Phil Taylor, E&E reporter
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar today said his department is developing new rules to improve the performance of sub-sea blowout preventers to avoid a repeat of last year’s BP PLC Macondo well blowout and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Salazar said the updated rules are in response to an Interior-commissioned forensic report issued last month that found the blowout preventer’s blind shear rams — the equipment’s final line of defense against an oil gusher — could not seal off BP’s well as designed because the drill pipe had buckled in the initial blast (E&ENews PM, March 23).

“We’ll also be looking to develop some additional improvements with respect to BOPs,” Salazar told reporters during a conference call this morning. “Those will be mostly in the area of instrumentation and actuation and effectiveness with respect to dual blind shear rams.”

Salazar spoke from Mexico, where he is meeting with government and industry officials on creating a “gold standard” for deepwater drilling safety and discussing a Gulf of Mexico transboundary agreement.

Interior Deputy Secretary David Hayes said the agency will be looking to the new Ocean Energy Safety Advisory Committee for advice on the new rules and that it hopes to issue an advance notice for proposed rulemaking in the coming months. The notice will solicit comment from a variety of sources on what upgrades are appropriate for blowout preventers and other deepwater drilling technologies, Hayes said.

“We obviously are requiring a whole new set of tests relative to the functionality of blowout preventers,” said Salazar, who touted new drilling safety measures already implemented that include well integrity standards and worst-case discharge calculations, among others. “We are looking at what else is needed, and that is part of a regulatory rulemaking process which is being undertaken.”
The new rules come as Interior and the Coast Guard conduct joint hearings in New Orleans this week to discuss what went wrong with BP’s blowout preventer, a device most had considered “fail-safe” before the Deepwater Horizon incident.

Michael Bromwich, director of Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, last week told a House committee that blowout preventers could no longer be considered fail-safe devices and that more information would be provided in this week’s hearings on the Det Norske Veritas forensic report.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

(04/05/2011)

Katie Howell, E&E reporter

A group of House Democrats today offered a measure that would clamp
down on a controversial offshore drilling royalty-relief provision.

At issue in the legislation from Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and others is
a royalty-waiver program that allows some oil companies to reduce or
eliminate their royalty payments on federal drilling leases until they
have recouped their investments.

Lawmakers initially approved the program in 1995, when oil sold for $18
a barrel and deepwater drilling was considered unprofitable without
government help. Suspended payments helped bring about a boom for the
industry in the late 1990s, but the subsidies, which were expanded by a
broad 2005 energy law, continue today despite escalating crude oil
prices. The Government Accountability Office says the loss of future
royalties could range from $20 billion to $53 billion depending on the
price of oil.

“The biggest oil companies are already getting 100 year-old tax breaks
to sell $100 a barrel oil to make $100 billion a year in profits,”
Markey said in a statement. “Oil companies don’t need a $53 billion
windfall courtesy of American taxpayers that increases our national
deficit.”

Today’s measure is not the first attempt to reform the royalty-relief
law. Markey and other Democrats have introduced similar bills in
previous Congresses, and similar language introduced as an amendment to
the first House GOP spending bill this year failed.

But the new bill comes as Democrats ramp up their criticism of GOP
resistance to cutting oil industry tax breaks as they slash other areas
of federal spending (E&E Daily, April 5).

“The Republican plan to cut the budget? Continue to cheat taxpayers out
of billions of dollars owed by the big oil companies. That’s not much
of a budget-cutting plan,” Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), a co-sponsor
of the measure, said in a statement. “It’s time that we hold giant oil
corporations accountable for the right to use the public’s resources.
Oil companies shouldn’t be drilling for free, and in a time of rising
gas prices, we need to close this $50 billion loophole.”

The oil industry is opposed to such reforms, saying it already pays
billions to the federal government in other royalties, taxes and fees.

Joining Markey and Miller in introducing today’s measure are Democratic
Reps. Rush Holt of New Jersey, Jim Moran of Virginia, Maurice Hinchey
of New York and Lois Capps of California.
Special thanks to Richard Charter

Most national television news on Monday night carrried stories about Transocean backing down on their claimed safety record that led to these bonuses for execs (per Richard Charter).

