Gulf Coast marks somber anniversary

On April 20, 2010, at about 10:00 pm CDT, the Mobile Offshore Drilling Unit (MODU) Deepwater Horizon exploded and caught fire in the Gulf of Mexico. Aboard were a crew of 126. Eleven were killed in the explosion and ensuing firestorm and another 15 were seriously injured. The Deepwater Horizon was in the process of drilling a well known as Macondo, and the wellhead was located more than one mile below the surface.

Two days later, still burning nearly out of control, the rig sank to the bottom of the gulf, dragging the damaged riser pipe with it and beginning the worst oil spill in the history of US maritime oil exploration.

Here is a detailed timeline of events from the night of the explosion until the Macondo well was finally declared dead. That page remains one of the most frequently visited resources on this website and has been used by researchers, bloggers and journalists regularly for the last two years.

The well was finally capped on July 15, ending the continuous flow of crude from the mile-deep wellhead. The well was formally declared dead on September 19, almost five months to the day from the explosion.

The slow motion nightmare that saw 4.9 million barrels of oil spilled into the gulf included evidence of nonexistent engineering quality control, exploitation of the disaster by the Obama administration, a bungled federal disaster response, the extortion of a $20 billion fraud-ridden slush fund, crippling of major industries in the gulf and a list of comical new terms added to the dictionary, including Top Hat, Top Kill, Static Kill, Capping Stack and “A Whale.”

The spill also gave rise to an equally comical collection of conspiracy theories. Included among these were rumors that the rig was torpedoed or somehow bombed and sunk intentionally; wild theories about BP, Transocean and Halliburton looting the real well located hundreds of miles away; and an Armageddon caused by a massive explosion of methane and cracking of the earth’s crust. Perhaps the most comical of all was the yarn spun about the government and BP intentionally poisoning Gulf Coast residents by spraying them with Corexit, a soap-like chemical used to disperse the oil. In October 2010, this blog did an exposé of one organization that shamelessly sought to exploit such fears—Project Gulf Impact.

Earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes and tsunamis are natural disasters. The Deepwater Horizon Spill was a man made disaster. It was caused by a horrific chain of fateful decisions leading up to the tragic explosion. AND it was exacerbated by an equally horrific series of decisions by an administration seeking to obtain maximum political and ideological advantage from the disaster. Its effects linger, as the maritime oil and gas exploration industry remains crippled, directly contributing to the economic malaise of the last two years.

The tourism and fishing industry are also still feeling the effects. To this day, tarballs created by the decomposition of the spilled crude are still washing ashore along beaches from Galveston, Texas to Apalachicola, Florida. Hundreds of fishermen, crabbers, oystermen and shrimpers have left the industry, unable to survive the closure of the hundreds of square miles of gulf waters to fishing. People are still fearful of swimming in the gulf and contributory bays and estuaries, and misperceptions about the safety of gulf seafood stubbornly persist in the minds of consumers.

Make no mistake about it. The Obama administration negligently allowed the Deepwater Horizon Spill to happen. It did so by allowing an equally negligent management and engineering team at BP and Transocean to ignore basic engineering quality control in an effort to cut costs. It made things worse by first refusing to even acknowledge the scope of the impending disaster and then by using the spill as a crowbar to gain political and ideological leverage over US energy policy.

Leftwing kooks—like the ones who founded PGI—used the spill to rail against “Big Oil” and develop wild conspiracy theories about intentional poisonings, mysterious ailments and massive coverups.

During the 2012 election, the Deepwater Horizon incident should be hung around this administration’s neck like the 300 ton blowout preventer, the device that failed and led to the explosion of the rig. George W. Bush suffered politically for Hurricane Katrina, a disaster he had no control over. Katrina’s scope was unimaginable. But the Deepwater Horizon was a disaster that could have been prevented, and incompetent leadership at the very top failed those 11 men, failed the people living and working on the gulf coast and failed the people who lost jobs throughout the country because of shameless political maneuvering and ideological arrogance.

Energy is the lifeblood of our economy. Oil and gas are plentiful in the Gulf of Mexico and represent a resource that this country can feasibly extract, process and use to drive economic growth and prosperity for the whole country. But the administration and its wacked out leftist supporters want you to believe that another Deepwater Horizon incident is just around the corner if we expand exploration in the gulf.

That is false. Maritime oil and gas exploration in the US was the safest in the world before the Deepwater Horizon incident and is even more so in its aftermath. What’s the likelihood of an incident like this happening in the Gulf of Mexico, vis-a-vis the chances it happening off the coast of Egypt or west Africa?

As we mark the 2nd anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon Incident, lets remember why it happened, and lets remember why the guy who played golf eight times between April 20 and July 15 needs to find another job.

Obama owns the Deepwater Horizon Incident and the Gulf Oil Spill. It’s his tarball.

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Companies say BP and subcontractors still owe them millions for work done after the spill

There were similar, loud complaints on the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina. Large contractors, working directly for the federal government (or in this case, the “responsible party” acting under the direction of the federal government), withheld millions in payments for legitimate, contracted work.

In this case, it’s a pair of cleanup contractors:

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NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Several companies hired to help BP respond to the massive oil spill claim the company or 1 of its subcontractors owes them millions of dollars for their work.

Ricky Myers, who owns Rhino Construction in Bay St. Louis, Miss., said Tuesday that BP contractor O'Brien's Response Management owes him $650,000 for his company's work on cleaning up beaches and barrier islands after the spill.

Myers said BP officials have assured him the company has paid what it owes O'Brien's, but other subcontractors say BP deserves some blame. Matthew Creel, who owns a Carriere, Miss.-based excavation company, said he is owed $60,000 and suspects BP is "trying to worm out of paying."

A spokesman for O'Brien's said he is looking into the companies' claims and couldn't immediately comment.

