Louisiana deep oil drilling disaster

[Ed Jewett]

Effort to place dome over oil well dealt setback, BP says
[Update 3:58 p.m.] Read the full CNN.com story
[Posted 3:33 p.m.] The effort to place a containment dome over a gushing wellhead was dealt a setback when a large volume of hydrates - crystals formed when gas combines with water - accumulated inside of the vessel, BP's chief operating officer said Saturday.
The dome was moved off to the side of the wellhead and is resting on the seabed while crews work to overcome the challenge, Doug Settles said.
Suttles said the gas hydrates are lighter than water, and as a result, made the dome buoyant. The crystals also blocked the top of the dome, which would prevent oil from being funneled to a drill ship.
"What we had to do was pick the dome back up, set it over to the side while we evaluate what options we have to actually try to prevent the hydrate formation or find some other method to try to capture the flow," Suttles said.
He said two options officials are looking at are heating the dome or adding ethanol to dissolve the hydrates.

[Ed Jewett]

Former White House Press Secretary, Dana Perino, suggests oil spill sabotage!

embedded video here from Fox News

http://beforeitsnews.com/story/40/718/Fo...otage.html

[Peter Lemkin]

Former White House Press Secretary, Dana Perino, suggests oil spill sabotage!

embedded video here from Fox News

http://beforeitsnews.com/story/40/718/Fo...otage.html

Petro-terrorism?!, I thought that was our bailiwick alone! :bebored:

[Jan Klimkowski]

BP has always had very spooky friends, and allegedly been involved in various coup d'etats.

Here's a rather colourful account of one particular BP spook:

Ex-spy is BP's Lawrence of Arabia

By Glen Owen

Last updated at 3:48 AM on 6th September 2009

He is the modern Lawrence of Arabia who used his relationship with Colonel Gaddafi to help to secure a £200,000-a-year job with BP.

The career of ex-MI6 agent Sir Mark Allen, the driving force behind the suspected ‘deal’ to return Abdelbaset Al Megrahi to Libya, reads like an espionage novel, taking in Middle East spy schools, falconry and secret meetings in Pall Mall gentlemen’s clubs.

Our investigation has discovered how Sir Mark, 59 – who resigned from MI6 to join BP in 2004 – used the contacts made during a life in the shadows to build a new career in business.

It reveals that he:

Led the diplomatic drive to lift sanctions against Libya, teaming up with a top CIA agent for private meetings with Colonel Gaddafi.

Chaired a secret meeting with Gaddafi’s spy chief in The Travellers Club in London, which included discussion of the Megrahi case and led to the Libyan leader being allowed to trade again with the West.

Resigned from MI6 six months later to join BP and was cleared by the Cabinet Office to start working for the oil giant immediately.

Is a friend of Justice Secretary Jack Straw, who backed his unsuccessful attempt to head MI6.

The Mail on Sunday tracked Sir Mark to his secure £1million apartment in Westminster but he refused to talk about the role he may have had in securing Megrahi’s return.

Last week it was revealed that he lobbied Mr Straw to speed up an agreement over prisoner transfers – which had been expected to lead to Megrahi’s return – to avoid jeopardising a trade deal with Libya worth up to £15billion to BP.
Yesterday Mr Straw admitted the agreement had played a ‘very big part’ in his decision to include Megrahi in the transfer deal.

In 2003, Sir Mark, then head of MI6’s counter-terrorism unit, joined forces with Steve Kappes, now deputy director of the CIA, to lead secret talks with Gaddafi’s regime to end international sanctions.

The two men embarked on shuttle diplomacy, flying around the world to meet senior Libyan figures, including Gaddafi.

Pulitzer prize-winning US author Ron Suskind, who has investigated British and American dealings with Gaddafi, said Sir Mark had several meetings with the Libyan leader in summer 2003.

‘He played a key role in charming Gaddafi out of his international isolation,’ he said. ‘His job was to make it clear to Gaddafi that anything could be put on the negotiating table, including Megrahi.’ At that point, Megrahi had been in a Scottish jail for two years.

A deal to end sanctions was sealed in December 2003 at The Travellers Club, where Sir Mark thrashed out an agreement with Gaddafi’s external intelligence chief Musa Kousa.