So glad someone from Florida is speaking out about how ridiculous it is to give bonuses for safety for the year the Deepwater Horizon destroyed the Gulf of Mexico. DV

http://www.thestatecolumn.com/state_politics/florida/rep-vern-buchanan-rips-bonuses-at-deepwater-horizon/

Tuesday, April 05, 2011

U.S. Congressman Vern Buchanan (FL-13) today denounced pay bonuses for executives of the company that operated the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon oil rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico last year.

Transocean announced it is awarding its top executives bonuses for achieving the “best year in safety.” The Deepwater Horizon explosion last April killed 11 people and spilled 4.9 million barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico for 86 straight days. Transocean’s bonuses included a $5.8 million compensation package to its president and chief executive officer, according to The Associated Press.
“Transocean issuing bonuses for its safety record is a travesty,” said Buchanan, who represents a Gulf Coast district. “The Deepwater spill was the worst ecological disaster in U.S. history. Rather than bragging about a terrible safety record and rewarding incompetence, the company should be focused on doing a better job and ensuring that another disaster never happens again.”

A national commission created to investigate the accident concluded that Transocean, BP and Halliburton all made “egregious mistakes” and that “each company is responsible for one or more egregiously bad decisions.”

Buchanan, an opponent of offshore drilling in the Gulf, is the lead sponsor of the “Oil Spill Prevention Act.” Buchanan’s bill would eliminate liability limits to hold oil companies accountable for offshore spills and reform the federal oversight process to ensure disasters like the Deepwater Horizon never happen again.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://fuelfix.com/blog/2011/03/31/scientists-find-2000-year-old-coral-near-gulf-spill-site/

Yeah, and how many corals have been buried by the oil????? DV

Posted on March 31, 2011 at 10:45 am by Associated Press in Gulf Oil Disaster, Social

CAIN BURDEAU
Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS – Federal scientists say they have dated coral living near the site of the busted BP oil well in the Gulf of Mexico at 2,000 years old.

The U.S. Geological Survey said Wednesday it had determined the age of the black coral in the Gulf for the first time. Scientists had been studying the ancient slow-growing corals before BP’s well blew out on April 20, 2010. The corals were found about 21 miles northeast of the BP well living 1,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf.

“They’re extremely old and extremely slow-growing,” said Nancy Prouty, a USGS scientist. “And there are big questions about their vulnerability and their ability for recovery.”

Black corals feed on organic matter sinking to the sea floor and it could take decades, or even centuries, to recover from “a disturbance to these ecosystems,” Prouty said.

She said scientists were looking at whether the ancient coral had been damaged by the BP oil spill, but the damage assessment had not been completed.

The location of the black coral is important because computer models and research cruises have mapped much of the deepwater oil moving to the southwest of the BP well, away from the black coral colony. Scientists have found dead coral southwest of the well.
However, Prouty said the surface oil slick was over the black coral colony during the spill.
BP’s well leaked more than 200 million gallons of oil after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded April 20, killing 11 workers.

Black corals, which resemble deep-sea bushes or trees, are found throughout the world and are an important marine habitat for fish and other forms of marine life. They grow very slowly – a human fingernail grows 200 times faster than black coral, USGS said.

Most of the Gulf’s bottom is muddy and the coral colonies that pop up every once in a while are vital oases for marine life in the chilly ocean depths.

The USGS study was part of a larger federal survey of fragile reef ecosystems.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/42322119/ns/us_news-environment/

Confidential data due to BP inquiry frustrates some researchers seeking answers

–
Federal scientists trying to figure out why dolphin deaths along the Gulf of Mexico are up this year now have a second challenge: a sharp jump in sea turtle deaths in some Gulf areas.

“In the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen an increase” in turtle deaths in the northern Gulf, Connie Barclay, a spokeswoman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told msnbc.com.

Since March 15, she noted, 39 deaths were confirmed in Mississippi, 4 in Alabama and 3 in Louisiana.

“The spring time is the typical time when turtle strandings in this region begin to increase,” Barclay added, “but the sharp increases in recent days are of concern.”
“Tests will be done for biotoxins, such as those from harmful algae blooms, which are common in the Gulf,” she said, and NOAA is contacting states to see if fishermen are accidentally hooking sea turtles.

“All causes of death, including petroleum, will be investigated when possible, based on decomposition,” she added, and “all turtles are being carefully examined for signs of external oiling.”

