Obama Lifts Ban On Deep Water Drilling; But Hid BP Spill Truth

Obama Administration Lifts Deep-Water Drilling Moratorium


Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced Tuesday that the Obama administration is lifting the Moratorium on deep-water oil drilling it put in place after the Gulf oil spill disaster.

Operators must comply with new rules and regulations in order to get permission to resume drilling, Salazar said.

"There will always be risks associated with deep-water drilling," Salazar said. "We have reached a point where we have significantly reduced those risks."

The six-month moratorium was first issued by Salazar in May after the April 20 explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 people and triggered one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history.

When a federal judge overturned the ban and an appeals court agreed, Salazar issued a second ban in June that was scheduled to expire in November.

Critics of the ban, including Republican leaders, Gulf state officials and Gulf coast residents, said it would only hurt oil and gas workers in the already hard-hit coastal communities, where hundreds of jobs were lost because of the disaster.

Salazar said the moratorium provided time to make sure similar accidents involving a failed piece of equipment called a blowout preventer wouldn't occur, and that rig operators were prepared to deal with worst-case scenarios if it did happen.

Under the new requirements, operators must show that their proposed development and exploration plans can deal with potential blowouts and undergo detailed inspections and design reviews of blowout preventers by independent third parties, said Michael Bromwich, the new head of the federal agency that oversees offshore oil drilling.

Bromwich said it might take time for companies to come into full compliance, but he expected some permits for resumed drilling to be approved by the end of the year.

"We will not approve permits without vital supplemental information required by the rules," said Bromwich, director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement.

Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, a critic of the moratorium, called Tuesday's announcement a good first step but said more was needed to help the region's oil and gas industry get back to work.

"This means that the administration must continue to accelerate the granting of permits in shallow and deep water, and provide greater certainty about the rules and regulations industry must meet," Landrieu said in a statement.

Landrieu has blocked Senate consideration of President Barack Obama's nomination of Jacob Lew to become the new director of the White House Office of Management and Budget to protest the moratorium. Her statement said she would study the situation in coming weeks before deciding whether to lift her hold on the nomination when the Senate returns from recess after the November 2 congressional elections.

An environmental group questioned if enough had been done to prevent another rig explosion and spill like the one that took oil giant BP and the government months to contain.

"Deepwater oil drilling is intrinsically dangerous, as demonstrated by the BP spill, and it's surprising the federal government thinks it has so quickly resolved all the problems that contributed to the spill," said David Guest, an attorney for Earthjustice.

"We learned from this spill that we have only a tiny fraction of what's necessary to control deep water oil spills," Guest said in a statement. "While we've now got some new regulations that address technology and safety, the federal government still hasn't come up with any new regulations addressing oil spill response. We still don't have the equipment or technology to control or contain the oil from a major blowout in the Gulf."

Salazar noted that one reason for the moratorium was because resources needed to respond to the disaster were tied up with the BP spill. Now that the broken well has been capped, those resources are again available in case of another accident, he said.

The moratorium affected 36 operators, half of which were able to continue some level of work such as helping to dig relief tunnels that capped the broken well, Salazar said. Lifting the moratorium means applications for 18 exploratory wells can again move forward, providing they comply with the tougher new regulations and rules, he said.

"The policy position we've articulated today is that we're open for business," Salazar said. "We will be taking applications for drilling in the deep water and we'll be processing those applications under the road map ... created in the last six months."


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Sources: MSNBC, Youtube, Google Maps

Green Jobs For All! Green Living & Urban America!

"Green For All"! (Van Jones' Organization) Urban Farming, Producing Green Jobs, Green Living & Clean Living Opportunities has finally come To Urban America! Its time for the American Black Community to Get a piece of this "Green" Pie! (i.e., MONEY) President Obama & Van Jones have already Opened the doors. We just Need to Walk through them!

Van Jones introduced Black People to the "Clean Way, Green Way" Business Concept. He also discusses how Black Entrepreneurs can Produce Green Jobs and teaches on the Benefits of Urban Farming & Eco-Equity to the American Black Community.

What about Hosting or Launching a "Green The Block" Party in your Community in order to Educate and Introduce Green Living/ Green Jobs Business Opportunities to Black People (including Black Business Owners) in your region?

Just a thought.

Peace










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Sources: Green For All, Youtube, Google Maps

Van Jones: Eco-Equity, Green Jobs & Urban Renewal (Videos)

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Gov. Jindal Happy Federal Judge Killed Obama's Moratorium (Video)

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Obama Calls BP "Reckless", Vows They Will Pay (Speech Video)

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Obama Accuses BP Of "Recklessness"


Dedicating new urgency to the Gulf oil spill, President Barack Obama accused BP of "recklessness" in the first Oval Office address of his presidency Tuesday night and swore not to rest until the company has paid for the damage it has caused to lives, businesses and shorelines.

