Earth Environment Underground

US history. BP has not been proved to be to blame for the Gulf of Mexico rig explosion that killed 11 men and caused a political furore, but it has been legally held to account for its Texas City refinery explosion in 2005 that led to 15 deaths. One source close to BP said the company was preparing to accelerate lobbying against the proposed bill, arguing that it is “punitive towards a single company” and “unconstitutional”. The British Embassy in Washington has made its objections known to both the White House and members of Congress. A British diplomat said: “This is a disturbing piece of legislation. We are concerned about the constitutionality of targeting a particular company, while it also sends a worrying signal to European markets that protectionism is alive and kicking on parts of Capitol Hill. “Congress should know that Europe would not sit idly by if these measures are implemented.” The White House is also understood to be concerned by the more provocative elements of the law, but remains sanguine they will not survive into the bill’s final version. A rival bill being debated in the Senate does not contain the same provisions, and this house usually has the upper hand in finalising legislation. The developments are nevertheless an indication that pressure on BP is not falling away, despite the fact it has now capped the Gulf of Mexico oil leak…. Read ahead

Source: telegraph.co.uk

Latest at telegraph.co.uk

• BP faces critical day as it seeks to seal Gulf of Mexico’s Macondo well
• BP preparing to seal leaking Gulf of Mexico oil well ‘for good’
• Korea National Oil Corporation plans to retain Dana Petroleum staff if £1.7bn takeover is agreed
• Britain slams ‘unconstitutional’ plan to ban BP from drilling in US
• US petrol stations to consider banishing BP from the pumps
• Dana Petroleum agrees to meet Koreans to discuss £1.7bn deal
• BP’s evaporating oil slick leaves America without a villain

NEW ORLEANS – The only thing keeping millions more gallons of oil out of the Gulf of Mexico right now is a rush job: an experimental cap that has held for more than two weeks but was never meant to be permanent. As soon as this week, crews will … Read ahead

Source: news.yahoo.com

Gulf. But marine scientists now fear that colorless, odorless natural gas that escaped from the ruptured well is also destroying the delicate ocean ecosystems—and BP might never be held accountable for the damage this "invisible villain" causes. Investigations have so far indicated that the rig explosion was caused by natural gas—likely triggered when a highly pressurized surge of gas shot up through the well and ignited when it came into contact with machinery. But in the aftermath, the role all this gas—some 40 percent of what is escaping from the well—will play in the destruction of marine life has seldom been discussed. … Read ahead

Source: motherjones.com

Latest at motherjones.com

• Methyl hydrate
• Oh oh, you won’t believe this one.
• The Supreme Court gave the ruling on Valdez spill
• Who Knows?
• chesapeake bay
• is this the cause for the
• Who’s ‘Invisible gas’ ?

Testimony from today’s hearings seemed to indicate the same: Ronald Sepulvado, a BP well site leader, testified that weeks before the explosion on the rig, leaks were found on a control pod of the blowout preventer—an important safety device that failed to stop the disaster. (Earlier hearings revealed that one of the two control pods also had a … Read ahead

Source: propublica.org

Latest at propublica.org

• Lobbyists Promote Asbestos Use in the Developing World
• In Financial Regulation Bill, Increased Transparency for Loan Mod Program
• The Transocean Testimony You Didn’t Hear Today
• Loan Mod Backlogs Continue Despite Servicers’ Pledges to Improve
• Stealing Our Stories Just Got Easier
• Federal Agencies Bolster Transparency Plans
• Worker: BP Didn’t Stop Drilling After Leaks on Blowout Preventer

