http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenumbers/2010/06/support-for-oil-drilling-.html

A Run at the Latest Data from ABC’s Poobah of Polling, Gary Langer

June 09, 2010 1:00 PM
Public support for oil drilling has declined in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon spill, with little backing specifically for the increased offshore drilling President Obama proposed barely a month before the spill began. The broadest interest, instead, is in renewable energy sources.

Fifty-two percent of Americans in this ABC News/Washington Post poll continue to support federal action to increase oil drilling in general as a way to address the country’s energy needs. But that’s down from 64 percent last summer and 67 percent in 2001.

In another question, just 25 percent specifically favor increased drilling offshore, as Obama had proposed but subsequently put on hold pending a safety review. A plurality (41 percent) would hold offshore drilling steady, rather than decrease it (31 percent).

There’s a range of factors behind these views. The public divides about evenly on whether the spill in the Gulf of Mexico is an isolated incident or a sign of broader problems with offshore drilling. More blame is placed on inadequate enforcement than on too-weak regulations, but majorities see both as involved (63 and 55 percent, respectively). And the greatest blame, as reported Monday, is on the oil company BP and its drilling partners, for taking unnecessary risks.

Such views matter. Among people who see the Deepwater Horizon spill as an isolated incident, 69 percent support more oil drilling overall. That plummets to 36 percent among those who see the spill as a sign of broader problems. Support for drilling also is nearly 20 points higher among the relatively few who don’t see the current spill as a major environmental disaster.

The trend isn’t a surprise  – as reported previously, concern about offshore drilling spiked after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in March 1989.

The Obama administration on Tuesday moved to resume shallow-water offshore drilling, with toughened safety rules, a subject on which Interior Secretary Ken Salazar testifies before Congress today. New deep-water drilling remains on hold pending further review.

ALTERNATIVES/GROUPS – Americans divide on another energy option, increased federal support for the construction of nuclear power plants, with 49 percent in favor, 46 percent opposed. The far more popular option, as in past years, is development of solar and wind power, with 87 percent support – including 80 percent who feel strongly about it.
There are differences among groups. Increased oil drilling is more popular among men than women, 58 percent vs. 46 percent, and, as in the past, there’s a much bigger gap on nuclear power – 63 percent support from men, just 37 percent among women.
Drilling gets much less support among young adults than their elders, and there are partisan and ideological gaps as well, with conservatives and Republicans more supportive, liberals and Democrats less so. Specifically on offshore drilling, support peaks, at 44 percent, among conservative Republicans, compared with a low of just 12 percent among liberals.

Click here for questions and overall results.
June 9, 2010 | Permalink | User Comments (3)
Gary Langer is director of polling at ABC News, where he’s covered the beat of public opinion for nearly 20 years – conducting and analyzing ABC News polls, evaluating data from other sources and setting the news division’s standards for poll reporting. Langer has won two Emmy awards for ABC’s reporting of public opinion polls in Iraq, and The Numbers blog was honored last year as winner of the 2008 Iowa Gallup Award for Excellent Journalism Using Polls.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/06/08/uk.rig.inspections/?hpt=Sbin

By the CNN Wire Staff
June 8, 2010 7:21 a.m. EDT
London, England (CNN) — Britain will step up its inspection of North Sea drilling rigs following the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the government announced Tuesday.

The government will also increase monitoring of offshore drilling compliance and has asked a new oil industry group to report on Britain’s ability to prevent and respond to oil spills, Energy Secretary Chris Huhne said.

“The events unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico are devastating and will be enduring,” Huhne said in a statement. “What we are seeing will transform the regulation of deep water drilling worldwide. It’s my responsibility to make sure that the oil and gas industry maintains the highest practices here in U.K. waters.”
Current measures are up to standards but must be strengthened in light of the Gulf of Mexico spill, Huhne said.

“It’s clear that our safety and environmental regulatory regime is fit for purpose,” he said. “It is already among the most robust in the world and the industry’s record in the North Sea is strong. For example, we already separate regulation of operations and safety.

“But the Deepwater Horizon gives us pause for thought and, given the beginning of exploration in deeper waters West of Shetland, there is every reason to increase our vigilance.”

Tougher steps are already being taken, Huhne said.

They include doubling the number of drilling rig inspections by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), which is responsible for licensing, exploration, and regulation of oil and gas developments on the U.K. Continental Shelf, he said.

The DECC is also reviewing the indemnity and insurance requirements for operators on the U.K. Continental Shelf.

Huhne said Britain’s stringent safety regulations came into force after the Piper Alpha disaster in July 1988, when a gas leak led to a major fire that engulfed the platform in the North Sea. Of the 229 people aboard the rig, 167 died.
Operators of oil rigs must now analyze the potential dangers on an installation, the consequences of any incident, and their methods to control the risks.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.truth-out.org/plan-burn-excess-oil-from-bp-well-raises-health-questions60389
Sunday 13 June 2010
by: Renee Schoof and Marisa Taylor  |  McClatchy Newspapers

Gas is burned at the site of the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. (Photo: Petty Officer 3rd Class Patrick Kelley / DVIDSHUB)

Washington – Plans to burn hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil from BP’s blown-out well are raising new questions about the health and safety of the thousands of workers on rigs and vessels near the spill site.