In return for the lifting of sanctions – and, sources say, assurances from Britain about Megrahi’s future – Gaddafi promised to abandon plans for weapons of mass destruction. Britain and America resumed relations the next month.

In May 2004, Sir Mark was the favourite of Mr Straw, then Foreign Secretary, to succeed Sir Richard Dearlove as Head of MI6. But the following month, after it was announced that the job had gone to John Scarlett, Sir Mark resigned to take up a special adviser’s job with BP.

More...Three doctors 'paid by Libyan government to say Lockerbie bomber had three months to live'
Prince Andrew 'had Lockerbie talks with Gaddafi son'
Gaddafi's gameplan: Why DID Libya want the Lockerbie bomber back so badly?

Unlike Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain’s special representative to Iraq who joined BP at the same time, Sir Mark was told by the Cabinet Office’s Advisory Committee on Business Appointments that he could start work immediately.

Sir Mark, who was knighted in 2005, immediately used his Libyan contacts in BP’s drive to win gas and oil contracts in the country, flying with the then BP boss Lord Browne to meet Gaddafi in the desert.

The BP deal with Libya was announced in May 2007. But by November it had still not been ratified because of delays in finalising prisoner transfers which had been arranged between Tony Blair and Gaddafi in tandem with the BP deal. The sticking point was debate in the British Government over whether to exclude Megrahi.

Sir Mark made two calls to Mr Straw, asking for the agreement to be speeded up. Within six weeks of his second call in November 2007, Mr Straw had written to Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill to say Megrahi would be included.

In the Seventies, Sir Mark studied at the Middle East Centre for Arabic Studies, a British ‘spy school’ in a village near Beirut.

He was posted to Cairo in 1978, where he developed a love of falcon-hunting with Bedouins.

In 1980 he published Falconry In Arabia, with a foreword and photos by Wilfred

Thesiger, the late writer-explorer who devoted his life to roaming deserts in the spirit of Lawrence of Arabia.

A BP spokeswoman refused to comment yesterday.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...z0nQn5DXiL

[Ed Jewett]

"Oil companies are criminal enterprises supported
by government thugs.

Not hyperbole."

Video:

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/212.html

#######

BP's Preparedness for Major Crisis Is Questioned


By GUY CHAZAN and NEIL KING

BP PLC engineers struggled over the weekend to overcome problems with a containment dome the company hopes might capture much of the oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico.
Challenges with the dome come as White House officials, U.S. lawmakers and others in the industry ask whether BP failed to foresee and prepare for a disaster of this scale, as doubts deepen over the company's ability to handle the spill.
View Full Image



European Pressphoto Agency Researcher Lisa Pfau tests for oil Sunday near Pass Christian, Miss.



BP assured regulators last year that oil would come ashore only in a small area of Louisiana, even in the event of a spill much larger than the current one. But as of Sunday evening, authorities reported that black, gooey balls were washing up on beaches in Alabama, farther than the company's original calculation.
BP spent Sunday trying to determine how to proceed with the huge metal-and-concrete containment dome, after it got clogged with crystallized gas 5,000 feet below the surface. The contraption was designed to sit over the leaking pipe and funnel as much as 85% of the oil to the surface, where it could be captured.
The four-story, 98-ton dome took the company two weeks to build and deploy—evidence, critics say, that the company didn't envision or prepare for the sort of blowout that occurred last month.
"The only thing that's clear is that there was a catastrophic failure of risk management," said Nansen Saleri, a Houston-based expert in oil-reservoir management and a former top official at Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil company.
More

