Florida Senator Nelson is exerting effort to try to move along restoration of the Gulf of Mexico and help those affected. Here’s a standard response letter he sends out that contains a lot of info on his good works in this regard. Too bad our other senator is simply watching. DV

Dear Mrs. Quirolo:

Thank you for contacting me regarding ongoing plans for restoration of the Gulf Coast one year after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. As you may know, I have opposed drilling off Florida for a long time now. There just isn’t enough oil in the eastern Gulf to justify risking our shores, our natural resources, and the many industries that rely on our coasts and waters and the military testing and training area off the Gulf.

Shortly after the spill, I introduced legislation that would lift the cap on oil companies’ liability in spills from $75 million to $10 billion. More recently, I introduced S.862, the Gulf of Mexico Recovery, Restoration, and Resiliency Act, which would dedicate 100% of the Clean Water Act penalties assessed to BP for ecosystem restoration and research, job and workforce development, and tourism promotion. It also would create a Citizens Advisory Committee and a Scientific Advisory Committee to provide input on the direction of Gulf restoration activities.

I just introduced S.983, which would prevent oil companies like BP from deducting the cost of oil spill recovery efforts. Last year, BP announced that they’d use nearly $12 billion in tax savings to offset clean-up costs associated with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. I introduced this legislation because we should not allow oil companies to shift the cost of their mistakes to the average taxpayer.

I’ve been monitoring closely the work of the Gulf Coast Claims Facility (GCCF), which BP established and funded to handle claims of economic damage due to the spill. At a recent Senate committee hearing, I questioned the head of the GCCF—Kenneth Feinberg—about the process for reviewing and settling claims. When he was appointed to the post, Feinberg promised the process would be open, quick, and independent of BP. But we’ve since learned there’s very little independence. And I’ve been hearing from way too many people who say they can’t get their claims paid in a timely fashion. I wrote the Administration to demand an investigation into the GCCF and its methods, and I won’t rest until this process becomes more transparent and efficient. Meantime, if you or someone you know is having difficulty with a claim, please call my Orlando office toll-free at 888-671-4091.

It is my hope and my belief that by the passage of time, the hard work and dedication of individuals, and the power of Mother Nature, the Gulf Coast will recover. Please do not hesitate to contact my office again.

Sincerely,
Senator Bill Nelson

P.S. From time to time, I compile electronic news briefs highlighting key issues and hot topics of particular importance to Floridians. If you’d like to receive these e-briefs, visit my Web site and sign up for them at http://billnelson.senate.gov/news/ebriefs.cfm

http://www.offshore-mag.com/index/article-display/8176386843/articles/offshore/regional-reports/us-gulf-of-mexico/2011/May/court-enters_judgment.html?cmpid=EnlOSWeeklyMay312011

Published: May 24, 2011
Offshore staff
HOUSTON – The US Department of the Interior “acted unlawfully by unreasonably delaying action” on permit requests from ATP Oil & Gas Corp. according to the Final Judgment issued by the US District Court in the Eastern District of Louisiana.

The suit that resulted in this judgment concerned two permits that were submitted by ATP, but not acted on within 30 days. The permits were approved, but not until more than five months after the federal GoM drilling moratorium was lifted.

In its judgment, the Court said, “Court wrote that, “The thirty-day timeline is reasonable, in part because the government has failed to establish that the individual permit applications pending in this case individually require more (or less) care. The Court has repeatedly acknowledged that some delays are understandable in a more regulated environment, but that now, over a year after the Deepwater Horizon tragedy, delays must reach some end.

Without evidence showing otherwise, a thirty-day timeline derived from the statute and past practices remains reasonable. And as this Court has previously explained, thirty days seems to have Congress’s acknowledgment as reasonable within the statutory plan.”
The originating court action was by ATP and also Ensco Offshore Co.

Special thanks to Richard Charter.

http://www.pnj.com/article/20110506/NEWS01/105060334/Budget-sinks-aquatic-preserve-protectors?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE

Gulf Breeze resident Robert Turpin’s earliest childhood memories include harvesting scallops in a cove near Fort McRee with his family. He has longed for the day he could introduce that ritual to his daughters. But that day may never come.

