A must see: Online CBS 60 Minutes: The BP Oil Blowout

60 Minute Expose (click)

Some of the best investigative journalism ever.  Mike Williams, the rig's chief electrical engineer survived under the most harrowing circumstances imaginable. He now tells What BP, Halliburton, and Transocean Executives never told the Senators this past Tuesday -- How BP (weeks behind schedule) in a rush to get the oil ignored critical advice to use safer procedures. For BP, Profits trumped safety, 11 workers lost their lives and what may become one of the worst ecological nightmares in history continues. We also learn that there is another BP time bomb in the Gulf -- the Atlantis Rig. Hopefully Mr. Williams will get to tell his story in Congress. 

                Oil slick BP Deepwater Horizon Wellhead: May 6 (Daniel Beltra, Reuters)

Too Deep to Fail = Too Deep to Drill

Listening to the Senators grill BP's Lamar McKay (BP photo, left) and executives from Halliburton and Transocean last week, one thing became very clear --  no one really knows what is going on a mile below the surface. The gush rate may be 5000 or 100,000 barrels a day. According to an article in today's NY Times  scientists have discovered enormous plumes deep in Gulf waters as big as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and as thick as 300 feet thick -- indicating that the release rate may be much greater than BP's 5000 barrel per day estimate. Scientists fear that the submerged oil is likely to deplete dissolved oxygen critical to the survival of marine life. 


And, as BP's repeated failed efforts demonstrate, its very difficult to figure out how to shut off the flow at this depth. As those on the hot seat testified they have virtually no experience with such disasters. According to a number of Internet sources there are very few wells pumping from depths greater than 5,000 feet. 

Photo Source: Oilism

There are very few oil wells that pump oil from these depths. According to Shell's website, the company's Perdido Development (pictured below and pumping for a month) is the deepest installation in the world with a depth of 8000 feet below the Gulf surface some 200 miles from the Texas coast.  Perdido is pumping natural gas as well as crude through separate pipe lines to the shore. Like the BP's operation, remotely controlled robots (designed to withstand the enormous pressures) will patrol the well head area on the sea bed. We can only wonder what would happen if disaster strikes Shell's new installation. (Perdido means lost in Spanish.) Shell plans to use the same floating rig to pump oil from other deep water locations (link above). 


Photo Source: Shell Oil 
                             
It is clear that much tougher regulations and enforcement are in store for offshore oil ventures. However, given the magnitude and duration of ecological destruction and costs to fishing, tourism and residents along the coast additional constraints will be needed. 


According to Shell's website  the Perdido is a floating rig that can be transported to oil rich Gulf sources hundreds of miles from the current location. However, it would make sense to restrict Perdido's production until a complete investigation of the BP disaster and the Perdido installation (accident prevention, accident response and control measures and environmental impact assessments are completed. 


In addition, there should be a complete moratorium on any new drilling in  U.S. coastal waters until the federal government can assure that we won't have any repeats of the BP disaster.  


                                                         

PBS NEWS HOUR LEAKING OIL COUNTER

 PBS NEWS HOUR BP OIL LEAK COUNTER AND RELATED NEWS

Today's news on the Oil in the Gulf

See Great Hightower Humor  on Gov. Rick Perry and the Offshore Oil Debacle. (From Truthout May 13, 2010)

See Also

Criminal Charges Likely From Gulf Oil Spill, Legal Experts Say Wednesday 12 May 2010

by: Marisa Taylor  |  McClatchy Newspapers

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/05/12/94061/federal-laws-point-to-criminal.html

A report from Louisiana by Willie Fontenot: Big Oil Versus Democratic Rights and the Environment

Editor's Note: Willie Fontenot, an environmental leader from Baton Rouge sent in the following alert along with some encouraging thoughts. His photo appears below and bio following the article. 

While hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil from the BP's gusher into the Gulf, oil companies have been waging a nasty campaign to pass legislation that would close the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic and similar clinics around the state. The Bill is being pushed by the oil and chemical industry. There is an excellent article in today's The Times-Picayune by reporter James Gill: Here is the intro: "Although the bill was conceived as revenge against Tulane, its animus extends to every university law clinic in the state. Students at the clinics provide free legal services to the poor across the legal spectrum. Yet because Tulane has provoked the ire of polluting industries, all the other clinics would be forced to close, or operate under severe constraints. The bill would put the kibosh on four of Tulane's clinics, according to Law School dean Stephen Griffin.

It would forbid clinics to 'file a petition, motion or suit' against any government agency or to seek monetary damages for any client. Clinics, except in criminal cases, would not be allowed to raise "state constitutional challenges in state or federal court."


Willie Continues:Two months ago I would have given the bill a 90 percent chance of passing. Today the chances are probably below 10 percent. Just the number of people who responded to the article this morning is a pretty good example of how the public is taking a new look at everything that government does and does not do. The BP disaster has definitely changed many things. This morning on CNN they were doing a story which compared the EXXON Valdez disaster in Alaska 21 years ago and how the waters and wetlands of Alaska have not yet recovered from that oil spill. We now have something which is giving the news media an unusual opportunity they have not had in twenty years.

________

Willie Fontenot has been involved in environmental and social justice issues for forty years. He served in the Environmental Section of the Louisiana Attorney General’s office for twenty seven years. Over the last 40 years he has helped to organize more than 500 community groups throughout Louisiana and more than 30 other states on a wide variety of environmental and social justice issues and problems.

Gold at Record High Prices -- Cost to Ecosystems Skyrockets

What does the high price of gold have to do with the fate of the Amazon Rain Forest?