He announced that he had asked former Mississippi Gov. Ray Mabus to develop a long-term Gulf Coast Restoration Plan — to be funded by BP PLC — in concert with local states, communities, fishermen, conservationists and residents "as soon as possible."

Obama did not detail what this plan should include or how much it might cost, a price sure to be in the billions of dollars.

'We will make BP pay'

Whatever the bottom line, he declared to his prime-time television audience, "We will make BP pay."

Still, eight weeks into the crisis, oil continues to gush from the broken wellhead, millions of gallons a day, and Obama has been powerless to stem the leak. The sad episode has raised doubts about his leadership and his administration's response to what Obama has called the nation's worst environmental disaster.

The speech comes as a new poll shows a majority of Americans disapprove of how he has handled the Gulf disaster, though far more blame BP for what people call a sluggish two-month response.

A government panel of scientists said earlier Tuesday that the undersea well is leaking even more oil than previously thought, as much as 2.52 million gallons a day — or enough to fill the Oval Office more than 22 times. The total spilled so far could be as much as 116 million gallons.

BP has had only modest success so far in stemming the flood of oil, but Obama said that within weeks "these efforts should capture up to 90 percent of the oil leaking out of the well." Later in the summer, he said, the company should finish drilling a relief well to stop the leak completely.

Much of the president's speech was devoted to a recitation of steps his administration has already taken — "from the very beginning," he said — to clean the oil, help the distraught people of the Gulf and prevent another environmental crisis.

"We will fight this spill with everything we've got for as long it takes," Obama said.

Likened to long epidemic

Likening that process to a long epidemic instead of a single crushing disaster like an earthquake or hurricane, he said the nation could be tied up with the oil and its aftermath for months "and even years."

Looking ahead to his showdown Wednesday morning with BP executives, Obama said he would "inform" them that the company must set aside whatever resources are required to make whole all local residents and businesses hurt by the spill and to repair the immense ecological damage wrought by the oil.

That meeting was to be followed by a presidential statement — his fourth planned remarks on the spill in three days. Later in the week, BP leaders take the Washington hot seat again, appearing before more congressional hearings.

However, Obama said that the new Gulf restoration plan would go beyond just repairing the effects of the crude on a unique, teeming ecology that was already battered by the 2005 hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

"We must make a commitment to the Gulf Coast that goes beyond responding to the crisis of the moment," the president said.

Obama also urged the nation and Congress to get behind his goal of passing sweeping energy and climate change legislation, a key domestic priority of his presidency that had become a long shot. Though Obama supports placing a price on heat-trapping carbon emissions, he did not directly state that.

"The tragedy unfolding on our coast is the most painful and powerful reminder yet that the time to embrace a clean energy future is now," he said. "I say we can't afford not to change how we produce and use energy - because the long-term costs to our economy, our national security, and our environment are far greater."

Oil executives grilled

On Capitol Hill, executives from other major oil companies turned on BP and defended their own drilling practices during a congressional hearing as they sought to stave off new government regulations in the wake of the spill.

Obama began the day in Pensacola, Fla., where he inspected the famous white sand beaches and met with local officials before heading back to the White House to deliver the first televised Oval Office message of his presidency.

The president walked along Pensacola Beach with Gov. Charlie Crist and Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen. People were swimming in the emerald green water. But oil is nearby even if it can't be seen, according to Allen.

Onlookers chanted "Save our beach, save our beach."

Earlier Tuesday, the White House announced former Justice Department inspector general Michael Bromwich as Obama choice's for the new head of the Minerals Management Service, the agency that regulates the oil industry. Bromwich replaces Liz Birnbaum, who resigned in May in the fallout over the government's response to the spill.

BP said a small fire believed caused by lightning briefly shut down a system capturing oil from the gushing well on Tuesday. The fire on the drilling ship Discoverer Enterprise was quickly extinguished, the company said, and the oil capture operation resumed.

BP also announced it is accelerating the payments of commercial large-loss claims to get money into the hands of businesses more quickly. BP executive Bob Fryar said the company has thus far paid about $70 million in claims — the vast majority paid to individuals, especially those working in fishing and tourism. Fryar said the average time from claim to check is four days for individuals and about seven days for commercial entities.

Oil in the hot seat

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Oil executives testifying before the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on energy and the environment Tuesday defended their own drilling practices.

Exxon Mobil Chairman Rex Tillerson told the panel it is crucial to find out what caused the offshore rig to explode in April, killing 11 workers and creating the biggest oil spill in U.S. history.

"This incident represents a dramatic departure from the industry norm in deepwater drilling," Tillerson said.

Shell Oil Co President Marvin Odum testified, "We remain confident in our drilling expertise and procedures, built on a foundation of multiple required safety


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Pres. Obama Addresses Nation On BP Oil Spill; What To Expect

Robert Gibbs Previews Obama's Address To The Nation


With a good majority of Americans saying he's not being tough enough on BP, President Obama is doing something he's never done before tonight – addressing the nation from the Oval Office. To give us an idea of what we can expect, we were joined by White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on Tuesday's American Morning.


