Pensacola Beach Blog

On Sabbatical

2010-09-22T08:40:00.000-05:00

Friends, family, bloggers, an antagonist or two, and even spam artists are wondering whatever has become of Beach Blogger? Apologies are due all around. Consider us as groveling for your forgiveness.

We're very well, thank you for asking, and as happy, sassy, and cynical as ever.

We originally intended to take a short time off. But after a much too-abbreviated respite in a couple of westerly locations, we squarely confronted the reality that BP's oil spill had shoved another project of ours onto a back burner, and far too long at that. All in all, we lost three months on a looming deadline.

We blame Tony Hayward and BP, of course. If Ken Feinberg thinks he's seen some dicey damage claims, wait until he gets ours for missing the entry deadline for the Fredrick Jackson Turner award.

Our blogging compadre, Barrier Island Girl, wistfully sighs through an email she sent us the other day that it looks like we've 'taken back our life.' Not quite. We've just imprisoned it inside another passion for the time being.

Wait a bit more. Blogging will resume shortly, though it likely will be light. In the meantime, we recommend you consult our blogging neighbors Why Now? and Barrier Island Girl. They're both superb.

Disappearing Thursday: July 29 BP Oil Spill Update

2010-07-29T13:43:00.003-05:00

1. Oilcast.

Another interactive web tool, this one developed by the State Emergency Response Team (SERT) for the Florida Division of Emergency Management's FloridaDisaster.org, says today:

Winds over Florida waters are expected to be out of the northwest in the morning, shifting out of a general west direction in the afternoon from Wednesday through Friday. Winds should be 15 knots or less within 60 miles of the coastline each day, with waves less than 3 feet.

Rain chances will begin to increase again on Thursday and Friday to around 30-40% each day through the weekend. Heat indices will be near 100-105 degrees along the shoreline through the next several days, though some isolated areas may reach as high as 108.

In another s ection of the web site the state division says:

Although sporadic sightings of tar balls may continue, Florida’s shoreline is not expected to receive additional impacts over the next 72 hours.

2. Towing Boom.

Nevertheless, yesterday we saw one small boat hauling about 300-400 feet of boom behind it, heading for the entrance to Pensacola Bay (click above). Nearby, two shrimp boats looked like they were getting into position to skim any oil.

3. Disappearing Tourists.

Jim Snyder of Bloomberg News reported late last night that although only Florida's four panhandle counties have been directly affected by BP's oil spill, "Florida’s claims for spill damage are surpassing those from other Gulf States that have suffered more direct physical damage."

Florida filed 32,762 claims through last week, topping No. 2 Louisiana by more than two thousand, said Scott Dean, a spokesman for [BP].

Because of Florida’s heavier dependence on beach tourism, it will take the biggest hit in dollars from the spill, a study commissioned by the U.S. Travel Association found.

The state will lose $7.6 billion, a 13 percent decline, if the accident’s impact lasts 15 months and $18.6 billion, a drop of 14 percent, if it lingers for 36 months, according to the study by Oxford Economics, a U.K. economics firm. The percentage declines will be greater for Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, Oxford Economics said.

From all appearances, it looks like claims by Floridians soon will be mounting even higher. One business journal reports that many more Florida business owners "have BP in their sights and plan to seek compensation." What's more, it appears these are all businesses based in south Florida, which has yet to see any direct impact from the oil spill. The report is based on data collected from "businesses... located in Sarasota, Lee/Collier, Manatee, Pinellas and Hillsborough counties."

4. Disappearing Claims.

Good luck with that. As the Sun-Sentinel reports the newly appointed administrator of the $20 billion BP trust fund, Kenneth Feinberg, told Congress yesterday that while public "perception" may be a compensable injury for a business that is losing tourist income, "every business that loses money as an indirect result of the spill may not be compensated."

[T]hose more directly affected and relatively close to the spill would be eligible.

"I will have to draw some lines on eligibility," [Feinberg] said. "The lines will be based on proximity to the beach and the (individual’s or company’s) dependence on natural resources for fishing or whatever."

"Actual physical damage to property is not required," he said.

"If the perception harms a hotel on the beach, even if there’s no damage, that’s compensable. It’s another thing if the perception harms a hotel 70 miles inland."

The Sun-Sentinel's sense of this is that "businesses along the western Panhandle will get some BP money because of the devastation to its tourism industry. Those elsewhere in Florida -- even if they lose prospective visitors -- probably will not see compensation."

As for those who have weekend water-front cabins or other property within the oil zone, they also likely have a long and probably fruitless struggle ahead. One example was mentioned by NPR last night:

Preston Mayeaux, 59, knows where he would draw the line.

He walked into a BP claims center this week seeking compensation because, he says, the property value has plummeted at the small cabin he owns on Bayou John Charles. He says he can no longer enjoy summer weekends on the oily water.

"I lost my golden years that I wanted to be able to go to my fishing camp, and how do you put a price on that?" Mayeaux says. "I don't know how you put a price on that."

Apparently, neither did the BP claims official who Mayeaux says gave him a lot more pushback than sympathy. If BP's recklessness caused the spill, then he says people like him should be compensated.

To add to the attenuated nature of some claims is the fact that the economy was a mess well before the BP oil spill.

"We know there’s been an impact and loss," says one south Florida restauranteur, "but how do you show a difference when you’re measuring against a year of recession? Last year was such a bad year."

5. Disappearing Oil.

Not only tourists have disappeared. Apparently, so has about half of BP's oil spill.

We continue to find tarballs in sargasso washed up on the beach, or half-buried in the sand next to a cement piling at Ft. Pickens Park (see left) on the west end of Pensacola Beach -- just steps from a clean-up crew.

But over the length and breadth of the Gulf the new question seems to be, as David A. Fahrenthold and Leslie Tamura phrase the question for WaPo, "Where did all the oil go?"

Up to 4 million barrels (167 million gallons), the vast majority of the spill, remains unaccounted for in government statistics. Some of it has, most likely, been cleaned up by nature. Other amounts may be gone from the water, but they could have taken on a second life as contaminants in the air, or in landfills around the Gulf Coast.

And some oil is still out there -- probably mixed with chemical dispersants. Some scientists have described it floating in underwater clouds, which one compared to a toxic fog.

NOAA's administrator, the credibility-impaired Jane Lubchenco, says it's neither gone nor killing the Gulf. "The truth is in the middle," she asserts.

Relying on the latest estimate of the leak's total volume -- 60,000 barrels (2.5 million gallons) per day, at most -- then 5.2 million barrels may have escaped over 86 days. Of that, about 1.2 million barrels were either siphoned, burned or skimmed.
That would leave slightly less than 4 million barrels missing.

The best-case scenario is that much of this amount has been eaten by the gulf's natural stock of oil-munching microbes. Several scientists have said they are concerned that these microbes could cause their own problems, depleting the oxygen that gulf creatures need in the water.

It looks like we're about to witness a rematch between NOAA scientists versus the rest of the scientific community.

NOAA scientists have offered upbeat assessments of the oil that remains below the ocean's surface, saying they've seen significant concentrations only near the wellhead.

But other scientists, working for Gulf Coast universities, have reported finding large "clouds" of oil miles away from the site.

WaPo quotes Prof. Caz Taylor of Tulane University as saying, "We're so unsure of what's going on at this point," including whether the oil might hurt creatures that eat the crabs, Taylor said.

"The worrying thing," she adds, "is that we're seeing these droplets everywhere that we're sampling," from Galveston Bay, Tex., to Pensacola, Fla.

6. Disappearing BeachBlogger.

Speaking of disappearing, we'll be taking a break for a few days and leaving all the electronics and phones and tarballs behind. We'll be back toward the end of next week.

Pensacola Beach: BP Going Green

2010-07-29T13:41:00.002-05:00

We spent much of yesterday traipsing down the beach to Ft. Pickens and stopping along the way from time to time to talk with clean-up workers.

Some workers are more loquacious these days than formerly. Perhaps it's because they have fewer tarballs to pick up. More likely, it's because withering criticism has forced BP to relax what Mac McClelland called its "gag order" on clean-up workers.

Green for Clean

Yesterday, one thing stood out for us: clean-up worker uniforms are going green. BP green, in many instances.

Going "clean for Gene" even today is a phrase that denotes a remarkable turn-around in American history, public opinion, and politics. Cutting off that long hair in 1968 to work for Eugene McCarthy elevated anti-war activism to a politically acceptable level and brought down a war president.

As Prof. Joshua I. Miller has argued at some length, "Fashion affects citizens’ perceptions of one another, and therefore influences their political bonds." [Miller, "Fashion and Democratic Relationships," 37 Polity 3, 5 (January, 2005).] It's as true today as it was forty-two years ago.

Time was when BP's clean-up crews dressed like work release prisoners, as in the snapshot we took in the bad old days of early June at Navarre Beach (above left).

A month or so later, blazing orange vests predominated. Orange is a color that fairly shouts "Look out! Danger! Emergency!" It fascinates herons, apparently (below), but it's a definite turn-off for beach visitors looking to relax by the sea.

Over the past few weeks, however, a sartorial transition in BP clean-up crews seems to have been gaining momentum. For one thing, new T-shirts are coming off the looms, proudly emblazoned with the words, "Qualified Community Responder" (below).

It seems not everyone gets one, however. We'd like to think that's because they can be worn only by those who have received superior training so as to qualify for such a snazzy T-shirt. But a reliable source tells us it's because there is presently a severe shortage of the new uniforms.

"They're making them as fast as they can," one supervisor told us confidentially. "We expect a new shipment any time."

As a result, at least for awhile longer we're likely to see scenes like this one, below, with one worker decked out in BP's dernier cri and another still saddled with last month's out-dated duds.

The Psychology of Green

It's all a PR stunt, of course. The purpose is to put the minds of beach-goers at ease; or, preferably, completely asleep.

Business consultants consider green to be a "calming color... that's very pleasing to the senses."

Dark forest green is associated with terms like conservative, masculine and wealth. Hospitals use light green rooms because they too are found to be calming to patients. It is also the color associated with envy, good luck, generosity and fertility. It is the traditional color of peace, harmony, comfortable nurturing, support and well paced energy.

British Petroleum undoubtedly hopes that something in between dark and light green -- we'll call it "BP green" -- is the best color to make you soporific and insensible to any disaster that is transpiring around you.

Someone, somewhere at BP is battling back against the hilarious, mocking caricatures of BP's logo, such as those here.... and here... and here, among dozens of others sites. When the entire art world burlesques your logo, your corporate image is in mortal danger. Or, so we imagine the PR types suppose who focus on superficialities.

BP Fashion Accessories

On the beach this week we saw signs that BP's PR department is counter-punching with more than just green T-shirts. Everything is turning green.

Clean up crews increasingly accessorize with green clean-up crew dune buggies....

Beach scrapers are becoming green...

More clean-up crew road graders are transitioning from last month's Caterpillar yellow (insert, below) to John Deere green...

Even green porta-potties, increasingly, stand sentry where once they were yellow, tan, and blue...

The endless stream of white vans is still visible, as it was two months ago:

But we have no doubt that John Deere can help BP with that, too. If not, then soon enough we'll probably be seeing fleets of Japanese-built green Scions taking their place.

It's also a good bet that somewhere in London an army of lawyers is hard at work trying to figure out if there's some way to get worldwide trademark protection on BP's particular shade of green. With that, they just might be able to put the entire world to sleep even as the Gulf of Mexico dies, the Earth grows warmer, and our dependence on carbon-based fossil fuels renders the planet completely uninhabitable.

BP Anniversary: Wednesday July 28 BP Oil Spill

2010-07-28T17:22:00.001-05:00

1. Oilcast

The interactive GeoPlatform, a superior tool developed by the University of New Hampshire and NOAA, today is showing mostly "light oiling" along Santa Rosa Island over the next seventy-two hours. You can reconfigure the display yourself if you're interested in other areas of the Gulf Coast or other indices.

2. 100 Days.

All the news organizations are noting that today marks the one hundredth day anniversary of the explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling platform. As George Altman of the Mobile Register describes it:

Exactly 100 days ago, the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, killing 11 people and spawning what has been called the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history. Federal officials say they could permanently plug the broken oil well in a matter of weeks, but even if they are successful, an enormous recovery project still lies ahead.

The Economist magazine, which loves to chart all kinds of stuff, last week added the BP oil catastrophe to the long list of other 'worst' peacetime oil spills in history. (See below). Even if one accepts the London-based magazine's British-friendly low-ball estimate of the total barrels of BP oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico -- and discounts the magazine's inexplicable obliviousness to the ongoing Nigerian oil disaster -- BP wins the dubious distinction of the world's worst oil polluter, tarball-blackened hands down.

3. Size and Amount Matter.

Skytruth yesterday posted a different sort of chart, one showing that "cumulatively, the surface oil slicks and sheen observed on ... satellite images directly impacted 68,000 square miles of ocean - as big as the state of Oklahoma."

What we find more interesting, however, are charts showing how much in wealth all these momentous oil spills have cost the human species. A year and a half ago, Jeff Siegel was marking the anniversary of what was then, in some circles, considered the world's worst oil spill -- the Exxon Valdez disaster. ["You've Come a Long Way, Baby"]

Siegel's calculations show the cumulative cost of twenty notable oil spills, adjusted for inflation, totalled $41,142,623,500. Yesterday, British Petroleum nearly doubled that amount when it announced it had a second quarter loss of $17.2 billion and is setting aside another $15 billion to cover projected charges against future earnings. The $32 billion total quite likely could rise, BP's chairman of the board told Barron's yesterday. And, he's strangely optimistic no fines for gross negligence will add to the total.

As Seigel's article begs to be asked, how much better off would we and the warming earth be if that money had been poured into alternatives to carbon-based fossil fuels?

4. Long Term Recovery.

It's clear that we won't know the full cost of BP's criminal negligence for decades to come. As McClatchy News reports Minnesota attorney Bill O'Neill, who handled Exxon Valdez lawsuits for fishermen and businesses, told a Senate committee yesterday, "The inability to know the impacts of the spill are inherent in oil spills. In three or four years, you're still not going to know what the impact of the spill is."

BP's newly designated CEO, Robert Dudley, said in a conference call with reporters yesterday that "he hopes 'five years from now' people will look back and conclude his company acted with "incredible corporate responsibility to a very tragic accident." But attorney O'Neill points out that it took many more years than that in Alaska to verify that some local fisheries there could never recover. And another witness, a native of Cordova, Alaska, says it took fifteen years for his town to recover economically.

