in the mud looking for morsels of food, only to kick up a nasty rainbow sheen of oil. And when they’d surface to breathe, their blowholes would open, sucking in that same oily sheen. It was the stuff of nightmares. When my respiratory problems became too hard to manage, I went to Florida to recuperate. The dolphins and other creatures of the Gulf were not so lucky.

The situation was reported to the authorities, with whom I exchanged a number of frustrating emails. Finally a few months later, they went to the GPS Position I had provided and reported back that the dolphins’ health appeared to be normal. Frustrating for all sides involved I’m sure, and with the government’s gag order on NOAA staff due to pending lawsuits against BP, it’s been a long time with no news.

My friends know how long I raged about the dolphins in Barataria Bay – and elsewhere in the Gulf where the mortality rates have been no less than astounding. Today that anger is back again, the memories of those dolphins are as vivid as if it were yesterday.

In this video, you’ll see the dolphins around 1:13 forward.

New York Times/Environmental Blog
By LESLIE KAUFMAN

Dolphins in Barataria Bay off Louisiana, which was hit hard by the BP oil spill in 2010, are seriously ill, and their ailments are probably related to toxic substances in the petroleum, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration suggested on Friday.

As part of an ongoing assessment of damages caused by the three-month spill, which began with an explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig, NOAA scientists performed comprehensive physicals last summer on 32 dolphins from the bay. They found problems like drastically low weight, low blood sugar and, in some cases, cancer of the liver and lungs.

Yet the most common symptom among the dolphins, found in about half the group, was an abnormally low level of stress hormones like cortisol. Such hormones regulate many functions in the animal, including the immune system and responses to threats. Scientists said the dearth of hormones suggested that the animals were suffering from adrenal insufficiency.

Lori Schwacke, the lead scientist for the health assessment, said the findings were preliminary and could not be conclusively linked to the oil spill at this point. But she said the exams were also conducted on control groups of dolphins that live along the Atlantic coast and in other areas that were not affected by the 2010 spill and that those dolphins did not manifest those symptoms.

“The findings we have are also consistent with other studies that have looked at the effects of oil exposure in other mammals,” Dr. Schwacke added, citing experimental studies of mink that were dosed with oil. Some of those minks developed adrenal insufficiency.

Strandings of dolphins began rising in states along the Gulf of Mexico in February 2010, or about two months before the oil spill.

But NOAA says that the strandings have returned to normal rates along the Florida coast, which was the farthest from the spill, while remaining abnormally high along the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. In Barataria Bay alone, with a population of about 1,000 dolphins, 180 strandings have been reported since February 2010. In a normal year, about 20 dolphin standings would be reported in all of Louisiana, the agency said.

Ben Sherman, a NOAA spokesman, cautioned against drawing too broad a conclusion about dolphin deaths across the gulf from the findings. He said the results could provide “possible clues” to the effects of the oil spill on other dolphins in the northern Gulf of Mexico. “However, it is too soon to tell how the Barataria Bay findings apply,” he said.

March 24, 2012

Published on Thursday, March 22, 2012 by Common Dreams

Obama: indefinite ‘development of oil and gas infrastructure’
– Common Dreams staff

Today, President Obama has endorsed a southern portion of the Keystone XL pipeline. “As long as I’m president, I’m going to keep encouraging the development of oil and gas infrastructure,” Obama said in a speech in Cushing, Okla.

As the president spoke, Native American pipeline protesters were ‘caged’ miles away from the event.

Native American activists in Oklahoma have expressed outrage at the proposal of the pipeline as it will “desecrate known sacred sites and artifacts” on its path to refineries in Texas, in addition to the evident environmental degradation involved.

Local authorities have forced the activists to hold their protest in a cage erected in Memorial Park far away from the speech. “The protestors were stunned that their community, so long mistreated, would be insulted in such an open manner instead of being given the same freedom of speech expected by all Americans simply for taking a stance consistent with their values,” reports the Global Justice Ecology Project.