BP and the federal government are in new territory once again in dealing with the nation’s worst environmental disaster: There’s never been such a huge flaring of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, or possibly anywhere.

The incineration of such huge amounts of oil combined with the black clouds of smoke already wafting over the Gulf waters from controlled burns of surface oil create pollution hazards for the estimated 2,000 people working in the area.

Dozens of rigs and ships are clustered in the area around the spill site.

The Discoverer Enterprise, the main recovery ship, is recovering as much as 15,000 barrels of oil a day through a pipe from the wellhead. A second vessel, the Q4000, is being prepared to pull up more oil and burn it. Experts say it could be burning 10,000 barrels, or 420,000 gallons, a day.

Dr. Phil Harber, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the burning oil could expose workers to toxins that might cause severe respiratory irritation, asthma attacks and inflamed airways depending on how the burns are handled. Burning oil is a fairly common method of relieving pressure in refinery operations, he said.

“But the magnitude is a concern,” said Harber, who’s also the chief of UCLA’s division of occupational and environmental medicine.

The other worry, he said, is if the wind carries off the thick clouds, “there are hundreds of ships in the area, and those workers could have significant exposures and perhaps less protection because the exposures would be unanticipated,” he said.

Harmful byproducts of burning the light crude flowing into the Gulf include fine particles; toxic gases such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide; polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, which result from the incomplete burning of carbon-containing materials such as oil; and volatile organic compounds such as benzene toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene.

EPA’s stationary monitors and mobile laboratories are checking for pollutants from the spill, but have found that air quality levels for ozone and particulates that are normal on the coast for this time of year. The agency has reported that it’s also found low levels of chemicals from the oil that produce odors and can cause short-term effects such as headaches or nausea.

Diane Bailey, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, questioned why the Coast Guard decided to allow the oil to be burned.

“It seems like a no-brainer that you wouldn’t want to do this,” she said. “Maybe there’s just such a logistical challenge in getting it onshore and getting it processed that they decided this is the cheapest, easiest thing to do. But the possible acute health problems should be of a greater concern.”

The Q4000 is expected to begin operations at the end of next week, Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government’s coordinator on the spill, said Friday on MSNBC. The Q4000 has a crew of 122.

In addition, there are two rigs digging relief wells that eventually will attempt to shut off the gushing oil. More than a dozen remotely operated vehicles are at work at the spill, a mile below the surface, and each requires its own platform where its controllers work.

Allen said at a briefing on Friday that typically there are 25 to 30 vessels working within two square miles around the wellhead.

Allen said that once BP makes improvements and increases its capacity to capture the oil, it no longer would burn oil from the Q4000. However, those improvements aren’t expected until July.
BP then will install a floating pipe to extract the oil and bring in a larger production facility.
The new burning comes as BP’s plan to protect workers fighting the massive oil spill has come under criticism for exposing them to higher levels of toxic chemicals than generally accepted practices permit.

Moreover, BP isn’t required to give workers respirators, to evacuate them from danger zones, or to take other precautions until conditions are more dangerous.

Critics are questioning the quality of the company’s plan as dozens of oil spill workers are becoming sick.

BP and government health and safety officials are monitoring air pollutants offshore and haven’t found toxins that exceed federal standards. However, outside experts say the current levels still could pose health risks, and health and safety officials acknowledge that they are struggling with whether to require certain workers to wear respirators.

Residents in the coastal communities – especially babies and people with asthma or serious heart problems – also could be vulnerable to any possible toxins from the burn-off.

The EPA also monitors air quality from the air when burns are set off, said spokeswoman Adora Andy. A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration P-3 “Hurricane Hunter” aircraft, configured as a chemistry lab, also measured pollutants from 200 feet to 1,000 feet above the surface.

“We’re taking every step we can to ensure the health and safety of Gulf Coast residents and oil spill responders,” EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson said in a statement Tuesday when NOAA announced the P-3 air check flights.

Richard Haut, a senior research scientist at the Houston Advanced Research Center, a nonprofit group that studies economic and environmental issues, said the flare that will burn the oil will be more controlled and burn more cleanly the fires set on the surface to get rid of oil. The surface fires are the main concern in terms of the health of workers in the area, he said.

Allen Friday said that about 90,000 barrels of oil have been burned so far on the surface in the 53 days since the Deepwater Horizon exploded.

Stephen Harris of Schlumberger Limited, the company that makes the equipment that will burn the oil, called the EverGreen, said that excess oil and gas have been burned off around the world for the past 40 years.