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Did Obama Give BP Free Pass On Oil Spill & Clean Up?

Obama Gives Brits Free Pass On Oil Spill While Lashing Out At Congress


President Obama on Saturday reassured Prime Minister David Cameron that his frustration over the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is not an attack on Britain.

But a day earlier, Obama blasted U.S. lawmakers and Tea Party activists for criticizing his response to the nation's worst environmental disaster, suggesting they are being hypocrites.

"I think it's fair to say, if six months ago, before this spill had happened, I had gone up to Congress and I had said we need to crack down a lot harder on oil companies and we need to spend more money on technology to respond in case of a catastrophic spill, there are folks up there, who will not be named, who would have said this is classic, big-government overregulation and wasteful spending," he told Politico in an interview.

Obama also suggested the criticism coming from anti-big government protesters, such as Tea Party activists, was hypocritical.

"Some of the same folks who have been hollering and saying 'do something' are the same folks who, just two or three months ago, were suggesting that government needs to stop doing so much," Obama said. "Some of the same people who are saying the president needs to show leadership and solve this problem are some of the same folks, who just a few months ago, were saying this guy is trying to engineer a takeover of our society through the federal government that is going to restrict our freedoms."

But Obama sang a much different tune to Cameron on Saturday when the two leaders held a "warm and constructive" telephone conversation for more than 30 minutes, Cameron's Downing St. office said.

Cameron's office said the prime minister “expressed his sadness at the ongoing human and environmental catastrophe,” but stressed BP's economic important to Britain, the U.S. and other countries.

Then Obama told the prime minister "that his unequivocal view was that BP was a multinational global company and that frustrations about the oil spill had nothing to do with national identity. The prime minister stressed the economic importance of BP to the U.K., U.S. and other countries. The president made clear that he had no interest in undermining BP's value.”

Cameron is under pressure to get Obama to tone down the criticism fearing it will hurt the millions of British retirees that hold BP stock. The company's stock has lost 40 percent of its value since the April 20 oil rig fire.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., fired back at Obama over his criticism of Congress, saying hypocrisy is no excuse for inaction "in addressing the dysfunctional and corrupt nature of the Minerals and Management Service" -- the agency that oversees offshore drilling.

"If President Obama had exercised some long overdue leadership and called on Congress to address the cozy relationship between MMS and the industry they regulate, I would have been the very first person to partner with him and give MMS the overhaul it desperately needs," Issa said in a written statement.

"After 10 inspector general reports, 10 GAO reports, a congressional investigation, the real question is, why did it take such a catastrophe for the president to call for action," he said.

Obama has sharpened his attacks on BP in recent days as the company struggles to stop oil gushing from its ruptured deepsea well.

Obama has said he would have fired BP's top executive, if he were in charge, and has supported the idea that the oil company suspend its quarterly dividend.

In a sign the company feels the pressure, BP said Saturday that its board would meet Monday to discuss deferring its second-quarter dividend and putting the money into escrow until the company's liabilities from the spill are known. BP said no decision had yet been made.

Obama also has reproached BP for spending money on a public relations campaign and occasionally refers to "British Petroleum," although the company years ago began using only its initials and is a far-reaching international corporation with extensive holdings in the United States, including a Texas refinery and a share of the Alaska oil pipeline.

This past week, the usually measured Obama said in a television interview, "I don't sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar; we talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers -- so I know whose ass to kick."


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Obama Will Address U.S. Tuesday On BP Oil Spill Disaster

Obama To Address Nation Tuesday Night On Gulf Oil Spill


President Obama will address the nation Tuesday night to talk about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The 8 p.m. ET speech will take place from the White House shortly after the president returns from a trip to the Gulf.

The speech will be delivered shortly after the president's return from a two-day trip to the Gulf region. He is expected to address efforts to contain the spill, the timeline for capturing the oil, the long-term recovery and restoration of the Gulf region and regulatory reform efforts at the Mineral Management Service.

"This is an ongoing crisis, much like an epidemic," David Axelrod told NBC television's "Meet the Press."

The 10-15 minute speech will also provide more details about a BP escrow fund the president wants established for fishers and trawlers whose livelihoods have been shot as a result of the spill. The administration wants a third-party reclamation process rather than BP managing distribution of funds.

The speech comes as the Obama administration faces criticism for a slow reaction time to the Gulf spill, including the approval for the construction of barriers and assistance to the states. At the same time frustration is growing about the slow pace of the clean-up and BP's inability to stop the flow while the estimates on the leak have grown exponentially.

BP's board is to meet on Monday to discuss deferring its second-quarter dividend and putting the money into escrow until the company's liabilities from the spill are known.

In addition, the president will make clear in his meeting Wednesday with BP's chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg, and others about his expectation of BP's responsibility for caring for people affected by the spill.

"Our mission is to hold them accountable in every appropriate way," Axelrod said.