A program to restore the scallop fishery in Pensacola area waters may cease on July 1 if the Northwest Florida Aquatic Preserve office on Garcon Point is closed.

That office and five others across the state, operating under the Department of Environmental Protection, were not funded in the state budget set for approval by lawmakers today. The budget goes into effect July 1.

“I won’t be able to expose my kids to scalloping unless we’re managing and trying to improve the scallop fisheries,” said Turpin, 50, a marine biologist.

Turpin, other residents and fellow scientists worry what will happen to the entire 76,000 acres of underwater lands in the Northwest Florida preserves and the sea life the lands nurture without the watchful eye of the aquatic preserve staff, especially as the impacts of the BP oil spill still are being assessed.

“The aquatic preserve’s staff are the silent soldiers protecting our natural resources,” said Heather Reed, a marine biologist and the City of Gulf Breeze project manager for the Deadman’s Island Restoration Project.

The aquatic office, with a staff of three and an annual budget of $178,281, is responsible for the restoration and preservation of salt marshes, seagrass beds, oyster beds and shoreline stabilization and water quality monitoring of the submerged land from Perdido Key to St. Andrews Bay.

These resources are directly tied to the quality of the environment and viability of the economy of Northwest Florida, in terms of the seafood industry, tourism, recreation and the quality of life, Turpin said. Restoring, monitoring and preserving these resources is more critical than ever in the oil spill’s wake, he said.

DEP would not allow the aquatic preserve staff to be interviewed for this story.

Turpin, Reed and Vernon Compton, who works closely with the staff as director of the Gulf Coastal Plain Ecosystem Partnership of the Nature Conservancy, said staff members were key players in pointing out to BP’s Unified Command the environmentally sensitive areas of the Panhandle that needed the most protection last year during the disaster.

Special thanks to the Gulf Restoration Network.

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/05/concerns_for_njs_water_as_del.html

Published: Monday, May 30, 2011, 11:51 PM Updated: Tuesday, May 31, 2011, 5:23 AM
By Seth Augenstein/The Star-Ledger

New Jersey is downstream from a bitter battle over natural gas development in Pennsylvania that involves a controversial drilling practice.

During that process, called fracking, a mix of water, sand and chemicals is pumped more than a mile underground, causing explosions that unlock the pockets of natural gas.

But the practice is at the center of a dispute over natural gas development in Pennsylvania. The chemicals going underground could have a severe impact on water quality for more than 2.8 million residents in New Jersey, environmentalists warn.

“We’re going to get the bad end of this, and no one realizes it,” said Tracy Carluccio, deputy director of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, an environmental group.

Gas companies have been tapping wells across Pennsylvania using the process, which is also known as hydraulic fracturing, for several years. But now the gas industry is staking out northeastern Pennsylvania – the closest this natural gas rush has come to New Jersey – and the watershed of the Delaware River, one of the Garden State’s major sources of water.

Doug O’Malley, field director of Environment New Jersey, says it’s a wake-up call.

“We suddenly realized that this isn’t drilling in the arctic – this is drilling along the Delaware. I can’t think of a larger threat to our drinking water,” he said.
The perceived dangers have sparked response from the public. As the Delaware River Basin Commission, a regulatory agency with members from the four states along the river and the federal government, continues to draft regulations for gas drilling in its watershed, about 58,000 comments flooded into the agency before an April 15 deadline – more than 10 times that of other high-profile public issues in recent memory, a commission official said.

A natural gas rush

The pressure to drill is high, according to John Plonski, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection’s assistant commissioner for water-resource management and the state’s voting member on the commission.

“We know there’s going to be a rush on drilling in northeastern Pennsylvania once the regulations are passed,” he said. “Pennsylvania and New York and New Jersey have never experienced an oil or gas rush like this before.”

