FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
June 15, 2010
 
CONTACT:
Lautenberg Press Office 202.224.3224
  
HAVING RELIEF WELL IN PLACE BEFORE SPILL WOULD STOP LEAKS MORE QUICKLY
 
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ), a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, today introduced legislation that would require oil companies to drill emergency relief wells at all new drilling sites off the coast of the United States.  Relief wells are a proven way of stopping an oil spill; however, once a leak has started, the damage inflicted in the months it takes to complete a relief well can be devastating.  While the BP spill began in April, the relief wells being drilled are not expected to be completed until August.  Lautenberg’s bill would require pre-emptive relief well drilling and limit the damage to our nation’s environment and coastal economy when oil spills like the one in the Gulf occur.
 
“My bill takes a common-sense step to contain damages that come with the inherently dangerous drilling business.  If relief wells had been in place before the BP rig explosion, the gushing oil could have been stopped in weeks instead of months,” Lautenberg said.  “Clean energy that will reduce our dependence on oil is the long-term solution – but while offshore drilling continues in the Gulf and Alaska, this bill provides a proven way to contain oil spill drilling disasters.  I will also continue to oppose any energy proposal in the Senate that does not protect New Jersey from oil drilling in the Atlantic.”
 
The “Emergency Relief Well Act” would require the concurrent drilling of at least one relief well whenever a new exploratory or development well is drilled.  Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen has discussed requiring oil companies to drill relief wells in tandem with the main well, saying the idea is “a legitimate point to be raised,” Allen also said, regarding the current spill, “The long-term solution is going to be drilling the relief wells.”
 
Nearly two months after the Deepwater Horizon offshore rig explosion, the BP oil spill has already poured more than 50 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.  After numerous attempts to stop the oil failed – including a containment dome, the “top kill” procedure, and the “junk shot”- the drilling of a relief well appears to be the only way to permanently stop the gushing oil.  Relief wells were also used successfully to stop two of the world’s largest spills, the Ixtoc Spill in Mexico in 1979 and the Montara Spill in Australia in 2009.  In both cases, the relief wells took several months to complete.  The Emergency Relief Well Act will be directed to the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
 
As one of the Senate’s leading critics of offshore drilling, Lautenberg has worked to hold Big Oil accountable and increase investments in clean energy development that reduces the nation’s dependence on oil.  In recent weeks, he has:

Introduced the Beyond Petroleum Act (S. 3343) that would assess a fee on offshore drilling leases to generate nearly $2 billion per year for the development of clean alternatives to oil.
Co-sponsored the Big Oil Bailout Prevention Liability Act (S. 3305), which eliminates the cap on damages BP must pay to those injured by the spill.
Offered an amendment to the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations bill requiring BP to reimburse the government for all spill-related expenditures.
Introduced a bill (S. 3443) to eliminate the requirement that regulators approve drilling plans within 30-days, allowing regulators unlimited time to evaluate the potential risk of specific proposals.
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Special thanks to  Richard Charter

http://www.ogj.com/index/article-display/3670569828/articles/oil-gas-journal/general-interest-2/hse/2010/06/bp-plans_to_collect/QP129867/cmpid=EnlDailyJune152010.html

Jun 15, 2010
Paula Dittrick
OGJ Senior Staff Writer

HOUSTON, June 15 — BP PLC has provided the US Coast Guard with plans to collect 40,000-53,000 b/d of oil by June 30 from the deepwater Macondo blowout well on Mississippi Canyon Block 252 in the Gulf of Mexico.

This range of oil expected to be collected represents installed design capacities of various drillships, tankers, and multiservice vessels that BP is using or plans to use. “Any unplanned events will impact actual delivery,” of oil volumes, BP said in a June 12 letter to USCG Rear Adm. James A. Watson.

By mid-July, BP plans for total possible collection capacity of 60,000-80,000 b/d. BP said it is moving a floating, production, storage, and offloading vessel from South America. The FPSO has a capacity of 25,000 b/d, and it will take an estimated 4 weeks to arrive. Ownership details on the FPSO were not disclosed.

The FPSO will provide redundancy in case of failure of the Toisa Pisces or the Helix Producer, BP said in a letter to Watson. The collection systems are being put in place pending completion of at least one of two relief wells currently being drilled, BP said.

The Helix Producer is a 528-ft floating production unit with 45,000 b/d of capacity. BP has a contract for at least 60 days for the Helix Producer with its owner, Houston-based Helix Energy Solutions Group Inc. Plans are for the Helix producer to load oil onto the Toisa Pisces, a Liberian-flagged well testing and service vessel owned by Sealion Shipping Ltd. The Toisa Pisces can produce 20,000-25,000 b/d of oil.