The amount of money set aside will be part of White House discussions with BP executives on Wednesday, but Axelrod said it should be "substantial."


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Obama Creates Independent BP Oil Spill Commission, Weekly Address

Sources: Whitehouse.gov, Youtube

Obama Blasts BP Execs On Oil Spill Response & Clean-Up

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Obama Slams Oil Companies Over Spill Response & Clean-Up


President Barack Obama on Friday angrily decried the "ridiculous spectacle" of oil industry officials pointing fingers of blame for the catastrophic spill in the Gulf of Mexico and said the accident could bring devastation to the region and its economy.

The president also pledged to end a "cozy relationship" between the oil industry and federal regulators that he said had existed for years and into his own administration.

On Tuesday, executives of the three companies involved in the disaster — BP, Transocean and Halliburton — testified before senators and were quick to lay blame elsewhere.

In their opening statements, the executives said it was too early to draw conclusions but then explained what they thought went wrong and who was responsible.

As Obama spoke in the White House Rose Garden, undersea robots in the Gulf tried to thread a small tube into the jagged pipe that is spewing oil into the water. The blown-out well has pumped out more than 4 million gallons of crude.

BP engineers were trying to move the 6-inch tube into the leaking 21-inch pipe, known as a riser. The smaller tube was to be surrounded by a stopper to keep oil from leaking into the sea. BP said it hoped to know by Friday evening if the tube succeeded in taking the oil to a tanker at the surface.

Obama said he shared the "anger and frustration" felt by many Americans, and he acknowledged differing estimates over how much oil was leaking.

"We know there's a level of uncertainty," Obama said. He said the administration's response has "always been geared toward the possibility of a catastrophic event."

Trying to stop the flow

Since the April 20 drilling rig explosion set off the catastrophic spill, BP PLC has tried several ideas to plug the leak that is spewing at least 210,000 gallons of oil into the Gulf a day. The size of the undulating spill was about 3,650 square miles, said Hans Graber, director of the University of Miami's Center for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing.

In the fateful hours before the Deepwater Horizon exploded about 50 miles off the Louisiana shore, a safety test was supposedly performed to detect if explosive gas was leaking from the mile-deep well.

While some data were being transmitted to shore for safekeeping right up until the blast, officials from Transocean, the rig owner, told Congress that the last seven hours of its information are missing and that all written logs were lost in the explosion. Earlier tests that suggested explosive gas was leaking were preserved.

BP facing big bill

Oil has been gushing from the well for three weeks at the rate of 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons) per day, threatening to eclipse the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster as the biggest U.S. oil spill, and possibly the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.

BP, whose shares have tumbled and wiped out $30 billion of market value since the rig fire on April 20, said the oil spill had cost it $450 million so far.

While the spill threatened coastlines, local businesses and animal habitats, it also created complications for Obama's energy policy.

Two lawmakers introduced legislation this week in the U.S. Senate to fight climate change and expand production of renewable fuels, but the spill has dampened the public appetite for an expansion of offshore drilling -- a component originally designed to encourage Republican support.

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Outside of Washington communities that could be affected by the spill wondered when oil would show up on their shores.

Federal authorities said more than 520 vessels were responding to assist in containment and cleanup efforts in addition to dozens of aircraft and remotely operated vehicles.

A U.S. Senate committee approved $68 million to speed assistance to people affected by the massive oil spill, part of a request by the Obama administration to address the crisis.


Sources: BP, CNN, MSNBC, Wikipedia

Icy Crystals & Tar Balls Delay "BP Gate" Oil Spill Clean Up

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Icy Crystals Foil Attempt To Cap Oil Leak


A novel but risky attempt to use a 100-ton steel-and-concrete box to cover a deepwater oil well gushing toxic crude into the Gulf of Mexico was aborted Saturday after ice crystals encased it, an ominous development as thick blobs of tar began washing up on Alabama's white sand beaches.

The setback left the mission to cap the ruptured well in doubt. It had taken about two weeks to build the box and three days to cart it 50 miles out then slowly lower it to the well a mile below the surface, but the frozen depths were too much for it to handle.

Still, BP officials overseeing the cleanup efforts were not giving up just yet on hopes that a containment box — either the one brought there or a larger one being built — could cover the well and be used to capture the oil and funnel it to a tanker at the surface to be carted away. Officials said it would be at least Monday before a decision was made on what next step to take.

"I wouldn't say it's failed yet," BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles said. "What I would say is what we attempted to do ... didn't work."

There was a renewed sense of urgency as small bits of tar began washing up on Dauphin Island, three miles off the Alabama mainland at the mouth of Mobile Bay and much farther east than the thin, rainbow sheens that had so far arrived sporadically in the Louisiana marshes.

"It almost looks like bark, but when you pick it up it definitely has a liquid consistency and it's definitely oil," said Kimberly Creel, 41, who was hanging out and swimming with hundreds of other beachgoers. "... I can only imagine what might be coming this way that might be larger."

