Louisiana deep oil drilling disaster

[Magda Hassan]

BP chief Tony Hayward 'negotiating exit deal'

Mr Hayward has been with the company for 28 years
BP's chief executive Tony Hayward has been negotiating the terms of his exit, with a formal announcement likely within 24 hours, the BBC has learnt.
Mr Hayward has been widely criticised over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
BBC business editor Robert Peston said it was likely he would be replaced by his US colleague Bob Dudley, now in charge of the clean-up operation.



BP said Mr Hayward "remains our chief executive and has the full support of the board and senior management".
Our correspondent added that while BP had been preparing for a change at the top for some time, the company was waiting until progress had been made on stemming the leak and until it was possible to quantify the financial costs of the disaster.
BP is due to release its results for the second quarter on Tuesday.
It is expected to reveal a provision of up to $30bn (£19bn) for the costs of capping the well, compensation claims and fines to be paid, resulting in a massive quarterly loss.
Continue reading the main story

• Hayward negotiates his exit
  

Mr Hayward has been with the company for 28 years.
He has also been rapped by US congressmen for not taking responsibility for the disaster at its Macondo oil well, which killed 11 people.
The congressmen were unimpressed by the answers they received from the BP boss at a congressional committee on energy and commerce hearing last month.
They accused him of "stonewalling" questions and of "kicking the can [of responsibility] down the road".
Mr Hayward had already been lambasted for saying that he "just wanted his life back" and that the Gulf is a "big ocean" following the leak.
He was also taken to task for attending a sailing event in June by those, including the White House, who felt he should have been dealing with the leak.
Many commentators believe Mr Dudley's American accent will be advantageous from a PR perspective
The man expected to replace him, Bob Dudley, took over the day-to-day operations in the Gulf of Mexico last month.
Many say that, from a public relations point of view, Mr Dudley has the advantage of being American and speaking with an American accent.
He grew up in Mississippi and, according to BP, has a "deep appreciation and affinity for the Gulf Coast".
Mr Dudley joined BP in 1999 following a merger with US oil firm Amoco.
He is probably best-known for running BP's joint venture in Russia, TNK-BP, during the public falling-out with its Russian partners.
He joined the BP board in April 2009.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-10753573

[Jan Klimkowski]

Hayward - stil utterly clueless.

Still totally deluded.

Still filthy rich and set up for life.

Tony Hayward: BP was 'a model of corporate social responsibility'

Outgoing chief executive's comments likely to inflame US public opinion as he defends oil group's response to rig disaster

BP formally confirmed today that it had axed its boss Tony Hayward in an attempt to appease mounting anger in the US but risked undermining the move by insisting it had been a "model of corporate social responsibility".

In further comments unlikely to go down well in Washington, Hayward said he had been "demonised" in the US, adding that he might be "too busy" to attend future US hearings into the disastrous Gulf oil spill.

Explaining his decision to leave the group he has led for three-and-a-half years, Hayward said: "I believe this tragedy will leave BP a different company. I believe for it to move on in the United States it needs new leadership and it is for that reason I have stood down as the CEO. I think BP's response to this tragedy has been a model of good social corporate responsibility. It has mounted an unprecedented response."

The same message was given by Bob Dudley, the BP director currently in charge of the Gulf clean-up who will take over the top job from Hayward in two months.

Dudley, who will become BP's first American boss, described the company's reaction to the blowout on the Deepwater Horizon as an "unprecedented corporate response" adding that very few companies could have done what it did.

And the future chief executive said the accident was "very complex", caused by multiple failures of equipment and triggered by "a number of companies" rather than just issues associated with BP.

Asked whether Hayward had been unfairly treated by US public opinion, Dudley praised Hayward's leadership, adding: "I think that time will show whether that has been fair or not." He later said he expected his colleague's reputation to be restored but declined to say whether Hayward could eventually get a wider role in addition to the one he will be nominated for as a non-executive director at the company's Russian joint venture, TNK-BP.

Hayward himself said it was pointless to worry about whether his departure was fair or not, adding that "life is not fair". His exit was in the best interests of BP because he had been demonised by the Gulf accident, he explained.

Hayward accepted some of the gaffes he had made such as wanting to "get his life back" had damaged the oil company.

"It may not have been a great PR success. You can argue about whether it could ever have been a great PR success, operationally we capped the well and cleaned up a hell of a lot of the oil."

Hayward was contrite when asked whether he personally could have done anything differently. "Was I close to perfect? Absolutely not. Did I make some mistakes? Of course I did. With the benefit of hindsight would I have done anything different? Of course."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/...onsibility

[Ed Jewett]

[Peter Lemkin]

Oil industry safety record blown open

National Wildlife Federation says catalogue of oil industry accidents proves BP disaster in Gulf of Mexico is not a one-off

Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 29 July 2010 20.18 BST

A pelican covered in oil from the BP leak is cleaned in Louisiana. Photograph: Reuters

The oil industry has been responsible for thousands of fires, explosions, and leaks over the last decade, killing dozens of people and destroying wildlife and the environment across America, according to a report published today.

None of the individual incidents catalogued by the National Wildlife Federation comes close in scale to BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the worst environmental disaster in America's history. But the thousands of lesser offshore spills, pipeline leaks, refinery fires and other accidents demolish the industry argument that BP's ruptured well was a one-off, and that the oil and gas business has grown safer, the report's authors said.

"These disasters make it clear that the BP disaster isn't a rare accident," said Tim Warman, who directs the global warming programme for NWF, which calls itself the country's largest conservation organisation. "These are daily occurrences. These are daily incidents of not paying attention."

In a further grim reminder, the American midwest was in the throes of its own environmental disaster today, with a ruptured pipeline gushing gallons of oil into Michigan's Kalamazoo River.

Enbridge Energy, which is Canadian-owned but based in Houston, said the spill may have reached 1m gallons. Federal government officials in Washington and the state of Michigan were struggling to stop the oil from reaching the Great Lakes.

In the Gulf of Mexico, meanwhile, while BP's oil well remains capped, a tugboat crashed into an abandoned well this week and set off a 100ft gusher of oil and gas.

The coastguard commander, Thad Allen, told reporters today that operations were switching from response to recovery, suggesting that equipment and personnel in the Gulf could be drastically scaled back in four to six weeks. "If you need fewer skimming vessels out there, there is going to be a levelling you need to consider," he said.

The report from the National Wildlife Federation drew on records from the Minerals Management Service, which regulates offshore drilling, and the Environmental Protection Agency, to come up with a figure of 1,440 offshore leaks, blowouts, and other accidents were reported between 2001-2007.

In addition to environmental damage, these caused 41 deaths and 302 injuries.

The safety record for onshore activities was even more dismal. Some 2,554 pipeline accidents occurred between 2001 and 2007, killing 161 people and injuring 576.

"Oil and gas is being produced in 34 states across the country and it is just not being regulated to the extent it needs to be," said Lauren Pagel of Earthworks, which monitors extractive industries.

At times, the accidents occurred far from industrial installations such as offshore drilling rigs or refineries. In one particularly gruesome incident from August 2000, three families with young children on a camping trip in New Mexico were consumed by a 500ft fireball from a ruptured pipeline. All 12 people were killed, and an official investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board later blamed the pipeline company for failing to detect or repair severely corroded pipes.

Four years later, a tanker truck lost control and crossed guard rails outside Washington DC, igniting 8,000 gallons of burning petrol on one of the country's busiest highways. "There was fire everywhere," the report quotes highway officials as saying. Four people were killed.


Among the causes for the poor safety record was the industry's relentless costcutting, despite record profits, said the report's authors, describing equipment failures, tank corrosion, and other signs of poor maintenance. The poor safety and environmental records were not restricted to the so-called Big Oil companies.

Enbridge Energy has had 400 separate spills between 2003 and 2008, spewing 1.3m gallons of crude into the environment, according to official records.

[Peter Lemkin]

AMY GOODMAN: BP has announced its latest attempt to seal the largest oil spill in US history once and for all appears to be working. Dubbed "static kill," the operation forces a heavy, synthetic fluid called drilling mud down into the well. BP said today pressure in the well appears to be stabilizing.

A seventy-five-ton cap placed on the well last month has contained the oil, but it’s considered a temporary measure. According to government estimates, nearly five million barrels of oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico from BP’s oil well before it was capped July 15th. Scientists estimate as many as 62,000 barrels of oil were leaking from the well each day at its peak. That’s more than twelve times as much oil as the government originally projected.

Retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, who’s coordinating the Obama administration’s response to the oil spill disaster, said static kill alone is not enough to plug the well.

THAD ALLEN: The relief wells are the answer. There’s a limit to how much we know and can find out from the static kill, if you will. First of all, if annulus cannot be accessed from the top—in other words, we didn’t compromise the seals—then we’ll only be able to fill the drill pipe itself, the casing, with mud, and then we’d have to actually go to the bottom anyway. We need to go into the bottom to make sure we fill the annulus, the casing and any drill pipe there, then follow that with cement. This thing won’t truly be sealed until those relief wells are done.


AMY GOODMAN: Well, ever since BP placed a temporary cap on the well last month, the media has been abuzz with reports of how the oil has largely disappeared from the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. And the New York Times is reporting today the government is expected to announce today that three-quarters of the oil has already evaporated, dispersed, been captured or otherwise eliminated, and that much of the rest is so diluted it doesn’t seem to pose much additional risk of harm. It’s not clear what effect the more than 1.8 million gallons of the dispersant Corexit that was dumped in the Gulf will have.

But independent journalists, scientists, activists and fisherfolk who have been to the Gulf recently tell a different story. I’m joined now by two guests. From Washington, DC, Antonia Juhasz is with us, director of the Chevron Program at Global Exchange and author of The Tyranny of Oil: The World’s Most Powerful Industry—and What We Must Do to Stop It. She’s just back from Louisiana, where she found some of BP’s "missing oil"—on the wetlands and beaches along the waterways near St. Mary’s Parish, where no one is booming, cleaning, skimming or watching.

And joining us from New Orleans is environmentalist Jerry Cope. He has spent the last few weeks traveling along the Gulf Coast and experiencing firsthand the contamination in the air and water. He just published a piece in the Huffington Post where Cope argues that instead of celebrating the allegedly vanishing oil, we should be concerned about the disappearance of marine life in the Gulf. He describes the Gulf as a "kill zone" and looks into where the marine animals have gone, given that BP has reported a relatively low number of dead animals from the spill.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Jerry Cope, let’s begin with you in New Orleans. Talk about what you found.

JERRY COPE: Well, a friend of mine, Charles Hambleton, and I came down about three weeks ago. We’ve been hearing a lot of stories. People were calling both of us regarding the loss of marine life and that there was a tremendous cover-up operation in place to conceal this from the public and the media. And this was at the same time where a lot of, you know, mainstream media were complaining about restricted access, that they couldn’t get onto the beaches, they weren’t allowed to fly. So these calls kept coming in.

We finally decided three weeks ago to come down and see for ourselves what the situation was, and we went from Louisiana all the way to Florida, spent a great deal of time around Orange Beach and Gulf Shores, Alabama, which tends—is kind of like ground zero in this whole mess, in terms of especially the effects of the dispersant. There’s a great many people there that are sick and ill. The doctors aren’t really sure how to treat them. Dr. Riki Ott’s been down, spending a lot of time with those folks. Myself, I have a pneumonia induced by chemical exposure. I’ve been talking to doctors in Boston.

But the—we talked to numerous fishermen and local people, and there was, in fact, a very large-scale operation with BP, assisted by several federal agencies, to cover up the loss of marine life. They gathered up the fish, birds, whales, dolphins, all the sea life, and the carcasses were destroyed, in very large numbers.

AMY GOODMAN: Jerry Cope, you mentioned Riki Ott. You interviewed the marine toxicologist—she’s an Exxon Valdez survivor—last week about the disappearance of marine life in the Gulf. This is a clip from that interview.

RIKI OTT: We also know from Exxon Valdez that only one percent, in our case, of the carcasses that floated off to sea actually made landfall in the Gulf of Alaska. I don’t believe there’s been any carcass drift studies down here that would give us some indication of when something does wash up on the beach, what percentage is it of the whole. But anyway, we know that offshore there was an attempt by BP and the government to keep the animals from coming onshore in great numbers. And the excuse was, this is a health problem, we don’t want to create a health hazard. And that will only be a good excuse if they kept tallies of all the numbers that died, because all the numbers, all the animals, are evidence for federal court. We, the people, own these animals, and they become evidence for damages to charge for BP. In Exxon Valdez, the carcasses were kept under triple lock-and-key security until the Natural Resource Damage Assessment study was completed. And that was in about a year and a half—two-and-a-half years after the spill. And then, all the animals were burned, but not until then.


AMY GOODMAN: That was Riki Ott. She’s an Exxon Valdez survivor. She’s a marine biologist. Jerry Cope, take it from there. What happened, do you believe, to the animals in the Gulf, to the marine life?

JERRY COPE: Well, there were two dramatic sequences that were described by workers that were out at the source, which is what they called the Canyon 252 site where this incident occurred. And they reported seeing, just as far as the eye could see, dead carcasses of all kinds of marine life out near the source. And then there was also—we heard numerous accounts of a large wave of marine life being pushed into shore as the dispersant and the oil, the first wave, came in and approached towards the end of June. And then, all of a sudden, it was simply gone. All of these animals disappeared. They didn’t show up in the lagoons in any large numbers. And everyone—all the scientists were questioning, where did they go?

I spoke to Hal Whitehead, who studied extensively sperm whales, specifically, the ones down in the Gulf of Mexico, and there was an unusual pod that was resident in the area of the Mississippi Canyon site, and they’ve also disappeared, the entire pod. And that was an unusual social structure there in that those particular sperm whales were not terribly nomadic. They seemed to stay there, as well as the usual whales that moved in and out with the population.

AMY GOODMAN: What about the Corexit, Jerry Cope, the chemical dispersant? What the government is saying—there is just tremendous elation in the media now with the government announcing that 75 percent of the oil is gone. What about the Corexit?

JERRY COPE: Well, last week, we spent two days flying over the Gulf. We went south from Louisiana and then all the way out, then back, all the way back up to Florida. And for as far as the eye can see, the entire Gulf of Mexico is a very strange green color. It’s not blue at all; it’s green. And it’s iridescent. You can—the dispersant, obviously, covers the entire ocean out there, well beyond the site of the spill. And there’s nothing moving. We saw, in two days of flying, four dolphins, that didn’t appear to be very happy, and then three schools of rays, as I put in the article. There’s nothing moving out in the water there.

And as far as the effects of the Corexit, the EPA came out with these wonderful reports yesterday how it’s no more toxic than the oil. But I didn’t read in any of those reports just how toxic the oil was. BP, in their training classes for hazmat, all of the crews that worked on the spill, part of that training, which was a four-hour program, is they told them, in no uncertain terms, if you had any cuts to your skin, abrasion, open wounds, and it was exposed to the crude oil in the water, on the beaches, any form whatsoever, you could pretty much guarantee yourself that you would get cancer in your lifetime. That was part of the training class. So, the oil is most definitely toxic. The Corexit is very toxic. In my opinion, it’s terrible. It evaporates and puts all of this up into the atmosphere. There’s a lot of sick people along the coast. And I called it the Jaws syndrome. It’s life imitating art on a scale that’s hard to wrap your head around, because they are pretending the situation is entirely normal.

AMY GOODMAN: Antonia Juhasz is also with us in Washington, DC, author of The Tyranny of Oil. You have just come back from the Gulf of Mexico. You’re writing a book on what’s happened there, Antonia. Can you talk about what you found in the Gulf, in St. Mary’s Parish, and where that is?

ANTONIA JUHASZ: Yeah. St. Mary’s Parish is one bayou over from Venice Beach area, which is the focus of a lot of the coverage of where the oil has been coming ashore and where a lot of the oil impact has been. So it’s one bayou over. And I went down there to attend a BP community forum that was held Thursday night. And at this forum, the parish president announced that St. Mary’s Parish doesn’t have oil, has never had oil, and won’t have oil hitting its shores. As soon as he said that, he was immediately surrounded by fishermen. And one of the fishermen said, "Well, if that’s true, then why does Kermit have oil in his bag right now?" And one of the fishermen, everyone turned to him, and he said, "You know, I was just out on the water, like I’ve been every day, looking for oil, and I saw oil, and I’ve seen oil. And we’ve been telling you that there’s oil." At that point, the microphone was turned off, and, you know, essentially all hell broke loose. And the Coast Guard, which was there, went over to this fisherman and said, you know, "If you saw oil, show us where you saw the oil." And they went over and they looked at maps, and he showed them where the oil was. And they were very concerned.

