http://www.nasdaq.com/article/officials-issue-notice-to-bp-transocean-over-deepwater-horizon-oil-sheen-20121010-01271

Oct 10, 2012

The Federal On-Scene Coordinator for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill issued a Notice of Federal Interest to BP PLC (BP) and Transocean Ltd. (RIG) this week due to an oil sheen in the spill area, a U.S. government statement said late Wednesday.

Coast Guard Capt. Duke Walker issued the notice Tuesday following sample results from an oil sheen near the area where the Deepwater Horizon drill rig exploded and sank more than two years ago, the statement from the government website restorethegulf.gov said.
It said the sheen, spotted on satellite images last month and reported by BP, doesn’t pose a risk to the shoreline.

The notice “effectively informs BP and Transocean that the Coast Guard matched the sheen samples to the Deepwater Horizon spill or sunken drilling debris and that either party or both may be held accountable for any cost associated with further assessments or operations related to this sheen,” the statement said.

Government statement:
http://www.restorethegulf.gov/release/2012/10/10/fosc-issues-notice-federal-interest-bp-and-transocean
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Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/10/10/cnns-erin-burnett-gets-it-wrong-on-drilling-and/190518

JILL FITZSIMMONS

CNN’s Erin Burnett claimed yesterday that drilling in the Arctic would lower U.S. gasoline prices, echoing a conservative narrative that has been debunked by energy experts across the ideological spectrum who say that expanding U.S. production will not affect the world oil market.

During a segment on Shell’s drilling expedition in the Arctic, Burnett suggested that “more drilling” in the U.S. is a solution to high gas prices in California and across the nation, saying: “One way to bring down costs, of course, would be more drilling and that is a highly political topic.”

Meanwhile, Piers Morgan has repeatedly suggested that President Obama’s energy policy is to blame for high gas prices.

But as their colleagues at CNN have explained, U.S. policies have little impact on the global price of oil. In April, CNN business correspondent Christine Romans said: “Republicans want to drill, drill, drill, drill, but just that won’t solve the problem … The only way to pay less for gas is to use less gas.”

Indeed, a recent analysis by the Associated Press found “[n]o statistical correlation between how much oil comes out of U.S. wells and the price at the pump.” Drilling in the Arctic won’t lower gas prices – it requires high prices. What NPR described as “Shell’s multibillion dollar gamble to make drilling in the Arctic profitable and environmentally safe” only makes economic sense if oil prices remain high.

Experts say that the long-term solution to U.S. vulnerability to high gas prices is not increasing oil production, but reducing our consumption by investing in fuel efficiency, public transit and alternative vehicles.

But drilling in the Arctic will only perpetuate our reliance on oil, and as Burnett went on to report, it could pose major environmental risks. Reports indicate that Shell may be unprepared to contain an oil spill in remote Arctic waters, which could be catastrophic for the fragile Arctic ecosystem. Even the CEO of Total, a French oil company, warned that the risk of an oil spill in the Arctic is too high to justify drilling there. And Arctic drilling will also release large amounts of methane and black carbon — greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. Meanwhile, Alaskan natives have expressed concerns that industrial development in the region could threaten local wildlife and their way of life.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

frac test down under….

http://www.inkcinct.com.au/web-pages/cartoons/past/2011/2011-511–coal-seam-gas-fracturing.gif

http://soundwaves.usgs.gov/2012/10/research3.html

Well, yeah, duh. This was the big risk all along, wasn’t it? The loss of biologically rich and diverse habitats? Hate to say I said so…….. DV

By Rachel Pawlitz
Sept. / Oct. 2012

Nearly 2 years after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the meticulous, long-term efforts of scientists finally yielded the official results: the brown, wilted, dying corals found at Mississippi Canyon lease block 294 were indeed damaged by a plume of oil from the spill. For many, it seemed a foregone conclusion. What else could brown gunk (flocculent matter, if you’re a scientist) covering damaged corals 7 miles from the Deepwater Horizon drill site be, if not oil from the spill? Yet, to this team of scientists, it was worth taking a close look at the evidence with two-dimensional gas chromatography, sediment cores, coral samples, and mosaic imagery. Why? Because so much was at stake.

