http://www.ecorigs.org/EcoRigsOilSpill.html

Report:
On July 15th 2010, Scott Porter, a member of EcoRigs, observed a new type of subsurface oil and dispersant signature. It consisted of a large plume of white stringy mucus like materials. It was observed at two locations (Grand Isle (GI) 93 & GI 90) approximately occupying the area between 40 ft and 120 ft below the surface (maybe deeper). The substance varied in size from small flakes to long strings that extended up to 6 feet. (See video July 15, 2010)
There were two distinct plumes of oil and dispersants on July 15th at GI 93 and 90, there was the more common subsurface plume, the brown cloudy plume consisting of fine particulate matter located in the upper 30 ft of the water column. The last time we visited GI 93, on June 16th, we saw the same brown particulate signature except that it was confined to the upper 20 feet of the water column. The white mucus-like plume was not present during the June 16 dive and the depth of the more common brown plume did not appear to be as large. There was no surface oil or sheen on either day.
There was a third plume observed on the bottom We could not verify the depth of the plume or whether the plume on the ocean floor consisted of oil and dispersants. The soils in the area are often composed of silts deposited there by the Mississippi River or other tributaries. Sediment could have been re-suspended by active currents; the structure was near the Mississippi Canyon area. Also, the area experiences hypoxic areas during the summer months, and the plume above the seafloor could be a part of the nephloid layer that appears every year.
EcoRigs has observed similar mucus-like material in the water before; however, it was brown and different in shape and was not as persistent. At Main Pass (MP) 311, on June 6th, large globs of semi-translucent mucus like materials were present below the brown particulate type of plume (See June 6th 2010 video). On this day, the common brown oil and dispersant plume consisting of fine particulates, occupied the upper 20 feet of the water column. (See video June 6th 2010)
Finally, EcoRigs is presenting base line data of water conditions found at GI 93. Please view video captured in July 2009 and October 2008 at GI 93. The fish population observed during pre-spill visits appeared different from the current population. There was and still remains a large population of fish at GI 93 and 90 although the species composition has appears to have changed. Large populations of red snapper and amberjack were present on July 15th far more than we have seen there in the past. Video and analysis of fish and invertebrate populations are forthcoming.

Best Regards, Steve Kolian 225-910-0304 cell

Special thanks to Steve Kolian of ecorigs.org

In the wake of the BP drilling disaster, state Sierra Club chapters across the country are working to limit, restrict, etc. off shore drilling in their state legislatures. We picked up our first win in North Carolina last week. Here’s a quick write up:

Limiting Off-shore Drilling in NC

SB 836 “Oil Spill Liability, Response, & Preparedness” enacted. The bill aims to increase the protection of North Carolina’s coastline from offshore drilling and potential spills. The Act removes the current cap on the amount recoverable by the State for the cost of clean up and any resulting damages to public resources in the case of an oil spill. The Act also modifies the state’s Coastal Area Management Act (CAMA) by requiring, in the case of a consistency review, significant planning and preparation for potential spills regarding offshore activities before any leases could move forward. The act directs the Coastal Resources Commission to review existing laws and regulations that pertain to offshore energy production and exploration in light of the British Petroleum Deepwater Horizon spill and to recommend modifications to the law as they see fit. Lastly, the act directs the department of Crime Control and public Safety to immediately review and update the state oil spill contingency plan in order to prepare the state in the event of oil from the BP spill reaching our shores.

WHEN: 2010.07.08
WHERE: NC

Tactical Highlights:

The spill in the Gulf of Mexico moved public opinion from somewhat supporting off-shore drilling in NC to being against. The bill remained realtively unaltered as it moved through the legislative process. The few changes the bill saw were mainly focused on logistics and legal wording. The North Carolina Chapter worked closely with North Carolina Conservation Network, Conservation Council of North Carolina, Environment North Carolina, and Coastal Federation to achieve the bill’s passage.

*********************************************************
Athan Manuel
Director of Lands Protection
Sierra Club
408 C St. NE
Washington, DC 20002
202-548-4580 / fax 547-6009
cell: 202-716-0006
athan.manuel@sierraclub.org

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gIXWYBTpLtSayJtg41LKXpxSxVPAD9H1N4B05

By COLLEEN LONG and HARRY R. WEBER (AP) – July 18th, 2010

NEW ORLEANS – A federal official says scientists are concerned about a seep and possible methane near BP’s busted oil well in the Gulf of Mexico.

Both could be signs there are leaks in the well that’s been capped off for three days.

The official spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity Sunday because an announcement about the next steps had not been made yet.

The official is familiar with the spill oversight but would not clarify what is seeping near the well. The official says BP is not complying with the government’s demand for more monitoring.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) – The custom-built cap that finally cut off the oil flowing from BP’s broken well held steady Sunday, and the company hopes to leave it that way until crews can permanently kill the leak.

That differs from the plan the federal government laid out a day earlier, in which millions more gallons of oil could be released before the cap is connected to tankers at the surface and oil is sent to be collected through a mile of pipes.