As many as 18,000 wells might be fracked in the basin over the next 30 years, said Clarke Rupert, a commission spokesman. Gas companies have already leased Pennsylvania land and are waiting for the rules of when and how to begin drilling, Rupert said. He added the commission’s role is to regulate the industry while protecting the watershed.

Industry groups say the technique is safe and has been newly refined to unearth the energy equivalent of 87 billion barrels of oil underneath the Marcellus Shale, an arc of underground rock from West Virginia and Ohio up to Pennsylvania and New York.

The natural gas industry says the resource is the nation’s clean alternative to coal and oil and the chemicals used are too deep to affect the water table.
The Marcellus Shale Coalition, which represents the drillers, says the wastewater that comes back up is either re-used or cleaned before being released into the environment.

“Hydraulic fracturing is one of the most tightly regulated technologies in one of the most tightly regulated industries,” said Travis Windle, spokesman for the Marcellus coalition.

“As a host of environmental regulators across the country have affirmed, fracturing has never impacted groundwater over the past 60 years. That’s not an accident.”

Pennsylvania just last month tightened the guidelines for how to treat the leftover fluids that come back up after fracking. The new standards require facilities to treat the byproduct to drinking-water standards, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.

Still, environmentalists on this side of the border warn Pennsylvania’s standards are not going to do enough to protect water for millions of New Jersey taps.

“New Jersey residents will be affected,” said Carluccio. “Anything that happens upstream affects that water.”

Politicians respond

The fracking debate has intensified since the commission’s comment period ended. New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman threatened on April 18 to sue the federal government if it does not pledge to conduct a full safety investigation into the natural gas industry’s effects on the Delaware. The next day, a fracking well run by Chesapeake Energy in Bradford County, Pa., broke and leaked fluids with chemicals into a nearby tributary of the Susquehanna River.

The effects of the accident have been running downriver. The federal Environmental Protection Agency immediately began an investigation into the fracking process at the site. And on May 2, the Maryland attorney general notified Chesapeake and its affiliates it intended to sue over the incident, claiming that “tens of thousands of gallons of fracking fluids” had leaked into the Susquehanna River watershed – and were endangering the health of Maryland citizens downstream.

“Companies cannot expose citizens to dangerous chemicals that pose serious health risks to the environment and to public health,” said Douglas F. Gansler, the Maryland attorney general.

Water quality has been affected elsewhere, according to some experts. Conrad Volz, the former director of the Center for Healthy Environments and Communities at the University of Pittsburgh, said he has documented the fallout from fracking.

Volz said his team conducted studies in western Pennsylvania and found elevated levels of barium, benzene, strontium, petroleum byproducts and bromides were all being released from a wastewater treatment facility into a creek.

“I think New Jersey should learn from our problems here in Pennsylvania,” said Volz, who testified before the U.S. Senate on fracking a few weeks ago.
“This is one of the issues of our time – I fully believe that.”

Most recently, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a Duke University study documenting “systematic evidence” of methane contamination of drinking water sources in northeastern Pennsylvania and upstate New York, due to fracking. Some people have reported lighting their water on fire from the flammable fumes from their taps – but the National Academy study was the first confirmation of methane contamination.

However, the study found no contamination from fracking fluids in wells near gas wells.

‘Minimal’ effects

Some experts say the concerns are overstated. Terry Engelder, a professor of geosciences and a fracking expert based at Pennsylvania State University, said the industry recycles the fluids it uses, and keeps the ones that remain in the ground at a safe depth that won’t have serious health or environmental impacts.

“It certainly is minimal,” he said.

David Yoxtheimer, a geologist at the Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research at Penn State University, said the wastewater standards for natural gas in Pennsylvania were among the most stringent in the nation. He also said disposal of 90 percent of the fracking fluid a mile deep in the rock shale was no different from than the deep-well injection of toxic waste products from other industries because the fluids don’t have any way to get out of the deep rock beneath the water table.

“There’s really no driving force to get it up to the water table,” Yoxtheimer said.