NEW ORLEANS — Robotic submarines working a mile underwater removed a leaking cap from the gushing Gulf oil well Saturday, starting a painful trade-off: Millions more gallons of crude will flow freely into the sea for at least two days until a new seal can be mounted to capture all of it. There’s no guarantee for such a delicate operation almost a mile below the water’s surface, officials said, and the permanent fix of plugging the well from the bottom remains slated for mid-August. “It’s not just going to be, you put the cap on, it’s done. It’s not like putting a cap on a tube of toothpaste,” Coast Guard spokesman Capt. James McPherson said. Robotic submarines removed the cap that had been placed on top of the leak in early June to collect the oil and send it to surface ships for collection or burning. BP aims to have the new, tighter cap in place as early as Monday and said that, as of Saturday night, the work was going according to plan. If tests show it can withstand the pressure of the oil and is working, the Gulf region could get its most significant piece of good news since the April 20 explosion on the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig, which killed 11 workers. “Over the next four to seven days, depending on how things go, we should get that sealing cap on. That’s our plan,” said Kent Wells, a BP senior vice president, of the round-the-clock operation. It would be only a temporary solution to the catastrophe that the federal government estimates has poured between 87 million and 172 million gallons of oil into the Gulf as of Saturday. Hope for permanently plugging the leak lies with two relief wells, the first of which should be finished by mid-August. With the cap removed Saturday at 12:37 p.m. CDT, oil flowed freely into the water, collected only by the Q4000 surface vessel, with a capacity of about 378,000 gallons. That vessel should be joined Sunday by the Helix Producer, which has more than double the Q4000’s capacity. But the lag could be long enough for as much as 5 million gallons to gush into already fouled waters. Officials said a fleet of large skimmers was scraping oil from the surface above the well site. The process begun Saturday has two major phases: removing equipment currently on top of the leak and installing new gear designed to fully contain the flow of oil. BP began trying Saturday afternoon to remove the bolted top flange that only partially completed the seal with the old cap. Video images showed robotic arms working to unscrew its bolts. Wells said that could last into Monday depending on whether the flange can be pulled off from above, as BP hopes. If not, a specially designed tool will be used to pry apart the top and bottom flanges. Once the top flange is removed, BP has to bind together two sections of drill pipe that are in the gushing well head. Then a 12-foot-long piece of equipment called a flange transition spool will be lowered and bolted over it. The second piece of pipe inside the well head came as something of a surprise, and raises the possibility that one of the sections of pipe became jammed in the Deepwater Horizon’s blowout preventer, though which the well pipes run. The failure of the blowout preventer, a massive piece of equipment designed to stop the unchecked flow of oil, is partly to blame for the size of the spill. “That will be an important question to ask when we pull the blowout preventer up to the surface and we’ll figure out where that pipe ultimately landed,” Wells said. After the flange transition spool is bolted in place, the new cap — called a capping stack or “Top Hat 10″ — can be lowered. The equipment, weighing some 150,000 pounds, is designed to fully seal the leak and provide connections for new vessels on the surface to collect oil. The cap has valves that can restrict the flow of oil and shut it in, if it can withstand the enormous pressure. That will be one of the key items for officials to monitor, said Paul Bommer, a professor of petroleum engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. “If the new cap does work and they shut the well in, it is possible that part of the well could rupture if the pressure inside builds to an unacceptable value,” Bommer wrote in an e-mail Saturday. Ultimately, BP wants to have four vessels collecting oil within two or three weeks of the new cap’s installation. If the new cap doesn’t work, BP is ready to place a backup similar the old one on top of the leak. The government estimates 1.5 million to 2.5 million gallons of oil a day are spewing from the well, and the previous cap collected about 1 million gallons of that. With the new cap and the new containment vessel, the system will be capable of capturing 2.5 million to 3.4 million gallons — essentially all the leaking oil, officials said. The plan, which was accelerated to take advantage of a window of good weather lasting seven to 10 days, didn’t inspire confidence in the residents of the oil-slicked coast. “This is probably the sixth or seventh method they’ve tried, so, no, I’m not optimistic,” said Deano Bonano, director of emergency preparedness for Jefferson Parish. On Saturday he was inspecting beaches at Grand Isle lined with protective boom and bustling with heavy equipment used to scoop up and clean stained sand. “Even if they turn it off today, we’ll still be here at least another six weeks, on watch for the oil,” he said. “Shutting off the oil is a very important step, but we should not assume this disaster is over,” said Larry Schweiger, president of the National Wildlife Federation. “I think it’s important to recognize that there’s an enormous amount of oil still in the Gulf.” ___ Associated Press Writer Holbrook Mohr in Belle Chase, La. contributed to this report. … Read ahead

