http://www.japantoday.com/category/world/view/u-s-agency-stops-seismic-tests-in-gulf-of-mexico-worries-about-dolphins

WORLD APR. 03, 2012 – 06:07AM JST ( 0 )

NEW ORLEANS –
With sick and dead dolphins turning up along Louisiana’s coast, federal regulators are curbing an oil and natural gas exploration company from using seismic equipment that sends out underwater pulses known to disturb marine mammals.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has told Global Geophysical Services Inc to not conduct deep-penetration seismic surveys until May, when the bottlenose dolphin calving season ends. The agency says the surveys are done with air-guns that the emit sounds that could disrupt mother and calf bonding and mask “important acoustic cues.”

The company said it laid off about 30 workers because of the restriction, which it called unnecessary.

But environmental groups suing BOEM over the use of underwater seismic equipment say restrictions should be extended to surveyors across the Gulf of Mexico.

The new limit on exploration highlights the friction over oil drilling in the Gulf since the April 20, 2010 blowout of a BP PLC well that resulted in the death of 11 workers and the nation’s largest offshore oil spill in the nation’s history.

After the 2010 spill, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Center for Biological Diversity sued to get curbs placed on underwater seismic surveys. The environmental groups argued they harm marine mammals and that the federal government violated animal protection laws after it declared in 2004 that the surveys were safe.

The government is in settlement talks with those environmental groups, according to court documents.

“Imagine dynamite going off in your neighborhood for days, months on end,” said Michael Jasny, a senior policy analyst at the NRDC. “That’s the situation these animals are facing.”

Jasny said the restriction placed on Global Geophysical was a good sign, but far from enough.

In its ruling, the federal agency said it was concerned that seismic surveys could affect marine mammals, and even cause them to lose their hearing.

Amy Scholik, a fisheries biologist with NOAA, said it was unknown what kind of effects air-guns have on bottlenose dolphins, but she said there was concern about possible effects on dolphin calves because they are vulnerable to stresses. She added that whales in Alaska have been shown to change migration routes because of seismic surveys.

George Ioup, a physics professor at the University of New Orleans studying the effects of air-guns on marine mammals, said the verdict was out on the effects of air-guns on mammals. He said BOEM seemed to be ruling “on the side of caution.”

“Proving there is an effect, I don’t know if that has been done,” he said. “I don’t think the answer is overwhelmingly simple.”

The air-guns are towed at low speeds behind a survey ship and emit high-intensity, low-frequency sound waves to find geological layers. Seismic surveying is essential to drillers because they tell them where to drill and not drill.

The government also relies on the seismic data to know where it’s safe to drill and to determine how much it should charge for leasing offshore blocks to oil and gas companies.

Marc Lawrence, Global Geophysical’s vice president in the Gulf region, said the seismic surveys do not pose a danger to marine mammals.

“We see no hazard to them whatsoever,” Lawrence said. As proof, he said dolphins routinely ride along with ships when they are conducting surveys.

He said the restriction covers an area that ranges out to about 20 miles (32 kilometers) off the Louisiana coast. He called BOEM’s restriction unprecedented. His company is searching for overlooked reservoirs in areas along the central Louisiana coast: Grand Isle, Timbalier island, the West Delta and south Pelto.

This is the same area where government scientists say they have found sick and dead dolphins.

From February 2010, NOAA has reported 180 dolphin strandings in the three parishes that surround Barataria Bay-Jefferson, Plaquemines and Lafourche-or about 18% of the 1,000 estimated dolphins in the bay.

Last month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said it had found 32 dolphins in the bay underweight, anemic and showing signs of liver and lung disease. Nearly half had low levels of stress hormones that help with stress response, metabolism and immune function.

Lori Schwacke, a NOAA scientist, said the dolphins’ hormone problems could not definitely be tied to the oil spill but were “consistent with oil exposure.”

Over the same period of time, NOAA says 714 dolphins and whales have been found stranded from the Florida Panhandle to the Texas state line, with 95% of those mammals found dead. Normally, the region sees 74 reported dolphin deaths a year.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.chron.com/business/article/Bromwich-Offshore-drilling-regulators-need-to-3448986.php

By Jennifer A. Dlouhy
Updated 06:57 a.m., Sunday, April 1, 2012

Michael Bromwich testifies in 2010 about overhauling the federal agencies that oversee offshore drilling. Now he urges more aggressive enforcement action. Photo: Jay Westcott / Bloomberg News

WASHINGTON – The former prosecutor who overhauled the federal agencies that oversee offshore drilling in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill wants to see regulators do more to publicly advance new safety rules and enforce the ones already on the books.