To understand the damage in the deep, the scientists had to start by understanding what was down there before the spill. To support that mission, enter U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) research benthic ecologist Amanda Demopoulos (http://profile.usgs.gov/ademopoulos), who studies life on the seafloor to describe what types of organisms typically live together in deep-sea communities. Her work involves digging sediment cores from the ocean bottom and sorting through the many tiny life forms found there. (For example, see “Scientists Cruise Deep Into Coral Ecosystems,” Sound Waves, December 2009.)

In addition to deep-sea coral ecosystems, Demopoulos studies communities in parts of the Gulf where oil naturally seeps up from the seafloor and is in fact a wellspring of life, not a source of damage. Chemosynthetic ecosystems-the ones where food webs are based on chemicals rather than sunlight-tend to host different life forms, such as tubeworms.

Demopoulos was on the November 2010 research expedition that first discovered the damaged corals. Led by biology professor Charles Fisher of the Pennsylvania State University (http://bio.psu.edu/directory/crf2) and funded by the Bureau of Ocean and Energy Management (BOEM) and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the expedition’s goal was to build a scientific understanding of the various undersea ecosystems. It was part of a decades-long collaborative effort among federal and university scientists to explore deep-sea ecosystems in order to provide sound baseline information for management decisions about how to best balance natural-resource use with protection. Demopoulos recalled watching the first images from the damaged site come in from a remotely operated vehicle (ROV).

“When we were watching the ROV video in the lab, I looked up at the video screen, and it looked starkly different from anything we’d ever seen before,” Demopoulos said. “The corals were all dark grey and lumped over, and it was clear these animals were not healthy. We’d seen dead coral, but this was so different, we immediately knew it was worth investigating further. When we got closer, there didn’t seem to be any secondary colonization, as we’d seen in the past on dead coral.”

The fact that no new animals, such as barnacles or hydroids, had begun to attach and grow on the dead corals suggested that the coral deaths had been recent, noted Demopoulos. This process, known as secondary colonization, is commonly observed on dead corals but takes time to occur.

In December 2010, barely a month after the discovery of the damaged coral, Fisher led a followup expedition to further examine the damaged corals, supported by a special National Science Foundation RAPID grant. Fisher, along with assistant professor of chemistry Helen White of Haverford College (http://www.haverford.edu/faculty/hwhite), directed the coral-damage assessment in collaboration with scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Temple University, the USGS, and the BOEM. On the basis of her expertise with sediment samples, Demopoulos worked with White and Fisher to design the best approach for assessing the corals at the Mississippi Canyon lease block 294 for the presence of oil and the extent of damage.

“The challenge we faced in this study was piecing together what happened from multiple lines of evidence, because no one was sitting on the seafloor when the plume went by. The corals were the only witness,” said Demopoulos. “We had to consider the proximity to the Deepwater Horizon site and the fact that a deep-water plume had recently passed over the site, then closely examine the corals for tissue damage and signs of stress, such as the presence of mucus, and of course, the chemical signature of the oil. It was truly an interdisciplinary effort.”

Demopoulos pointed out that the cumulative knowledge about deep-sea communities from previous expeditions provided the baseline for scientifically assessing what they saw at the site. “This is but one site in the Gulf of Mexico,” she said, “but it has shown how important it was for us to have a frame of reference as to what a healthy deep-sea coral ecosystem looks like. We are still trying to understand the extent to which this is occurring elsewhere in the Gulf of Mexico.”

The results of the scientists’ efforts were published online in March 2012 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) at http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1118029109. Additional information about the study is posted at http://science.psu.edu/news-and-events/2012-news/Fisher3-2012.

