BP Spill: Has the damage been exaggerated?

[DarrinS]

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2007202-1,00.html






President Obama has called the BP oil spill "the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced," and so has just about everyone else. Green groups are sounding alarms about the "Catastrophe Along the Gulf Coast," while CBS, Fox and MSNBC slap "Disaster in the Gulf" chryons on all their spill-related news. Even BP fall guy Tony Hayward, after some early happy talk, admitted the spill was an "environmental catastrophe." The obnoxious anti-environmentalist Rush Limbaugh has been a rare voice arguing that the spill — he calls it "the leak" — is anything less than an ecological calamity, scoffing at the avalanche of end-is-nigh eco-hype.

Well, Rush has a point. The Deepwater explosion was an awful tragedy for the 11 workers who died on the rig, and it's no leak; it's the biggest oil spill in U.S. history. It's also inflicting serious economic and psychological damage on coastal communities that depend on tourism, fishing and drilling. But so far — while it's important to acknowledge that the long-term potential danger is simply unknowable for an underwater event that took place just three months ago — it does not seem to be inflicting severe environmental damage. "The impacts have been much, much less than everyone feared," says geochemist Jacqueline Michel, a federal contractor who is coordinating shoreline assessments in Louisiana.
(See pictures of the Gulf oil spill.)

Yes, the spill killed birds — but so far, less than 1% of the birds killed by the Exxon Valdez. Yes, we've heard horror stories about oiled dolphins — but, so far, wildlife response teams have collected only three visibly oiled carcasses of any mammals. Yes, the spill prompted harsh restrictions on fishing and shrimping, but so far, the region's fish and shrimp have tested clean, and the restrictions are gradually being lifted. And, yes, scientists have warned that the oil could accelerate the destruction of Louisiana's disintegrating coastal marshes — a real slow-motion ecological calamity — but, so far, shorelines assessment teams have only found about 350 acres of oiled marshes, when Louisiana was already losing about 15,000 acres of wetlands every year.
(Comment on this story.)

The disappearance of more than 2,000 square miles of coastal Louisiana over the last century has been a true national tragedy, ravaging a unique wilderness, threatening the bayou way of life and leaving communities like New Orleans extremely vulnerable to hurricanes from the Gulf. And while much of the erosion has been caused by the re-engineering of the Mississippi River — which no longer deposits much sediment at the bottom of its Delta — quite a bit has been caused by the oil and gas industry, which gouged 8,000 miles of canals and pipelines through coastal wetlands. But the spill isn't making that problem much worse. Coastal scientist Paul Kemp, a former Louisiana State University professor who is now a National Audubon Society vice president, compares the impact of the spill on the vanishing marshes to "a sunburn on a cancer patient."
(See TIME's graphic "100 Days of the BP Spill.")

Marine scientist Ivor Van Heerden, another former LSU prof who's working for a spill response contractor, says "there's just no data to suggest this is an environmental disaster. I have no interest in making BP look good — I think they lied about the size of the spill — but we're not seeing catastrophic impacts," says Van Heerden, who, like just about everyone else working in the Gulf these days, is being paid out of BP's spill response funds. "There's a lot of hype, but no evidence to justify it."

The scientists I spoke with cite four basic reasons the initial eco-fears seem overblown. First, the Deepwater Horizon oil, unlike the black glop from the Valdez, is comparatively light and degradable, which is why the slick in the Gulf is dissolving surprisingly rapidly now that the gusher has been capped. Second, the Gulf of Mexico, unlike Prince William Sound, is balmy at more than 85 degrees, which also helps bacteria break down oil. Third, heavy flows of Mississippi River water helped keep the oil away from the coast, where it can do much more damage. Finally, Mother Nature can be incredibly resilient. Van Heerden's assessment team showed me around Casse-tete Island in Timbalier Bay, where new shoots of spartina grasses were sprouting in oiled marshes, and new leaves were growing on the first black mangroves I had ever seen that were actually black. "It comes back fast, doesn't it?" Van Heerden said.
(See 12 people to blame for the Gulf oil spill.)

Van Heerden is controversial in Louisiana, so I should mention that this isn't the first time he and Kemp helped persuade me the conventional wisdom about a big story was wrong. Shortly after Hurricane Katrina, when the Army Corps of Engineers was still insisting that a gigantic surge had overwhelmed its levees, they gave me a tour that debunked the prevailing narrative, demonstrating that most of the breached floodwalls showed no signs of overtopping. Eventually, the Corps admitted that they were right, that the surge in New Orleans was not so gigantic, that engineering failures had drowned the city. But there was still a lot of resentment down here of Van Heerden and his big mouth, especially after he wrote an I-told-you-so book about Katrina. He made powerful enemies at LSU, lost his faculty job, and is now suing the university. Meanwhile, he's been trashed locally as a BP shill ever since he downplayed the spill in a video on BP's website.



But Van Heerden and Kemp were right about Katrina, and when it comes to BP, they're sticking to the evidence gathered by the spill response teams — which all include a state and a federal representative as well as a BP contractor. So far, the teams have collected nearly 3,000 dead birds, but less than half were visibly oiled; some may have died from eating oil-contaminated food, but others may have simply died naturally at a time when the Gulf happened to be crawling with carcass-seekers. In any case, the Valdez may have killed as many as 435,000 birds. The teams have found 488 dead sea turtles, which is unfortunate, but only 17 were visibly oiled; otherwise, they have found only one other dead reptile in the entire Gulf. "We can't speak to the long-term impacts, but Ivor is just saying what all of us are seeing," says Amy Holman, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration director for Alaska who is working on Van Heerden's assessment team in the Gulf.

The shoreline teams have documented more than 600 miles of oiled beaches and marshes, but the beaches are fairly easy to clean, and the beleaguered marshes don't seem to be suffering much additional damage. Oil has blackened the fringes of the marshes, but most of it stayed within a few feet of the edge; waves from a recent tropical storm did carry some more oil a few meters inland, but very little of it infiltrated the wetland soils that determine the health of the marsh.
(See the world's top 10 environmental disasters.)

LSU coastal scientist Eugene Turner has dedicated much of his career to documenting how the oil industry has ravaged Louisiana's coast with canals and pipelines, but he says the BP spill will be a comparative blip; he predicts that the oil will destroy fewer marshes than the airboats deployed to clean up the oil. "We don't want to deny that there's some damage, but nothing like the damage we've seen for years," he says.

It's true that oil spills can create long-term problems; in Alaska, for example, shorebirds that ate Exxon-tainted mussels have had lower reproductive success, and herring fisheries have yet to fully recover. The potential long-term damage that underwater oil plumes and an unprecedented amount of chemical dispersants that BP has spread in the area could have on the region's deepwater ecosystems and food chains might not be known for years. Some scientists worry that the swarms of oil-eating bacteria will lower dissolved oxygen levels; there has been early evidence of modest reductions, although nothing approaching the "dead zones" that were already proliferating in the Gulf of Mexico because of agricultural runoff in the Mississippi Basin. "People always fear the worst in a spill, and this one was especially scary because we didn't know when it would stop," says Michel, an environmental consultant who has worked spills for NOAA for over 30 years. "But the public always overestimates the danger — and this time those of us in the spill business did too."
(Watch TIME's video "Portraits From the Oil Spill.")

It's easy to overstate the policy implications of this optimistic news. BP still needs to clean up its mess; federal regulation of deepwater drilling still needs to be strengthened; we still need to use fewer fossil fuels that warm the planet; we still don't need to use more corn ethanol (which is actually dirtier than gasoline). The push to exploit the spill to push a comprehensive energy and climate bill through Congress has already stalled anyway — even though the planet still needs one.

The good news does suggest the folly of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal's $350 million plan to build sand berms and rock jetties to protect marshes and barrier islands from oil. Some of the berms are already washing into the Gulf, and scientists agree that oil is the least of the problems facing Louisiana's coast, which had already lost over 2,000 square miles of wetlands before the spill. "Imagine how much real restoration we could do with all that money," Van Heerden says.
(Watch TIME's video "Oil Spill Anxiety on the Bayou.")

Anti-oil politicians, anti-Obama politicians and underfunded green groups all have obvious incentives to accentuate the negative in the Gulf. So did the media, because disasters drive ratings and sell magazines; those oil-soaked pelicans you keep seeing on TV (and the cover of TIME) were a lot more compelling than the healthy pelicans I saw roosting on some protective boom in Bay Jimmy. Even Limbaugh, when he wasn't downplaying the spill, was outrageously hyping it as "Obama's Katrina." But honest scientists don't do that, even when they work for Audubon.

"There are a lot of alarmists in the bird world," Kemp says. "People see oiled pelicans, and they go crazy. But this has been a disaster for people, not biota."

[CosmicCowboy]

http://www.aolcdn.com/channels/09/00/485faecc-003d2-0206d-400cb8e1
Wheres the oil?

[Winehole23]

Two questions: has the damage even been measured yet?

Has the well been decisively capped?

[Winehole23]

If the discovered info is insufficient for the fearmongers the same surely goes for kneejerk minimizers like DarrinS.

[Winehole23]

Hell, the scientific studies will be under wraps for at least three years. Isn't it a little soon to crow that the Deepwater spill doesn't amount to much?

Are you gonna wait for the scientific returns, Darrin, or do you prefer jumping to conclusions?

[boutons_deux]

"scientific studies will be under wraps for at least three years"

And BP is corrupting every scientist it can buy to keep their findings secret.

BP will fight damages as aggressively, and very probably, as successfully as our good old American "person" Exxon did for 21 years.

[CavsSuperFan]

People that think that they should be able to eat shell fish without the risk of dying are a bunch of Left Wing Whacko’s….One day we will probably discover that tar balls are healthy to eat…

[George Gervin's Afro]

So is this Obama's katrina or not?

[CosmicCowboy]

People that think that they should be able to eat shell fish without the risk of dying are a bunch of Left Wing Whacko’s….One day we will probably discover that tar balls are healthy to eat…

Shit, I quit eating oysters 15 years ago. Eating filter-feeders from the ocean was nuts BEFORE the oil spill.

[admiralsnackbar]

Shit, I quit eating oysters 15 years ago. Eating filter-feeders from the ocean was nuts BEFORE the oil spill.
I take your meaning, but everything in the ocean is ultimately a filter feeder. Have you sworn-off scrimps, huachinango, grouper, etc?

[CosmicCowboy]

nope, just first generation FF's.

[DarrinS]

Hell, the scientific studies will be under wraps for at least three years. Isn't it a little soon to crow that the Deepwater spill doesn't amount to much?

Are you gonna wait for the scientific returns, Darrin, or do you prefer jumping to conclusions?


What did I conclude? I posted an article.

[Oh, Gee!!]

so if wasn't that bad, will right-wing pundits lay off of Obama for his performance? or will they persist in those attacks, but use these new arguments to lobby for more drilling?

[DarrinS]

Why do people get bent when environmental crises turn out not to be so catastrophic?

Isn't it good news?

[George Gervin's Afro]

so if wasn't that bad, will right-wing pundits lay off of Obama for his performance? or will they persist in those attacks, but use these new arguments to lobby for more drilling?

Well you could logically conclude now that Obama's vision may have worked after all..

[DarrinS]

Well you could logically conclude now that Obama's vision may have worked after all..


This thread isn't about Obama.

[admiralsnackbar]

Why do people get bent when environmental crises turn out not to be so catastrophic?

Isn't it good news?

Why are you so willing to assume it isn't catastrophic? An opinion piece in that venerable scientific journal that is Time? We don't even know what the short-term effects will be, much less those on the horizon, and you're acting like people's ignorance amounts to "news?"

[Winehole23]

What did I conclude? I posted an article.There's a pattern here, Darrin. Anyone who searches out your previous posts will see it.

[DarrinS]

Why are you so willing to assume it isn't catastrophic? An opinion piece in that venerable scientific journal that is Time? We don't even know what the short-term effects will be, much less those on the horizon, and you're acting like people's ignorance amounts to "news?"


Were any experts quoted in that article? Experts with "boots on the ground" so to speak?

[DarrinS]

There's a pattern here, Darrin. Anyone who searches out your previous posts will see it.


You are about the same age as me. Given all the apocalyptic doomsday scenarios portrayed in the media and pop culture of the early 1970's, aren't you glad none of that shit became a reality?

[admiralsnackbar]

Were any experts quoted in that article? Experts with "boots on the ground" so to speak?

None whom I've heard of.

[CosmicCowboy]

Well you could logically conclude now that Obama's vision may have worked after all..

You are absolutely hilarious.

[George Gervin's Afro]

You are absolutely hilarious.

5,4,3,2,1.. blame Obama for ineffective response....

[EVAY]

The disaster has gone underwater. It has not disappeared, except perhaps from the front pages of some newspapers and magazines. The oil will still kill wildlife and soil previously pristine beaches for years to come. The time upcoming is the time that most coastal residents fear most; the time that BP will start lagging even more in its clean-up efforts because the news media wants something else to talk about; the time that the Darrins of the world run out and say "if I can't see it it must be gone".

[DarrinS]

The disaster has gone underwater. It has not disappeared, except perhaps from the front pages of some newspapers and magazines. The oil will still kill wildlife and soil previously pristine beaches for years to come. The time upcoming is the time that most coastal residents fear most; the time that BP will start lagging even more in its clean-up efforts because the news media wants something else to talk about; the time that the Darrins of the world run out and say "if I can't see it it must be gone".



You sound even more expert than the experts quoted in the OP.

[EVAY]

You sound even more expert than the experts quoted in the OP.

I just spent the last two weeks with a guy who has lived on the Alabama gulf coast for almost 80 years and another who has been fighting BP since this began.

I believe that they are experts, and I share their concerns.

[LnGrrrR]

You sound even more expert than the experts quoted in the OP.

Wow, I wasn't aware that every wildlife and oceanography expert was contacted for their thoughts in that article. It must have taken the author quite some time.

[admiralsnackbar]

Good news, everybody!

*****************************

By Dan Froomkin

Scientists have found signs of an oil-and-dispersant mix under the shells of tiny blue crab larvae in the Gulf of Mexico, the first clear indication that the unprecedented use of dispersants in the BP oil spill has broken up the oil into toxic droplets so tiny that they can easily enter the foodchain.
Marine biologists started finding orange blobs under the translucent shells of crab larvae in May, and have continued to find them "in almost all" of the larvae they collect, all the way from Grand Isle, Louisiana, to Pensacola, Fla. -- more than 300 miles of coastline -- said Harriet Perry, a biologist with the University of Southern Mississippi's Gulf Coast Research Laboratory.
And now, a team of researchers from Tulane University using infrared spectrometry to determine the chemical makeup of the blobs has detected the signature for Corexit, the dispersant BP used so widely in the Deepwater Horizon
"It does appear that there is a Corexit sort of fingerprint in the blob samples that we ran," Erin Gray, a Tulane biologist, told the Huffington Post Thursday. Two independent tests are being run to confirm those findings, "so don't say that we're 100 percent sure yet," Gray said.
"The chemistry test is still not completely conclusive," said Tulane biology professor Caz Taylor, the team's leader. "But that seems the most likely thing."
With BP's well possibly capped for good, and the surface slick shrinking, some observers of the Gulf disaster are starting to let down their guard, with some journalists even asking: Where is the oil? (http://abcnews.go.com/WN/bp-oil-spill-crude-mother-nature-breaks-slick/story?id=11254252)
But the answer is clear: In part due to the1.8 million gallons of dispersant that BP used, a lot of the estimated 200 million or more gallons of oil that spewed out of the blown well remains under the surface of the Gulf in plumes of tiny toxic droplets. And it's short- and long-term effects could be profound.
BP sprayed dispersant onto the surface of the slick and into the jet of oil and gas as it erupted out of the wellhead a mile beneath the surface. As a result, less oil reached the surface and the Gulf's fragile coastline. But more remained under the surface.
Fish, shrimp and crab larvae, which float around in the open seas, are considered the most likely to die on account of exposure to the subsea oil plumes. There are fears, for instance, that an entire year's worth of bluefin tuna larvae may have perished.
But this latest discovery suggests that it's not just larvae at risk from the subsurface droplets. It's also the animals that feed on them.
"There are so many animals that eat those little larvae," said Robert J. Diaz, a marine scientist at the College of William and Mary.
Oil itself is of course toxic, especially over long exposure. But some scientists worry that the mixture of oil with dispersants will actually prove more toxic, in part because of the still not entirely understood ingredients of Corexit, and in part because of the reduction in droplet size.
"Corexit is in the water column, just as we thought, and it is entering the bodies of animals. And it's probably having a lethal impact there," said Susan Shaw, director of the Marine Environmental Research Institute. The dispersant, she said, is like " a delivery system" for the oil.
Although a large group (http://www.crrc.unh.edu/dwg/dwh_dispersants_use_meeting_report.pdf) of marine scientists meeting in late May reached a consensus that the application of dispersants was a legitimate element of the spill response, another group (http://www.meriresearch.org/Portals/0/Documents/CONSENSUS%20STATEMENT%20ON%20DISPERSANTS%20IN%20TH E%20GULF%20updated%20July%2017.pdf), organized by Shaw, more recently concluded "that Corexit dispersants, in combination with crude oil, pose grave health risks to marine life and human health and threaten to deplete critical niches in the Gulf food web that may never recover."
One particular concern: "The properties that facilitate the movement of dispersants through oil also make it easier for them to move through cell walls, skin barriers, and membranes that protect vital organs, underlying layers of skin, the surfaces of eyes, mouths, and other structures."
Perry told the Huffington Post that the small size of the droplets was clearly a factor in how the oil made its way under the crab larvae shells. Perry said the oil droplets in the water "are just the right size that probably in the process of swimming or respiring, they're brought into that cavity."
That would not happen if the droplets were larger, she said.
The oil droplet washes off when the larvae molt, she said -- but that's assuming they live that long. Larvae are a major food source for fish and other blue crabs -- "their siblings are their favorite meal," Perry explained. Fish are generally able to excrete ingested oil, but inverterbrates such as crabs don't have that ability.
Perry said the discovery of the oil and dispersant blobs is very troubling -- but not, she made clear, because it has any impact on the safety of seafood in the short run. "Unlike heavy metals that biomagnify as they go up the foodchain, oil doesn't seem to do that," she said. Rather, she said, "we're looking at long-term ecological effects of having this oil in contact with marine organisms."
Diaz, the marine scientist from William and Mary, spoke at a lunchtime briefing about dispersants on Capitol Hill on Thursday.
Dispersant, he explained, "doesn't make the oil go away, it just puts it from one part of the ecosystem into another."
In this case, he said, "the decision was to keep as much of the oil subsurface as possible." As a result, the immediate impact on coastal wildlife was mitigated. But the effects on ocean life, he said, are less clear -- in part because there's less known about ocean ecosystems than coastal ones.
"As we go further offshore, as the oil industry has gone offshore, we find that we know less," he said. "We haven't really been using oceanic species to assess the risks, and this is a key issue."
(Similar concerns have been expressed about the lack of important data (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/16/turtle-rescue-efforts-are_n_649425.html) that would allow scientists to accurately assess the effects of the spill on the Gulf's sea turtles, whose plight (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/02/gulf-oil-spill-the-plight_n_634083.html) is emerging as particularly poignant.)

Diaz warned of the danger posed to bluefin tuna -- and also to "the signature resident species in the Gulf, the shrimp." He noted that all three species of Gulf shrimp spawn offshore before moving back into shallow estuaries.
Diaz also expressed concern that dispersed oil droplets could end up doing great damage to the Gulf's many undersea coral reefs. "If the droplets agglomerate with sediment," he said, "they could even settle to the bottom."
Nancy Kinner, co-director of the Coastal Response Center at the University of New Hampshire, said the use of dispersants in this spill raises many issues that scientists need to explore, starting with the effects of long-term exposure. She also noted that scientists have never studied the effects of dispersants when they're injected directly into the turbulence of the plume, as they were here, or at such depth, or at such low temperatures, or under such pressure.
She also said it will be essential for the federal government to accurately determine how much oil made it out of the blown well. A key data point for scientists is the ratio of dispersant to oil, she said, and "if you don't know the flow rate of the oil, you don't know what you dispersant to oil ratio is."
After a series of ludicrous estimates, the federal government settled last month on an official estimate (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/10/government-raises-estimat_n_608208.html) of about 20,000 to 40,000 barrels a day, but BP is widely expected to contest that figure and some scientists think it is still a low-ball estimate.
There seems to be no doubt that history will record that the use of dispersants was good for BP, making it harder to tell how much oil was spilled, and reducing the short-term visible impact. But what's less clear is whether it will turn out to have been good for the Gulf.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/29/scientists-find-evidence_n_664298.html?view=print

[EVAY]

Good news, everybody!