Federal officials wary of making the well unstable have said that plan would relieve pressure on the cap and may be the safer option, but it would mean three days of oil flowing into the Gulf before the collection begins.

Both sides downplayed the apparent contradiction in plans. Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, who will make the final decision, said the containment plan he described Saturday hadn’t changed, and that he and BP executives were on the same page.

“No one associated with this whole activity … wants to see any more oil flow into the Gulf of Mexico,” said Doug Suttles, BP PLC’s chief operating officer. “Right now we don’t have a target to return the well to flow.”

Allen said more work is needed to better understand why pressure readings from the well cap are lower than expected. There could be two reasons, he said: either there’s less oil in the reservoir because so much has flowed out, or oil is leaking out underground.

“While we are pleased that no oil is currently being released into the Gulf of Mexico and want to take all appropriate action to keep it that way, it is important that all decisions are driven by the science,” Allen said.

Both Allen and BP have said they don’t know how long the trial run will continue. It was set to end Sunday afternoon, but the deadline – an extension from the original Saturday cutoff – came and went with no word on what’s next.

After little activity Sunday, robots near the well cap came to life around the time of the cutoff. It wasn’t clear what they were doing, but bubbles started swirling around as their robotic arms poked at the mechanical cap.

Work continued on the permanent fix: two relief wells, one being drilled as a backup. The company said work on the first one was far enough along that officials expect to reach the broken well’s casing, or pipes, deep underground by late this month. Then the job of jamming the busted well with mud and cement could take “a number of days through a few weeks.”

Some boat captains were surprised and angry to learn that their work helping with the cleanup will mean less money they’re eligible to claim from the $20 billion compensation fund set up by BP.

The fund’s administrator, Kenneth Feinberg, told The Associated Press on Sunday that if BP pays fishermen wages to help skim oil and perform other cleanup work, those wages will be subtracted from the amount they get from the fund.

Longtime charter boat captain Mike Salley said he didn’t realize BP planned to deduct those earnings, and he doubted many other captains knew, either.

“I’ll keep running my boat,” he said Sunday on a dock in Orange Beach, Ala., before heading back into the Gulf to resupply other boats with boom to corral the oil. “What else can I do?”

It will take months, or possibly years for the Gulf to recover. But there were signs that people were trying to get life – or at least a small part of it – back to normal.
The public beach at Gulf Shores, Ala., had its busiest day in weeks on Saturday despite oil-stained sand and a dark line of tar balls left by high tide.

Darryl Allen of Fairhope, Ala., and Pat Carrasco of Baton Rouge, La., came to the beach to throw a Frisbee just like they’ve been doing for the past 30 years. With oil on people’s minds more than the weather, Allen asked what’s become a common question since the well integrity test began: “How’s the pressure? I hope it’s going up,” he said. “You don’t want to be too optimistic after all that’s happened.”

People also were fishing again, off piers and in boats, after most of the recreational waters in Louisiana were reopened late this week. More than a third of federal waters are still closed and off-limits to commercial fishermen.

“I love to fish,” said Brittany Lawson, hanging her line off a pier beside the Grand Isle Bridge. “I love to come out here.”

And even though it has been only days since the oil was turned off, the naked eye could spot improvements on the water. The crude appeared to be dissipating quickly on the surface of the Gulf around the Deepwater Horizon site.

Members of a Coast Guard crew that flew over the wellhead Saturday said far less oil was visible than a day earlier. Only a colorful sheen and a few long streams of rust-colored, weathered oil were apparent in an area covered weeks earlier by huge patches of black crude. Somewhere between 94 million and 184 million gallons have spilled into the Gulf, according to government estimates.

Weber reported from Houston. Michael Kunzelman in New Orleans and Jay Reeves in Orange Beach, Ala., also contributed to this report.
Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20100718/OPINION/7181011/2078/OPINION
Published: Sunday, July 18, 2010 at 1:00 a.m.

Hopefully, this is the beginning of a rational overhaul of oil policies….DV

Many oil industry officials and leaders in Louisiana oppose a deepwater drilling moratorium, saying that it is economically harsh, overly broad and unjustified.

But a new memorandum from the U.S. Secretary of the Interior lays out a startlingly clear case for systemic overhaul — not just a pause — in deepwater oil exploration.

A new Bloomberg poll indicates that the nation sees the BP oil spill more as a freak accident than an industrywide indictment of deepwater drilling practices.

However, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s words provide ample reason to reconsider that viewpoint. “I cannot conclude at this time that deepwater drilling can move forward in a safe and environmentally sound manner,” Salazar states in his July 12 “decision memorandum.”

Newly identified concerns

The document outlines his reasons for a new moratorium on deepwater exploratory drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific. An earlier moratorium — enacted after the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig triggered the BP Macondo spill — was suspended by the courts.

