Shall We Play a Game???

There was an obscure British Petroleum themed board game released in the early 1970's called BP Offshore Oil Strike which allowed players to explore for oil, build platforms and construct pipelines while trying to avoid oil rig disasters. The game included "hazard cards" such as, "Blow-Out! Rig Damaged. Oil Slick Clean-Up Costs. Pay $1 Million."

The existence of this game may go a long way towards explaining why Tony Hayward and his pals have not been taking their little leak very seriously. They are certainly acting like they are convinced that BP's disaster is only a game. To underscore this assumption is the fact that in the 77 days since the BP Horizon well began to spew into the Gulf of Mexico, BP has skimmed or burned only about 60 percent of the amount it promised regulators it could remove IN A SINGLE DAY. With such inept handling of the disaster, I bet that Tony now wishes that he could play the Blow-Out hazard card to limit BP's financial liabilities to just $1 million - That would allow him to shirk his responsibilities and get his life back...

Will the US Government and the EPA Allow the "A Whale" to Help in the Cleanup Effort?

The "A Whale", a massive oil skimming ship owned by the Taiwan Maritime Transportation Company (TMT), is traveling to the Gulf of Mexico hoping to aid in cleanup efforts there. The ship is the world's largest oil skimming vessel at 1,115 feet long, 10 stories high, and 196 feet wide and can hold 1 million barrels of recovered oil. The vessel was originally constructed six months ago in South Korea for transporting oil and iron ore. Recent structural and equipment modifications at a Portuguese shipyard such as the addition of twelve 16-foot long intake ports on each side of the bow will allow the ship to skim up to 500,000 barrels (21 million gallons) of oil-contaminated water daily.

Once the "A Whale" arrives in the Gulf, however, there are legal questions that may prevent the ship from being utilized. The "A Whale" does not yet have government approval to assist in the cleanup or a contract with BP to perform the work. It is unclear whether BP will allow the ship to begin skimming and the Jones Act, a 1920 law that limits the activities of foreign-flagged vessels in US coastal waters, may restrict the operations of the Liberian-flagged vessel.

The Jones Act regulations may not pose a significant hurdle as the restrictions apply only to foreign-flagged vessels in State Territorial Waters (up to three miles offshore). The "A Whale" would likely be most effective well offshore closer to the BP Horizon site. A more daunting barrier is the EPA's refusal to allow the ship to discharge oily water back into the Gulf after the bulk of the spilled oil has been recovered and transfered to storage tanks inside the vessel. While a vast majority of the oil will be separated from the oil/water mixture that is skimmed from the surface, some oily residue will remain in the water that is to be discharged overboard after processing. The EPA's stance is that this discharge will pollute the Gulf...

The Oil on the Surface is Just the Tip of the Iceberg...

Scientists from several universities recently reported the discovery of massive plumes of what appears to be oil suspended in clouds stretching for miles and reaching hundreds of feet beneath the Gulf's surface. Those findings — from the University of South Florida, the University of Georgia, Southern Mississippi University and other institutions — were based on water samples taken in the Gulf over the last several weeks. They continue to be analyzed.

Yesterday, however, BP Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward categorically denied these findings. Hayward claims that BP's own sampling has shown "no evidence" that oil is suspended in large masses underwater but he did not elaborate on how BP's testing was done. "The oil is on the surface," Hayward said. "Oil has a specific gravity that's about half that of water. It wants to get to the surface because of the difference in specific gravity."

Hayward is correct that crude oil in its natural state will generally migrate towards the surface and form somewhat homogeneous slicks BUT BP has injected massive quantities of Corexit dispersant into the leak at the bottom of the Gulf to try to break up and disperse the oil preventing it from forming slicks at the surface. Nobody (not even Tony) knows exactly how this has effected the oil's trajectory to the top of the water column.

BP has a vested interest in preventing the oil from reaching the surface where it can be quantified. As long as it can be kept deep under the surface, the public can be kept in the dark and everything will "look" OK...

Some Ridiculous Quotes From BP Reps

• British Petroleum CEO Tony Hayward, May 13: "The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume."
• British Petroleum Rep Randy Prescott, May 26: "Louisiana isn't the only place that has shrimp." Here's Randy's office phone number: (713) 323-4093. Give him a call and tell him that BP is not the only place that has gas!!
• British Petroleum CEO Tony Hayward, May 30: "There's no one who wants this over more than I do. I would like my life back."
  
• "Gulf Coast ecosystem, We don't need no stinking Gulf Coast ecosystem." While nobody at BP has stated this publicly, their actions make it pretty obvious that this is what they are thinking...
• UPDATE - Another one from British Petroleum CEO Tony Hayward, June 3: "Considering how big this has been, very little has got away from us." VERY LITTLE? HOW ABOUT UNTOLD MILLIONS OF GALLONS OF THE STUFF (not to mention the 1.8 million gallons of chemical dispersants) AND AN OIL SLICK THAT IS 3,850 SQUARE MILES???? THE PELICAN DOES NOT THINK THAT "VERY LITTLE HAS GOT AWAY".

