Oil Pipeline Breach Fouls Yellowstone River

A pipeline running underneath the Yellowstone River ruptured and dumped up to 1,000 barrels of oil into the river in Montana that runs from the national park of the same name into North Dakota. It's fouled a 25 mile stretch and it will be up to Exxon Mobil to clean up the mess (they operate the pipeline).

An Exxon Mobil spokeswoman, Pam Malek, said the pipe leaked an estimated 750 to 1,000 barrels of oil for about half an hour before it was shut down. Other Exxon officials estimate up to 42,000 gallons (158,982 litres) of crude oil escaped.

Duane Winslow, Yellowstone county director of disaster and emergency services, said the plume was dissipating as it moved downstream.

"We're just kind of waiting for it to move on down while Exxon is trying to figure out how to corral this monster," Winslow said.

"The timing couldn't be worse," said Steve Knecht, chief of operations for Montana disaster and emergency services. "With the Yellowstone running at flood stage and all the debris, it makes it dang tough to get out there to do anything."

He said the plume was measured at 25 miles near Pompeys Pillar national monument.

Alarms Were Inhibited On Deepwater Horizon

Not only does this Mike Williams, an engineer on the Deepwater Horizon claim that the alarms were inhibited on the Deepwater Horizon the day the oil rig exploded into the international consciousness and unleashed the worst oil spill in history, but this was normal operating procedures on the rig for more than a year prior to the explosion because the operators didn't want false alarms waking up workers at 3am.

Reporting from Kenner, La — Critical fire and gas leak alarm systems had been disabled for at least a year aboard the Deepwater Horizon because the rig's leaders didn't want to wake up to false alarms, a rig chief engineer tech told federal investigators.

"I discovered it was 'inhibited' about a year ago," said Mike Williams, the chief engineer tech who worked for rig owner Transocean aboard the Deepwater Horizon, which erupted in flames April 20, killing 11 men and starting the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.
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"I inquired," Williams told an investigative panel from the U.S. Coast Guard and the Interior Department in suburban New Orleans. "The explanation I got was that from the [offshore installation manager] down, they did not want people to wake up at 3 a.m. due to false alarm," Williams said. Williams later said the rig's captain had also agreed that the alarms were to be disabled.

Williams said he complained repeatedly about disabling the systems, from six months to three days prior to the rig's explosion. He said he told supervisors it was unsatisfactory for the alarms to be disabled, but was rebuffed.

The alarm systems could have been helpful to alert crew members of catastrophe and initiate an emergency shutdown system that could have shut down the engines -- a dangerous ignition source -- as soon as a surge of flammable natural gas surged up the oil well onto the rig.

This is damning testimony against Transocean, which owned the rig. Combine this with the the inadequate blowout preventer, and if the rig encountered trouble, it increased the risks of a disaster.

Moreover, this information will definitely be used in the inevitable lawsuits between the various parties involved, Transocean, BP, and other contractors on the job in trying to shift blame for the disaster. Transocean and BP will be shouldering the blame and liability here - and each will try to blame the other for the disaster and the ensuing liabilities. Disabling the alarms shows that the operators on the rig were more concerned about "workers not being awakened by false alarms" than security and safety resulting from proper operation and functioning alarms that might have given workers extra minutes and seconds to respond once the disaster was set in motion. A difference of a few seconds or minutes might have given the 11 workers who lost their lives in the disaster a fighting chance to make it to safe zones or rescue boats.

BP Caught Photoshopping Command Center Photos?

Are you kidding me. Just when you think that BP's PR department couldn't make things any worse, bloggers found that the BP command center was photoshopped. The Washington Post picks up the story and there are all kinds of reasons to doubt BP's version, which was that instead of showing empty screens at the headquarters, the photographer clumsily inserted images of the ROV video feeds.

An enlarged version of the photograph reveals flaws in the editing job. One of the 10 images sticks down into the head of one of the people sitting in front of the wall, while another piece of the image is separated from the other side of the head by jagged white space. The right side of the same image also hangs down below the area on which the video feeds were projected.

