http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1918382420100619 

BP restarts drillship system after 10-hour lapse
June 19, 2010
2:38pm EDT

By Kristen Hays

HOUSTON (Reuters) – BP Plc restarted one of its oil-capture systems at the gushing leak in the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday after a 10-hour shutdown to fix a problem on a piece of fire-prevention equipment.

Spokesman Robert Wine said a “flame arrestor” on the vent atop an oil storage tank on the oil-collecting drillship was blocked, so it was shut down at 8:23 p.m. CDT (8:23 p.m. EDT) to allow crews to clean it out.

A flame arrestor is a device on the vent designed to dissipate heat to reduce the risk of fire, Wine said.

When a lightning storm blew in, BP decided to wait until it passed to restart the drillship system.

BP disclosed the shutdown in its daily 9 a.m. CDT (10 a.m. EDT) update of oil collected posted on its website. About three hours later, the company issued an announcement that said the system restarted at 6:30 a.m. CDT (7:30 a.m. EDT), before the shutdown was disclosed.

Wine said the company announced the restart when that operation, which takes several hours, was complete. “It’s a process, it’s not instantaneous,” he said.

The second system, where more oil is being burned off at a service rig, operated normally throughout the time the drillship system was shut down, Wine said.

Before the shutdown, the two systems captured 24,500 barrels a day of oil, or 87.5 percent of the systems’ total capacity of 28,000 barrels a day.

The drillship system, in which a containment cap at the top of failed blowout preventer equipment at the seabed channels oil to Transocean Ltd’s Discoverer Enterprise a mile above at the water’s surface, collected 14,400 barrels, down from the 16,020 barrels collected in the previous uninterrupted 24-hour period, BP said.

CONTAINMENT PLANS

The company said the second system, where oil is siphoned through a hose connected to the blowout preventer to Helix Energy Solution’s Helix Q4000 service rig at the surface, burned off 10,100 barrels of oil. That is the rig’s daily oil-handling capacity, according to BP.

The Q4000 must burn off oil because it has no storage or processing capacity, unlike the drillship, BP said.

The total amount of oil collected by the containment cap system since it was installed on June 3 reached 205,570 on Friday. The total burned off by the service rig since it began siphoning oil early Wednesday reached 23,220 barrels on Friday, according to BP figures.

BP aims to increase the surface oil-handling capacity to up to 53,000 barrels a day by bringing in another vessel to siphon oil from the blowout preventer through another hose and bring it to the surface. That vessel will be able to process up to 25,000 barrels a day, according to BP.

The latest estimate of the leak’s flow rate from a team of U.S. scientists is 35,000 to 60,000 barrels a day. U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the top U.S. official overseeing the spill response, said Friday that range represents varied opinions and the actual flow is more likely at the low end.

But BP plans to increase capacity to up to 80,000 barrels a day by mid-July in response to Coast Guard demands for more oil-handling capability and backup systems.

That upgrade also will include switching the current containment cap for a larger one with what the company says is a better seal. That cap also will allow vessels at the surface to disconnect quickly and move if a hurricane approaches, unlike the current cap system.

Allen said the Coast Guard and BP might consider not switching caps at the end of June if the 53,000-barrel capacity appears to be capturing all the oil. The leak would gush unchecked when the current cap is removed and before the new one is secured, Allen has said.

But the current system does not allow the drillship to disconnect and move quickly if a storm comes, which is a critical part of the July containment phase, he said.
(Reporting by Kristen Hays; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

White House chief: Yacht trip another gaffe by BP

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hmRv_YUlI1GFQp-ArxAtk0n8S3EwD9GEGNCG2

(AP) – June 19, 2010

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s chief of staff says BP chief executive Tony Hayward has committed yet another in a “long line of PR gaffes” but attending a yacht race in England while the Gulf oil spill disaster continues.

Hayward faced a fresh avalanche of criticism as news circulated Saturday that he was at a yacht competition around the Isle of Wight.

White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel is mocking Hayward’s infamous statement that he wishes the crisis were over so could have his life back.

Referring to the yachting, Emanuel tells ABC’s “This Week,” “He’s got his life back, as he would say.”

Emanuel says the focus should stay on capping the leaking well and helping the people of the Gulf region.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

June 18, 2010

 http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/pascal061810.htm

24 Corporate Crime Reporter 25(10), June 18, 2010

Jeanne Pascal knows BP.

Up until three months ago, when she retired, Jeanne Pascal was an attorney at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Her beat: debarment of BP.

For years, she worked on the BP case.