As Oceana.org points out in a fact sheet, BP's Deepwater Horizon catastrophe released "an oil spill the size of Exxon Valdez" every 4 to 7 days over the course of the last three months. Some 21 years later in Alaska --

there are still two species that continue to be listed as “not recovered,” these are the Pacific herring and pigeon guillemot. There are ten species that are still “recovering”, including sea otters, killer whales, clams, and mussels. Commercial fishing, recreation and tourism are among the “human services” still listed as “recovering.” The ten species listed as “recovered” include bald eagles, pink and sockeye salmon and harbor seals. There are five resources listed as “unknown,” including the cutthroat trout, rockfish and subtidal communities.

5. Gulf Spill Legislation.

Even without knowing how long or deep will be the effects of BP's oil spill, both the U.S. House and the Senate are considering legislation that would "toughen regulations on offshore drilling," the Times Picayune reports. Late is better than never, we suppose.

The New York Times reprints an article from Greenwire by Katie Howell and Robin Bravender that identifies a number of near-identical provisions in the two bills:

"Both measures require drillers to beef up their oil spill response plans that are filed before drilling begins."
Both would write into statutory law the regulatory restructuring of MMS announced over a month ago by the Interior Department;
"The two bills would raise the liability limits for oil companies responsible for spills." The Senate does this cleanly by eliminating the current $75 million liability limitation for oil; the House bill merely would authorize a president to raise the cap.
"Both measures would grant the presidential commission tasked with investigating the oil spill subpoena power to conduct its investigations and would increase funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund."
The Senate bill "would set up a multiagency oil spill research and development program is similar to a measure passed on the House floor last week (H.R. 2693 (pdf)). The House has also passed a version H.R. 5019 of the "Home Star" energy-efficiency retrofit program that is included in the Senate bill.

The House bill, which is scheduled for floor debate tomorrow, also includes an additional provision that would "that would ban companies that have suffered 10 or more deaths at offshore and onshore drilling facilities over the past seven years from getting new permits." Guess the name of the only corporation on planet earth which would be barred from the Gulf of Mexico under that bill.

Has anything been left out? Well for starters, as The Atlantic's Nicole Allan reports, almost everything good that once was in the proposed Senate energy bill.

[I]t includes none of the grand, carbon-slashing measures that phrase called to mind just weeks ago. Instead, the Clean Energy Jobs and Oil Company Accountability Act is a modest, contained package that gives a curt nod to climate advocates but focuses on responding to the BP oil spill.

Reid apparently couldn't get more than one measly Republican vote to assure that the original energy bill could be debated on the floor of the Senate. Together with the defection of a couple of ultra-conservative Democrats, that means he couldn't find the 60 votes out of 100 needed to defeat a threatened Republican filibuster.

6. BP vs. U.S. Senate.

No less than five friends and relatives sent me messages today pointing to Thomas Friedman's column which went on the web yesterday and which appears in today's print edition of the Times. In sum, he says, the Senate is a bigger threat to the Gulf of Mexico coastal ecosystem than BP Corp.

There are three things it should be doing for the gulf and our other vital ecosystems. First, taking out some minimal insurance against climate change by reducing our carbon emissions; this region is particularly vulnerable to sea level rise and the more intense storms that climate change will bring. Second, set us on a path to diminish our addiction to oil so we don’t have to drill in ever-deeper waters. And, finally, provide the federal funding to restore America’s critical ecosystems. The Senate abandoned the first two but is still working on the third.

To be clear, what Friedman means when he refers to the "Senate" is the minority of all Republican senators and two or three Democrats who are paid by the oil and coal industry to keep us addicted to carbon-based fuels until we choke on the carbon monoxide-fouled air or burn the planet to a cinder.

Senator Reid isn't responsible for that minority of nay-sayers being in the Senate. We are. All of us.

The voters in states like Louisiana, for example, who for years have sent mere tools of the oil industry to Washington to work assiduously for more offshore rigs and money -- and less barrier islands and beaches -- for that state. But the rest of us also share in the blame. We know too well how corrupt our election politics have become, yet we neglect to do anything about it.

A coalition of environmental organizations released a joint statement that puts the problem starkly:

As we witness the worst industry‐caused environmental catastrophe in our history,
the deadliest coal mining disaster in 40 years, and sweat through the hottest first 6
months of any year on record, there’s never been a more urgent time to move
forward with a clean energy and climate policy.

There’s no doubt that big oil, big coal, their army of lobbyists and their partners in
Congress are cheering the obstruction that blocked Senate action on clean energy
and climate legislation. Their cheers are cheers for China taking the lead in clean
energy jobs, the Middle East getting more of our money, and America getting more
pollution and fewer jobs.

At every opportunity, a minority of Senators who are in the pocket of America’s
largest polluters in the coal and oil industries chose obstruction over working
together to solve America’s energy and national security challenges. As a result of
their actions, the big polluters will continue to reap record profits at the expense of Americans.

Every decade for the last three decades has been a record-setter for global warmth. Photo plankton that feed the fish in the world's oceans are disappearing, mostly probably because of warming oceans. The fish won't be far behind.

If all of that and the BP catastrophe, too, can't wake us up what will it take?

Corporate Games Tuesday: July 27 BP Oil Spill Update

2010-07-27T07:37:00.007-05:00

"To put Hayward's failure down to tone-deaf PR "gaffes" is to suggest that appearances matter more than reality; that the superficial trumps substance."

-------------

1. Oilcast

Winds and water currents are projected to remain generally favorable "through Thursday," reads NOAA's surface oil forecast. However, as NOAA (above) and its Mobile Regional weather center are predicting for our locality, winds will be light southwesterly and westerly, for the most part. They will shift to a more welcome light northerly breeze by Wednesday.

The forecast direction could be better, but it is the seasonal norm. The relatively "light" strength of the winds is favorable. By Thursday midnight, Ocean Circulation Group 's latest animation shows offshore directional arrows coming at us from nearly every direction (screenshot below), albeit slowly and without much push.

2. Corporate Games.

As predicted, BP's Tony Hayward is officially out effective October "by mutual agreement," BBC News announced this morning. His reward? According to NPR this morning, a year's salary and benefits worth over $1.6 million million, an annual "pension pot" of at least $18 million which he can begin drawing at age 55, and a cushy "non-executive" job as director of its Russian joint venture.

That's more like an "up-fall" than a downfall. Everyone seems to putting it down to Hayward's "gaffes" and his failure at public relations. Rahm Emanuel, who plays Karl Rove to President Obama, even cracked this lame joke: "I think we can all conclude that Tony Hayward is not going to have a second career in PR consulting."

This is maddening. Hayward's fundamental mistake was that he failed at his job of seeing that a major oil company went about its business competently and within the law. Instead, he was the man in overall charge of an entity that killed eleven employees, disturbed the lives and livelihoods of millions of innocent victims, and endangered all sea life in the Gulf of Mexico.

To put Hayward's failure down to tone-deaf PR "gaffes" is to suggest that appearances matter more than reality; that the superficial trumps substance. Would we love Hayward any more after April 20 if he had uttered soporific apologies and cleverly conned us with false sympathy?

Corporations do not sympathize with anyone. By law they have but one job: to make money for their shareholders.

The current Supreme Court, by a vote of 5 to 4, may suppose that corporations are "persons" protected by our Constitution. If so, however, as Prof. Joel Balkan's work shows, they are deeply pathological 'persons' singularly interested in, and acting upon, one overriding desire. Like any other sociopath on the street, corporations want to get as much money as they can as fast as they can.

3. Hayward's Replacement.

We should bear that point in mind as Robert Dudley ascends to Hayward's job. Yesterday, instead, New York Times reporters Jad Mo uawad and Cliffor d Krauss dutifully transcribed without comment BP Corporation's hoped-for narrative in naming Dudley:

The planned appointment of an American to run the London-based company... would underscore how vital the United States has become to BP. About one-third of the company’s oil and gas wells, refineries and other business interests.* * *

Mr. Dudley, 54, who grew up in Mississippi and spent summers fishing and swimming on the gulf, has been in charge of BP’s response to the spill for the last month. Before that, he was best known for running the company’s joint venture in Russia, where he butted heads in 2008 with BP’s business partners and the Russian government over control of the operation.

As if a bucolic childhood or American citizenship makes any difference when working for an international corporation like BP. When one is employed by a pathological entity interested in just one thing, rearing and nationality mean nothing. Dudley's job isn't to be a good neighbor. His job is to achieve the corporation's singular objective without getting caught violating the law.

Focusing, as so much of the press has been doing, on Dudley's personality and lousy PR skills diverts our attention from substance to the superficial. Wake up, people. This isn't television, it's real life.

As the Pensacola News Journal editorializes today.

[T]he environmental and economic damage caused by BP — and the recent plunge into the financial abyss led by the big banks and investment houses — should wake us all up to just how tied together we are. The idea that BP or other big companies can be safely left alone to work their market "magic" should have gone down in flames with the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon and the incineration of the default credit swap era.
* * *
[R]egulations will never be an adequate replacement for the acceptance of ethical and moral responsibility for their actions on the part of large corporations. At some point they must understand that making more money each quarter cannot be the end-all, be-all of their existence. The economy is supposed to be about people improving their lives, not cutting any moral, environmental or economic-risk corner that gets in the way of next quarter's fiscal results.

3. Boom status.

We spent yesterday checking out a number of our favorite sites to see what changes, if any, the T.S. Bonnie emergency wrought.

Some booms are back, like Project Greenshores' boom in the northeast corner of Pensacola Bay (see left) and the booms protecting Dead Man's Island in Gulf Breeze (see below).

Others yesterday morning at Bayou Texar were nowhere to be seen. On the beach, the boom was still not replaced at the entrance to Little Sabine Bay, in Lafitte Cove, and across Pensacola Pass.

4. BP Newtown.

One thing that's back in full force are all the clean-up workers. We found so many of them encamped on the beach along the road to Ft. Pickens that it looked like a new village. Call it BP Newtown.

This is the new normal, apparently. To give you a sense of it, we tried to stitch together several photos of the scene we came upon just west of the entrance to Ft. Pickens National Seashore Park.

Our editing skills are minimal and our tools are crude and ancient, so the result shows the stitching. But click on the photo above to get a sense for how the clean-up crews' tents stretch for nearly a mile along the shore, as if they had been newly platted for residential homes.

5. Tarballs Ashore.

We weren't surprised to come across vast piles of seaweed (properly, sargasso) washed up along Ft. Pickens' beaches (see below). This is expected after the vigorous surf we had last week.

Click each photo to see a close-up.

What shocked us was all the oil evidence we found embedded in and around it. Oil tarballs cling to the sargasso and wash ashore with it. Perhaps a third of the individual weedy stalks we came across on a 2-mile stroll have oil clinging to them.

Almost as frequently, we found the two -- oil and sea grass -- lying next to each other.

Oil also is visible on beached driftwood and the seemingly ubiquitous plastic bottles that litter Gulf waters.

Unweathered, gooey oil tarballs with the tell-tale orange tint were as numerous as the black weathered tarballs. This tells us that much of the oil arrived underwater or is relatively new.

On the beach, the visible tarballs ranged from about the size of a postage stamp to as wide and thick as the palm of an adult male.

About a quarter mile west of the Ft. Pickens fishing pier, we happened upon a small group of divers. As they were emerging from the water, we asked if they'd spotted any underwater oil on their dive. "Don" said he'd seen "some" including one large tarball not far from shore. He gestured with his hands to demonstrate its size (below).

That, too, looks like part of the "new normal" we on the Gulf Coast will be experiencing for a very long time to come.

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

2010-07-25T06:19:00.005-05:00

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 researc hers' 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.

Subsea Saturday: July 24 BP Oil Leak Update

2010-07-24T12:33:00.003-05:00

1. Oilcast.

As the latest NOAA oilcast graphic shows (above), the surface of BP's oil lake visible in satellite photos presently is being pushed away from the Florida panhandle and toward the northwest, fouling more of the coastline of Louisiana where Bobby Jindal apparently welcomes it as an economic growth strategy:

Oil moving westward around the Mississippi Delta is collecting in the convergence line associated with the freshwater outflow -- this oil will continue moving westward threatening the Delta and shorelines west to Caillou Bay.

That doesn't mean we're in the clear, of course. Westerly winds and currents can, and eventually will, push it back toward us just as easily.

2. Bonnie Gone.

Former Tropical Storm Bonnie lost its status as a tropical storm and became a mere tropical depression overnight. The National Hurricane Center was saying early this morning, "Bonnie could degenerate into an area of low pressure... Warnings will likely be discontinued later this morning."

Two hours later NHC discontinued all warnings. Bonnie is gone. No storm, no depression, no Bonnie.

Here in Northwest Florida we barely noticed anything except high clouds and a very few abbreviated rain squalls. We happened to be in north Pensacola late yesterday afternoon and were caught in one weird, violent burst of a dust storm, followed by a ten-minute downpour. That was it.

By dinner time on the beach you could tell there had been enough rain to flood Via deLuna directly in front of the superior eatery, Florida Pizza. Then again, that often happens to this old section of Via deLuna, so it seems, even if there's been nothing more than a dewy morning.

3. Subsea Oil.

As Enid Sisskin has warned, danger lurks not just in the oil you see but in what you don't see. McClatchy News reports today,"researchers have definitively linked clouds of underwater oil in the northern Gulf of Mexico to BP's runaway Deepwater Horizon well... ."

This is the first comprehensive and irrefutable proof of a "link between the subsurface oil clouds commonly known as 'plumes' and the BP oil spill, USF officials said Friday."

The announcement came on the same day that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that its researchers have confirmed the existence of the subsea plumes at depths of 3,300 to 4,300 feet below the surface of the Gulf.
* * *
Together, the two studies confirm what in the early days of the spill was denied by BP and viewed skeptically by NOAA's chief — that much of the crude that gushed from the Deepwater Horizon well stayed beneath the surface of the water.

Most of the testing NOAA conducted was south of Louisiana, Mississippi, but at least one of the underwater plumes appears to be relatively close to Florida. "One layer was 100 feet thick; it was found 45 nautical miles north-northeast of the well site, officials said."

One of the maps included in NOAA's 73-page report (above left) shows confirmed underwater plumes were discovered due south and about one longitudinal degree west of Pensacola. NOAA may not have tested east of there.

At the University of South Florida, marine scientists' findings were said to be based on "water sampling using three separate technologies: an optical device that measures red backscatter; the ship’s sonar; and filtrations that trapped microscopic particles."

Lab tests of these trapped particles confirmed in early June that the particles were microscopic oil droplets suspended at depth. The recent Compound-Specific Isotope Analysis (CSIA) further confirmed that these suspended oil droplets matched BP MC252 oil.