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Last fall, a blog reader and business owner on the Gulf Coast sent me an email with almost identical complaints—that BP and/or its subcontractors were trying to get out of paying him and his colleagues for work they agreed to under contract.

That individual was concerned over making his complaints public and chose not to go any farther with publicizing his story on this site. I understood completely. However, maybe now that others are starting to come forward that gentleman and his colleagues would be interested in telling their stories.

I’d run them here.

Follow me on Twitter, and visit the Deepwater Horizon Incident Timeline, one of the only resources of its kind on the internet. It’s visited by interested members of the public, researchers and journalists all over the world.

 

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Stone Cold Shocka: White House altered report that justified deepwater drilling ban

The Interior Department’s Inspector General confirms what we already knew—that the White House altered a report that justified Secretariat Salazarovich’s deepwater drilling moratorium to make it appear that an independent panel of drilling experts and scientists concurred with the six month ban on new deepwater exploration efforts.

We knew back in June, just weeks after the moratorium was announced, that the drilling ban was all about politics and nothing about science or safety.

From the Associated Press, via NOLA.com:

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The Interior Department's inspector general says the changes resulted "in the implication that the moratorium recommendation had been peer reviewed." But it hadn't been.

Still, the report said the administration did not violate federal rules because it had offered a formal apology and already publicly clarified the nature of the expert review.

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Politico has a copy of the IG’s report online. Here’s the key quote from the report:

The IG gives the regime a pass, blaming “rush editing” and failing to lay the more damaging—and more likely—charge that the White House deliberately misled the country by making the report appear to have the backing of an independent panel of experts.

Whether you believe the regime’s actions were born of malice or incompetence, the fact remains that the moratorium has cost between 8,000 and 12,000 jobs and $1.8 billion in direct economic activity associated with the oil and gas industry in the Gulf.

It’s an economic tragedy that didn’t need to happen.

White House: Drilling Moratorium to be lifted “soon”

What’s wrong with today?

Via Fox News:

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The White House says the government will lift a moratorium on deep water oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico "very soon."

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs says the government is close to having the necessary plans in place to lift the ban that was imposed after the Gulf oil spill.

The administration imposed new rules to make offshore drilling safer late last month, but said at the time that it was not yet ready to lift the moratorium. The new rules take effect immediately and include requirements that oil rigs certify that they have working blowout preventers and standards for cementing wells. The cementing process and blowout preventer both failed to work as expected in the Gulf spill.

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As I wrote when the new rules were published,  there was absolutely no reason why they couldn’t have been implemented on a rig-by-rig, case-by-case basis between the May 27 imposition of the Deepwater Drilling Moratorium and today’s announcement.

The regime could easily have allowed the safest, best equipped rigs keep working while older, less well equipped rigs were inspected and retrofitted as necessary.  There was never a need to shut off the flow of oil and gas from the Gulf of Mexico, threaten tens of thousands of jobs and cost the nation billions in economic output.

Instead, drilling companies began the inevitable exodus, sailing for the coasts of Egypt and the Republic of Congo, where regulations are much laxer and where the resources to combat a repeat of the Macondo disaster simply don’t exist.

Secretariat Salazarovich issues new rules for offshore drilling

Breaking today:  Komrade Interior Secretariat Salazarovich has issued new rules that supposedly “strengthen safety standards” for offshore drilling.  Via al.com:

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WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has announced new rules requiring that offshore drilling rigs certify that they have working blowout preventers and standards for cementing wells.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said today that the new rules will improve safety and reduce the chance of catastrophic blowouts such as the massive BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico. He said the rules also should improve workplace safety by reducing the risk of human error.

Salazar has said new rules must be in place before the Interior Department lifts a ban on deepwater drilling. The ban is set to expire Nov. 30, but officials have said they hope to end it early.

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Clap, clap, clap!  Bravo, Secretariat Salazarovich!

WTF took you so long?

There is absolutely nothing in the proposed new rules that could not have been implemented on a rig-by-rig, case-by-case basis between the May 27 imposition of the Deepwater Drilling Moratorium and today’s announcement.

The White House could easily have allowed the safest, best equipped rigs keep working while older, less well equipped rigs were inspected and retrofitted as necessary.  There was never a need to shut off the flow of oil and gas from the Gulf of Mexico, threaten tens of thousands of jobs and cost the nation billions in economic output.

The moratorium has never been about safety, or science.  It’s about politics and ideology.  Though the moratorium is set to expire November 30, who really thinks the regime is going to let all those greedy oil companies get back out there and start punching more holes in Gaia’s skin?

This is America under Obama.  We can’t have companies making money, providing jobs, and maintaining the country’s independence…

Admiral Thad Allen officially steps down as Oil Spill National Incident Commander

Admiral Thad Allen, the man Obama tapped as the Gulf Oil Spill National Incident Commander, officially steps aside tomorrow, October 1. 

Allen was chosen as the NIC 11 days after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, caught fire and sank, and the Macondo well it was drilling began spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico.  Allen  was chosen because he was the veteran of Katrina and Rita recovery operations.

Allen took a lot of heat from local and state politicians (it’s an election year, after all).

I know some people may disagree with this assessment, but overall, Admiral Thad Allen did an excellent job, given the task, the resources and the political environment he had to work in.  His (almost) daily briefings were informative.  He always sounds like he knows what he's talking about, regardless of the subject's technical difficulty.  Whether its booming, skimming and beach cleaning activities or complex engineering and physical characteristics of a runaway oil well and malfunctioning mechanical devices, Allen communicated exactly what was going on and why. 

That shows a penchant for listening to the people working for him, and making decisions based on the best information he has available.  He had no agenda and since he was already officially retired, job security was not an issue.