John Aravosis pointed out the alterations Monday evening on his Americablog.com and observed, "I guess if you're doing fake crisis response, you might as well fake a photo of the crisis response center." The photo doctoring comes as BP has promised transparency in a bid to regain the public's trust.

Scott Dean, a spokesman for BP, said that there was nothing sinister in the photo alteration and provided the original unaltered version. He said that a photographer working for the company had inserted the three images in spots where the video screens were blank.

Why would the command center's screens be blank at any point during this crisis? Would not someone want to know what's going on at every moment, lest another leak or problem be discovered?

While the answer to that question would seem to be yes, it is possible that some of the feeds were shut off as ROVs and their respective cameras moved in or out of position (and anyone following the disaster has seen just that on any number of pages dedicated to the ROV remote feeds). Yet, to edit the photos to insert images of the well in the empty space is just as misleading and once again shows that BP is mismanaging the public relations campaign just as badly as it did with the well safety and integrity that led to the catastrophe.

UPDATE:
It would appear that the underlying photo used as the basis for the photo editing was from years back (essentially a stock photo) and the oil well ROV images were badly superimposed on it. And John Aravosis has found other BP photos from the command center that have gotten the photo editing treatment.

What Next For BP Well Disaster

Killing the well that has spewed anywhere from 100 to 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico is still a few weeks away if the relief wells are progressing as indicated. The cap that was installed last week is apparently showing signs of a small leak, but that isn't worrying BP too much.



The tests to determine the well's integrity are showing a pressure that isn't where the engineers had hoped, indicating that there may be a leak somewhere else in the system or that the well itself has expelled such volumes of oil and gas that it isn't showing the pressures it had previously.

There are seeps of oil and gas in the vicinity of the damaged well, but BP says that they're unrelated. They may be right - one of the reasons that oil companies were drilling in the area was that geologists had seen signs of oil and gas deep underground and that some of it was making its way through the seafloor.

Thad Allen, the official appointed by Barack Obama to lead the government's response to the disaster, said leaks detected over the weekend did not threaten the well.

He said the seepage of gas from the seabed probably had nothing to do with the well. Oil and gas are known to ooze naturally from fissures in the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.

Speaking at a news conference last night, he said: "The small seepages we're seeing do not indicate at this point a threat to the well bore."

Yesterday he gave BP another 24 hours to keep the containment cap on the ruptured well closed, during a terse exchange of words between the company and the government over the handling of the crisis. Today, Allen said BP could keep the cap closed for at least another 24 hours, provided the company remained on alert for leaks.

Allen sent a stiff letter to BP on Sunday night ordering the oil giant to continue seismic and sonar monitoring around the well to try to get a better picture of what was happening now that the flow of oil had ostensibly stopped.

He said the company had an obligation to inform him of any problems within four hours of any seepage being detected.

AP has a summary of events and issues from around the region relating to the oil spill and its devastating consequences along the Gulf Coast.

Meanwhile, BP is contemplating something called a static kill, which is suspiciously similar to the failed top kill and junk shots that didn't stop the well a few weeks back. BP seems to think that the lower pressures now seen on the well would enable the static kill to work.

The sooner those relief wells get done and can then pump in the concrete to kill the well, the better.

Once again this disaster points out the folly of being pennywise and pound foolish. By saving a few bucks by cutting corners to get this well done in the way it was, BP was hoping to save money and time. Instead, it will cost them tens of billions before it's over.

Many engineering and technological breakthroughs have come through disasters - whether it's things like building and bridge collapses, oil tanker disasters (requiring double hulls, better containment, etc.), and we can only hope that the engineers figure out better ways to shut down wells that blow out like this one other than praying and wishful thinking. It means prepositioning equipment that can deal with these kinds of disasters. It means better BOPs and a whole raft of technologies that can skim oil from waters that aren't completely still (aka everywhere other than in the safe environment of a lab).