Source: chron.com

Latest at chron.com

• LA Grim Sleeper suspect had 4-decade arrest record
• Oil unleashed temporarily in attempt to contain it
• GOP candidate Angle to rally GOP against Reid
• 2 Hungarian boat crash victims remembered in Pa.
• In spy swap, agents were pawns in a practiced game
• FAA tells airlines to fix cockpit window heaters
• FAA tells airlines to fix cockpit window heaters

Truth is certainly sometimes stranger than fiction. For instance, does this seem real? In the 1970s, a board game was created for an oil company known at the time as British Petroleum. In that game, called “BP Offshore Oil Strike”, players build oil rigs and drill off coastlines and in open water. Then, when the rig explodes, they have to pay a fine and clean it up. Sounds like a fun game, right? … Read ahead

Source: treehugger.com

Latest at treehugger.com

• Healthier Office Spaces Benefit Everyone
• Stock Value Makes The Politics Of BP’s Gusher Local – Far From The Gulf
• Elle Macpherson Says She Uses Rhino Horn Medicine
• Waxman Tells Obama To Just Say No To Tar Sands Pipeline
• Good Instructions for Preserving the Beach While Enjoying it
• What Is Sustainable Development & Why Is Defining It Key to Our Future?
• Journalists Covering BP Spill Now Face Felonies, $40K Fines

The X Prize Foundation announced today that it is developing a multimillion-dollar “oil spill cleanup X challenge” to come up with solutions to cleaning up shorelines and open water fouled by oil leaking from the BP Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico. … Read ahead

Source: good.is

Latest at good.is

• Why Corporations Should Be More Responsible
• [ object ]
• Entertaining an Argument Against the Plastic Bag Ban
• FDA Takes One Step Forward, One Step Backward
• Would You Drive this Car?
• Great News: An X Prize for Oil Cleanup
• Should Teachers Friend Their Students?

Friday marked the 60th day since the Deepwater Horizon rig began hemorrhaging oil into the Gulf of Mexico, and the topic took up much of our fact-checking efforts this week. Here’s a summary of our latest fact-checks on statements made about the oil spill. You can read all of our fact-checks on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill on our … Read ahead

Source: politifact.com

Latest at politifact.com

• Rick Barber: “Without representation, (the IRS) can increase taxes.”
• Barack Obama: “Oil companies showered regulators (at the Minerals Management Service) with gifts and favors, and were essentially allowed to conduct their own safety inspections and write their own regulations.”
• Jim DeMint: “Ninety-four percent of the bills that pass the Senate have no debate, no vote, no amendments, no reading of the bill, no online disclosure.”
• Barack Obama: “I’ve issued a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling.”
• Edward Markey: “Right now every single one of the (oil) companies here today and dozens of others are drilling for free in the Gulf of Mexico on leases that will cost American taxpayers more than $50 billion in lost royalties.”
• Bart Stupak: “While Exxon Mobil has 40 pages on its media response strategy, its plan for resource protection is only five pages long and its plan for oil removal is just nine pages long.”
• J.D. Hayworth: John McCain “voted against the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, wrongly claiming they helped only the rich.”

BP PLC’s 582-page regional spill plan for the Gulf, and its 52-page, site-specific plan for the Deepwater Horizon rig are riddled with omissions and glaring errors, according to an Associated Press analysis that details how BP officials have pretty much been making it up as they go along. The lengthy plans approved by the federal government last year before BP drilled its ill-fated well vastly understate the dangers posed by an uncontrolled leak and vastly overstate the company’s preparedness to deal with one. … Read ahead

Source: nola.com

Oil complicates forecasts on hurricane season eve Buzz up! Send Email IM Share Facebook Twitter Delicious Digg Fark Newsvine Reddit StumbleUpon Technorati Yahoo! Bookmarks Print … Read ahead

Source: news.yahoo.com