The Helix Producer and Toisa Pisces are expected to be working by June 30 on the oil spill, which resulted from an Apr. 20 blowout of the Macondo well, and a resulting explosion and fire on Transocean Ltd.’s Deepwater Horizon semisubmersible. Eleven crew members died in the blast. The semi sank Apr. 22.

Currently, a lower marine riser package cap on the failed Deepwater Horizon blowout preventer is collecting oil and gas that goes to the Transocean Discoverer Enterprise drillship, which can process from 15,000-18,000 b/d of oil.

BP said the Q4000, a multiservice e vessel owned by Helix, will collect 5,000-10,000 b/d of oil. For a few weeks, this oil will be burned using a clean-burning system until floating production units and tankers can be put into place.

In the future, BP also plans to use the Discoverer Leader, another Transocean deepwater drillship. It will be able to process 10,000-15,000 b/d of oil.

Contact Paula Dittrick at paulad@ogjonline.com. Thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-06-16/bp-oil-spill-lawsuits-spread-to-states-beyond-gulf-coast.html
BP Oil Spill Lawsuits Spread to States Beyond Gulf Coast
June 16, 2010, 12:03 AM EDT
By Laurel Brubaker Calkins and Margaret Cronin Fisk
June 16 (Bloomberg) — BP Plc faces more than 225 lawsuits in 11 states as litigation from businesses, individuals and investors continues to increase almost two months after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded.

In addition to scores of claims brought in five states along the Gulf shore, coastal businesses and property owners in Georgia and South Carolina have sued for damages from the drifting oil, which has yet to round the southern tip of Florida and enter the Atlantic Ocean.

Investors in three states, including Louisiana and Alaska, have sued BP’s board of directors for allegedly causing more than $50 billion in shareholder losses by failing to implement safety policies that would have prevented the spill. In a separate class-action lawsuit in Florida, the company is accused of “a pattern” of criminal acts including fraud. That suit seeks triple damages under federal civil racketeering law.

“The damage is not just suffered at ground zero along the Gulf Coast,” said Mark Lanier, a Houston lawyer representing dozens of fishermen and property owners against BP. “The shock waves reverberate across state lines and across occupational lines.”
A judge may decide there isn’t a strong enough connection between some damage claims and the spill itself and those claims will be thrown out, Lanier said yesterday in a phone interview. “But we’re not at that point yet,” he said.

Primary Liability

BP, as owner of the underwater lease, has primary liability for damages caused by the tens of millions of gallons of crude oil that have spewed from the damaged well since the April explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon. Almost all the lawsuits also name Transocean Ltd., which owned the rig, along with Cameron International Corp. and Halliburton Energy Services Inc., which provided the rig’s blowout prevention equipment and cementing services, respectively.

David Nicholas, a BP spokesman, didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment yesterday.

BP America Inc. Chairman Lamar McKay told Congress in May that the company will pay all “legitimate” claims related to the spill. On June 2, Credit Suisse estimated the combined cleanup, restoration and litigation costs of the spill could top $37 billion.

President Barack Obama said yesterday in a televised speech that he will tell BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg in a White House meeting today that the London-based company must set aside “whatever resources are required to compensate the workers and business owners who have been harmed as a result of his company’s recklessness.”
Securities Lawsuits

Three lawsuits claiming securities fraud were filed by BP investors in federal courts in Louisiana. The lawsuits, each seeking to represent buyers of BP American depositary receipts in a class action, claim the company and its officials inflated share values by issuing “materially false and misleading statements” about BP’s safety record and protocols.

“BP’s procedures for minimizing its financial losses from drilling rig problems were no more than fantasies,” said lawyers for the Johnson Investment Counsel in a June 7 filing in Lafayette, Louisiana. “BP was simply not the enterprise that its public communications pictured.”

The lawsuit claims BP’s actions cost investors more than $56 billion in share value by May 25. The plaintiff is an investment holding company, said its attorney Stanley M. Chesley at Waite, Schneider, Bayless & Chesley in Cincinnati.

Directors Targeted

At least five so-called derivative lawsuits brought by shareholders on behalf of BP were filed against current and former officers and directors of the company. These lawsuits, filed in state and federal courts in Alaska, Delaware and Louisiana, contend that company mismanagement led to the April 20 explosion.

The spill “is a catastrophe of epic proportions brought by the greed and fraudulent conduct of BP,” according to a civil racketeering lawsuit filed June 12 in Florida that names as defendants the company, various corporate entities, and Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward.
The lawsuit alleges that BP “successfully infiltrated” the Minerals Management Service, the federal regulatory agency overseeing off-shore drilling, and “systematically submitted unsubstantiated and erroneous exploration and oil spill response plans and lease agreements.”