About a half dozen tar balls had been collected by Saturday afternoon at Dauphin Island, Coast Guard chief warrant officer Adam Wine said in Mobile. Authorities planned to test the substance but strongly suspected it came from the oil spill.

A long line of materials that resembled a string of pompoms were positioned on a stretch of the shore. Crews walked along the beach in rubber boots, carrying trash bags to clear debris from the sand.

Brenda Prosser, of Mobile, said she wept when she saw the workers.

"I just started crying. I couldn't quit crying. I'm shaking now," Prosser said. "To know that our beach may be black or brown, or that we can't get in the water, it's so sad."

Prosser, 46, said she was afraid to let her 9-year-old son, Grant, get in the water, and she worried that the spill would rob her of precious moments with her own child.

"I've been coming here since I was my son's age, as far back as I can remember in my life," Prosser said.

In the three weeks since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers, about 210,000 gallons of crude a day has been flowing into the Gulf. Until Saturday none of the thick sludge — those iconic images of past spills — had reached Gulf shores.

It was a troubling turn of events, especially since the efforts to use the containment box had not yet succeeded.

The icy buildup on the containment box made it too buoyant and clogged it up, BP's Suttles said. Workers who had carefully lowered the massive box over the leak nearly a mile below the surface had to lift it and move it some 600 feet to the side. If it had worked, authorities had said it would reduce the flow by about 85 percent, buying a bit more time as a three-month effort to drill a relief well goes on simultaneously.

Company and Coast Guard officials had cautioned that icelike hydrates, a slushy mixture of gas and water, would be one of the biggest challenges to the containment box plan, and their warnings proved accurate. The crystals clogged the opening in the top of the peaked box like sand in a funnel, only upside-down.

Options under consideration included raising the box high enough that warmer water would prevent the slush from forming, or using heated water or methanol to prevent the crystals from forming.

Even as officials pondered their next move, Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry said she must to continue to manage expectations of what the containment box can do.

"This dome is no silver bullet to stop the leak," she said.

The captain of the supply boat that carried the precious cargo for 11 hours from the Louisiana coast earlier last week wasn't giving up hope.

"Everybody knew this was a possibility well before we brought the dome out," Capt. Demi Shaffer, of Seward, Alaska, told an Associated Press reporter stationed in the Gulf in the heart of the containment zone with the 12-man crew of the Joe Griffin. "It's an everyday occurrence when you're drilling, with the pipeline trying to freeze up."

The spot where Deepwater Horizon rig once was positioned is now teeming with vessels working on containing the well. There are 15 boats and large ships at or near the site — some being used in an ongoing effort to drill a relief well, another with the crane that lowered the containment device to the seafloor.

There is even a vessel at the site called the Seacor Lee that is sending a live video feed from the undersea robots back to BP's operations center in Houston.

"Everyone was hoping that that would slow it down a bit if not stop it," said Shane Robichaux, of Chauvin, a 39-year-old registered nurse relaxing at his vacation camp in Cocodrie, La. "I'm sure they'll keep working on it 'til it gets fixed, one way or another. But we were hopeful that would shut it down."

The original blowout was triggered by a bubble of methane gas that escaped from the well and shot up the drill column, expanding quickly as it burst through several seals and barriers before exploding, according to interviews with rig workers conducted during BP PLC's internal investigation.

Deep beneath the seafloor, methane is in a slushy, crystalline form. Deep sea oil drillers often encounter pockets of methane crystals as they dig into the earth.

As the bubble rose up the drill column from the high-pressure environs of the deep to the less pressurized shallows, it intensified and grew, breaking through various safety barriers, said Robert Bea, a University of California Berkley engineering professor and oil pipeline expert who detailed the interviews to an Associated Press reporter.

"A small bubble becomes a really big bubble," Bea said. "So the expanding bubble becomes like a cannon shooting the gas into your face."


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"BP Gate" Oil Spill Underwater Footage (Videos)

First Underwater Footage: Gulf Of Mexico Oil Spill At Source


BP (NYSE:BP) has released footage of their remote operating vehicle (ROV) successfully capping one of the three leaks that is pouring an estimated 5,000 barrels of oil a day into the waters off the Gulf of Mexico.

This is the first video I've seen of the oil leak itself . The sheer volume of oil gushing out is quite incredible - you can see it at about the 2 minute 15 second mark of the video.

The ROV used a robotic arm to cap the leak, which did not reduce the total volume of the oil leak, but according to officials makes the task of capping the other two leaks much easier. Time is getting short for BP as reports are coming out this afternoon that oil has begun to wash up on the shores of a major Louisiana wildlife refuge.

Video footage provided by BP via the United States Coast Guard.


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"BP Gate" Oil Spill Caused By Gas Bubble, Worse Than Exxon Valdez

Report: Gas bubble Triggered Rig Blast


The deadly blowout of an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico was triggered by a bubble of methane gas that escaped from the well and shot up the drill column, rig workers have told BP's Internal Investigators.