While Allen’s leadership was completely apolitical, the biggest challenge he faced was making decisions in an environment completely controlled by a White House for which every decision was run through the political sieve. He got things done anyway.  Maybe not always at the speed the locals liked, maybe not always choosing the path the White House wanted.  But he got stuff done.

Admiral Allen should go into retirement knowing that his was a job (mostly) well done.

The End of the Deepwater Horizon Incident Oil Spill Timeline

On September 19, 2010 the Macondo well was officially proclaimed "dead." The Deepwater Horizon Incident Timeline, which ran from the April 20 explosion, fire and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon through the “bottom kill” procedure of the relief well, contains just over 600 entries.  Most of the entries are linked and sourced, and the timeline describes the slow motion disaster of the Gulf Oil Spill in about as much detail as you’ll find anywhere on the web.

A large percentage of the news story links are from the Mobile Press-Register (via al.com) and the New Orleans Times-Picayune (via nola.com), two regional newspapers that provided outstanding, round-the-clock coverage of the event.  Those two papers deserve all the awards they’ll win for their coverage, and then some.

While it won’t be updated anymore, the timeline will stay online as a resource for news hounds, researchers, and others interested in chronicling the disaster.  It is inevitable that some of the links will “die” as sites update their archives.  If you happen upon a broken link, please identify it and if a suitable alternative exists, it’ll be corrected.

To all of the visitors who used the document to stay up to date, to all the bloggers who linked to the page and to all of the folks who commented and sent tips and suggestions via email, a heartfelt thank you!

Ding Dong, the Well is Dead. Gulf Oil Spill comes to anticlimactic end

In a statement released this morning, Admiral Thad Allen (RET) confirms the results of last night’s final pressure test and proclaims the Macondo Well dead; the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill over:

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"After months of extensive operations planning and execution under the direction and authority of the U.S. government science and engineering teams, BP has successfully completed the relief well by intersecting and cementing the well nearly 18,000 feet below the surface.  With this development, which has been confirmed by the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, we can finally announce that the Macondo 252 well is effectively dead.   Additional regulatory steps will be undertaken but we can now state, definitively, that the Macondo well poses no continuing threat to the Gulf of Mexico.  From the beginning, this response has been driven by the best science and engineering available.  We insisted that BP develop robust redundancy measures to ensure that each step was part of a deliberate plan, driven by science, minimizing risk to ensure we did not inflict additional harm in our efforts to kill the well.  I commend the response personnel, both from the government and private sectors, for seeing this vital procedure through to the end.  And although the well is now dead, we remain committed to continue aggressive efforts to clean up any additional oil we may see going forward."

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It’s something of an anticlimactic end, as the well was successfully capped on July 15 and no oil has flowed from the well since then.  There’s been quite a bit of speculation as to whether the relief well completion was even needed, as the “top kill” procedure that followed the successful cap stanched the flow of oil and could have been the permanent fix.

Nonetheless, a slow motion disaster has come to a quiet end, nearly five months to the day since April 20, when a methane gas bubble erupted and blew out the well.  The ensuing explosions and fire killed 11 men, sank one of the world’s most advanced drilling rigs and started the worst marine oil spill in US history.

Now comes the continuing recovery, which the Obama regime can hasten by dropping the arbitrary, capricious and economically devastating drilling moratorium.  Let the Gulf Coast get back to work, and it will recover all by itself.

"We have a situation," the assistant driller said. "The well is blown out.”

The Associated Press has a riveting account of the doomed Deepwater Horizon rig’s last hours.  Three days before the fateful blowout, explosions and fire that killed 11 men, sunk the rig and set off the nation’s worst marine oil spill, senior Halliburton technical adviser Jesse Gagliano warned colleagues that “we have a potential problem here:”

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"We have a potential problem here," the Halliburton employee told 3 colleagues he met in the hallway in BP PLC's Houston headquarters. He said his computer model was predicting a "serious gas flow problem" with BP's well abandonment plan.

His idea for addressing the issue would never be carried out. BP decided it wasn't necessary. Five days later, on April 20, the well blew out, causing the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

In an internal report released Wednesday, BP stood by its decision, saying Gagliano's plan would not have stopped the explosion.

The disagreement was just one of several that emerged in the days and hours before the blast, according to BP's report and e-mails, documents and testimony gathered by federal investigators. Confusion surrounded crucial tasks and frustration rose among people involved.

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BP operated the well, Transocean owned the rig and Halliburton carried out the cement job. They had to work together.  Yet key plans kept changing. Critical tests meant to ensure the well would be safely cemented were not going smoothly.

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Gagliano's computer model exposed yet another possible problem. The longtime technical adviser concluded that the cementing operation needed more centralizers, devices designed to ensure that the casing — or drilling pipe — runs down the center of the wellbore to increase the chance for a perfect seal and prevent leaks. BP had planned to run six centralizers and had them onboard.

After a corridor chat with BP's senior drilling engineer, Gagliano worked up more models. By the evening of April 15, Gagliano had a model with 21 centralizers that resolved the gas flow problem. The 15 additional centralizers were acquired and scheduled for delivery the next morning, in time for the Halliburton cementers to do the job.

BP drilling engineer Brett Cocales learned the next afternoon, April 16, that his company's engineers had decided against using the additional centralizers because of questions about their mechanical integrity. Members of a BP investigation panel said Wednesday that those concerns were unfounded because engineers were mistaken about which centralizers had been shipped.

In an e-mail to fellow drilling engineer Brian Morel, Cocales explained the extra centralizers could help meet the goal of inserting the casing properly. Then he continued:

"But who cares? It's done. We'll probably get a good cement job," he wrote, frustrated it had taken so long to make a decision.

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Obviously, they didn’t get a good cement job at all, because four days after Cocales’ and Morel’s email exchange, a methane gas bubble erupted through the well, displacing mud and seawater on its way through the crown of the Deepwater Horizon.  A series of mistakes aboard the well then let the gas escape and reach an ignition source.