• U.S. Considers `Malfeasance' in Leak
  
• Gulf Coast States Seek Bolder Steps
  
• Photos: Containment Unit Lowered | Video
  
• Timeline | Aerial view | More Video
  
• Oil Spill Liability May Spike
  

BP defended its actions. "You have here an unprecedented event—never before have you seen a blowout at such depth and never before has a blowout preventer failed in this way," BP spokesman Andrew Gowers said. "The unthinkable has become thinkable, and the whole industry will be asking searching questions of itself."
The dome is now sitting on the seabed, about 600 feet away from the main leak. Doug Suttles, chief operating officer of BP's exploration and production division, denied the operation had failed and said the company was trying to figure out a way of providing heat at a depth of 5,000 feet to melt the crystals. BP had anticipated that the crystallized gas, called hydrates, could form in the pipe connecting the dome to the surface vessel, but not inside the dome itself.
BP also said it would try to deploy a smaller "top hat" dome that will form a tighter fit around the leak, hopefully preventing more water from entering the device and forming hydrates, Mr. Suttles said. The top hat will be lowered on Tuesday or Wednesday, he said.
BP and its partner on the project, Transocean Ltd., will face two Senate panels Tuesday on the April 20th explosion of the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that killed 11 workers. The rig sank two days later, setting off an oil leak that has since released around 85,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf.
The issue of BP's preparedness is sure to be a prime topic at the hearing, according to Senate staffers.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said that his "own preliminary observations" were that BP and its partners had made "some very major mistakes" leading up to and after the disaster.
Some in the oil industry questioned why it took the company so long to come up with the idea of a containment dome, and why it didn't have one ready to use.
"There should be technology that's pre-existing and ready to deploy at the drop of a hat," said one former Transocean executive. "It shouldn't have to be designed and fabricated now, from scratch."
BP is also struggling to secure sufficient amounts of booms, the floating strips used to keep oil offshore, and a large enough fleet of skimmer boats to keep the slick from spreading.
BP's general spill plan, which was updated last summer, shows that the company's claimed abilities were out of sync with the realities of the spill. Under the plan, BP said that the worst spill from a mobile drilling operation would come from a lease called the Mississippi Canyon 462, about 33 miles off the Louisiana coast. A blowout of that lease could discharge a mammoth 250,000 barrels a day, BP said, 50 times the estimated flow of the current leak. Yet BP claimed to have in place sufficient booms, stocks of dispersants and skimmers to deal with a spill far in excess of the volume it is now struggling to contain.
BP's plan, as submitted to the Mineral Management Service, placed exceedingly low probabilities on oil reaching land in the event of a major spill. Even in the case of the worst spill, BP said, there was only a 3% chance that oil would come ashore after a month in any part of the Gulf other than Plaquemines, La., which juts into the Gulf south of New Orleans.
Mr. Gowers defended BP's clean-up operation. "We moved very rapidly to implement the approved response to the accident," he said. "The evidence for that is the huge containment effort on the surface and onshore."
—Brian Baskin contributed to this article.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424...st_Popular