BP’s Oil Spill Response Plan Nothing More Than a Sick Joke

If you are up for some light reading, you might just want to read some of the 583-page text of BP's Oil Spill Response Plan for the Gulf of Mexico that was submitted in June 2009 to federal regulators at the Minerals Management Service. These government officials must either have not paid much attention to what they were reading, were paid-off by BP, or were simply incredibly incompetent when they rubber-stamped BP's application to drill in the Gulf. BP's plan includes the following red flags that indicate that they obviously had no idea how to stop a catastrophic leak once they had created one:

• In the plan BP promises to protect sea lions, seals, sea otters, and walruses even though NONE of these animals live anywhere near the Gulf of Mexico.
• A Japanese home shopping site is listed as one of the "primary equipment providers for BP in the Gulf of Mexico Region for rapid deployment of spill response resources on a 24 hour, 7 days a week basis."
• Requires that BP's representatives shall never make "promises that property, ecology, or anything else will be restored to normal."
• States that in a "Worst Case Discharge" situation, BP has the "personnel, equipment, and materials in sufficient quantities and recovery capacity to respond effectively to oil spills from the facilities and leases covered by this plan, including the worst case discharge scenarios."

As stated in the first sentence of this post, BP's Response Plan is merely "light reading" with no concrete or detailed planning on how to prevent an ecological disaster if a spill should occur. All that BP wanted was to DRILL, BABY, DRILL and unfortunately our government was only too willing to oblige...

BP Horizon Oil Reaches Louisiana Marshlands

The BP Horizon oil spill is beginning to make itself apparent onshore. Until yesterday the vast majority of the oil was offshore and out of sight - much of it apparently still deep under the surface. The environmentally important and extremely sensitive Louisiana coastal marshlands were the fist areas to be impacted by large quantities of the oil.

This was not the light sheen or scattered tar balls that have been witnessed up and down the coast but heavy oil that is the consistency of latex paint. This oil has coated much of the marsh grasses and is seeping into the soil prompting Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal to lament, "The day that we've been fearing is upon us today".

While the environmental destruction and the damage to the local Gulf Coast fishing industry will certainly be evident for many, many years to come, public outrage will probably not hit a crescendo until this gunk starts washing up on the white sand beaches now covered by tourists and lined with soon to be empty condominiums.

Apparently BP Prepared For This Disaster by Making Shrewd Political Contributions

Who will finally take the blame for the massive gulf oil spill is still to be seen but according to OpenSecrets.org (the Web site for the Center For Responsive Politics), BP's lobbying arm extends deep into the pockets of Washington, D.C. In fact, the top recipient of BP related donations during the 2008 cycle was none other than President Barack Obama himself, who collected $71,000.

Some interesting facts that could affect the outcome of the ongoing "Blame Game":

• In 2009, BP spent a massive $16 million to influence laws relating to such issues as oil drilling safety and environmental regulations.
• During the first quarter of 2010, BP spent $3.53 million on federal lobbying efforts (you can expect this number to rise dramatically in the coming weeks).
• During the 2008 election cycle, individuals and PACs associated with BP spent half a million dollars on political candidates, forty percent going to Democrats.
• Last year (when BP spent $16 million), the most active environmental lobbying group, the Nature Conservancy , spent a paltry $2.2 million in comparison.

AND THE WINNER IS...

BP Horizon was Operating at the Outer Limits of Today's Technology

When the accident occurred BP was operating the Horizon rig at the outer limits of the industry’s technology. The wellhead was in water with a depth of 5,000 feet and the well extended another 13,000 feet beneath the ocean floor. At this depth, only remotely controlled robotic arms can be used to make repairs to damaged equipment since the deepest scuba dive ever recorded was only 1,044 feet deep (which greatly exceeds the the normal working depth for any commercial diver). In fact, more people have been on the surface of the moon than have scuba dived below 800 feet.

In their exploration plan and environmental impact analysis filed with the federal government in February 2009, BP said it had the capability to handle a "worst-case scenario" at the site, which the document described as a leak of 162,000 barrels (8.8 million gallons) per day from an uncontrolled blowout. At the current estimate of 5,000 barrels per day one has to wonder, given BP's ineffective handling of the situation, were they lying or just stupid when they made the statement that a spill 32 times larger than the current one would be "no problem".

Lawyers Quickly Descending on the Gulf Coast

Just as expected, teams of lawyers are quickly descending on the Gulf to extract their share from the devastation caused by the sinking of British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and the resulting unstoppable oil spill. Multiple lawsuits have already been filed which could dwarf the half-billion dollars awarded after the Exxon Valdez disaster in March 1989.

This reminds me of a joke that I heard many years ago:

Q: What is the difference between a lawyer and a catfish?
A: One is an ugly, scum-sucking, bottom feeder and the other is just a fish...