Although our attention is focused on the disastrous BP Oil gusher in the Gulf, there is another eco-menace at work – it’s the price of gold. As the article in the side page (link) highlights, jittery investors in global stock markets are buying gold, the universal safe bet, driving the price of gold up to a near record high. The soaring price paid for gold is fueling a modern day gold rush -- much of it in ecologically sensitive areas. 

Unfortunately, some of the best deposits are in ecologically critical rain forests. To make matters worse, gold mining is one of the most environmentally destructive processes ever invented.

“Gold mining, however, generates more waste per ounce than any other metal, and the mines' mind-bending disparities of scale show why: These gashes in the Earth are so massive they can be seen from space, yet the particles being mined in them are so microscopic that, in many cases, more than 200 could fit on the head of a pin. ….Extracting a single ounce of gold there—the amount in a typical wedding ring—requires the removal of more than 250 tons of rock and ore.” Source: Stock Block Web

In the Peruvian forest pictured above, mining is done using hydraulic mining of and uses toxic chemicals including cyanide and mercury to separate the gold from the deposits of mud and sand (found in river channels and flood plains). Mercury escaping from the process can form an organic form that biomagnifies in food chains. For an excellent article on the subject see: Mongabay Website 

As the figure from Mongabay shows, gold mining can have a devastating impact on forests. This impact has been escalating dramatically over the past few years.

The figure in the sidebar (click title) demonstrates the strong inverse relationship between the value of gold and the value of stock markets. 

Here is a question: How can the free market alone protect rain forests and other ecosystems from this kind of devastation. Post your thoughts?

APRIL 2010: 40TH ANNIVERSARY OF EARTH DAY

   An Economic and Political Perspective

  Henry S. Cole, Ph.D.

The 40th anniversary of Earth Day happened last week. I participated in the first Earth Day as a young professor and environmental activist back in1970. We had high hopes. People were jumping on the eco-wagon like there was no tomorrow. Well here we are tomorrow, four decades later. And we've had a busy Earth Month. 

President Obama announced his plans to open up more coastal waters to the oil industry,

 n a stroke of bad timing for the President’s policy, one of BP’s big oil rigs exploded and sunk the    Gulf of Mexico (on Earth Day). The resulting oil slick expanded rapidly week and threatens estuaries and fish and shrimp industries in four states. See ABC TV video.  According to the Wall Street Journal, the rig had no remote shut-off switch used in other oil-producing nations  U.S. regulators don’t require them. On Thursday, the head of the Coast Guard’s efforts, Mary Landry said that the situation is deteriorating and the spill may wind up being one of the worst in history.

The good news. After nine long years, the Interior Department finally approved a 130-turbine wind farm off the coast of Cape Cod providing a real boost to the U.S. offshore wind industry. See NY Times coverage; The U.S. has lots of offshore wind. 

But there are other news in the making that may ultimately have a more important impact on the future of the environment. Consider the Senate the revelations emerging from the Senate subcommittee hearing on the impact of Goldman Sachs on the financial system and the broader economy. Thanks to financial experts like Simon Johnson (See Johnson and Kwak’s best-selling 13 Bankers and their Blog, Baseline Scenario) and this week’s Senate hearing (See the video), we can see how the reckless speculation and avarice of the Wall Street investment banks contributed the financial meltdown of 2008 and the worst recession since the Great Depression. According to a recent CNN Report: the Bailout Tracker our federal government has already spent 3 trillion dollars and committed 11 trillion dollars to bailout the “too-big-to-fails” (TBTFs). Now the Mega-banks are again making billions while the 15 million Americans are unemployed and millions have lost their homes.

The Wall Street fiasco is an outgrowth of the deregulation that started under President Reagan and continues to flourish. Environmental regulation and enforcement was especially hard hit under Reagan and George W. Bush. 

Hopefully Congress will enact legislation strong enough to rein in the TBTFs that profit by betting against the rest of us. However, ultimately, the real solution is for Congress to ensure that no corporation is powerful enough to wreck havoc on our economy or on the environment.

The juxtaposition of these stories points to a monumental fork in the road – not just a choice between renewables and fossil fuels, but a deeper choice about the way that decisions are made and for whose benefit. It’s about whether mega-corporations or “We the People” will mold the future.  

If permitted, large energy corporations will not only “drill, baby, drill,” but will attempt to squeeze oil from shales and tar sands regardless of the environmental consequences. Big Energy also wants a free hand to reopen uranium mines to fuel a new generation of nuclear power plants with big government subsidies regardless of the environmental and financial risks. Note that the President’s energy plan includes tens of billions of dollars in loan guarantees to entice reluctant banks to invest in nuclear power.

The CEO of one of these companies is likely to use the following strategy (1) use political power to regulatory concessions; (2) get big government subsidies (3) make big profits but saddle the tax paying public with the risks (4) suggest that your firm may leave town if you don’t get what you want. The latter is especially scary to a governor in an economically depressed state with high unemployment. So he or she instructs the head of the state environmental department and the Senator to go easy on the guy with the big smoke stack. Somehow the threat of losing another 500 jobs seems a bit more compelling than a few more cancers or a melting glacier on a far off mountain.

Finally, one should ask what if the trillions used for bailouts had been invested directly in the small, local businesses and community-oriented banks. What if we invested to help state and local governments solve their budget crises?  Imagine if even a small part of the $$$ were invested to boost wind and solar industries and to restore damaged ecosystems. Then we might just be able to celebrate fully on the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day. 

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