###

Huge U.S. oil spill drifts west; BP mulls options



(Reuters) - BP Plc engineers desperately explored options on Sunday to control oil gushing from a ruptured well deep under the Gulf of Mexico after a setback with a huge undersea containment dome fueled fears of a prolonged and growing environmental disaster.
U.S. | Green Business
The spill is spreading west, further from Florida's beaches but toward the important shipping channels and rich seafood areas of the central Louisiana coast, where fishing, shrimping and oyster harvesting bans were extended.
BP is exploring several new options to control the spill after its 98-ton containment chamber, which took about two weeks to build, struck a snag on Saturday.
A buildup of crystallized gas in the dome forced engineers to delay efforts to place the huge containment device over the rupture and funnel leaking oil to a waiting drillship.
"We're gathering some data to help us with two things. One is another way to do containment, the second is other ways to actually stop the flow," BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles told Reuters in Venice, Louisiana.
BP was also exploring ways to work around the containment dome's problem with gas hydrates, or slushy methane gas that would block the oil from being siphoned.
"One is a smaller dome; we call it the 'top hat.' The second is to find a way to tap into the riser, the piece of pipe the oil is flowing through, and taking it directly to the pipe up to a ship on the surface," Suttles said.
Conducting operations a mile below the ocean's surface complicated BP's efforts. Engineers worked with remote-controlled vehicles in the blackness of "inner space."
At least 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons/795,000 liters) of oil a day have been gushing unchecked into the Gulf since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20, rupturing the well and killing 11 crew members. The leak threatens to become the worst-ever U.S. oil spill.
On Dauphin Island, Alabama, a barrier island and beach resort, sunbathers found tar balls along a short stretch of beach on Saturday, and experts were testing the tar to determine if it came from the Gulf spill.
ECOLOGICAL DISASTER
The spill threatens economic and ecological disaster on Gulf Coast tourist beaches, wildlife refuges and fishing grounds. It has forced President Barack Obama to rethink plans to open more waters to drilling.
The disaster could slow the exploration and development of offshore oil projects worldwide, Nobuo Tanaka, executive director of the International Energy Agency warned on Sunday.
"The future potential is offshore in deeper water and in the Arctic, so if offshore investment is going to be slowed down, that is a concern," Tanaka told Reuters.
BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward told London's Sunday Telegraph it could be weeks or months before the spill is brought under control. He said the company could spend $10 million a day on clean-up efforts.
BP may next try to plug the damaged blowout preventer on the well by pumping debris into it at high pressure, a method called a "junk shot," or by putting a new preventer on top.
"They are actually going to take a bunch of debris -- some shredded up tires, golf balls and things like that -- and under very high pressure shoot it into the preventer itself and see if they can clog it up to stop the leak," U.S. Coast Board Admiral Thad Allen told CBS News. BP also is drilling a relief well to halt the leak, but that could take three months.
Hundreds of boats deployed protective booms and used dispersants to break up the oil again on Sunday, but rougher seas threatened to curtail the spill response. Crews have laid more than 189 miles of boom and spread 325,000 gallons (1.2 million liters) of chemical dispersant.
SANDBAGS
The spill's major contact with the shoreline so far has been in the Chandeleur Islands off Louisiana, mostly a wildlife reserve. The next few days threatens wider contact.
Forecasts show the giant oil slick moving west, as brisk onshore winds blow from the southeast through next weekend.
A state of emergency was declared on Sunday in Lafourche and Terrebonne Parishes in Louisiana, west of the Mississippi Delta, where training is under way to teach local fisherman how to deploy booms and assist with oil spill contractors.
Sheen was about eight miles off the coast of Port Fourchon, with heavy oil still some 28 miles offshore, said Charlotte Randolph, president of Lafourche Parish. "We're keeping a very close watch, deploying boom and closing some beaches," she said.
Truckloads of sand were being delivered to Port Fourchon to fill large sandbags, which will be dropped by National Guard helicopters in five areas along the coast.
Louisiana officials closed more waters to fishing and shrimp and oyster harvesting as the slick edged westward.
Shrimp harvesting is now banned from Freshwater Bayou on the central coast to Louisiana's border with Mississippi. Some oyster beds west of the Mississippi River also are shut.
Seafood is a $2.4 billion industry in Louisiana, which produces more than 30 percent of the seafood originating in the continental United States.
In Bayou La Batre, Alabama, the Coast Guard and BP were contracting boat owners at an average rate of $3,000 per day to help with oil-skimming operations.
"I want to get it cleaned up as fast and right as I can. This is my hometown. I want to be part of this for myself and for my son," said Lane Zirlott, a third generation shrimper.
On Dauphin Island, workers contracted by BP wore rubber boots and gloves to lay down oil-absorbing synthetic fibers called pom-poms, erect storm fencing along the beach and collect samples of the tar and water for testing.
Gary Bratt, owner of Chaise N' Rays Rentals, which rents recreational equipment on Dauphin Island, said the threat of the spill reaching shore was ruining his business. "Our business is off 70 percent at this point," with potential vacationers canceling "right and left," he said.
Gulf Coast politicians echoed the public's fears.
"You're talking about massive economic loss to our tourism, our beaches, our fisheries, very possibly disruption of our military testing and training which is in the Gulf of Mexico," Florida Democratic Senator Bill Nelson told CNN."
Crews labored all weekend to cordon off the entrance to Alabama's Mobile Bay with a containment boom fence to try to safeguard America's ninth-largest seaport.
Ships arriving at Southwest Pass, the deepwater entrance to the Mississippi River and New Orleans, will be inspected to determine if they need cleaning.
Jon Jarvis, director of the National Park Service, and Rowan Gould, acting director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, were sent to the Gulf to help lead efforts to protect coastal communities. Gould is a veteran of cleanup efforts following the 1989 Exxon Valdez accident, the worst U.S. oil spill ever.
(Additional reporting by Anna Driver in Houston; Tom Brown and Pascal Fletcher in Miami; Steve Gorman, Verna Gates and Kelli Dugan in Dauphin Island, Alabama; Don Pessin in Venice, Louisiana; Shaleem Thompson in Buras, Louisiana; and Eric Beech in Washington; Writing by John Whitesides and Ros Krasny; Editing by Chris Wilson)


http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64...me=topNews


there's a slide show with 25 photos at the link too...