A BP spokesman contacted by the Los Angeles Times, you will not be surprised to learn, pretended to complete ignorance:

"We have only seen media reports, and have not yet seen the report and underlying data," BP spokesman Phil Cochrane said in an e-mail.

A scientist at the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota says "the finding is important because oil that escaped from the mile-deep, blown-out well had been treated with dispersants... . It's more readily taken up and absorbed and ingested by marine animals," says Richard H. Pierce, director of Mote's Center for Ecotoxicology.

Although dispersed oil degrades more quickly over the long-run, in the short-term, it poses a more toxic threat to marine life, Pierce said.

The NOAA report is available to everyone (except, apparently, BP) right here. The University of South Florida report will be publicly released on Monday, McClatchy reports.

4. Asleep at the Switch

The Coast Guard's hearings in Louisiana about what caused the explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling platform are getting to be as exciting as Sam Ervin's Watergate hearings. Yesterday, Mike Williams, the New York Times reports,who was "the rig’s chief electronics technician... said the general safety alarm was habitually set to 'inhibited' to avoid waking up the crew with late-night sirens and emergency lights."

"They did not want people woke up at 3 a.m. from false alarms," Mr. Williams told the federal panel of investigators. Consequently, the alarm did not sound during the emergency, leaving workers to relay information through the loudspeaker system.
While it is not known whether it would have saved the workers who died in the April 20 disaster, the lack of a fully functioning alarm hampered the effort to safely evacuate the rig, Mr. Williams said.

Williams also testified to "several new details about the equipment on the rig, testifying that another Transocean official had turned a critical system for removing dangerous gas from the drilling shack to 'bypass mode.'"

When Mr. Williams questioned that decision, he said he was reprimanded.
“No, the damn thing’s been in bypass for five years,” he recalled being told by Mark Hay, the subsea supervisor. “Why’d you even mess with it?”

Other testimony at the hearing "addressed the role that shortcuts and mistakes played in compounding the rig’s troubles." These included mechanical errors, "390 repairs" left undone, and an incorrectly done test of emergency equipment that failed to detect a “kick of gas roughly an hour before the explosion."

5. Whither BP?

Overall, the evidence is mounting that not one of the oil drilling companies involved is without serious fault. All conspired to create a criminally negligent hot-dog culture that not only killed eleven workers but which put all life in the Gulf of Mexico at risk.

Can any of these leading corporations in the oil drilling industry survive the consequences of being caught? One expert we spoke with the other day was doubtful.

"I had a Ph.D. student who's now a higher up in the industry," he told us. "He's a top notch guy. He says BP is hurting financially and he doesn't expect it to survive another two years."

Derek Thompson for the estimable Grist Magazine found a bankruptcy wizard last month who agrees. "There is a reasonably high chance that BP could file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the next few years, or even months," he said. "[T]he result would be an 'absolute horror' for the government... ."

The prospect of a BP bankruptcy is not as crazy as you might think. Andrew Sorkin described why six weeks ago:

BP’s costs for the cleanup could run as high as $23 billion, according to Credit Suisse. On top of that, BP could face an additional $14 billion in claims from gulf fisherman and the tourism industry. So while conservative estimates put the bill at $15 billion, something approaching $40 billion is not out of the question. After all, little about this spill has turned out as expected.
The company has about $12 billion in cash and short-term investments, but there is already a debate about whether it should cut its dividend out of fear that it could run out of money. [It did - Beach Blogger] Of course, it could sell assets or seek loans, which in this environment is still not that easy.

As Zero Hedge Fund noted over a month ago, watching BP's common stock price doesn't necessarily give the clearest picture of BP's financial status. Think credit default swaps, the very kind of risky investment instruments that was the undoing of some of Wall Street's biggest securities firms and insurance companies.

[T]he real investing community is ever more carefully looking at the worst case, and its implications. Said implications would be vast, and in addition to wiping out billions in capital from BPs direct counterparties which are already limiting their BP exposure... would also impair indirect holders of pre-packaged securitized BP exposure.

Claims against BP for its part in the oil spill catastrophe now top $200 million. While that's a long way from the $20 billion pledge for a compensation fund which the White House exacted from the company, apparently no one has made public the actual documents setting up the fund. In connection with pending lawsuits, one federal judge has been asked to order a release of the details.

Today, fund administrator Kenneth Feinberg told an Alabama audience that he is concerned that "British energy giant BP Plc is holding up payments to economic victims of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill." He says he thinks it's more about needing documentation than having ready cash. We shall see.

Feinberg doesn't get his hands on the money until August. If then, we are tempted to say.

As one financial expert noted fifteen years ago, "Seeking shelter under the umbrella of the federal bankruptcy court has become an increasingly common corporate strategy in recent years." Take a quick trip down's bankruptcy's memory lane:

Cases such as Texaco, Wilson Foods, Continental, and others are some examples of solvent corporations using Chapter 11 to stave off potential financial disasters. Texaco argued that it needed protection because of its inability to pay its liabilities, which included a $10.3 billion award to Pennzoil. Wilson Foods and Continental argued that they needed protection because their high labor costs were making them uncompetitive. Manville, UNR Industries, and Amatex sought protection because they were deluged with lawsuits for asbestos-related diseases.
* * *
Bankruptcy is no longer viewed as a last resort for insolvent companies, but is regarded as a strategy that can be used by financially solvent companies in an attempt to prevent potential financial disasters. An increasing number of financially sound companies have sought shelter under Chapter 11 not only to reorganize their present debts but also in order to renegotiate their liabilities, to void their contractual obligations, or to head off future liabilities.
Tavakolian, "Bankruptcy: An Emerging Corporate Strategy", 60 SAM Advanced
Management Journal 18 (1995) [full article by subscription only]

The consequences of such a move by BP would be devastating for claimants and Gulf coast businesses expecting to recover their losses. The moment a bankruptcy petition is filed, all creditor claims pending in court would be frozen. As Tavakolian explained:

The court prohibits all creditors from pursuing the company pending a bankruptcy court's approval of a plan to restructure the company's financial obligations. The automatic stay gives the company temporary relief from collection attempts, lawsuits, and foreclosure procedures, thereby allowing the company to focus on its operations.

Even if bankruptcy -- the now-common business strategy of so many capitalist enterprises -- isn't in BP's future, the most optimistic vision for the company isn't much prettier. "'BP will spend the coming decades circling the drain, mired in endless litigation, its reputation irreparably damaged, and its finances weakened," investment specialist Robert Bryce told Sorkin.

Beside all the fishermen, businesses, and property owners just who, may we ask, is going to compensate the oiled sea turtles, pelicans, fish, oysters, crab, and seaweed for what BP did to them?

Bonnie Be Good

2010-07-23T13:06:00.001-05:00

T.S. Bonnie is crossing south Florida right now and will enter the Gulf later today. NHC's 11 a.m. discussion says:

The environment in the Gulf of Mexico is not favorable for any significant strengthening and in fact...global and hurricane dynamical models insist on weakening or even dissipating the cyclone gradually. Bonnie could degenerate into a tropical wave as it crosses Florida but the official forecast still shows some slight strengthening over the Gulf of Mexico.

The latest satellite images, wind data, marine conditions, and more is available at NOAA's New Orleans/Baton Rouge regional weather station. Check in with Hurricane City for Jim Williams' coverage.

Bonnie, Bonnie Friday: July 23 BP Oil Spill Update

2010-07-23T11:33:00.003-05:00

1. Oilcast.

The approach of Tropical Storm Bonny has "forced the evacuation of response vessels at the site of BP’s blown-out oil well, further stalling efforts to permanently seal the well," the New York Times reports this morning.

Among the vessels forced to flee the well site, 50 miles off the Louisiana coast, was a drill rig that was working on a relief well, which is considered the ultimate way to seal the well.
* * *
The drill rig that was working on the relief well was most likely to be among the first to leave because it travels very slowly. Other ships that are better able to handle higher seas and travel faster would leave later, Admiral Allen said. Support ships for submersibles that have been monitoring the well would be among the last to leave, so the well would probably be unattended for only a few days, he said.

The oil well itself will be "left closed off and unattended." It is expected there is "little risk" the 3-stack cap will "deteriorate" under pressure.

The decision to leave the well capped, which was made at the recommendation of Energy Secretary Steven Chu, means that scientists with the government and with BP think that the well is undamaged and that there is little risk it would deteriorate if kept under pressure, as it has been since valves on a new cap were closed a week ago.

The National Hurricane Center is projecting that T.S. Bonnie will not likely grow to hurricane status. It is expected to near the Gulf coast late Saturday or early Sunday.

Depending on how close the storm passes to the well and how long it takes to clear out, a BP spokesman estimates it will take 10 to 12 days to complete the relief well operation. This likely means a permanent solution to the long-running oil gusher will be pushed back to mid-August, and that's if everything goes well.

2. Bonnie, Bonnie Loch Ile.

Kimberly Blair reports for the local daily, "Pensacola Beach officials are more worried about Tropical Storm Bonnie... stirring up dangerous rip currents than washing oil up on the beach."

Bonnie's prevailing cyclonic winds are likely to push BP's lake of oil -- which we're told a true Scottish Bonnie would call loch ile -- away from the Florida panhandle farther to the south and west.

Good for us, bad for Bobby Jindal's toxic pretend-barrier islands.

Even T.S. Bonnie isn't likely to do much damage to Pensacola Beach, Blair's sources believe.

"By all indications, if it follows the projected path and crosses the Gulf on Saturday or Sunday and goes into Texas or Louisiana, we'll get some surf, no doubt," said Pensacola Beach Public Safety Supervisor Bob West. "The projected 40 mph or 50 mph winds, will only create 5 to 6 foot waves."

Just the kind of conditions surfers enjoy -- and in which unwary swimmers drown.

Jim Williams at Hurricane City has collected all the early morning computer-generated spaghetti forecasting models for Tropical Storm Bonnie. (See above) A near-contemporaneous public advisory from the Hurricane Center, however, warns that "a tropical storm watch has been issued for the northern Gulf of Mexico coast from Destin... westward to Morgan City Louisiana."

This represents a slight shift to the east. This is the reason, as NHC explains in its discussion:

Bonnie is moving faster and has turned west-northwestward.* * * There is some spread in
the guidance after landfall along the northern gulf coast. The guidance is noticeably faster... which may be in part from the more westward initial location. The new NHC track is similar to the previous track but is faster than the previous advisory. This requires the issuance of tropical storm watches for a portion of the northern gulf coast.

Still, Pensacola Beach is unlikely to be affected much, other than by higher waves, brisk but not particularly damaging winds, and starting today "thunderstorms after 1 p.m."

3. Promotional Predicament.

The predicament for Pensacola area businesses is apparent to all. The Island Authority's Bob West gave news reporter Blair a quote for the ages that encapsulates the dilemma facing us:

"The beach looks great, with the exception of sargassum and algae. The water is clear and is that beautiful blue. There's only a smattering of tar balls."

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

4. "It's the Water."

Alexander Higgins has serious questions -- which is putting it mildly -- about EPA's assurances that its monitoring of Gulf seafood and water shows all is safe. Concerned over "obfuscated and poorly arranged" reports about the safety of Gulf water and seafood, he mashed up a number of EPA's sampling reports with local media stories about tests for Vanadium, a naturally-occurring metal found in oil which is a potential carcinogen but more commonly causes "bronchitis and pneumonia."

According to Higgins Gulf Coast local media reports are far more accurate in showing contaminated water samples than EPA's own publicly-released test results. His summary about Pensacola Beach is typical of many of the other coastal localities he examined:

One of the most well known areas being devastated by the BP Gulf Oil Spill is Pensacola Beach Florida.

Amazingly however the EPA reports only detecting on substance, Diesel Range Organics [C10-C28] in a water sample taken on May 9th, from all of the samples collected within 10 miles of Pensacola Beach.

While the EPA data shows the beach is free of contamination that clearly isn’t the case and against advice of Federal scientists Pensacola Beach was reopened after being absolutely covered with oil in June. Over 400 people ended getting sick after swimming on the county beaches.

We've previously mentioned that the "400" number is now said to have been an error. But that shouldn't obscure Higgins' larger point that EPA test results released to the public are, on the whole, almost completely useless to the average citizen. They certainly appear to differ substantially from local media reports as well.

EPA was heavily criticized for its supposed claims after 9-11 that New York City air was safe to breathe. However, the evidence for that is mixed as Google's own mash-up for 9-11 researchers shows. But reason for doubts remain about the way in which EPA casts its air quality reports for public consumption.

Higgins' work is useful, but hardly the last word on the safety of seafood and water in the Gulf. Except on this one point: EPA has a huge job ahead if it wants to regain the public's trust about its air and water quality reports. This can only be done if it finds a way to issue candid, detailed, and easily-explained public reports that give the average citizen meaningful information.

EPA has made some progress in the last month. The new web site "EPA Response to BP Spill in the Gulf of Mexico" is a start. It's easy enough to understand, too, if you have a college degree, can read the periodic table of elements, and have a copy of Merck's Manual handy.

Does anyone else think it's weird that Homeland Security can reduce the public notice about the terrorism threat level to five colored-bar warnings, yet EPA has yet to find a quick and accurate way to warn the citizenry at large where and when the water is unsafe for swimming or the seafood is inedible?

5. Murzin Mirth.

Pensacola News Journal columnist Mark O'Brien is fresh from nearly finishing out of the money in an Indianapolis horse race for 'funniest columnist.' At least he beat someone whose humorous entry was all about potty training.

In his allotted space today O'Brien relates a remark recently made by now-candidate for county commissioner Dave Murzin. Murzin is freshly home from his own trip -- this one as state representative to Tallahassee, where he made sure voters will have absolutely no say about stiffening an offshore drilling ban to protect the state's beaches.

According to O'Brien, "Murzin, a state representative from Pensacola, said he likes 'listening to people' and hearing others' opinions."

Now that is hilarious! Mark deserves a first place prize from someone for that catch.

Booms Away Thursday: July 22 BP Oil Spill Update

2010-07-22T14:27:00.012-05:00

1. Oilcast.

No real change from yesterday's oilcast. As NOAA continues to forecast, prevailing winds for the next three days will be "ENE/NE at 10-15 kts" and the "leading edge" of the oil lake poisoning the Gulf of Mexico will continue "to move north towards the Chandeleur Islands and northwestward towards the Mississippi Delta."