By all means, go read AP correspondent Ramit Plushnick-Masti’s account of the events, conversations and people involved.

But as I pointed out here yesterday, this is an account of a chain of events in which had someone made the right choice at any point in the process, the disaster would have likely been averted or the blowout brought under control. Instead, the rig was doomed by a cascading series of missteps, from failing to insure that a “fool proof blowout preventer” was indeed foolproof during testing; failing to heed Gagliano’s advice on centralizers; Vidrine’s decision to displace the mud with seawater; the crew’s failure to implement emergency procedures once they realized that the well was gonna go.

A tragic series of events indeed, but a series of events that is exceedingly rare in today’s oil and gas exploration industry.

Internal BP Report: 'sequence of failures' doomed the Deepwater Horizon

BP has released a 193-page report detailing the company’s own investigation into the causes of the blowout, explosion and fire that killed 11 men and set off the worst marine oil spill in US history.  Not surprisingly, BP blames some of its own people for the disaster, but the company spreads some of the blame around, fingering rig-owner Transocean and Halliburton, the company responsible for the cementing job that many point to as the weakest link in the chain of events.  From the New Orleans Times-Picayune:

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In the 193-page report, commissioned by former BP chief executive Tony Hayward and conducted by BP's head of safety and operations Mark Bly, the British oil giant sought to spread some of the blame to its contractors, rig owner Transocean and cementing firm Halliburton.

Bly's report boiled the disaster down to this: The cement that was supposed to line the bottom of the well and keep out hydrocarbons failed; a test of pressure in the well was misinterpreted by BP engineers and Transocean rig workers; the Transocean rig crew took 40 minutes to recognize that gas was kicking up toward the rig; they routed the gas through a goose-neck tube that fed onto the rig, rather than diverting it overboard; ventilation systems allowed gas to get in the engine rooms; and the supposedly fail-safe blowout preventer failed.

Most of these issues have come out in the course of federal investigations. But BP's assessment is much more focused on what rig workers, mostly from Transocean, did after the blowout had already begun, rather than on the decisions BP engineers and others made about the design of the well and various safety measures that are supposed to stop a blowout before it happens.

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The Executive Summary of the report identifies eight key findings (PDF) ranging from poor cementing and testing procedures to well control procedures after the emergency had gotten underway.

The report documents what many have already surmised: That the people in charge of the well-capping process—from BP’s office in Houston to the men on the deck of the rig—failed  to follow basic engineering principles and abandoned well-established safety procedures in a series of making the wrong choices before, during and after the blowout.  Engineering textbooks are filled with examples of consequences resulting from poor engineering and safety procedures.  The Deepwater Horizon Incident is surely set to be one of the most oft-cited in the years to come.

The key “take away” from the incident and the investigations’ findings are that the whole of the chain of wrong choices represent an exceedingly rare chain of events.  Had someone made the right choice at any point in the process, the disaster would have likely been averted or brought under control before it morphed into a catastrophe. 

Indeed, the executive summary says almost exactly the same thing:

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The team did not identify any single action or inaction that caused this accident. Rather, a complex and interlinked series of mechanical failures, human judgments, engineering design, operational implementation and team interfaces came together to allow the initiation and escalation of the accident.

Multiple companies, work teams and circumstances were involved over time.

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Offshore oil and gas exploration has been a very safe activity.  This is the first major blowout and oil spill since the 1979 Ixtoc II spill in the Bay of Campeche.  The reason for that is because safety protocols and engineering procedures are well established and when followed to the letter, they usually result in a safe, predictable event.  But when people think they’re smarter than the textbooks or just don’t believe that things are as bad as they seem, they court disaster.

And on April 20, 2010, disaster is just what they got.  You can follow the events from April 20 through today’s report release at the Deepwater Horizon Incident Timeline at this blog.

Oil patchers tell Washington to end the moratorium

Breitbart's Big Government has this, today.  It's unlikely to have much of an impact, as the regime's position hasn't budged one iota, and outside of a few whimpers from gored-ox Democrats like Louisiana's Mary Landrieu, Congressional Dems don't seem interested in the fight.  But give these guys credit for keeping the issue at the forefront, even as the spill seems to be fading from media radar:

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In a visit to Washington, D.C., yesterday, a group of about fifty energy industry workers and representatives from the Gulf of Mexico area told lawmakers, reporters and bloggers that if the Obama administration and Congress are serious about creating and saving jobs, they will lift the moratorium on energy exploration in the Gulf.

The workers were joined by Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and former Rep. John Peterson (R-Pa.), outspoken opponents of both the moratorium and tax changes proposed by Democrats that opponents charge would hammer the energy industry.

Thomas Pyle, President of the American Energy Alliance, a group focused on maintaining energy industry jobs in the Gulf area said in a statement, “In an economy like this, the President and Congress should be looking for ways to strengthen U.S. businesses, not weaken them.”

Several of those who traveled to the Hill for meetings with members of Congress say they are suffering financially in the wake of the moratorium’s imposition, and that layoffs and business closures will be unavoidable should it remain in effect.

“My job matters,” said Thomas Clements, co-owner of Oilfield CNC Machining in Broussard, Louisiana. “So I’ve come to Washington to find somebody to hear me, to see my hopelessness, my no-man’s-land that I’m in because of these proposed tax changes to the energy industry and the moratorium.” Clements elaborated, saying that he had planned to hire more workers this year, but the six-month moratorium on drilling has halted those plans.

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What's abundantly clear is that the regime either doesn't understand the ripple effect such a crushing and arbitrary moratorium has, or it completely understands the impacts of its actions and that the hardships voiced above are a feature, rather than a bug.