The oil started spilling after the methane bubble expanded quickly and burst through several seals and barriers before exploding, according to a timeline described in documents revealed to the Associated Press.

The documents provide the most detailed account of what may have caused the April 20 blast that killed 11 workers.

Revelations of the workers' descriptions came as at least one scientist expressed concern that the resulting spill already has grown larger than the massive Exxon Valdez disaster of 1989 and dumped as much as 13 million gallons of crude into waters off the U.S. coastline.

U.S. official say the underwater gusher has poured out more than 3 million gallons of crude. But Ian MacDonald, a biological oceanographer at Florida State University, told Reuters on Friday that official flow-rate estimates of 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons) a day since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded were much too conservative.

The real flow rate from the undersea well, based on aerial images of the oil slick and estimates of the thickness of the oil itself, is probably closer to 25,000 barrels (1,050,000 gallons) a day, MacDonald said.

A spokesperson for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which has been monitoring the oil spill, said no one was immediately available to comment on possible revisions of the oil spill's size.

The Exxon Valdez tanker ship spilled about 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound, in one of the world's worst environmental disasters ever. If his own estimate is accurate, MacDonald said BP's oil spill was already larger than its 1989 rival.

Investigation details revealed

Portions of the rig-workers interviews, two written and one taped, were described in detail to the AP by Robert Bea, a University of California Berkeley engineering professor who serves on a National Academy of Engineering panel on oil pipeline safety and worked for BP PLC as a risk assessment consultant during the 1990s. He received them from industry friends seeking his expert opinion.

A group of BP executives were on board the Deepwater Horizon rig celebrating the project's safety record, according to the transcripts. Meanwhile, far below, the rig was being converted from an exploration well to a production well.

Based on the interviews, Bea believes that the workers set and then tested a cement seal at the bottom of the well. Then they reduced the pressure in the drill column and attempted to set a second seal below the sea floor. A chemical reaction caused by the setting cement created heat and a gas bubble which destroyed the seal.

Deep beneath the seafloor, methane is in a slushy, crystalline form. Deep sea oil drillers often encounter pockets of methane crystals as they dig into the earth.

As the bubble rose up the drill column from the high-pressure environs of the deep to the less pressurized shallows, it intensified and grew, breaking through various safety barriers, Bea said.

"A small bubble becomes a really big bubble," Bea said. "So the expanding bubble becomes like a cannon shooting the gas into your face."

'Swoosh, boom, run'

Up on the rig, the first thing workers noticed was the seawater in the drill column suddenly shooting back out at them, rocketing 240 feet in the air. Then, the gas surfaced. Then the oil.

"What we had learned when I worked as a drill rig laborer was swoosh, boom, run," Bea said. "The swoosh is the gas, boom is the explosion and run is what you better be doing."

The gas flooded into an adjoining room with exposed ignition sources, he said.

"That's where the first explosion happened," said Bea, who worked for Shell Oil in the 1960s during the last big northern Gulf of Mexico oil well blowout. "The mud room was next to the quarters where the party was. Then there was a series of explosions that subsequently ignited the oil that was coming from below."

The executives were injured but survived. Nine rig crew on the rig floor and two engineers died, according to one account.

"The furniture and walls trapped some and broke some bones but they managed to get in the life boats with assistance from others," said the transcript.

The reports made the 73-year-old industry veteran cry.

"It sure as hell is painful," he said. "Tears of frustration and anger."

BP spokesman Daren Beaudo said he could not immediately comment on the report.

Containment Box lowered

On Friday, a BP-chartered vessel lowered a 100-ton concrete-and-steel vault onto the ruptured well, an important step in a delicate and unprecedented attempt to stop most of the gushing crude fouling the sea.

"We are essentially taking a four-story building and lowering it 5,000 feet and setting it on the head of a pin," BP spokesman Bill Salvin told The Associated Press.

Underwater robots guided the 40-foot-tall box into place in a slow-moving drama. Now that the contraption is on the seafloor, workers will need at least 12 hours to let it settle and make sure it's stable before the robots can hook up a pipe and hose that will funnel the oil up to a tanker.

"It appears to be going exactly as we hoped," on Friday afternoon, shortly after the four-story device hit the seafloor. "Still lots of challenges ahead, but this is very good progress."

By Sunday, the box the size of a house could be capturing up to 85 percent of the oil.

The task became increasingly urgent as toxic oil crept deeper into the bays and marshes of the Mississippi Delta.

A sheen of oil began arriving on land last week, and crews have been laying booms, spraying chemical dispersants and setting fire to the slick to try to keep it from coming ashore. But now the thicker, stickier goo — arrayed in vivid, brick-colored ribbons — is drawing ever closer to Louisiana's coastal communities.