And then I, the next day, went out with him, and we spent five hours going along the coast of Oyster Bayou to Taylor Bayou in his boat, and what I saw was oil, waves of oil that had washed in. They had clearly washed in, because it was—you could see the wave effect. It was over the wetlands, grass, grassy areas, just coated in waves of oil that had hit. We went to beaches that were covered with tar balls. And, you know, this is not an unusual sight. Anyone who’s been watching TV has seen these sights. What was completely unusual, in my experience over three months of time going down to the Gulf, is that there was no one around. There were no cleanup workers. There was no boom. There was no evidence that anyone had any concern about this oil. And, in fact, that’s what we found out, that the Coast Guard then reported, after it went and looked at these locations, that it wasn’t enough to worry about. And that didn’t make any sense to the fishermen who I spoke to and the fisherman I was with, who said, "One, this is oil that is in and around where we live, where we fish, at the heart of our livelihood, which is this Oyster Bayou. And also, this is oil coating"—and I saw it—"the marshlands, the wetlands," which is, you know, when the oil gets into the grass, if it stays there, it can kill the root system. If it kills the root system, it kills the wetlands. If it kills the wetlands, there’s no barrier to, one, the oil getting further in and, two, more importantly in this area, hurricane provision and hurricane protection.

And this is also completely out of whack with what BP had been doing previously, in my experience, which is, wherever you saw oil, there wasn’t far behind a BP cleanup crew that would clean it up. Of course, the oil would just wash back on, and then they’d come back and they’d clean it up again. What is astounding, from my experience, is that it is evidence of what we’re hearing and seeing all across the Gulf, which is the cleanup apparatus being pulled away and removed. And the reason to do that is just as these—the press reports are saying, if the oil is out of sight, it’s out of mind. We know it’s out of sight, primarily, one, because the well is capped—thank goodness—but two, that it’s been dispersed. It’s been dispersed, and we can’t see it. And if BP can pull up its cleanup crews and show that everything is OK, the idea is that it would significantly limit the potential liability that BP faces. If it can say about the oil-soaked areas that I saw, "Oh, that’s insignificant," then they’re not liable for cleanup, not liable for the consequences to that community—at least, I imagine that’s what they would argue—in St. Mary’s Parish. Of course, they should be, and are, but that seems to be the logic, and it’s devastating to see it taking shape on the ground.

AMY GOODMAN: Antonia Juhasz, you’re in Washington, DC, up from the Gulf of Mexico, because the Senate is expected to take up energy spill legislation today. Quickly explain what that is.

ANTONIA JUHASZ: Well, they’re not, so—what was supposed to happen was two waves of legislation. One was the climate legislation that was supposed to happen addressing the ravages of climate change. That got pushed aside. What was initially supposed to happen was that the climate legislation that was on the table was going to now include spill response legislation, capping—or eliminating the cap on liability for oil companies involved in disasters like this, maintaining the moratorium put in place by the Obama administration, oversight and regulatory measures to the Interior Department, a lot of very good provisions that are needed to address making sure a disaster like this doesn’t happen and making sure—in the future, and making that BP actually is held liable for what it’s done. First, the climate package was pulled. It was felt there wouldn’t be votes for that. Then, just last night, where there was supposed to be a Senate spill bill that was supposed to come through today, that got pulled yesterday, because there weren’t going to be enough votes—just for that, this very small, very simple, very limited measure that would have been the only congressional response at this point, legislatively at this point.

AMY GOODMAN: And very quickly—we have fifteen seconds—BP planning to sell $30 billion in assets?

ANTONIA JUHASZ: Yeah, BP is starting a fire sale to get rid of $30 billion worth of itself to try and consolidate its operations. My concern about that is, who’s going to buy those pieces? Exxon and Chevron have said they’re in the market. They’ve actually said they’re interested in potentially buying BP. And that would be disastrous, in my mind, in terms of further concentration and wealth and political influence being put into an ever-smaller number of corporate hands. Most disconcerting, we heard that—there’s a rumor that the Obama administration may be—

AMY GOODMAN: Antonia Juhasz is also with us in Washington, DC, author of The Tyranny of Oil. You have just come back from the Gulf of Mexico. You’re writing a book on what’s happened there, Antonia. Can you talk about what you found in the Gulf, in St. Mary’s Parish, and where that is?

ANTONIA JUHASZ: Yeah. St. Mary’s Parish is one bayou over from Venice Beach area, which is the focus of a lot of the coverage of where the oil has been coming ashore and where a lot of the oil impact has been. So it’s one bayou over. And I went down there to attend a BP community forum that was held Thursday night. And at this forum, the parish president announced that St. Mary’s Parish doesn’t have oil, has never had oil, and won’t have oil hitting its shores. As soon as he said that, he was immediately surrounded by fishermen. And one of the fishermen said, "Well, if that’s true, then why does Kermit have oil in his bag right now?" And one of the fishermen, everyone turned to him, and he said, "You know, I was just out on the water, like I’ve been every day, looking for oil, and I saw oil, and I’ve seen oil. And we’ve been telling you that there’s oil." At that point, the microphone was turned off, and, you know, essentially all hell broke loose. And the Coast Guard, which was there, went over to this fisherman and said, you know, "If you saw oil, show us where you saw the oil." And they went over and they looked at maps, and he showed them where the oil was. And they were very concerned.

And then I, the next day, went out with him, and we spent five hours going along the coast of Oyster Bayou to Taylor Bayou in his boat, and what I saw was oil, waves of oil that had washed in. They had clearly washed in, because it was—you could see the wave effect. It was over the wetlands, grass, grassy areas, just coated in waves of oil that had hit. We went to beaches that were covered with tar balls. And, you know, this is not an unusual sight. Anyone who’s been watching TV has seen these sights. What was completely unusual, in my experience over three months of time going down to the Gulf, is that there was no one around. There were no cleanup workers. There was no boom. There was no evidence that anyone had any concern about this oil. And, in fact, that’s what we found out, that the Coast Guard then reported, after it went and looked at these locations, that it wasn’t enough to worry about. And that didn’t make any sense to the fishermen who I spoke to and the fisherman I was with, who said, "One, this is oil that is in and around where we live, where we fish, at the heart of our livelihood, which is this Oyster Bayou. And also, this is oil coating"—and I saw it—"the marshlands, the wetlands," which is, you know, when the oil gets into the grass, if it stays there, it can kill the root system. If it kills the root system, it kills the wetlands. If it kills the wetlands, there’s no barrier to, one, the oil getting further in and, two, more importantly in this area, hurricane provision and hurricane protection.

And this is also completely out of whack with what BP had been doing previously, in my experience, which is, wherever you saw oil, there wasn’t far behind a BP cleanup crew that would clean it up. Of course, the oil would just wash back on, and then they’d come back and they’d clean it up again. What is astounding, from my experience, is that it is evidence of what we’re hearing and seeing all across the Gulf, which is the cleanup apparatus being pulled away and removed. And the reason to do that is just as these—the press reports are saying, if the oil is out of sight, it’s out of mind. We know it’s out of sight, primarily, one, because the well is capped—thank goodness—but two, that it’s been dispersed. It’s been dispersed, and we can’t see it. And if BP can pull up its cleanup crews and show that everything is OK, the idea is that it would significantly limit the potential liability that BP faces. If it can say about the oil-soaked areas that I saw, "Oh, that’s insignificant," then they’re not liable for cleanup, not liable for the consequences to that community—at least, I imagine that’s what they would argue—in St. Mary’s Parish. Of course, they should be, and are, but that seems to be the logic, and it’s devastating to see it taking shape on the ground.

AMY GOODMAN: Antonia Juhasz, you’re in Washington, DC, up from the Gulf of Mexico, because the Senate is expected to take up energy spill legislation today. Quickly explain what that is.

ANTONIA JUHASZ: Well, they’re not, so—what was supposed to happen was two waves of legislation. One was the climate legislation that was supposed to happen addressing the ravages of climate change. That got pushed aside. What was initially supposed to happen was that the climate legislation that was on the table was going to now include spill response legislation, capping—or eliminating the cap on liability for oil companies involved in disasters like this, maintaining the moratorium put in place by the Obama administration, oversight and regulatory measures to the Interior Department, a lot of very good provisions that are needed to address making sure a disaster like this doesn’t happen and making sure—in the future, and making that BP actually is held liable for what it’s done. First, the climate package was pulled. It was felt there wouldn’t be votes for that. Then, just last night, where there was supposed to be a Senate spill bill that was supposed to come through today, that got pulled yesterday, because there weren’t going to be enough votes—just for that, this very small, very simple, very limited measure that would have been the only congressional response at this point, legislatively at this point.