“There has been a decline in the amount of public activity,” said Michael Bromwich, who left his post as interim head of the Interior Department’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement late last year. “I haven’t seen a lot of evidence of activity.”

As the two-year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon disaster approaches on April 20, a long-planned major drilling safety rule shows no signs of being proposed soon. There also haven’t been big public crackdowns on offshore drilling violations recently, following the safety bureau’s high-profile move last year to pursue penalties against BP and other companies associated with the Gulf spill.

In 2011, the federal government issued 2,690 “incidents of noncompliance” to companies that work offshore, the first step in penalizing the firms for violating rules governing the outer continental shelf. That included the high-profile notices issued for alleged violations tied to the Gulf spill to BP as well as Halliburton and Transocean – which was then an unprecedented move against offshore contractors.

So far this year, 390 have been issued, but none have drawn the public attention of last year’s BP spill infractions.

“If you’re going to be a credible regulator, you’ve got to be aggressive in your enforcement,” Bromwich said in an interview. “We all need to see evidence of aggressive enforcement.”

Bromwich’s comments come nearly four months after he stepped down as the safety bureau director and as he launches the Bromwich Group, a Washington-based consultancy aimed at advising companies on revamping their operations and combating systemic problems in law enforcement agencies.

‘Fix-it guy’

Known as a “fix-it guy” with a history of cleaning up troubled organizations – including two years focused on the Houston Police Department crime lab amid allegations of bad management – Brom- wich also is looking to help oil and gas companies work with foreign regulators and help other countries set up programs to regulate offshore drilling.
Although Bromwich expects to focus on foreign oil and gas issues and has pledged not to actively lobby the federal bureaus that oversee offshore drilling, he said he will also work for energy companies looking for guidance on complying with new U.S. safety and environmental rules.

Rule change in works

At the Interior Department, Bromwich drew criticism for pushing major changes in offshore drilling rules too quickly for companies to keep up. One promised change – a broad new offshore drilling safety rule – has yet to materialize.

Regulators have spent more than a year working on that measure, which would set new standards for the design of subsea wells and blowout preventers used as emergency safeguards against unchecked oil and gas.

The safety bureau was close to proposing those mandates late last year. Bromwich said he hopes they materialize soon.

“It is important to make it clear that this is a continuing process and the rules have to reflect technological developments that are going on in the industry,” he said. “You can’t sit back and do nothing.”

“There has to be a continuous and very public involvement in pushing the regulatory frontier forward. Regulations have to change, they have to evolve and there has to be continuous improvement.”

Under Bromwich’s 14-month tenure at the Interior Department, regulators were planning to propose a single safety rule, with the contents guided by several technical reports on the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

“My notion all along was that you wanted to wrap as much as you could into the one proposal,” he said.

But his successor, retired Coast Guard Rear Adm. James Watson, plans a different approach. The safety bureau is now preparing “a small number of focused rules that can more quickly address the most pressing safety issues,” said bureau spokesman Nicholas Pardi. The bureau “expects to be able to issue proposals this year for new rules to improve blowout preventer and production system safety, while we continue to fully evaluate the recommendations from the many Deepwater Horizon investigations and assess the need for additional rule-makings.”

One major change after the 2010 spill was a requirement that companies be able to contain and capture crude from damaged underwater wells. The Marine Well Containment Co. and Helix Well Containment Group are now providing that equipment in the Gulf.

But critics, including some environmental groups, say existing tests of the systems don’t guarantee they will work in an emergency. And they insist there is no assurance the offshore drilling industry is prepared for a wide variety of possible emergency scenarios that don’t look like what happened to BP’s Macondo well two years ago.

Industry readiness drills match Interior Department requirements, Helix spokesman Cameron Wallace stressed.

“As the scope of future drilling operations might evolve, the methods of testing response readiness to contain a potential spill will evolve with them,” Wallace said.

Industry leads the way?

Bromwich stressed the importance of testing emergency equipment in a range of realistic scenarios, but said the oil and gas industry might have to lead the way.

One candidate to do such emergency planning and testing could be the industry’s new Center for Offshore Safety, created by the American Petroleum Institute and headed by Shell Oil Co.’s former chief well engineering scientist, Charlie Williams.