[Ed Jewett]

Rig firm's $270m profit from deadly spill

May 9, 2010 by legitgov

[url=javascript:void(0)][/url]Rig firm's $270m profit from deadly spill --Transocean has already received a cash payment of $401m with the rest due in the next few weeks. 09 May 2010 The owner of the oil rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 people and causing a giant slick, has made a $270m (£182m) profit from insurance payouts for the disaster. The revelation by Transocean, the world’s biggest offshore driller, will add to the political storm over the disaster. The company was hired by BP to drill the well. The "accounting gain" arose because the $560m insurance policy Transocean took out on its Deepwater Horizon rig was greater than the value of the rig itself.

http://www.legitgov.org/Rig-firms-270m-p...adly-spill

[Ed Jewett]

Will The Gulf Of Mexico Oil Spill Be An Economic Disaster That The Gulf Coast Will Never Recover From?


As a silent blanket of black goo that is now about the size of the state of Florida slowly but relentlessly drifts towards the Gulf Coast, communities in the region are bracing for an economic catastrophe that is being described as a "slow motion Katrina". Still reeling from the effects of Hurricane Katrina after all these years, many who depend on the Gulf of Mexico for their livelihood fear that the massive oil spill heading their way could prove to be an economic disaster from which they will never recover. Thousands of businesses in the region could go under before all of this is over, and millions could lose their jobs. As the gigantic mass of black oil kills and maims all the wildlife it encounters, and as it pushes dangerously close to the coastal wetlands, many residents are predicting that two of the most important industries in the region - seafood and tourism - will be completely and totally destroyed.
Already, the edges of the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico have grazed the barrier islands off Louisiana's Chandeleur and Breton sounds. BP spokeswoman Ayana McIntosh-Lee announced on Monday that the damaged well is releasing 210,000 gallons of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico. At this point there is no end in sight.
In fact, the oil spill in the Gulf Of Mexico is now larger than the entire state of Florida, and each day it grows larger and more insidious.
Scientists in the region tell us that the Gulf oil spill could actually get into what's called the "Loop Current" within a day, eventually carrying oil south along the Florida coast and into the Florida Keys. In fact, one prominent oceanographer says that he cannot think of any scenario where the oil spill doesn't eventually reach the Florida Keys.
And there are indications that things could get a whole lot worse before they get better.
It is being reported that a confidential government report on the oil spill in the Gulf makes it clear that the Coast Guard now fears that the damaged well could become an unchecked gusher shooting millions of gallons of oil per day into the Gulf. One Alabama newspaper has posted excerpts from this alarming report....
"The following is not public," reads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Emergency Response document dated April 28th that was posted on . "Two additional release points were found today in the tangled riser. If the riser pipe deteriorates further, the flow could become unchecked resulting in a release volume an order of magnitude higher than previously thought."

How bad could it get?
Well, if the riser pipe blows out, experts tell us that we could see 5 to 10 times as much oil flowing into the Gulf as we are now.
That would be a nightmare of Biblical proportions.
Not that we aren't facing a complete and total nightmare already.
Both Obama administration and BP are indicating that it might take up to three months to completely seal off the leaking oil well.
3 more months of oil flowing into the Gulf?
How in the world could the Gulf Coast ever recover from that?
And once the oil spill gets into the wetlands along the coast it will never, ever be able to be totally cleaned up.
Already, environmentalists are warning that the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico could absolutely devastate the bird population of the region.
You see, nearly 75 percent of all U.S. waterfowl use Louisiana's three million acres of wetlands to rest or nest. Once the oil spill gets into those wetlands it is over for those waterfowl.
Not only that, but Louisiana produces more fish and seafood than anywhere in the United States except for Alaska. The cost of this disaster to the fishing industry in Louisiana alone could top 3 billion dollars, and it is being projected that the tourism industry in Florida could lose even more than that.
In fact, some local shrimpers in the region are gloomily forecasting that it will be seven years before they can set to sea again.
Are you starting to get the picture?
Entire industries are going to be wiped out by this thing.
In economic terms, this is far bigger than Katrina.
What we are witnessing is the potential economic death of an entire region.
To get an idea of just what kind of a nightmare the residents of the Gulf Coast are facing, just read some of the quotes that have been popping up in mainstream media sources over the last couple of days....
The Telegraph:
"Worst case scenarios almost never happen," Professor Robert Thomas, of New Orleans' Loyola University, was quoted as saying yesterday. "In this case, almost everyone I have known with technical knowledge of oil spills – people who have worked in the industry 30, 40 years – say it is upon us."
Louis Miller of the Mississippi Sierra Club:
This is going to destroy the Mississippi and the Gulf Coast as we know it.
The Los Angeles Times:
"A major oil spill would devastate the ecosystem and the economy based on that ecosystem," said Larry Crowder, professor of marine biology at Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment. "It's a particularly bad time of year because just about everything is nesting or replicating.
"In the Gulf of Mexico giant blue fin tuna are spawning, and their eggs and larvae float on the surface," he said. "Seabirds and gulls are nesting. For nesting sea turtles, obviously, oiling the beaches could have a devastating impact."
An anonymous Louisiana resident:
"A hurricane is like closing your bank account for a few days, but this here has the capacity to destroy our bank accounts."
Even if you have a heart that is cold as a stone, now is the time to pray for those who live along the Gulf Coast. The oil spill relentlessly pushing towards the shore threatens to destroy countless numbers of lives.
Hopefully BP (or someone else) will find a way to keep this disaster from escalating out of control.
If not, there are going to be a whole lot of people who are going to need our help.