UPDATE:
While the water in many parts of the Gulf Coast appears to be fine to the naked eye, it may not be nearly as safe as you would hope.



The petroleum counts showed higher than normal levels, but the sample from near a marina could not be measured because the sample exploded for unknown reasons. The chemist doing the tests speculated that it could have been the result of methanol, methane, or the oil dispersant used to break up the oil slicks. However, another possibility for high counts could be that oil could have been leaking from the vicinity of the marina itself. Either way, this is a situation that bears continued scrutiny.

US Not Alone In Dealing With Oil Spills and Environmental Disasters

China is dealing with a major spill in one of its major port cities, Dailan. 1,476 tons of oil spilled into the waters (the equivalent of 10,776 barrels of oil or nearly 600,000 gallons.

Nobody was hurt, but hundreds of firefighters battled flames for more than 15 hours, and state media said about 1476 tons of oil had spilled into the sea, causing a 71 square mile slick.

The clean-up operation may take five days, officials said.

Industry sources are divided on how long the port will stay shut, with some estimating between seven and more than 10 days, but officials could not give a timeframe.

"The port was sealed right after the explosion. We have a one-week contingency plan, but are hoping that the oil spill can be cleaned up as soon as possible," an oil executive told Reuters.

The incident drew the attention of top Chinese officials, including President Hu Jintao, Premier Wen Jiabao and security chief Zhou Yongkang, who all issued statements and instructions during the blaze. But port officials did not show up at a news conference on Monday morning, a city government official said.

Workers are using skimmers and dispersants to break up the oil slick and stop it spreading, the official China Daily said. The pollution is concentrated about 62 miles offshore.

It's small potatoes compared to the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico (where the new cap and tests appear to show some problems with seepage from the vicinity of the wellhead), but China's environmental disasters add up because of the sheer numbers of problems with China's lax environmental protections.

Last week, it became public that there was a major spill toxic chemicals from a copper plant that led to an outcry only after the spill reached a major river. The largest gold producer in China, which owns the copper plant, didn't disclose the leak for nine days. That was due in part to heavy rains damaging a plastic liner, but an illegal drain enabled the runoff to hit the Ting River. The company claimed that the heavy rains were responsible, but the company's conduct shows a disregard for environmental concerns.

Fingers Crossed: BP Shuts Down Flow Of Oil From Deepwater Horizon Disaster

For the first time in nearly 3 months, the flow of new oil from the damaged Deepwater Horizon well has stopped as a new cap on the well appears to have worked.

Now, we've got to deal with anywhere from 90 million to 180 million gallons of oil that already leaked into the Gulf and has caused tremendous damage to the ecosystem.

With all this, you've still got stupid quips by BP executives:

“I am very excited that there’s no oil in the Gulf of Mexico,” Kent Wells, a senior vice president for BP, said about the flow during a teleconference on Thursday, “but we just started the test and I don’t want to create a false sense of excitement.”

Oil stopped flowing at 2:25 p.m. local time, Mr. Wells said, when engineers closed the choke line, the final seal of the well. Engineers and scientists will now examine the results of the tests every six hours to determine the pressure levels.

The view one mile beneath the gulf on BP’s continuous live video feed was conspicuously calm, devoid of the clouds of crude oil that had been billowing since the disaster first occurred in April. Despite the long-anticipated moment, officials involved in the spill effort, including President Obama, were quick to downplay the development as a temporary measure.

“I think it is a positive sign, we’re still in the testing phase and I’ll have more to say about it tomorrow,” President Obama said in response to a shouted question at the conclusion of a news conference devoted entirely to the passage of the financial regulatory bill.

"We’re encouraged by this development, but this isn’t over," Thad W. Allen, the retired Coast Guard admiral who is overseeing the federal response to the spill, said in a statement on Thursday. "It remains likely that we will return to the containment process using this new stacking cap connected to the risers to attempt to collect up to 80,000 barrels of oil per day until the relief well is completed."