Above: Normal coral with some dead skeletal material covered by typical secondary colonization (right), in comparison with wilting, dying coral covered with oil-plume debris (left). Also affected were brittlestars, seen climbing in the healthy coral. Image courtesy of Lophelia II 2010 expedition, NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research (OER) and BOEM. [larger version]

Above: Amanda Demopoulos sorts and identifies animals in a sieved sample. Image courtesy of Lophelia II 2009: Deepwater Coral Expedition: Reefs, Rigs and Wrecks. [larger version]

Above: Damaged coral with brittlestar climbing through it. Image courtesy of Lophelia II 2010 expedition, NOAA OER and BOEM. [larger version]

[Modified from USGS Science Pick at http://www.usgs.gov/blogs/features/usgs_science_pick/corals-damaged-by-deepwater-horizon/.]

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.ogj.com/articles/2012/10/independent-reviews-suggested-as-way-to-keep-offshore-safety-current.html?cmpid=EnlDailyOctober32012

I think it’s revealing that even the oil rep suggests sharing updated technologies for containment with current industry groups, suggesting that improved technology and practices may not be integrated into current production at present even as deeper drilling expands dramatically. DV

WASHINGTON, DC, Oct. 2
10/02/2012
By Nick Snow
OGJ Washington Editor

Regularly scheduled reviews of offshore oil and gas safety and environmental standards and practices could help assure that the complacency prevalent before the 2010 Macondo deepwater well blowout and subsequent oil spill doesn’t resurface, an environmental organization official suggested.

Elgie Holstein, senior director for strategic planning at the Environmental Defense Fund, said the National Academies of Science or some other independent group with the necessary expertise and stature possibly could conduct such reviews as each federal 5-year US Outer Continental Shelf program was being developed.

“It may take outside bodies-both regulators and independent scientists-to identify areas which need to be addressed as the industry moves into more challenging regions and depths,” Holstein said during an Oct. 2 discussion of offshore oil and gas safety at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

US Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement Director James A. Watson, who also participated, said Holstein’s idea intrigued him. “In an industry that’s constantly moving forward, I think you need another mechanism,” he said. “It’s constantly pressing technology and management systems into higher-risk areas. I think there’s a role for someone to point out that this is happening, and that a time-out might be necessary.”

Troublesome trend

The discussion’s moderator, Michael R. Bromwich, a consultant and nonresident CSIS advisor, oversaw the 2010-11 restructuring of federal offshore oil and gas regulatory enforcement following the Macondo incident and spill. He warned that the strong offshore oil and gas safety emphasis that followed Macondo is being replaced by a focus on speed in approving drilling and other permits. Ways to break down barriers to improvement need to be found and instituted instead, he said.

“The key point is sustained learning, along with generated information,” observed Charlie Williams, executive director of the Center for Offshore Safety, which the US oil and gas industry established after Macondo. “There’s a lot of research in disparate places, but we need to assure there aren’t gaps in safety technology.”

Major oil companies operating in the Gulf created the Marine Well Containment Co. in 2010 when it became obvious offshore spill control and containment technology had not kept pace as exploration and production moved into deeper water, Williams continued. MWCC might be one place to start sharing information, he said.

Norway’s approach

Svein Erik Eide, vice-president of drilling and well technology at Statoil ASA, said Norway uses a collaboration of producers, regulators, and labor unions to handle offshore safety and environment issues.

“There’s a human factor behind all accidents,” Eide said, adding, “We can address it by sharing information and analyzing data at all times.”

When the Norwegians evaluated their own system after Macondo, they found rig workers were well trained as petroleum engineers but didn’t understand planning and execution of essential tasks, Eide said. “Half of our production comes from deep water in the North Sea. Not having capping and containment systems was a real surprise in 2010.”

Eide said nine companies stepped forward and helped develop offshore spill control and containment systems for the four regions of the world in which Statoil operates.

Holstein said the essential question was whether the oil and gas industry and its regulators can maintain rigorous safety and environmental standards amid budget cuts and political pressures. “Indeed, in the presidential race, there’s much discussion of whether we’re moving fast enough [to develop domestic oil and gas resources], and I expect it to be part of tomorrow night’s debate,” he said.

Contact Nick Snow at nicks@pennwell.com.

Special thanks to Richard Charter