Plaintiffs in the cases already filed include:

• British Petroleum PLC - The owner of the leaking well.
• Transocean Ltd. - The owner and operator of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.
• Halliburton, Inc. (Dick Cheney's company) - The contractor that "capped" the well.
• Cameron International - The manufacturer of the well blowout preventers.
• Lloyd's of London may also be financially on the hook as Transocean's insurer.

BP Horizon Oil Rig Fire Creates Disastrous Gulf Oil Spill

BP Horizon Before the Disaster

On the evening of April 29, the first oil from the British Petroleum Horizon disaster started washing ashore near the mouth of the Missippi River. This oil spill is threatening to eclipse even the Exxon Valdez in the magnitude of environmental destruction. The following text is adapted from an e-mail that was sent to me documenting the demise of the the BP Horizon drilling platform:

On the night of April 20, the BP Deepwater Horizon semisubmersible drilling rig caught fire in the Gulf of Texico (oops, Mexico) off the coast of Louisiana. The rig burned for two days and then sank in 5,000 ft of water. An estimated 5,000 barrels of oil per day are spewing into the Gulf and eleven workers remain missing and are presumed dead. The rig was owned by Transocean, the world’s largest offshore drilling contractor and was contracted through the year 2013 to BP. BP was working on their Macondo exploration well approximately 41 miles offshore Louisiana on Mississippi Canyon block 252 when the fire broke out. The dry lease of the rig cost BP about $500,000 per day and the full drilling spread, including helicopters, support vessels, and other services, increased the estimated daily operational costs to close to $1,000,000. The rig cost about $350 million to build in 2001 and, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article, has an estimated replacement cost of $560 million today.

This rig represented the cutting edge of drilling technology. It was a floating semisubmersible rig, capable of working in up to 10,000 ft water depth. This type of rig is not moored; It does not use anchors because it would be too costly and too heavy to suspend this mooring load from the floating structure. Rather, a triply-redundant computer system uses satellite positioning to control powerful thrusters that keep the rig on station within a few feet of its intended location, at all times. This is called Dynamic Positioning.

The rig had apparently just finished cementing steel casing in place at depths exceeding 18,000 ft. The next operation was to suspend the well so that the rig could move to its next drilling location, the idea being that a rig would return to this well later in order to complete the work necessary to bring the well into production. It is thought that somehow formation fluids – oil /gas – got into the wellbore and were undetected until it was too late to take action. With a floating drilling rig setup, because it moves with the waves, currents, and winds, all of the main pressure control equipment sits on the seabed – the uppermost unmoving point in the well. This pressure control equipment – the Blowout Preventers, or ‘BOP’s” as they’re called, are controlled with redundant systems from the rig. In the event of a serious emergency, there are multiple Panic Buttons to hit, and even fail-safe Deadman systems that should be automatically engaged when something of this proportion breaks out. None of them were aparently activated, suggesting that the blowout was especially swift to escalate at the surface.

The flames were visible up to about 35 miles away. Not the glow – the flames. They were 200 – 300 ft high. All of this will be investigated and it will be some months before all of the particulars are known. For now, it is enough to say that this marvel of modern technology, which had been operating with an excellent safety record, has burned up and sunk taking souls with it. The well still is apparently flowing oil, which is appearing at the surface as a slick. They have been working with remotely operated vehicles, or ROV’s which are essentially tethered miniature submarines with manipulator arms and other equipment that can perform work underwater while the operator sits on a vessel. These are what were used to explore the Titanic, among other things. Every floating rig has one on board and they are in constant use. In this case, they are deploying ROV’s from dedicated service vessels. They have been trying to close the well in using a specialized port on the BOP’s and a pumping arrangement on their ROV’s. They have been unsuccessful so far.

Specialized pollution control vessels have been scrambled to start working the spill, skimming the oil up. In the coming weeks they will move in at least one other rig to drill a fresh well that will intersect the blowing one at its pay zone. They will use technology that is capable of drilling from a floating rig, over 3 miles deep to an exact specific point in the earth – with a target radius of just a few feet plus or minus. Once they intersect their target, a heavy fluid will be pumped that exceeds the formation’s pressure, thus causing the flow to cease and rendering the well safe at last. It will take at least a couple of months to get this done, bringing all available technology to bear.

The situation is quickly becoming an ecological disaster and there is no apparent quick fix to stop the leak. The most optimistic hope is that it could somehow bridge off downhole but many experts are predicting several months of unabated flow and with hurricane season fast approaching the full scope of the disaster is only now becoming appallingly clear. Maybe it is not such a good idea to drill for oil so close to our valuable beaches and fisheries.

The photos that follow show the progression of events over the 36 hours from catching fire to sinking.

Flames Quickly Engulf the Rig

Pronounced List Several Hours Before Sinking

BP Horizon's Last Moments on the Surface

The Oil Begins to Spread Soon After the Sinking on April 22 (Ironically, this was Earth Day)