Kent Wells, a BP vice president, said the burner hasn’t been used before in the Gulf of Mexico. Oil and gas will be burned separately. Wells said air would be injected into the oil so it would burn more cleanly.
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(Mark Seibel contributed to this article.)   Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/eric-reguly/weve-seen-the-spewing-oil-wheres-the-public-outcry/article1598369/

It’s the worst oil spill in American history, but the protests against BP and deepwater drilling have been surprisingly tame

Eric Reguly
Published on Wednesday, Jun. 09, 2010 6:31PM EDT
Last updated on Wednesday, Jun. 09, 2010 7:43PM EDT
Where is the rage? Yes, U.S. President Barack Obama would have BP (BP-NYSE) boss Tony Hayward dismissed and the pictures of oil-soaked pelicans are heart breaking to anyone who can be bothered to look at them. Yes, the discovery of vast submarine plumes of oil have agitated scientists, if not the oblivious sunbathers.

Yet almost two months after BP’s Macondo well erupted, the oil continues to gush into the Gulf of Mexico and there seems to be little sense of genuine crisis. In spite of its wildly optimistic statements about the ability to stop the leak that has created the worst oil spill in American history, BP continues to make fortunes. Its dividend remains intact, as does the employment of its CEO, Mr. Hayward. Workers, from fishermen to hotel owners, who depend on clean gulf waters are, of course, upset. But they seem happy to take the few bucks thrown at them by BP’s front men while dreaming of richer payoffs once the lawsuits are settled.

The Tea Party Republicans, of the drill-baby-drill party, are blocking efforts to raise the liability limits for oil spills. The “Boycott BP” Facebook page has 475,000 supporters. It sounds like a lot until you consider that the U.S. population is 300 million and that Facebook claims more than 400 million “active” users. BP gas station owners say they notice little drop off in sales.

Compare this to two far less severe environmental events, where widespread public concern, mixed with a healthy dose of rage, made corporate giants buckle and triggered sweeping changes.
The first was the 1969 oil spill off the California coast, near Santa Barbara. A drilling rig operated by Union Oil of California (later Unocal, now part of Chevron) botched a well. About 100,000 barrels of oil escaped over 10 days, creating a slick that blackened beaches in the Santa Barbara Channel. The images, broadcast on a relatively new invention – colour TV – greatly upset Americans, as did the pictures in the same year of Ohio’s effluent- and chemical-laden Cuyahoga River in flames. They demanded environmental protection legislation and President Richard Nixon responded. In came the National Environmental Policy Act, followed by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Clean Air Act.

A recent New Yorker article by Elizabeth Kolbert said “BP’s Deepwater Horizon spill makes the Santa Barbara spill look like a puddle.” The BP leak, which started April 20, dumps as much oil every few days as the Union Oil well did for the entire time it was out of control. But beyond the deepwater drilling moratorium and the inevitable tighter drilling regulations, there is little sense that U.S. energy policy faces wholesale change. Offshore oil will continue to be America’s greatest energy growth story, for the simple reason oil reserves elsewhere are dwindling rapidly and cars are not about to disappear from American roads.

The second environmental event was Royal Dutch Shell’s attempt to sink the Brent Spar offshore rig deep in the Atlantic Ocean in 1995. The rig, essentially a floating oil tank, was no longer needed. Shell realized it would be cheaper to pull the cork on the 14,500-tonne monster than tow it ashore and break it apart with torches.

Greenpeace got wind of the plan, learned that the Brent Spar contained 100 tonnes of oil sludge that wouldn’t be removed before it was to be sunk and went into full economic terrorism mode. It and other environmental groups urged a boycott of Shell products and gasoline stations. Their effort became an international cause célèbre when Shell used water cannons to prevent a Greenpeace helicopter from landing protesters on the rig.

Shell gas stations everywhere lost business. In Germany, sales fell an estimated 20 to 30 per cent, though a former Shell executive told The Globe and Mail the true figure was closer to 50 per cent. Shell went into a panic and agreed to dispose of the Brent Spar on land. The water cannon pictures were bad enough; the lost income was even worse.

Shell was so stung by the bad publicity that it launched an ambitious green energy program to try to clean up its oily image. It worked for a while. Then, three years ago, Shell sold most of its solar power business and went back to its roots. BP, which once stood for “beyond petroleum,” is also cutting back on clean-energy spending.

Given the damage caused by the blowout of the BP well, whose relief wells will not be finished before August, it’s remarkable that the anti-BP and anti-deepwater drilling protests have not been widespread, energetic and angry. Forty-one years ago, a relatively minor spill ushered in the great American environmental movement. Fifteen years ago, a boycott forced one of the world’s mightiest oil companies into a humiliating U-turn. And this year?
 Don’t count on much happening. The spill, it appears, is the price Americans are willing to pay for their oil addiction.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

By: Linda Young, Director 

Please call your Florida State Representative and Senator and tell them to urge the Governor and the FL DEP to protect our coasts NOW!!!

We need larger booms that are properly set, skimmers and vacuums and absorbent pads and booms NOW. The oil is here and they have dallied long enough. No more lame excuses!!!!

For more info, www.cleanwaternetwork-fl.org