Examiner
June 10, 2010

 http://www.examiner.com/x-19632-Salt-Lake-City-Headlines-Examiner~y2010m6d10-Kevin-Costner-sells-32-oil-spill-machines-to-BP-to-recycle-6-million-gallons-of-water-a-day-photos

Wednesday, Kevin Costner presented his oil spill solution to Congress and demonstrated his machine that separates oil from water with a 99.9% success rate. Actor, Kevin Costner said that he was inspired by the Exxon-Valdez oil spill in 1989 to come up with an idea that would safely separate oil from water, and over the years he has spent $20 million on the machine and the patent for it.

“There’s been some question as to why I’m here,” Costner told the House Energy and Environment subcommittee on Wednesday. “I want to assure everyone here it’s not because I heard a voice in a cornfield,” Costner said joking about the Field of Dreams movie he made several years ago.

Costner said that over the years he has had a difficult time getting any interest in buying the machines. He said he performed for the Coast Guard, private companies, and the government, but no was interested.

“My enthusiasm for the machine was met with apathy,” said Costner.

But in May, BP asked for 6 of Costner’s machines to be flown to the Gulf to be tested. And now BP has ordered 32 more of the machines because they have an almost 100% success rate in separating oil from ocean water. The machines, marketed by Ocean Therapy Solutions suck up the oily water and recycle the water. 32 machines will process about 6 million gallons of water each day.

Costner said “that as long as the oil industry profits from the sea, they have an obligation to protect it.” He went on to say that the cleaning devices “should be on every ship transporting oil, they should be on every derrick, they should be in every harbor.”

“There’s 33 platforms that are shut down,” said Costner. “We can put Americans back to work and bring into the 21st century the technology of oil spill recovery.”
Last Friday, Obama cancelled his business trip to Asia and headed back down to the Gulf Coast. Thursday night, Obama told Larry King that he was “furious with the entire situation.”

Recently, a new video of the gushing oil had many of the investigative teams calling BP untrustworthy because more oil was leaking from the well then they originally claimed. For more on that story, click here.

The state of Utah has 28 oil drilling companies throughout the state. Two years ago President Bush allowed oil drilling to be done near two national parks, much to the dismay of many Utah residents. Oil drilling isn’t considered safe in the US, and without the safety requirements for oil drilling that other countries require, residents near the oil drilling are typically distraught.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

Great!  I was worried about that one; but read on for the next one…..DV

(06/10/2010)
Robin Bravender, E&E reporter

The Senate today blocked a bid from Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) to veto U.S. EPA’s climate regulations.

The chamber rejected, 47-53, a procedural motion that would have allowed a vote on the disapproval resolution, effectively killing the measure to overturn EPA’s scientific finding that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare.

All 41 Republicans and six Democrats — Sens. Evan Bayh of Indiana, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia — voted in favor of the resolution.

Murkowski and her supporters had acknowledged that the measure had little chance of becoming law because it faced a tough battle passing the Democrat-led House and the White House this week pledged a veto.
The Senate’s rejection of the measure is expected to energize proponents of a climate bill, who anticipate new momentum for their efforts as senators seek an alternative to EPA rules.

“That’s helpful to us,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters after the vote. “Its obvious people want some rules and regulations.”

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), who is co-sponsoring a cap-and-trade climate and energy bill with Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), said yesterday that he was hopeful Murkowski would fail, “And I think that will give us a little momentum.”

David Hamilton, director of the Sierra Club’s global warming program, said a Murkowski failure marks “a good directional signal” for a Senate climate bill.

Murkowski had argued that the resolution had nothing to do with the science, but was necessary to block overwhelming economic and regulatory impacts from federal climate rules. She said the threat of EPA regulations should not be used as a tool to prod the Senate to rush to complete a climate bill.

“Congress would not pass, should not pass bad legislation in order to stave off bad regulations,” Murkowski said.

Rockefeller bill

Meanwhile, the Senate appears poised to soon vote on another, more limited, effort to handcuff EPA climate rules.

During the run-up to today’s vote on Murkowski’s measure, Democratic leaders promised a vote on a narrower bill from West Virginia’s Rockefeller to impose a time-out for two years on EPA rules aimed at industrial emitters, a Senate aide said (Greenwire, June 10).

Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), a co-sponsor of Rockefeller’s bill, said today that there would be a vote, but that there was no firm date.

Rockefeller spokeswoman Jamie Smith said that “Rockefeller is not part of any deal. He is fighting to be sure the Congress — not the unelected EPA — decide major economic and energy policy.” Rockefeller voted in favor of the Murkowski resolution today.