At any rate, the moratorium's effects are already being felt. Today's new jobless claims figures and tomorrow's sobering employment numbers are going to start showing some of these impacts, and sooner rather than later. The country depends on energy produced by the Gulf of Mexico and the economy won't grow without it.

Gimme some feedback in the comments.

Missing Oil! Who's behind this? - Updated with video

Via Hot Air:

NYT: Oil slick on gulf surface disappearing rapidly on its own

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It’s not that the oil’s all gone, of course. But a lot of it is. And the rest is … hiding. [gasp!]
...
Less surface oil means fewer dead animals and, presumably, less of a chance that a hurricane’s going to blow in and paint the coast black. As for the oil below the waves and what it’s doing to marine life, oxygen levels, etc., the feds will have to get back to you on that. [ZOMG] So far, so good, though: The Times notes that two early assessments have found relatively low concentrations of toxic compounds in the deep sea.

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It's obviously a conspiracy between BP and Halliburton. Or, the government and NALCO, the company that makes that evil, toxic, racist Corexit 9500 soapy stuff that disperses oil and makes it more accessible to the teeming microbial colonies that have evolved on the 390,590,821,800 oil seeps on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. After all, EPA said the stuff was pretty safe and didn't harm wildlife, so they're obviously hiding something.

The Gulf of Mexico is a unique body of water in the world.  It is virtually closed, exchanging very little water with the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea.  It is also extremely warm in the summer months, which is why tropical systems tend to blow up so rapidly once they cross the Tropic of Cancer on their annual treks to the west-northwest.  I mean, it's bathwater warm. Natural substances like the light sweet (low sulphur) crude that spewed from the runaway Macondo well have been part of the ecosystem for millenia, and the ecosystem has evolved natural processes to deal with those substances and keep things in balance. The Deepwater Horizon incident did upset that balance, and things are likely to remain out of balance for a while.  But, not for long.  The well has only been capped for 13 days, and somewhere on the order of 100 million gallons of oil have all but disappeared from sight.

Where'd it go?  Back into the belly of the beast.

Update:  How could I forget the greatest conspiracy theory to evah be concocted about the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. Matthew Simmons, "respected" energy market analyst, on MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan Show. Magic. Flying. Blowout Preventers. Peak Oil... Thanks for the heads up, TJ. And correcting the video link.





Gimme some feedback in the comments.

Frank-Dodd Act puts US oil companies at a disadvantage

Another fine example of  "we need to pass it to see what's in it."

Frank-Dodd was supposed to be a reform of the financial services industry.  You know, and do stuff like protect consumers from predatory lending and all that other liberal pap.  But hiding rotten little easter eggs in legislation has been the hallmark of the 111th Congress.

The bill signed into law yesterday by Obama amends the Exchange Act so that the SEC now requires publicly traded firms listed on US exchanges to disclose any information on payments made to foreign or the US federal government for the commercial development of oil, gas or mineral resources.

This story appears in Rig Zone: 

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Since SEC-listed companies are mostly American companies and only a few foreign companies, it would put U.S.-based firms at a competitive disadvantage, said API spokesperson Misty McGowen.

"It would not capture payments being made by national oil companies from other countries, and the level of detail required to be reported would allow competitors access to proprietary information when bidding, which they could use to their advantage in contract negotiations," said API spokesperson Misty McGowen.

API does support transparency in disclosure of payments, "but we don't think this level of disclosure is the right way to do things." McGowen said API supports and participates in the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, a multi-lateral, international initiative to promote transparency in oil and gas payments.

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The intention, echoed through Senator Lugar's Energy Security through Transparency Act (SB 1700) is designed to reduce international corruption in making multi-billion dollar oil, gas and minerals exploration deals. That's a noble idea, but it has little support from the international community, especially among countries (like China) who desperately need to exploit the energy resources of impoverished nations (like Cuba) and have no problem shelling out major coin to corrupt authoritarians. It's a problem, but it's a problem that's been around since the rise of the merchant class.

But to have the US go it alone is sheer stupidity. This places companies like Texaco, Chevron, and Diamond Offshore at a significant competitive disadvantage. Detailed knowledge of transactions between oil companies and those they negotiate leases with would allow competitors to discover or deduce proprietary information, and use it against them. And, some of the competitors are nationalized oil companies, like Mexico's nearly broke Pemex, Brazil's PetroBras and others around the globe.

Isn't a deepwater drilling moratorium and a nearly permanent ban on shallow water drilling anywhere but the Gulf of Mexico enough? Does this cabal want to harm the energy sector, or just kill it outright, negating the need for Cap and Tax?

Gimme some feedback in the comments.

Day 2, Optimism for the Gulf, dismay for the conspiracy nuts

What a pleasant surprise it was to wake up this morning, grab a cup of coffee, sit down to check the live ROV feeds...

And see that the new cap stack was still holding the Macondo well in check.

It looks like good engineering by real engineers may have finally plugged the damned hole. As both BP and government officials noted, the test is not completed yet, and more than likely, flow will resume from the stack within the next few days.  But with the cap's integrity being demonstrated by the minute, the days of uncontrolled flow of crude are done.  All but perhaps a tiny trickle will be transported to the surface, processed and transported to refineries in Louisiana and Mississippi. Barring of course, a catastrophic chain of events that conspiracy nuts like Alex Jones and Matt Simmons have been running wild with.

Unless there's a massive tectonic plate shift causing a cauldron of fire and an Armageddon-ish methane eruption, or something, the end game is near. Maybe now, all those idiotic doom merchants can go find some other New World Order/Bilderberg/Trilateral Commission conspiracy to hawk. I don't care, but please find one that keeps you busy for a while, because I'm tired of the emails.  Maybe the disaster nuts who continually claim that BP and the government is lying; that the cap is really just a great big distraction and the Worst is Yet to Come^TM can just drink a big steaming cup of STFU.  Just go away.  Please don't send me anymore wild-assed YouTube videos or links to kooked out blogs full of black helicopters and stuff.