Really? There's no oil in the Gulf? Maybe there's no new oil gushing into the Gulf, but we've got the millions of gallons that already despoiled the Gulf as a result of a combination of factors, including technological failures and greed.

The main lesson here is that the oil companies simply do not have a plan to deal with major spills such as this, and lack the capabilities to do so under the harsh conditions that they now drill deepwater wells.

Here's a history of attempts to stop the oil spill.

Oil Continues Gushing From BP Well as BP and Government Struggle With Spill's Effects

What's billed as the world's largest oil skimmer is currently being tested in the Gulf near the spill site - and we may know today whether the Coast Guard and other government agencies and BP will sign off on the A Whale going into full operation.

The ship, which swallows water with oil then separates it, can skim about 21 million gallons of oil a day. That's at least 250 times the amount that modified fishing vessels currently conducting skimming operations have been able to contain, according to Taiwanese company TMT shipping, which owns the vessel.

Meanwhile, BP said Monday that the cost of its response to the Gulf oil disaster now totals approximately $3.12 billion. That includes containment, relief well drilling, grants to Gulf states, claims paid and federal costs, the oil giant said.

A total of about 550 skimming vessels were out in the Gulf on Sunday, according to a spokeswoman for the Unified Command Joint Information Center in Houma, Louisiana. But with oil still pouring into the sea at a rate of tens of thousands of barrels a day, federal authorities closed a new section of the Gulf off Louisiana to fishing on Sunday.

The A Whale could do in a day what an entire fleet of skimmers has been able to accomplish in weeks. So what's the holdup? Well, the ship doesn't separate all oil from the water. A small percentage does get through. That should be no excuse for the skimmer to go in operation since the sheer volume of this disaster demands using extraordinary means to help control the hundreds of millions of gallons of oil that have harmed the Gulf.



BP says that it's spent more than $3 billion trying to contain the spill and to shut down the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. That is a fraction of the cost to the economy around the Gulf Coast effected by the destruction of sensitive wetlands and ecosystems, and the loss of jobs and livelihoods throughout the Gulf Coast.

A Whale Gets Put Through Its Paces

What's billed as the world's largest oil skimmer is being put through its paces by the US Coast Guard to see if it can do what its promoters promise. For the next 48 hours, the A Whale will be tested to see if it can process 600,000 barrels of water per day to separate out the oil slicked contaminants from sea water.

If it does work as advertised, it would be a massive upgrade to the oil gathering capabilities because the ship can work in heavier seas and process far more sea water than existing skimmers.

New Ship Skimmer May Provide Relief For Oil Containment Operations

If this ship, the A Whale, provides a fraction of what its designers claim are possible in a single day, then it would be a significant upgrade over oil containment and cleanup operations to date.

The designers claim that it could skim 500,000 barrels a day. To date, all the containment efforts have recovered 600,000 barrels.

The full story is here.

The vessel's billionaire owner, Nobu Su, the CEO of Taiwanese shipping company TMT Group, said the ship would float across the Gulf "like a lawn mower cutting the grass," ingesting up to 500,000 barrels of oil-contaminated water a day.

But a number of hurdles stand in his way. TMT officials said the company does not yet have government approval to assist in the cleanup or a contract with BP to perform the work.

That's part of the reason the ship was tied to pier at the Virginia Port Authority's Norfolk International Terminals Friday morning. TMT and its public-relations agency invited scores of media, elected officials and maritime industry executives to an hour-long presentation about how the ship could provide an immediate boost to clean-up efforts in the Gulf.

TMT also paid to fly in Edward Overton, a professor emeritus of environmental sciences at Louisiana State University, to get a look at the massive skimmer.

Overton blasted BP and the federal government for a lack of effort and coordination in their dual oil-spill response and made a plea to the government to allow the A Whale to join the cleanup operation.