Louisiana State University's Coastal Studies Institute graphically depicts this over the next five days (click above), showing relatively low surf and light winds over Pensacola coastal waters.

2. Tropical Depression.

Yesterday morning, as we wrote, NHC ranked the stormy disturbance in the Caribbean known as "97L" as having a 70 percent chance of becoming a tropical storm or hurricane. Throughout the ensuing daylight hours, however, they lowered the chances to 60 and then 50 percent.

This morning, we were back to 70 percent. (Click left.) The center of the disturbance was about a thousand miles southeast of Pensacola this morning.

Just before noon, the storm officially became a "tropical depression." It has--

developed a surface circulation and enough organized convection to be classified as a tropical depression. The depression is sheared at this time and its center is located on the southwest side of a cyclonically curved convective band. The shear appears to be relaxing a little...however...as indicated by the motion of the high clouds on high resolution images. The cyclone is still interacting with a strong westward-moving upper low to the west. This pattern would only allow the depression to strengthen a little as indicated in the official forecast...but this forecast is uncertain. In fact... none of the models show significant intensification.

A hurricane hunter was scheduled to take a closer look at it this afternoon, which NHC expects will help determine whether the depression has become Tropical Storm Bonnie.

3. Booms Away.

Yesterday at mid-day worries over the storm caused Florida officials to order the removal of "Tier 3" booms previously installed by local governments. Later the same day, the Unified Command ordered the dismantling of federally-authorized Tier 1 and Tier 2 booms as well.

Jamie Page reports on all this for the Pensacola News Journal ["Oil Booms Removed for Storm"]:

About 47,000 feet of boom already has been removed from Escambia and Santa Rosa County waters since Tuesday, said Brooke Thorington, spokeswoman for the Joint Information Center in Mobile.
* * **
Not all boom is being removed; only boom in navigable waterways, environmentally sensitive areas, and safe harbor areas where boats in distress may need to go during a storm, [Brooke] Thorington said. Any additional boom to be removed will depend on the forecast.* * *

The boom that is removed, and any associated equipment, will be temporarily stored in a secure location to protect it from weather-related damage and to protect fragile coastline from impacts caused by dislodged boom.

If you're interested in the numbers, Page has them. "BP deployed about 481,000 feet of Tier 1 and 2 boom along the most sensitive areas of Florida's coast" and "316,261 feet of Tier 3 boom" which was added and now will be removed by local governments "from Escambia all the way to Franklin County."

The boom is being removed by, among others, fishermen and "boaters with the Vessels of Opportunity program" as photo journalist Gary McCracken documents today. According to a state Department of Environmental Protection spokeswoman, "After the tropical activity passes, should further oil spill impacts be projected, officials will redeploy the boom."

4. Oil Pollution as a Growth Industry.

Consider this: all the millions upon tens of millions of dollars BP and local governments are expending to lay out new boom, take it up again, re-deploy it later, skim the oil, reimburse local businesses for tourism losses, etc. etc. etc. -- all of it eventually will make its way into calculations of the Gross National Product.

Yes, it will help to show economic growth in these "unusually uncertain times." But is it really "economic growth" when we commit vast sums of money to polluting the Earth and then spend more vast sums trying to clean up the mess we've made?

Some Louisiana residents seem to think so. Yesterday in Lafayette, Louisiana -- the heart of the Gulf Coast oil drilling industry -- "thousands" rallied to demand more deepwater drilling in the Gulf. Can you believe it? They want to risk repeating this catastrophe!

The gathering was political, of course. "The rally... featured speeches from elected leaders, along with representatives from the oil, restaurant and seafood industries."

Lt. Gov. Scott Angelle served as master of ceremonies and fired up an already lively crowd, proclaiming that “It is time to quit punishing innocent American workers to achieve some unrealistic political agenda.”

As if Angelle, himself, doesn't have an even more "unrealistic political agenda."

Just yesterday, we were speaking with an academic expert on the Gulf of Mexico who lives in Louisiana. He is beside himself with fury over the response of Governor Bobby Jindal, Angelle, and other politicians to the ongoing devastation of the state's coastal habitat.

"We’re in the middle of a war to defend our way of life,” Jindal speechified yesterday.

And that's the problem, our friend says. Instead of leading the way to develop industries founded on clean solar energy, which he says could create as many or more jobs in the state, Louisiana's present political leadership is trying to hang on to the old way that "is destroying the globe." Our friend explained:

Jindal is making a big deal out of building up barrier islands. Unfortunately, the media buys it. What he's really doing is dredging up polluted sediments from past mistakes by the industry and the Corps of Engineers and spreading them all over the coast. In one instance I've seen, Jindal created a mile and a half of nothing but polluted rubble. It's insane.

If the BP oil spill demonstrates anything, it is that we can no longer allow a single state, nation, or industry to preserve "a way of life" that is killing the planet. When that way of life risks poisoning the Gulf of Mexico and destroying the chain of life in our oceans, we need to find new political and business leaders who have the foresight and fortitude to set us on the path to a newer, more sustainable way of life.

5. Academic Free-for-All.

Academics like our friend may not be popular with the pols, but they're in high demand by oil industry corporations -- and by victims who are hoping to get proper compensation for the losses BP has caused them.

We've previously made light about the rush to monopolize expert witnesses. But, really, it's no laughing matter.

Ben Raines of the Mobile Register is the lead reporter in the nation on this subject for the moment. [See "BP Buys Up Gulf Scientists for Legal Defense, Roiling Academic Community," July 16.] Travis Griggs is out in front on the Florida university angle.

Last week, Raines reported:

For the last few weeks, BP has been offering signing bonuses and lucrative pay to prominent scientists from public universities around the Gulf Coast to aid its defense against spill litigation.

BP PLC attempted to hire the entire marine sciences department at one Alabama university, according to scientists involved in discussions with the company's lawyers.
* * *
More than one scientist interviewed by the Press-Register described being offered $250 an hour through BP lawyers. At eight hours a week, that amounts to $104,000 a year.

Scientists from Louisiana State University, University of Southern Mississippi and Texas A&M have reportedly accepted, according to academic officials. Scientists who study marine invertebrates, plankton, marsh environments, oceanography, sharks and other topics have been solicited.

A hundred G's annually is a bonus worthy of a Wall Street banker, never mind some poorly paid, obscure faculty member wearing a corduroy jacket with leather patches on the elbows. The catch is, BP's "research" contracts require the academics to remain mum about the data they collect and the results they obtain for at least three years.

Yesterday, Griggs reported that something close to the opposite is happening to Florida academics:

Researchers at Florida universities say BP has not offered them the lucrative research contracts it reportedly has offered to other universities in exchange for scientists' cooperation with its legal defense.

One well might consider that high acclaim, indeed, for Florida's universities. As Dick Snyder of the University of West Florida told Griggs, "I think we're looking at [BP] trying to control information about an environmental catastrophe." To resist the enormous pressure BP can bring to bear on the university system is admirable.

Nondisclosure agreements are common when universities partner with private industries for research and development or product testing, "but in this case, I think we're looking at something different than that," Snyder said.

"If you're working on some new chemical product they come up with, then yeah, we'll sign a (nondisclosure agreement) and help them with their research and development. ... But (this) is really pushing the edge of it. It's not a product the company is working on. What's the basis for the nondisclosure?"

W. Ross Ellington, head of the Oil Spill Academic Task Force at Florida State University, told Griggs:

"The only time we would withhold research data is if we want to publish before our competitors publish. But in this case, because it's so important, the free dissemination is going to be very important."

Our own coastal scientist friend says that in Louisiana and Mississippi it's become an "academic free-for-all" as faculty, staff, and independent researchers try to climb aboard the BP money wagon without getting polluted by the money.

6. McUniversity.

The problem is hardly new to academia or industry. Books have been written on what has come to be known as the rise of "Academic Capitalism," sometimes less charitably known as "McUniversity," after George Ritzer's famous neologism.

The reasons are not complicated, either. As one student of the sociology of science put it a few years ago, citing two other pioneers who saw the same conundrum:

On the one hand, in order to remain competitive in global markets, companies increasingly seek for new knowledge and science-based products and processes from universities. On the other hand universities need new sources of income, as state funding for higher education has been diminishing. Thus "the corporate quest for new products converged with faculty and institutional searches for increased funding."

Oli-Henlenya Ylijoki, "Entangled in Academic Capitalism?
A Case-study on Changing Ideals and Practices of
University Research," 45 Higher Education 307 (2003)

In other words, we've brought this on ourselves. For industry it's money, money, money. Nothing new about that. But for academics, the need is driven by the "diminishing" financial support by our political organs for public colleges and universities.

Our coastal science friend says all corporate research grants are "dirty money." But he sees nothing unethical in a scientist contracting to work as an expert witness so long as he or she has the integrity to observe traditional academic values, does all the research necessary (rather than merely that which would support a preconceived viewpoint), and presents conclusions objectively and without favor.

Ah, but there's the rub. What litigant wants an expert witness who will be fair and impartial? In Florida, our own attorney general was merely following the industry standard when he hired a self-loathing crackpot at twice the normal fee to testify against his own gay proclivities. Watch what he says, not what he does.

Oil company litigants want an expert who shares their view of the case and who has the scientific fire-power to win it for them. None of them are in the business of paying "a fair and impartial" researcher for his time and expense in offering research results to a court or the public at large.

The whole mess is something important that remains unresolved. That's why our coastal scientist friend also says, "If the money isn't from the National Science Foundation, it's dirty."

7. Rapid Response System.

One way to alleviate, though perhaps not completely solve the problem, is suggested by yesterday's news that "four of the world’s biggest oil companies" have committed "$1 billion to create a rapid-response system to deal with deepwater oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico... ."

Of course these mega-corporations aren't ponying up a quarter of a billion dollars, each, out of eleemosynary motives. They want to burnish their public image and "restore public confidence in the industry after the BP disaster painfully exposed how unprepared the industry was for a major accident."

The plan is to jointly create "a new nonprofit entity, called the Marine Well Containment Company" which would "be in charge of operating and maintaining" an emergency capability of responding to broken well or other oil spill emergencies.

The entity, modeled in part after the Marine Spill Response Corporation, which was set up after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, will also finance research to look into new ways of tackling an underwater spill.
* * *
"Companies have used their technology to get into the deep water but they didn’t have an adequate plan to intervene at these depths or to contain a large-scale spill,” [an energy expert says].

This joint "nonprofit" project obviously will be dominated and run by Big Oil. But something along similar lines-- a research grant foundation funded by oil companies but run by, say, institutional representatives from Gulf Coast universities and the National Science Foundation -- just might work as a joint funding source and distribution agent for academic oil pollution research grants supporting coastal studies, sea life damage, and coastal restoration research.

While it wouldn't entirely eliminate the ethical challenge facing academics working for industry, it has the potential to relieve a large part of the problem, if done right. One might even dare hope that it could eventually lead to eliminating the threat oil leaks -- or even our own petroleum dependency -- pose for the planet.

8. (Oil) Men at Work.

More than seventy percent of all Floridians want to see a drilling ban constitutional amendment on the ballot. That makes no difference to state representatives ~~Greg Evers~~ Dave Murzin (a candidate for ~~Santa Rosa~~ Escambia county commissioner) or Clay Ford. They're hard at work making sure that the people have no voice in this democracy.

It's "political theater as farce," the Pensacola News Journal editorializes today:

[B]oth representatives voted last year for a bill that would have ended the legislative ban on drilling in Florida waters — an effort that died in the Senate when the Deepwater Horizon exploded and sank in the Gulf of Mexico.

The paper rightly points out that "House Republicans weren't serious" from the get-go about letting voters have a voice in the matter. In coming up with such transparent, outright lies to justify their own actions in denying a meaningful voice to the people of Florida, Murzin and Ford have disgraced their public office and betrayed the voters who sent them to Tallahassee.

Storm Coming, Booms Going

2010-07-21T10:48:00.002-05:00

Late this morning the State Emergency Response Team announced the temporary "removal of supplemental Tier 3 boom within the next 72 to 96 hours in the Panhandle counties." In a formal statement [available here], it is said:

The removal is in light of the potential tropical activity in the Gulf of Mexico.

“During a tropical storm boom can cause additional damage to the natural resources that we are trying to protect from oil spill impacts,” said [state] DEP Secretary Michael W. Sole. “Given the current oil spill trajectories and the tropical activity in the Gulf of Mexico we think this is the best decision for Florida’s communities.”
* * *
Following the tropical activity, should further oil spill impacts be projected, officials will redeploy the boom.

"Tier 3" boom are those deployed by state and local governments at their own expense in areas additional to sensitive coastline areas approved by the Unified Command under the U.S. Coast Guard’s Area Contingency Plan (ACP).

No appreciable change has been made in the earlier forecast of the National Hurricane Center. It continues to state:

A tropical depression is not expected to form today but environmental conditions are still favorable for some development as the system moves toward the west-northwest at about 10 mph away from Hispaniola into the Bahamas on Thursday. There is a high chance...60 percent...of this system becoming a tropical cyclone during the next 48 hours.

Bloomberg News reported at mid-morning that "heavy rain showers over the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Puerto Rico" were diminishing the chance of strengthening. But Bloomberg also quotes a meteorological consultant for businesses as predicting that Invest 97L would become a Category 1 "by the weekend."

If so, the next tropical storm name on the list is "Bonnie." We have a good friend by the same name. She's a gentle, humorous soul who wouldn't hurt a sand flea. We'll take that as a good omen.

Whopper Wednesday: July 21 BP Oil Spill Update

2010-07-21T08:09:00.006-05:00

1. Oilcast.

If you want to beach it, the next several days look like the surest opportunity for a pleasant, relatively oil-free time in weeks. NOAA reports (see above) that overflights at BP's well site "indicate the surface oil is breaking up into numerous patches separated by clean water - for the first time no surface oil was observed in the vicinity of the source."

Locally, NOAA expects wind and wave forecasts (below) will be pushing comparatively cleaner water westward over the next 72 hours.
2.Tropical Report.

Get that beach experience in before the weather turns next week. The National Hurricane Center is now saying "there is a high chance... 70 percent" of Invest 97L "becoming a tropical depression or a tropical storm during the next 48 hours."

Right now, the slow-moving system is north of Puerto Rico and soon will be passing the Dominican Republic. The Miami Herald reports, "strong winds and heavy rain" are expected in south Florida by late Thursday.

All the early computer-generated spaghetti projections (left) have the storm heading into the Gulf. After that, they come up with a wide scattering of potential targets ranging from Morgan City, Louisiana to Apalachee Bay, Florida. Pensacola Beach, wouldn't you know it, is just about in the middle.