The government doesn’t have sufficient resources to prepare for a full range of worst-case scenarios, Bromwich said. “Because the government is always going to be constrained Š inevitably it’s going to be industry that needs to carry a lot of the weight on that,” he added.
jennifer.dlouhy@chron.com Twitter: jendlouhyhc

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://articles.cnn.com/2012-03-26/us/us_gulf-oil-coral_1_deepwater-horizon-oil-spill-coral-communities?_s=PM:US

OIL SPILL

March 26, 2012|By Matt Smith, CNN

*
Researchers found coral at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico covered with “black scum” and gooey brown mixture of materials.

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill damaged coral formations deep beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico and miles from the ruptured well at the heart of the disaster, researchers reported Monday.

Scientists using remote-controlled probes and the venerable research submersible Alvin spotted a coral colony covered in “black scum” about 7 miles (11 kilometers) southwest of the undersea gusher, Penn State University biologist Charles Fisher said. Another nearby formation was covered in a gooey brown and white mix of oil and organic materials from the coral, he said.

“What this does tell us is there was acute damage to a reef 7 miles away,” Fisher said. “It tells us it’s likely this oil hit a lot of other areas of the seafloor.”

Fisher was the chief scientist for an expedition that surveyed the area in November and December 2010 with funding from the National Science Foundation. Some of the findings are being published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Samples taken from the coral beds, located at a depth of about 4,300 feet, matched the chemical fingerprint of the oil from the Macondo well, said Helen White, the lead author of the paper documenting the results.

An estimated 4.9 million barrels (206 million gallons) of crude poured into the Gulf after the April 2010 explosion that sank the drill rig Deepwater Horizon and killed 11 men aboard. Oil spewed into the sea for nearly three months before a cap was placed on the BP-owned Macondo well, nearly a mile beneath the surface.

Scientists have previously confirmed that a plume of hydrocarbons from the well settled in the deep Gulf. White, a geochemist at Haverford College in Pennsylvania, said other data is still being analyzed.

“I think it’s going to take a while before we understand the long-term impacts of the spill,” she said.

Fisher said coral is a good bellwether because it is stationary, draws sustenance from the surrounding water and provides a refuge and breeding ground for other marine life.

“When a coral gets insulted, if you will, what it does is it produces a lot of mucus to try to get rid of that insult, kind of like we do reacting to dust or hay fever,” he said. The coral would normally shed that material, but in this case, it started to die, and the oil and other residues stuck to it.

What scientists saw wasn’t a “big puddle” of oil, “but there was enough in it that we could vacuum it off and fingerprint it,” he said.

“It certainly told us that we need to look around for more coral communities in the area and try to define the full footprint of the impact,” he said.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2012/03/30-3

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 30, 2012
1:37 PM

CONTACT: Friends of The Earth
Kelly Trout, 202-222-0722, ktrout@foe.org
Michal Rosenoer, 202-222-0734, mrosenoer@foe.org

WASHINGTON – March 30 – Legislation introduced yesterday in both the U.S. House and Senate would provide liability protection for oil companies, gas retailers and engine manufacturers against any engine damage resulting from consumers’ use of E15, a gasoline blended with 15 percent ethanol. The bill, known as the “Domestic Fuels Act of 2012,” would encourage the transition of E15 into the U.S. marketplace despite overwhelming evidence that the fuel will severely damage small engines, void consumer warranties and pollute drinking water.

Michal Rosenoer, biofuels policy campaigner at Friends of the Earth, had the following statement in response:

“Gas prices are shooting up and big oil executives are making millions, while parents can’t afford to get their kids to school. We’re already subsidizing Big Oil with billions of taxpayer dollars and mandating the use of polluting, inefficient corn ethanol in our fuel. Now some members of Congress are excusing oil companies from paying for the damage caused by their dirty fuel and sticking American consumers with the bill.

“Senator Hoeven, Representative Shimkus and others in Congress seem more concerned with safeguarding oil company profits than protecting millions of Americans from a fuel that will damage their engines, void warranties and harm the environment.”
###

Friends of the Earth is the U.S. voice of the world’s largest grassroots environmental network, with member groups in 77 countries. Since 1969, Friends of the Earth has fought to create a more healthy, just world.