AMY GOODMAN: And very quickly—we have fifteen seconds—BP planning to sell $30 billion in assets?

ANTONIA JUHASZ: Yeah, BP is starting a fire sale to get rid of $30 billion worth of itself to try and consolidate its operations. My concern about that is, who’s going to buy those pieces? Exxon and Chevron have said they’re in the market. They’ve actually said they’re interested in potentially buying BP. And that would be disastrous, in my mind, in terms of further concentration and wealth and political influence being put into an ever-smaller number of corporate hands. Most disconcerting, we heard that—there’s a rumor that the Obama administration may be—

AMY GOODMAN: Antonia Juhasz is also with us in Washington, DC, author of The Tyranny of Oil. You have just come back from the Gulf of Mexico. You’re writing a book on what’s happened there, Antonia. Can you talk about what you found in the Gulf, in St. Mary’s Parish, and where that is?

ANTONIA JUHASZ: Yeah. St. Mary’s Parish is one bayou over from Venice Beach area, which is the focus of a lot of the coverage of where the oil has been coming ashore and where a lot of the oil impact has been. So it’s one bayou over. And I went down there to attend a BP community forum that was held Thursday night. And at this forum, the parish president announced that St. Mary’s Parish doesn’t have oil, has never had oil, and won’t have oil hitting its shores. As soon as he said that, he was immediately surrounded by fishermen. And one of the fishermen said, "Well, if that’s true, then why does Kermit have oil in his bag right now?" And one of the fishermen, everyone turned to him, and he said, "You know, I was just out on the water, like I’ve been every day, looking for oil, and I saw oil, and I’ve seen oil. And we’ve been telling you that there’s oil." At that point, the microphone was turned off, and, you know, essentially all hell broke loose. And the Coast Guard, which was there, went over to this fisherman and said, you know, "If you saw oil, show us where you saw the oil." And they went over and they looked at maps, and he showed them where the oil was. And they were very concerned.

And then I, the next day, went out with him, and we spent five hours going along the coast of Oyster Bayou to Taylor Bayou in his boat, and what I saw was oil, waves of oil that had washed in. They had clearly washed in, because it was—you could see the wave effect. It was over the wetlands, grass, grassy areas, just coated in waves of oil that had hit. We went to beaches that were covered with tar balls. And, you know, this is not an unusual sight. Anyone who’s been watching TV has seen these sights. What was completely unusual, in my experience over three months of time going down to the Gulf, is that there was no one around. There were no cleanup workers. There was no boom. There was no evidence that anyone had any concern about this oil. And, in fact, that’s what we found out, that the Coast Guard then reported, after it went and looked at these locations, that it wasn’t enough to worry about. And that didn’t make any sense to the fishermen who I spoke to and the fisherman I was with, who said, "One, this is oil that is in and around where we live, where we fish, at the heart of our livelihood, which is this Oyster Bayou. And also, this is oil coating"—and I saw it—"the marshlands, the wetlands," which is, you know, when the oil gets into the grass, if it stays there, it can kill the root system. If it kills the root system, it kills the wetlands. If it kills the wetlands, there’s no barrier to, one, the oil getting further in and, two, more importantly in this area, hurricane provision and hurricane protection.

And this is also completely out of whack with what BP had been doing previously, in my experience, which is, wherever you saw oil, there wasn’t far behind a BP cleanup crew that would clean it up. Of course, the oil would just wash back on, and then they’d come back and they’d clean it up again. What is astounding, from my experience, is that it is evidence of what we’re hearing and seeing all across the Gulf, which is the cleanup apparatus being pulled away and removed. And the reason to do that is just as these—the press reports are saying, if the oil is out of sight, it’s out of mind. We know it’s out of sight, primarily, one, because the well is capped—thank goodness—but two, that it’s been dispersed. It’s been dispersed, and we can’t see it. And if BP can pull up its cleanup crews and show that everything is OK, the idea is that it would significantly limit the potential liability that BP faces. If it can say about the oil-soaked areas that I saw, "Oh, that’s insignificant," then they’re not liable for cleanup, not liable for the consequences to that community—at least, I imagine that’s what they would argue—in St. Mary’s Parish. Of course, they should be, and are, but that seems to be the logic, and it’s devastating to see it taking shape on the ground.

AMY GOODMAN: Antonia Juhasz, you’re in Washington, DC, up from the Gulf of Mexico, because the Senate is expected to take up energy spill legislation today. Quickly explain what that is.

ANTONIA JUHASZ: Well, they’re not, so—what was supposed to happen was two waves of legislation. One was the climate legislation that was supposed to happen addressing the ravages of climate change. That got pushed aside. What was initially supposed to happen was that the climate legislation that was on the table was going to now include spill response legislation, capping—or eliminating the cap on liability for oil companies involved in disasters like this, maintaining the moratorium put in place by the Obama administration, oversight and regulatory measures to the Interior Department, a lot of very good provisions that are needed to address making sure a disaster like this doesn’t happen and making sure—in the future, and making that BP actually is held liable for what it’s done. First, the climate package was pulled. It was felt there wouldn’t be votes for that. Then, just last night, where there was supposed to be a Senate spill bill that was supposed to come through today, that got pulled yesterday, because there weren’t going to be enough votes—just for that, this very small, very simple, very limited measure that would have been the only congressional response at this point, legislatively at this point.

AMY GOODMAN: And very quickly—we have fifteen seconds—BP planning to sell $30 billion in assets?

ANTONIA JUHASZ: Yeah, BP is starting a fire sale to get rid of $30 billion worth of itself to try and consolidate its operations. My concern about that is, who’s going to buy those pieces? Exxon and Chevron have said they’re in the market. They’ve actually said they’re interested in potentially buying BP. And that would be disastrous, in my mind, in terms of further concentration and wealth and political influence being put into an ever-smaller number of corporate hands. Most disconcerting, we heard that—there’s a rumor that the Obama administration may be—

AMY GOODMAN: Antonia Juhasz is also with us in Washington, DC, author of The Tyranny of Oil. You have just come back from the Gulf of Mexico. You’re writing a book on what’s happened there, Antonia. Can you talk about what you found in the Gulf, in St. Mary’s Parish, and where that is?

ANTONIA JUHASZ: Yeah. St. Mary’s Parish is one bayou over from Venice Beach area, which is the focus of a lot of the coverage of where the oil has been coming ashore and where a lot of the oil impact has been. So it’s one bayou over. And I went down there to attend a BP community forum that was held Thursday night. And at this forum, the parish president announced that St. Mary’s Parish doesn’t have oil, has never had oil, and won’t have oil hitting its shores. As soon as he said that, he was immediately surrounded by fishermen. And one of the fishermen said, "Well, if that’s true, then why does Kermit have oil in his bag right now?" And one of the fishermen, everyone turned to him, and he said, "You know, I was just out on the water, like I’ve been every day, looking for oil, and I saw oil, and I’ve seen oil. And we’ve been telling you that there’s oil." At that point, the microphone was turned off, and, you know, essentially all hell broke loose. And the Coast Guard, which was there, went over to this fisherman and said, you know, "If you saw oil, show us where you saw the oil." And they went over and they looked at maps, and he showed them where the oil was. And they were very concerned.

And then I, the next day, went out with him, and we spent five hours going along the coast of Oyster Bayou to Taylor Bayou in his boat, and what I saw was oil, waves of oil that had washed in. They had clearly washed in, because it was—you could see the wave effect. It was over the wetlands, grass, grassy areas, just coated in waves of oil that had hit. We went to beaches that were covered with tar balls. And, you know, this is not an unusual sight. Anyone who’s been watching TV has seen these sights. What was completely unusual, in my experience over three months of time going down to the Gulf, is that there was no one around. There were no cleanup workers. There was no boom. There was no evidence that anyone had any concern about this oil. And, in fact, that’s what we found out, that the Coast Guard then reported, after it went and looked at these locations, that it wasn’t enough to worry about. And that didn’t make any sense to the fishermen who I spoke to and the fisherman I was with, who said, "One, this is oil that is in and around where we live, where we fish, at the heart of our livelihood, which is this Oyster Bayou. And also, this is oil coating"—and I saw it—"the marshlands, the wetlands," which is, you know, when the oil gets into the grass, if it stays there, it can kill the root system. If it kills the root system, it kills the wetlands. If it kills the wetlands, there’s no barrier to, one, the oil getting further in and, two, more importantly in this area, hurricane provision and hurricane protection.