*****************************

By Dan Froomkin

Scientists have found signs of an oil-and-dispersant mix under the shells of tiny blue crab larvae in the Gulf of Mexico, the first clear indication that the unprecedented use of dispersants in the BP oil spill has broken up the oil into toxic droplets so tiny that they can easily enter the foodchain.
Marine biologists started finding orange blobs under the translucent shells of crab larvae in May, and have continued to find them "in almost all" of the larvae they collect, all the way from Grand Isle, Louisiana, to Pensacola, Fla. -- more than 300 miles of coastline -- said Harriet Perry, a biologist with the University of Southern Mississippi's Gulf Coast Research Laboratory.
And now, a team of researchers from Tulane University using infrared spectrometry to determine the chemical makeup of the blobs has detected the signature for Corexit, the dispersant BP used so widely in the Deepwater Horizon
"It does appear that there is a Corexit sort of fingerprint in the blob samples that we ran," Erin Gray, a Tulane biologist, told the Huffington Post Thursday. Two independent tests are being run to confirm those findings, "so don't say that we're 100 percent sure yet," Gray said.
"The chemistry test is still not completely conclusive," said Tulane biology professor Caz Taylor, the team's leader. "But that seems the most likely thing."
With BP's well possibly capped for good, and the surface slick shrinking, some observers of the Gulf disaster are starting to let down their guard, with some journalists even asking: Where is the oil? (http://abcnews.go.com/WN/bp-oil-spill-crude-mother-nature-breaks-slick/story?id=11254252)
But the answer is clear: In part due to the1.8 million gallons of dispersant that BP used, a lot of the estimated 200 million or more gallons of oil that spewed out of the blown well remains under the surface of the Gulf in plumes of tiny toxic droplets. And it's short- and long-term effects could be profound.
BP sprayed dispersant onto the surface of the slick and into the jet of oil and gas as it erupted out of the wellhead a mile beneath the surface. As a result, less oil reached the surface and the Gulf's fragile coastline. But more remained under the surface.
Fish, shrimp and crab larvae, which float around in the open seas, are considered the most likely to die on account of exposure to the subsea oil plumes. There are fears, for instance, that an entire year's worth of bluefin tuna larvae may have perished.
But this latest discovery suggests that it's not just larvae at risk from the subsurface droplets. It's also the animals that feed on them.
"There are so many animals that eat those little larvae," said Robert J. Diaz, a marine scientist at the College of William and Mary.
Oil itself is of course toxic, especially over long exposure. But some scientists worry that the mixture of oil with dispersants will actually prove more toxic, in part because of the still not entirely understood ingredients of Corexit, and in part because of the reduction in droplet size.
"Corexit is in the water column, just as we thought, and it is entering the bodies of animals. And it's probably having a lethal impact there," said Susan Shaw, director of the Marine Environmental Research Institute. The dispersant, she said, is like " a delivery system" for the oil.
Although a large group (http://www.crrc.unh.edu/dwg/dwh_dispersants_use_meeting_report.pdf) of marine scientists meeting in late May reached a consensus that the application of dispersants was a legitimate element of the spill response, another group (http://www.meriresearch.org/Portals/0/Documents/CONSENSUS%20STATEMENT%20ON%20DISPERSANTS%20IN%20TH E%20GULF%20updated%20July%2017.pdf), organized by Shaw, more recently concluded "that Corexit dispersants, in combination with crude oil, pose grave health risks to marine life and human health and threaten to deplete critical niches in the Gulf food web that may never recover."
One particular concern: "The properties that facilitate the movement of dispersants through oil also make it easier for them to move through cell walls, skin barriers, and membranes that protect vital organs, underlying layers of skin, the surfaces of eyes, mouths, and other structures."
Perry told the Huffington Post that the small size of the droplets was clearly a factor in how the oil made its way under the crab larvae shells. Perry said the oil droplets in the water "are just the right size that probably in the process of swimming or respiring, they're brought into that cavity."
That would not happen if the droplets were larger, she said.
The oil droplet washes off when the larvae molt, she said -- but that's assuming they live that long. Larvae are a major food source for fish and other blue crabs -- "their siblings are their favorite meal," Perry explained. Fish are generally able to excrete ingested oil, but inverterbrates such as crabs don't have that ability.
Perry said the discovery of the oil and dispersant blobs is very troubling -- but not, she made clear, because it has any impact on the safety of seafood in the short run. "Unlike heavy metals that biomagnify as they go up the foodchain, oil doesn't seem to do that," she said. Rather, she said, "we're looking at long-term ecological effects of having this oil in contact with marine organisms."
Diaz, the marine scientist from William and Mary, spoke at a lunchtime briefing about dispersants on Capitol Hill on Thursday.
Dispersant, he explained, "doesn't make the oil go away, it just puts it from one part of the ecosystem into another."
In this case, he said, "the decision was to keep as much of the oil subsurface as possible." As a result, the immediate impact on coastal wildlife was mitigated. But the effects on ocean life, he said, are less clear -- in part because there's less known about ocean ecosystems than coastal ones.
"As we go further offshore, as the oil industry has gone offshore, we find that we know less," he said. "We haven't really been using oceanic species to assess the risks, and this is a key issue."
(Similar concerns have been expressed about the lack of important data (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/16/turtle-rescue-efforts-are_n_649425.html) that would allow scientists to accurately assess the effects of the spill on the Gulf's sea turtles, whose plight (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/02/gulf-oil-spill-the-plight_n_634083.html) is emerging as particularly poignant.)

Diaz warned of the danger posed to bluefin tuna -- and also to "the signature resident species in the Gulf, the shrimp." He noted that all three species of Gulf shrimp spawn offshore before moving back into shallow estuaries.
Diaz also expressed concern that dispersed oil droplets could end up doing great damage to the Gulf's many undersea coral reefs. "If the droplets agglomerate with sediment," he said, "they could even settle to the bottom."
Nancy Kinner, co-director of the Coastal Response Center at the University of New Hampshire, said the use of dispersants in this spill raises many issues that scientists need to explore, starting with the effects of long-term exposure. She also noted that scientists have never studied the effects of dispersants when they're injected directly into the turbulence of the plume, as they were here, or at such depth, or at such low temperatures, or under such pressure.
She also said it will be essential for the federal government to accurately determine how much oil made it out of the blown well. A key data point for scientists is the ratio of dispersant to oil, she said, and "if you don't know the flow rate of the oil, you don't know what you dispersant to oil ratio is."
After a series of ludicrous estimates, the federal government settled last month on an official estimate (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/10/government-raises-estimat_n_608208.html) of about 20,000 to 40,000 barrels a day, but BP is widely expected to contest that figure and some scientists think it is still a low-ball estimate.
There seems to be no doubt that history will record that the use of dispersants was good for BP, making it harder to tell how much oil was spilled, and reducing the short-term visible impact. But what's less clear is whether it will turn out to have been good for the Gulf.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/29/scientists-find-evidence_n_664298.html?view=print

Admiralsnackbar:

This is just so important, man. Would you please start a thread with this article? Hidden back here under Darrin's crap lots of people won't see this, and this is exactly what many have been fearing. Maybe it won't turn out to be so bad, but this is scary as hell for our future health, it sems to me. Thanks.

[Ignignokt]

Evay, you're retarded. The Gulf water has bacteria that will dissolve the oil. The oil is light crude.

[TDMVPDPOY]

those machines BP bought from bill costner, are they even using them to extract the oil from the water?

[Nbadan]

The disaster has gone underwater. It has not disappeared, except perhaps from the front pages of some newspapers and magazines. The oil will still kill wildlife and soil previously pristine beaches for years to come. The time upcoming is the time that most coastal residents fear most; the time that BP will start lagging even more in its clean-up efforts because the news media wants something else to talk about; the time that the Darrins of the world run out and say "if I can't see it it must be gone".

It's not just the oil companies that need to be held accountable, but also all these M$M shills that are trying to spin this for BP.....

[admiralsnackbar]

Evay, you're retarded. The Gulf water has bacteria that will dissolve the oil. The oil is light crude.

That bacteria lives at the bottom of the ocean, but even if it did rise up for a holiday feast, something would then eat the bacteria, and that something would be eaten by something bigger until it got up to our kids' filet o'fish.

Do you honestly believe the shit just vanishes, man? Doug Henning spreads some magic dispersant fairy powder and whoooooo! we're done? Dude... you dump that much sewage into the ocean and it would cause problems.

[admiralsnackbar]

Admiralsnackbar:

This is just so important, man. Would you please start a thread with this article? Hidden back here under Darrin's crap lots of people won't see this, and this is exactly what many have been fearing. Maybe it won't turn out to be so bad, but this is scary as hell for our future health, it sems to me. Thanks.

Don't let me stop you, man -- I certainly didn't write it. Glad you understand it's significant.

[Wild Cobra]

those machines BP bought from bill costner, are they even using them to extract the oil from the water?
You can be sure that they are.

[DMX7]

Oil Spill = Solved. End of story!

[Sportcamper]

Fri Jul 30, 2:24 pm ET
Many in Gulf are outraged at reports of vanishing oil..

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20100730/bs_yblog_upshot/many-outraged-over-reports-of-oil-in-gulf-vanishing

[Wild Cobra]

Well Camper. That article links to another that shows an edited map. Here is the original:

NASA Home/News & Features/News Topics/Looking at Earth/Features/Oil Spill/20100728_oilspill (http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/oilspill/20100728_oilspill.html)

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/471883main_gulf_amo_2010209_lrg_800-600.jpg

[Winehole23]

^^^Pic is minimizing. Where's Florida? We know it got hit.

[bigzak25]

"scientific studies will be under wraps for at least three years"

And BP is corrupting every scientist it can buy to keep their findings secret.

BP will fight damages as aggressively, and very probably, as successfully as our good old American "person" Exxon did for 21 years.


boutons, why on earth would our President stand for something like this?

Is it out of his power to demand transparency with these scientific findings?

I almost want to demand that our President Obama not let this secrecy be perpetuated!

[Winehole23]

TAMPA, Fla. (Aug. 5, 2010) – Asresearchers from USF’s Coastal Research Laboratory examined miles of beaches of north Florida and Alabama last month, they discovered beaches hit by oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill and then “cleaned” by BP crews were anything but clean.

The sand, on the surface, looked better after crews had passed and was somewhat whiter, the scientists noted. But when University of South Florida beach geologist Ping Wang and researchers from his lab looked closer into the once pristine white quartz sands, they found that after beach-cleaning machines had combed the area, the beach was covered with thousands of tiny tar balls.

Furthermore, the beach cleanup efforts were doing nothing to address layers of oil buried inches below the sand and accounting for possibly more than half of the beach contamination.

“We estimate that less than 25% of the overall oil contamination, including both surficial and buried oil was cleaned,” Wang and PhD student Tiffany Roberts wrote in a report documenting the research, which was funded by the National Science Foundation.

http://usfweb3.usf.edu/absoluteNM/templates/?a=2566&z=127

[Winehole23]

"Recent reports seem to say that about 75% of the oil is taken care of and that is just not true," said John Kessler, of Texas A&M University, who led a National Science Foundation on-site study of the spill. "The fact is that 50% to 75% of the material that came out of the well is still in the water. It's just in a dissolved or dispersed form."http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/05/oil-spill-white-house-accused-spin

[spursncowboys]

That beach looks pretty good to me. Is the tiny tar balls bad for the environment? Or is it just that they are visible to the eye? Sorry haven't really been following this story much.

[boutons_deux]

Crabs provide evidence oil tainting Gulf food web


Scientists watching Gulf of Mexico's blue crabs for evidence that oil is entering food chain

To assess how heavy a blow the BP oil spill has dealt the Gulf of Mexico, researchers are closely watching a staple of the seafood industry and primary indicator of the ecosystem's health: the blue crab.


http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0809/crabs-provide-evidence-oil-tainting-gulf-food-web/

========

I'm sure we ain't seen nuthin yet of adulterated seafood.

[LnGrrrR]

Pftt all these damn scientists aren't REAL Americans though, are they?

[Spurminator]

Outta sight outta mind.

[DarrinS]

Crabs provide evidence oil tainting Gulf food web


Scientists watching Gulf of Mexico's blue crabs for evidence that oil is entering food chain

To assess how heavy a blow the BP oil spill has dealt the Gulf of Mexico, researchers are closely watching a staple of the seafood industry and primary indicator of the ecosystem's health: the blue crab.


http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0809/crabs-provide-evidence-oil-tainting-gulf-food-web/

========

I'm sure we ain't seen nuthin yet of adulterated seafood.



LOL. I used to eat blue crabs out of the Houston ship channel. That water always smelled of oil.


p.s. Oil is not mercury.

[Wild Cobra]

That beach looks pretty good to me. Is the tiny tar balls bad for the environment? Or is it just that they are visible to the eye? Sorry haven't really been following this story much.
Tiny tarballs are natural in that region without oil spills!

[Winehole23]

Link?

[Winehole23]

USF says government tried to squelch their oil plume findings

By Craig Pittman (http://www.tampabay.com/writers/craig-pittman), Times Staff Writer
In Print: Tuesday, August 10, 2010

A month after the Deepwater Horizon disaster began, scientists from the University of South Florida made a startling announcement. They had found signs that the oil spewing from the well had formed a 6-mile-wide plume snaking along in the deepest recesses of the gulf.



The reaction that USF announcement received from the Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal agencies that sponsored their research:



Shut up.


"I got lambasted by the Coast Guard and NOAA when we said there was undersea oil," USF marine sciences dean William Hogarth said. Some officials even told him to retract USF's public announcement, he said, comparing it to being "beat up" by federal officials.


The USF scientists weren't alone. Vernon Asper, an oceanographer at the University of Southern Mississippi, was part of a similar effort that met with a similar reaction. "We expected that NOAA would be pleased because we found something very, very interesting," Asper said. "NOAA instead responded by trying to discredit us. It was just a shock to us."


NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco, in comments she made to reporters in May, expressed strong skepticism about the existence of undersea oil plumes — as did BP's then-CEO, Tony Hayward.


"She basically called us inept idiots," Asper said. "We took that very personally."
Lubchenco confirmed Monday that her agency told USF and other academic institutions involved in the study of undersea plumes that they should hold off talking so openly about it. "What we asked for, was for people to stop speculating before they had a chance to analyze what they were finding," Lubchenco said. "We think that's in everybody's interest. … We just wanted to try to make sure that we knew something before we speculated about it."


"We had solid evidence, rock solid," Asper said. "We weren't speculating." If he had to do it over again, he said, he'd do it all exactly the same way, despite Lubchenco's ire.
Coast Guard officials did not respond to a request for comment on Hogarth's accusation.


The discovery of multiple undersea plumes of oil droplets was eventually verified by one of NOAA's own research vessels. And last month USF scientists announced they at last could match the oil droplets in the undersea plumes to the millions of barrels of oil that gushed from the collapsed well until it was capped July 15.


"What we have learned completely changes the idea of what an oil spill is," USF scientist David Hollander said then. "It has gone from a two-dimensional disaster to a three-dimensional catastrophe."
Read more (http://www.tampabay.com/news/environment/article1114225.ece)...

[MannyIsGod]

LOL. I used to eat blue crabs out of the Houston ship channel. That water always smelled of oil.


p.s. Oil is not mercury.


Well, this could explain a whole hell of a lot.

[boutons_deux]

Gulf Oil Spill Update: Scientist Finds Gulf Bottom Still Oily, Dead

WASHINGTON — Oil from the BP spill remains stuck on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, according to a top scientist's video and slides that she says demonstrate the oil isn't degrading as hoped and has decimated life on parts of the sea floor.

That report is at odds with a recent report by the BP spill compensation czar that said nearly all will be well by 2012.

At a science conference in Washington Saturday, marine scientist Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia aired early results of her December submarine dives around the BP spill site. She went to places she had visited in the summer and expected the oil and residue from oil-munching microbes would be gone by then. It wasn't.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/20/gulf-oil-spill-update-sci_n_825634.html?view=print
===========

As Wikileaks showed, the govt is always lying.

And what about the $35/barrel spilled = $21B fine?

People are sick all along the Gulf Coast.

[Wild Cobra]

my uncle who is a marine biologist said that oil is always leaking up through the ocean floor and that organisms in the water have a way of breaking it down, and that's what's happening to all the oil from the gulf spill
That's just it.

Just because there is oil there doesn't mean it came from that leak.

But no....

The lemmings will believe anything their masters tell them.

[boutons_deux]

Mystery Illnesses Plague Louisiana Oil Spill Crews

RACELAND, Louisiana — Jamie Simon worked on a barge in the oily waters for six months following the BP spill last year, cooking for the cleanup workers, washing their clothes and tidying up after them.

One year later, the 32-year-old said she still suffers from a range of debilitating health problems, including racing heartbeat, vomiting, dizziness, ear infections, swollen throat, poor sight in one eye and memory loss.

She blames toxic elements in the crude oil and the dispersants sprayed to dissolve it after the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico about 50 miles (80 kilometers) off the coast of Louisiana on April 20, 2010.

"I was exposed to those chemicals, which I questioned, and they told me it was just as safe as Dawn dishwashing liquid and there was nothing for me to worry about," she said of the BP bosses at the job site.

The local doctor, Mike Robichaux, said he has seen as many as 60 patients like Simon in recent weeks, as this small southern town of 10,000 bordered by swamp land and sugar cane fields grapples with a mysterious sickness that some believe is all BP's fault.

Andy LaBoeuf, 51, said he was paid $1,500 per day to use his boat to go out on the water and lay boom to contain some of the 4.9 million barrels of oil that spewed from the bottom of the ocean after the BP well ruptured.

But four months of that job left him ill and unable to work, and he said he recently had to refinance his home loan because he could not pay his taxes.

"I have just been sick for a long time. I just got sick and I couldn't get better," LaBoeuf said, describing memory problems and a sore throat that has nagged him for a year.

Robichaux, an ear, nose and throat specialist whose office an hour's drive southwest of New Orleans is nestled on a roadside marked with handwritten signs advertising turtle meat for sale, says he is treating many of the local patients in their homes.

"Their work ethic is so strong, they are so stoic, they don't want people to know when they're sick," he said.

"Ninety percent of them are getting worse... Nobody has a clue as to what it is."

According to a roster compiled by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, a total of 52,000 workers were responding to the Gulf oil spill as of August 2010.

The state of Louisiana has reported 415 cases of health problems linked to the spill, with symptoms including sore throats, irritated eyes, respiratory tract infections, headaches and nausea

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/150637

[boutons_deux]

"Spillionaires": Profiteering in the Wake of the BP Oil Spill

The oil spill that was once expected to bring economic ruin to the Gulf Coast appears to have delivered something entirely different: a gusher of money.

Some people profiteered from the spill by charging BP outrageous rates for cleanup. Others profited from BP claims money, handed out in arbitrary ways. So many people cashed in that they earned nicknames -- "spillionaires" or "BP rich." Meanwhile, others hurt by the spill ended up getting comparatively little.

In the end, BP's attempt to make things right -- spending more than $16 billion so far, mostly on claims of damage and cleanup -- created new divisions and even new wrongs. Because the federal government ceded control over spill cleanup spending to BP, it's impossible to know for certain what that money accomplished, or what exactly was done.


Documents show that local companies with ties to insiders garnered lucrative cleanup contracts and then charged BP for every imaginable expense. The prime cleanup company, which had a history of bad debts and no oil-spill experience, submitted bills with little documentation or none at all. A subcontractor charged BP $15,400 per month to rent a generator that usually cost $1,500 a month. A company owned in part by the St. Bernard Parish sheriff charged more than $1 million a month for land it had been renting for less than $1,700 a month.

Assignments for individual fishermen followed the same pattern, with insiders and supporters earning big checks.

"This parish raped BP," said Wayne Landry, the chairman of the St. Bernard Parish Council, referring to the conduct of its political leadership. "At the end of the day, it really just frustrates me. I'm an elected official. I have guilt by association."

The economic benefits that rippled through St. Bernard Parish were seen in varying degrees throughout the Gulf. In the six months after the spill, sales tax receipts [8], a key measure of economic activity, rose significantly in eight of the 24 most affected communities from Louisiana to Florida, despite the national recession. Only one community, in Mississippi, saw its receipts dip significantly. Local governments also profited. A recent story by the Associated Press [9] found that governments along the coast used BP money to buy SUVs, Tasers and other equipment not necessary to clean up oil.

