Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Oil Drilling News


GULF OIL DISASTER


Waves Delay Work on BP's Relief Well


Replacement Of Deepwater Horizon Blow-Out Preventer Still On Hold


Till Depth Do Us Part

"The 2010 Gulf oil spill may have been the largest such disaster in history, and hobbled BP's race to the frontiers of oil exploration, but it was only a speed bump for the industry overall..."

U.S. Drilling Regulator Bars Employees From Dealings With Friends, Family
It's about time.

La. governor presses panel on drilling moratorium

Southern governors push for bigger cut of oil money

Monday, August 30, 2010

Oil Drilling News


GULF OIL DISASTER


BP to Push Ahead on Replacing Blowout Preventer


BP Internal Report Said to Find Engineers Misread Gulf Well Test Results


Risk-Taking Rises as Oil Rigs in Gulf Drill Deeper

"Our ability to manage risks hasn't caught up with our ability to explore and produce in deep water," said Edward C. Chow, a former industry executive who is now a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "The question now is, how are we going to protect against a blowout as well as all of the other associated risks offshore?"

Be sure to check out the graphics associated with this article.


Gulf working rigs up despite moratorium: analysts


Oil spill panel leader says drilling ban should end early, calls for leasing policy overhaul


Fossil fuel subsidies are 10 times those of renewables, figures show

"...the report will further increase pressure on G20 countries to make good on their recent pledge to phase out fossil fuel subsidies – a move that the IEA believes could single-handedly slash global carbon emissions by up to seven per cent."

Hurricane Katrina - 5 Year Anniversary (Skytruth)

WILDLIFE, HUMAN AND ECOSYSTEM IMPACTS


Seafood industry battles perception problem following Gulf oil spill


Despite "All Clear," Mississippi Sound Tests Positive for Oil


BP reverses, admits there's oil in local waters

"Despite persistent denials from BP last week, thousands of pounds of weathered oil is being pulled from under the surface of Pensacola Bay every day."

ALASKA/ARCTIC


Deepwater Horizon fears resurface as rigs probe for oil under Arctic ice


CALIFORNIA


Oil slick near Imperial Beach dissipates


Friday, August 27, 2010

Oil Drilling News


GULF OIL DISASTER


Deep-Water Drilling Moratorium No Longer Needed, Panel Probing Spill Says


Acrimony Behind the Scenes of Gulf Oil Spill


Who Is to Blame for the BP Disaster?


BP hopes new device will put teeth into cleanup of oil on tainted beaches


WILDLIFE, HUMAN AND ECOSYSTEM IMPACTS


Gauging BP oil spill's damage may take a decade


NOAA Re-opens Federal Waters off Western Louisiana to Commercial and Recreational Fishing
"The area closed to all fishing now measures 48,114 sq mi (124,614 sq km) and covers about 20% of the Gulf of Mexico exclusive economic zone. "


Officials expand water monitoring for spilled oil

"We continue to expand the scope and resources dedicated to detect, monitor, and sample for subsurface oil and dispersants," said Federal Onscene Coordinator and US Coast Guard Adm. Paul Zukunft. "We are aggressively monitoring the fate of the oil in the gulf." 

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Oil Drilling News


GULF OIL DISASTER

How the Minerals Management Service's partnership with industry led to failure


On Doomed Rig's Last Day, a Divisive Change of Plan


How reporters mangle science on Gulf oil

Deep-sea plumes: A rush to judgment?
"For now, Kessler and others argue, it's too early to say any plume — much less all plumes — have been thoroughly removed from the water. Such an assurance must wait, they say, until scientists confirm that something more than the hydrocarbon equivalents of cookies and steak have disappeared from the Gulf's crude-oil lunch carts."


Obama environmental advisers had limited role in plan to expand oil drilling

"Speaking before the presidential oil spill commission, Jane Lubchenco, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's administrator, and Nancy Sutley, chair of the Council on Environmental Quality, said that while they did offer comments about the proposal, the key decisions were made by the president and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who oversees U.S. oil and gas policy under federal law.'

WILDLIFE, HUMAN AND ECOSYSTEM IMPACTS

Gulf Oil Spill: Rick Steiner Got BP Disaster Right From The Beginning, Warns Crisis Is Far From Over
"The transcendent, take-home lesson from all of this is that we need to hasten our transition to sustainable energy. Some of the costs of oil become very clear in oil spills, but the real costs also include climate change, wars to secure oil supplies, health impacts from breathing atmospheric emissions, and supporting petro-dictators. "We know we need to transition to sustainable, clean, low-carbon energy, and we know how. We know that the chronic, day-to-day degradation of our biosphere caused by our oil addiction -- global warming, ocean acidification, coral reef death, sea level rise, floods and droughts, crop failure, forest fires, ice melt, biodiversity loss -- is cumulatively more devastating than all the oil spills we can throw at ourselves."

New Study Documents Symptoms of Cleanup Workers in 2002 Spill Off Spanish Coast
"The exposed workers were examined two years after their contact with spilled oil, when "a greater proportion" of that group was found to still experience respiratory symptoms such as wheezing and nighttime shortness of breath, the study's authors wrote. Chromosomal abnormalities in white blood cells, considered a potential marker for heightened cancer risk, was also detected at higher rates in fishermen who regularly came in contact with oil during cleanup work."