There's no more to see, here.  So please, go away.

At the Mississippi Canyon 252 prospect, aka Macondo, aka aboard the Deepwater Horizon Mobile Operating Drilling Unit, we saw a tragic accident caused by a failure to follow sound engineering and safety procedures.  We had the best engineering on the planet, along with the best technology, the best suite of lessons learned, and the best safety protocols in the industry be completely ignored by a company with a history of doing just that.  And the government let them do it.  But the fact is, it could have happened anywhere, and it's likely to happen again off the shores of South America, Africa or Southeast Asia.  And the consequences will be an order of magnitude worse than Macondo. Why?  Because banana republics and socialist authoritarian regimes don't have the money, experience or desire to protect life, property or the environment.

This was an accident.  It was not an inside job.  No, the North Koreans submarines didn't slink out of a Cuban port to torpedo the rig.  No, Haliburton did not conspire with BP and Transocean to cripple BP.  No, there really isn't a plan to depopulate the Gulf Coast.  No, it wasn't a plot by Soros and NALCO to kill the gulf with all that evil, nasty COREXIT. And no, there really isn't a deep sea volcano down there that BP and the government are covering up.  Geez Louise, there have been more conspiracy theories cooked up since April 20 than there have been dead pelicans picked up on Grand Isle. If they were half as clever as the nut jobs think they are, they'd have done a much better job of hiding, don't ya think?  After all, the lack of evidence is the surest sign that the conspiracy is working.

One more time for the really stubborn hardheads:  This was an accident, caused by human stupidity and government incompetence. And, as of at noon CDT today, the catastrophe is still over.

Update:  I got so wrapped around my Schadenfreude over the dismayed conspiracists that I forgot to add two important screenshots from testing last night.  These are images captured from the BOA Deep C ROV's, which were stationed on the sea floor.  The first is from BOA 1, on the bottom near the well.  The second is from BOA 2, on the bottom near the well head itself. 

I don't see any methane geysers coming up through fissures in the sea floor, Mr. Simmons.  Do you?  I don't see any oil blowing out from around the uncased wellhead either, Mr. Simmons.  It's probably time to cover your shorts...

Gimme some feedback in the comments.

Conflicts of Interest Redux

As the presidential commission on the Deepwater Horizon interest convenes at the Hilton Riverside Hotel in New Orleans, here's a rerun of a post from June.
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 That expert panel that Barack Obama appointed to investigate the cause of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, fire and ensuing economic and ecological disaster is far from being "expert" on anything except radical, left-wing anti-drilling policy.  They are nothing more than a collection of political hacks, with absolutely no experience in mechanical, hydraulic, structural or petrochemical engineering.

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Only one of the seven commissioners, the dean of Harvard's engineering and applied sciences school, has a prominent engineering background -- but it's in optics and physics. Another is an environmental scientist with expertise in coastal areas and the after-effects of oil spills. Both are praised by other scientists.

The five other commissioners are experts in policy and management.

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So, we're going to have a bunch of left-wing policy wonks, some of whom have publicly stated their opposition to new drilling, examine the causes of the tragic accident that claimed 11 lives and spilled millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

Gee... What could go wrong? Whatever do you think this panel's recommendations will be? I have a simple wild-assed guess: It'll look a lot like this.

Beineke and her leftist ilk have no business being within spitting distance of a panel that is charged with investigating an engineering and safety protocol failure.  The Deepwater Horizon incident was a failure of individual and corporate adherence to standards that, if followed, would have resulted in the safe penetration and exploitation of one of the Gulf's most prolific oil reservoirs.  The panel's job is to find out how and why those protocols were not followed, and make specific recommendations for avoiding such oversights in the future.

Extra Point:  Remember, sports fans.  This is the panel whose deliberations will determine whether the regime lifts the moratorium on deepwater drilling.  Do you have any confidence whatsoever that their deliberations will be based on anything other than ideology?  It is a clear conflict of interest, and Republican members of the Legislative Branch need to make a stand on this issue.


Gimme some feedback in the comments.

Deepwater Horizon Incident -- in the Timeline today

In the news today:


Federal appeals court is hearing arguments on the overturned deepwater drilling moratorium.

Adm. Allen again says the relief well is ahead of schedule, and BP is expected to tell investors that it will have the runaway well capped by July 27.

The regime--busy with four fundraisers today--is skeptical that BP can beat the schedule.


Seas are calming both offshore and nearshore, allowing skimming operations to restart.

The "A Whale" gets another week of testing.

BP is given 24-hours to come up with a plan to replace the existing containment cap and complete the relief wells.

The CostnerFuge^TM oil skimmer things set sail for the Gulf and the oil slick.

Gimme some feedback in the comments.

Obama's Deepwater Horizon commission has its objectivity questioned by... Senate Democrats

My what a tangled coalition we weave, when first we practice to deceive.

US Senator Mary Landrieu, D-LA, managed to force the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee to form a bipartisan congressional committee to investigate the causes of the deadly Deepwater Horizon explosion, fire and ongoing oil spill in the Gulf.

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On the same day the White House commission investigating the Gulf oil spill announced its first meetings -- July 12-13 in New Orleans -- a Senate committee cast what amounted to a no-confidence vote on the commission's objectivity.

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted Wednesday to create a congressional bipartisan commission to investigate the spill, with Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., and others saying a separate panel is needed because the White House commission has four environmental advocates -- three members and the executive staff director -- but no oil industry representation.

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The Times-Picayune is being kind in suggesting that the commission's objectivity is in question. As soon as the panel members were named, this blog noted the panel's conflicts of interest. Those people shouldn't even be within spitting distance of a panel charged to investigate engineering and safety failures.  They're long on left-wing policy, short on any real smarts.