After all BP’s rap sheet was long and nasty  three convictions, an $84 million OSHA fine, and a deferred prosecution agreement.

Last year, Pascal was inclined to debar BP  strip it of its government contracts  because of its repeat violations.

But the Pentagon intervened.

“The Defense Energy Support Center told me that BP was supplying 80 percent of the fuel going to the U.S. military in Iraq,” Pascal told Corporate Crime Reporter.

“That’s a very substantial need.”

“We’re talking 2009,” Pascal said. “Had we debarred BP at that time, the Defense Department would have gotten an exception to the debarment and continued to do business with BP. We would have gotten a sister federal agency doing a substantial amount of business with a debarred contractor. And we would have had no oversight or no audit rights over that company.”

So, Pascal shifted to Plan B.

She was willing to enter into a compliance agreement  so that the government could audit BP’s operation to ensure that what happened on the North Slope  spills, slipshod safety  would be corrected.

She had cut a similar five year compliance agreement with BP after it was convicted of polluting on Endicott Island on the North Slope.

But that ended in 2005.

And now BP was in trouble again.

And Pascal offered BP another compliance agreement.

One problem  BP wanted no part of Pascal’s conditions.

First and foremost  that BP’s ombudsman  former federal judge Stanley Sporkin  be kept independent outside of BP.

No, BP said  we need our own ombudsman in house.

“Judge Stanley Sporkin’s office is providing ombudsman services to BP as a result of the House Energy and Commerce oversight hearings in 2007,” Pascal said.

“Then BP president Bob Malone promised that Judge Sporkin would restore the integrity to BP’s operation and restore the confidence of the American people. I wanted Judge Sporkin’s office to continue to do the job that BP promised Congress Judge Sporkin would do.”

“But BP wanted to terminate Judge Sporkin’s office and control that function by appointing a BP person to that position.”

Who did BP want to appoint as its in house ombudsman?

“I think his name was Tom McCormick  but I am not certain,” Pascal says.

Pascal says that the issue of keeping Sporkin as ombudsman for the workers was important to her because she recognized that BP was a “retaliatory company.”

In 2003, BP sought to end the first five year compliance agreement  which Pascal negotiated with BP outside counsel Carol Dinkins, a partner at Vinson & Elkins  end it early  at three to five years instead of five.

When BP workers on the North Slope caught wind that BP was in negotiations to end it early, they complained to Pascal and to BP’s probation officer  Mary Frances Barnes.

“Employees who came to me or to Stanley Sporkin with health safety and environmental complaints found themselves retaliated against,” Pascal said.
As a result, Pascal rejected BP’s plea to end the first five year compliance agreement early.

“If a company employee brings me information and wanted me to look into it, BP would conduct an investigation and try to find out who talked.”

“When they thought they had the answer, they would either demote that person, discipline that person or terminate them.”

Do you know for a fact that workers who went to you were retaliated against?

“Yes I do,” Pascal says.

How many?

“Enough to be of huge concern to me personally. I had about 35 people come to me under the first compliance agreement. And they were terrified that the company would get their names and retaliate against them. ”

“People who work for BP are afraid of their employer. BP is a very retaliatory company.”

“BP has the money, talent and resources to correct all of these problems and do all of this right. But they have chosen not to do it.”

“What happened in the Gulf  it looks as if they took shortcuts to save a couple of millions of dollars  that tells me that they have not learned from their four encounters with the law, their millions in fines, the multiple civil lawsuits filed against them  they still have not gotten the message.”

“The amount of the fines and the bad press clearly has not been sufficient to stop their behavior.”

“If I were the debarment official now, I would look at this company and say  this company cannot be rehabilitated. They are not going to do it right. They have actively chosen not to do what they need to do to correct the problem.”

“What stunned me was that BP told us that their lines were in pristine top notch shape. The employees were telling us that the pipes were corroded and in bad shape. In fact, a year after the compliance agreement ended, there was a substantial spill on Prudhoe Bay. That was the 2006 leak. But that was a year after the first compliance agreement ended.”

A second issue was BP’s Health Safety and Environment (HSE) unit.

“BP Exploration Alaska under Doug Suttles had an HSE, which was an independent division with a vice president who reported to the President,” Pascal said.

“Following the 2006 oil spill, Doug Suttles folded HSE under the technical directorate under Tony Brock. So, you have an HSE manager reporting to Tony Brock. Tony Brock reported to the President.”

“I wanted HSE restored to a vice presidential position.”

“BP was saying that HSE didn’t deserve a top billing as a operational concern. So, that was another sticking point.”

Pascal was negotiation the second compliance agreement with BP’s general counsel Jack Lynch.