Although oil has yet to leave the Gulf of Mexico, three proposed class-action lawsuits were filed last week in federal court in Charleston, South Carolina, on behalf of property owners, tourism-related businesses, real estate companies and other businesses in six coastal counties. Lawyers involved in those cases say fears the slick will foul beaches later this summer already have caused tourists to cancel trips and vacation rentals.

‘Already Hurting Us’

“The actual spill may not have reached our shores but the effects have,” attorney Aaron Jophlin of the Bell Legal Group LLC in Georgetown, South Carolina, said in an interview. “We hear the effects from our friends and neighbors that, man, it’s already hurting us.”

Owners of condominiums and hotels in Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, where oil is now washing ashore on beaches regularly listed among those with the world’s whitest sand, have filed dozens of lawsuits over lost business. Charter boat operators, fishing guides, marinas, souvenir vendors and watercraft-rental shops as far south as the Florida Keys are suing.

Some of New Orleans’s largest convention hotels, including the Marriott Convention Center and Wyndham Riverfront, have sued over bookings they claim they will lose now and into the future. Meeting planners, who work years in advance, may avoid booking conventions in coastal resorts just as they did after Hurricane Katrina devastated much of the central Gulf Coast in 2005, lawyers for the hotels say.

Katrina Effect

While most New Orleans hotels and restaurants reopened fairly quickly after Katrina, “We still had a tail of lost business for a couple of years” as meeting planners avoided the region, said Steve Herman, a lawyer for the hotels.

Restaurant owners throughout the Gulf Coast are suing over higher seafood prices and the reduced supply of fresh shrimp, oysters and fish, as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has closed 32 percent of the Gulf to commercial fishing. About 75 percent of shrimp and 20 percent of all seafood consumed in the U.S. comes from the Gulf, according to papers filed in multiple lawsuits.

Restaurateurs also are suing over lost income, claiming customers are avoiding seafood altogether over fears of contamination.

Fishing Fleet

Whole fleets of fishing industry workers have arrived at Gulf courthouses, including 11,700 individually named Vietnamese-American commercial fishermen who filed six lawsuits against BP and Transocean in federal court in Houston.

Thirty-three Mexican citizens who own or work on fishing boats or in seafood processing plants along the U.S. Gulf coast have sued BP and Transocean over lost income from the closure of Gulf waters.

Residents in Kentucky and Tennessee, who own Gulf beachfront properties, have sued over lost income from rental cancellations as well as the lost enjoyment of their own vacation homes.

“BP has grievously injured the entire country, not simply a city, parish, county or state,” Houston attorney Michael Holley, who represents multiple spill victims, said yesterday in an interview. “Hundreds of thousands — soon to be millions — of Americans are seeking redress anywhere it can be obtained, and the litigation will continue to spread as the oil and the harm continues to flow.”
BP shares have dropped 48 percent since the spill. They fell 3.8 percent to 342 pence in London trading yesterday, the lowest price since April 1997.
______________________

–With assistance from Leslie Snadowsky in New Orleans and Stanley Reed in Washington. Editors: Michael Hytha, Peter Blumberg.
To contact the reporters on this story: Laurel Brubaker Calkins in Houston at laurel@calkins.us.com; Margaret Cronin Fisk in Southfield, Michigan, at mcfisk@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: David E. Rovella at drovella@bloomberg.net.

Thanks to Richard Charter

http://thephoenixsun.com/archives/10266

special thanks to Osha Davidson

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/US/06/14/oil.disaster.foreign.assistance/

Washington (CNN) — The State Department said Monday that 17 foreign countries and four international bodies have offered equipment, expertise and other assistance to respond to the Gulf oil disaster.

Some of the offers accepted so far include two skimmers and 13,780 feet of boom from Mexico in early May, eight skimming systems from Norway in early May, three sets of surface-oil clearing systems from the Netherlands on May 23, and 9,843 feet of containment boom from Canada on June 4, according to a State Department statement.

Other countries to offer help include South Korea, Croatia, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Romania, Russia, Spain, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and Vietnam, according to the statement.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley issued a separate statement to clarify that the government had only accepted offers of foreign assistance without making any requests.

“We have not issued an appeal for assistance,” Crowley’s statement said.

The U.S. government also has accepted help from the International Maritime Organization in notifying its member states about the crisis, as well as assistance by the European Commission’s Monitoring and Information Centre in coordinating offers of help from EU countries, the State Department said.

“With few exceptions, these international offers of assistance are made on a reimbursable basis, which means that the assistance is provided only if paid for by the recipient,” the statement said.

In addition, oil giant BP has obtained equipment such as skimmers and booms from several nations including Algeria, Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Latvia, Norway, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan and the United Kingdom, the State Department said.

Thanks to Erika Biddle