According to sales tax collections, Louisiana made out better than anywhere. Sales tax collections from Plaquemines Parish rose more than 71 percent, while St. Bernard saw the biggest jump of all. The parish collected almost $26.8 million in sales and lodging tax receipts in the six months after the spill, almost twice as much as over the same period in 2009. Flush with cash from cleanup and claims, many fishermen bought new toys, boats and trucks. Sales at the nearest Chevrolet dealer rose 41 percent.

Some of the influx of money can be traced to the efforts of St. Bernard's parish president, Craig Taffaro Jr., a 45-year-old psychotherapist with a wrestler's build, a cue-ball head and a trimmed goatee.

Just days into the crisis, Taffaro did what many parish presidents did: He invoked a Louisiana law that allowed him to declare a 30-day emergency and handle the crisis without most normal government checks and balances. But Taffaro used his powers more broadly than most, saying that he wanted to put money back into the community. Unlike the leaders of other Gulf communities, Taffaro -- not BP -- chose the prime contractor that supervised the cleanup. He and his allies also decided which fishermen would be hired to put out boom and search for oil. At one point, Taffaro hired his future son-in-law to work in the finance department and help on the spill.


As the money flowed, complaints spread. Some beneficiaries didn't necessarily suffer from the spill but had social or political connections. Subcontractors said those at the top of the cleanup creamed off money for doing very little, while those at the bottom earned much less for doing the actual work.

At first, everyone was angry with BP. But as the months wore on, some St. Bernard residents directed their frustration at Taffaro, blaming him for handing out jobs and money to a small group of insiders.

Meanwhile, Taffaro was attacking BP and the federal government in the media, appearing on TV alongside Gov. Bobby Jindal and testifying in Congress. His outrage was palpable. There wasn't enough boom, coordination or respect for the local government. BP wasn't making good on its obligations.

The pressure paid off. Taffaro at one point boasted that St. Bernard had doled out more BP cleanup money to commercial fishermen than any other Louisiana parish. His claim is impossible to verify, because neither Taffaro nor anyone else would provide details about the spending numbers.

BP gave only limited information to ProPublica, and declined to comment on allegations it had been overcharged.

Taffaro and other St. Bernard officials refused to respond to the public-records requests ProPublica began filing in November.

"I'm in the process of really, truly trying to assist you," said Dysart, who is also the parish interim chief administrative officer.

In response to questions submitted by ProPublica last month, Taffaro said through his spokeswoman that he can approve overtime for salaried employees in extenuating circumstances and that Dysart eventually decided to stop taking overtime. Taffaro said there was no law against hiring his future son-in-law because he was not yet married, and that paying overtime for picking up dog food was necessary because the spill had caused fishermen to abandon their dogs.

Taffaro also said that the tax receipt bubble was "a false economy," similar to what happened after Hurricane Katrina.

****

Many companies and people earning big money from the spill had connections to parish powerbrokers, according to court documents, parish records and interviews done by ProPublica.

But the price Amigo charged BP for the land was astronomical. Amigo had been leasing the land for less than $1,700 a month from the Arlene & Joseph Meraux Charitable Foundation Inc., according to the nonprofit's most recent tax returns. The company billed BP more than $1.1 million a month, said BP spokesman Joe Ellis.



http://truthout.org/print/1160

===========

And what about the Federal fines of $35/barrel spilled? Should be $20B+

[Winehole23]

A broken underwater wellhead has been dumping 4,000 gallons of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico for seven years, and neither its owner nor state or federal governments have informed the public or seriously tried to stop it, six environmental groups claim in Federal Court.

Lead plaintiff Apalachicola Riverkeeper sued Taylor Energy Co., acting with its co-plaintiffs as the Waterkeeper Alliance.

"This lawsuit is necessary because of Taylor's slow pace in stopping the flow of oil from its well(s) into the Gulf," the complaint states." To the best of the Waterkeepers' knowledge, this contamination continues after seven (7) years of flow.

"This lawsuit is also needed because of the secrecy surrounding Taylor's response to a multi-year spill that threatens public resources. Such secrecy is inconsistent with national policy that 'Public participation in the ... enforcement of any [Clean Water Act or RCRA] regulation ... shall be provided for, encouraged, and assisted." (Brackets in complaint.)

The complaint continues: "The Waterkeepers understand that an underground mudslide began this spill on about September 15, 2004, by destroying a Taylor drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico (Block 20 of the Mississippi Canyon) and burying up to 28 wells. But without details about Taylor's response to this crisis, it is impossible for members of the public to assess the risk that similar events will cause additional multi-year spills, including spills from higher-pressure wells in deeper water. Because such spills may damage the Gulf's eco-system on a scale comparable to or exceeding the BP spill, it is essential that the public learn from the more than 7-year Taylor response. Further, without understanding why it is taking more than 7 years to stop the Taylor spill, it is impossible to assess the reasonableness of Taylor's response."

The waterkeepers say that Taylor, the U.S. EPA and the Department of Interior have been secretive about what, if anything, has been done to stop the leak.

The plaintiffs say Taylor has 28 wells associated with an oil platform 11 miles off the coast of Louisiana, and that at least one of the wells has been leaking a significant amount of oil since September, 2004.http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/02/06/43649.htm

[MannyIsGod]

Nice.

[Viva Las Espuelas]

BP's recent commercials makes it seem like it's sunshine and lollipops in the Gulf

[baseline bum]

It's only 1/100th of a Superdome unit volume tbh.

[Winehole23]

thanks, bb.

I was wondering, and briefly considered bumping the Superdome thread.

[MannyIsGod]

BP's recent commercials makes it seem like it's sunshine and lollipops in the Gulf

What irritates me is that they're allowed to use those commercials as advertising. When talking about the gulf and how its back to normal I don't think there should be any fucking mention of BP.

[Viva Las Espuelas]

can't let a crisis go to waste

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

I like how they're saying, "Were assuming completely responsibility for cleaning the gulf!" in those commercials as if cleaning up after a mess you made is some amazing, commendable act.

[TDMVPDPOY]

you reap what you sow, including the cleanup wankers who tried to milk BP...

[Wild Cobra]

can't let a crisis go to waste
That's right Rahm.

[DarrinS]

Thousands of gallons of oil per day have been seeping off the coast of Santa Barbara and in the Gulf of Mexico for hundreds of thousands of years. They are even visible from space.

:wow


We're all gonna die!

[Winehole23]

Bad analogy.

Not fair to compare natural seeps to spills that producers and regulators sweep under the rug.

You're not really advocating complacence about fixing spills, are you Darrin?

[DarrinS]

Bad analogy.

Not fair to compare natural seeps to spills that producers and regulators sweep under the rug.

You're not really advocating complacence about fixing spills, are you Darrin?


They should try to do everything possible to prevent spills, but accidents happen. That said, people still need to be able to put numbers in perspective.

[Wild Cobra]

Bad analogy.

Not fair to compare natural seeps to spills that producers and regulators sweep under the rug.

You're not really advocating complacence about fixing spills, are you Darrin?
I think Darrins point is it happens anyway. i would say the magnitude of the spill matters. Nature will take care of only so much. There is likely natural seepage there anyway.

I have a personal theory that there would be less oil off the coast of California if oil companies were allowed to drill, and relieve the pressure!

[DarrinS]

Manny will be along shortly to compare oil with plutonium.

[Winehole23]

how about fixing blown well heads? worth it in your view? ok to leave it like it is?

[DarrinS]

how about fixing blown well heads? worth it in your view? ok to leave it like it is?


Should be fixed, if possible.

[Wild Cobra]

how about fixing blown well heads? worth it in your view? ok to leave it like it is?


Should be fixed, if possible.
Agreed.

[boutons_deux]

BP surges back into profits, as US criminal trial looms

BP returned to profit with a bang last year, posting net earnings of $23.9 billion on Tuesday, as the British energy giant prepared for a criminal trial over the US Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster.

BP announced adjusted profit after tax equivalent to 18.2 billion euros for 2011, as higher oil prices offset a drop in production, according to a group statement.

The London-listed energy major also signalled its recovery by hiking its shareholder dividend for the first time since the devastating April 2010 spillage that ravaged the company's fortunes.

BP had suffered a net loss of $4.9 billion in 2010 after an explosion on the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig killed 11 workers, sent millions of barrels of oil spewing into the sea and left it with huge compensation costs.

Including changes in the value of BP's energy inventories, net profit hit $25.7 billion in 2011, the group added Tuesday.

"BP is on the right path," the company's chief executive Bob Dudley said in the earnings release.

"2012 will be a year of increasing investment and milestones as we build on the foundations laid last year."

BP said that it had committed $1.0 billion "for the early restoration of natural resources following the Deepwater Horizon accident in 2010."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jAftkrJ58Kd7Y9aVGgDAPKJdUf3w?docId=CNG.013c9 d26e5bc6771d8e4bb78654007fe.5a1

=======

anybody wanna bet BP will NEVER pay the fine of $35/barrel spilled?

[Winehole23]

Should be fixed, if possible.Why? Oil is far less dangerous than plutonium. Sure you're not overreacting?

[DarrinS]

Why? Oil is far less dangerous than plutonium. Sure you're not overreacting?


Unlike the left, I don't think everything is a crisis.

[Winehole23]

excepting the existential threat posed by political Islam and Barack Obama, of course

[TDMVPDPOY]

seems like another grab for money, since its reporting season...didnt bp made like 22b this quarter?

[MannyIsGod]

excepting the existential threat posed by political islam and barack obama, of course

boom

Personally I would have gone with LEDs and dishwasher soap.

Actually, the more I think about it the more its really fucking funny that Darrin of all people is trying to claim the mantle of level headedness.

:lol

[ElNono]

It's only 1/100th of a Superdome unit volume tbh.

How many Libraries of Congress that would be?

[MannyIsGod]

I think superdomes should be the new SI unit for volume.

[DarrinS]

I think superdomes should be the new SI unit for volume.

Superdome is a massive volume -- except when compared to the Gulf of Mexico.

[FromWayDowntown]

Whatever the effects of the spill, BP's financials have recovered nicely:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/08/business/global/bp-reports-stronger-q4-earnings-in-2011.html?_r=1

The article notes that trial on the claims of those who allege themselves to have been harmed by the spill is scheduled to begin on February 27 in New Orleans. Should be an interesting trial.

[boutons_deux]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/19/bp-coast-guard-officers-b_n_581779.html

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2011/04/gulf_oil_spill_one_year_later.html

That shit happened, BP hasn't paid for it, the Gulf Coast is still fucked,and Guld Seabed is full to toxic dispersants. aka, UCA business as usual. Private gain, public pain.

[boutons_deux]

Judge: BP liable for civil penalties for oil spill

A federal judge ruled Wednesday that BP PLC and one of its minority partners in the blown-out Macondo well are liable for civil penalties under the Clean Water Act for their roles in the nation's worst offshore oil spill.

U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier also ruled that Deepwater Horizon rig owner Transocean Ltd. may be liable under the same law as an "operator" of the well. The judge, however, said he couldn't decide before a trial scheduled to start Feb. 27 whether Transocean meets the definition of that term.

The Justice Department argued that BP, minority partner Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and Transocean are each liable for per-barrel civil penalties for oil discharged from the well.

Barbier rejected Anadarko's argument that oil discharged from Transocean's rig, not the well.

"Pressure within the earth drove hydrocarbons up the Macondo Well, through the (blowout preventer), and finally out the riser," the judge wrote. "Thus, the uncontrolled movement of oil began in the well. The riser and (blowout preventer), by contrast, were merely passive conduits through which oil flowed."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5izZ8_Dlxw5LM7K02jtSDPA5YaiQQ?docId=1a2306ffd 3684de9b0f96f76776696f2

[Wild Cobra]

Judge: BP liable for civil penalties for oil spill

A federal judge ruled Wednesday that BP PLC and one of its minority partners in the blown-out Macondo well are liable for civil penalties under the Clean Water Act for their roles in the nation's worst offshore oil spill.

U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier also ruled that Deepwater Horizon rig owner Transocean Ltd. may be liable under the same law as an "operator" of the well. The judge, however, said he couldn't decide before a trial scheduled to start Feb. 27 whether Transocean meets the definition of that term.

The Justice Department argued that BP, minority partner Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and Transocean are each liable for per-barrel civil penalties for oil discharged from the well.

Barbier rejected Anadarko's argument that oil discharged from Transocean's rig, not the well.

"Pressure within the earth drove hydrocarbons up the Macondo Well, through the (blowout preventer), and finally out the riser," the judge wrote. "Thus, the uncontrolled movement of oil began in the well. The riser and (blowout preventer), by contrast, were merely passive conduits through which oil flowed."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5izZ8_Dlxw5LM7K02jtSDPA5YaiQQ?docId=1a2306ffd 3684de9b0f96f76776696f2
Well, there is something I disagree with on this (surprise surprise.)

The Blowout Preventer used was not "passive." It was an active hydraulic ram to shear and block the pipes. Wasn't this incident uncontrollable to be stopped because the blowout preventer failed?

Anadarko also won a ruling:

Anadarko Wins Court Ruling Excluding Evidence in BP Spill Trial Next Week (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-24/anadarko-wins-court-ruling-excluding-evidence-in-bp-spill-trial-next-week.html)

[FromWayDowntown]

Well, there is something I disagree with on this (surprise surprise.)

The Blowout Preventer used was not "passive." It was an active hydraulic ram to shear and block the pipes. Wasn't this incident uncontrollable to be stopped because the blowout preventer failed?

You're misapplying the way in which Judge Barbier used the word "passive." He's not using the word to describe the blowout preventer itself; instead, I think he's explaining that, in terms of how the oil escaped, the blowout preventer was a passive element -- that the oil simply flowed through it and the blowout preventer was not the cause of the flow.

[Wild Cobra]

You're misapplying the way in which Judge Barbier used the word "passive." He's not using the word to describe the blowout preventer itself; instead, I think he's explaining that, in terms of how the oil escaped, the blowout preventer was a passive element -- that the oil simply flowed through it and the blowout preventer was not the cause of the flow.
No, that is my point. Passive elements of an object wouldn't have a hydraulic ram. A pipe is passive. The blowout preventer is an active component.

[MannyIsGod]

WC displays his mastery of language skills and comprehension. Bravo, WC. We should all strive to be at your level.

[FromWayDowntown]

No, that is my point. Passive elements of an object wouldn't have a hydraulic ram. A pipe is passive. The blowout preventer is an active component.

Great!

Your point has exactly nothing to do with the legal question the court was answering, but I'm sure it's wonderfully useful in some context.

The oil flowed passively through the blowout preventer even though the blowout prevented is potentially mechanically active when operated.

[RandomGuy]

..NEW ORLEANS (AP) — After months of laboratory work, scientists say they can definitively finger oil from BP's blown-out well as the culprit for the slow death of a once brightly colored deep-sea coral community in the Gulf of Mexico that is now brown and dull.

In a study published Monday, scientists say meticulous chemical analysis of samples taken in late 2010 proves that oil from BP PLC's out-of-control Macondo well devastated corals living about 7 miles southwest of the well. The coral community is located over an area roughly the size of half a football field nearly a mile below the Gulf's surface.

The damaged corals were discovered in October 2010 by academic and government scientists, but it's taken until now for them to declare a definite link to the oil spill.

Most of the Gulf's bottom is muddy, but coral colonies that pop up every once in a while are vital oases for marine life in the chilly ocean depths. The injured and dying coral today has bare skeleton, loose tissue and is covered in heavy mucous and brown fluffy material, the paper said.

"It was like a graveyard of corals," said Erik Cordes, a biologist at Temple University who went down to the site in the Alvin research submarine.

So far, this has been the only deep-sea coral site found to be seriously damaged by the spill.

On April 20, 2010, the well blew out about 50 miles off the Louisiana coast, leading to the death of 11 workers aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and the nation's largest offshore spill. More than 200 million gallons of oil were released.

"They figured (the coral damage) was the result of the spill, now we can say definitely it was connected to the spill," said Helen White, a chemical oceanographer with Haverford College and the lead researcher.

She said pinpointing the BP well as the source of the contamination required sampling sediment on the sea floor and figuring out what was oil from natural seeps in the Gulf and what was from the Macondo well. Finally, the researchers matched the oil found on the corals with oil that came out of the BP well.

Also, the researchers concluded that the damage was caused by the spill because an underwater plume of oil was tracked passing by the site in June 2010. The paper also noted that a decade of deep-sea coral research in the Gulf had not found coral dying in this manner. The coral was documented for the first time when researchers went looking for oil damage in 2010.

The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The scientists said that they have gone back to the dying corals by submarine since 2010, but that they are not ready to talk about what they've seen at the site.

However, Charles Fisher, a biologist with Penn State University who's led the coral expeditions, said recovery of the damaged site would be slow.

"Things happen very slowly in the deep sea; the temperatures are low, currents are low, those animals live hundreds of years and they die slowly," he said. "It will take a while to know the final outcome of this exposure."

BP did not immediately comment on the study.

The researchers said the troubled spot consists of 54 coral colonies. The researchers were able to fully photograph and assess 43 of those colonies, and of those, 86 percent were damaged. They said 10 coral colonies showed signs of severe stress on 90 percent of the coral.

White, the lead researcher, said that this coral site was the only one found southwest of the Macondo well so far, but that others may exist. The researchers also wrote in the paper that it was too early to rule out serious damage at other coral sites that may have seemed healthy during previous examinations after the April 2010 spill.

Jerald Ault, a fish and coral reef specialist at the University of Miami who was not part of the study, said the findings were cause for concern because deep-sea corals are important habitat. He said there are many links between animals that live at the surface, such as tarpon and menhaden, and life at the bottom of the Gulf. Ecosystem problems can play out over many years, he said.

"It's kind of a tangled web of impact," he said.

..----------------------------------------------

[Winehole23]

Tracy Kuhns and her husband Mike Roberts, commercial fishers from Barataria, Louisiana, are finding eyeless shrimp.


"At the height of the last white shrimp season, in September, one of our friends caught 400 pounds of these," Kuhns told Al Jazeera while showing a sample of the eyeless shrimp.


According to Kuhns, at least 50 per cent of the shrimp caught in that period in Barataria Bay, a popular shrimping area that was heavily impacted by BP's oil and dispersants, were eyeless. Kuhns added: "Disturbingly, not only do the shrimp lack eyes, they even lack eye sockets."

"Some shrimpers are catching these out in the open Gulf [of Mexico]," she added, "They are also catching them in Alabama and Mississippi. We are also finding eyeless crabs, crabs with their shells soft instead of hard, full grown crabs that are one-fifth their normal size, clawless crabs, and crabs with shells that don't have their usual spikes … they look like they've been burned off by chemicals."
On April 20, 2010, BP's Deepwater Horizon oilrig exploded (http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/spotlight/bpoilspill/), and began the release of at least 4.9 million barrels of oil. BP then used at least 1.9 million gallons of toxic Corexit dispersants to sink the oil.


Keath Ladner, a third generation seafood processor in Hancock County, Mississippi, is also disturbed by what he is seeing.


"I've seen the brown shrimp catch drop by two-thirds, and so far the white shrimp have been wiped out," Ladner told Al Jazeera. "The shrimp are immune compromised. We are finding shrimp with tumors on their heads, and are seeing this everyday."


While on a shrimp boat in Mobile Bay with Sidney Schwartz, the fourth-generation fisherman said that he had seen shrimp with defects on their gills, and "their shells missing around their gills and head".


"We've fished here all our lives and have never seen anything like this," he added.
Ladner has also seen crates of blue crabs, all of which were lacking at least one of their claws.


Darla Rooks, a lifelong fisherperson from Port Sulfur, Louisiana, told Al Jazeera she is finding crabs "with holes in their shells, shells with all the points burned off so all the spikes on their shells and claws are gone, misshapen shells, and crabs that are dying from within … they are still alive, but you open them up and they smell like they've been dead for a week".


Rooks is also finding eyeless shrimp, shrimp with abnormal growths, female shrimp with their babies still attached to them, and shrimp with oiled gills.


"We also seeing eyeless fish, and fish lacking even eye-sockets, and fish with lesions, fish without covers over their gills, and others with large pink masses hanging off their eyes and gills."


Rooks, who grew up fishing with her parents, said she had never seen such things in these waters, and her seafood catch last year was "ten per cent what it normally is".