Never tried before

There are still untold risks and unknowns with the containment box: The approach has never been tried at such depths, where the water pressure is enough to crush a submarine, and any wrong move could damage the leaking pipe and make the problem worse. The seafloor is pitch black and the water murky, though lights on the robots illuminate the area where they are working.

If the box works, another one will be dropped onto a second, smaller leak at the bottom of the Gulf.

At the same time, crews are drilling sideways into the well in hopes of plugging it up with mud and concrete, and they are working on other ways to cap it.

Investigators looking into the cause of the explosion have been focusing on the so-called blowout preventer. Federal regulators told The Associated Press Friday that they are going to examine whether these last-resort cutoff valves on offshore oil wells are reliable.

Blowouts are infrequent, because well holes are blocked by piping and pumped-in materials like synthetic mud, cement and even sea water. The pipes are plugged with cement, so fluid and gas can't typically push up inside the pipes.

Instead, a typical blowout surges up a channel around the piping. The narrow space between the well walls and the piping is usually filled with cement, so there is no pathway for a blowout. But if the cement or broken piping leaves enough space, a surge can rise to the surface.

There, at the wellhead of exploratory wells, sits the massive steel contraption known as a blowout preventer.

It can snuff a blowout by squeezing rubber seals tightly around the pipes with up to 1 million pounds of force. If the seals fail, the blowout preventer deploys a last line of defense: a set of rams that can slice right through the pipes and cap the blowout.

Deepwater Horizon was also equipped with an automated backup system called a Deadman. It should have activated the blowout preventer even if workers could not.

Based on the interviews with rig workers, none of those safeguards worked.


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Sources: CNN, Huffington Post, MSNBC, TIME, Wikipedia, Youtube, Google Maps

Gulf Oil Spill vs. Politics: Offshore Drilling & 2010 Elections

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Oil Spill Politics May Hurt Both Parties



Talk about an "I-told-you-so" moment.

President Barack Obama was put on the defensive over oil Friday – as a fast-growing spill in the Gulf of Mexico forced the White House to reassure the public that Obama’s plans for expanded offshore drilling won’t proceed without a full review of this accident.

The spill gives fellow Democrats and environmentalists who objected to Obama’s plan a vivid piece of evidence to use against it, as Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) said the notion of expanded drilling is “dead on arrival” on Capitol Hill.

But Republicans who are usually quick to criticize Obama have barely raised a peep over his handling of the crisis – even as the White House scrambles to deflect questions over why it took nine days to understand the full extent of the spill.

The Republican reticence is a sign that the political danger over the oil spill cuts both ways, especially for a party that made “drill baby drill” a chant at its presidential convention.

Several Republicans on Friday reiterated their support for offshore drilling – and even Obama said the spill doesn’t change his support for oil exploration in the United States, as a way to replace offshore supplies.

But right now, it’s Obama who could face more short-term political trouble, experts said, since just weeks ago the president was announcing plans for greater use of offshore drilling – and dismissing the risks of a disaster.

“I wouldn’t want to be in Obama’s spot here,” said Rick Kurtz, a professor of political science at Central Michigan University who has studied the response to oil spill disasters. “From Obama’s standpoint, you’re in a lot of hot water. You came out and said you’re for more offshore drilling and then you have this happen. You’ve got a lot of potential political egg on your face.”

Just a few weeks ago, Obama downplayed the idea of a leak like the one that is currently unfolding in the Gulf. “Oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills. They are technologically very advanced. Even during Katrina, the spills didn’t come from the oil rigs, they came from the refineries onshore,” Obama said during a Q-and-A session in North Carolina on April 2.

White House adviser David Axelrod said Friday that no new drilling would go forward until the causes of the current spill were thoroughly examined. However, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said no new drilling rights were set to be granted in the 30 days Obama has set for an initial investigation.

“Nothing is immediately impacted by the president’s review. There is nothing stopped,” Gibbs said Friday. “That review will affect everything we take into account about our next offshore policy.”

Obama has already taken fire from Nelson, who called for a moratorium on new offshore drilling.

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Nelson said Friday that the spill has undercut any support for expanding offshore drilling on Capitol Hill. Knocking that provision out of an upcoming climate change measure might also strip it of the Republican support it needs to clear the Senate.

"If the idea was that Senator Graham put this offshore oil drilling provision in the draft climate change bill in order to attract Republican votes, while he himself has now walked way from the negotiations, I can't imagine that there is a snow ball’s chance in hell that it is going to survive," said a senior Senate Democratic aide.

"Senator McCain's 'drill baby drill' comments during the campaign are going to come back to haunt him,” the senior aide said, “and give him another reason to wish that he had never heard of Sarah Palin.”

But Republican strategist Mark McKinnon said the incident will cause both Democrats and Republicans to reconsider their positions on drilling as well as the energy legislation more broadly.



“The new political battle cry is ‘Spill Baby Spill,’ and everyone is scrambling,” McKinnon said. “This potential environmental disaster is changing the equation on energy politics overnight…Members of both political parties are trying to adapt.”