No Sign of Oyster Recovery Two Years After BP Oil Spill

BY DAN FLYNN | MAR 30, 2012
With the second anniversary of the BP oil spill fast approaching, attention is once again returning to the damaged Gulf environment, especially to its greatly diminished oyster production.

The worst man-made environmental disaster in U.S. history put 200 million gallons of oil and two million gallons of toxic dispersants into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico with the April 20, 2010 explosion of BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling platform and uncontrolled oil spill it caused.

The Gulf oyster supply is going through a second very limited season with demand not reaching anywhere near pre-BP oil spill levels.

In recent days, plaintiff attorneys on behalf of thousands of Gulf residents and businesses reached settlements with BP’s defense team expected to total around $7.8 billion. That’s in addition to $6.5 billion paid to about 200,000 individuals and businesses that went with BP’s out-of-court fund.

BP, however, has not yet had to pay a dime in compensation for its impact on the Gulf ecosystem. The federal government could pursue both criminal environmental penalties and separate civil action against BP, which together might hit $60 billion.

The oil company is spending millions to promote Gulf tourism and spread an all-cleaned-up image. And top officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are repeatedly brought out to tout Gulf food safety.

But below the surface of Gulf waters, marine scientists keep reporting findings that are not so reassuring. For example, Auburn University’s Department of Fisheries and Allied Aquacultures found supposedly harmless tar balls–periodically found on Gulf beaches–teeming with bacteria.

“As long as BP’s tar balls keep washing ashore on Gulf Coast beaches folks who come into contact with them and who have a compromised immune system or advanced diabetes or liver disease such as cirrhosis are at risk for contracting fibrosis through skin abrasions and lacerations–just as those who consume raw oysters with Vibrio vulnificus,” says marine expert Ed Cake. “We knew when the oil spill was at its peak flow rate that V. vulnificus bacterium would proliferate because it consumed oil, but we were not aware those tar balls would continue to threaten beach goers and BP’s clean-up crews that come into contact with them.”

Vibrio vulnificus is a bacteria in the same family as those that cause cholera. It normally lives in warm seawater and is part of a group of vibrios that are called “halophilic” because they require salt to live. Not all Vibrio vulnificus are pathogenic to humans, and that points to how much research still needs to be done about the Gulf’s post-spill ecology. Cake, whose Mississippi State license plate is “Oyster 1,” says researchers “should err on the side of caution.”

‘Whether or not a specific Vibrio vulnificus is pathogenic matters not to the bacteriologist who is determining the relative levels of that bacterium in molluscan shellfish or in growing waters for management purposes,” Cake says. “But it will matter to at at-risk (immuno-compromised) person who should avoid exposure to V. vulnificus including those strains in BP’s tar balls since he or she could find out too late that the strain encountered was, in fact, pathogenic–and deadly.”

Auburn research professor Cova Arias, who works from a Dauphin Island laboratory, warns anyone coming across a tar ball on the Gulf coast to give it a wide berth, as if were “a bad crab or something rotten on the beach.”
Two years later, fourth generation oysterman Nick Collins said there is nothing but dead shells in the Louisiana oyster beds that produced 60 to 80 sacks of oysters a day before the BP spill.

“Has anyone found a successful spring spat set on their leases yet?” asks Mississippi-based oyster expert Ed Cake. “Is there any evidence that the long-awaited oyster industry recovery has begun east of the (Mississippi) River or in the Barataria Bay area?”

Oyster spat are larvae that successfully attach to a solid substrate, usually other oyster shells on an oyster bar, and begin growing and forming shells.

At the peak of the oil spill, about 40 percent of U.S. Gulf waters were closed to all recreational and commercial fishing – finfish and shellfish included. The area closed was about the size of the State of Minnesota. U.S. waters include the area from three to 200 miles from shore.

Almost all state waters west of the Florida peninsula were also closed.

BP, in paid television advertising since December, depicts both tourism and commercial fishing as recovering nicely. The company is paying for $179 million in tourism promotion and another $82 million in seafood testing and marketing.

Many Gulf residents think BP just wants to close the book on the disaster. That’s unlikely to happen until the environmental bill is paid, and funds are set aside to restore Gulf ecosystem.
The herring fishery in Prince William Sound is only now beginning to recover, 22 year after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, and the oyster fishery in Mexico’s Terminos Lagoon has not fully recovered 32 year after the 1979 Ixtoc-1 oil spill, says Cake.

Special thanks to Richard Charter