And this is also completely out of whack with what BP had been doing previously, in my experience, which is, wherever you saw oil, there wasn’t far behind a BP cleanup crew that would clean it up. Of course, the oil would just wash back on, and then they’d come back and they’d clean it up again. What is astounding, from my experience, is that it is evidence of what we’re hearing and seeing all across the Gulf, which is the cleanup apparatus being pulled away and removed. And the reason to do that is just as these—the press reports are saying, if the oil is out of sight, it’s out of mind. We know it’s out of sight, primarily, one, because the well is capped—thank goodness—but two, that it’s been dispersed. It’s been dispersed, and we can’t see it. And if BP can pull up its cleanup crews and show that everything is OK, the idea is that it would significantly limit the potential liability that BP faces. If it can say about the oil-soaked areas that I saw, "Oh, that’s insignificant," then they’re not liable for cleanup, not liable for the consequences to that community—at least, I imagine that’s what they would argue—in St. Mary’s Parish. Of course, they should be, and are, but that seems to be the logic, and it’s devastating to see it taking shape on the ground.

AMY GOODMAN: Antonia Juhasz, you’re in Washington, DC, up from the Gulf of Mexico, because the Senate is expected to take up energy spill legislation today. Quickly explain what that is.

ANTONIA JUHASZ: Well, they’re not, so—what was supposed to happen was two waves of legislation. One was the climate legislation that was supposed to happen addressing the ravages of climate change. That got pushed aside. What was initially supposed to happen was that the climate legislation that was on the table was going to now include spill response legislation, capping—or eliminating the cap on liability for oil companies involved in disasters like this, maintaining the moratorium put in place by the Obama administration, oversight and regulatory measures to the Interior Department, a lot of very good provisions that are needed to address making sure a disaster like this doesn’t happen and making sure—in the future, and making that BP actually is held liable for what it’s done. First, the climate package was pulled. It was felt there wouldn’t be votes for that. Then, just last night, where there was supposed to be a Senate spill bill that was supposed to come through today, that got pulled yesterday, because there weren’t going to be enough votes—just for that, this very small, very simple, very limited measure that would have been the only congressional response at this point, legislatively at this point.

AMY GOODMAN: And very quickly—we have fifteen seconds—BP planning to sell $30 billion in assets?

ANTONIA JUHASZ: Yeah, BP is starting a fire sale to get rid of $30 billion worth of itself to try and consolidate its operations. My concern about that is, who’s going to buy those pieces? Exxon and Chevron have said they’re in the market. They’ve actually said they’re interested in potentially buying BP. And that would be disastrous, in my mind, in terms of further concentration and wealth and political influence being put into an ever-smaller number of corporate hands. Most disconcerting, we heard that—there’s a rumor that the Obama administration may be—

AMY GOODMAN: Antonia Juhasz is also with us in Washington, DC, author of The Tyranny of Oil. You have just come back from the Gulf of Mexico. You’re writing a book on what’s happened there, Antonia. Can you talk about what you found in the Gulf, in St. Mary’s Parish, and where that is?

ANTONIA JUHASZ: Yeah. St. Mary’s Parish is one bayou over from Venice Beach area, which is the focus of a lot of the coverage of where the oil has been coming ashore and where a lot of the oil impact has been. So it’s one bayou over. And I went down there to attend a BP community forum that was held Thursday night. And at this forum, the parish president announced that St. Mary’s Parish doesn’t have oil, has never had oil, and won’t have oil hitting its shores. As soon as he said that, he was immediately surrounded by fishermen. And one of the fishermen said, "Well, if that’s true, then why does Kermit have oil in his bag right now?" And one of the fishermen, everyone turned to him, and he said, "You know, I was just out on the water, like I’ve been every day, looking for oil, and I saw oil, and I’ve seen oil. And we’ve been telling you that there’s oil." At that point, the microphone was turned off, and, you know, essentially all hell broke loose. And the Coast Guard, which was there, went over to this fisherman and said, you know, "If you saw oil, show us where you saw the oil." And they went over and they looked at maps, and he showed them where the oil was. And they were very concerned.

And then I, the next day, went out with him, and we spent five hours going along the coast of Oyster Bayou to Taylor Bayou in his boat, and what I saw was oil, waves of oil that had washed in. They had clearly washed in, because it was—you could see the wave effect. It was over the wetlands, grass, grassy areas, just coated in waves of oil that had hit. We went to beaches that were covered with tar balls. And, you know, this is not an unusual sight. Anyone who’s been watching TV has seen these sights. What was completely unusual, in my experience over three months of time going down to the Gulf, is that there was no one around. There were no cleanup workers. There was no boom. There was no evidence that anyone had any concern about this oil. And, in fact, that’s what we found out, that the Coast Guard then reported, after it went and looked at these locations, that it wasn’t enough to worry about. And that didn’t make any sense to the fishermen who I spoke to and the fisherman I was with, who said, "One, this is oil that is in and around where we live, where we fish, at the heart of our livelihood, which is this Oyster Bayou. And also, this is oil coating"—and I saw it—"the marshlands, the wetlands," which is, you know, when the oil gets into the grass, if it stays there, it can kill the root system. If it kills the root system, it kills the wetlands. If it kills the wetlands, there’s no barrier to, one, the oil getting further in and, two, more importantly in this area, hurricane provision and hurricane protection.

And this is also completely out of whack with what BP had been doing previously, in my experience, which is, wherever you saw oil, there wasn’t far behind a BP cleanup crew that would clean it up. Of course, the oil would just wash back on, and then they’d come back and they’d clean it up again. What is astounding, from my experience, is that it is evidence of what we’re hearing and seeing all across the Gulf, which is the cleanup apparatus being pulled away and removed. And the reason to do that is just as these—the press reports are saying, if the oil is out of sight, it’s out of mind. We know it’s out of sight, primarily, one, because the well is capped—thank goodness—but two, that it’s been dispersed. It’s been dispersed, and we can’t see it. And if BP can pull up its cleanup crews and show that everything is OK, the idea is that it would significantly limit the potential liability that BP faces. If it can say about the oil-soaked areas that I saw, "Oh, that’s insignificant," then they’re not liable for cleanup, not liable for the consequences to that community—at least, I imagine that’s what they would argue—in St. Mary’s Parish. Of course, they should be, and are, but that seems to be the logic, and it’s devastating to see it taking shape on the ground.

AMY GOODMAN: Antonia Juhasz, you’re in Washington, DC, up from the Gulf of Mexico, because the Senate is expected to take up energy spill legislation today. Quickly explain what that is.

ANTONIA JUHASZ: Well, they’re not, so—what was supposed to happen was two waves of legislation. One was the climate legislation that was supposed to happen addressing the ravages of climate change. That got pushed aside. What was initially supposed to happen was that the climate legislation that was on the table was going to now include spill response legislation, capping—or eliminating the cap on liability for oil companies involved in disasters like this, maintaining the moratorium put in place by the Obama administration, oversight and regulatory measures to the Interior Department, a lot of very good provisions that are needed to address making sure a disaster like this doesn’t happen and making sure—in the future, and making that BP actually is held liable for what it’s done. First, the climate package was pulled. It was felt there wouldn’t be votes for that. Then, just last night, where there was supposed to be a Senate spill bill that was supposed to come through today, that got pulled yesterday, because there weren’t going to be enough votes—just for that, this very small, very simple, very limited measure that would have been the only congressional response at this point, legislatively at this point.

AMY GOODMAN: And very quickly—we have fifteen seconds—BP planning to sell $30 billion in assets?

ANTONIA JUHASZ: Yeah, BP is starting a fire sale to get rid of $30 billion worth of itself to try and consolidate its operations. My concern about that is, who’s going to buy those pieces? Exxon and Chevron have said they’re in the market. They’ve actually said they’re interested in potentially buying BP. And that would be disastrous, in my mind, in terms of further concentration and wealth and political influence being put into an ever-smaller number of corporate hands. Most disconcerting, we heard that—there’s a rumor that the Obama administration may be—

AMY GOODMAN: Five seconds.

ANTONIA JUHASZ: —signaling a green light to such a potential change—something we want to make sure doesn’t happen.

AMY GOODMAN: Antonia Juhasz and Jerry Cope, thanks so much for joining us.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Alabama sues BP over oil spill "catastrophic harm"

BIRMINGHAM | Fri Aug 13, 2010 5:05pm BST

BIRMINGHAM Ala., Aug 13 (Reuters) - Alabama is suing BP Plc (BP.L) (BP.N) and Transocean (RIG.N) for damages sustained from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the state's attorney general said on Friday.