A hurricane hunter aircraft will be gathering more detailed data later today.

3. Oily Legislators Spin Whoppers.

Gannett Corp.'s capital bureau in Tallahassee covered yesterday's abortive special session of the legislature, called by Governor Charlie Crist to consider placing a referendum on the November ballot that would have banned drilling off the Florida coast. A constitutional amendment is believed necessary as an additional bulwark against future sneak attacks on the existing statutory ban against near-shore drilling which the state has enjoyed for many years.

There once was a time when that drilling ban enjoyed broad bipartisan support. But the extremists who have taken over the state's Republican party were on the verge last April of repealing that statute when the Deepwater Horizon platform blew up, exposing the folly of their plans.

Jim Ash's report today from Tallahassee reveals -- surprise, surprise -- that local legislators are saying one thing to the home folk and doing another in the state capital. Yesterday, every single Republican in the state House of Representatives voted to adjourn the special session after only 49 minutes without even taking up or debating the governor's proposal.

Yet, for the consumption of folk back home, state representatives Clay Ford (R-Gulf Breeze) and Dave Murzin (R-Pensacola) are spinning big whoppers to create the impression they were "disappointed... there was much left undone with regards to oil drilling in the Gulf."

Ford is particularly oily. About Governor Crist's proposal, he claims, "I was in favor of putting it to a vote. I would have voted to put it on the ballot in November."

If that were so, then why would he vote to adjourn the special session before the proposal even could be raised? Ford isn't saying. He doesn't have to. His actions speak louder than words. For Clay Ford, party loyalty trumps protecting his constituents from environmental catastrophe.

Murzin, too, voted in lock-step with the Republican statehouse leaders to deny voters a chance to vote on the constitutional referendum. This is the same leadership behind the sneak attack last April to revoke the long-standing offshore drilling ban.

The excuse Murzin is offering is risible. He claims the offshore drilling ban "might have unintended consequences on the inland oil production in Santa Rosa County known as the Jay Fields." The Jay Fields, which are nearing depletion anyway, are located well inland -- 35 miles north of Pensacola.

4. Murzin's Mendacity.

Dave Murzin wouldn't want you to know this, but the exact wording of the proposed resolution that would have put the drilling ban issue on the ballot is here, in the underlined language starting on page 2.

It would have added to Article II, Section 7 ("Natural resources and scenic beauty") the following new subsection (boldface added):

(c) The exploration and drilling for, and the extraction and production of, oil are prohibited in and beneath all state waters located between the mean high-water line along the coastline of the state and the seaward limit of the state's boundaries, as now or hereafter fixed by this constitution or the Congress of the United States, whichever such boundary is farther from the coastline. This prohibition shall not apply to the transportation of oil produced outside of such waters.

What do you suppose it is about the phrases "mean high water line" or "seaward limit" that confuse state representative Murzin? The nearby Jay airport has an elevation of 254 feet above sea level. The Jay Field will be inside the mean high tide line of Florida about a week after the surf begins washing over the top of Portofino Towers.

Murzin may or may not be rock-stupid, but apparently he thinks the voters are.

5. Ad for Tourism Promotion.

In today's News Journal, reporter Jamie Page covers the YouTube video recently produced by the Appleyard ad agency to promote local tourism in the midst of the BP oil spill. The ad was produced for the tourist promotion arm of the Pensacola Bay Chamber of Commerce.

The title of Jamie Page's article is "Ad Spins Beach Bummer into Fun Summer." After Gannett's self-defeating web policy disappears the article behind a cumbersome and expensive archival system, you can still see the video for free on YouTube.

The ad is supposed to be a semi-comic look at oil cleanup workers enjoying the tourist sites around town. The video, Page reports, hasn't actually been placed yet for paid broadcast anywhere --

but it saw some major publicity over the weekend by "NBC Nightly News" and the "Today" show before it was posted Monday on YouTube. It is now on MSNBC's website. If the video gets a positive reaction from the public, then Visit Pensacola likely will turn it into a 30-second television commercial... .

In other words, it's a work in progress. Viewer reactions are being sought.

Now, we have no expertise whatsoever in advertising or marketing. Over the years, we've worked diligently to develop a constitutional immunity against advertisements of every kind.
Never read 'em, never watch 'em. Couldn't tell you what feminine hygiene deodorant or erectile dysfunction drug we're supposed to be using, or what anti-depression medication we should be demanding our doctor give us.

The story line of the Visit Pensacola ad, according to its producer, is supposed to use "these negative images [people] have seen and... show them in an absurd light and make them funny and use them to our advantage to show all the fun things to do in Pensacola."

Does it work? Our guess is the ad will appeal to locals who know how the BP clean-up workers' hazmat suits look and who will recognize film clips taken around town -- bicycling down South Palafox (good luck with that!), Fort Pickens, the Naval Aviation Museum at N.A.S., the Lighthouse, the war memorial, and so on.

Personally, however, we can't imagine distant viewers appreciating the humor or figuring out what the images depict. One of the scenes (above left) even looks to us like the clean-up workers are about to mug some doofus on the street.

As we say, however, we don't know anything about advertising. You, dear reader, whoever you are know more than we do. Go to the YouTube page and leave your comment for the benefit of all the Pensacola Beach tourist businesses who have been wrecked by BP's criminal negligence.

Florida G.O.P. Subverts Drilling Ban

2010-07-20T14:20:00.002-05:00

The Florida House of Representatives today met for 49 minutes and then adjourned without even considering whether to give voters the chance to vote on a proposed constitutional amendment against oil drilling.

The vote was 44 Democrats in favor of letting voters decide and all 67 Republicans against it.

That's helpful, in a way. Now, it will be easy to tell whom to vote for. If you see a Florida Republican office holder you know he is for oil spills and against democracy. The party-line vote made it simple as that.

Although the state Senate remains in session as this is written, by adjourning House Republicans made sure voters will not have a chance to vote on the issue in November.

Oily Opening Tuesday: July 20 BP Oil Spill Update

2010-07-20T13:28:00.009-05:00

1. Oilcast.

NOAA's 72-hour oilcast map, above, dramatically shows how persistent southeast winds are likely to push BP's oil back where it belongs, off the shores of Bobby Jindal's drill-happy Louisiana. They want it? They can have it.

Probably based on the same data, the Jackson County Floridian reports:

No additional oil from the Gulf of Mexico spill will wash up on the Panhandle and other Florida beaches, because of a combination of westerly [sic] winds and the newly-capped gusher, state officials say.

If the favorable weather holds, no oil sheens are expected to stain Pensacola’s sugar-white beaches for at least a week, Florida Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Michael Sole said at a news conference this morning.

“Most of the oil is significantly offshore—about 85 miles,” Sole said. “There are no expected impacts to Florida shorelines this entire week. Still, we’re going to be ready ... until all this oil is gone.”

On the other hand, The Gov Monitor, which also has offices in Florida as well as overseas, reports a darker possibility today:

Isolated impacts of crude oil tar balls and tar patties are expected to continue in Northwest Florida over the next 72 hours. State reconnaissance teams operating by air, land and sea continue to identify potential impacts and are actively coordinating with cleanup teams.

However, the web site's own interactive map indicates no new reports of oil coming ashore have been received as yet.

Probably, the truth is they're all correct. The main oil slicks are going to be nudged west again while some of the oil tarballs already off the Northwest Florida coast could stop circling out at sea and come ashore in the surf. It shouldn't be much, but any amount is too much.

By all means, come to the beach but avoid the odd looking stones and pretty little orange spongy-looking things. They're toxic.

2. Tropical Points of Interest

Jim Williams at Hurricane City is predicting a tropical storm named "Bonnie to form S.E of TX/LA as a minimal tropical storm setting the stage for next week." Right now, the Hurricane Center is watching "Invest 97L," just passing Puerto Rico.

"There is a high chance... 60 percent... of this system becoming a tropical depression or storm during the next 48 hours," the National Hurricane Center says.

3. Well well enough?

New Orleans Times-Picayune reports, "Scientists have discovered four gas "seeps" at or near BP's blown-out Macondo well since Saturday... .

Bubbles have been spotted on the seabed about three kilometers away from the well, a few hundred meters from the well, at the base of the original blowout preventer on the well, and coming out of a gasket in the flange on the capping stack that was installed last week.

In addition, the Washington Post reports:

[V[ideo provided by BP showed drops of oil and gas leaking from a piece of the new containment cap just below three rams designed to cut off the flow from the well. The leak has caused the formation of some hydrates -- slushlike crystals of natural gas and water that torpedoed earlier containment efforts. But, Allen said, "we do not believe this is consequential at this time."

Sounds like success, eh? Not. National Incident Commander Admiral Thad Allen is still keeping BP's latest fix-it effort on a short leash:

Pressure in the well remains lower than what BP had originally expected to be, but climbing. Pressure currently stands at 6,811 pounds per square inch, and is rising by about one pound per square inch each hour.
Allen said the well will remain shut in for another 24-hour observation period. However, if there is any sign of a significant drop in the well's pressure, officials are prepared to reopen the well immediately.

Moreover, yesterday Allen imposed on BP a new condition to keeping the cap closed. If new anomalies are seen, "BP has to report to us and act on those within four hours."

Scientists are huddling today, according to the Associated Press, "to analyze data from the ocean floor as they weigh whether a leaking well cap is a sign BP's broken oil well is buckling."

If BP's latest attempted fix goes well, it will be the first time anything the corporation has tried actually works well since April 20.

4. The BOP Leak.

What are the odds of BP finally getting something right? Not good, as testimony showed early today at the resumed U. S. Coast Guard-Bureau of Energy Management joint investigative hearing in Louisiana. You can watch the hearing when in session on C-Span here.

Today, BP's well site leader at the Deepwater Horizon platform, Ronald Sepulvado, testified that--

before he wrapped up his stint as BP's top man on the rig four days before the April 20 accident, he reported that one of the control pods on the blowout preventer, or BOP, had a leak.
He said he told his supervisor in Houston, BP team leader John Guide, and assumed that Guide would notify federal regulators at the Minerals Management Service. According to investigators, that never happened.

Federal Regulation 250.451(d) states that if someone drilling in federal waters encounters "a BOP control station or pod that does not function properly" the rig must "suspend further drilling operations until that station or pod is operable."

Asked if that was done, Sepulvado said it wasn't.

"I assumed everything was OK because I reported it to the team leader and he should have reported it to MMS," Sepulvado said.

5. Bullheading by Boys.

The dirty secret about oil engineers is that they're really little boys at heart. They like making lots of new toys, but in their enthusiasm they also break a lot of them.

Today, the New New York Times reports:

Kent Wells, a senior vice president for BP, said the company was studying the possibility of a “static kill,” in which heavy mud would be pumped into the recently capped well. Also known as bullheading, the procedure would force the oil and gas back down into the reservoir.
“The static kill does give us a new option,” he said at a briefing in Houston. A decision to proceed could be made in several days, Mr. Wells said.

Either these guys enjoy the challenge of beating the monstrous oil leak and they want to keep going with the game; or, one could take this as an early sign that BP engineers have their own doubts about how long the 3-cap stack can hold back fresh oil without busting the seafloor wide open. It looks to us like Admiral Allen is afraid the latter is the case.

6. Florida's Oily Legislature.

Today, the Florida legislature convenes in the special session called by Governor Charlies Crist in early July to consider a proposed constitutional ballot measure to ban drilling off the Florida coast. It could turn out for many of the lawmakers to be their own political death.

If so, the funeral with last rites will be held November 2 at a polling place near you. Suggested entries for the gravestone are welcome. Here's the first we received from a poetic reader:

Here lies the Republican party.
No longer hale and hearty.
They wanted to drill
But BP did spill
So the voters have had their fill.

On the other hand, pro-drilling legislators may be looking forward to new riches if they beat back the governor's proposal. Did you ever wonder how it is politicians get rich on their paltry public salaries? The St. Petersburg Times hints at a possible answer:

A Times/Herald review of campaign contributions to legislators and their political committees shows that between Jan. 1, 2009 and March 31, 2010, lawmakers received $278,452 from the oil and gas industry and their affiliated companies, including nearly $185,800 to the Republican Party of Florida and $77,000 to the Florida Democratic Party.

During that time, next year's House speaker, Rep. Dean Cannon, R-Winter Park, pushed a bill to lift the Florida drilling ban. He has since backed off on that plan.

Today's PNJ editorial issues a Quixotic call on the lawmakers to "Just Say It." Be honest. Go ahead, shout 'Drill, baby, drill' again:

[D]rilling advocates offer increasingly specious arguments against letting voters decide the matter.

They tell us we shouldn't put such a big decision on the shoulders of voters at a time when they might make an "emotional" decision. But if it wasn't emotion driving repeal of the drilling ban this spring, could it have been heavy spending by pro-drilling lobbyists?

And drilling supporters tell us that a ban wouldn't have protected us from the current disaster... because this spill occurred off Louisiana! OK — and if it happened 10 miles off Florida's beaches?

Why won't drilling advocates be honest and admit they don't want to risk letting Florida voters ban the drilling legislators were about to approve?

Rather a silly question, don't you think? The answer, of course, is that if Florida Republicans were honest with the voters they wouldn't be raking in the big bucks from the oil industry.

7. New Voices.

The thing is, new voices and new politicians always arise in times of crisis. This time, they're coming from all the opponents to offshore drilling. One of them is "Hands Across the Sand," headed by Dave Rauschkolb of Seaside, Florida.

He owns three Panhandle restaurants along the beach, is a lifelong surfer and an avid fisherman. The decisions of other Gulf states, he says, are motivated by money, but have a far wider effect.

"There are some things that we need to see not only in economic terms. The soul of America is being lost because of things being seen only in economic terms," he said. "They'd have to be blind and deaf to not see how their actions affect the other Gulf states."

Quite possibly, Mr. Rauschkolb is just one of those "new" voices or people who'd like to take a crack at running for state office.

8. Lockerbie Labyrinth.

David Cameron, prime minister of Great Britain, is visiting the White House today. Two items sure to be on the agenda are the BP oil catastrophe and the release of convicted Libyan terrorist Abelbaset Ali al-Megrahi. Cameron also will meet with four U.S. senators who have particularly pointed questions about the al-Megrahi scandal.

You know about the unbridled defense of BP Corp. mounted by British politicians and the British press in the wake of the Gulf drilling catastrophe. They're not concerned about their own precipitously declining investments in British Petroleum -- excuse us, BP Corp. stock. Of course not. You think politicians or newspaper publishers could be so selfish?