BP, Once Again, Wants to Push the Oil Back Into the Gulf (healthygulf.org)
"On the 23rd, BP once again asked the Corps of Engineers for an Emergency Permit to "surf wash" the beaches of Louisiana--this time on Grand Isle.  The concept behind this surf washing is to push the sand, "stained" by oil, back into the Gulf, and let the waves "clean" it."

CALIFORNIA


Santa Barbara officials say 'no, thanks' to oil drilling


FLORIDA

Florida Chapters Start State Constitutional Ban Effort (Surfrider Foundation and Save our Seas, Beaches and Shores, Inc.)

VIRGINIA


VA Youth question Governor McDonnell's offshore views


Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Oil Drilling News

GULF OIL DISASTER


U.S. Oil-Spill Panel Wants Changes to Command Structure on Drilling Rigs


More BP problems: The trust fund


Job Losses Over Drilling Ban Fail to Materialize

"Unemployment claims related to the oil industry along the Gulf Coast have been in the hundreds, not the thousands, and while oil production from the gulf is down because of the drilling halt, supplies from the region are expected to rebound in future years. Only 2 of the 33 deepwater rigs operating in the gulf before the BP rig exploded have left for other fields."


Drillers May Face Months of Waiting Even After Obama Lifts Deep-Water Ban


President's Oil Spill Commission Should Call for Permanent Protection of U.S. Coasts and Drilling Reform (Environment America)


WILDLIFE, HUMAN AND ECOSYSTEM IMPACTS


Gulf oil spill: Has it caused a new fish kill?


Oil leak worries linger For many in Gulf, disaster not over


New Study Sees Dissipating Oil Spill


ALABAMA


Corexit found in Orange Beach Waters

"It concerns me," says Orange Beach Mayor Tony Kennon. "And what it means is that we're going to aggressively go and try to find that corexit. We're going to start more aggressive testing in Cotton Bayou and other places and we're going to up the number of tests we run. Our job is going to be go find it, if it's there."

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Oil Drilling News

GULF OIL DISASTER


Offshore oil: same old drill


U.S. research vessel sees few signs of spilled oil


Rig Survivor Blames BP's `Screwed-Up Plan' for Gulf Oil Blowout

"In the interview, he ticked off perceived flaws in the well design on his scarred fingers: Using foam cement in a high- pressure gas well, failing to employ a safer casing type, installing inadequate centralizers to insure the wall was properly cemented, and failing to test the well's integrity before removing heavy drilling mud that was containing the pressure. 

"I've worked on jobs for BP, Chevron and Shell and I've never seen this combination of bad choices on any other well, ever," he said."


Answers are few as fingers pointed

Spill Probe Focuses On Command Structure at Doomed Rig


Gulf Fishermen-Turned-Clean-Up Contractors Enthuse: 'Thank God For BP'

Yes, you read that right.  But read on to the end of the article.

WILDLIFE, HUMAN AND ECOSYSTEM IMPACTS


Riki Ott: Seafood Safety and Politics Don't Mix—Opening of Gulf Fisheries at Odds With Evidence of Harm


Could the Gulf Oil Disaster Happen Here?

"Join us at the California Center for Sustainable Energy on August 26, from 6 p.m. - 8 p.m. as Moderator KPBS Reporter/Producer Ed Joyce takes participants through an interactive panel discussion including three expert speakers."

FLORIDA


Florida's 3-Way Race for Key Senate Seat Could Hinge on Drilling

Monday, August 23, 2010

Oil Drilling News

GULF OIL DISASTER


BP Begins to Remove Drilling Pipe


Well's blowout preventer to be replaced before 'bottom kill'


'Why' still eludes oil spill panel


Relief-Well Rigs Concerned U.S.

"Government tests uncovered serious problems with the blowout preventers aboard two deepwater rigs that were drilling relief wells to shut down BP PLC's broken well, regulatory documents show. 

The problems are likely to spark new questions about whether the devices, touted by the industry as a fail-safe, are reliable."

Raising bar for deepwater drilling


Enforcement, monitoring are critical to accident prevention in oil drilling offshore


U.S. Saw Drill Ban Killing Many Jobs

"Senior Obama administration officials concluded the federal moratorium on deepwater oil drilling would cost roughly 23,000 jobs, but went ahead with the ban because they didn't trust the industry's safety equipment and the government's own inspection process, according to previously undisclosed documents."


NOAA Claims Scientists Reviewed Controversial Report; The Scientists Say Otherwise

"...at the report's unveiling on August 4, Lubchenco spoke of a "peer review of the calculations that went into this by both other federal and non-federal scientists." On Thursday afternoon, she told reporters on a conference call: "The report and the calculations that went into it were reviewed by independent scientists." The scientists, she said, were listed at the end of the report. 

But all the scientists on that list contacted by the Huffington Post for comment this week said the exact same thing: That although they provided some input to NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), they in no way reviewed the report, and could not vouch for it."

URI grad, Cranston native publishes study on Gulf oil spill


Surfrider "Wake Up" PSA