"We are making this claim because we believe that BP has inflicted catastrophic harm on the state," attorney general Troy King told Reuters.

"We are suing them for the amount it will take to make Alabama whole," he said, declining to name a figure. (Reporting by Matthew Bigg, editing by Pascal Fletcher and Jackie Frank)

http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKN1318504420100813

[Peter Lemkin]

Alabama sues BP over oil spill "catastrophic harm"

BIRMINGHAM | Fri Aug 13, 2010 5:05pm BST

BIRMINGHAM Ala., Aug 13 (Reuters) - Alabama is suing BP Plc (BP.L) (BP.N) and Transocean (RIG.N) for damages sustained from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the state's attorney general said on Friday.

"We are making this claim because we believe that BP has inflicted catastrophic harm on the state," attorney general Troy King told Reuters.

"We are suing them for the amount it will take to make Alabama whole," he said, declining to name a figure. (Reporting by Matthew Bigg, editing by Pascal Fletcher and Jackie Frank)

http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKN1318504420100813

I've heard a figure of half a trillion dollars as the total damage done. What they'll end up doing is the 'ol corporate disappearing/ morphing act, methinks.....:bebored:

[Peter Lemkin]

Global Research, August 9, 2010
Dahr Jamail's Dispatch - 2010-07-08

Since BP :evil: announced that CEO Tony Hayward would receive a multi-million dollar golden parachute and be replaced by Bob Dudley, we have witnessed an incredibly broad, and powerful, propaganda campaign. A campaign that peaked this week with the US government, clearly acting in BP’s best interests, itself announcing, via outlets willing to allow themselves to be used to transfer the propaganda, like the New York Times, this message: “The government is expected to announce on Wednesday that three-quarters of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon leak has already evaporated, dispersed, been captured or otherwise eliminated — and that much of the rest is so diluted that it does not seem to pose much additional risk of harm.”



The Times was accommodating enough to lead the story with a nice photo of a fishing boat motoring across clean water with several birds in the foreground.



This message was disseminated far and wide, via other mainstream media outlets like the AP and Reuters, effectively announcing to the masses that despite the Gulf of Mexico suffering the largest marine oil disaster in US history, most of the oil was simply “gone.”



Thus, it’s only what is on the surface that counts. If you can’t see it, there is not a problem.



This kind of government cover-up is nothing new, of course.

“It is well known that after the Chernobyl accident, the Soviet government immediately did everything possible to conceal the fact of the accident and its consequences for the population and the environment: it issued “top secret” instructions to classify all data on the accident, especially as regards the health of the affected population,” journalist Alla Yaroshinskaya has written.


In 1990 Yaroshinskaya came across documents about the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe that revealed a massive state cover-up operation, coupled with a calculated policy of disinformation where the then Soviet Union’s state and party leadership knowingly played down the extent of the contamination and offered a sanitized version to the public, both in and out of Russia. To date, studies continue to show ongoing human and environmental damage from that disaster.



When the disaster at Chernobyl occurred, it was only after radiation levels triggered alarms at the Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant in Sweden that the Soviet Union admitted an accident had even occurred. Even then, government authorities immediately began to attempt to conceal the scale of the disaster.



Sound familiar?



In late April, after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank into the depths and the Macondo well began gushing oil, BP and the complicit Coast Guard announced no oil was being released.The Gulf Restoration Network flew out to the scene and saw massive amounts of oil and sounded the alarm, which forced BP and the US government to admit there was, indeed, oil. Such has the trend of BP/US Government lying, countered by (sometimes) forced accountability, then to more lying, been set.



These most recent, and most blatant of the BP/US Government propaganda gems are easily undermined by countless facts. Reality and truth always, given time, find a way to surface…just like BP’s dispersed oil.



Two captains of so-called “vessels of opportunity” helping with the cleanup recently told Times-Picayune reporter Bob Marshall that they saw more oil at South Pass on Tuesday than they have during the entire crisis.



“I don’t know where everyone else is looking, but if they think there’s no more oil out there, they should take a ride with me,” charter captain Mike Frenette said.



Another captain, Don Sutton, saw floating tar balls for 15 miles from South Pass to Southwest Pass. “And that wasn’t all we saw. There were patches of oil in that chocolate mousse stuff, slicks and patches of grass with oil on them,’” he said.



Yesterday I spoke with Clint Guidry, a Louisiana fisherman who is on the Board of Directors of the Louisiana Shrimp Association and the Shrimp Harvester Representative on the Louisiana Shrimp Task Force created by Executive Order of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.



“Right now, there is more oil in Barataria Bay than there has been since this whole thing started on April 20,” Guidry told me.



BP oil is now turning up under the shells of post-larval blue crabs all across the northern Gulf of Mexico. Nearly all the crab larvae collected to date by researchers, from Grand Isle, Louisiana all the way over to Pensacola, Florida, have oil under their shells. Further analysis is showing that the crabs likely also contain BP’s Corexit dispersant.



On August 5th it was reported that a pair of fishermen in Mississippi “made an alarming discovery that has many wondering what’s happening below the surface” of the Gulf of Mexico. They found several full-sized crabs filled with oil.



In Hancock County, Mississippi, Brian Adam, the EMA director, reported, “We’re still seeing tar balls everyday, and I’m not talking just a few tar balls. We’re seeing a good amount everyday on the beaches.”



According to Adam, a rock jetty near Waveland became covered in one thousand pounds of tar balls in only three days time. Keith Ladner, owner of Gulf Shores Sea Products and a longtime supplier of seafood, said this of some full-sized crabs he found near the mouth of Bay St. Louis: “You could tell it was real slick and dark in color so I grabbed it, and opened the back of the crab, and you could see in the ‘dead man’ or the lungs of the crabs…you could see the black.”



The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) report from Wednesday claims that 33 percent of BP’s oil in the Gulf has been either burned, skimmed, dispersed, or directly recovered by cleanup operations. NOAA goes on to claim that another 25 percent has evaporated into the atmosphere or dissolved in the water, and another 16 percent has been naturally dispersed. Of the remaining 26 percent, NOAA claims that amount is either washed ashore, been collected from beaches, is buried along the coasts, or is still on or just below the surface.



University of South Florida chemical oceanographer David Hollander says these estimates are “ludicrous.” Of the NOAA report, Hollander says, “It’s almost comical.”



Other scientists also immediately expressed their doubts of the validity of the NOAA report, whiletoxicologists expect to be busy tracking the effects of BP’s toxic dispersants “for years.”



Giant plumes of BP’s sub-surface dispersed oil are floating around the Gulf of Mexico, as confirmed recently by researchers from the University of South Florida.



It was also recently revealed that the worst dead zone in 25 years has been recorded in Gulf of Mexico waters. Of course it’s likely a given that this is due to BP’s liberal use of dispersants.

“To judge from most media coverage, the beaches are open, the fishing restrictions being lifted and the Gulf resorts open for business in a healthy, safe environment,” environmental activist Jerry Cope wrote recently, “We, along with Pierre LeBlanc, spent the last few weeks along the Gulf coast from Louisiana to Florida, and the reality is distinctly different. The coastal communities of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida have been inundated by the oil and toxic dispersant Corexit 9500, and the entire region is contaminated. The once pristine white beaches that have been subject to intense cleaning operations now contain the oil/dispersant contamination to an unknown depth. The economic impacts potentially exceed even the devastation of a major hurricane like Katrina, the adverse impacts on health and welfare of human populations are increasing every minute of every day and the long-term effects are potentially life threatening.”


Cope continued:



“In May, Mother Nature Network blogger Karl Burkart received a tip from an anonymous fisherman-turned-BP contractor in the form of a distressed text message, describing a near-apocalyptic sight near the location of the sunken Deepwater Horizon — fish, dolphins, rays, squid, whales, and thousands of birds – “as far as the eye can see,” dead and dying. According to his statement, which was later confirmed by another report from an individual working in the Gulf, whale carcasses were being shipped to a highly guarded location where they were processed for disposal.”


“Local fisherman in Alabama report sighting tremendous numbers of dolphins, sharks, and fish moving in towards shore as the initial waves of oil and dispersant approached in June. Many third- and fourth-generation fishermen declared emphatically that they had never seen or heard of any similar event in the past. Scores of animals were fleeing the leading edge of toxic dispersant mixed with oil. Those not either caught in the toxic mixture and killed out at sea, or fortunate enough to be out in safe water beyond the Source, died as the water closed in, and they were left no safe harbor. The numbers of birds, fish, turtles, and mammals killed by the use of Corexit will never be known as the evidence strongly suggests that BP worked with the Coast Guard, the Department of Homeland Security, the FAA, private security contractors, and local law enforcement, all of which cooperated to conceal the operations disposing of the animals from the media and the public.”