"We need this ship. We need this help," Overton said. "That oil is already contaminating our shoreline. We've got to get the ship out there and see if it works. There's only one way to find out: Get the damn thing in the gulf and we'll see."

TMT officials acknowledged that not even they're sure how well the new skimming method will work, noting that it appeared to perform well in limited testing last week.

The system would enable the ship to take in 500,000 barrels of oiled water a day, and separate out the oil from water within that quantity. Since this ship is the size of a large oil tanker, it is substantially more capable of handling the open seas and higher volumes of liquids than other skimmers currently in operation.

Can it live up to the expectations of the designers? Even if it does 25% of what's claimed, that represents a significant upgrade over what is currently available.

So, what is standing in the way of deployment? Is it red tape and requirements that the ship release water that is devoid of all oil? Coast Guard requirements? A combination of factors? Well, it would require special EPA dispensation because it wouldn't completely remove all the oil from the water.

We're already dealing with worst case scenarios up and down the Gulf Coast, and a skimming system that eliminates a great percentage of the oil it comes in contact with is substantially better than not having that system in place - and working in conjunction with other systems would enable far greater control and containment of the spreading oil slicks and plumes.

BP Admits It Never Follows Federal Law On Blowout Preventers

BP has admitted that it doesn't follow federal law on certifying blowout preventers with the Minerals Management Service. Ever.

On the issue of the blowout preventer's capabilities, [Sen. Chuck] Grassley [R-Iowa] asked BP to show that it is in compliance with the Code of Federal Regulations Chapter 30, Section 250.416(e), which requires oil companies to provide the Minerals Management Service with proof that the massive safety devices they use to close off wells are "capable of shearing the drill pipe in the hole under maximum anticipated surface pressures."

The company responded that it applies for permits to drill oil wells "in accordance with the process prescribed by MMS officials," but goes on to say that it was not "MMS practice" to require anyone to comply with that particular section of the law.

"I find it very disturbing that BP asserts that the 'practice' in oil drilling is to avoid current laws designed to keep our beaches safe," Grassley responded in his letter. "And I am outraged that MMS is looking the other way."

Now, BP is trying to shift the blame for that on to the MMS, but the fault rests with BP. They are mandated to certify those preventers and have repeatedly failed to do so. Claiming that the MMS doesn't have a procedure for certification doesn't cut it.

It is the failure of the blowout preventer that has contributed heavily to this oil spill disaster. Had the blowout preventer worked as it should have, the oil flow would have likely been stopped - leaving the spill to be much smaller than the ongoing impact.

Also, if BP is shirking its certification requirements, are the other oil companies operating offshore doing the same? If not, why are they not doing so - what's the difference between the management styles and safety standards involved. These are questions that go to liability and culpability for the management that allowed drilling to occur under less than optimal conditions and with a disregard for safety and standard procedures in the oil industry.

There's also differing accounts on whether an oil services company, Schlumberger, withdrew their workers from the Deepwater Horizon rig because of unsafe conditions, or whether BP requested they leave after deciding not to do certain work on the casing that would have added $8-12 million to the well operations, but improved safety. One report claims BP sent them home:

The lawmakers also said BP also decided against a nine- to 12-hour procedure known as a "cement bond log" that would have tested the integrity of the cement. A team from Schlumberger, an oil services firm, was on board the rig, but BP sent the team home on a regularly scheduled helicopter flight the morning of April 20. Less than 12 hours later, the rig exploded.

BP also failed to fully circulate drilling mud, a 12-hour procedure that could have helped detect gas pockets that later shot up the well and exploded on the drilling rig.

However, other reports seems to indicate that Schlumberger (SLB) quit the rig and evacuated its employees because they considered the rig unsafe because the rig was not meeting its stringent safety standards.