No, what they're worried about are all the poor little old lady pensioners in Great Britain who are depending on BP stock to put bread on the table instead of cat food. Even though, as the UK's Daily Finance reports, "many people" in Great Britain "will not be affected."

Late last week before leaving for Washington Cameron signaled that he intends to use his face-time with Obama to "discuss oil giant BP... with U.S. President Barack Obama... and stress how important a 'strong and stable' company is to both nations." Yes, indeed. Where would the Gulf coast be today if BP Corp. hadn't existed?

It has been absolutely cringe-inducing to watch all these government and corporate officials lie so openly and obviously about the BP-engineered release of the convicted Lockerbie bomber. Both BP and the Labor Party ministers who played key roles in al-Megrahi's release are terrible, terrible liars. Yet, they do it with such a straight face that it makes the bottoms of our feet tickle as we watch them tiptoeing along the edge of a steep, unstable precipice of transparent prevarications.

We've already summarized the oily details about how al-Megrahi won his freedom after being convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the murder-by-bombing of two hundred and seventy PanAm passengers over Lockerbie, Scotland. It's even more difficult for government officials to lie when Libyan officials themselves, as the New York Times reports, "have said Libya made clear to Britain that if Mr. Megrahi were not included in the transfer agreement, lucrative oil deals for British companies would not be approve."

How many Libyans in British prisons were there, anyway, and of those how many had been convicted of terrorism offences? Long-time British cabinet minister Jack Straw provided the answer when called to account:

As at 31/12/08 there were 26 Libyans in UK prisons, of whom 25 were in England and Wales and one in Scotland. * * * One prisoner only has been convicted of a terrorism-related offence.

Guess who that one prisoner was.

Subsequently released government documents show that Libya had warned Britain if al Megrahi were to die in a Scottish prison, "it would have 'catastrophic effects for the relationship between Libya and the U.K.'" Even the son of Muommar Gaddafi admits the obvious:

According to a transcript of comments made by Saif Gaddafi, the son of the Libyan leader, Megrahi's release was "on the table in all commercial, oil and gas agreements" and other dealings with Britain.

In response to the overwhelming evidence that the British government was induced to release al-Megrahi by the promise of new drilling rights for BP Corp. in Libya, the British, Scottish, and U.S. governments are playing a painfully transparent game of pointing fingers at one another in hopes of confusing everybody.

'Not our fault' claims Downing Street. 'Scotland has an independent judiciary that made a "profoundly misguided decision".'
'It wasn't us," the Scottish Justice minister says. 'Ask the British government about "the deal in the desert."'
'Don't look at me,' whines Tory prime minister Cameron. 'It was Scotland's decision or maybe Gordon Brown's Labor Party did it.'
But you Tories," replies the currently headless Labour Party, 'are the ones who invited BP's convicted perjurer-bandit, the infamous former BP chief executive, Lord Browne of Madingley-- into your Government "to resurrect his tarnished career." He's the guy who first established BP's culture of criminal negligence that led to the Gulf oil spill.
'Get your stories straight,' Secretary of State Hillary Clinton more or less said in a press statement yesterday. 'Whoever did it, we can't say it was in the interests of justice.'
'Send more troops to Afghanistan to bale my centrist-loving ass out and we'll believe any excuse you cook up,' President Obama is expected to add.

Mordant Monday: July 19 BP Oil Spill Update

2010-07-19T09:41:00.006-05:00

1. Oilcast.

Light southerly winds should shift later today to easterly winds, persisting at least through Wednesday, according to NOAA's oil spill forecast (above). You can see what that looks like by viewing the animated forecast of the Ocean Circulation Group at the University of South Florida.

NOAA forecasts locally that the surf should be calm with "a low risk of rip currents." It looks like several relatively good days at the beach. Quick! Book your marriage on the beach.

By the way, if you've been thinking of getting away from the long-lasting BP oil spill by moving to, say, Phoenix or Albuquerque -- think again. NOAA's latest prediction is, "drought conditions in the Southwest U.S. to worsen." What's more, with last month having been the hottest June on record and sales of fuel-efficient cars actually dropping in the U.S. over the last five months, we don't expect the rest of the century to get any cooler.

2. Anomalies at the Well.

Shortly before eight o'clock last night, Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen of the Unified Command sent a sharp, biting letter to BP's managing director, Bob Dudley. He extended the test period for the new 3-stack cap "contingent upon the completion of seismic surveys, robust monitoring for indications of leakage, and acoustic testing by the NOAA vessel PISCES in the immediate vicinity of the well head."

The pressure test of the well now gets extended day by day. The reason is that a "seep" of oil has been detected some distance from the well. Plus, there are reported anomalies at the well head itself. This tends to confirm concerns which revived when pressure readings on the cap turned out lower than hoped for that there is a leak in the wellbore or the seafloor. If the cap isn't reopened, the environmental disaster could become even worse and harder to fix.

First word of this came late yesterday in an AP dispatch which attributed knowledge of a seafloor leak to an anonymous "administration official."

An administration official familiar with the spill oversight, however, told The Associated Press that a seep and possible methane were found near the busted oil well. The official spoke on condition of anonymity Sunday because an announcement about the next steps had not been made yet.

BP's chief operating officer, Doug Suttles, would admit in a press conference yesterday morning only that "a few bubbles" had been found around the well. But a sketchy early morning report today by Reuters News alludes to BP engineers as the source of the information that oil is leaking from the seafloor. It also appears the company may be trying to claim the leak comes from some cause other than the Deepwater Horizon explosion that blew things to smithereens.

3. Unified No More?

Admiral Allen sternly laid down additional conditions for continuing the pressure testing. The manner and substance of his directive to BP manifest serious tensions between the Government and the mega-corporation over just how much information BP has been sharing with the Unified Command.

Wrote Allen:

[Y]ou are required to provide as a top priority access and coordination for the monitoring systems, which include seismic and sonar surface ships and subsea ROV and acoustic systems. When seeps are detected, you are directed to marshal resources, quickly investigate, and report findings to the government in no more than four hours. I direct you to provide me a written procedure for opening the choke valve as quickly as possible without damaging the well should hydrocarbon seepage near the well head be confirmed.
* * *
Now that source control has evolved into a period beyond the expected 48 hour interval of the Well Integrity Test, I am requiring that you provide me a written update within 24 hours of your intentions going forward. I remain concerned that all potential options to eliminate the discharge of oil be pursued with utmost speed until I can be assured that no additional oil will spill from the Macondo Well.
* * *
I direct you to provide a detailed plan for the final stages of the relief well that specifically addresses the interaction of this schedule and any other activity that may potentially delay relief well completion.

Three shockers inspired Allen's letter, as one can discern from Henry Fountain's front-page article in today's New York Times.

4. Out of Sight, Out of the News.

First, as mentioned above, Allen's letter reveals that the ambiguous pressure test results show that oil and methane gas is seeping from the seafloor. This means the cap hasn't necessarily stopped the leak, as so many news sources were erroneously reporting yesterday; the leak likely continues from the seafloor, out of sight of underwater cameras available to the public and, perhaps, the Government.

Second, yesterday BP launched a widespread public disinformation campaign with press releases, anonymous official statements, and web updates all emphasizing that 'currently the well remains shut-in with no oil flowing into the Gulf.' BP made no mention about leaks at the seafloor.

NPR's persistently miserable coverage by studio-bound Richard Harris is a prime example of the stenographic coverage offered by most news sources yesterday. Relying as he so often does on BP's sunny press releases, Harris reported yesterday:

And they said the well looks good still. The pressure is holding. They're surveying the seafloor with cameras and sonar and they're not seeing any oil come up. That's good. They're also using deep penetrating surveys to look deep underground and they're not seeing anything alarming there either. So that looks good.

Harris' credulity is boundless when it comes to swallowing BP's claims. He wasn't alone in that. The UK Guardian summarized BP's blitz of press statements yesterday this way:

Tests over the weekend on the new cap placed over the broken well suggested that it was working, there were no leaks, the flow had been stopped and – wonder of wonders – it might stay that way until the well is finally and conclusively plugged, probably next month.

Third, BP began making noises that it intends to abandon the plan worked out earlier with the Unified Command. As Henry Fountain puts it:

[A] senior BP official said Sunday that the company’s recently capped well in the Gulf of Mexico was holding up and that BP now hoped to keep the well closed until it could be permanently plugged.* * * That BP plan differs sharply from the one the company and the federal government had suggested only a day earlier, to eventually allow the flow of oil to resume temporarily, collecting it through pipes to surface ships.

At bottom, as Fountain writes, "the company very much wants to avoid a repeat of the live underwater video that showed millions of gallons of oil spewing from the blown well for weeks" and "the government wants to eliminate any chance of making matters worse." Clashing objectives, obviously. Will they lead to all-out disagreement?

The larger question all of this poses is whether BP considers itself subordinate to the commander of the Unified Command. Once again, it seems, as with BP's shadowy connection to the Lockerbie bomber's release we find our era rhyming with the fourteenth century when the economic and political organization of the western world was radically changing. Popes, like Boniface VIII, kept issuing their usual encyclicals but leaders of the newly-empowered nation-states, like Phillip IV, started defying them.

For the moment -- or, rather, for the next twenty-four hours -- a direct confrontation has been avoided. Early this morning, Admiral Allen released a statement saying that in overnight conversations, "the federal science team got the answers they were seeking and the commitment from BP to meet their monitoring and notification obligations." Accordingly, the cap will remain in place for another twenty-four hours while pressure testing of the well continues and additional seismic surveys are undertaken.

5. Sand Story.

Kimberly Blair has been doing a terrific job for the PNJ covering Pensacola Beach issues about the oil catastrophe. Today, she has an 1100-plus word investigative report on what's happening with the famously white sand on the beach.

We've all seen it: BP clean-up workers grabbing not only tarballs but also large hunks of sand. Bulldozers are even less discriminating as they scrape up enormous shovel-fulls of sand and tar and then pour them into the beds of waiting dump trucks, which disappear into the night.

"[F]or every tar ball and oil blob scooped up during the cleaning process, a chunk of the signature sand goes into a clear plastic bag," Blair writes. Where's it all going? she asks. To "Waste Management's Springhill Landfill north of Panama City," she answers.

The bags filled by individual cleanup workers contain "Between 10 to 20 percent... oil and 80 to 90 percent sand," Keith Wilkins tells Blair. Wilkens, who is Escambia County's deputy chief of Community Services, has emerged as the local answer man for most oil related questions. Doubtless, the percentages are much worse for the 'dozers and sand scrapers. But even he can't say how much oil the heavy equipment has round into the layers of sand beneath the feet of beach-goers.

Scoopers and scrapers took up too much sand. Heavy tractors and trailers destabilized the shoreline, making it vulnerable to natural erosion. The weight of the heavy machines forced oil deeper into the sand and created a public safety hazard for beachgoers.

As of Wednesday, 13,382 tons of crude-contaminated debris, including sand, from oil-impacted beaches of Northwest Florida, has gone to the landfill. Of that, an estimated 1,600 tons, or 2,400 cubic yards, of sand have been removed from Escambia County beaches, said Amy Graham with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

County and island officials are now reconsidering past approaches, Blair reports.

The environmentally friendly cleanup methods Escambia County is adopting are similar to what Gulf Islands National Seashore has been doing all along, Barbara Dougan, the Seashore's oil-response spokeswoman, said. Rakes and small shovels are being used to scoop up the sand and sift it through fish nets. Sieves and even french frying baskets are being tested with great success in the seashore's Mississippi parks, she said.

Heavy equipment is not allowed on the sensitive seashore, which is a critical habitat for nesting sea turtles and shore birds. The park will use the beach rakes only in areas where they won't damage the invertebrates that live along the shoreline.

Sand renourishment well may be required, similar to what Pensacola Beach residents have seen and paid for twice in the past eight years, Blair calculates. And she's not counting post-Hurricane Opal renourishment, which was the first for Pensacola Beach.

But what to do with the oiled sand already collected? Well, that's a work in progress. A Waste Management spokeswoman says, "It is still in the experimental stage, but we are committed to finding a green solution."

As for the buried oil still on the beach below the surface sand, "that's something we have to leave in place and address at the end of all of this with a major excavation," Wilkins told Blair. "We can't (remove it) with major oil hitting our beaches every week."

Or every month or, god forbid, every year if the well and seafloor leaks continue indefinitely. Once again, it seems, BP's environmental catastrophe has left us with an unprecedented problem that will be with us for generations.

Survival Sunday: July 18 BP Oil Spill Update

2010-07-18T08:34:00.009-05:00

""In ecosystems, when you wipe out large segments of them, the ecosystem responds to the absence of those things and other things come in to take their place and you don't return to the way things were."-- Stan Senner, Ocean Conservancy (quoted by BBC News, July 13, 2010)

1. Oilcast.

Click image to read:

2. The Hyppocratic Oilth.

In a statement by Adm. Thad Allen released yesterday, it was announced:

The federal science team has been closely overseeing BP's well integrity test with the goal of first doing no harm to the well.

We'll call that the Hyppocratic Oilth. Adm. Allen goes on:

Based on the data and pressure readings compiled to date, the test has provided us with valuable information which will inform the procedure to kill the well and a better understanding of options for temporary shut in during a hurricane.
* * *
As we continue to see success in the temporary halt of oil from the leak, the U.S. government and BP have agreed to allow the well integrity test to continue another 24 hours.

The government has ordered additional monitoring of the area while the test continues which includes doubling the seismic mapping runs over the well site. A NOAA sonar ship has also been brought to the site to assist in monitoring the entire sea floor area around the well. The ship will make regular passes around the well looking for any hydrocarbon release subsea, and both acoustic and visual monitoring of the area with ROV's will continue.

Happy days will not be here again even if the tests disclose no known leaks. The admiral's statement makes it clear that "when this test is eventually stopped, we will immediately return to containment... ." That means, opening up the well again and collecting more oil-mixed-with water.

This morning, BP announced in a statement that the "test" will be completed Sunday afternoon. And, you'll be shocked to hear that BP's spokesman says everything is going just peachy.

As always, the permanent solution still is weeks away, when and if the relief wells hit their target and heavy mud and cement seal the well for good.

3. Relief Wells.

"Can it work?" ~~Thyrie Bland~~ Travis Griggs asks about a relief well in the headline of today's Sunday Pensacola News Journal. ~~Bland~~ Griggs offers an admirably vivid and compelling word picture of the process, leaving no doubt how dicey are the prospects:

Deep beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, past where blue water fades to black, past the point where the pressure would crush a nuclear submarine, past the frigid sandy seafloor and thousands of feet of shale and stone — is where engineers must stop the Deepwater Horizon oil spill for good.