Cope added, “The Gulf of Mexico from the Source into the shore is a giant kill zone.”



Earlier this week, marine biologist, toxicologist and Exxon Valdez survivor Dr. Riki Ott took a flight over southern Louisiana. Here’s some of what she wrote about it:



“Bay Jimmy on the northeast side of Barataria Bay was full of oil. So was Bay Baptiste, Lake Grande Ecaille, and Billet Bay. Sitting next to me was Mike Roberts, a shrimper with Louisiana Bayoukeepers, who has grown up in this area. His voice crackled over the headset as I strained to hold the window. “I’ve fished in all these waters - everywhere you can see. It’s all oiled. This is the worst I’ve seen. This is a heart-break…”


“We followed thick streamers of black oil and ribbons of rainbow sheen from Bay Baptiste and Bay Jimmy south across Barataria Bay through Four Bayou Pass and into the Gulf of Mexico. The ocean’s smooth surface glinted like molten lead in the late afternoon sun. Oil. As far as we could see: Oil.”


“When we landed after our 2-hour flight, our pilot told us that she sometimes has to wipe an oily reddish film off the leading edges of her plane’s wings after flying over the Gulf. Hurricane Creekkeeper John Wathem documented similar oily films on planes he chartered for Gulf over-flights. Bonnie doesn’t wear gloves when she wipes her plane. She showed me her hands — red rash, blisters, and peeling palms.



If peeling palms are an indication of the oil-solvent stew, the reddish film on Bonnie’s plane and others means that the stew is not only in the Gulf, it is in the rain clouds above the Gulf. And in the middle of hurricane season, this means the oil-solvent mix could rain down anywhere across the Gulf.”


Dean Blanchard, one of the most important seafood purchasers in Louisiana, recently attended a Town Hall Meeting with a BP representative in Grand Isle, Louisiana.



In the meeting, Blanchard stands up and addresses the BP representative at length.

“Ya’ll didn’t give me enough money to pay my bills. I can show you. For the electric bill and everything. What I’ve collected from BP, so far since this started, is less than what I paid out in bills. And I’ve cut my things down to rock bottom. But how do you expect a man to live on less than 10 percent of what I was projected to make? I don’t believe there’s anybody in this country who could pay their bills with just 10 percent of their check. We borrowed money preparing for shrimping season and this happened at the worst possible time.”


Blanchard added, “I ain’t got no job, and no money, and Mr. Hayward gets $18 million and a new job. That’s hard to take. Let me tell you. Very, very hard to take.”



I should point out that from my first days Louisiana, I’ve been hearing from fishermen working on BP’s clean-up operations that BP is using night flights to drop dispersant on oiled bays. I’ve seen video taken by fishermen of a white-foamy substance in the marsh the morning after these flights took place.



Blanchard went on to say that he felt that BP did not want to clean up the oil, that it was more cost effective for them to leave it in the water than to clean it up, and then mocked the preposterous government claim that most of the oil is gone because you cannot see it from the air.



The BP rep, Jason, clearly nervous, later responds by saying, “We are doing over-flights, our task forces are looking for oil each day. We have a communications room where they are able to call in sightings of oil, from the boats, from the task forces. There is…I understand the anger and I understand the frustration. A couple of things that Dean said I have to take exception to. We do want to clean up this oil. I can understand frustration. I can understand seeing certain people getting certain amounts of money and some of the things that people see. But someone is going to have to explain to me why BP would not want to clean up this oil.”



Blanchard had clearly heard enough of BP’s propaganda. To the representatives’ request to have someone explain to him why BP would not want to clean up the oil, Blanchard angrily obliged:



“Because it’s more cost effective for ya’ll to come at night and sink the son-of-a-bitch! When the oil’s coming around, they call ya’ll, they tell ya’ll where the oil’s at, and the first thing ya’ll do is tell them to go the other way, ya’ll send the planes, and ya’ll fucking sink it! [Spray dispersants from the air] That’s what ya’ll are doing, come on man!” He sits back down angrily. “Let’s quit playing over here and tell the truth. Ya’ll are sinking the oil, Jason! You know ya’ll are sinking it. You know what ya’ll are doing. Ya’ll are sending all the boats, you’re putting them all in a group at night, we all hear the planes, and the next morning there’s nothing but white bubbles! What do you think, we’re stupid? We’re not stupid! Ya’ll are putting the oil on the bottom of my fishing grounds! Ya’ll not only messing me up now, ya’ll are messing me up for the rest of my life! I ain’t gonna live long enough to buy anymore shrimp!”



The lives of Gulf coast fishermen and residents are being destroyed. Scientists, environmentalists, and toxicologists are describing the Gulf of Mexico as a growing dead zone, a kill zone, and an energy sacrifice zone. As you read this, oil is everywhere around southeastern Louisiana, and continually washing ashore in Alabama and Mississippi.



Meanwhile, Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer, announced Friday that the company may not give up on its claims on the Macondo well. “There’s lots of oil and gas here,” he said, “We’re going to have to think about what to do with that at some point.”



Of this, Louisiana’s St. Bernard Parish President Craig Taffaro said it’s no secret that BP wants to drill again. In fact, he said, it has been part of his conversations with BP since the oil crisis began.



Let us be clear about who, and what, we are dealing with here.

[Ed Jewett]

