Yesterday was a big day where the gusher is concerned. This gift from Bush, Cheney and the Republican party, who gutted regulations and set up the corrupt relationship between Big Oil and the MMS, has become the worst environmental catastrophe in human history.
As BP labored for a second day Thursday to choke off the leak at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, dire new government estimates showed the disaster has easily eclipsed the Exxon Valdez as the biggest oil spill in U.S. history.
After an 18-hour delay to assess its efforts and bring in more materials, BP resumed pumping heavy drilling mud into the blown-out well 5,000 feet underwater. Officials said it could be late Friday or the weekend before the company knows if the procedure known as a top kill has cut off the oil that has been flowing for five weeks.
As the world waited, President Barack Obama announced major new restrictions on drilling projects, and the head of the federal agency that regulates the industry resigned under pressure, becoming the highest-ranking political casualty of the crisis so far.
BP PLC insisted the top kill was progressing as planned, though the company acknowledged drilling mud was escaping from the broken pipe along with the leaking crude.
"The fact that we had a bunch of mud going up the riser isn’t ideal but it’s not necessarily indicative of a problem," said spokesman Tom Mueller.
Early Thursday, officials said the process was going well, but later in the day they announced pumping had been suspended 16 hours earlier. BP did not characterize the suspension as a setback, and Eric Smith, associate director of the Tulane Energy Institute, said the move did not indicate the top kill had failed.
"The good news is that they pumped in up to 65 barrels a minute and the thing didn’t blow apart," Smith said. "It’s taken the most pressure it needs to see and it’s held together."
The top kill is the latest in a string of attempts to stop the oil that has been spewing since the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon exploded April 20. Eleven workers were killed.
If the procedure works, BP will inject cement into the well to seal it permanently. If it doesn’t, the company has a number of backup plans. Either way, crews will continue to drill two relief wells, considered the only surefire way to stop the leak… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <Bay Ledger>
Hope that the well can be plugged tops my list, but more important, long term, are the new regulations.
The extension of a moratorium on offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico will not affect 591 deepwater wells that are already producing oil and gas, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Thursday, nor will it affect the operations of 4,515 producing wells in relatively shallow waters.
However, the moratorium will stop work at 33 offshore drilling rigs that are prospecting for petroleum in water deeper than 500 feet. Operators of those exploratory deepwater rigs will be ordered to stop their operations as soon as they arrive at a safe point to secure their wells, Salazar said.
There is no moratorium on exploration in waters shallower than 500 feet. However, they must meet additional safety requirements and inspections before proceeding.
The moratorium, initially for 30 days, was extended for six months as a result of the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horzion offshore drilling rig and the oil spill that has spewed millions of gallons of oil each day into the gulf since.
Salazar said that once the moratorium has passed, offshore drilling will require certification of all blowout preventers, stronger procedures for keeping wells under control, a tougher inspection process, and expanded safety and training requirements for rig workers.
“These actions are all guided by the need to take a cautious approach to offshore oil and gas development as we strengthen safety and oversight of offshore oil and gas operations,” Salazar said. “Some of these measures we can implement immediately, others will take some time.”
As for future leasing in the Gulf of Mexico , Salazar said much depends on what a presidential commission concludes in the coming months.
Salazar acknoweldged that the Obama administration had been operating under "a mistaken assumption" when it called for more offshore drilling in March.
“The assumption I had made in putting together that plan was that these activities could move forward in a safe way,” he said. “That assumption is obviously an assumption that was mistaken, given the evidence we have seen from the Deepwater Horizon, and that is why the decision to put the pause button on deepwater exploration until these safety evaluations can be made is absolutely the right decision.”… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <McClatchy DC>
In my opinion, this does not go far enough. If we are to allow any deep water drilling at all, a proposition about which I am most dubious, we must require that relief wells be drilled simultaneously, paced so that future blowouts can be sealed in hours, not months.
Overall the best coverage I saw yesterday came from Keith Olbermann.
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Personally, Obama satisfied me that he is taking responsibility and acting in our best interests. To a large extent, his initial response was mandated by oil-spill legislation passed under GHW Bush.
As for BP, this will increase your anger.
After reports that a BP "company man" overruled workers for the oil rig company Transocean on a key safety procedure prior to an explosion which set the rig aflame and sinking into the Gulf of Mexico, a senior BP official that was on the rig when it exploded has told investigators he will invoke his Fifth Amendment right not to testify in the case.
"One of BP’s company men on the Deepwater Horizon when it exploded, Robert Kaluza, has declined to testify before the investigative panel in Kenner, citing his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself, the Coast Guard said," according to the New Orleans Times Picayune. "Kaluza was scheduled to testify Thursday in the joint U.S. Coast Guard and Minerals Management Services hearings in Kenner."
The Louisiana paper also said a second BP official, Donald Vidrine, told the Coast Guard he couldn’t testify Thursday because of "illness."… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <Raw Story>
Let criminal prosecutions of BP executives begin!
Corporations are NOT people! Money is NOT speech!
4 Responses to “Major Developments on GOP Gulf Gusher”
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I agree with 100% here TC. I go further… while I was relieved by the President taking full responsibility for this incident’s resolution… I am still stunned at the hamhanded, numbskulled way the White House handled this as the days passed with this foulness spilling. It gave the impression of a corporate politic ethic… responding under orders from BP and the lack of science leading on this just absolutely stuns me further. NOW, after the outrage of the public… does this get resolved by the President? I’m not a ‘progressive’ voter or political enthusiast… I’m Green, LIBERAL commie pinko kind of gal I guess, old hippie… and I’m finding out that my kind of action based suggestions through this have kinda pissed off Obama supporting friends. That’s too bad. This is a global tragedy. The traveling dead zones it will create in the ocean might be the trigger for ‘game over’ kind of endings. That’s just real. Calling the White House and your Reps / Senators is how to take action. I’ve signed onto Gumbo / Limbo and our local green group collectives who are anticipating the eventual crude arriving on our shores… shortly. I’m on the east coast of south FL. Our seagrasses in the Dry Tortugas just beyond the Keys will be destroyed. Reefs… oh, I know you know… and I’m making myself cry here. But TC
I agree with you.
Good articles and insights on your part.
🙂
Thanks Gwen. Although Obama’s response to the crisis itself is what it should have been, he certainly bungled the PR aspect of it. Perhaps he was so fixated on the problem, he failed to take the time to properly inform people what he was doing and why. I also think he was gullible (along with most of us) in believing the oil companies that they had plans in place to deal with an accident quickly and safely. Perhaps he should have dedicated more time to it before it happened, but given that he inherited two wars, a financial crisis, a jobs crisis, an income disparity crisis, a health care crisis, a global climate change crisis, and an immigration crisis from the GOP, perhaps he has been just too busy putting out fires to sniff for smoke.
I hope and pray that your area is spared. I understand that the loop current is not behaving as normally right now, which is why you have been so far.
“I am responsible.” You would never hear Bush say that.
This is a heartbreaking experience, but we have to have confidence that Obama and his team are doing everything they possible can at this point.
That’s the way I see it, Lisa. Under Bush, Halliuburton would have received a no-bid contract to clean it up at a cost of $1 billion per mile of beach. Cost overruns would increase the to $2 billion/mile, no beach would be cleaned, and the taxpayers would be charged for more miles than the US has coastline in all fifty states,