With a long string of steel and a rock-crushing bit, engineers must carve a three-mile path, weaving through pockets of explosive gas before feeling their way with high-tech sensors toward a target no wider than a telephone pole. In a delicate dance orchestrated from 18,000 feet above, the drill must brush — but not bump — alongside the steel casing of the ruptured Deepwater Horizon well.

With their eyes glued to pressure gauges, engineers will lower a tool to cut a window through the steel wall of the errant well. When they strike oil, they go in for the kill.

With massive pumps pushing fluid as fast as 100 fire hoses, engineers pump a heavy sludge into the bottom of the gushing well. At first the oil will sweep the kill fluid toward the surface, but as thousands of gallons of heavy mud fill the three-mile well bore, its weight pushes back against the pressure of the oil.

The pumps race. The pressure builds. And if everything goes right, the oil stops.

But relief wells don't always go right. ~~Bland~~ Griggs doesn't blanch at telling us about last year's Timor Sea disaster or the 10-month-long Pemco blow-out at the Ixtoc well in the Bay of Campeche, or a shallow-water gas well blow-up off the Louisiana coast.

He could have mentioned dozens of others, neatly cataloged here on a British web site into categories like "deadliest," "most expensive," "sunk rigs," and so on. Some took as many as five tries at a successful relief well. Another catalog of petroleum pollution, indexed by corporate identity, is provided by NOAA here.

"Everybody's confident that we'll get it," ~~Bland~~ Griggs quotes BP drilling advisor Terry Jordan as saying.

"Get it" as in eventually, someday, capping BP's runanway oil well? Yes, probably.

But "get it" as in waking up to see that this dangerous source of energy is poisoning the planet and we need to rush the development of alternatives? That remains to be seen.

4. Surviving Species.

"How much damage has the BP oil spill done?" BBC News asked this week. "And when will it be fully repaired?"

The answers are "we aren't sure" and "probably never." The warmth of the Gulf should help degrade the leaked oil much faster than in a cold climate like Prince William Sound -- where ninety percent of the Exxon Valdez oil persists in the water, under rocks, and in the soil. That doesn't mean, however, that the oil and its penetrating effects on the chain of life will totally vanish from the Gulf of Mexico anytime soon. Not even in the life time of everyone alive today.

Summarizes the BBC:

There may be oil which becomes buried on shore, and oil may end up at the bottom of the sea in anaerobic areas - places where there is no oxygen to allow the microbes to do their work.

"We have never seen these clouds or plumes of oil dispersed in tiny droplets in the water," says [Stan] Senner. "We don't know how much is ending up on the bottom. Onshore, we don't know how much is being buried."

Habitats where the oil has sufficiently penetrated the several thousand known species of sea grasses, marine algae, fungi, and other "submerged aquatic vegetation" will die -- as will the more complex forms of sea life that depend upon them. If the oil penetrates the roots of coastal sea oats, succulents, ferns, shrubs, and trees, these plants also are unlikely to survive.

Where such plants are stabilizing islands, wetlands or estuaries, "then you are going to lose those areas altogether. [Wetlands] will go to open water and will never recover," Senner says.

As for fish, bird, and animal species, experts interviewed by the BBC suggest that the shorter the life span, the quicker a specie may recover if there are sufficient unaffected like-kind organisms to breed in their place; but longer-lived animals like "dolphins, whale sharks and sea turtles... might not fully recover for 10-20 years."

And that's the optimistic view. Endangered species, like Kemp's Ridley sea turtle and the Bluefin Tuna, which have the misfortune to breed near where the Deepwater Horizon platform was, may disappear altogether.

The largest changes may be undetected for some time. Senner warns:

In ecosystems, when you wipe out large segments of them, the ecosystem responds to the absence of those things and other things come in to take their place and you don't return to the way things were. * * * Ecosystems are always dynamic.

As Charles Darwin taught us, all living things may become displaced by other organisms when habitats change by natural causes or the hand of man. An asteroid collision with Earth renders dinosaurs extinct and clears the way for small nocturnal mammals to evolve, some of them eventually evolving into homo sapiens. Humankind's coal-fired furnaces almost wipe out light-colored pepper moths by making them easy prey to spot against the coal-dust darkened lichen of trees, resulting in 98% of the moths being darker colored.

As Stephen Jay Gould also argued compellingly, "contingency, or shaping of present results by long chains of unpredictable antecedent states" inevitably influence how the "timeless laws of nature" work.

Relief wells or no, the Gulf will never be the same. What that means for shrimp, fish, dolphins, sea turtles, and the humans who live here may not be known for a very, very long time. But it will never be the same.
correction to substitute
Travis Griggs as author 7-20 pm

Perplexing Saturday: July 17 BP Oil Spill Update

2010-07-17T08:08:00.002-05:00

1. Oilcast.

There is a new normal on Pensacola Beach. "It's been fairly nice" means, in Kimberly Blair's paraphrasing of a local county official, "Most of the tar balls on the beach are weathered and appear to be left over from the major impact in mid-June, though fresher, oily tar balls have begun dotting the high-tide line on Pensacola Beach and Perdido Key... ."

That official, director Keith Wikins of Escambia County's Community Service Bureau, reads the forecast as keeping "the oil plume hanging offshore south of us" for the next few days. That's also consistent with what Louisiana State University's WAVCIS projections by the Coastal Studies Department show (above).

L.S.U.'s Coastal Studies Department has another useful animation showing the 120-hour "Surface Current Forecast." CLICK HERE to see it.

2. Well Test.

Osha Gray Davidson explains what's "really been happening" at BP's leaking well site. Looks like we're not the only ones frustrated by National Public Radio's lousy coverage:

[T]he BP well has not been plugged. It hasn’t been stopped, capped, or extinguished.

It has been “controlled,” just like the cockroaches that are guaranteed to return once the poison wears off.

The press has been getting this wrong from the git-go and they are still screwing up. Yesterday, I heard the usually reliable NPR repeat the false notion that BP is testing the cap. No, they’re testing the well by using the cap.

This isn’t just word-play. Once the distinction between testing the cap and testing the well was lost, people were certain to celebrate victory when the cap worked, even though we knew it would.

Here is what’s actually happening.

To make sure that the well bore — the part below the seafloor — is not damaged and leaking oil into cracks or holes in the rock, the cap is tricked out with pressure gauges. Now in place, the cap is controlling the oil flow. But time is the key. More time = greater pressure = well integrity.

2. Puzzling Pressure.

What are the results to this hour? Perplexing:

Pressure readings in the well rose significantly in the 24 hours after the valves were closed on a cap at the top of the well, an indication that the well was in good shape. But officials voiced caution, saying that they had expected that the pressure might rise even higher, and that the possibility of damage from the April 20 blowout could not yet be ruled out.

On PBS' News Hour Thursday, the night before the new blow out preventer on the stack cap was closed, Washington Post reporter Joel Achenbach was asked about the possible outcome of this experimental reality show in the Gulf. Here's his answer:

Lots of possibilities.
Now, the worst-case scenario is kablooey, OK, that, when you close the well, the pressure builds. And you can just imagine that the casing of this well down below the Gulf floor may be damaged. And so you could have a further kind of a lateral blowout into the rock formation.

Then you could have a situation of sort of cratering, of erosion, of gas and oil surging up in multiple leaks around the blowout preventer. Now, that, however, is not the most likely scenario. And there is no sign that that has happened.

The other possibility is -- and The Washington Post today is reporting -- I talked to one of the top scientists -- the other possibility is the pressure readings could be ambiguous. It is not what you want to see. It's not terrible. You have to sit there and figure out, well, what's going on here?

So far, that's where it seems BP is at the moment -- scratching its oily corporate head while wondering where did the pressure go?

Is it lower than expected because over the past three months BP's well already released an abundance of poisonous gas and crude oil into the human habit? Is some of it escaping out a hole in the well casing BP hasn't found? Is the oil and gas perhaps being squeezed into subsurface cracks in the rock formations, like toothpaste escaping through holes in the bottom of the tube?

The BBC reports "the company will soon run another seismic survey to check for any evidence of ruptures." A second seismic survey wouldn't have been of much use if President Obama's energy secretary, Steve Chu, hadn't insisted on a baseline survey before closing the stack cap. Thanks to Chu, BP will have something with which to compare the latest seismic imagery.

3. Chu Knew.

What a difference brains in an office-holder make, eh? The last two U.S. Secretaries of Energy were (1) a middling-level pol whose chief claim to fame was he introd uced a bill in the U.S. Senate to abolish the department of energy; and (2) a complete non-entity who previously headed the fourth-worst air polluting company in Texas.

Secretary Chu, by contrast, is a "board-certified genius" and Nobel Prize winning physicist who "has stepped in repeatedly to take command of the effort to contain BP’s runaway well, often ordering company officials to take steps they might not have taken on their own."

In early May, he suggested using gamma ray imaging to determine the condition of the well’s blowout preventer, a move no one at the company had considered.
A few weeks later, he overruled some BP officials and ordered the company to stop the “top kill” effort, citing “very, very grave concerns” that it could backfire.
He insisted in late June that a tighter cap be installed on the leaking riser. And on Tuesday, over the strenuous objections of top BP officials, he ordered a 24-hour delay in plans to conduct a pressure test on the well, saying that more safety precautions and analysis were necessary.

If there's a bright spot anywhere to be seen as we look back over the past three months, it's that Steven Chu has probably saved us from the absolute worst of which BP is capable.

4. Pensacola Beach Cleanup Continues.

Salon reported yesterday that "on Pensacola Beach... dozens of BP workers in neon vests operated heavy equipment up and down the beach throughout the night and early morning."

Workers used shovels and rakes to comb through the sands for pieces of tar. Other workers then collect the clumps of tar in bags, which are carried by the front-end loaders to dump trucks and hauled away down the beach.

We saw a lot of that as we took a tour down the road to Ft. Pickens. A dozen or more white vans stuffed with workers were coming back toward the central core even as two huge buses filled with more BP workers was heading in the opposite direction toward the fort. Heavy equipment was scattered all along the seven miles stretch of beach -- road graders, dump trucks, and oversized dune buggies predominated.

Two large boats were just offshore (above). We couldn't be sure if they were looking for oil slicks or skimming it.

A helicopter flew low above the beach (below left). It appeared to be a spotter, looking for tar mats.

In the midst of all this, here and there small knots of scantily-clad sunbathers were stretched out on the sand, clean-up workers in hazmat suits combed the beach for conspicuous tarballs and trash, and the occasional tourist could be seen wading thigh-deep in the surf as if nothing had changed.

As we say, it's the new "normal."

5. Can't Fool Mother Nature.

Welcome as all the hour-by-hour and day-and-night clean-up activity may be, as Rene Shoof writes for McClatchy newspapers, the truth is "nature will have to do most of it."

While BP has hired thousands of people to boom, skim and burn large amounts of crude, the bulk of an estimated 200 million gallons of oil that spewed into the water is actually beyond human reach. As a result, the ultimate cleanup will be left to nature and to colonies of oil-chomping microbes.

Capturing most of the spill is now all but impossible to do.
* * *
"I think the bottom line is that once the oil gets into the water column — not just the surface — the genie is out of the bottle (and) that we do not have any effective ways to get the genie back into the bottle," said Robert Bea, a University of California engineering professor and an expert on offshore drilling.

Bea worked for Shell Oil on the Santa Barbara oil spill in 1969 and the Bay Marchand, La., spill in 1970 and for the Mexican oil company Pemex on the huge Ixtoc spill in 1979. In the years since those spills, the technology of cleanup hasn't changed, he said.

What's worse, no one knows what the consequences of all this oil in the Gulf will be.

Bea said that two of the newer approaches used by BP to combat the blowout didn't work very well. The unprecedented use of chemical dispersants — more than 1.8 million gallons — helped keep oil off beaches, where people notice it, but the dispersants were ineffective and environmentally destructive, he said.

6. Is the plural of oil mousse "meece?"

A beach friend called out attention to this lexicon of oil spills. Study it. Pop quiz tomorrow.

Anxiously Waiting Friday July 16 BP Oil Spill

2010-07-16T06:07:00.008-05:00

1. Weekend Oilcast.

However welcome the latest news, below, the weekend could get oily for parts of Pensacola Beach and nearby beaches. NOAA's 48-hour oil projection map, above, shows us just outside the dreaded Zone of Uncertainty. But the Mobile regional weather office reports:

Southwest Atlantic Ridge will build westward today as a tropical wave moves westward resulting in an increasing southeasterly wind flow which will persist through the period. Seas will build to 3 feet by late today and become fully developed on Saturday and remain near 3 feet through Monday when subsiding seas will occur.

Heavier, sustained seas from a southerly direction are not good. We need a north wind. If near-shore seas are more moderate, however, we may get lucky again. Keep an eye on the colored flags at Pensacola Beach. Red and yellow are bad, green good.

2. Anxious Waiting, Cautious Hoping.

Harry Webber for the Associated Press has it exactly right:

BP finally gained control over one of America's biggest environmental catastrophes by placing a carefully fitted cap over a runaway geyser that has been gushing crude into the Gulf of Mexico since early spring. Engineers, politicians and Gulf residents will watch anxiously over the next day and a half to see if it holds.

After nearly three months and up to 184 million gallons, the accomplishment was greeted with hope, high expectations — and, in many cases along the beleaguered coastline, disbelief. But no one was declaring victory just yet.

Locally, the PNJ relies on a report from its sister newspaper, USA Today, that adopts the same cautiousness. ["Oil Stops Flowing But Is It Over?"] Dan Vergano explains:

The success of the new cap, the best hope yet of containing the leak, still rides on pressure tests that began late Wednesday. In a metaphor for the bumpy progress of containing the disaster, the testing halted when a valve in the new cap started leaking. It was fixed, and the oil stopped flowing.
But for how long? Engineers will monitor the pressure readings over a period of 48 hours.
Looming even larger is the work on a nearby relief well that BP continues to bill as the permanent solution to stopping the spill that has triggered a $3.5 billion response.

Here in Pensacola, Sean Dugas supplements the national news with reactions from a few local residents.

"I think we have a long road to hoe, but this will lift people's spirits. Now we know where we stand. As long as it was flowing, it seemed like there was no hope." - Darice Langham, 40, of Pensacola

"It's about time. If they would have taken care of the blowout value in the first place, we wouldn't be in this mess now. It's sad. It's just sad." - Diane Nelms, 55, of Milton

Campbell Robinson and Henry Fountain in the New York Times quote another coastal resident, a fisherman from Louisiana:

"It’s like putting a Band-Aid on a dead man in my opinion, said Jeff Ussury, 48, who considers his days as a crabber over for good. He doubted the news of the capping was even true.