"I've never seen this," he said, a statement Al Jazeera heard from every scientist, fisherman, and seafood processor we spoke with about the seafood deformities.
Given that the Gulf of Mexico provides more than 40 per cent of all the seafood caught in the continental US, this phenomenon does not bode well for the region, or the country.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/04/201241682318260912.html

[RandomGuy]

http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/L2yhhhWC9cvVGSzzRzVVhg--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Y2g9MzE3MDtjcj0xO2N3PTI0MDk7ZHg9MD tkeT0wO2ZpPXVsY3JvcDtoPTI1MTtxPTg1O3c9MTkw/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/ap_webfeeds/08c26d801373460b0d0f6a706700fd10.jpg

2 years later, fish sick near BP oil spill site


BARATARIA BAY, La. (AP) — When fishermen returned to the deep reefs of the Gulf of Mexico weeks after BP's gushing oil well was capped, they started catching grouper and red snapper with large open sores and strange black streaks, lesions they said they'd never seen and promptly blamed on the spill.

Now, two years after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank, killing 11 men and touching off the worst offshore spill in U.S. history, the latest research into its effects is starting to back up those early reports from the docks: The ailing fish bear hallmarks of diseases tied to petroleum and other pollutants.

Those illnesses don't pose an increased health threat to humans, scientists say, but they could be devastating to prized species and the people who make their living catching them.

There's no saying for sure what's causing the diseases in what's still a relatively small percentage of the fish, because the scientists have no baseline data on sick fish in the Gulf before the spill to form a frame of reference. The first comprehensive research may be years from publication. And the Gulf is assaulted with all kinds of contaminants every day.

Still, it's clear to fishermen and researchers alike that something's amiss.

— A recent batch of test results revealed the presence of oil in the bile extracted from fish caught in August 2011, a year after BP's broken well was capped and nearly 15 months after it first blew out on April 20, 2010.

"Bile tells you what a fish's last meal was," said Steve Murawski, a marine biologist with the University of South Florida who was chief science adviser for the National Marine Fisheries Service until November 2010 when he began working on oil spill studies for USF. "There was as late as August of last year an oil source out there that some of those animals were consuming."

Bile in red snapper, yellow-edge grouper and a few other species contained on average 125 parts per million of naphthalene, a compound found in crude oil, Murawski said. Scientists expect to find almost none of the toxin in fish captured in the open ocean.

"Those levels are indicative of polluted urban estuaries," he said.

— Last summer, a team of scientists led by USF has done what experts say is the most extensive study yet of sick fish in shallow and deep Gulf waters. Over seven cruises in July and August, the scientists caught about 4,000 fish — from Florida's Dry Tortugas to central Louisiana — using miles-long fishing lines dragged from close to shore out to depths of 600 feet. The work was funded with a federal government grant and help from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute.

http://news.yahoo.com/2-years-later-fish-sick-near-bp-oil-144143260.html

[CosmicCowboy]

I'll bet that was a hell of a fish fry...

[RandomGuy]

Superdome is a massive volume -- except when compared to the Gulf of Mexico.

Rather than take the time to keep pointing out to you why the things you say are wrong, and then you not really paying attention and saying them again, I propose the following shorthand:

http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=219&pictureid=1625

Anytime you see this, you will know it is something stupid you have already said, or similar enough to something else stupid you have said that has already been concretely shown as illogical.

[RandomGuy]

I'll bet that was a hell of a fish fry...

...mmmm naphthalene...

[DarrinS]

Rather than take the time to keep pointing out to you why the things you say are wrong, and then you not really paying attention and saying them again, I propose the following shorthand:

http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=219&pictureid=1625

Anytime you see this, you will know it is something stupid you have already said, or similar enough to something else stupid you have said that has already been concretely shown as illogical.



You are morally and intellectually superior. Congrats!

[boutons_deux]

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/FishRot-e1334768772772.jpg

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Shrimp-Tumors.jpg

Legacy Of BP Oil Spill: Eyeless Shrimp And Fish With Lesions

Shrimp with no eyes, fish with lesions, and clawless crabs.

Scientists believe that shrimp, fish, and crabs in the gulf have been deformed by the chemical released to disperse oil during the spill. Fishers in the area say that they’ve been noticing deformities on their catches since. Al Jazeera reports:

“At the height of the last white shrimp season, in September, one of our friends caught 400 pounds of these,” [Louisiana commercial fisher Tracy] Kuhns told Al Jazeera while showing a sample of the eyeless shrimp.

According to Kuhns, at least 50 per cent of the shrimp caught in that period in Barataria Bay, a popular shrimping area that was heavily impacted by BP’s oil and dispersants, were eyeless. Kuhns added: “Disturbingly, not only do the shrimp lack eyes, they even lack eye sockets.”

“Some shrimpers are catching these out in the open Gulf [of Mexico],” she added, “They are also catching them in Alabama and Mississippi. We are also finding eyeless crabs, crabs with their shells soft instead of hard, full grown crabs that are one-fifth their normal size, clawless crabs, and crabs with shells that don’t have their usual spikes … they look like they’ve been burned off by chemicals.” [...]

The dispersants are known to be mutagenic, a disturbing fact that could be evidenced in the seafood deformities. Shrimp, for example, have a life-cycle short enough that two to three generations have existed since BP’s disaster began, giving the chemicals time to enter the genome.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/04/18/466660/legacy-of-bp-oil-spill-eyeless-shrimp-and-fish-with-lesions/

In other UCA poison-for-profit and fuck-the-planet news, Monsanto wants to use an Agent Orange poison on US crop land, now that round-up for Monsanto's GM crops has spawned a generation of round-up resistant super weeds.

[Winehole23]

ah, that's a gently warmed over rewrite of the recent al jazeera link

[Winehole23]

but do go ahead. were you saying something?

[boutons_deux]

Gfy

[CosmicCowboy]

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/FishRot-e1334768772772.jpg

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Shrimp-Tumors.jpg

Legacy Of BP Oil Spill: Eyeless Shrimp And Fish With Lesions

Shrimp with no eyes, fish with lesions, and clawless crabs.

Scientists believe that shrimp, fish, and crabs in the gulf have been deformed by the chemical released to disperse oil during the spill. Fishers in the area say that they’ve been noticing deformities on their catches since. Al Jazeera reports:

“At the height of the last white shrimp season, in September, one of our friends caught 400 pounds of these,” [Louisiana commercial fisher Tracy] Kuhns told Al Jazeera while showing a sample of the eyeless shrimp.

According to Kuhns, at least 50 per cent of the shrimp caught in that period in Barataria Bay, a popular shrimping area that was heavily impacted by BP’s oil and dispersants, were eyeless. Kuhns added: “Disturbingly, not only do the shrimp lack eyes, they even lack eye sockets.”

“Some shrimpers are catching these out in the open Gulf [of Mexico],” she added, “They are also catching them in Alabama and Mississippi. We are also finding eyeless crabs, crabs with their shells soft instead of hard, full grown crabs that are one-fifth their normal size, clawless crabs, and crabs with shells that don’t have their usual spikes … they look like they’ve been burned off by chemicals.” [...]

The dispersants are known to be mutagenic, a disturbing fact that could be evidenced in the seafood deformities. Shrimp, for example, have a life-cycle short enough that two to three generations have existed since BP’s disaster began, giving the chemicals time to enter the genome.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/04/18/466660/legacy-of-bp-oil-spill-eyeless-shrimp-and-fish-with-lesions/

In other UCA poison-for-profit and fuck-the-planet news, Monsanto wants to use an Agent Orange poison on US crop land, now that round-up for Monsanto's GM crops has spawned a generation of round-up resistant super weeds.

:lmao

thinkprogress quoting Al Jazeera?

[Winehole23]

Gfygood morning

[boutons_deux]

Al Jeezera? More credible that Fox Repug Propaganda network.

why not copy here Fox's in-depth reporting on how bad BP fucked up the Gulf (and got away with it)

[Winehole23]

you watched it?

[Winehole23]

are you secretly in love with Fox News, boutons? You can't stop talking about it and you do get do so emotional sometimes...

[Winehole23]

did Fox do a great bit on this?

[MannyIsGod]

Do the eyeless shrimp fill up the superdome yet? If not then get back at me when they do. Also, consensus that oil spills are bad could be overturned tomorrow. I mean look at stomach ulcers.

Given the information that there aren't enough eyeless shrimp to fill the superdome and that ulcers are caused by bacteria (plus I know Al Gore is behind this somehow) I can only rule that things have in fact been overblown.

[RandomGuy]

You are morally and intellectually superior. Congrats!

Why, thank you. :toast

[Wild Cobra]

How many of these deformities were there before the spill?

Oh that's right... Probably no comparison available. nobody saw it as a story angle then.

[Winehole23]

one of the scientists cited in the al jazeera article was studying it beforehand and had a pre-blowout statistical baseline, didn't you notice?

[Wild Cobra]

one of the scientists cited in the al jazeera article was studying it beforehand and had a pre-blowout statistical baseline, didn't you notice?

No.

I'm guilty this time of dismissing the source article. Like CC said:

:lmao

thinkprogress quoting Al Jazeera?

[Winehole23]

gotcha. so you dismiss what all those fishermen willingly said for attribution?

[ChumpDumper]

lol this time

[Wild Cobra]

gotcha. so you dismiss what all those fishermen willingly said for attribution?
No, my instinct is this is more hype. Yes, I could be wrong, but I don't care to look for solid facts on this either.

Too many times in my life have I seen articles written by the "boy who cried wolf."

[ChumpDumper]

I don't care to look for solid facts

[Wild Cobra]

Typical Chump. Taking a statement for one event, and thinking he smart by manipulation of the context.

Yes, I could be wrong, but I don't care to look for solid facts on this either.
Chump...

Are you dumb, or just an antagonistic bully?

[Winehole23]

instinct, huh?

no need to weigh the facts when your spidey-sense is tingling? how convenient for you...

[ChumpDumper]

It can pretty much be applied to any topic you happen to be discussing.

Enlightening tbh.

[Wild Cobra]

instinct, huh?

no need to weigh the facts when your spidey-sense is tingling? how convenient for you...

No, I only care to focus on a limited number of topics that require leaning more. I don't have the time... or should I say, I have better use for my time than looking up topics that don't interest me much.

I gave my impression, and admitted I could be wrong.

Isn't that enough?

[Winehole23]

more than generous, I would say

[MannyIsGod]

:lol

This time.

[boutons_deux]

http://mjcdn.motherjones.com/preset_16/surfrider_fdt_uv_pah_contamination.jpg

BP's Corexit Oil Tar Sponged Up by Human Skin

The persistence of Corexit mixed with crude oil has now weathered to tar, yet is traceable to BP's Deepwater Horizon brew through its chemical fingerprint.

The program uses newly developed UV light equipment to detect tar product and reveal where it is buried in many beach areas and also where it still remains on the surface in the shoreline plunge step area. The tar product samples are then analyzed…to determine which toxins may be present and at what concentrations. By returning to locations several times over the past year and analyzing samples, we've been able to determine that PAH concentrations in most locations are not degrading as hoped for and expected.

Worse, the toxins in this unholy mix of Corexit and crude actually penetrate wet skin faster than dry skin (photos above)—the author describes it as the equivalent of a built-in accelerant—though you'd never know it unless you happened to look under fluorescent light in the 370nm spectrum. The stuff can't be wiped off. It's absorbed into the skin.

And it isn't going away. Other findings from monitoring sites between Waveland, Mississippi, and Cape San Blas, Florida over the past two years:

The use of Corexit is inhibiting the microbial degradation of hydrocarbons in the crude oil and has enabled concentrations of the organic pollutants known as PAH to stay above levels considered carcinogenic by the NIH and OSHA.
26 of 32 sampling sites in Florida and Alabama had PAH concentrations exceeding safe limits.
Only three locations were found free of PAH contamination.
Carcinogenic PAH compounds from the toxic tar are concentrating in surface layers of the beach and from there leaching into lower layers of beach sediment. This could potentially lead to contamination of groundwater sources.

http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/04/microbes-arent-eating-oil-gulf-beaches-thanks-corexit-dispersant

[RandomGuy]

I don't care to look for solid facts

(poke poke)

:lol

(edit)

Whoops, looks like someone beat me to it. To be clear: I know this is out of context, but it just looks funny, so I couldn't resist a minor poke in the ribs.

[RandomGuy]

No.

I'm guilty this time of dismissing the source article. Like CC said:

Ad hominem logical fallacy.

Thinkprogress quotes al Jazeera, who quotes actual people interviewed:



"The fishermen have never seen anything like this," Dr Jim Cowan told Al Jazeera. "And in my 20 years working on red snapper, looking at somewhere between 20 and 30,000 fish, I've never seen anything like this either.


Tracy Kuhns and her husband Mike Roberts, commercial fishers from Barataria, Louisiana, are finding eyeless shrimp.

"At the height of the last white shrimp season, in September, one of our friends caught 400 pounds of these," Kuhns told Al Jazeera while showing a sample of the eyeless shrimp.

According to Kuhns, at least 50 per cent of the shrimp caught in that period in Barataria Bay, a popular shrimping area that was heavily impacted by BP's oil and dispersants, were eyeless. Kuhns added: "Disturbingly, not only do the shrimp lack eyes, they even lack eye sockets."


Eyeless shrimp, from a catch of 400 pounds of eyeless shrimp, said to be caught September 22, 2011, in Barataria Bay, Louisiana [Erika Blumenfeld/Al Jazeera]

"Some shrimpers are catching these out in the open Gulf [of Mexico]," she added, "They are also catching them in Alabama and Mississippi. We are also finding eyeless crabs, crabs with their shells soft instead of hard, full grown crabs that are one-fifth their normal size, clawless crabs, and crabs with shells that don't have their usual spikes … they look like they've been burned off by chemicals."


Before and after

But evidence of ongoing contamination continues to mount.

Crustacean biologist Darryl Felder, in the Department of Biology with the University of Louisiana at Lafayette is in a unique position.

Felder has been monitoring the vicinity of BP's blowout Macondo well both before and after the oil disaster began, because, as he told Al Jazeera, "the National Science Foundation was interested in these areas that are vulnerable due to all the drilling".

"So we have before and after samples to compare to," he added. "We have found seafood with lesions, missing appendages, and other abnormalities."

Felder also has samples of inshore crabs with lesions. "Right here in Grand Isle we see lesions that are eroding down through their shell. We just got these samples last Thursday and are studying them now, because we have no idea what else to link this to as far as a natural event."

According to Felder, there is an even higher incidence of shell disease with crabs in deeper waters.

"My fear is that these prior incidents of lesions might be traceable to microbes, and my questions are, did we alter microbial populations in the vicinity of the well by introducing this massive amount of petroleum and in so doing cause microbes to attack things other than oil?"

One hypothesis he has is that the waxy coatings around crab shells are being impaired by anthropogenic chemicals or microbes resulting from such chemicals.

"You create a site where a lesion can occur, and microbes attack. We see them with big black lesions, around where their appendages fall off, and all that is left is a big black ring."

Felder added that his team is continuing to document the incidents: "And from what we can tell, there is a far higher incidence we're finding after the spill."

"We are also seeing much lower diversity of crustaceans," he said. "We don't have the same number of species as we did before [the spill]."


Fuck, this is some pretty damn good journalism. They cite three different scientists, fishermen themselves, then provide the following at the end of the article.


Read more about the scientists in this article, and their findings:

Dr Darryl Felder, Department of Biology, University of Louisiana, Lafayette. Runs a research lab that studies the biology of marine crustaceans. Dr Felder has been monitoring the seafloor in the vicinity of BP's blow-out Macondo oil-well both before and after the oil disaster began. He was studying samples from the seafloor in the Macondo area pre-spill via funding from the National Science Foundation, which provided him a grant to log the effects of all the drilling in the area. His funding now comes from the Gulf Research Initiative (GRI), which is funded by BP. Read his full biography here.

Dr Jim Cowan with Louisiana State University's Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences has been studying Gulf seafood, specifically red snapper, for more than 20 years. Funding is through the State of Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. Read his full biography here.

Dr Andrew Whitehead, LSU, his lab conducts experiments and studies on Evolutionary and Ecological Genomics. He recently published "Genomic and physiological footprint of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on resident marsh fishes" in the National Academy of Sciences. Much of his funding also comes from the Gulf Research Initiative. Read his full biography here.

Brief summary of scientists' findings/studies:

Felder: Studies carried out from January 2010 to present in BP's Macondo well area. Found abnormalities in shrimp post-spill, whereas pre-spill found none.

Cowan: Studies carried out from Nov 2010-present, from west Louisiana to west Florida, from coast to 250km out. Found lesions/sores/infections in 20 species of fish, as many as 50 per cent fish in some samples impacted. Pre spill levels were 1/10 of one per cent of fish.

Whitehead: Species such as the Gulf Killifish, in and around the Gulf of Mexico, will continue to be subject to negative effects of the BP oil spill disaster of 2010. The Killifish, which researchers consider a good indicator of water quality in the Gulf of Mexico, is showing signs that the oil spill is having a negative impact on its health. Tracked killifish for the first four months after spill across oil-impacted areas of Louisiana and Mississippi.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/04/201241682318260912.html

You won't see this kind of thoroughness at Fox "news".

[RandomGuy]

No, my instinct is this is more hype. Yes, I could be wrong, but I don't care to look for solid facts on this either.

Too many times in my life have I seen articles written by the "boy who cried wolf."

Quite frankly, I could say the exact same thing about anything you claim on climate change.

My instinct is that anything you post is more hype. I could be wrong, but I don't care to look for solid facts on the things you post.

To many times in my life I have seen articles written by sophists who claim to be "honest skeptics".

Claims stand or fall on their own. Blanket dismissals are a shitty way to form opinions.

[CuckingFunt]

How many of these deformities were there before the spill?

Oh that's right... Probably no comparison available. nobody saw it as a story angle then.

I know it pains you to think of things in non-partisan terms, but there are several whole industries based in the Gulf of Mexico and its surrounding waterways for whom this is not merely a political talking point.

[Wild Cobra]

I know it pains you to think of things in non-partisan terms, but there are several whole industries based in the Gulf of Mexico and its surrounding waterways for whom this is not merely a political talking point.
Money isn't partisan.

Follow who looking for a payoff.

My state is actually going forward with a lawsuit against BP, because some of the retirement funds are in their stocks. I don't know how they plan to win. The 5 year trend isn't that much different that other oil giants.

[CuckingFunt]

Money isn't partisan.

Follow who looking for a payoff.

My point is that you'd have to be a full on retard to think that no one was monitoring the health and safety of fish and wildlife populations in an area that supports sizable commercial fishing industries and supplies seafood to a big part of the country without a political hot button issue or potential law suit dollars as a motivation.


My state is actually going forward with a lawsuit against BP, because some of the retirement funds are in their stocks. I don't know how they plan to win. The 5 year trend isn't that much different that other oil giants.

Yes. Analogous.

[boutons_deux]

Study reveals link between oil spill exposure and hematologic and hepatic toxicity

A new study reports that workers exposed to crude oil and dispersants used during the Gulf oil spill cleanup display significantly altered blood profiles, liver enzymes, and somatic symptoms compared to an unexposed control group. Investigators found that platelet counts were significantly decreased in the exposed group, while both hemoglobin and hematocrit levels were notably increased. Their findings, reported in The American Journal of Medicine, suggest that oil spill cleanup workers are at risk for developing hepatic or blood-related disorders.

In April 2010, Deepwater Horizon, an offshore drilling rig owned by British Petroleum (BP) exploded, spewing over 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. In order to break down the oil slick, BP used nearly 2 million gallons of dispersants like COREXIT, and an estimated 170,000 workers participated in the cleanup effort. Currently, COREXIT is banned in the United Kingdom because of its potential risk to cleanup workers.

While other studies have identified a relationship between oil spills, dispersants, and human health, this new research from the University Cancer and Diagnostic Centers, Houston, TX, led by G. Kesava Reddy, PhD, MHA, and Mark A. D'Andrea, MD, FACRO, focuses primarily on the link between oil spill exposure and hematologic and hepatic functions in subjects who had participated in the oil spill cleanup operation. The investigators looked at a total of 247 subjects between January 2010 and November 2012, with 117 subjects identified as exposed to the oil spill and dispersants by participating in the cleanup over the duration of three months. The unexposed control group of 130 subjects was comprised of people living at least 100 miles away from the Gulf coast of Louisiana.

Using medical charts, demographic and clinical records, the team reviewed specific data points such as white blood cell (WBC) counts, platelet counts, hemoglobin, hematocrit, blood urea nitrogen (BUN), creatinine, serum beta-2 microglobulin, alkaline phosphatase (ALP), aspartate amino transferase (AST), and alanine amino transferase (ALT) for both groups.

While no significant differences were noted in the WBC counts of the two groups, the study did find that platelet counts were notably decreased in the oil spill exposed group. Also, BUN and creatinine levels were substantially lower in the exposed group, while hemoglobin and hematocrit levels were increased compared to the unexposed subjects. Furthermore, considered indicators of hepatic damage, the serum ALP, AST, and ALT levels in the exposed subjects were also elevated, suggesting that the exposed group may be at a higher risk for developing blood-related disorders.