That measure could spark another brawl between those who support EPA rules in the absence of legislation and others who want to take the option off the table completely.

Reporters Darren Samuelsohn and Katherine Ling contributed.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.ft.com/home/uk

ByCarola Hoyos in London, ft.com
Published: June 8 2010 15:09 | Last updated: June 8 2010 15:09
Norway will not allow any deepwater oil and gas drilling in new areas until the investigation into the explosion and spill in the US Gulf of Mexico is complete, Terje Riis-Johansen, the Nordic country’s energy minister, has said.
“We are now working on the 21st licensing round. It will be conducted in light of what we have experienced in the Gulf of Mexico,” Mr Riis-Johansen said in a statement.
 “It is not appropriate for me to allow drilling in any new licences in deepwater areas until we have good knowledge of what has happened with the Deepwater Horizon [the Gulf rig that exploded on April 20] and what this means for our regulations,” he added.
It is the first such decision outside the US, which put in place a seven-month moratorium on deepwater drilling in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, which killed 11 people and has caused the biggest ever oil spill in US coastal waters.
Norway’s oil industry is eager for access to the estimated 1.3bn barrels of oil beneath the Lofoten islands of northern Norway to offset declining output from mature North Sea fields. Norwegian oil production has fallen by 50 per cent from its peak a decade ago.
But the government of Jens Stoltenberg, prime minister, is deeply divided over whether to open Lofoten, with pro-oil elements of his Labour party pitted against environmental opposition from others in the centre-left coalition. The Gulf of Mexico spill has bolstered the argument of those who want to protect Lofoten and its important cod spawning grounds from drilling.
The UK’s department of energy on Tuesday announced it would increase inspections and consider tightening other regulation in light of the US spill.
The moratorium in the US will cut production in the country’s most important region for new oil by 100,000-300,000 barrels a day, the International Energy Agency said on Tuesday.
In a report to be published this week, the rich countries’ energy watchdog will reveal that were the moratorium to last one year, oil output in 2015 would be cut by 100,000 barrels a day. If the moratorium continued for two years, that loss would rise to 300,000 barrels a day, slashing 2015 production from the Gulf of Mexico by about 20-25 per cent.
Additional reporting by Andrew Ward in Stockholm

Special thanks to Richard Charter

From: “Legal Planet: Environmental Law and Policy”
Date: June 8, 2010 10:19:52 AM PDT

Dan Farber | June 8, 2010 at 9:18 am URL: http://wp.me/prxko-1Nh

That Washington Post has a detailed story that details BP’s culture of carelessness:

Taken together, these documents portray a company that systemically ignored its own safety policies across its North American operations — from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico to California and Texas. Executives were not held accountable for the failures, and some were promoted despite them.

What’s most disturbing in the story is BP’s history of filing false reports and suppressing worker concerns about safety and adverse safety information.

It’s worth pointing out that for once the lawyers were the good guys in the story.   BP’s Houston law firm, Vinson & Elkins, warned BP that warned that pipeline corrosion endangered operations” in Alaska:

[The V&E report] also offered a harsh assessment of BP’s management of employee concerns. According to the report, workers accused the company of allowing “pencil whipping,” or falsifying inspection data. The report quoted an employee who said employees felt forced to skip key diagnostics, including pressure testing, pipeline cleaning and corrosion checks.

The report said that Richard Woollam, the manager in charge of corrosion safety in Alaska at the time, had “an aggressive management style” and subverted inspectors’ tendency to report problems. “Pressure on contractor management to hit performance metrics (e.g. fewer OSHA recordables) creates an environment where fear of retaliation and intimidation did occur,” it said. Woollam was soon transferred.

Unfortunately, BP did not heed the report, resulting in a disastrous accident in Alaska two years later.  The company has apparently made some efforts to clean up its act in the last few years, but obviously this was too little and too late.

I can’t help wondering whether criminal charges against BP should have been filed years ago.  That might have gotten the attention of management and the shareholders in time to fix the corporate culture before Deepwater Horizon started drilling.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.maritime-executive.com/article/oped-not-enough-lifeboats/

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

Not Enough Lifeboats by Tony Munoz, Editor-in-Chief, MarEx Newsletter and the Maritime Executive Magazine

Forty-nine days of “top kill,” “junk Shot,” controlled burns, dispersants and hi-tech domes and the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is still a calamity of immeasurable proportions, which is still continuing to devastate the environment and economies of the Gulf States. For the White House the spill has been yet another test of competence and leadership, and the glaring truth is there are not enough lifeboats for everyone.

There was so much excitement in the offshore industry after the 27-year congressional moratorium on offshore drilling ended on September 29, 2008. While the pro-oil Bush administration did nothing after the end of the moratorium, it would take the anti-drilling Obama to lift the ban on March 31, 2010. The offshore industry embraced the potential renaissance. But, the OCS stimulus potential simply exploded and melted into the bottom of the ocean on April 20th.

This “Energy Pearl Harbor” has shaken every American and many throughout the world. In the last few days, LSU’s Pelican subsea vessel witnessed at least a 400-foot underwater plume of thick oil sitting on the ocean floor that goes on forever and NOAA has sent its research vessel, THOMAS JEFFERSON, to hopefully provide us the truth about the impact of the spill undersea. But, what is clear to everyone is that neither BP nor the oil industry had anything even closely resembling an emergency response plan for drilling at 5,000 feet. For years the oil industry has touted the deepwater technologies, which had evidently outstripped government regulators’ ability to understand and deal with the realities of a possible catastrophic oil spill event.

Then, of course, there are rumors about the purported cowboy tensions between Transocean workers and BP superintendents about the pace of drilling, which could have led to many mistakes. These tensions were so evident to all the workers that Transocean Tool Pusher, Jason Anderson, one of the eleven men that died in the explosion, spent his last trip home getting his affairs in order. He told his wife Shelly he was so concerned about the safety practices of BP that he drew up a Will and began offering advice to his wife about how to raise their kids. While Transocean filed a petition to limit its liability to $27 million, BP, who spent a record $15 million last year for Lobbyists in Washington, will feel the full impact of the event, because nobody wants to see BP limit its liability.

As the oil spreads 100 miles across the Gulf coastline devastating businesses and wildlife, Americans are appalled by the unneeded suffering. However, this brings me to another point; Louisiana’s governor, Bobby Jindal, who last year said there should be as little federal government interference as possible because the American people can handle anything is now begging for federal interference for money, supplies, and assistance to create barriers islands to protect the state’s wetland. And, what about all the folks that screamed and shouted about the socialistic president that federalized the financial institutions, car companies and health care, these are now the same people screaming for him to do something in the Gulf of Mexico crisis. It’s a catch 22 Mr. Obama, damned if you do and damned if you don’t, it’s just the same American political climate that has grinded congress to a halt of ever getting anything done up there.

For all the devastation being inflicted on wildlife and businesses in the Gulf, for all the uncalculated billions (?) that BP and its associates may be on the hook for, for all the offshore operators and shipbuilders whose futures may hang in the balance, for the workers cleaning and skimming crude in the ocean and on the beaches whose future health may become another casualty, and for Obama who may or may not be competent enough to fix the problem because he entered the fray way too late, there are simply not be enough lifeboats.

But, like Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, who is the designated incident command leader, said, “Replace BP with what?

The Gulf Coast spill is far from over, and there is so much more pain and suffering yet to come. While the Russians may be snickering in their vodka at us, they have suggested putting a nuke 16,000 feet into the well to cauterize the hole. Something, they did in the 60s and 70’s five times with an 80 percent success rate.

Well, we need to do something, because we just had lunch at the OceanEnergy Conference in Fort Lauderdale, where Matthew Simmons, the renowned energy investment guru and author of “Twilight in the Desert”, spoke and said, if we let it bleed out it may take 25 years because there is more oil in the hole than even BP expected. He also said, what this country needs is a good education on alternative wind energy, and as far as the offshore industry is concerned there are 3,442 active rigs in the Gulf and many are over 30 years old. The federal government will require inspections and upgrades, which will be another boom for the energy support industry.

Déjà Vu All Over Again

While this is day 49 for the Deepwater Horizon debacle, its day 34 in Akwa Ibom along the Niger Delta, where another offshore spill is still adding millions of more gallons of crude to the ocean environment. In an already devastate estuary, an oil rig operated by a subsidiary of ExxonMobile is polluting the seas and tidal marshes in a country that admits there have been at least 2,000 major oil spills. Nigeria has tough sounding “paper tiger’ environmental laws, but their enforcement is by a government totally corrupted by big-oil. And, let’s not forget about the “ABAN PEARL” natural gas exploration rig that sank 23 days after the Gulf of Mexico event. On May 13th, the rig sank for no apparent reason, but Chavez said on his Tweeter account that all the gas connections had been disconnected and all 95 workers were taken off safely.

Note: The MarEx has covered this event since the beginning and we will continue to do so and let our readers have access via OPEDs. So, if you want your comments heard, please send your messages to tonymunoz@maritime-executive.com

Thanks to Richard Charter