http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archi...cover-from

[Ed Jewett]

HOUSTON, May 8, 2010 AP: Oil Blowout Preventers Known to Fail

Investigation Into Cutoff Valves Like One in Gulf of Mexico Spill Show Repeated Failures, Weakened Regulations

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/05/0...9368.shtml

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• The Deepwater Horizon Blowout Preventer. (AP/DHRUC)
  

• Photo Essay Oil Spill Threatens Wildlife As the Gulf oil spill spreads towards the mainland, more than 400 species of wildlife are in serious danger
  
• Photo Essay Gulf Oil Spill Containment The U.S. Coast Guard is scrambling to contain a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico
  

• Stories
  
• Oil Leak Container Touches Down on Seafloor
  
• BP Probe: Blowout Triggered by Methane Gas
  

(AP) Cutoff valves like the one that failed to stop the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster have repeatedly broken down at other wells in the years since federal regulators weakened testing requirements, according to an Associated Press investigation.

These steel monsters known as blowout preventers or BOPs - sometimes as big as a double-decker bus and weighing up to 640,000 pounds - guard the mouth of wells. They act as the last defense to choke off unintended releases, slamming a gushing pipe with up to 1 million pounds of force.

While the precise causes of the April 20 explosion and spill remain unknown, investigators are focusing on the blowout preventer on the Deepwater Horizon rig operated by BP PLC as one likely contributor.

Complete Coverage: Disaster in the Gulf

To hear some industry officials talk, these devices are virtually foolproof.

But a detailed AP review shows that reliability questions have long shadowed blowout preventers:

• Accident reports from the U.S. Minerals Management Service, a branch of the Interior Department, show that the devices have failed or otherwise played a role in at least 14 accidents, mostly since 2005.

• Government and industry reports have raised questions about the reliability of blowout preventers for more than a decade. A 2003 report by Transocean, the owner of the destroyed rig, said: "Floating drilling rig downtime due to poor BOP reliability is a common and very costly issue confronting all offshore drilling contractors."

• Lawsuits have fingered these valves as a factor in previous blowouts.

It is unclear why the blowout valves on the Deepwater Horizon didn't stop the April 20 blast that killed 11 workers and has sent millions of gallons of oil spewing into Gulf. Interviews with rig workers conducted as part of BP's internal investigation into the explosion indicate that a methane gas bubble escaped from the well and expanded quickly as it shot up the drill column, a series of events that included the failure of the blowout preventer and explosion of the rig.

Since then, the minerals agency has been inspecting offshore rigs and platforms to verify testing of these valves and check emergency exercises. On Friday, a senior agency official told the AP that regulators had been comfortable that the valves were reliable - until the blowout.

"Based on the record, we have felt that these were performing the job they were supposed to perform," Deputy Director Walter Cruickshank said. "This incident is going to make us re-examine that assumption."

He said new procedures and rules may be needed, including certifying blowout preventers by an independent group of experts. He also said the agency may revise its peeled-back testing requirement of 1998, when it replaced a weekly regimen with biweekly pressure tests.