Ostensibly, the regime's panel has the task of identifying the root causes of the accident that took down the Deepwater Horizon, and coming up with a regulatory framework designed to prevent such accidents from occurring.  While that panel was to review evidence, conduct investigations and hold hearings, the Department of Interior was to enforce the now-neutered six month deepwater drilling moratorium.  That moratorium was struck down last month by a Federal Judge and remains unenforceable.

But the panel wasn't completed until June 18, and won't hold its first meetings until July.  There was no way the panel could have legitimately and objectively completed its work within the six month timeframe of the moratorium.  So, the question is that, given the regime's selection of panel members and the extremely tight six-month schedule, what was the regime's motive? Hmmmm.

The fact that a Senate committee dominated by Democrats like Maria Cantwell, Byron Dorgan and Bernie Sanders voted to create its own bi-partisan commission is a telling.  When even a staunchly partisan committee like Energy & Natural Resources is doing an end-around the White House, it doesn't speak very well about party harmony.

Congressional Democrats are strategically distancing themselves from the President, as polls continue to show growing public dissatisfaction with his performance in handling the oil spill response.  His overall job performance has been tanking since April and he's quickly turning into poison on the campaign trail.

Gimme some feedback in the comments.

Chaos and confusion, part deux: the $20 billion slush fund

Just yesterday, we learned about the apparent confusion over who's covered by the $20 billion BP shakedown fund when, during an interview with CNN, the fund administrator told the interviewer that he'd just learned that the moratorium claims would be covered.

But it's a different day today, so it's a different story.

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Kenneth Feinberg, who is administering the new claims process for victims of the Gulf oil disaster, made crystal clear today that individuals and businesses hurt by the drilling moratorium are not eligible for a piece of the $20 billion escrow fund BP set aside to pay all eligible claims.

"If they send moratorium claims to me what am I supposed to do with them under the $20 billion?" Feinberg said during a break of a hearing of the House Small Business Committee at which he was testifying about his new job. "Those moratorium claims are only going to be paid out of the $100 million."

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This is not what he said Monday:

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"Yes, I now have discovered -- I didn't realize this until yesterday -- that the moratorium claims will fall under my jurisdiction," Feinberg said in an interview Monday on CNN.

"That's a huge development, and we didn't know that before?" replied the CNN reporter.

"I didn't either," Feinberg said.

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There doesn't seem to be any lack of confusion or chaos on the part of the White House or BP, either.  In the second story linked above, a White House spokesman said that the $100 million fund would be administered by BP.  In the story linked yesterday, Feinberg said he believed he'd be administering the fund.  Keep in mind, sports fans, that these two slush funds were established in negotiations between the White House and BP on June 16, two freakin' weeks ago.

So why all the confusion?  Maybe it's because there is no document formalizing the agreement.  At least, there isn't one that's been made public.  As a result, Kenneth Feinberg tells the media one thing on Monday and tells Congress something completely different a few days later.

Who the hell is in charge?  $20 billion here.  $100 million there.  Pretty soon, we're talking about a lot of money, and a tremendous opportunity for waste, fraud and abuse.

Gimme some feedback in the comments.

Confusion, chaos reign with $20 billion BP shakedown fund--what could go wrong?

In a CNN interview on Monday, the administrator of the Obama regime's $20 billion shakedown/slush fund announced that, by Jove, his purview will indeed also include settling claims for individuals and businesses affected by the deepwater drilling moratorium.  That would be the moratorium that a Federal Judge has set aside and is technically no longer in effect.

But here's the kicker--Ken Feinberg didn't know his jurisdiction would include moratorium claims until the weekend:

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"Yes, I now have discovered -- I didn't realize this until yesterday -- that the moratorium claims will fall under my jurisdiction," Feinberg said in an interview Monday on CNN.

"That's a huge development, and we didn't know that before?" replied the CNN reporter.

"I didn't either," Feinberg said.

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Just last Thursday, Feinberg was telling reporters that idled workers couldn't submit claims against the $20 billion escrow account BP established following a June 16 meeting at the White House.  Instead, workers were expected to be compensated by a separate $100 million slush fund that was also agreed to at the June 16 meeting.

So, between last Thursday and his interview with CNN yesterday, who told Feinberg that his fund's jurisdiction would cover workers idled by the moratorium?  More interestingly, why is he being told to cover workers idled by a moratorium that cannot be enforced due to a court order?  

It's easy to understand the confusion that reigns over how these funds are to be administered.  If a formal agreement exists, no documentation of it has been made public.  First it was a $20 billion fund that was to be neither a guaranteed minimum nor a guaranteed maximum, nor was the establishment of the fund to mitigate BP's liability from the coming onslaught of civil lawsuits.  That fund was supposed to compensate individuals and businesses who were hurt by the spill's effects on tourism, fishing and other economic activities shut down by the spill.  Then, we learned about a separate $100 million fund that would serve workers idled by moratoria and other regime interference in the oil and gas sector.  Now, apparently, those two funds are to be conflated, co-mingled and completely confused with one another.  Gee, do you think there might be an opportunity for waste, fraud and abuse here, sports fans?

We already have fantastic evidence of how well managed these types of slush funds are.  Remember how well TARP and Porkulus funds were accounted for.  Why, every red cent went right where it was supposed to, didn't it? Remember also that this is the Gulf Coast, and the epicenter of this disaster is Louisiana.  In the five years since Katrina and Rita hit the state in a hurricane double-whammy, the a special task force at the Department of Justice is still indicting, prosecuting and convicting people of defrauding the government with bogus claims.