Friends of the Earth @foe_us

#Obama: “As long as I’m president I’m going to keep encouraging the development of oil and gas infrastructure” #promiseofcleanenergy
22 Mar 12

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BREAKING NEWS: Native Americans Protest Keystone XL From A Cage (Global Justice Ecology Project):

“President Obama is an adopted member of the Crow Tribe, so his fast-tracking a project that will desecrate known sacred sites and artifacts is a real betrayal and disappointment for his Native relatives everywhere,” said Marty Cobenais of the Indigenous Environmental Network. “Tar sands is devastating First Nations communities in Canada already and now they want to bring that environmental, health, and social devastation to US tribes.”

The President visited Cushing to stand with executives from TransCanada and throw his support behind a plan to build the southern half of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline to move tar sands bitumen and crude oil from Cushing to the Gulf Coast refineries in Texas.

A major concern for Native Americans in Oklahoma, according to spokespeople at the event, is that Keystone XL and the Canadian tar sands mines that would supply it ignore impacts to indigenous communities and their sacred spaces.

“Natives in Canada live downstream from toxic tar sands mines,” said Earl Hatley, “and they are experiencing spikes in colon, liver, blood and rare bile-duct cancers which the Canadian government and oil companies simply ignore. And now they want to pipe these tar sands through the heart of Indian country, bulldozing grave sites and ripping out our heritage.”

The group points to a survey done by the Oklahoma Archeological Survey which found 88 archaeological sites and 34 historic structures that were threatened by Keystone XL. TransCanada was asked to reroute around only a small portion of these, leaving 71 archaeological sites and 22 historic structures at risk. The group says they have asked for a list of these sites and to oversee operations that might threaten sacred burial grounds, but neither request has been honored. […]

“The Ogallala Aquifer is not the only source of water in the plains,” said RoseMary Crawford, Project Manager of the Center for Energy Matters. “Tar sands pipelines have a terrible safety record and leaks are inevitable.”

“We can’t stop global warming with more fossil fuel pipelines,” added Crawford. “The people who voted for this President did so believing he would help us address the global environmental catastrophe that our pollution is creating. He said he would free us from ‘the tyranny of oil.’ Today that campaign promise is being trampled to boost the President’s poll numbers.”

http://www.lcv.org/act/

Gene Karpinski, League of Conservation Voters

9:00 AM (2 hours ago) March 24th, 2012

Dear DeeVon,

End Big Oil Handouts

Tell your senators: Stand up for the American people, not Big Oil.

Did you know that over the past decade, the big five oil companies – BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Shell – have earned more than $1 trillion in profits?

At the same time, these oil companies also enjoy billions in special tax breaks. Meanwhile, Big Oil’s congressional allies continue to push ‘oil above all’ energy policies – from advancing the toxic Keystone XL tar sands pipeline to expanding dangerous drilling off our coasts.

It’s time to fight back. The Senate may soon vote on legislation to end billions of dollars in annual giveaways that the Big Oil companies receive.

Click here to tell your senators that it’s time to end Big Oil handouts.

Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) has introduced the ‘Repeal Big Oil Tax Subsidies Act’ (S. 2204), which would cut billions of dollars in unnecessary oil subsidies. Additionally, the senator’s bill would use those savings to invest in clean, renewable energy sources that would create new jobs, make America more energy independent and reduce harmful pollution.

It makes absolutely no sense that ExxonMobil, which reported annual profits of $41 billion in 2011, continues to benefit from massive taxpayer-funded government handouts. But this upcoming Senate vote represents an opportunity to put every senator on the record. As President Obama said recently, “They can either stand up for oil companies, or they can stand up for the American people.”

Click here to tell your senators to stand up for us, not the Big Oil companies.

Thank you for taking action.

Sincerely,
Gene Karpinski
President
League of Conservation Voters