“He’s a man of great integrity,” Pascal said.

“However, Mr. Lynch is an attorney providing attorney services. And people making decisions on his advice were and are Lamar MacKay, Doug Suttles, Andy Inglis and Tony Hayward.”

“Lamar MacKay is the president of BP America.”

“Doug Suttles was the CEO of BP Exploration Alaska. He’s the guy who devalued HSE. They promoted him and sent him to Houston and gave him control over all exploration worldwide, including exploration in the Gulf.”

“Those four individuals were in control of what was happening and were in control when the Deepwater Horizon sank.”
[For a complete transcript of the Interview with Jeanne Pascal, see 24 Corporate Crime Reporter 25(10), June 21, 2010, print edition only.]

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-oil-spill-burnbox-20100617,0,4814068.story?page=1

By Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times
June 17, 2010
Reporting from the Gulf of Mexico – Here on the open ocean, 12 miles from ground zero of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the gulf is hovering between life and death.

The large strands of sargassum seaweed atop the ocean are normally noisy with birds and thick with crustaceans, small fish and sea turtles. But now this is a silent panorama, heavy with the smell of oil.

There are no birds. The seaweed is soaked in rust-colored crude and chemical dispersant. It is devoid of life except for the occasional juvenile sea turtle, speckled with oil and clinging to the only habitat it knows. Thick ribbons of oil spread out through the sea like the strips in egg flower soup, gorgeous and deadly.

A few dead fish float in the water, though dolphin-fish, tuna, flying fish and the occasional shark can still be seen swimming near the surface, threading their way through the wavy, sometimes iridescent gobs of crude.

“This is devastating. I mean literally, it’s terrible. All this should be pretty much blue water, and – look at it. It just looks bad,” said Kevin Aderhold, a longtime charter fishing captain who has been taking a team of researchers deep into the gulf every day to rescue oil-soaked sea turtles.

“When this first happened, a lot of us were like, they’ll cap that thing and we’ll be out fishing again. Now reality’s set in. Look around you. This is long-term. This’ll be here for-ev-er.”

And then it gets worse. When the weather is calm and the sea is placid, ships trailing fireproof booms corral the black oil, the coated seaweed and whatever may be caught in it, and torch it into hundred-foot flames, sending plumes of smoke skyward in ebony mushrooms. This patch of unmarked ocean gets designated over the radio as “the burn box.”

Wildlife researchers operating here, in the regions closest to the spill, are witnesses to a disquieting choice: Protecting shorebirds, delicate marshes and prime tourist beaches along the coast by stopping the oil before it moves ashore has meant the largely unseen sacrifice of some wildlife out at sea, poisoned with chemical dispersants and sometimes boiled by the burning of spilled oil on the water’s surface.

“It reflects the conventional wisdom of oil spills: If they just keep the oil out at sea, the harm will be minimal. And I disagree with that completely,” said Blair Witherington, a research scientist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission who has been part of the sea turtle rescue mission.

By unhappy coincidence, the same convergences of ocean currents that create long mats of sargassum – nurturing countless crabs, slugs and surface fish that are crucial food for turtles, birds and larger fish – also coalesce the oil, creating islands of death sometimes 30 miles long.

“Most of the Gulf of Mexico is a desert. Nothing out there to live on. It’s all concentrated in these oases,” Witherington said.

“Ordinarily, the sargassum is a nice, golden color. You shake it, and all kinds of life comes out: shrimp, crabs, worms, sea slugs. The place is really just bursting with life. It’s the base of the food chain. And these areas we’re seeing here by comparison are quite dead,” he said.

“It’s amazing. We’ll see flying fish, and they’ll land in this stuff and just get stuck.”

Hardest hit of all, it appears, are the sea jellies and snails that drift along the gulf’s surface, some of the most important food sources for sea turtles.

“These animals drift into the oil lines and it’s like flies on fly paper,” Witherington said. “As far as I can tell, that whole fauna is just completely wiped out.”

The turtle rescue team sets out at 6 a.m. in the muggy warm stillness of the harbor at Venice, La. The researchers move into the open gulf about an hour later, past a line of shrimp boats deputized to lay boom along the coastal marshes.

Closer to the Deepwater Horizon site, the water takes on a foreboding gray pallor tinged with a rainbow-like sheen. Soon, the oil begins swirling around the boat and the seascape smells like an auto mechanic’s garage.