“The current regulatory regime for offshore operations is not sufficient to ensure safety and environmental protection,” Salazar explained. “Until the Department can implement rules to address newly identified deepwater drilling concerns, rig by rig compliance reviews conducted under the current regime cannot ensure safety.”

Salazar imposed the new deepwater moratorium until Nov. 30, allowing time for investigations to wrap up and regulatory changes to get under way. Yet he noted that the moratorium might have to be extended “if the results of the various investigations reveal significant unexpected risks.”

We question whether the needed safety changes can be implemented in just a few months. The concerns raised by Salazar involve significant issues of design, industrial practices, response training, equipment and expense.

‘Not an isolated incident’

For example, the memo said that testing has raised new worries about the reliability of blow-out preventers (BOPs) — critically important equipment whose failure is believed to be a chief cause of the Gulf spill.

“It is clear that the apparent performance problem with the Deepwater Horizon’s BOP is not an isolated incident,” Salazar asserted. “Performance problems have also been identified in recent weeks with the BOPs on the relief wells that BP is drilling. The problems have been uncovered during new testing requirements that were imposed on the relief wells after the BP Oil Spill, thus providing more evidence that prior testing requirements were inadequate. It is unlikely that these problems are unique to BP.”

Elsewhere in the memo:

He noted endemic challenges posed by deepwater conditions, including inaccessibility of wells; the formation of methane hydrates; pressure problems that complicate well-cementing procedures; and limited availability of remotely operated deepwater vehicles to effect repairs.

He cited the impact hurricanes would have on spill-containment efforts and cited shortcomings in drillers’ emergency response plans.

“This is not a question of a specific operator’s record, but a measure of the adequacy of the entire industry’s containment plans and capacity to address major spills in the deepwater environment,” Salazar stated. “BP was not the only operator drilling with inadequate plans.”

He explained that deepwater oil fields can have five to 10 times the flow of oil seen in shallow-water wells, so an accident would discharge much larger quantities.

BP’s 86-day struggle “to contain the Macondo blowout and spill provides continuing evidence that BP — and the rest of the industry … had not prepared to contain a blowout in the deepwater environment,” the secretary stated. “Substantial improvement in the industry’s safety practices and procedures relating to offshore drilling, particularly with respect to deepwater drilling conducted from floating rigs and production facilities, is necessary.”

‘Any responsible government’

Salazar’s 22-page memo calls for a moratorium, not the abolition of deepwater drilling. But his critique all but admits that, in its current state, the industry is not ready for prime time.

The BP disaster is even causing doubts in Europe, where deepwater drilling has a longer history.

“I think it is really not justifiable to be issuing licenses or permits for further drilling operations at this moment,” Gunther Oettinger, Energy Commissioner of the European Union, was quoted as saying last week. He called for a moratorium on new deepwater drilling until the cause of the BP spill is better understood.

“Given the current circumstances, any responsible government would at present practically freeze new permits for drilling with extreme parameters and conditions,” he told the European Parliament.

In the U.S., drilling-related industries seem likely to contest Salazar’s new moratorium on economic and other grounds.

Certainly, a suspension of deepwater exploratory oil drilling will cause economic disruption, but dollar signs shouldn’t blind anyone to the rest of the picture: oily tides swirling through Gulf waters, shores and wetlands; paralyzed seafood and tourism industries; dead dolphins and wildlife.

Until deepwater drilling can be done right, it should not be done at all.
Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www2.highlandstoday.com/content/2010/jul/18/la-lets-step-back-and-pass-good-laws-about-offshor/

Highlands Today
Published: July 18, 2010

Drilling for offshore oil is a touchy subject these days, and rightfully so. The thought of more drilling and possibly more accidents makes most of us ill, considering the damage already done by BP’s recent spill in the Gulf. But we should hold off before making decisions about more drilling until everyone’s thinking rationally. This is important, and we must think it through.

Gov. Charlie Crist is calling a special session of the Florida Legislature to discuss banning offshore oil drilling in Florida’s waters. He wants a Florida constitutional amendment to make sure the Legislature doesn’t mess with the law once it’s in place.
We don’t necessarily disagree with Crist’s idea on this. We are as horrified as anyone about the disaster that’s happened in the Gulf and it is fouling our beaches and killing business and the environment. If passing a constitutional amendment fixes that, we’re all for it.

Truth is, though, the BP spill wasn’t in Florida waters. Other big offshore rigs are nowhere near us, but if they spill, it likely will affect us as much as anyone. And if we ban drilling in offshore waters, just one foot past these forbidden zones could be oil wells.
The bottom line is let’s try to calm ourselves a bit before making nearly permanent decisions. We must consider everything, and make sure decisions we make now in anger are really the right decisions for Florida.

Perhaps they are the perfect solution. And maybe with Crist in office for a few months more, this is the absolute best time to do this. But we must make decisions like this with a clear mind and considering every possible ramification. If we don’t, we might be making a bad decision while trying to fix a bad situation.

Special thanks to Richard Charter