New Jersey legislators are also getting involved. Five proposed bills in the Legislature would regulate or even ban fracking in the Garden State.

Sen. Linda R. Greenstein (D-Middlesex), a sponsor of a proposed fracking ban, said sponsors were sending an early message to the natural gas industry that New Jersey was going to protect its water, first and foremost.

“I think we wanted to make a strong statement – before it even hits New Jersey,” she said. “We didn’t want to play around the edges on this.”

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20110527/BUSINESS/105270339/Gas-in-Iowa-costs-1-more-per-gallon-than-last-year-Who-s-to-blame-?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CFrontpage

10:13 PM, May. 26, 2011 |

Written by DAN PILLER

The price impact?
Gasoline costs amount to no more than about 5 percent of a typical family’s spending, well below food (13 percent) and shelter (40 percent). So economists believe that the impact of higher gas prices tends to be at the margins, such as holiday driving and attendance at special events.

The auto club AAA reports that 30.9 million Americans are expected to travel more than 50 miles by car this weekend, a slight decline from the 31 million a year ago.

The AAA survey said that of those who will travel, six of 10 said rising gas prices won’t affect their plans. Of the remaining four out of 10, 70 percent said they’ll simply economize other areas of their travel budget, according to AAA.

Airfares, hotel rates and car rental rates are also up along with gas prices. The number of travelers flying this weekend is expected to be up about 11.5 percent from last year’s 2.63 million. Memorial Day weekend airfares are projected to be about 14 percent more expensive than last year.

Recreational vehicle and camper owners haven’t been deterred by the higher gas prices.

“We have good reservations for Memorial Day weekend and, frankly, we expect the higher gas prices to help us because many of our members live within 50 miles,” said Nocona Mollendor, manager of Cutty’s Des Moines Camping Club Inc.

“What we’ve seen is that when gas prices rise, people take shorter trips, but they still travel,” she said.

Rich Teeters, retired from a trucking job for the city of Phoenix, Ariz., and his wife, Jean, brought their fifth-wheeler pulled by a pickup to Cutty’s this week. As he readied his vehicle for the next leg of his journey, to Wisconsin, Teeters said “some people adjust by traveling fewer miles or maybe staying longer at a campground.”

Teeters has hedged his spending on energy. He uses diesel fuel, which has become more expensive than gasoline in the dozen years since he became a near year-round traveler. But he also owns stock in Exxon Mobil, the energy giant.

“I couldn’t do this if I didn’t invest well,” said Teeters.

Another campground visitor from the Sun Belt, Ed Mutney, stayed at Cutty’s this week midway through a trip from his home in Silver Spring, Fla., to Alaska.

“I’m going to meet some friends on I-80 and we’ll caravan the rest of the way,” said Mutney, retired from the U.S. Air Force.

“It got a little scary when the price of gasoline got to $4 a few weeks ago, but it has slipped back,” Mutney said.
– Dan Piller

Lance Bauer of Winterset, who works for Keck Energy, fills an underground storage tank with unleaded gasoline in Des Moines on Thursday morning. / RODNEY WHITE/THE REGISTER

Ashley Brown of Des Moines has welcomed the recent drop in gas prices. “I am staying home over the holiday but it is still nice to know I can leave if I want to and that $10 will get me around town,” she said. / ANDREA MELENDEZ/THE REGISTER
How much more it costs to go to …
The difference in the cost of a round-trip drive to each location on Memorial Day weekend 2010 and 2011 in a 25-mpg vehicle:

KANSAS CITY
2010: $40.81
2011: $56.21

MINNEAPOLIS
2010: $51.67
2011: $71.17

CHICAGO
2010: $70.75
2011: $95.45

Gasoline that costs $1 per gallon more than it did last Memorial Day will cause Iowans to wonder who is to blame as they fill up for the holiday weekend.

The never-ending gas price morality play has produced a new villain, the Wall Street speculator, who is succeeding Texas oilmen and OPEC ministers as the bad guy at the gas pump.