Strewn among the oil and seaweed are human flotsam: an orange hardhat, a pie pan, a wire coat hanger, yellow margarine-tub lids, a black-and-green ashtray. The crew has found papers – long at sea on global currents – bearing inscriptions in Spanish, Arabic, Greek and Chinese.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jun2010/2010-06-16-091.html

NEW  ORLEANS, Louisiana, June 16, 2010 (ENS) – A coalition of environmental groups today took legal action on behalf of the U.S. government to oppose a lawsuit aimed at prematurely canceling the moratorium on deepwater oil drilling.

On June 7, Hornbeck Offshore Services, based in Covington, Louisiana, filed suit in federal court in the Eastern District of Louisiana against Ken Salazar in his capacity as secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior.

The oil services company accuses Salazar and the Obama administration of violating the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act by issuing the six-month moratorium on certain deepwater oil drilling.
Hornbeck, which has some 1,300 employees, alleges that the shutdown of deep water drilling operations illegally interferes with its business contracts, is “arbitrary and capricious” and was not done in accordance with applicable federal regulations.
The company asks the court for a permanent injunction to stop the drilling moratorium.

The coalition of conservation groups wants the court to uphold the moratorium.

“The moratorium on drilling is crucial to ensure that safety and environmental measures are in place to prevent the next Deepwater Horizon oil spill,” said Miyoko Sakashita, oceans director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The industry attempt to overturn the moratorium is an unacceptable gamble with the fate of the Gulf coasts human and natural environment.”

After the BP-leased oil rig Deepwater Horizon exploded and caught fire in the Gulf of Mexico April 20, President Obama ordered Secretary Salazar to begin a 30-day review of all exploration and production operations on the Outer Continental Shelf.

The review resulted in a report that concluded the drilling of new offshore deepwater wells “poses an unacceptable threat of serious and irreparable harm to wildlife and the marine, coastal, and human environment.”

On May 28, the Obama administration imposed a six-month moratorium on new deep water oil wells.
But in its lawsuit, Hornbeck argues that the moratorium is unjustified because, “The report contains no finding or evidence of a systemic failure by rig operators, drillers or other participants in offshore drilling operations to comply with current regulations or existing permits.”

“If anything, the moratorium does not do enough to end risky drilling, since there have yet to be true reforms to the lax safety and environmental oversight of offshore drilling,” said Sakashita. “The moratorium is already a compromise, which is narrowly tailored to allow most drilling to continue despite exemptions of environmental review.”

“We are still struggling to combat the largest environmental catastrophe ever faced by the Gulf of Mexico,” said Sakashita. “The industry challenge to the moratorium flies in the face of good common sense.”

The moratorium prohibits the Minerals Management Service from processing new applications for deepwater drilling operations, which affects 33 rigs.

The conalition of conservation groups includes the Center for Biological Diversity, Sierra Club, Florida Wildlife Federation, Defenders of Wildlife and the Natural Resources Defense Council, represented by staff attorneys, Earthjustice and the Southern Environmental Law Center.

The coalition points out that many of the suspended drilling applications have oil spill response plans that are similar to BP’s cookie-cutter plan that has been proven to be “tragically inadequate.”

The gulf region generates tens of billions of dollars annually for the commercial seafood industry and recreational fishing industry, the groups point out. As a result of the BP oil spill, one-third of the gulf is under a government-imposed fisheries closure.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

Clean Energy Congress
June 28-29, 2010
House Chamber, Florida State Capitol
Tallahassee, Florida

Florida has an opportunity to grow our economy and create jobs by establishing a market for the clean tech sector. For this reason and many more, there is an increasing urgency to put state and federal policies in place to attract investments to the state.

Don’t miss a unique opportunity to create a vision for a sustainable energy future for
Florida and the nation.
To submit ideas or participate as a delegate or observer,visit www.cleanenergycongress.org.

Space is limited so respond right away.

Monday, June 28
10:00 am Presentations
12:00 pm Lunch – 22nd Floor, Capitol
1:30 – 5:30 pm Discussion of delegate proposals
5:30 – 7:00 pm Reception – 22nd Floor, Capitol

Tuesday, June 29
8:30 am Adoption of Ideas and Policy Recommendations
12:00 pm Congress Adjourns
12:15 pm Press Conference and Signing Ceremony
“Declaration of Energy Independence”

For more information, visit www.cleanenergycongress.org
or e-mail cleanenergycongress@gmail.com.

The Clean Energy Congress is sponsored by The Florida Business Network for a Clean Energy Economy.

Special thanks to State Representative Michelle Rehwinkel Vasilinda who co-created the concept, is sponsoring our use of the House Chamber and the 22nd Floor, and has been spent many hours helping to plan the event.