Congress plans hearings that will consider BOP reliability. "The safety valve is not so safe," said U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash. She said the industry knew this kind of part sometimes fails, but it acted as if it couldn't.

After the accident, BP CEO Tony Hayward said of blowout preventers in general: "It's unprecedented for it to fail."

Yet the AP review turned up instances where preventer seals have failed outright, obstructions have blocked them, or valves simply weren't designed for the task. Sometimes there were blowouts.

The control systems also have proved goof-prone. When a worker accidentally disconnected a blowout preventer at one rig in 2000, federal regulators recommended changes in the control panels. Later that year, a worker at a rig off the Louisiana coast was making those very changes when he accidentally pushed the wrong button - and unlatched the valves; the ensuing blowout released 8,400 gallons of crude.

The government has long known of such problems, according to a historical review conducted by the AP. In the late 1990s, the industry appealed for fewer required pressure tests on these valves. The federal minerals service did two studies, each finding that failures were more common than the industry said.

But the agency, known as MMS, then did its turnaround and required tests half as often. It estimated that the rule would yield an annual savings of up to $340,000 per rig. An industry executive praised the "flexibility" of regulators, long plagued with accusations that it has been too cozy with the industry it supervises.

Laurence Power, of Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, Scotland, an engineering teacher who has studied these valves in offshore oil wells, said he has "not been able to see their logic" for reducing the frequency of testing.

In 1999, right after that rule change, an MMS-commissioned report by a research group identified 117 blowout preventer failures at deepwater rigs within the previous year. These breakdowns created 3,638 hours of lost time - a 4 percent chunk of drilling time.

In 2004, an engineering study for federal regulators said only 3 of 14 new devices could shear pipe, as sometimes required to check leaks, at maximum rated depths. Only half of operators accepting a newly built device tested this function during commissioning or acceptance, according to the report.

"This grim snapshot illustrates the lack of preparedness in the industry to shear and seal a well with the last line of defense against a blowout," the report warned.

Two years later, a trade journal's article still noted that shearing preventers "may also have difficulty cutting today's high-strength, high toughness drill pipe" at deep wells.

The special cutting preventers were blamed in 1979 for the biggest peacetime well spill in history, when about 140 million gallons of oil poured from a Mexican well in the Gulf.

Questions about reliability hung heavily but were mostly unspoken Thursday at a Houston conference on offshore oil rig technology. Shown a spreadsheet of problems with blowout preventers, Transocean technology manager John Kozicz said, "We know that - but they don't happen frequently."

Even Transocean's Earl Shanks, lead author of the 2003 study reporting "poor BOP reliability," now views blowout preventers as "very reliable." But he did acknowledge problems in the complex electronic and hydraulic tangle that activates and controls the devices. At Deepwater Horizon, he said, "Something went wrong - and we don't know what."

Cameron International, which made the Deepwater Horizon preventers, has acknowledged that these lumbering emergency stoppers need lots of upkeep. "You have to maintain it," CEO Jack Moore told investors last year. "You have to replace the mechanical and rubber elements."

Cameron International did not respond to AP questions about reliability. But it has had to face such questions in court.

A 2008 federal lawsuit claims its faulty blowout preventers contributed to a well blowout. The suit makes the same claim about other valves installed at the rig but made by Hydril.

A Hydril Pressure Control representative said he couldn't be quoted by name under company policy, but he defended the safety of his company's preventers. Asked about the lawsuit, he said, "It is a matter of litigation, and we have denied the allegation and strongly believe in the merits of our case."


More Coverage of Gulf Oil Spill:

Oil Leak Container Touches Down on Seafloor
Pelicans' Brief Success Threatened by Oil Spill
Oil Washing Ashore at Island Off Louisiana Coast
Marine Food Chain Seen at Risk After Oil Spill
Can Congress Raise BP's Oil Spill Liability?
Exxon-Valdez Revisited
How Much Does BP Owe for Gulf Oil Spill?