On the Republican side, no major figure came forward to criticize Obama – though several reiterated their support for drilling.

Among the GOP leaders keeping their powder dry was House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), who favors more aggressive offshore drilling than Obama.

“Our position is we support an all-of-the-above energy strategy,” Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said, adding that Boehner supports an “investigation into what went wrong in this situation.”

“Even with the strictest oversight in the world, accidents still happen,” Former Gov. Sarah Palin (R-Alaska) said in a statement posted on her Facebook page.

“No human endeavor is ever without risk – whether it’s sending a man to the moon or extracting the necessary resources to fuel our civilization. I repeat the slogan “drill here, drill now” not out of naiveté or disregard for the tragic consequences of oil spills – my family and my state and I know firsthand those consequences.”’

She added: “How could I still believe in drilling America’s domestic supply of energy after having seen the devastation of the Exxon-Valdez spill? I continue to believe in it because increased domestic oil production will make us a more secure, prosperous, and peaceful nation.”

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Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell maintained his support for offshore drilling, although he said he wouldn’t want the BP spill off the coast of Virginia Beach. “Every time there's an airplane crash, we don't say, ‘Well, we don't fly airplanes anymore,’” McDonnell said on WRVA during the monthly “Ask the Governor” program. “We find ways to improve public safety, make it better and contain any environmental impact.”

A later statement from McDonnell’s office stressed that while he still favors new drilling, he understands that the spill’s environmental toll could be severe.

Republicans in the region directly affected by the spill, but also heavily dependent on the oil industry, were also reluctant to predict the political consequences of the breach.

“We support oil drilling but obviously we support responsible drilling. Obviously, it’s a huge spill and we don’t know what the damage is going to be yet,” said Louisiana GOP Chairman Roger Villere.

Villere said he wouldn’t support a moratorium on new drilling, such as that being proposed by Nelson. “To go slow and figure out what’s going on here is important, but not to stop drilling,” the GOP leader said. “It’s not good for what we need to make America free.”

"My sense is that the big negatives because of the immediate environmental impact will lead Texas leaders to lay low in the short term,” said James Henson, a politics and government professor at the University of Texas.

“If the postponement of expanded drilling holds, well there are very few people in the current Texas political leadership, given their temperaments and political affiliations, who will pass up on any opportunity to criticize the Obama administration.

And if it involves appearing to stick up for the oil and gas sector here, [then it’s] all the more likely they’ll take a turn taking shots at the administration."



Earlier this week, Republican Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida cited the “horrific” oil spill as he retreated from his tentative support for some drilling far off the Florida coast.

And McKinnon said of Obama, “Questions will be asked and need to be answered about why the threat wasn’t taken more seriously early on.”

But one Democratic strategist said any GOP leader who pursues that tack is going to face trouble.

“The Republicans commenting on this has the credibility of Fat Albert discussing weight loss,” said former Al Gore spokesman Chris Lehane. “It’s a pretty significant stretch for the Republicans to try to score points on an issue that was arguably at the core of their message in the 2008 campaign….

It’s difficult for Republicans to get any real traction on it because they’re so tied to the idea of opening up offshore drilling.”

Still, the White House is trying to head off criticism that it was slow to recognize the gravity of the spill, which was formally designated to be of “national significance” on Thursday, some nine days after an explosion on the rig killed 11 workers and sent crude oil spewing from pipes thousands of feet below the ocean’s surface.

“The federal response has included anticipation and planning for a worst case scenario from day No. 1,” one official said Thursday.

One of the White House’s strategies to deflect any blame for the spill or failings in the response is to stress that the onus is on the well’s owner, British Petroleum, to plan for and react to this kind of incident.

“We will continue to push BP to engage in the strongest possible response,” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Friday.

Some say the Obama Administration’s claim that BP is in charge and federal officials are just aggressively monitoring is absurd, given the magnitude of the crisis.

“That’s nuts,” said Zygmunt Plater, a Boston University law professor who has studied the federal response to oil spills. “I don’t think they’ve thought it through enough….It’s horrific that 20 years after the Exxon Valdez this is still not something we have really planned adequately for, even though it’s inevitable.”

Lehane said he expected that the public would not hold Obama responsible for the spill itself but that in the long term he will be responsible for how it is cleaned up. “You at least get an initial pass, but ultimately this stuff is going to be a problem for the government,” he said. “People don’t trust private corporations to do the right thing.”

John Temperilli, a disaster response specialist with Witt Associates, praised the response efforts so far, but said that Obama is sure to face sharp criticism if the spill spreads from Louisiana’s shores to beaches as far away as the Florida panhandle.

“I know those folks are just petrified because of what we may be facing as we run into the tourist season. A lot of folks around the Gulf Coast are going to be very unhappy regardless of who’s taking action,” he said. “People will blame somebody. Why not the White House?”


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Sources: MSNBC, PBS, Politics, Youtube, Google Maps