There's a $20 billion slush fund and its own administrator doesn't know what it covers.  There's supposedly a separate $100 million fund that's supposed to cover workers idled by the moratorium--the moratorium tossed out of court last week. Does Feinberg administer that fund as well, or is someone else in charge of it?  There's absolutely no documentation of the agreements between BP and the federal government, so we don't really know who's in charge of what fund and who can file claims against this one, that one or some other one.  And, there's a state with a legendary history of graft and corruption. 

Gee... What could go wrong?

Gimme some feedback in the comments.

Secretariat Salazarovich: I will give you stealth ban, peasants!

Two items in the media stream today bear some attention and point to what is quickly becoming an economic disaster as bad or worse than the Deepwater Horizon spill currently spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico.  Secretariat Salazarovich isn't granting permits to drill anywhere--shallow or deep water.

The first is an opinion piece in Roll Call from Louisiana Representative Bill Cassidy. Cassidy writes, in part:

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An offshore moratorium is also a job killer, not for executives at multinational energy corporations but for welders, pipefitters, roustabouts and the range of service and support industries connected to them. And these blue-collar workers won’t be able to make their mortgage payments or buy groceries for their families with unemployment checks and food stamps.

Job losses spurred by ending offshore production would extend far beyond the industry itself. The average multiplier effect for a job in energy production is 5.5. In other words, every job created in energy production leads to the creation of almost six more. The reverse is also true. Job losses would be most acute in areas most affected by the Deepwater Horizon spill, such as coastal Louisiana.

Even a temporary moratorium has significant economic consequences. The deep-water drilling rigs, upon which many of these jobs depend, can rent for $500,000 per day. During a moratorium, these rigs will be towed to Africa or Brazil to begin multiyear projects. Jobs directly and indirectly associated with these rigs will go to Africa and Brazil with them. This isn’t hypothetical; it’s already happening. Anadarko Petroleum Corp. already announced that it is moving rigs from the Gulf to other countries, and officials at Port Fourchon, La., have said that some of their tenants are weighing layoffs.

Instead of a knee-jerk overreaction, the president and Congress should pursue rational policy. There is a middle ground. Do a real-time analysis of what went wrong and implement corrective measures successively based on what we have learned.

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Cassidy is absolutely correct.  Any stoppage of drilling in the Gulf of Mexico causes significant economic harm, not just to Louisiana, but to the Gulf Coast communities from Houston to Mobile.  It also causes significant economic harm to the nation by restricting supply and driving up energy prices at a time when the economy badly needs high-paying blue collar jobs like those in and supporting the offshore oil and gas industry.

But a second item in today's news shows that the Obama regime isn't the least bit concerned about jobs, the Gulf, or the energy needs of our economy.  CNN.com has a story about a "stealth ban," imposed by regulatory officials who have stopped granting permits on already leased tracts:

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But drillers in shallow water say they haven't been issued permits since the April 20 explosion. The delay has already forced hundreds of layoffs, and many more could be on the way.

"I'm almost out of business over here," said Paul Butler, president of Spartan Offshore, a small drilling company in Metairie, La.

Butler said that only one of his four drill rigs are operating; all four were drilling before the spill. Spartan has six contracts that would put his entire fleet back to work, but he can't get going until the permits come through, he added.

The week before last, Butler said he had to lay off 72 employees. Come Tuesday he'll have to let another 140 go.

"That's 140 families, is how I look at it," Butler said.

Same is true at Hercules Offshore, the largest shallow water driller in the Gulf.

"The Department of Interior isn't issuing permits," said Jim Noe, a Hercules executive. "By mid July all of our rigs will be on the beach, and the workers without a job."

That could be a lot of jobs.

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  Judge Martin Feldman imposed an injunction on the deepwater drilling moratorium last week, and the ban on shallow water drilling was lifted June 8, a full three weeks ago. Could the regime be in contempt of court?  Or, could it be arbitrarily and capriciously exercising regulatory power, causing undue economic hardship?

Interior officials quoted in the CNN.com story told reporters that new safety requirements were issued along with the lifting of the shallow water moratorium, and that none of the permits have complied. Representatives from both Spartan Drilling and Hercules Offshore, along with representatives from a local oilfield services company, have told me that this is not true.  Revised permit requests meeting or exceeding the NTL linked above were submitted within a week of the June 8 issuance date, and pointed out to me that the NTL specifically requires all such paperwork to be submitted no later than June 17, and specifically outlines the additional data required:

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Operators must submit the following information by 5:00 pm EDT June 17, 2010, to the address set forth below:

1. BOP and well control system configuration. This includes the piping diagram of the stack and control system, including the BOP stations and accumulator system.
2. BOP and well control system test results, including any anomalies in testing or operation of critical BOP components. Submit test results (charts, digital pressure data, forms, etc.) and information on any initial failed test attempts and remedy to obtain a successful test.
3. BOP and loss of well control events. Document any loss of well control event, even if temporary, and the cause of the event. The operator does not have to include kicks that were controlled but should include the release of fluids through a diverter.
4. BOP and well control system downtime. Submit downtime related to BOP and well control system failures (failure to test properly).

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All of the paperwork is in, yet MMS hasn't granted a permit in more than two weeks. 


Furthermore, very few of the shallow water wells from Texas to the Alabama-Florida state line are producing oil.  The vast majority are producing natural gas, in very shallow water, in areas where the geology is much better known.  Since the MMS began managing offshore drilling in 1982, not a single spill of significance has occurred in the shallow water zone of the Gulf of Mexico.  Not one.

The refusal of the Obama regime to grant permits that meet the regulatory guidance constitutes a dereliction of duty.  There is no legitimate reason to deny these companies the ability to drill and produce in shallow water.  The safety record is flawless, and the new safety requirements have been met.  If the regime doesn't begin issuing permits within a reasonable time, these companies should haul Secretariat Salazarovich before a Judge in the Eastern District Federal Court, and force him to do his job.

Gimme some feedback in the comments.