US Probes Transocean over Ties to Burmese Drug Lords

by Thomas Maung Shwe / August 17th, 2010
CHIANG MAI, THAILAND (Mizzima) – US-Swiss drilling company Tranoscean has admitted it is under investigation by the US Treasury over its “operations in Myanmar [Burma]”. The probe comes amid intense public scrutiny since its rig blew up in the Gulf of Mexico.
Since the explosion on Tranoscean’s rig in April caused America’s worst oil spill, the company hired by BP has acknowledged in its latest regulatory 10-Q filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) it had “recently received an administrative subpoena” from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) regarding its “operations in Myanmar [Burma]”. The filing was submitted on August 4.
The 10-Q form, is an SEC filing that must be submitted quarterly with the SEC and contains similar information to the annual 10-K form, however the information is generally less detailed, and the financial statements are generally unaudited.
The subpoena from the US government’s sanctions enforcement division came after Mizzima first reported in May, that Transocean’s US regulatory filings showed the firm was hired late last year to do drilling work in Burmese waters co-owned by a company controlled by Stephen Law, a junta crony businessman alleged by the US government and analysts to be a major drug-money launderer.
“OFAC’s administrative subpoena authority”, according to the US Treasury department’s website, “generally provides the basis for OFAC to require the production of whatever additional information it may require to assess its enforcement response to the apparent violation”. As a subpoena is not voluntary, failure to comply with such an administrative writ is a serious violation.
Mizzima’s report of Transocean’s ties with a blacklisted Burmese narcotics-trafficking clan was picked up in a front page story in The New York Times, which also detailed the firm’s questionable practices in Iran, Norway and Syria.
Wong Aung, an observer of Burma’s natural resource sector and international co-ordinator for the Shwe Gas Movement, a coalition of Burmese organisations opposed to offshore gas drilling in the country’s ecologically sensitive coastal regions, is pleased the US government has listened to calls to investigate Transocean’s shady dealings in Burma.
He believed it was “inconceivable that Transocean was unaware” that the oil and gas rights in the waters they were drilling in were co-owned by Burma’s infamous Law family. Stephen Law, aka Tun Myint Naing, his Singaporean wife, and his “narco warlord” father are all on OFAC blacklists, officially called the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list. All three are also listed in similar European Union travel bans and sanctions lists.
Transocean International’s corporate 8-K filing with the SEC on November 2 showed that Chinese state-run energy company CNOOC hired Transocean’s semi-submersible Actinia, a Panamanian-registered drilling rig, to operate in Burma from October to December.
According to the CNOOC website, all of the firm’s stakes in Burma’s gas industry are held in partnership with China Focus Development (formerly known as Golden Aaron) and China Global Construction, with CNOOC as the operator. China Focus Development is a privately owned Singapore-registered firm whose sole shareholders are Stephen Law and his wife, Ng Sor Hong, aka Cynthia Ng. The US and EU sanctions list show Ng Sor Hong to be chief executive of the firm, which is also among more than a dozen companies controlled by Law on the OFAC blacklist of banned Burma-related entities.
Law’s Sino-Burmese father Lao Sit Han, aka Lo Hsing Han, is believed by US drug-trafficking analysts to have controlled one of Southeast Asia’s best-armed narcotics militias during the 1970’s. After coming to an understanding with the Burmese regime, Lao Sit Han moved to Rangoon where he reportedly used the profits from his drug empire to expand into other areas including operating ports through the family controlled Asia World, a US blacklisted firm over which Lao Sit Han is chairman.
Stephen Law is the managing director of Asia World and is believed to be the driving force behind what has become of one of Burma’s largest conglomerates. As well as running Burma’s largest deepwater port, the firm owns lucrative toll highways, hotels and is also involved in many construction projects, including building Rangoon’s Traders Hotel and refurbishing the Rangoon airport.
According to a February 2008 statement by the US Treasury department: “In addition to their support for the Burmese regime, Steven Law and Lo Hsing Han have a history of involvement in illicit activities.”
“Lo Hsing Han, known as the ‘Godfather of Heroin’, has been one of the world’s key heroin traffickers dating back to the early 1970s. Steven Law joined his father’s drug empire in the 1990s and has since become one of the wealthiest individuals in Burma,” the Treasury statement said.
Transocean predicts any penalty would be limited
Referring to the OFAC probe into their Burmese dealings and a similar one regarding the firm’s activities relating to Iran, Transocean stated in its filing that: “We do not expect the liability, if any, resulting from these inquiries to have a material adverse effect on our consolidated statement of financial position, results of operations or cash flows.”
Wong Aung said that he hoped that Transocean was justly punished for their apparent violation of US sanctions against Burma and the Law narcotics clan. He said: “I’m sure Transocean will fight hard to get out of this, and I hope they aren’t just given a slap on the wrist but a meaningful penalty that will send a clear message to multinational firms not to engage in business with the Burmese regime and one of Asia’s most notorious narco [narcotics-profit] laundering families.”
He said the “Transocean investigation should be a wake-up call for the US government to more stringently monitor what firms are doing in Burma and other places of concern. Both the Treasury department and the SEC must force multinational firms to be more transparent about their activities overseas. Far too often Western firms are allowed to ignore sanctions using offshore subsidiaries and secret contracts; even their large institutional shareholders don’t know what the firms are necessarily doing in Burma.”
Mizzima was unable to reach Transocean or OFAC by the time this story was completed.
Driller’s vague denial challenged
The New York Times reported on July 7 that Transocean had claimed in a statement sent to the paper that the firm had not violated US sanctions on Burma because neither Stephen Law nor his father’s names appeared in their contract with CNOOC. The statement failed to confirm or deny whether his wife, Ng Sor Hong, or the firm she heads, China Focus, appeared in Transocean’s contract.
Rights activist Wong Aung told Mizzima that Transocean’s statement was misleading. “The New York Times only reported that Transocean claims Stephen Law and his father weren’t mentioned in the CNOOC Burma contract. It’s interesting that there is no discussion of whether the contract mentions Law’s wife Ng Sor Hong and the US blacklisted company she heads that co-owns the rights to the gas block with CNOOC.
“It’s extremely unlikely that such a contract would not state who co-owns the gas rights to the area where the drilling would occur. The US and Swiss government must force Transocean to fully disclose the text of this contract,” Wong Aung said.
The company’s statement to the Times also included the cryptic claim that: “No Transocean affiliate that is subject to the US ban has ever done business in Myanmar [Burma].” As Transocean, formely based in the US, is now headquartered in landlocked Switzerland (where the Swiss press reported that it employs a mere 12 people), and the Actinia rig sent to drill for CNOOC is registered in Panama, Transocean will likely argue that is not subject to US sanctions. The fact that the OFAC has launched an investigation shows that the US government thinks otherwise.
Other Swiss firm fined for violating US sanctions on Burma, Iran
Credit Suisse, a major Swiss bank with considerable business in the US agreed last December to pay an unprecedented US$536 million fine after sanctions enforcers at the OFAC concluded the bank had violated American financial sanctions against Iran, Burma, Libya, Sudan, Cuba, and the former Liberian regime of Charles Taylor. On announcing the settlement, US Attorney General Eric Holder said the bank had illegally enabled countries under sanctions to circumvent the bans by creating “a business model to allow these rogue players access to US dollars”.
Although the US government investigation found that most of the violations related to transactions with Iran, Credit Suisse, under the terms of the settlement, admitted that it had illegally sent money to Burma on 30 occasions. Credit Suisse also acknowledged that over a 20-year period it had sent illegally a total of more than US$1.6 billion in funds to the sanctions-bound countries.
Thomas Maung Shwe is a journalist based in Chiang Mai, Thailand with the Burmese exiled news group Mizzima News. Read other articles by Thomas.
This article was posted on Tuesday, August 17th, 2010 at 8:00am and is filed under Corporate Globalization, Corruption, Myanmar/Burma, Oil, Gas, Pipelines.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Scientists dispute White House claim that spilled BP oil has vanished

US government challenged over claims oil has evaporated

Tests show oil is affecting phytoplankton and staying on seabed

Wednesday 18 August 2010 19.57 BST

The White House is facing a growing challenge over its claim that most of the oil from the Deepwater disaster has disappeared from the Gulf of Mexico, as at least three independent teams of scientists reported new evidence of oil persisting deep under the surface of the sea.

Earlier this month government scientists reported that about 75% of the oil had been captured, burned off, evaporated or broken down in the Gulf.

But University of South Florida scientists, returning from a 10-day research voyage, said they found oil on the ocean floor in the DeSoto canyon, a prime spawning ground for fish far to the east of BP's rogue oil well.

Preliminary results suggested that oil was getting into the phytoplankton, the microscopic plants at the bottom of the Gulf food chain.

"The idea that this could have an impact on the food web and on the biological system is certainly a reality," David Hollander, a marine geochemist, told the University of South Florida radio station. Smaller organisms would be likely to be affected the most, he added.

"Fish eggs – if they're in that environment – they may not be consuming it, but it's like paint in the air. You breathe it at low concentrations for a long enough time, you're still going to have that response."

Scientists from the University of Georgia also disputed the White House claim, releasing their own analysis suggesting 70% to 79% of the oil in the Gulf of Mexico remained in the water. "The idea that 75% of the oil is gone and of no concern for the environment is just absolutely incorrect," said Charles Hopkinson, a marine science professor at the university.

The journal Science is also weighing in, with a research paper on a large and apparently long-lasting deepwater plume of oil in the Gulf following the spill.

And the Gulf Coast Fund, a citizens' group, maintains that oil is still washing ashore in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida panhandle. "Just because the oil is no longer on the surface, it does not indicate the area is healthy," said Wilma Subra, a chemist advising the group. "We've received reports from residents all along the coast who continue to see oil on and off shore, as well as reports of hundreds of dead fish, crabs, birds, dolphins, and other sea life."

Congress is due to examine the White House claims at a hearing tomorrow on the fate of the 5m barrels of oil that leaked into the Gulf from BP's well. The energy and commerce committee will also look at official claims that Gulf seafood is safe to eat.

BP might not be able to execute the final kill of its well until September, said Thad Allen, the US Coast Guard's former commander, recently retired.

Allen said that BP and government officials had yet to agree on a way to pump cement into the bottom of the well without putting too much pressure on a cement seal at the top. Engineers are assessing whether to install a new blow-out preventer or a new system for relieving pressure on the cap at the top of the well.

The debate about the fate of the oil is a product of the strategic decision taken by the BP and the Obama administration to tackle the oil offshore and prevent the waste penetrating Louisiana's ecologically fragile wetland; the move involved spraying nearly 2m gallons of chemical dispersants on the oil, some of it at depths of 1,524 metres (5,000ft).

The approach means that scientists are now operating in uncharted waters. BP's well caused the biggest offshore oil spill but never before had response teams used such outsize quantities of dispersants and at such depths.

The efforts to end the problem also led to fears that the chosen cure, in this case the chemical dispersant Corexit, was more dangerous than the ailment. Scientific research had suggested that Corexit made organisms more vulnerable to the toxic components in the oil.

The uncertainties about the long-term consequences of the oil spill have complicated efforts by BP and the Obama administration to move to a long-term response plan. The administration is demanding new pressure tests before it gives the go-ahead for the completion of a relief well.

BP said it was winding down its claims operation, and that today would be the last day it would consider claims from anyone suffering economic losses through the spill. All new claims would be overseen by Ken Feinberg, an independent administrator appointed to oversee the $20bn BP escrow account. BP said its team had so far paid out $368m to claimants.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20...l-vanished