"Phosphatases, amino transferases, and dehydrogenases play critical roles in biological processes. These enzymes are involved in detoxification, metabolism, and biosynthesis of energetic macromolecules that are important for different essential functions," says lead investigator G. Kesava Reddy. "Alterations in the levels of these enzymes result in biochemical impairment and lesions in the tissue and cellular function."

Participants also reported somatic symptoms, with headache reported most frequently, followed by shortness of breath, skin rash, cough, dizzy spells, fatigue, painful joints, night sweats, and chest pain. "The health complaints reported by those involved in oil cleanup operations are consistent with the previously reported studies on major oil spills. However, the prevalence of symptoms appears to be higher in the present study compared with the earlier findings of other investigators," added Dr. Reddy.

The investigators acknowledge that the lack of pre-disaster health data on the subjects involved in the study is the greatest limiting factor; however, the data collected have shown significant health effects on the cleanup workers.

"To our knowledge, no previous study has explored the effects of the oil spill specifically assessing the hematological and hepatic functions in oil spill cleanup workers," explains Dr. Reddy. "The results of this study indicate that oil spill exposure appears to play a role in the development of hematologic and hepatic toxicity. However, additional long-term follow-up studies are required to understand the clinical significance of the oil spill exposure."

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-09/ehs-srl091213.php

[boutons_deux]

Gulf Ecosystem in Crisis Three Years After BP Spill

New Orleans - Hundreds of kilograms of oily debris on beaches, declining seafood catches, and other troubling signs point towards an ecosystem in crisis in the wake of BP's 2010 oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

"It's disturbing what we're seeing," Louisiana Oyster Task Force member Brad Robin told Al Jazeera. "We don't have any more baby crabs, which is a bad sign. We're seeing things we've never seen before."

Robin, a commercial oyster fisherman who is also a member of the Louisiana Government Advisory Board, said that of the sea ground where he has harvested oysters in the past, only 30 percent of it is productive now.

"We're seeing crabs with holes in their shells, other seafood deformities. The state of Louisiana oyster season opened on October 15, and we can't find any production out there yet. There is no life out there."

According to Robin, entire sectors of the Louisiana oyster harvest areas are "dead or mostly dead". "I got 10 boats in my fleet and only two of them are operating, because I don't have the production to run the rest. We're nowhere near back to whole, and I can't tell you when or if it'll come back."

State of Louisiana statistics confirm that overall seafood catch numbers since the spill have declined.

Everything is down'

Robin is not the only member of the Gulf's seafood industry to report bleak news. Kathy Birren and her husband own Hernando Beach Seafood, a wholesale seafood business, in Florida.

"I've seen a lot of change since the spill," Birren told Al Jazeera. "Our stone crab harvest has dropped off and not come back; the numbers are way lower. Typically you'll see some good crabbing somewhere along the west coast of Florida, but this last year we've had problems everywhere."

Birren said the problems are not just with the crabs. "We've also had our grouper fishing down since the spill," she added. "We've seen fish with tar balls in their stomachs from as far down as the Florida Keys. We had a grouper with tar balls in its stomach last month. Overall, everything is down."

According to Birren, many fishermen in her area are giving up. "People are dropping out of the fishing business, and selling out cheap because they have to. I'm in west-central Florida, but fishermen all the way down to Key West are struggling to make it. I look at my son's future, as he's just getting into the business, and we're worried."

Dean Blanchard, owner of a seafood business in Grand Isle, Louisiana, is also deeply troubled by what he is seeing. "We have big tar mats coming up on Elmers Island, Fouchon, Grand Isle, and Grand Terre," Blanchard told Al Jazeera. "Every time we have bad weather we get fresh tar balls and mats."

Blanchard said his business generates only about 15 percent of what it did before the spill. "It looks like it's getting worse," he said. "I told my wife when she goes to the mall she can only spend 15 percent what she used to spend."
Blanchard has also seen shrimp brought in with deformities, and has taken photographs of shrimp with tumours (see above). Others lack eyes. He attributes the deformities to BP's use of toxic dispersants to sink the spilled oil.

"Everybody living down here watched them spray their dispersants day in and day out. They sprayed our bays and our beaches," he said. "We got a problem, because BP says they didn't spray down here, but we had a priest that even saw them spraying. So either we got a lying priest, or BP is lying."

BP and the Coast Guard have told the media they have never sprayed dispersants within 10 miles of the coast, and that dispersants have never been used in bays.

A decades-long recovery

On a more sombre note, Dr Ed Cake, a biological oceanographer and a marine biologist, believes it will likely take the Gulf decades to recover from the BP disaster.

"The impacts of the Ixtoc 1 blowout in the Bay of Campeche in 1979 are still being felt," said Cake, referring to a large oil spill near the Mexican coast, "and there are bays there where the oysters have still not returned. My prediction is we will be dealing with the impacts of this spill for several decades to come and it will outlive me."

According to Cake, blue crab and shrimp catches have fallen in Mississippi and Alabama since the spill, and he also expressed worries about ongoing dolphin die-offs. But his primary concern is the slow recovery of the region's oyster population.

"Mississippi recently opened their season, and their oyster fisherman are restricted to 12 sacks of oysters a day. But they can't even reach six," Cake said. "Thirty sacks would be a normal day for oysters - that was the previous limit - but that is restricted now because the stocks just aren't there."

Cake's conclusion is grim. "Here in the estuarine areas, where we have the oysters, I think it'll be a decade or two before we see any recovery."

BP previously provided Al Jazeera with a statement on this topic, a portion of which read: "Seafood from the Gulf of Mexico is among the most tested in the world, and, according to the FDA and NOAA, it is as safe now as it was before the accident."

BP claims that fish lesions are naturally common, and that before the spill there was documented evidence of lesions in the Gulf of Mexico caused by parasites and other agents.

More oil found

The second phase of the ongoing federal trial against BP investigates whether the company's actions to halt the flow of oil during the blowout were adequate, and aims to determine how much oil was released.

"BP is mounting an aggressive legal and public relations campaign to shield itself from liability and minimise the amount of oil spilled in the Gulf, as well as the ongoing impacts from the disaster," said Jonathan Henderson, an organiser for the Gulf Restoration Network, an environmental group.

Even Louisiana's Republican Governor Bobby Jindal agrees. Jindal recently said, "Three and a half years later, BP is spending more money - I want you to hear this - they are spending more money on television commercials than they have on actually restoring the natural resources they impacted."

As far away from the blowout site as Florida, researchers continue to find oil in both Tampa Bay and Sarasota Bay.

In Louisiana, according to the LA Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA), more than 200 miles of shoreline have "some degree of oiling", including 14 miles that are moderately or heavily oiled. From March through August of this year, over three million pounds of oiled material have been collected in Louisiana, more than double the amount over the same time period last year.

In addition, the CPRA reports that "investigations into the chemical composition of MC252 [BP's Macondo well] oil samples demonstrate that submerged oil is NOT substantially weathered or depleted of most PAH's [polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons]," and "disputes…findings relied on by the USCG [US Coast Guard] that Deepwater Horizon oil is non-toxic".

The agency also expresses concerns that "submerged oil may continue to pose long term risk to nearshore ecosystems".

"New impacts to the Gulf's ecosystem and creatures also continue to emerge," Henderson told Al Jazeera. "This year alone, the National Marine Fisheries Service has recorded 212 dolphins and other marine mammal standings in the northern Gulf. A new scientific study conducted by NOAA, BP and university researchers also shows significant negative impacts on tiny organisms that live on the sea floor in a 57 square mile area around the Deepwater Horizon well site."

Numerous other impacts have been documented since the disaster began, including genetic disruptions for Gulf killifish, harm to deepwater corals,, and the die-off of tiny foraminifera that are an important part of the Gulf's food chain.
Ongoing studies continue to reveal toxins from BP's spill in water, soil, and seafood samples.

Meanwhile, fishermen in BP's impact zone wonder if things will ever return to normal. "Our future is very, very dim, and there are no sponge crabs out there, which is the future," Robin concluded. "I've never seen this in my lifespan. I'm not seeing a future, because everything out there is dead."

http://truth-out.org/news/item/19526-gulf-ecosystem-in-crisis-after-bp-spill

BP is now refusing to pay up, saying they've paid enough.

Skypeople win, Na'vi lose

All the cable and broadcast news channels will clearly follow Al J's lead and run with this story. :lol

[boutons_deux]

BP's "Widespread Human Health Crisis"

Since the spill began in April 2010, Al Jazeera has interviewed (http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/spotlight/bpoilspill/deeptrouble)hundreds of coastal residents, fishermen, and oil cleanup workers whose medical records, like Frizzell's, document toxic chemical exposure that they blame on BP's oil and the toxic chemical dispersants the oil giant used on the spill.

The US Center for Disease Control and Prevention lists the toxic components commonly found in chemicals in crude oil, and several of these chemicals have been found in the blood of people living in the impact zone of BP's disaster.

Several toxicologists agree, and now one accuses both BP and the US Environmental Protection Agency of knowingly placing people in harm's way since they both had prior knowledge of the harmful effects of the oil and dispersants.

"BP told the public that Corexit was 'as harmless as Dawn dishwashing liquid'," Dr Susan Shaw, of the State University of New York, told Al Jazeera. "But BP and the EPA clearly knew about the toxicity of the Corexit dispersants long before this spill."

Shaw, a toxicologist in the university's School of Public Health, has been studying the health effects of chemical exposure for 30 years. She is also the president and founder of the Marine Environmental Research Institute, and explained that BP's Material Safety Data Sheets for Corexit warned that the dispersant posed high and immediate human health hazards.

"Five of the Corexit ingredients are linked to cancer, 33 are associated with skin irritation from rashes to burns, 33 are linked to eye irritation, 11 are or are suspected of being potential respiratory toxins or irritants, and 10 are suspected kidney toxins," she added. "BP's own testing found that workers were exposed to a possible human carcinogen from the dispersant.

"We predicted with certainty the widespread human health crisis we are seeing in the Gulf today," Shaw said.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/19676-bps-widespread-human-health-crisis

[boutons_deux]

Reminders of the BP Oil Spill Evident at Mardi Gras

Those who decided to enjoy the festivities along the Gulf of Mexico might be in for something they didn’t expect: oil tar mats.

On Thursday of last week, workers on Pensacola Beach, Florida spotted and brought to shore a 1,200 pound oil tar mat (http://www.pnj.com/article/20140301/NEWS10/303010015/Oil-appears-on-Pensacola-Beach-years-after-BP-Gulf-spill?gcheck=1), which officials say accounted for about 90% of the total size of the mat.

While the bulk of the mat was a mixture of sand and other debris, scientists ran tests and were quickly able to determine that the oil in the mat was a perfect match for the oil released into the Gulf of Mexico during the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil disaster,


Gizmodo posted (http://gizmodo.com/5903021/bp-oil-spill-aftermath-eyeless-shrimp-clawless-crabs-and-fish-with-oozing-sores) a list of some of the major deformities that were discovered during an Al Jazeera investigation (http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/04/201241682318260912.html), all of which are attributable to BP’s oil:



Shrimp with tumors on their heads
Shrimp with defects on their gills and "shells missing around their gills and head"
Shrimp without eyes
Shrimp with babies still attached to them
Eyeless fish
Fish without eye-sockets
Fish without covers on their gills
Fish with large pink masses hanging off their eyes and gills
Crates of blue crabs, all of which were lacking at least one claw
Crabs with holes in their shells
Crabs with shells that have no spikes or claws or misshapen claws
Crabs that are dying from within


http://www.alternet.org/environment/reminders-bp-oil-spill-evident-mardi-gras?akid=11562.187590.5BDdO-&rd=1&src=newsletter965373&t=22

SkyPeople give gifts that keep on giving.

[boutons_deux]

Has the ongoing destruction of wildlife and the Gulf from the BP spill pushed even BigOil-corrupted/captured Louisiana to seek relief from the SkyPeople destruction?

Nouvelle Orleans was victim of the canals, channels, and loss of the wetlands buffering.

3 Former Louisiana Governors Agree: Lawsuit Against 97 Oil And Gas Companies Should Proceed (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/03/27/3419675/louisiana-lawsuit-oil-wetlands-restoration/)

Louisiana has given a lot to oil and gas companies, mostly in the form of natural resources. The generosity is not always reciprocated. While the industry brings economic gains and employment to the state, when it comes to environmental costs or socioeconomic strife the exchange is not so smooth. Last summer, the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East took matters into their own hands by filing a lawsuit against 97 oil and gas companies claiming they have caused the loss of hundreds of thousands of acres of coastal wetlands, which increases flood danger. The suit asks the companies to restore damaged wetlands or offer financial compensation for areas beyond repair, money that could be used for levee maintenance or construction.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal was quick to brush off the legitimacy of the claims, demanding that the lawsuit be pulled and asserting that the board is improperly taking over the state’s role in coastal policy. The oil and gas companies — the perpetrators of all the digging and dredging of pipeline canals along the coast among other damaging activities — have sided with Jindal, who has already appointed (http://fuelfix.com/blog/2014/02/28/battle-shaping-up-over-big-oil-lawsuit-bill/) three replacements to the board who see more eye-to-eye with him and share his opposition to the lawsuit after others terms ended.

On Wednesday, three former Louisiana governors took opposition to Jindal and the oil and gas industry. During a panel discussion at Loyola University, Buddy Roemer, Kathleen Blanco, and Edwin Edwards agreed that “no state officials — neither the legislature nor the current governor — should interfere with the local levee board’s lawsuit against oil companies,” according (http://uptownmessenger.com/2014/03/former-govs-roemer-blanco-and-edwards-speak-at-loyola-university-live-coverage/) to UptownMessenger.com, a local New Orleans news source.

“This ought to be a for-profit state, but those who abuse the privilege and don’t pay for damaging the land and water and the air that we breathe ought to pay the cost of it,” said (http://uptownmessenger.com/2014/03/former-govs-roemer-blanco-and-edwards-speak-at-loyola-university-live-coverage/) Roemer, a Republican who ran for president in 2012. Roemer also stated that the industry is simply trying to maximize their profits by shirking the responsibility of repairing the coastline.

Edwards and Blanco focused more on the lawsuit itself, with Edwards saying that at the very least it ought to be allowed to go to court to find out who is responsible and for what. Blanco agreed, citing the loss of land due to channel digging, and saying that she helped design the independent levee board to be free of politics. “I’m rather concerned that it is going to be re-politicized,” she (http://uptownmessenger.com/2014/03/former-govs-roemer-blanco-and-edwards-speak-at-loyola-university-live-coverage/) added.

The editorial board of the New Orleans Times-Picayune calls the levee boards one of the most positive changes to the area after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. “Residents demanded that the old crony-laden boards be consolidated and that board members have autonomy and the technical expertise to hold the Army Corps of Engineers accountable for its work,” wrote (http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2014/02/gov_jindal_louisiana_legislatu.html) the board in February. “The new flood protection authorities are vastly better watchdogs than the old boards.”

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/03/27/3419675/louisiana-lawsuit-oil-wetlands-restoration/

is oil, gas production, refining even amenable, available, at any price, to being non-destructive, non-polluting?

[DarrinS]

http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/oilsources2.jpg

[ChumpDumper]

lol objective source there.

[DarrinS]

lol objective source there.


Is this one good enough?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/03/140325-texas-pollution-oil-spills-animals-science/

[ChumpDumper]

Is this one good enough?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/03/140325-texas-pollution-oil-spills-animals-science/It's great, since it says much of that oil is consumed by critters and that doesn't happen with oil spills.

Good job, Darrin! :tu

[boutons_deux]

http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/oilsources2.jpg

no link to corexit pollution sources?

[DarrinS]

It's great, since it says much of that oil is consumed by critters and that doesn't happen with oil spills.

Good job, Darrin! :tu


I guess you missed the link "Read about how nature tackles oil spills".

For your convenience, I've posted it here --> http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/05/100507-science-environment-gulf-mexico-oil-spill-cleanup-bacteria/

Title: Nature Fighting Back Against Gulf Oil Spill
Subtitle: For starters, crude is like butter for oil-munching bacteria.

Good job, Chump :tu

[ChumpDumper]

I guess you missed the link "Read about how nature tackles oil spills".

For your convenience, I've posted it here --> http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/05/100507-science-environment-gulf-mexico-oil-spill-cleanup-bacteria/

Title: Nature Fighting Back Against Gulf Oil Spill
Subtitle: For starters, crude is like butter for oil-munching bacteria.

Good job, Chump :tuAnd it stops working after awhile and is fucked up by abuse of the environment.

Good job, Darrin. :tu

Seriously, you're trying to bring back the old Reagan chestnut of trees' being the largest source of pollution in the forests.

I never saw one bird smothered by oil from a seep when I lived in Santa Barbara.

[Winehole23]

nice bookends

[DarrinS]

And it stops working after awhile and is fucked up by abuse of the environment.

Good job, Darrin. :tu

Seriously, you're trying to bring back the old Reagan chestnut of trees' being the largest source of pollution in the forests.

I never saw one bird smothered by oil from a seep when I lived in Santa Barbara.


Lol, nice anectode. Case closed.

[DarrinS]

And it stops working after awhile and is fucked up by abuse of the environment.

Good job, Darrin. :tu

Seriously, you're trying to bring back the old Reagan chestnut of trees' being the largest source of pollution in the forests.

I never saw one bird smothered by oil from a seep when I lived in Santa Barbara.


Google is hard.

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/mar/07/local/la-me-oil-birds-20120307

First sentence: Oil seeping from the ocean floor off Santa Barbara is taking a toll on seabirds that are turning up by the dozens along the Southern California coastline coated in crude oil and tar.

[RandomGuy]

http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/oilsources2.jpg

Shocking, the people with the most money to make from cherry picking data to say oil production pollution isn't a problem, say that oil production pollution isn't a problem.

What is the data on which they base their chart Darrin?

Anyone trying to honestly evaluate the topic should ask that basic question. I assume you care about what is true or not.

[DarrinS]

Shocking, the people with the most money to make from cherry picking data to say oil production pollution isn't a problem, say that oil production pollution isn't a problem.

What is the data on which they base their chart Darrin?




From the Nat Geo link I posted above:

"In fact, of the tens of millions of gallons of oil that enter North American oceans each year due to human activities, only 8 percent comes from tanker or oil pipeline spills, according to the 2003 book Oil in the Sea III by the U.S. National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, which is still considered the authority on oil-spill data."

[ChumpDumper]

Lol, nice anectode. Case closed.Wait, so you don't like anecdotes now?

lol

Wow.

That's worse than BP and Valdez combined, right?

Are you going to Google those numbers?

[TeyshaBlue]

Next: Fracking the Ocean.

[ChumpDumper]

lol I'm just trying to understand the point here.

Just because oil from seeps kill birds, massive tanker and rig spills are OK?

[FuzzyLumpkins]

The real question here: is Darrin trolling, shilling or stupid?

[DarrinS]

Fuzzy with the ad hominem per usual

[FuzzyLumpkins]

http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/oilsources2.jpg


Fuzzy with the ad hominem per usual

What more really needs to be demonstrated? You posted the damning evidence and that is why I ask if you are trolling. It's so fucking stupid I have difficulty believing that you really think this compelling stuff. Like Kool and Jesus.

Bringing up a graph of the entire ocean really doesn't speak much when we are talking about the gulf coast ecosystem. That there are ecosystems out on the west coast that dump even more shit daily is besides the point. You don't just sprinkle oil eating bacteria and the slick goes away.

[DarrinS]

What more really needs to be demonstrated? You posted the damning evidence and that is why I ask if you are trolling. It's so fucking stupid I have difficulty believing that you really think this compelling stuff. Like Kool and Jesus.

Bringing up a graph of the entire ocean really doesn't speak much when we are talking about the gulf coast ecosystem. That there are ecosystems out on the west coast that dump even more shit daily is besides the point. You don't just sprinkle oil eating bacteria and the slick goes away.


:sleep :wakeup

[FuzzyLumpkins]

:sleep :wakeup

So where did you get the graph?

[DarrinS]

So where did you get the graph?


It's a mystery

[pgardn]

IER

The Institute's CEO, Robert L. Bradley, Jr., was formerly a director of policy analysis at Enron, where he wrote speeches for Kenneth Lay. He has written seven books, including Capitalism at Work and Edison to Enron,[5] and he maintains the website Political Capitalism.[6] He is also an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute.[7]

Nonprofit first funded by big oil, Exxon included. Now in the hands of people who have an economic interest in petroleum and the wonders of a totally unfettered free market.

Nice...

Oh shit, I got the part with the brackets from Wikipedia, sorry Winehole.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

IER

The Institute's CEO, Robert L. Bradley, Jr., was formerly a director of policy analysis at Enron, where he wrote speeches for Kenneth Lay. He has written seven books, including Capitalism at Work and Edison to Enron,[5] and he maintains the website Political Capitalism.[6] He is also an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute.[7]

Nonprofit first funded by big oil, Exxon included. Now in the hands of people who have an economic interest in petroleum and the wonders of a totally unfettered free market.

Nice...

Oh shit, I got the part with the brackets from Wikipedia, sorry Winehole.

lol Enron. Nice.

This shouldn't have been necessarily. Prima facia it's a petro think tank.

[boutons_deux]

http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/oilsources2.jpg

the point being the Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon are to be trivialized, ignored as being so much less polluting than "natural" oil pollution?

as pg found, IER is a "free market" (ie, Corporate-Americans fuck Human-Americans and fuck everything) stink tank.

[DarrinS]

http://www.eurocbc.org/1Oil_in_the_Sea.pdf

[RandomGuy]

From the Nat Geo link I posted above:

"In fact, of the tens of millions of gallons of oil that enter North American oceans each year due to human activities, only 8 percent comes from tanker or oil pipeline spills, according to the 2003 book Oil in the Sea III by the U.S. National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, which is still considered the authority on oil-spill data."

So I assume the 2003 book Oil in the Sea III, doesn't have the data incorporated from the Deepwater Horizon spill.

What would the pie chart look like if it did?

Does constant oil seepage coat the entire ocean floor, and shoreline marine habitats? How does that pie chart reflect localized damage?

http://homertribune.com/2014/03/mending-from-the-1989-exxon-valdez-oil-spill/

The 1989 spill, while a fairly small amount compared to yearly emissions off the coast of Alaska I would be sure, destroyed the fishing community and all the jobs that went along with it, in a rather sudden localized ecosystem collapse that has yet to recover.

Does the Institute for Energy Research provide information on the cumulative localized effects of spills? Why or why not?

[DarrinS]

still hung up on the source?

[Winehole23]

lol ducking RG's direct question

[DarrinS]

lol ducking RG's direct question

I'm sure Oil in the Sea III has the information RG asked about. Don't know why he's hung up on IER.

[DarrinS]

And a book published in 2003 is obviously not going to have data on an event that happened in 2010.

[Winehole23]

I'm sure Oil in the Sea III has the information RG asked aboutbut you don't. have you read it?

[Winehole23]

is it your habit to post sources you're totally unfamiliar with, except insofar as they appear to support what you say?

[DarrinS]

but you don't. have you read it?

no, have you?

[DarrinS]

is it your habit to post sources you're totally unfamiliar with, except insofar as they appear to support what you say?

What's that saying about people who live in glass houses?

[Winehole23]

fire away. so far you got zip.

[Winehole23]

no, have you?not my hobby horse.

[Winehole23]

I made no claims one way or the other, but that doesn't mean I can't make fun of you.

[DarrinS]

I made no claims one way or the other, but that doesn't mean I can't make fun of you.


I'm just sure that when you are carpet bombing the forum, boutons-style, that you are have fully read all references cited by your source articles.

Carry on.

[Winehole23]

I read what I post. Occasionally I do check sources. So yes, I do some due diligence.

Difference is, you're in the habit of doing none. To the point where pwning you is often as easy as referring to sources you posted, but didn't read

[DarrinS]

I read what I post. Occasionally I do check sources. So yes, I do some due diligence.

Difference is, you're in the habit of doing none. To the point where pwning you is often as easy as referring to sources you posted, but didn't read


I like when you write in this terse style. Much preferred over your circumlocutory usual.

[Winehole23]

My style's a work in progress. Posting here has helped for sure.

[spurraider21]

unrelated, but... :lol

https://scontent-b-lax.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc3/t1.0-9/1932361_762955323770542_1711296500_n.jpg

[boutons_deux]

EPA Gives BP ‘Get Out of Jail Free Card’ on 4th Anniversary of Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Disasterhttp://files.cdn.ecowatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/bpoilspill.jpg
But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has just given BP a big one. The EPA ruled that the corporation could start bidding on lucrative new oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico after having been suspended from doing any new business with the government ever since the accident.
That suspension was lifted on March 13 (http://ecowatch.com/2014/03/17/epa-lifts-bp-gulf-drilling-ban/) less than a week before the yearly government auction for drilling rights. The company whose negligence was responsible for the worst marine oil-spill in history won 43 new leases in the Gulf that is still fouled by million of gallons of unrecovered crude.

http://ecowatch.com/2014/04/20/epa-bp-anniversary-deepwater-horizon-oil-spill/

[boutons_deux]

BP is refusing to pay for Gulf oil spill research

Four years after the Deepwater Horizon Explosion, BP is making much of its commitment (http://www.salon.com/2014/04/17/coast_guard_slams_bp_for_suggesting_oil_spill_clea nup_is_complete/) to clean up the Gulf of Mexico — but it’s refusing to cough up the money needed to determine just how much damage the spill actually caused.

According to documents obtained by the Financial Times (http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/cdf8ba8c-c8a3-11e3-8976-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2zWYoxL4r), the company denied money to the federal government to fund studies assessing the oil spill’s impact on the Gulf, including its effect on the region’s dolphins (http://www.salon.com/2013/12/19/study_many_sick_dolphins_1_year_after_oil_spill/), whales and oysters. While the company shelled out over $1 billion for the Natural Resource Damage Assessment (http://www.gulfspillrestoration.noaa.gov/assessment/), which is “intended to provide a common understanding of the problems of the gulf shared by BP and the U.S. government, so the company knows what it needs to do to meet its legal obligation to put the damage right,” it’s since called the research process into question, denying most of the government’s further requests for funding. FT reports (http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/cdf8ba8c-c8a3-11e3-8976-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2zWYoxL4r):

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a US government agency, wrote to BP last July seeking almost $148m to pay for “injury assessment and restoration planning activities”, including funding of $2.2m for research into the recovery of the coastal wetlands, more than $10m for dolphins and whales and $22m for oysters.

In October, BP replied to the NOAA request rejecting the majority of those requests, saying it was concerned over “the lack of visibility and accountability” in the process, and the unwillingness of the NRDA trustees, which are US federal agencies and coastal state governments, to engage in technical discussions of the substantive issues.
BP said it had paid for work that was not done or done properly, been double-billed for the same study, and not been allowed to see research findings that it had been told would be shared.

Published numbers suggest BP has slowed sharply its spending on the NRDA. By the end of 2012, it had spent $973m, the company said last year, and it now puts its spending to date at “more than $1bn”.



BP has made no secret of its disdain for data linking the oil (http://www.salon.com/2013/12/19/study_many_sick_dolphins_1_year_after_oil_spill/) to sick dolphins, more than 600 of which washed up on Louisiana’s beaches (http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/blogs/whats-killing-the-gulf-of-mexicos-dolphins) in the two years following the spill. In response to this latest report, the company released a statement saying only that “BP is committed to funding environmental restoration for damage caused by the spill, and a comprehensive scientific assessment of the effects of the spill is the first step in that process.”

http://www.salon.com/2014/04/21/bps_refusing_to_pay_for_gulf_oil_spill_research/

[boutons_deux]

Four Years After The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, The Gulf Is Still Suffering (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/04/20/3428269/bp-oil-spill-four-year-anniversary/)


http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/AP83921140431-638x425.jpg

In his 34 years living in Louisiana, Ryan Lambert can’t remember ever seeing young, dead dolphins on his trips out in the Gulf. In just the last few months, however, he says he’s seen two.

Lambert, who owns a charter fishing company in Louisiana, told ThinkProgress he’s worried that the dying dolphins he’s still seeing point to lingering effects of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, which four years ago killed 11 people and spewed 210 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

“We still see little telltale signs,” he said. “There’s crabs with holes in their shells we’re seeing that we haven’t seen before, and I’ve never seen baby dolphins die.”
One study has linked (http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/dec/18/bp-oil-spill-dolphin-deaths-gulf-of-mexico) the spill to dolphin deaths in the Gulf, finding that dolphins’ diseases in Louisiana’s Barataria Bay are rare but consistent with oil exposure. BP, however, has disputed that ongoing deaths and strandings are a result of the spill.

Still, in the four years since the BP oil spill, it’s clear some places in the Gulf are still reeling from the effects of the millions of gallons of oil and chemical dispersants that doused the water. On Cat Island in Baratria Bay, a habitat that was once thick with mangroves and hosted hundreds of pairs of nesting nesting pelicans, all that’s left now is “bones of black mangrove stumps” as the Times-Picayune reports (http://www.nola.com/environment/index.ssf/2014/04/bp_oil_spill_four_years_later.html). The island is also quickly eroding, a process sped up by the oil, which still lingers in the island’s marshy soil and has killed off the trees that help bind the soil together.

“We’re in a system in Barataria Bay that’s already facing severe erosion, but it was clear that as this oil came ashore, and it stressed or killed plants, it was entirely predictable that we would see a higher rate of erosion on those shorelines that got oil,” David Muth, Director of the National Wildlife Federation’s Mississippi River Delta Restoration campaign, told ThinkProgress. “So you’re compounding a problem that already existed.”

Muth’s team at NWF has been monitoring Cat Island carefully since the spill. Last year, he said, the island’s mangroves appeared to be dying, but there were still birds nesting on the island. But this year, there were no birds, and all the mangroves had died.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/04/20/3428269/bp-oil-spill-four-year-anniversary/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+climateprogress%2FlCrX+%28Cli mate+Progress%29

[boutons_deux]

BP claims mission accomplished in Gulf cleanup; Coast Guard begs to differ

Helpful though it may have seemed for BP to speak on behalf of the federal government, the Coast Guard took some umbrage. From The Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/bp-and-coast-guard-issue-conflicting-statements-about-status-of-gulf-cleanup/2014/04/16/e1a5305e-c594-11e3-8b9a-8e0977a24aeb_story.html?wprss=rss_energy-environment):


Coast Guard Capt. Thomas Sparks, the federal on-scene coordinator of the Deepwater Horizon response, sought to stress that the switch to what he called a “middle response” process “does not end cleanup operations.”

“Our response posture has evolved to target re-oiling events on coastline segments that were previously cleaned,” said Sparks. “But let me be absolutely clear: This response is not over — not by a long shot.”


The Gulf Restoration Network tried to explain the semantics behind BP’s deceptive statement. “When oil washes up on shore, BP is no longer automatically obliged to go out there and clean up the mess,” spokesperson Raleigh Hoke said. “Now the onus is on the public, and state and federal governments to find the oil and then call BP in.”

We get why BP would wish that the cleanup were over. The efforts have already cost $14 billion — a fraction of the $42 billion that the company expects to pay out in fines, compensation claims, and other costs related to the Deepwater Horizon disaster. It’s a nightmare that we all wish were over — but wishes and rhetoric do not remove poisons from an ecosystem.

http://grist.org/news/bp-claims-mission-accomplished-in-gulf-cleanup-coast-guard-begs-to-differ/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed

[boutons_deux]

4 Years after BP's Gulf Oil Spill, Compensation Battle Rages

Four years after the Deepwater Horizon spill, oil is still washing up on the long sandy beaches of Grand Isle, Louisiana, and some islanders are fed up with hearing from BP that the crisis is over.

Jules Melancon, the last remaining oyster fisherman on an island dotted with colorful houses on stilts, says he has not found a single oyster alive in his leases in the area since the leak and relies on an onshore oyster nursery to make a living.

He and others in the southern U.S. state say compensation has been paid unevenly and lawyers have taken big cuts.

The British oil major has paid out billions of dollars in compensation under a settlement experts say is unprecedented in its breadth.

Some claimants are satisfied, but others are irate that BP is now challenging aspects of the settlement. Its portrayal of the aftermath of the well blowout and explosion of its drilling rig has also caused anger.

"They got an advert on TV saying they fixed the Gulf but I've never been fixed," said Melancon, who was compensated by BP, but deems the sum inadequate.

The oil company has spent over $26 billion on cleaning up, fines and compensation for the disaster, which killed 11 people on the rig and spilled millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico for 87 days after the blast on April 20, 2010.

That is more than a third of BP's total revenues for 2013, and the company has allowed for the bill to almost double, while fighting to overturn and delay payments of claims it says have no validity, made after it relinquished control over who got paid in a settlement with plaintiff lawyers in March 2012.

The advertisement that most riled Dean Blanchard, who began what later became the biggest shrimp company in the United States in 1982, was the one first aired by BP on television in late 2011 that said "all beaches and waters are open".(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoOfIR4Vk1o)

At that time almost 50 square miles of water in Louisiana were closed to fishing, according to the state's Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. Seven fishing areas are still closed, three where Blanchard says he would usually get his seafood.

Asked about the discrepancy, BP, which made the cleanup advertisements to help the affected states bring visitors back, said there was no scientific basis for the water closures and that all studies had found that seafood was safe to consume.

PERCEIVED INJUSTICE

Perceived injustice, between those who got payouts and those who did not, has divided the small community on Grand Isle, 50 miles south of New Orleans. Within sight of a line of deep sea oil rigs, it was one of the worst-affected areas.

Long streaks of oil marked the sand where a couple of tourists walked barefoot and small tarballs, which environmentalists say contain the most toxic form of oil, had collected on part of the beach when Reuters visited in October to report on the legacy of the spill.

The Gulf Restoration Network, an environmental group which monitors spilt BP oil, says it is still appearing in Grand Isle. The group saw what it called "thousands of tarballs" there on April 9th and collected some of them for testing.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/4-years-after-bps-gulf-oil-spill-compensation-battle-rages/

[boutons_deux]

Another article I read, a researcher was counting insects, whose count was way way down in the wetlands from before the spill. No insects = no food for fish, birds.

[boutons_deux]

Numbers on the board: The Gulf Coast, four years after the BP disaster


http://grist.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/bp-oil-spill.jpg?w=470&h=265&crop=1

Last week, I wrote about three victories that have emerged since the BP disaster (http://grist.org/politics/three-gulf-coast-victories-scored-since-the-bp-spill/), but the flip side of that is a host of problems that continue to plague the Gulf, which has suffered a whole string of insults, from Hurricane Katrina to ongoing erosion of its coastlines due to to erosion and fossil fuel extraction. Below is an index of statistics on the Gulf’s health, cobbled together from recent news articles, reports, and datasets documenting damage done to the coast:


30 percent: Portion of the nation’s shrimp supply that comes from the Mississippi River Delta area
900: Bottlenose dolphins found dead or stranded in the oil spill area since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded
500: Sea Turtles found dead or stranded near the oil spill area between 2011 and 2013
20 percent: Portion of the Gulf’s bluefin tuna exposed to oil while in their larval stage
82 percent: Population decline in bluefin tuna since the 1970s due to overfishing
778 miles: Amount of coastline BP says it cleaned before ending “active cleanup”
$14 billion: Amount BP says it spent on spill response and cleanup activities
$12.9 billion: Amount BP says it paid in claims, advances, civil settlements, and payments for tourism promotion, seafood testing, marketing, and health services
$23 billion: BP’s profits in 2013
70 million: Number of personnel hours BP says it used in the cleanup effort
33,000: Number of cleanup workers and coastal residents exposed to BP oil or dispersant who are being tracked in a National Institute for Health study
20 percent: Portion who were out of work when initially contacted for the survey
$105 million: Amount BP paid under a partial settlement for the oil spill to fund new healthcare centers and services for the Gulf
17 months: Time period BP was banned from all federal contracts
Two weeks: Length of time after that suspension was lifted before BP had another oil spill
Five: Number of rigs BP had in the Gulf of Mexico before the spill
10: Number of oil rigs BP currently has in the Gulf
1.3 million: Barrels of oil produced daily in the U.S. Gulf in 2011
2 million: Barrels of oil expected to come from the U.S. Gulf daily by 2020

http://grist.org/climate-energy/numbers-on-the-board-the-gulf-coast-four-years-after-the-bp-disaster/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed

[boutons_deux]

just another "external cost" BigOil won't pay

Oil spill damage to Gulf was deeper, wider than thought, say scientists

Four years after a BP oil (http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/BP+plc) rig exploded and flooded the Gulf of Mexico (http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Gulf+of+Mexico) with an estimated 170 million gallons of oil, scientists have discovered further evidence of coral communities affected by this environmental disaster.

Scientists at Pennsylvania State University (http://www.csmonitor.com/tags/topic/Pennsylvania+State+University), in State College, Pa., found coral communities that show signs of damage from 2010's Deepwater Horizon oil spill (http://www.livescience.com/19279-deepwater-horizon-oil-spill-images.html) more than 12 miles (20 kilometers) from the disaster site. The new findings suggest that the oil spill's footprint is both deeper and wider than was previously thought.

"This study very clearly shows that multiple coral communities, up to 22 kilometers [13.7 miles] from the spill site and at depths over 1,800 meters [5,905 feet], were impacted by the spill,"

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2014/0804/Oil-spill-damage-to-Gulf-was-deeper-wider-than-thought-say-scientists

[boutons_deux]

U.S. court says BP 'grossly negligent' in 2010 spill, billions in fines loom

BP PLC was "grossly negligent" for its role in the 2010 spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a U.S. district judge said on Thursday in a ruling that could add billions of dollars in fines to the more than $42 billion in charges taken so far for the worst offshore disaster in U.S. history.

Shares of BP traded in the United States fell 5 percent, or $2.40, to $45.31, eroding about $8.8 billion of its market value.

"The Court concludes that the discharge of oil 'was the result of gross negligence or willful misconduct' by BP, said the ruling from U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans.

BP said it would appeal the ruling.

A gross negligence verdict carries a potential fine of $4,300 per barrel fine, with BP having said some 3.26 million barrels leaked from the well and the U.S government having said 4.9 million barrels spilled.

Barbier apportioned 67 percent of the fault to BP, 30 percent to Transocean Ltd , which owned the drillship, and 3 percent to Halliburton , which did cement work on the Macondo well that blew out. Both of those companies have sought to limit their liability from the spill.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/sns-rt-us-bp-gulfmexico-ruling-20140904-story.html

With the Exxon/Valdez history, I expect BP to appeal, go judge shopping, and get the fine down to a couple $B, and take 20 years to do it.

btw, Prince William Sound has still not recoved from Exxon Valdez destruction.

[boutons_deux]

You need to know this. The 2010 BP oil disaster released about 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, and according to a new study, about 2 million barrels are still trapped on the ocean floor.

The study, called Fallout Plume of Submerged Oil from Deepwater Horizon, was conducted by researchers from the University of California, and led by grochemistry professor Dave Valentine.

The scientists analyzed sea sediment from the Gulf and discovered what they called a "bathtub ring" of oil the size of the state of Rhode Island. Despite the obvious link to the 2010 explosion and subsequent leak,

BP denied a connection to Deepwater Horizon, and issued a statement saying "The authors failed to identify the source of the oil." :lol

However, the authors of this recent study, which was published in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, say that the 2010 spill's impact could be even worse than they have indicated.

The study reads, "We also suggest that a significant quantity of oil was deposited outside this area, but so far has evaded detection because of its heterogeneous spatial distribution." In other words, oil that spread in different directions still may not be accounted for.

It's been over four years since the Deepwater Horizon exploded and began spewing oil into our Gulf, and we still don't know the full extent of the damage, or whether it will ever really be cleaned up.

Yet, BP is still raking in profits and more wells are being drilled off our shores.

What will it take to make us wake up to the dangers of oil drilling?

And, how much must a corporation destroy before they lose the privilege of doing business in our great nation? For the sake of our planet, and our species, we must answer those questions before we find ourselves dealing with an even bigger disaster.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/27234-on-the-news-with-thom-hartmann-2-million-barrels-of-oil-still-trapped-on-the-ocean-floor-after-bp-spill-and-more

[boutons_deux]

Millions of gallons of BP oil found resting on the Gulf floor

Another study (http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es5046524) has identified a massive amount of oil resting on the Gulf of Mexico’s floor, contradicting BP’s claims (http://www.salon.com/2014/10/22/heres_everything_wrong_with_bps_latest_absurd_self _defense/) that everything is totally better now and raising questions about the lasting impact of the 2010 spill.

Researchers at Florida State University identified some 6 to 10 million gallons of BP oil buried in the sediment at the bottom of the Gulf, covering a 9,300 square mile area southeast of the Mississippi Delta. Their findings, published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, help solve the mystery of where all the oil went: a federal judgeruled (http://blog.gulflive.com/mississippi-press-news/2015/01/judge_rules_bp_spilled_31_mill.html) that BP spilled about 134 million gallons of oil in total, although government estimates put that amount even higher.

Last year, geochemists at the University of California-Santa Barbara identified a similar phenomenon (http://www.salon.com/2014/10/27/researchers_a_massive_amount_bp_oil_is_coating_the _bottom_of_the_gulf/), of what they called a “bathtub ring” of oil the size of Rhode Island scattered across the Gulf. The authors of this study, as with that one, express concern about what it’s doing down there. Jeff Chanton, a professor of oceanology at FSU and the study’s lead author, notes (http://news.fsu.edu/More-FSU-News/Where-did-the-missing-oil-go-New-study-says-some-is-sitting-on-the-Gulf-floor) that as oil remains deep underwater, it encounters less oxygen, making it more difficult to decompose.

And just because it’s buried doesn’t mean it’s gone forever. “This is going to affect the Gulf for years to come,” Chanton said. “Fish will likely ingest contaminants because worms ingest the sediment, and fish eat the worms. It’s a conduit for contamination into the food web.”

http://www.salon.com/2015/01/30/millions_of_gallons_of_bp_oil_found_resting_on_the _gulf_floor/

[boutons_deux]

U.S. appeals ruling on size of BP oil spill

The U.S. government is appealing a federal court ruling that reduced the potential penalty BP Plc must pay for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico (http://bit.ly/1stXy0N) oil spill by almost $4 billion.

The appeal, which was filed on Friday in U.S. District Court in New Orleans, challenges a January decision by U.S. District Court Judge Carl Barbier that set the size of the spill at 3.19 million barrels. The appeal did not detail what aspects of Barbier's ruling it was challenging.

The government had estimated the size of the spill at 4.09 million barrels and BP at 3.26 million.

BP could have been fined a maximum of $17.6 billion under the Clean Water Act but Barbier's ruling on the spill size lowered the potential figure to $13.7 billion.

BP has incurred more than $42 billion of costs for the spill, including for clean up, fines and compensation for victims. About 810,000 barrels were collected during the clean up.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/14/us-bp-trial-appeal-idUSKBN0MA0QB20150314?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews

3M - 4M spilled, but only 800K recovered? that's leaving 2M - 3M poisoning the Gulf

I wonder if BP CEO Tony Hayward "got his life back" ? poor guy

[boutons_deux]

Report: BP Oil Spill Still Harming At Least 20 Animal Species (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/03/30/3640649/bp-spill-still-impacting-animals/)

At least 20 animal species are still suffering from the effects of the largest oil spill in U.S. history nearly five years after it occurred, according to a National Wildlife Federation report (http://www.nwf.org/News-and-Magazines/Media-Center/News-by-Topic/Wildlife/2015/03-30-15-New-Report-Five-Years-after-Deepwater-Horizon-Wildlife-Still-Struggling.aspx) released Monday.

The common loon, blue crab, red snapper, and sperm whale are among the animals named in the NWF’s report, Five Years And Counting (http://www.nwf.org/~/media/PDFs/water/2015/Gulf-Wildlife-In-the-Aftermath-of-the-Deepwater-Horizon-Disaster_Five-Years-and-Counting.pdf): Gulf Wildlife in the Aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon Disaster. Those animals only make up a small portion of the 13,000 species in the Gulf, the federation’s president told reporters on a phone call (http://www.nola.com/environment/index.ssf/2015/03/bp_spill_posing_ongoing_threat.html) Monday, implying the difficulty of determining the spill’s total long-term impact on animals.

“Given the significant quantity of oil remaining on the floor of the Gulf and the unprecedented large-scale use of dispersal during the spill, it will be years or even decades before the full impact of the Deepwater Horizon disaster is known,” the report said. “It is clear that robust scientific monitoring of the Gulf ecosystem and its wildlife populations must continue — and that restoration of degraded ecosystems should begin as soon as possible.”

The report comes just a few days after BP filed papers in federal court arguingits businesses would be threatened (http://fuelfix.com/blog/2015/03/30/bp-says-paying-just-a-fraction-of-its-oil-spill-bill-could-put-its-u-s-business-in-trouble/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter) by fines :lol :lol LIARS! for its historic April 2010 spill, which saw an estimated 210 million gallons of oil gush into the Gulf of Mexico.

U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier is currently weighing what that fine should be, and it could be as high as $13.7 billion — but BP is arguing that anything above $2.3 billion would put its U.S. business in serious trouble.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/03/30/3640649/bp-spill-still-impacting-animals/



BP announces record profits

Oil giant BP sparked fresh fury among motoring groups today after it emerged the company generated profits at the rate of £1.3 million an hour.

The UK-based group achieved profits of £2.86 billion (4.13 billion US dollars) in the first three months of this year alone.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-44255/BP-announces-record-profits.html#ixzz3VxUpEJii

$13B is about ONE YEAR BP PROFIT, "threatened"? :lol

[boutons_deux]

Deepwater oil spill: BP steps up PR effort to insist all is well in the Gulf

In the run-up to the five-year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon spill this April, BP (http://www.theguardian.com/business/bp) is ramping up its effort to convince consumers that life is returning to normal on the Gulf coast.

Over the last month, the company has released PR materials that highlight the Gulf’s resilience, as well as a report compiling scientific studies (https://www.thestateofthegulf.com/media/1508/bp_year-five-report-final.pdf) that suggest the area is making a rapid recovery.

But evidence is mounting that five years after millions of gallons of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico, wildlife is still struggling to rebound. A new report (http://www.nwf.org/News-and-Magazines/Media-Center/Reports/Archive/2013/12-05-13-Forestry-Bioenergy-in-the-Southeast.aspx), released on Monday by the National Wildlife Federation (NWF), suggests that at least 20 species are still being affected by the spill.

“This report, more so than any, shows that science is certain that this is a long-term problem,” said Ryan Fikes, a scientist with NWF. “But it’s going to take even more time to understand the true magnitude of this.”

The NWF report is the organization’s fifth survey highlighting scientific research into the environmental impact of the spill. This year, the NWF found that higher-than-normal rates of death for many species continued, and are likely linked to the disaster: dolphins along Louisiana’s coastline were found dead at four times historic rates last year, and research has shown the deaths of 12% of brown pelicans and 32% of a species of gull can be linked to the spill.

The NWF report also says the eggs of many animals – from trout in the Gulf to pelicans nesting as far away as Minnesota – have been found to contain oil and the dispersant used by BP in the wake of the spill.

A representative from BP sent a statement, attributed to senior vice-president Geoff Morrell, that read in part: “The National Wildlife Federation report is a work of political advocacy … the dire predictions made in 2010 have fortunately not come to pass.”

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/31/bp-pr-effort-gulf-coast-deepwater

If BigCorp's lips are moving, it's lying.

[MultiTroll]

boutons,
Another fabulous article^^^ and you know worse spills are coming from the Oil Pigs. Sooner if not later.
I'm curious, since you do not believe in God / Satan, what/who do you believe will save mankind from ever increasing evil?
The earths pollution rate is continuing at a rate that, left unchecked no doubt mankind would ruin the earth.

[boutons_deux]

"since you do not believe in God / Satan"

:lol WRONG conclusion

Yep, greed and dick measuring and religion are fucking up the planet, no need for nuclear holocaust.

[MultiTroll]

^^ so who is gonna solve it to you?

[boutons_deux]

^^ so who is gonna solve it to you?

the planet is fucked and unfuckable. When a socialist/communist/terrorist like Obama is pushing the TTP/TTIP to elevate corporate/financial power ABOVE national power, the situation is unfuckable.

[Cry Havoc]

:lol darrins abandoning this thread after getting repeatedly murked.

[MultiTroll]

the planet is fucked and unfuckable. When a socialist/communist/terrorist like Obama is pushing the TTP/TTIP to elevate corporate/financial power ABOVE national power, the situation is unfuckable.
i was not asking the cause, i am asking the solution.
FWIW i believe God will intervene and put an end to Satan and those who, following Satan want to and would destroy the Earth if allowed to continue.

[boutons_deux]

Five Years After the BP Oil Disaster: A Barrier Island for Nesting Birds Devoid of Life


Cat Island, off the Gulf Coast in Louisiana's Plaquemines Parish, was home to a vibrant bird rookery inhabited by brown pelicans, seagulls, spoonbills, and egrets before BP's Deepwater Horizon oil disaster. Five years after the largest oil spill in American history, the barrier island has just about disappeared.

Despite ongoing efforts by former Plaquemines Parish coastal zone manager PJHahn to restore the island, only the needed building permits and an engineering plan have been completed.

"Cat Island was ground zero of the oil spill," Hahn told DeSmogBlog.

http://www.truth-out.org/images/Images_2015_04/2015_0421bp_1.jpg


At the time of the spill, Cat Island was approximately five and a half acres, covered by a dense forest of black mangrove trees which were occupied by nesting birds. All that remains now are two small strips of land — less than an acre combined. Mangrove stumps jut out from the broken, shell-covered sandy remains of the island, at times fully submerged during high tide.

"The island was a treasure and it deserves to be restored," Hahn told DeSmogBlog. He continues to advocate for the restoration project he spearheaded.

"It's a hard sell for many since the island doesn't serve as storm protection like other barrier islands that are in the process of being restored since the spill," Hahn said.
But Cat Island and other small barrier islands, some of which have completely eroded since the spill, were perfect bird habitats because they were free of predators. Hahn believes the $6 million restoration price tag is a good investment, one that will pay for itself in dollars generated by the tourism industry. "Bird watchers from all over will come to visit the island," he said.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/30322-five-years-after-the-bp-oil-disaster-a-barrier-island-for-nesting-birds-devoid-of-life

[CosmicCowboy]

Going fishing offshore in Venice Louisiana next month. Since BP destroyed the Gulf guess i won't catch anything.

[boutons_deux]

Five Years After the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, BP’s Most Vulnerable Victims Are Still Struggling

BP agreed to a $7.8 billion settlement, but still hasn’t paid out most Gulf Coast businesses.

But today, Nguyen’s shop is shuttered and silent, a victim of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil-rig explosion on April 20, 2010. “Everybody knows that BP helped shut him down,” Lang said.

Nguyen and his customers blame BP’s labyrinthine claims-processing system, which still hasn’t paid him for the $440,000 in losses he sustained in 2010, when there was no seafood to sell because of the spill. The figure was determined by comparing that year’s paltry sales with a tally of past sales, and was documented in hundreds of pages submitted by his New Orleans–based lawyer, Joel Waltzer.

Though Skyland Seafood was just one small shop, its closing resounds well beyond Mobile as an example of the small mom-and-pop stores and family-run wholesalers that have struggled to stay in business after more than 3 million barrels of oil began spewing into the Gulf. These operations have made up the heart of the Gulf Coast seafood industry for generations, a lattice of local businesses that crisscross the coast from Florida to Texas. Yet they can’t seem to get compensation from BP for their modest claims.

But the sea is uncertain now.

After the explosion, the Macondo Prospect well gushed for three months. By May, the Louisiana crude oil had traveled 98 miles north to Alabama’s shores, in a gooey mess that officials described as tar balls, tar patties, tar mousse, and tar mats, some the size of a school bus. In the water itself, thick plumes of submerged oil with the consistency of beef liver stretched for miles, fishermen said.

Five years later, many of the fish that fed the Gulf’s vast seafood industry have yet to come back. Fishermen tell of trawling the waters all night and not bringing home enough fish to pay for their fuel. “I don’t know when it will be back to normal,” said Nguyen, who worries about his customers, his livelihood, and his long-standing BP claim.

It’s a familiar story to Florida claims lawyer Tom Young, who noted that he was able to resolve cases in two or three months back in mid-2012, when BP’s court-supervised settlement program was new and the money flowed more freely. Today, Young said, his cases require countless documents and take an average of 18 to 30 months. “The folks who were impacted the most will have the hardest time getting paid,” he added.

http://www.thenation.com/article/204457/five-years-after-deepwater-horizon-oil-spill-bps-most-vulnerable-victims-are-still-st

[boutons_deux]

Gulf Victims Suing BP Disaster's Compensation Czar

Shortly after BP's oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico began on April 20, 2010, one of the most politically well-connected attorneys in the United States was appointed to administer the $20 billion fund to, in theory, pay compensation to those harmed by BP's catastrophe.

President Obama and BP's chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg, agreed that attorney Kenneth Feinberg should head the fund. Feinberg would later be chosen, also by Obama, to oversee the compensation of the top executives of the banks that were bailed out with US tax dollars in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

He has, almost needless to say, been accused of being a fox guarding a chicken house.

Feinberg's firm was paid $1.25 million per month by BP - that we know of (Feinberg refused to disclose the full amount of his compensation and the details of his deal with BP) - to run the so-called Gulf Coast Claims Facility (GCCF).

In essence, BP paid Feinberg $1.25 million a month to limit their liability in the wake of the single largest marine oil disaster in US history.

Outrage against Feinberg escalated enough, that by December 2010, the Center for Justice and Democracy sent a letter (http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/blog/what-bps-secrecy-payout-deals-sacrifices) to BP CEO Bob Dudley expressing concern over "serious new issues raised about the lack of transparency and potential conflicts of interest related to the administration of the Gulf Coast Claims Facility," and pointed out the obvious conflict of interest:

Mr. Feinberg, employed by BP, has decided on his own authority that all claims recipients must release all companies who caused this disaster from any and all legal responsibility, no matter how grossly negligent they were. This sweeping release, which assigns victims' claims to BP, benefits only one actor: BP - the company that happens to pay Mr. Feinberg's salary.


Countless numbers of people along the Gulf Coast with claims against BP became increasingly enraged in their accusations that Feinberg was little more than a BP shill, and demanded that Feinberg stop claiming he was on their side, and not BP's.

Shortly thereafter, in January 2011, the federal judge presiding over BP's oil disaster litigation ruled that Feinberg was not independent of BP and could no longer claim he was, as Feinberg had been promising victims that he was their lawyer and did not answer to BP.

And now he is being sued by people he claimed to have represented against BP.

"In the cases such as BP, Feinberg should be exposed for what he is, the defendant's attorney protecting them at all costs to the detriment of the claimants," Maurie Salvesen, who is suing Feinberg's firm, told Truthout.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/30305-gulf-victims-suing-bp-disaster-s-compensation-czar

[MultiTroll]

President Obama and BP's chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg, agreed that attorney Kenneth Feinberg should head the fund. Feinberg would later be chosen, also by Obama, to oversee the compensation of the top executives of the banks that were bailed out with US tax dollars in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

Shortly thereafter, in January 2011, the federal judge presiding over BP's oil disaster litigation ruled that Feinberg was not independent of BP and could no longer claim he was, as Feinberg had been promising victims that he was their lawyer and did not answer to BP.

And now he is being sued by people he claimed to have represented against BP.

"In the cases such as BP, Feinberg should be exposed for what he is, the defendant's attorney protecting them at all costs to the detriment of the claimants," Maurie Salvesen, who is suing Feinberg's firm, told Truthout.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/30305-gulf-victims-suing-bp-disaster-s-compensation-czar
The hell was/is Barry doing acting like a Republican in this scam?
What's Barry had to say about all this?

[Winehole23]

Going fishing offshore in Venice Louisiana next month. Since BP destroyed the Gulf guess i won't catch anything.how's the knee?

[CosmicCowboy]

how's the knee?

still draining but the hole is getting smaller...been doing hyperbaric treatments every day for the last 6 weeks and the hole is definitely healing...will need another month or so to close completely. Unfortunately the staph infection is still there so I will probably have to have the knee taken out again...been loving having both legs back under me...I decided I needed a vacation before that...taking the family to New Orleans and staying down in the quarter...gonna binge eat and drink and then four of us will drive down to Venice where I chartered a 36' offshore go fast fishing boat...try to fill the freezer with ahi tuna...kind of a last hurrah if I have to have the knee removed again.

[Winehole23]

sounds like fun. pics or it don't count.

[CosmicCowboy]

sounds like fun. pics or it don't count.

Yeah, I'll do some pictures.

[RandomGuy]

Going fishing offshore in Venice Louisiana next month. Since BP destroyed the Gulf guess i won't catch anything.

Interesting bit on NPR. Short lived fish tend to show fewer symptoms, but the longer lived species have had marked increases in things like tumors, lesions, and accumulation of nasty things in internal organs.

Overall populations have mostly recovered, but the individuals in the species are decidedly less healthy.

Most of what you catch will probably be ok, but still... the nastiness would worry me, for the potential of icky things.


"This is a large complex ecosystem that's difficult to sample," he says. "We're talking about cryptic things we're trying to get a handle on. We know that there's impacts in certain areas. And some species, sure, they're capable of rebounding and they did. But to make a blanket statement is way too premature."

Murawski says migrating fish with a shorter lifespan, such as Spanish mackerel, appear to be doing well. But ones that live longer and don't move around as much, like tilefish and red snapper, show more problems like tumors and oil in their organs.
http://www.npr.org/2015/04/21/401288698/five-years-after-bp-oil-spill-experts-debate-damage-to-ecosystem

[RandomGuy]

still draining but the hole is getting smaller...been doing hyperbaric treatments every day for the last 6 weeks and the hole is definitely healing...will need another month or so to close completely. Unfortunately the staph infection is still there so I will probably have to have the knee taken out again...been loving having both legs back under me...I decided I needed a vacation before that...taking the family to New Orleans and staying down in the quarter...gonna binge eat and drink and then four of us will drive down to Venice where I chartered a 36' offshore go fast fishing boat...try to fill the freezer with ahi tuna...kind of a last hurrah if I have to have the knee removed again.

Good to hear you are up and about. Hope you have fun, and I wasn't too much of a killjoy... :D

[CosmicCowboy]

I'm actually curious. I figure the best way to get accurate info of the fish stocks and changes from before and after is to talk to the guys that catch and clean fish for a living.

[boutons_deux]

The Enduring Mystery of the Missing Oil Spilled in the Gulf of Mexico


Workers uncovered a tar mat weighing some 18,000 kilograms (http://www.houmatoday.com/article/20130626/HURBLOG/130629649) just offshore of a natural barrier island in Louisiana in the summer of 2013. Although the tar mat turned out to bear more sand than oil, it represented another small fraction of thehydrocarbons that went missing (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/one-year-after-bp-oil-spill-millions-of-barrels-oil-missing/) after BP's blowout (http://www.scientificamerican.com/report/deepwater-oil-idr/) in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. The sum of all the dispersed oil located thus far, from tar mats to oily marine snow, hardly accounts for at least four million barrels of oil spewed into the cold, dark bottom of the Gulf of Mexico from the deep-sea well named Macondo five years ago.

Like any good mystery, this one may never be solved. Of that four million barrels or more spewed after April 20, 2010, more than a million remain missing (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/one-year-after-bp-oil-spill-millions-of-barrels-oil-missing/), according to the best estimates of the U.S. government.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-enduring-mystery-of-the-missing-oil-spilled-in-the-gulf-of-mexico/?WT.mc_id=SA_ENGYSUS_20150423

[CosmicCowboy]

Well, I can personally confirm that there are still fish in the gulf near the oil spill. Guys I talked to said they can't tell any difference from before/after. They don't look that big in the picture but came home with two 120 quart ice chests loaded to the top with tuna, amberjack, and mahi mahi. For scale, that big yellow fin is 4 1/2 feet long.

http://i59.tinypic.com/jsj1bn.jpg

[boutons_deux]

Well, I can personally confirm that there are still fish in the gulf near the oil spill. Guys I talked to said they can't tell any difference from before/after. They don't look that big in the picture but came home with two 120 quart ice chests loaded to the top with tuna, amberjack, and mahi mahi. For scale, that big yellow fin is 4 1/2 feet long.


yep, your anecdote proves all the scientists' resulits, struggling or destroyed Gulf Coast businesses, and diseased, missing Gulf flora and fauna are all hippy lies.

[CosmicCowboy]

Boo, do you really not have any sense of humor at all?

[boutons_deux]

Boo, do you really not have any sense of humor at all?

try me, say something funny

[DarrinS]

Well, I can personally confirm that there are still fish in the gulf near the oil spill. Guys I talked to said they can't tell any difference from before/after. They don't look that big in the picture but came home with two 120 quart ice chests loaded to the top with tuna, amberjack, and mahi mahi. For scale, that big yellow fin is 4 1/2 feet long.

http://i59.tinypic.com/jsj1bn.jpg


Nice. :tu

They should all have two heads, if you listen to boots.

My friend snagged a good sized Mako out there.

[CosmicCowboy]

Nice. :tu

They should all have two heads, if you listen to boots.

My friend snagged a good sized Mako out there.

Yeah, had a 12' hammerhead cruising around us at one of the rigs.

[DarrinS]

Yeah, had a 12' hammerhead cruising around us at one of the rigs.

People go spear fishing on those rigs. Just asking for trouble, IMO.

[boutons_deux]

“The largest environmental settlement in history”: BP agrees to pay $18.7 billion in damages for Gulf Oil Spill

http://media.salon.com/2014/10/800px-Deepwater_Horizon_offshore_drilling_unit_on_fire_2 010-620x412.jpg

http://www.salon.com/2015/07/02/the_largest_environmental_settlement_in_history_bp _agrees_to_pay_18_7_billion_in_damages_for_gulf_oi l_spill/

[boutons_deux]

TX to get $750M, which most probably will be stolen and siphoned off to TX BigOil

[boutons_deux]

taxpayers screwed again by BigCorp

BP’s $18.7 Settlement Today for Gulf Spill Appears to Be Mostly Tax Deductible

Oil Giant Will Likely Write Off $13.2 Billion as an Ordinary Business Cost

they provide a fact sheet (http://www.justice.gov/opa/file/625011/download) that gives troubling indications that the true after-tax value of today’s settlement with the federal government, five states and 400 local entities may actually be far less than the $18.7 billion trumpeted in the headline of the DOJ statement:



Only $5.5 billion is indicated explicitly as a penalty under the Clean Water Act. The federal government could have received as much as a $13.7 billion penalty under that Act based on a recent finding by a New Orleans judge that the spill was the result of “gross negligence.” Penalties are not tax deductible by law, as opposed to ordinary business compensation or restitution. But 80 percent of this sum is also indicated as heading to states for restoration efforts, which could allow BP to treat it as deductible, unless the settlement language forbids it.
$13.2 billion of today’s settlement is not categorized as a penalty, indicating that it will almost certainly become a tax deduction, unless the settlement explicitly forbids it. If so, this non-penalty portion of the settlement will have an after-tax value of only $8.58 billion, and the whole deal would be worth only $14.08 billion to the public.
The Justice Department fact sheet indicates that the $8.1 billion earmarked for natural resource damages “includes $1 billion already committed for early restoration,” thus indicating a billion dollars of today’s announcement is actually just repackaging an earlier concession by the company.
Because the payments will be made over 18 years, the real value of latter payments will have significantly eroded. Depending on inflation, the value of a billion dollars paid 18 years from now will be far less than a billion dollar payment today.


A bipartisan bill in Congress, The Truth in Settlements Act, in the House and Senate would require federal agencies to be explicit whether large out-of-court settlements are tax deductible and would require companies to disclose in their SEC filings whether they use settlements as tax deductions.

http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2015/07/02/bps-187-settlement-today-gulf-spill-appears-be-mostly-tax-deductible

and we know BP will have $Bs in profits

[boutons_deux]

Pascal, a career Environmental Protection Agency attorney only seven weeks into her retirement, knew as much as anyone in the federal government about BP, the company that owned the well. She understood in an instant what it would take others months to grasp: In BP’s 15-year quest to compete with the world’s biggest oil companies, its managers had become deaf to risk and systematically gambled with safety at hundreds of facilities and with thousands of employees’ lives.

“God, they just don’t learn,” she remembers thinking.

The administration considered the environmental record of drilling companies in the Gulf to be excellent. It didn’t ask questions about BP, and it didn’t consider that the company’s long record of safety violations and environmental accidents might be important, according to Carol Browner, the White House environmental adviser.

They could have asked Jeanne Pascal.
http://www.propublica.org/images/articles/abrham-bp-4.jpgJeanne Pascal was a senior attorney for the Environmental Protection Agency for 26 years. (Abrahm Lustgarten/ProPublica)

For 12 years, Pascal had wrestled with whether BP’s pattern of misconduct should disqualify it from receiving billions of dollars in government contracts and other benefits. Federal law empowers government officials to “debar”—ban from government business—companies that commit fraud or break the law too many times. Pascal was a senior EPA debarment attorney for the Northwest, and her job was to act as a sort of behind-the-scenes babysitter for companies facing debarment. She worked with their top management, reviewed records and made sure they were good corporate citizens entitled to government contracts.

At first, Pascal thought BP would be another routine assignment. Over the years she’d persuaded hundreds of troubled energy, mining and waste-disposal companies to quickly change their behavior. But BP was in its own league. On her watch she would see BP charged with four federal crimes—more than any other oil company in her experience—and demonstrate what she described as a pattern of disregard for regulations and for the EPA. By late 2009 she was warning the government and BP executives themselves that the company’s approach to safety and environmental issues made another disaster likely.

A close look by ProPublica and PBS FRONTLINE at BP’s explosive growth corroborated and expanded on Pascal’s concerns. The investigation found that as BP transformed itself into the world’s third largest private oil company it methodically emphasized a culture of austerity in pursuit of corporate efficiency, lean budgets and shareholder profits. It acquired large companies that it could not integrate smoothly. Current and former workers and executives said the company repeatedly cut corners, let alarm and safety systems languish and skipped essential maintenance that could have prevented a number of explosions and spills. Internal BP documents support these claims.

http://www.propublica.org/article/bp-accidents-past-and-present?utm_source=et&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailynewsletter&utm_content=&utm_name=

[boutons_deux]

DEEPWATER HORIZON SETTLEMENT COMES WITH $5.35 BILLION TAX WINDFALL (http://uspirg.org/news/usp/deepwater-horizon-settlement-comes-535-billion-tax-windfall)

Today’s announcement by the U.S. Department of Justice of a proposed $20.8 billion out-of-court settlement with BP to resolve charges related to the Gulf Oil spill allows the corporation to write off $15.3 billion of the total payment as an ordinary cost of doing business tax deduction.

The majority of the settlement is comprised of tax deductible natural resource damages payments, restoration, and reimbursement to government, with just $5.5 billion explicitly labeled a non-tax-deductible Clean Water Act penalty.

This proposed settlement would allow BP to claim an estimated $5.35 billion as a tax windfall, significantly decreasing the public value of the agreement, and nearly offsetting the cost of the non-deductible penalty.

“BP was found to be grossly negligent in the Deepwater Horizon case, and yet the vast majority of what they are paying to make up for their gross negligence is legally considered just business as usual under the tax code unless the DOJ explicitly prohibits a write-off,” said Michelle Surka, program associate with US Public Interest Research Group. “This not only sends the wrong message, but it also hurts taxpayers by forcing us to shoulder the burden of BP’s tax windfall in the form of higher taxes, cuts to public programs, and more national debt.”

Under U.S. tax code, restitution, reimbursement, and compensatory payments made to damaged parties in a settlement can be claimed as ordinary cost of doing business tax deductions unless otherwise stated in the agreement. Penalties, by contrast, are almost always considered tax deductible. In this proposed consent decree, the 80% of the civil penalty portion of the payment is, as per the RESTORE Act, to be spent on “environmental restoration, economic recovery projects, and tourism and seafood promotion in the five Gulf states”. If the Department of Justice had not been explicit about deny deductions for this portion, BP could have interpreted that portion of the penalty as tax deductible restitution and compensation.

http://uspirg.org/news/usp/deepwater-horizon-settlement-comes-535-billion-tax-windfall

[boutons_deux]

Reproduction of dolphins hurt by BP oil spill

Dolphins living in a Louisiana bay polluted by BP's massive 2010 offshore oil spill have had a very difficult time giving birth long after their bay was covered in slicks, a new study shows.

The government study is the latest by a team of scientists that has tracked the health of a population of common bottlenose dolphins in Barataria Bay, an estuary south of New Orleans covered in heavy slicks after BP's April 2010 oil spill off the coast of Louisiana.

The researchers tracked 10 pregnant dolphins for nearly four years and found that only two of the dolphins gave birth to calves.

The study was published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Britain.

BP PLC's blown-out well killed 11 workers aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and spewed more than 130 million gallons (492 million liters) of oil into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

After the spill, researchers found dolphins in Barataria suffering from lung diseases and abnormalities they associated with exposure to oil contamination. Since then, the dolphins have become a focus of work to assess the effects from the oil spill.

In August 2011, about a year after oil stopped leaking from BP's blown-out well, researchers tagged 32 dolphins and followed them to see what happened.

The new study found they've suffered from a high mortality rate and chronic diseases that have hurt the animals' ability to reproduce. The study said the effects of the spill "have been long-lasting."

http://phys.org/news/2015-11-reproduction-dolphins-bp-oil.html

Thanks, BigOil!

[boutons_deux]

Darrin is FUCKING WORNG, AGAIN

Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Continues To Disrupt Marine Life

research, published June 28 in the journal Scientific Reports (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-27350-z), claims

the oil residue has caused fundamental changes in those microbes,

which play an important role in carbon dioxide absorption by the oceans and are essential building blocks in the food chain for marine life.

“At the sites closest to the spill, biodiversity was flattened,”

“There were fewer types of microbes. This is a cold, dark environment and anything you put down there will be longer lasting than oil on a beach in Florida.

It’s premature to imagine that all the effects of the spill are over and remediated.”

BP, the owner of the Deepwater Horizon, is spinning. “Nothing to see here, move along. Nothing to see here, move along.”

“We rely heavily on the ocean and we could be looking at potential effects to the food supply down the road.

Deep sea microbes regulate carbon in the atmosphere and recycle nutrients.

I’m concerned there will be larger consequences from this sort of event.”

https://cleantechnica.com/2018/06/28/deepwater-horizon-oil-spill-continues-to-disrupt-marine-life/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IM-cleantechnica+%28CleanTechnica%29

[boutons_deux]

BP Deepwater Horizon costs balloon to $65 billion

BP said on Tuesday it would take a new charge over the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill after again raising estimates for outstanding claims, lifting total costs to around $65 billion.

The post-tax, non-operating $1.7-billion charge BP will take in its fourth quarter results came after claims resolved in recent months were about seven times higher than anticipated, the London-based company said.

The claims were part of the Court Supervised Settlement Program that was set up in the wake of the disaster and included nearly 400,000 cases, BP said. A spokeswoman for the group said hundreds of outstanding claims have yet to be closed, raising the prospect of further charges.

BP shares were down 2 percent by 1117 GMT.

BP paid around $63.4 billion by the end of September to cover clean-up costs and legal fees linked to the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history where 11 rig workers were killed.

Charges over the spill have steadily grown since the company reached a landmark $19-billion settlement of federal and state claims in July 2015.

REMAINING CLAIMS


there was a risk that the final bill could rise again, Brendan Warn, analyst at BMO Capital Markets said.

“We note that

the last few remaining claims are likely to be the most complex and sizeable,

with this quarter’s provision being evidence of that,” Warn said.

“We acknowledge the possibility that there might be further provisions in the next few quarters,

as the remaining claims might prove to exceed BP’s expectations.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bp-deepwaterhorizon/bp-deepwater-horizon-costs-balloon-to-65-billion-idUSKBN1F50NL (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bp-deepwaterhorizon/bp-deepwater-horizon-costs-balloon-to-65-billion-idUSKBN1F50NL)

BP is probably getting away on the cheap

[boutons_deux]

Chemical that EPA allows to help clean up oil spills sickens people and fish, lawsuit claims

a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency, claiming that the agency has allowed 25 years to go by without updating the National Contingency Plan to respond to oil spills.

On Monday, the University of California at Berkeley Environmental Law Center issued the agency a 60-day intent to sue (https://www.law.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/REVISED-FINAL-NOI-3-22-2019-PDF-1.pdf) notice on behalf of several groups and individuals “for failure to perform a non-discretionary duty” under the Clean Water Act.

the EPA has continued to allow emergency responders to use a chemical mixture called Corexit (https://www.epa.gov/emergency-response/corexitr-ec9500a) to disperse oil into droplets that allow microbes to further break it down,

About 20 percent of nearly 5,000 Coast Guard personnel who responded to the BP spill and were exposed to the toxin reported persistent coughing. Others experienced wheezing and trouble breathing, according to a 2018 study commissioned by the National Institutes of Health.

“The combination of both oil and oil dispersants presented associations that were much greater in magnitude than oil alone for coughing, shortness of breath and wheezing,” the report said.

A Louisiana State University study two years prior reported a similar finding:

that symptoms from exposure resulted in “burning in nose, throat or lungs, sore throat, dizziness and wheezing."

during the Deepwater Horizon cleanup efforts, when

“dispersants and oil combined to form droplets of chemical enhanced oil that is more deadly than oil alone to people,”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/03/26/chemical-that-epa-sanctions-help-clean-up-oil-spills-sickens-people-fish-lawsuit-claims/?utm_term=.bc1ff7b10fd4 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/03/26/chemical-that-epa-sanctions-help-clean-up-oil-spills-sickens-people-fish-lawsuit-claims/?utm_term=.bc1ff7b10fd4)


(https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/03/26/chemical-that-epa-sanctions-help-clean-up-oil-spills-sickens-people-fish-lawsuit-claims/?utm_term=.bc1ff7b10fd4)

[boutons_deux]

Deepwater Horizon Oil Buried In Gulf Coast Beaches Could Take More Than 30 Years To Biodegrade


https://i1.wp.com/scienceblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Deepwater-Horizon-oil-buried-in-Gulf-Coast-beaches-could-take-more-than-30-years-to-biodegrade.gif?fit=900%2C600&ssl=1

Golf ball-size clods of weathered crude oil originating from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon catastrophe could remain buried in sandy Gulf Coast beaches for decades

t these large clumps of oil and sand — called sediment-oil-agglomerates — take at least 30 years to decompose.
“This oil contains substances that are harmful to the environment and to humans,” Huettel said. “Understanding the fate of this buried oil is critical, as it can persist for long periods of time.”

Oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill contaminated an estimated 965 kilometers of sandy beaches along the Gulf of Mexico coastline.

cleanup operations were not able to unearth all of the harmful oil, some of which was buried as deep as 70 centimeters in the sand.

https://scienceblog.com/510385/deepwater-horizon-oil-buried-in-gulf-coast-beaches-could-take-more-than-30-years-to-biodegrade/ (https://scienceblog.com/510385/deepwater-horizon-oil-buried-in-gulf-coast-beaches-could-take-more-than-30-years-to-biodegrade/)

[boutons_deux]

A Decade Later, the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Has Left an Abyssal Wasteland

A nightmare at 6,000 feet.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/deepwater-horizon-oil-spill-aftermath?utm_source=Atlas+Obscura+Daily+Newslette r&utm_campaign=7e5c21ed83-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_09_23_Not_LA&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f36db9c480-7e5c21ed83-63318061&mc_cid=7e5c21ed83&mc_eid=80860ad8d3 (https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/deepwater-horizon-oil-spill-aftermath?utm_source=Atlas+Obscura+Daily+Newslette r&utm_campaign=7e5c21ed83-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_09_23_Not_LA&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f36db9c480-7e5c21ed83-63318061&mc_cid=7e5c21ed83&mc_eid=80860ad8d3)

[boutons_deux]

BP Spill: Has the damage been exaggerated? (https://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=159902&page=6&p=9930758)

Have the financial penalites to the perpetrators been minimized?

have they really paid for their "external costs"?

Deepwater horizon—the lasting impact of America's largest oil spill

https://scx1.b-cdn.net/csz/news/800/2018/deepwaterhor.jpg

In 2015, BP issued a statement claiming that

the Gulf was healing itself and “returning to pre-spill conditions,” :lol

which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) called “inappropriate as well as premature (https://www.gulfspillrestoration.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/wp-content/uploads/statement-from-EC-to-BP-5-yr-3_16_15_with_contact.pdf).”

During Joye’s two visits in 2010 and 2014, her ROVs captured soil samples and found that

BP’s oil had sprawled across more than 1,200 square miles of seafloor,

https://phys.org/news/2018-04-deepwater-horizonthe-impact-america-largest.html (https://phys.org/news/2018-04-deepwater-horizonthe-impact-america-largest.html)

[CosmicCowboy]

Deepwater Horizon Oil Buried In Gulf Coast Beaches Could Take More Than 30 Years To Biodegrade


https://i1.wp.com/scienceblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Deepwater-Horizon-oil-buried-in-Gulf-Coast-beaches-could-take-more-than-30-years-to-biodegrade.gif?fit=900%2C600&ssl=1

Golf ball-size clods of weathered crude oil originating from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon catastrophe could remain buried in sandy Gulf Coast beaches for decades

t these large clumps of oil and sand — called sediment-oil-agglomerates — take at least 30 years to decompose.
“This oil contains substances that are harmful to the environment and to humans,” Huettel said. “Understanding the fate of this buried oil is critical, as it can persist for long periods of time.”

Oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill contaminated an estimated 965 kilometers of sandy beaches along the Gulf of Mexico coastline.

cleanup operations were not able to unearth all of the harmful oil, some of which was buried as deep as 70 centimeters in the sand.

https://scienceblog.com/510385/deepwater-horizon-oil-buried-in-gulf-coast-beaches-could-take-more-than-30-years-to-biodegrade/ (https://scienceblog.com/510385/deepwater-horizon-oil-buried-in-gulf-coast-beaches-could-take-more-than-30-years-to-biodegrade/)

Texas beaches have always had tar balls.

[boutons_deux]

Texas beaches have always had tar balls.

yep, and we, 60 years ago, used gasoline to remove it.

But the fish, birds, dolphins, crustaceans were healthy.

yet again, a complete lie of FALSE FUCKING EQUIVALENCE

1954: world first offshore oil rig leaves LA coast.

https://aoghs.org/offshore-oil-history/ (https://aoghs.org/offshore-oil-history/)

===================

An oil spill that began 15 years ago is up to a thousand times worse than the rig owner's estimate

A new federal study (https://cdn.coastalscience.noaa.gov/publication-attachments/nccos-tech-memos/NCCOS-TM-260_Mason_2019.pdf) estimates that each day, about

380 to 4,500 gallons of oil are flowing

at the site where a company's oil platform was damaged after a hurricane.

That's about a hundred to a thousand times worse than the company's initial estimate, which put the amount of oil flowing into the ocean at less than three gallons a day.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/29/us/taylor-oil-spill-trnd/index.html (https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/29/us/taylor-oil-spill-trnd/index.html)

And of course, international BigOil is spending $100Ms to block environmental work, spew greenwashing bullshit and propaganda.

Exxon has promised investors it will extract all 250B barrels in its reserves.

[pgardn]

The take home message is that sandy beaches are extraordinarily good at cleaning pollutants as long as the pollutants are not to large in volume ie lack surface area. (So stop building on beachfront and ruining the natural flow of sand and water. In fact, stop building next to water that gets exposed to severe weathering. (Peagarden take)) https://scienceblog.com/510385/deepwater-horizon-oil-buried-in-gulf-coast-beaches-could-take-more-than-30-years-to-biodegrade/


And, Natural oil seepage from the Gulf occurs regularly and ends up on beaches in Texas.

[boutons_deux]

GOP LEADERSHIP HUDDLES WITH FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY DURING CLIMATE WEEK

Behind closed doors, across town in Washington, D.C., Republican lawmakers, including leadership, huddled with the fossil fuel industry, maintaining the very ties that bind U.S. policymakers and prevent them from addressing climate change.

House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., hosted fundraisers with oil and gas lobbyists to raise cash for the Scalise Leadership Fund, a political action committee used to dole out cash for battleground House races across the country.

event with Scalise was hosted (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6425061-Scalise-BGR.html) by the BGR Group, a lobbying firm that represents (https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/firmsum.php?id=D000021679) Chevron, Southern Company, and Petroceltic International, among other fossil fuel interests.

The following day, Scalise hosted an event advertised as an “Oil & Gas Industry Dinner,” charging up to $5,000 to attend the event as a host.

LaHood, R-Ill., and Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-Mo., held fundraisers (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6425470-Luetkemeyer.html) with the utility industry (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6425469-Darin-LaHood.html).

The two lawmakers were hosted by the Edison Electric Institute, a lobby group for the investor-owned utilities that has

fought to preserve coal power plants and obstruct mandates for renewable energy.

EEI, as it is known, represents Southern Company, Duke Energy, American Electric Power, and other

utility companies that rely on coal-burning power plants.

the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the prominent think tank,

hosted BP executives for a panel event on how to best address the climate crisis. :lol

The event, a disclosure noted (https://www.csis.org/events/energy-transitions-forum-low-carbon-pathways-growth-and-sustainability), was “made possible by generous support from BP.” :lol

https://theintercept.com/2019/09/22/gop-fossil-fuel-fundraisers-climate-week/ (https://theintercept.com/2019/09/22/gop-fossil-fuel-fundraisers-climate-week/)