Bye-Bye Tony Sunday: July 25 BP Oil Spill Update

1. Oilcast.

The midday Situation Report issued yesterday by the state of Florida noted:

The NOAA oil plume model shows the oil plume 90 miles from Pensacola, and 160 miles from Panama City. Florida is not expected to receive direct oil impacts through at least Monday, scattered tarball fields already nearshore may continue to be carried onshore along the panhandle coast.

The state's situation report also announced that the "the removal of tier 1 and tier 2 boom has been halted."

2. Hayward Out at BP.

The BBC is reporting this morning that BP chief executive Tony Hayward is "negotiating his exit from the company." A formal announcement that he will soon have his life back is expected in the next 24 hours.

The BBC also is reporting that "Oil giant BP has confirmed it will begin drilling off the Libyan coast in the next few weeks." This culminates BP's three-year effort to strong-arm the British government into agreeing to release the convicted Lockerbie bomber and then muddling the international scandal by passing responsibility around like a hot potato.

During Hayward's tenure as Chief Executive Officer he managed to kill at least 11 of his employees, poison the Gulf of Mexico, compile more than 700 safety violations at its Texas refinery, spill over 45,000 gallons of oil in Alaska, and subvert the British justice system.

How big an exit bonus do you suppose that earned him, according to the standards of today's corporate business world?

3. Ships Return.

Also at midday yesterday, Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen "ordered the ships that had left BP's broken well in the Gulf of Mexico back to the area so they could resume work as soon as possible." Rebecca Mowbray in todays' New Orleans Times-Picayune quotes him saying, "Within 24 hours we should have most of the vessels back on scene."

USA Today summarizes Allen's remarks at a press briefing as estimating "It could be Friday before workers can start "'static kill.'" Drilling of the relief well may not resume until Monday.

Altogether, former T. S. Bonnie's feint toward the coast "cost BP a week of work in shutting down the well," Rebecca Mowbray reports.

4. Tropical Effects.

Cammy Clark of the Miami Herald writes in a dispatch also carried by McClatchy News that the storm caused more like a "7- to 9-day delay in completing the ultimate fix" of a relief well. According to NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco, however, "the storm's wave action of up to 8 feet in the northern Gulf will churn the oil, spreading what's left of the surface oil slicks and breaking tar balls up into smaller parts that will biodegrade more quickly."

Clark reports Lubchenco also gave it as her opinion that Bonnie's lingering effects in the Gulf "could drive some oil into marshes and bayous and onto beaches." Or, Lubchenco says, maybe "its counter-clockwise rotation also could move some oil away from the coastlines."

That Jane Lubchenco. She's such a big help, isn't she?

5. Go Fish.

Late last week Lubchenco's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced the re-opening of 26,388 square miles of the Gulf to commercial and recreational fishing. The NOAA press release says the reopened area constitutes "a third of the [previously] overall closed area." (Click map, left)

The reopened area, however, is quite a haul from the northern Gulf coast. It lies some "190 miles southeast of the Deepwater/BP wellhead." NOAA says "the area where the majority of fishing will occur is about 220 miles from the wellhead, along the west Florida shelf."

Lubchenco, whose credibility was damaged when she and BP jointly "denounced" marine researchers' early reports of undersea lakes of dispersed oil which later proved correct, said in the statement released Thursday, "We are confident that seafood caught in this area is, and will continue to be, free from contamination."

Or, knowing Lubchenco's 'What Me Worry?' attitude, maybe it won't.

6. Turtle Nest Rescue.

A Mobile, Ala., citizen journalist at the experimental Examiner.com site reported yesterday that "the first Kemp's ridley sea turtle nest was excavated" from Fort Pickens National Seashore Park two days ago. The delicate operation, "took place at 6:00 p.m. EDT on Friday as part of the multi-agency effort to retrieve thousands of turtle eggs from the Gulf Coast and relocate them... ."

The eggs will be incubated at a secure NASA facility near Cape Canaveral. Once they hatch, the baby turtles will be released along the east coast of Florida. This should give them a better chance of survival than if they entered the Gulf waters polluted by the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Our own Barrier Island Girl has a much more entrancing report -- with lots of pictures, too. Everyone who is anyone in the local media was present (click above left). As an added bonus, Barrier Island Girl has a stunning portrait of the mother Kemp's ridley turtle. But what's she doing in the middle of a blacktop road?

7. Registration for Primary Elections.

Monday July 26 is the last day for Floridians to register as voters in the upcoming August 24 primary. Click here for information on how to register -- including how to register by email.