[Ed Jewett]

If you have the Google Earth plug-in, you can compare the size of the oil spill to your locale here: http://paulrademacher.com/oilspill/

###

Oil leak is 5 times greater than reported by officials

{ May 10, 2010 @ 4:59 pm } · { Earth Events/Environment/Space, News }
{ Tags: BP, Conspiracy, deepwater horizon, gulf of mexico, oil leak }

The amount of oil gushing from BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil disaster is five times more than what the oil company and the U.S. Coast Guard are currently estimating, said a Florida State University oceanography professor on Saturday.

At an oil spill environmental forum at the Hilton Pensacola Beach Gulf Front, Ian MacDonald said the blowout is gushing 25,000 barrels a day.

The Coast Guard and BP estimate 5,000 barrels a day of crude is spewing into the Gulf.

MacDonald said his estimate is based on satellite images and government maps forecasting the slick’s trajectory.

MacDonald also told a crowd of about 100 gathered for the discussion that he’s been frustrated by the lack of data from federal responders and BP since the April 20 explosion and subsequent spill.

Dick Snyder, director of the Center for Environmental Diagnostics and Bioremediation at the University of West Florida, said satellite imagery and maps give a misleading picture of the spread of the spill.

Chemical dispersants and exposure to sunlight have made some of the oil nearly invisible and hard to detect, he said.

Testing seawater for a hydrocarbon signature is needed to adequately track the oil spill so cleanup operations can be activated before it arrives, Snyder said.

A proposal by UWF to conduct such testing off the Pensacola coast was rejected by the state Department of Environmental Protection, Snyder said.

Both Snyder and MacDonald are members of the newly created Oil Spill Academic Task Force.

The organization brings together resources of Florida’s academic institutions to assist the state of Florida and the Gulf region in preparing for and responding to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

The task force consists of scientists and scholars working in collaboration with colleges from the State University System as well as private colleges.

www.pnj.com/article/20100510/NEWS01/5100314

http://heidilore.wordpress.com/2010/05/1...um=twitter

[Peter Lemkin]

If you have the Google Earth plug-in, you can compare the size of the oil spill to your locale here: http://paulrademacher.com/oilspill/

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Oil leak is 5 times greater than reported by officials

{ May 10, 2010 @ 4:59 pm } · { Earth Events/Environment/Space, News }
{ Tags: BP, Conspiracy, deepwater horizon, gulf of mexico, oil leak }

The amount of oil gushing from BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil disaster is five times more than what the oil company and the U.S. Coast Guard are currently estimating, said a Florida State University oceanography professor on Saturday.

At an oil spill environmental forum at the Hilton Pensacola Beach Gulf Front, Ian MacDonald said the blowout is gushing 25,000 barrels a day.

The Coast Guard and BP estimate 5,000 barrels a day of crude is spewing into the Gulf.

MacDonald said his estimate is based on satellite images and government maps forecasting the slick’s trajectory.

MacDonald also told a crowd of about 100 gathered for the discussion that he’s been frustrated by the lack of data from federal responders and BP since the April 20 explosion and subsequent spill.

Dick Snyder, director of the Center for Environmental Diagnostics and Bioremediation at the University of West Florida, said satellite imagery and maps give a misleading picture of the spread of the spill.

Chemical dispersants and exposure to sunlight have made some of the oil nearly invisible and hard to detect, he said.

Testing seawater for a hydrocarbon signature is needed to adequately track the oil spill so cleanup operations can be activated before it arrives, Snyder said.

A proposal by UWF to conduct such testing off the Pensacola coast was rejected by the state Department of Environmental Protection, Snyder said.

Both Snyder and MacDonald are members of the newly created Oil Spill Academic Task Force.

The organization brings together resources of Florida’s academic institutions to assist the state of Florida and the Gulf region in preparing for and responding to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

The task force consists of scientists and scholars working in collaboration with colleges from the State University System as well as private colleges.

www.pnj.com/article/20100510/NEWS01/5100314

http://heidilore.wordpress.com/2010/05/1...um=twitter

If they don't stop the flow in the next month or two, the entire Gulf will become a dead zone. A very real danger is the remaining wellhead breaking off and the oil coming out at ambient pressure - likely 30-100X the current rate, until the reservoir below is empty....a lovely scenario and paradigm for how humans are raping Mother Earth - Gaia! It has also quietly been reported, but ignored by the MSM that this deposit [and the cause of the original explosion] contains not only oil, but also methane hydrate - a known danger and substance that at depth is a solid and when it escapes to the surface spontaneously explodes.