SLB gets out to the Deepwater Horizon to run the CBL, and they find the well still kicking heavily, which it should not be that late in the operation. SLB orders the “company man” (BP’s man on the scene that runs the operation) to dump kill fluid down the well and shut-in the well. The company man refuses. SLB in the very next sentence asks for a helo to take all SLB personel back to shore. The company man says there are no more helo’s scheduled for the rest of the week (translation: you’re here to do a job, now do it). SLB gets on the horn to shore, calls SLB’s corporate HQ, and gets a helo flown out there at SLB’s expense and takes all SLB personel to shore.

The Congressional report seems to back the former account (that BP was done with SLB's services), and not the one that has SLB quitting the rig because of safety concerns.

Asnine Speech Analysis of the Day

CNN tries to figure out the disconnect between President Obama's most recent speech on the BP oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and the public's reaction.

Their conclusion?

It's our fault that we didn't comprehend the speech.

President Obama's speech on the gulf oil disaster may have gone over the heads of many in his audience, according to an analysis of the 18-minute talk released Wednesday.

Tuesday night's speech from the Oval Office of the White House was written to a 9.8 grade level, said Paul J.J. Payack, president of Global Language Monitor. The Austin, Texas-based company analyzes and catalogues trends in word usage and word choice and their impact on culture.

Though the president used slightly less than four sentences per paragraph, his 19.8 words per sentence "added some difficulty for his target audience," Payack said.

He singled out this sentence from Obama as unfortunate: "That is why just after the rig sank, I assembled a team of our nation's best scientists and engineers to tackle this challenge -- a team led by Dr. Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and our nation's secretary of energy."

Really?

That's why Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann and a whole litany of media types panned the speech?



Matthews did post-graduate work in Economics. Olbermann graduated from Cornell. So the speech was over their heads?

Those are some of the Administration's biggest media supporters, and they panned the speech because it contained nothing really new and nothing we hadn't already heard in the last 57 days. I'm not a fan of either Olbermann or Matthews, but this speech was panned across the board by people of all kinds of educational backgrounds - including those who attended Ivy League universities.

Maybe it wasn't so much how he said it but what he said - or didn't say?

You know - maybe it was the content of the speech that upset so many people.

This isn't about the audience's inability to understand the President. It is that the President's speech was lacking on the specifics and general policies that will help get the oil spill under control and make sure that BP does everything within its power to stop the flow of oil into the Gulf.

The speech was ineffective because the President wasn't offering anything that we haven't already heard from the Administration through its multiple sources.

Photo and Caption of the Day

The Los Angeles Times has a story up about President Obama's speech last night, and includes the following photo and caption that are top notch.

The caption reads: "Gov. Charlie Christ checks a Florida beach for signs of oil".

Really? That's what he's checking for right there? He's apparently checking for oil on the backside of the ladies as they saunter into the ocean in barely there bikinis.

For that, we've got the caption and photo of the day.

BP Sets Aside $20 Billion For Spill Compensation

British Petroleum is putting aside $20 billion for spill compensation. This is a down payment on the damage, and will in no way be sufficient to compensate all those damaged by the oil spill. A 3d party administrator will probably be along the lines of the victim compensation fund set up in the aftermath of 9/11 to handle claims by victims of the attacks and run by Kenneth Feinberg.

I'm not surprised that Feinberg's name is showing up here.

Not only did he handle the victim compensation fund for the 9/11 attack, but he was again called on to administer the sick workers fund (once that gets approved by the members of the class). He also got called on to handle executive compensation following the Wall Street meltdown and ensuing hot air from Congress over executive pay.

He's real good at what he does and is generally seen as reasonable and fair in determining awards.

But to put the $20 billion in perspective, $20 billion is the amount that was thrown around in the days after 9/11 to pay for the rebuilding efforts. That severely underestimated the costs there too.

In fact, the costs for Louisiana alone may top $100 billion although it is unlikely that they will ever recoup those losses. Florida, Alabama and Mississippi would similarly see serious losses - and if the spill reaches out into the Atlantic, other states could see massive losses.

And that doesn't touch on the international liabilities if the oil damages coastlines of other countries along the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean.