http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-oil-nepa-20100618,0,74784.story
The pleas come as the White House Council on Environmental Quality is reviewing whether the federal drilling watchdog has appropriately followed the National Environmental Policy Act.

The drilling rig Discoverer Enterprise recovers oil from the leaking Deepwater Horizon site in the Gulf of Mexico. (James Edward Bates, Associated Press / June 13, 2010)
By Jim Tankersley and Jennifer Martinez
June 17, 2010 | 7:33 p.m.

Reporting from Washington – Oil and gas companies have told the Obama administration that environmental regulations for deep-water drilling rigs do not immediately need to be toughened because the Deepwater Horizon explosion was an unforeseeable event, not a failure of federal oversight, according to documents filed last week with the White House.

The industry’s chief lobbying arm, the American Petroleum Institute, submitted written comments to the White House Council on Environmental Quality. The council is reviewing whether the federal Minerals Management Service – the now-splintered and much criticized agency charged with regulating oil drilling – has appropriately conducted reviews mandated by the National Environmental Policy Act, known as NEPA.

“One accident does not mean that the practice and procedures of MMS are inadequate to implement NEPA’s requirements, especially when the cause of the accident has yet to be determined,” wrote the lobbying group, which represents 400 oil and gas companies, including BP.

Anadarko Petroleum, which owns a quarter share of the leaking BP well, wrote in a separate filing that it believes the government’s enforcement of environmental laws has not “in any way played a role” in the Gulf of Mexico spill.

Since the April 20 explosion, the MMS has drawn fire from environmentalists for routinely exempting hundreds of offshore drilling projects from detailed environmental analysis, including the one for the Deepwater Horizon rig. The practice is known as granting “categorical exclusions.” That practice is a specific focus of the White House review.

President Obama has assailed the “cozy relationship between the oil companies and the federal agency that permits them to drill,” referring to the MMS. He said his administration would close loopholes that allow oil companies to bypass environmental reviews.

Last month, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced that he would break MMS into three arms, separating environmental reviews from drilling leasing. Salazar this week appointed former Justice Department Inspector General Michael R. Bromwich to oversee the restructuring.

Before the Deepwater Horizon explosion, the MMS had all but ruled out the possibility of a catastrophic spill on any gulf rig, calculating that there was only a 3% to 5% chance of a blowout exceeding a total of 1,000 barrels.

Scientists estimate that the busted BP well is gushing up to 60,000 barrels a day.

The service based those risk assessment calculations on decades of drilling precedent, which indicated that major blowouts were rare. It failed to update those calculations to reflect the increased technological hurdles and blowout dangers of deep-water drilling, which proliferated in the late 1990s.

MMS officials said last month that they trusted the oil industry to develop new deep-water drilling techniques.

In their comments to the White House, the lobbying group and Anadarko defended the MMS’s risk calculations and its use of categorical exclusions. They suggested that eliminating categorical exclusions would burden drilling companies with another level of bureaucracy.

They implored the White House to delay issuing any new NEPA rules for drilling.

“The current process provides ample opportunity for both public input and review of the potential environmental consequences” of drilling, Anadarko wrote.

Paired with other industry filings presented to the White House’s environmental quality council before the April 20 disaster, the oil industry comments show almost no change in their posture on environmental oversight.

In a September 2009 letter to an Obama administration task force reviewing ocean use policies, BP said “effective controls are in place and being enforced to appropriately manage water resources in the ocean.”

The company warned against implementing “new designations such as protected areas or oversight groups that duplicate, add layers to or undermine current regulation, and that limit or discourage industrial use and development without significant benefit to marine ecology or national priorities.”

BP’s letter was echoed by oil industry trade groups. In statements made by American Petroleum Institute Senior Policy Advisor Lakeisha Harrison in August and October 2009, the trade group praised the existing MMS leasing program and resisted changes to ocean management that could restrict drilling.

The Chamber of Shipping of America, which counts ConocoPhillips and Chevron Shipping Co. as members, also voiced concerns.

The oceans policy task force has not yet released its final report. The public comment period for the White House review of MMS environmental regulation procedures was scheduled to close Thursday.

Asked about the oil industry filings, the communications director for the Council on Environmental Quality, Christine Glunz, said on Thursday that the council “receives input from a wide variety of people and interests and considers all comments we receive while developing new policy approaches.”

jtankersley@latimes.com

jenmartinez@tribune.com

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=NTE2ZDFiYWNmOGU0ZWExOGM1M2IwMTg5ZTFlNjJjOWM=
JUNE 7, 2010 4:00 A.M.
 
When the Deepwater Horizon first started gushing oil, many considered the incident an example of private enterprise having no regard for the environment. However, it is becoming clear that government was involved from the start, is in charge now (as President Obama himself tells us), and cannot do much about the problem. So is there any way to address this?

Yes. We need to move away from the crony corporatism that has characterized much of the nation’s energy sector during the last century or so. It would be foolish to promise that market-based reforms would prevent another disaster, but they would be more effective than yet more meaningless bureaucracy. There are several reasons for this.

First, the existing government regulations have been counterproductive. They pushed energy companies offshore – miles and miles offshore. America is a resource-rich country, and unlike other resource-rich countries, we have locked up most of our resources so we can’t use them. While the Gulf of Mexico holds about 44 billion barrels of oil in undiscovered reserves, according to Minerals Management Service (MMS) estimates, the continental U.S. has slightly more onshore. The difference is that we are allowed to explore and extract the offshore reserves, while it is extremely difficult to get permission to do the same on land. As a result, most exploration takes place offshore, where the consequences of a spill are so much greater.

Various restrictions also push the oil industry into deep waters, where it is so much more difficult to fix a blowout than in shallow coastal waters, where there is still plenty of oil. Allowing more onshore and shallow-water drilling would lessen the chances of an accident like this considerably.

Second, government and business corrupt each other. BP told the MMS that it could handle an event like this with ease with proven technology. The MMS took BP’s word for it. Now, as they attempt ad-hoc fixes, it is clear that both BP and the federal government were unprepared for such an event. Both are at fault.

As experience shows, when regulators and representatives from a regulated industry have day-to-day contact, they grow into a cozy relationship. This sort of state corporatism, where legislators, regulators, and industry become almost symbiotic, is hugely damaging to the polity and the economy.

The best way to end this relationship is for industry to no longer see government as a source of favors and privileges. The way to do this is by cutting back those rules that entice both entities into this relationship. For example, due to antitrust rules, companies seek to win favor with government regulators, rent-seeking industries get more income from government than from ordinary customers, companies divert important resources to support hortatory government policy (“Beyond Petroleum”), and so on. Dismantling the corporate state, so that corporate discipline comes from competition rather than from regulators’ largesse, is the best way to end this coziness. It will also lower barriers to entry and spur innovation. All of these effects will provide greater protections for consumers and the environment.

Third, those involved in potentially devastating activities must bear the costs of their failures. After the Exxon Valdez spill, legislators and industry got together and agreed to a cap on damages in exchange for an increase in tax payments. Generally, damage caps create what is known as “moral hazard,” lessening the consequences – and thus increasing the likelihood – of a potentially damaging act. There are good reasons for having shareholders limited in their liability, but there are few convincing reasons to shield corporations the same way. If ending that deal means lower tax revenues, so be it.

Finally, the Gulf has become a huge “tragedy of the commons.” No one stood ready to protect the sea – certainly not the federal government – because no one owned it. Yet there are many ways to invest the ocean with property rights. Individuals could own oceanic resources such as reefs and even shares in fish stocks. Not only would such property rights give owners a real incentive to ensure that these resources grow and develop, they give the owners an incentive to defend those rights. Thus, if a fishery or reef is threatened by a risky oil installation, the owner could take legal action to ensure that the risk is lessened. At the moment, that job is the government’s, and the government doesn’t do it. Having those most affected account for these risks would do much to internalize the external costs of oil drilling.

Some of these reforms might make oil drilling more expensive, while others would reduce its cost. But taken together, they would rebalance the oil industry’s priorities to make it more responsive to its neighbors and less invested in currying government favor.

– Iain Murray is vice president for strategy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gIXWYBTpLtSayJtg41LKXpxSxVPAD9GDJBO84

By MATTHEW BROWN and RAMIT PLUSHNICK-MASTI (AP) – 5 hours ago

NEW ORLEANS – It is an overlooked danger in oil spill crisis: The crude gushing from the well contains vast amounts of natural gas that could pose a serious threat to the Gulf of Mexico’s fragile ecosystem.

The oil emanating from the seafloor contains about 40 percent methane, compared with about 5 percent found in typical oil deposits, said John Kessler, a Texas A&M University oceanographer who is studying the impact of methane from the spill.

That means huge quantities of methane have entered the Gulf, scientists say, potentially suffocating marine life and creating “dead zones” where oxygen is so depleted that nothing lives.

“This is the most vigorous methane eruption in modern human history,” Kessler said.
Methane is a colorless, odorless and flammable substance that is a major component in the natural gas used to heat people’s homes. Petroleum engineers typically burn off excess gas attached to crude before the oil is shipped off to the refinery. That’s exactly what BP has done as it has captured more than 7.5 million gallons of crude from the breached well.

A BP spokesman said the company was burning about 30 million cubic feet of natural gas daily from the source of the leak, adding up to about 450 million cubic feet since the containment effort started 15 days ago. That’s enough gas to heat about 450,000 homes for four days.

But that figure does not account for gas that eluded containment efforts and wound up in the water, leaving behind huge amounts of methane.

BP PLC said a containment cap sitting over the leaking well funneled about 619,500 gallons of oil to a drillship waiting on the ocean surface on Wednesday. Meanwhile, a specialized flare siphoning oil and gas from a stack of pipes on the seafloor burned roughly 161,700 gallons.

Thursday was focused on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers chastised BP CEO Tony Hayward.

Testifying as oil still surged into the Gulf at between 1.47 million and 2.52 million gallons a day, coating more coastal land and marshes, Hayward declared “I am so devastated with this accident,” “deeply sorry” and “so distraught.”

But he also said he was out of the loop on decisions at the well and disclaimed knowledge of any of the myriad problems on and under the Deepwater Horizon rig before the deadly explosion. BP was leasing the rig the Deepwater Horizon that exploded April 20, killing 11 workers and triggering the environmental disaster.

“BP blew it,” said Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., chairman of the House investigations panel that held the hearing. “You cut corners to save money and time.”

As for the methane, scientists are still trying to measure how much has escaped into the water and how it may damage the Gulf and it creatures.

The dangerous gas has played an important role throughout the disaster and response. A bubble of methane is believed to have burst up from the seafloor and ignited the rig explosion. Methane crystals also clogged a four-story containment box that engineers earlier tried to place on top of the breached well.

Now it is being looked at as an environmental concern.

The small microbes that live in the sea have been feeding on the oil and natural gas in the water and are consuming larger quantities of oxygen, which they need to digest food. As they draw more oxygen from the water, it creates two problems. When oxygen levels drop low enough, the breakdown of oil grinds to a halt; and as it is depleted in the water, most life can’t be sustained.

The National Science Foundation funded research on methane in the Gulf amid concerns about the depths of the oil plume and questions what role natural gas was playing in keeping the oil below the surface, said David Garrison, a program director in the federal agency who specializes in biological oceanography.

“This has the potential to harm the ecosystem in ways that we don’t know,” Garrison said. “It’s a complex problem.”

In early June, a research team led by Samantha Joye of the Institute of Undersea Research and Technology at the University of Georgia investigated a 15-mile-long plume drifting southwest from the leak site. They said they found methane concentrations up to 10,000 times higher than normal, and oxygen levels depleted by 40 percent or more.

The scientists found that some parts of the plume had oxygen concentrations just shy of the level that tips ocean waters into the category of “dead zone” – a region uninhabitable to fish, crabs, shrimp and other marine creatures.

Kessler has encountered similar findings. Since he began his on-site research on Saturday, he said he has already found oxygen depletions of between 2 percent and 30 percent in waters 1,000 feet deep.

Shallow waters are normally more susceptible to oxygen depletion. Because it is being found in such deep waters, both Kessler and Joye do not know what is causing the depletion and what the impact could be in the long- or short-term.

In an e-mail, Joye called her findings “the most bizarre looking oxygen profiles I have ever seen anywhere.”

Representatives of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration acknowledged that so much methane in the water could draw down oxygen levels and slow the breakdown of oil in the Gulf, but cautioned that research was still under way to understand the ramifications.

“We haven’t seen any long-term changes or trends at this point,” said Robert Haddad, chief of the agency’s assessment and restoration division.

Haddad said early efforts to monitor the spill had focused largely on the more toxic components of oil. However, as new data comes in, he said NOAA and other federal agencies will get a more accurate read on methane concentrations and the effects.

“The question is what’s going on in the deeper, colder parts of the ocean,” he said. “Are the (methane) concentrations going to overcome the amount of available oxygen? We want to make sure we’re not overloading the system.”

BP spokesman Mark Proegler disputed Joye’s suggestion that the Gulf’s deep waters contain large amounts of methane, noting that water samples taken by BP and federal agencies have shown minimal underwater oil outside the spill’s vicinity.

“The gas that escapes, what we don’t flare, goes up to the surface and is gone,” he said.
Steven DiMarco, an oceanographer at Texas A&M University who has studied a long-known “dead zone” in the Gulf, said one example of marine life that could be affected by low oxygen levels in deeper waters would be giant squid – the food of choice for the endangered sperm whale population. Squid live primarily in deep water, and would be disrupted by lower oxygen levels, DiMarco said.

Brown reported from Billings, Mont.

special thanks to Richard Charter

view video on this topic at:
http://www.seaturtles.org/article.php?id=1660

 June 16th, 2010
A shrimp boat captain in Louisiana hired by BP was blocked from rescuing juvenile Kemp’s ridleys that were covered in oil in the Gulf waters. He was captured on video saying that the turtles are being collected in the clean-up efforts and burned up like so much ocean debris with other marine life gathering along tide lines where oil also congregates.

He witnessed BP workers burning turtles caught in the oil booms. Rescue efforts are being ended tomorrow.

STRP’s Gulf Director Carole Allen responded to the news by saying “The burning of boom and oil when even one sea turtle was seen in the water is a despicable crime.”

STRP’s Chris Pincetich has been in communication with both the reporter who shot the interview and the Captain who witnessed the illegal killing of sea turtles, and is making arrangements to ensure that sea turtle rescue efforts are not stopped, and can be performed in areas with boomed oil.
The Los Angeles Times reported on the “Death by Fire” June 17, click here to read the story.
Sea Turtle Restoration Project * PO Box 370 * Forest Knolls, CA 94933, USA
Phone: +1 415 663 8590 * Fax: +1 415 663 9534 * info@seaturtles.org
» powered by radicalDESIGNS

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.waltonsun.com/news/across-4938-rauschkolb-hands.html

Deborah Wheeler
2010-06-17 17:36:49

When restaurateur Dave Rauschkolb organized the first Hands Across the Sand silent protest in February, he was merely one man asking friends and neighbors to take a stand with him to send a message to the Florida Legislature that the people of Florida did not want oil drilling within 10 miles of our shores.

Rauschkolb warned any powers that be who would listen that a leak from oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico could ruin our beaches and thus the livelihood of residents living along the shore.

He was impressed with the response he got from like minds across the state, but many in the legislature seemed to think those fears were radical.

Then came the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon.

After two months of watching the very disaster he predicted creep up to his doorstep, Rauschkolb has organized a second Hands Across the Sand. This time, he has the world’s attention.

“This is an opportunity on a national and world-wide level to send a clear message to our leaders that it is time to declare our independence from oil,” said Rauschkolb from his Rosemary Beach home.

Rauschkolb has been working 17 hours a day. He has flown to Washington, D.C., and talked to people all over the world to accomplish his objective. The effort has paid off in support.

On June 26 at noon, at 417 sites in roughly 300 cities in 43 states across the U.S., and 11 countries outside the U.S., including Japan, India, New Zealand, and others – concerned people will stop what they are doing, go to their nearest beach and join hands in solidarity to take a stand against offshore oil drilling.

On the website www.handsacrossthesand.org, Rauschkolb provides the tools to create a Hands Across the Sand event at any site. The site is interactive and offers T-shirt designs, posters, logos, fliers, and sample press releases.

Through the site’s map, Net surfers can view cities where an event has already been planned, and find contact information for the organizer in that city.

“I am not raising money or selling anything. Each organizer takes responsibility for their event using our tools,” said Rauschkolb.

Rauschkolb feels all Americans would be remiss if, in the midst of the tragedy, they didn’t take this opportunity to demand those in power to steer the country toward clean energy options that don’t place marine wildlife at risk.

“The fact that our worst fears have come true has underscored the need to act on a much higher level,” he said. “Not only will this affect the Gulf Coast, but it could result in an economic disaster that could affect the entire U.S. economy. It goes on and on and on with an economic impact that is far reaching.”

Rauschkolb feels it is now clearly evident this kind of disaster can and will happen again and expanded offshore drilling could endanger other communities in America and around the globe.

“I initially started getting e-mails from the U.K., Japan and New Zealand. They heard about this event and it made me realize there are other countries of the world that want to stand in solidarity on this issue with us. People in coastal communities all over the world are fearful it could happen to them,” he said.

As for how government officials are doing in handling the oil spill debacle, Rauschckolb said he spent an hour with Gov. Crist last week and was pleased with everything he had to say regarding Florida’s future. Rauschkolb said Crist is calling a special session of the legislature to propose a ban to offshore oil drilling in Florida and to propose placing an amendment on the ballot in November that would take drilling out the hands of politicians and place it in the hands of Floridians.

“I support his efforts,” said Rauschkolb.

Rauschkolb also had nothing bad to say about the president.
“I think he is doing the best he can considering the epic proportions of the disaster, considering no president has ever had to deal with this type of disaster before,” he said.

Rauschkolb believes the blame for the disaster rests not only on BP’s shoulders but on the entire offshore oil-drilling industry.

“Clearly this disaster could have been caused by any of the companies,” he said.

Rauschkolb has not only been a business owner on the Gulf Coast for 24.5 years, he lives in South Walton full time.

“On a personal level Š it’s emotional,” began Rauschkolb as he tried to explain his investment of time and energy in the Hands Across the Sand project. His explanation was interrupted as he took time to compose himself. “I care deeply for our marine and wildlife and their environment, our way of life on the Gulf and the future of all our abilities to continue making a living on this beautiful coast. I have a 7-month-old daughter and she may never know the beauty of this place the way we have come to know it. I fear our status quo and businesses could be scattered to the windŠ We all depend on seasonal tourism dollars.”

The rest of the nation and world are in solidarity with us on this,” he concluded. “We will work together for change. This gathering of people at Hands Across the Sand is of the world. The support lets me know I am not alone.”

To learn more about Hands Across the Sand and to read Rauschkolb’s mission statement and how to become involved, visit www.handsacrossthesand.org and join the more than 15,000 fans of Hands Across the Sand on Facebook.

Special thanks to Richard Charter