“There won’t be another drop in the price of gasoline this weekend, and it’s due to Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley,” said Mark Meyer, president of Keck Energy in Des Moines. On Tuesday, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, both major investors in crude oil markets, had issued forecasts of higher crude oil prices this summer.

Gas prices map: Find the best fuel deals in Iowa and around the country.

The price of oil promptly rose by more than $1 per barrel in the next two trading days on exchanges.

“What a crazy system we have,” he said. “People resist paying an extra 5 cents per gallon in gas tax to fix the highways, but we allow speculators to raise the price of gasoline by 50 cents a gallon.”

As crude oil and gasoline prices have risen 25 percent since Jan. 1, more charges of market manipulation are flying.

U.S. regulators on Tuesday launched one of the biggest-ever crackdowns on oil price manipulation, accusing traders and companies of artificially driving up crude oil prices in 2008.
Also this month, Rex Tillerson, chairman of Exxon Mobil, told a congressional committee that supplies of crude oil and refined gasoline were adequate and that the supply-and-demand price of crude probably should be around $70 per barrel.

Crude oil traded at $99 per barrel on the day of Tillerson’s comments.

But Big Oil isn’t among those calling for trading limits or other crackdowns on the crude oil markets. John Felmy, chief economist for the American Petroleum Institute, told The Des Moines Register in an interview this week: “Oil prices have risen for basic supply and demand reasons. Worldwide demand for oil, particularly from China and India, is up while production is flat.”
Felmy argues that all commodity markets, including crude oil, need speculators “to provide the liquidity that any functioning market requires” to attract investors.

Nevertheless, commodities watchers point blame toward Wall Street.

Stephen Schork of Villanova, Pa., a former oil trader on the New York Mercantile Exchange whose commodities newsletter makes the speculation argument, said: “The best way to predict the market is to create it.

“Goldman was giving a signal that the dumb money could come back into the oil market, and it worked,” Schork said.
Schork and others noted that a lot of money fled the oil markets May 5 after Goldman Sachs had warned clients that crude oil prices, then about $114 a barrel in New York and $124 a barrel in London, were too high.

Goldman and Morgan Stanley have declined to comment on their market forecasts.

Commodity trader Don Roose of U.S. Commodities in West Des Moines asked: “You tell me: Did the supply of crude oil suddenly increase enough in a single day to justify a $10 drop in the price of crude oil?”

Roose asserts that speculators, or investors who don’t take physical possession of crude oil, are a “major factor” in the wild swings in oil prices that taunt motorists from lighted signs at gas stations.

Dawn Carlson, president of the Petroleum Marketers Association of Iowa, has written letters to the Iowa congressional delegation urging a crackdown on speculators, through the Commodities Futures Trading Commission.

“We think speculation is a major factor in the volatility of oil and gasoline prices,” said Carlson, whose organization represents convenience stores and other gasoline retailers in Iowa.
Last week, U.S. attorneys filed lawsuits against two oil traders in Australia and California and three American and international firms, alleging that in early 2008 they tried to hoard nearly two-thirds of the available supply of a crucial American market for crude oil, then abruptly dumped it and improperly pocketed $50 million.

That activity coincided with the rise in crude oil prices that year to $147 per barrel, still a record. Retail gasoline prices soared above $4 per gallon that summer, cutting demand by an unprecedented 5 percent during peak driving season in June and July and teaching the oil industry that $4 gasoline may be the point of price resistance.

That lesson was relearned last month when prices reached $3.90 per gallon in Iowa and climbed over $4 nationally. The American Petroleum Institute reported that demand for gasoline dropped by 2.2 percent during April from the same month a year earlier.

So the sudden drop in oil prices in early May, spurred by speculative selling, gave conspiracy theorists more ammunition. Market manipulators pulled the price back just at the point where demand is hurt, the speculator detractors said.

Schork said he isn’t sure that a market conspiracy could work that deeply, but he said: “Speculation tends to exaggerate prices. There’s no question that demand for gasoline seems to soften between $3.50 and $4 per gallon.

Special thanks to Richard Charter