Some 400 sea turtle deaths were reported in the five months after the BP oil spill last April, but the number dropped off sharply starting in October. All seven species of sea turtles are listed under the Endangered Species Act.

The news comes as the mystery behind the dolphin deaths grew to include a sense of intrigue: NOAA is keeping a tight lid on its ongoing probe into the deaths, which are possibly connected to the BP spill, causing tension with some independent scientists.
In the case of dolphins, biologists hired by the National Marine Fisheries Service, a branch of NOAA, to collect specimens and tissue samples were quietly told late last month to keep their findings confidential.

The order was in a Fisheries Service letter informing outside scientists that its review of the dolphin die-off, classified as an “unusual mortality event (UME),” had been folded into a federal criminal investigation of the oil spill.

“Because of the seriousness of the legal case, no data or findings may be released, presented or discussed outside the UME investigative team without prior approval,” said the letter, obtained by Reuters.

The Fisheries Service “did not issue a gag order,” Blair Mase, the agency’s stranding coordinator for the Southeast, told msnbc.com in response to the disclosure. “We did ask partners” to refrain from releasing data so as “to ensure confidentiality.”

Still, a number of partner scientists said they have been personally rebuked by federal officials for “speaking out of turn” to the media about efforts to determine the cause of some 136 dolphin deaths this year in the Gulf, and 115 others last year after the April spill.

Moreover, they said collected samples and specimens are being turned over to the government for analysis under a protocol that will leave independent scientists in the dark about the efficacy and outcome of any lab tests.

Some partner researchers in the agency’s Marine Mammal Stranding Network complained such constraints undermine the transparency of a process normally open to review by the scientific community.

“It throws accountability right out the window,” one biologist involved in tracking dolphin deaths for more than 20 years told Reuters on condition of anonymity. “We are confused and … we are angry because they claim they want teamwork, but at the same time they are leaving the marine experts out of the loop completely.”

Some question why the Fisheries Service has taken so long to get samples into laboratories.

“It is surprising that it has been almost a full year since the spill, and they still haven’t selected labs for this kind of work,” said Ruth Carmichael, who studies marine mammals at the independent Dauphin Island Sea Lab in Alabama.

“I can only hope that this process is a good thing. I just don’t know. This is an unfortunate situation.”

Mase, a marine mammal scientist, said lab results would go directly back to the Fisheries Service, and hopefully in about two to three months.

“We have to be very methodical,” Mase said. “The criminal investigation does play a role in the delay of findings, but it has to be done this way.”

For Mase and others, this is the first time their work on marine mammals has become part of a potential crime scene.

“This is all new to pretty much all of us,” she said, adding that “we’re not sure how that’s going to work” when asked if the results would be released to the public before any criminal action.

As of Monday night, scientists counted 136 bottlenose dolphin carcasses found since mid-January along the shores of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, almost half of them newly born or stillborn infants.

And Mase noted that “we’re still in the response phase” since carcasses are washing up daily, including at least two on Tuesday in Louisiana.

The tally so far this year, which compares to 31 deaths on average during the same time of year between 2002 and 2009, coincides with the first dolphin calving season in the northern Gulf since BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded last April.

The blast killed 11 workers and ruptured a wellhead on the sea floor, dumping an estimated 206 million gallons of oil into the Gulf over more than three months.

Last year, 115 dead dolphins, most of them adults, washed up along the Gulf Coast in the weeks and months following the blowout.

But Mase pointed out that even before the spill started in late April, a jump in dolphin deaths was seen in February and March of 2010.

The latest spike in deaths, and high concentration of premature infants among them, has led some experts to speculate that oil ingested or inhaled by dolphins during the spill has taken a belated toll on the animals, possibly leading to a wave of dolphin miscarriages.

But most of the specimens collected bear no obvious signs of oil contamination, making lab analysis crucial to understanding what caused the deaths.

Mase said the carcasses also are considered potential evidence in the natural resources damage assessment being conducted in conjunction with civil litigation pursued against BP by the government simultaneously with the criminal probe.

“It is frustrating at times,” she said of the slow process, “but you have to understand the big picture. If there is a responsible party we want to make them responsible.”

Msnbc.com’s Miguel Llanos and Reuters contributed to this report.
Special thanks to Richard Charter