“I started out kind of believing in them,” he said, “but I don’t believe in them at all anymore.”

We don't remember cynicism being one of the stages of oil grief, but it makes sense under the circumstances. Even if the pressure tests hold, there are more hazards to be overcome. Not the least of them is the tropical storm season and what it could wash up on our shores even months after the BP oil leak is stopped at the source -- if it ever is.

3. Rubio's Poopy Platform.

Andy Marlette's editorial cartoon for the PNJ today reminds everyone that Republican senatorial candidate Marco Rubio still favors drilling off the Florida coast. What it reminds us about is what we've been told is an old Vaudeville joke: "Some dirty pigeon stooled on me."

Those "drill, baby, drill" pols are still out there, even if they are laying low for now. While we hope for a permanent stop to the leak, they're hoping the voters get amnesia and forget the devastation which indiscriminate deep water drilling in the Gulf can cause.

4. Europe Learns.

Having watched with horror our misfortune, the European Union is now considering a ban on deep water drilling.

5. Rebranding BP.

As we have cautioned, even if the leak has been stopped for good lasting damage has been done to the Gulf and to coastal communities in five states. Some worry that BP's image is a little dented, too.

In a parody of those authoritarian stalwarts who look forward to the day when BP once again rules MMS and drills wherever it wants however it wants, Great Britain's chapter of Greenpeace has been holding a "rebranding contest" for BP. Multiple entries have been received in the categories of Best Logo, Best Illustration, Best Wildlife, Best Slogan, and -- our favorite category -- "WTF?"

And, you get to vote for the ones you like best! Our personal favorite is in the "best slogan" category. It pokes fun at two villains with one blow:

6. Unbelievable.

Would you believe there was more drilling of oil wells in the very same quarter of the year BP's Deep Horizon platform blew up than in the year before? It's true, according to the American Petroleum Institute:

After posting a 22% decline in the first quarter, US oil and natural gas drilling activity staged a turnaround in Q2, with completions rising 38% from the same period of 2009, the American Petroleum Institute said in a report this week.

An estimated 10,358 oil wells, gas wells and dry holes were completed in Q2, API said.

minor edit 7-16am

Overnight No-Spill Cam

2010-07-15T17:18:00.000-05:00

News Hour reports: "BP Holding Back Oil, for Now; Ticker Stands Still."

Help us monitor the underwater cap stack overnight. If you see oil or anything else untoward, please let us know.

Cap Testing Thursday: July 15 BP Oil Spill Update

2010-07-15T11:48:00.009-05:00

1. Oilcast

Today we configured NOAA's new interactive spill map for wind and wave projections over the next 72 hours (as above). It looks like the moderately light southerly breezes we saw on the beach yesterday will continue. By late yesterday afternoon, we made the wind out to be almost a two-club wind at times, or as brisk as 15 mph along unprotected shores. Small white caps dotted Pensacola Bay.

A southerly breeze generally means southerly currents near to shore. These days, with large sheets of oil hanging around offshore, that almost inevitably means at least some small tarballs and fresh oil mousse sloshing around in the surf. If the past is prologue, the farther west on Santa Rose Island one goes the more numerous and larger the tarballs even on days when the weather seems great.

2. Cap Test Delayed, Resumes, Delayed, Resumes, etc. etc. etc.

After a long day of on-again, off-again promises to begin the pressure testing on the new cap stack, late last night BP finally started the tests -- and discovered " a leak on a line on the choke valve of the new cap." Little wonder Energy Secretary Chu and his team thought it necessary to make BP re-check everything yesterday.

We shouldn't be surprised that BP's engineers missed something. For three months, BP has been acting as if they're filming "The Keystone Kops Drill for Oil." Even when the corporation stubbornly sticks to sharing only what little good news there is, and suppressing all of the bad, it screws up.

Yesterday, however, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs and Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen were more explicit about the risks BP is running than any official involved, government or otherwise, has been before. As the New York Times reported today:

Mr. Gibbs described the review as “a series of steps” that were being taken “in order to ensure that what we’re doing is being done out of an abundance of caution to do no harm.”
Among the concerns was that if the well was damaged during the test, oil and gas might leak from the seafloor around the well rather than up through the well bore as it is now.
* * *
Admiral Allen said the government had asked BP for more information on the structural strength of the well. And in allowing the test to proceed, the government stipulated that pressure be allowed to build up in intervals, with acoustic tests to gauge the well’s condition every six hours. That would most likely lengthen the duration of the test, which had been expected to last from 6 to 48 hours.

Earlier this morning, BP repaired the leaking hose. Now, says the New York Times in a late update, the "test can proceed." Remember that admonition of our dear old father. He wasn't a pessimist, just a clear-eyed realist.

3. Booms on the Water.

Even in a moderately light breeze, as mentioned above, the oil booms in unprotected waters don't fare well. Even low waves wash over them, twist them, and sometimes dislodge them altogether. Yesterday, the boom on the mainland at the Project Greenshores site at the north of the 3-mile bridge was close to breaking up in less than 2 feet seas (see photo, left).

It's disheartening to imagine what a stiff wind will do to them.

On the other hand, in protected waters like the entrance to Little Sabine Bay, the boom was doing fairly well yesterday:

4. The Story of O.

Yes, there are "oil impact notices" stuck here and there at Pensacola Beach warning visitors of the possible presence of "oil products." But what about the electronic sign? Nary a word that so much as starts with the letter "O."

Yesterday the sign read, "Swim with extra caution." Doesn't that sound almost like an invitation to swim rather than a health warning?

5. New Tourist Game: Tarballs and Mousse.

Not surprisingly, many land-lubbing tourists don't know a tarball from a mousse patty. Heck, most of us who've frequented the beach for years didn't know the difference either, until a couple of months ago.

It seems, now, that tourists well enough informed to know we're experiencing an oil emergency may be coming to the beach out of curiosity. Yesterday, we came across a small party beaching it along the road to Ft. Pickens. They were from Missouri, the "show me" state. They had to see for themselves.

Several were wading in the surf, playing at catching tarballs with each ebb and flow of the waves coming ashore. It's the latest tourist recreational activity, like shelling -- only for bits of oil pollution.

We saw Yvonne from St. Louis snatch something small and orange from the surf before it washed back into the Gulf.

"What's this?" she asked a friend.

He shrugged and shook his head. "A shell, maybe?"

"It's oil from the spill," we offered. "See how soft and pliable it is? They call that mousse."

"Really?" she said excitedly. "It doesn't look like oil."

We explained that the hard black things she had been grabbing out of the water are called tarballs. They are bits of oil that have weathered awhile in the air and water. The small orange glop she held in her hands now was unweathered oil. It had traveled from BP's well over a hundred and fifty miles away, probably under water for most of the time.

Yvonne was so excited that she proudly displayed her find to all of her friends. We obligingly took a photo:

We didn't mean to be censorious of our new-found acquaintances, but we couldn't help remarking that it seemed a little, well, inappropriate that she looked so happy about finding oil on the beach.

"You're right," she said after a moment's thought. "Here, take my picture again."

This time she wrinkled her nose and screwed her face into what she supposed would be the locally-accepted expression:

As they were leaving, we noticed that Yvonne took the mousse with her, despite our warning that it is toxic. A souvenir of her beach vacation.

6. Social Notes from Pensacola Beach.

Rick Outzen, publisher of the local weekly Independent News, reported yesterday that he's been getting complaints "from business owners that attended the SRIA cocktail party for the Blue Angels and their wives on Friday, July 9 at the Hilton."

First, the beach lifeguards were there and talked through most of the presentations. Second, the names and titles of the Blues were stated incorrectly. When the Blues wanted to make their presentation to the SRIA, no one could find the board chairman or a board member to accept it.

As one beach business owner and admitted Blues fan told me, "These men deserve our respect and admiration. That party was an embarrassment."

The most shocking lapse, to us, is the absence of anyone from the Santa Rosa Island Authority. SRIA executive car-counter Buck Lee likes to receive more awards than a TV exec at a sitcom convention. Once, he even had the SRIA give himself a Hummer.

7. Journalism Award.

Speaking of awards, Mac McClelland, who was on Pensacola Beach a couple of weeks ago, has won the Hillman Foundation's monthly Sidney Award for outstanding social consciousness in journalism. Her winning entry in Mother Jones magazine concerned BP's oil spill and the devastating effect it has had on the lives of families along the Louisiana coast. ["Depression, Abuse, Suicide: Fishermen's Wives Face Post-Spill Trauma"]

8. NPR Continues to Doze Through Its Oil Coverage.

National Public Radio this morning continued its miserably superficial coverage of the Great Oil-Poisoning of the Gulf of Mexico. At long distance from his sunny, eternally-optimistic desk in Washington D.C., where he's sure not to get his cuffs dirty, NPR'S science guy Richard Harris continues his completely credulous watch of the same robotic camera feeds that everyone else in the world sees. Then he reports what he thinks he saw.

Have time to waste? Give a listen. Then ask NPR, is this the kind of "serious, in-depth reporting" they claimed they would do with Joan Kroc's $200 million?

Test Delay Wednesday: July 14 BP Oil Spill Update

2010-07-14T11:30:00.005-05:00

1. Oilcast

Not much change from previous oil forecasts for Pensacola Beach. We remain well within the "uncertainty" area of NOAA's potential forecast of washed-up tarballs and mousse, but so far this week only about one percent of Pensacola Beach has been reported covered with "sporadic tarballs." Light southwest winds and off-and-on overcast conditions continue.

2. Pressure Test Postponed.

First the "well integrity" pressure tests were to start "immediately" after the new "18-foot-tall, 150,000-pound" stack cap was seated. Then, it was Monday. Then Tuesday morning. Then Tuesday by noon. Then Tuesday mid-afternoon. Then evening.

Now it may not be until Thursday -- if ever -- before pressure tests on BP's new cap stack begin. The New York Times and Bloomberg News were among the first to report late last night that start of the pressure testing --

was postponed after BP met with National Incident Commander Thad Allen, Energy Secretary Steven Chu and a government team of scientists and industry experts, who decided more analysis needed to be done before they proceeded, Allen said in a statement last night.

"We continue to prepare and review protocols for the well integrity test, including the seismic mapping run that was made around the well site this morning," Allen said. "As a result of these discussions, we decided that the process may benefit from additional analysis."

As the Times explains:

On its Web site, BP said in a statement that the test had been postponed after a meeting with Energy Secretary Stephen Chu “and his team of scientific and industry experts.”

According to a statement issued a little after 8:30 CDT last night, Admiral Thad Allen and Secretary Chu's group, seismic mapping of the seafloor yesterday morning convinced them "that the process may benefit from additional analysis that will be performed tonight and tomorrow."

BP's well bore is more than 12,000 feet, or 2+ miles into the Earth below the seafloor. There always has been concern that merely by "pressure testing" the new cap stack the oil company conceivably could cause additional, irreparable damage to the stack or the well itself, thus complicating or even negating August's relief well efforts. Hence, BP has issued multiple assurances that it would proceed slowly to close three open vent in the stack while trying to achieve higher pressures inside the stack; and it would re-open the vents if pressure dropped because that would signal problems below the seafloor.

Now, it seems, seismic imaging has caused concerns that the well bore, or the rocky formations around it beneath the seafloor, may have been compromised by the original April 20 explosion. As Rolling Stone Magazine's Osha Gray Davidson wrot e late last night:

Allen’s reference to an already performed “seismic mapping run” as a reason for delaying the test, suggests the possibility of a second even more serious problem. Geologists may have detected cracks or fissures in the rock surrounding the well, weaknesses probably caused by the initial explosion.
If that’s true, the area may not be stable enough to proceed with the well test. The pressure generated by shutting off the flow of oil could lead to a catastrophic failure of the well — allowing crude to spew into the water at a rate even greater than it already is.

Sound familiar?

3. NPR's Leaking Coverage.

For some reason National Public Radio's coverage of the oil spill has been leaking a lot of oil lately. It's all surface and no depth. Faced with what may be the biggest man-made environmental disaster in history, so far as we can tell NPR has no correspondents on the leak scene or along the Gulf Coast.

This morning, NPR science reporter Richard Harris, still sitting at his desk in Washington D.C., continues his superficial "analysis" by confessing on air that he gets his information by "watching the robot under water" and that he really doesn't know what's going on or why. But, 'Rah-rah BP! It's all so exciting!

Confronted with a glass of oil and asked if it's half-full or half-empty, Harris would say it looks full to him -- and then he'd drink it. Give a listen if you have time to waste:

4. Executive Malaprop.

Goodman Ace would have been amused. During BP Corp. vice-president Kent Wells' afternoon telephone press briefing Tuesday, he opened the discussion about the cap stack's then-anticipated integrity tests with this apology:

So now let me move to the well integrity test. So I come with my head in my hand. I was a little optimistic this morning, thinking we’d get started by late morning or noon. [emphasis added]

We realize Wells meant to employ the usual shibboleth about apologetically approaching another with "hat in hand." But for Gulf Coast residents it was so much more apt the way he said it. Any number of coastal residents and businesses would like to have his head.

As Jane Ace might have said, being funny must be why Wells gets "the big busts." We look forward to seeing him put his foot in his mousse more often.

5. Beach Oil Study.

The National Science Foundation is supporting Florida State University professors Markus Huettel and Joel E. Kostka in their study of "how quickly the Deepwater Horizon oil carried into Gulf of Mexico beach sands is being degraded by the sands' natural microbial communities, and whether native oil-eating bacteria that wash ashore with the crude are helping or hindering that process."

St. George Island, Fla., and Dauphin Island, Ala., have served as the primary research sites since early June, when the one-year study began. In addition, the researchers have obtained heavily oiled sand from Pensacola Beach, Fla., and from a barrier island off the Louisiana coast.
* * *
Huettel and Kostka will analyze sediment cores collected from Gulf beaches to find out how much and to what depth oil washed onto the shore is carried into the sand; how rapidly microbes in the sand are breaking it down; and how the oil pollution may be impacting the structure and function of natural microbial communities that help to protect water quality on the coast.

The results also may shed light on whether dispersants help or hurt in the degradation of beached oil, as well as possible techniques for accelerating the degradation process.

6. Oily Games.

We predicted it. An Xbox "indy" game is now available for download, called "Crisis in the Gulf." Price is $1.

No reimbursement from BP for your losses is assured.

In the game, the company saddled with stopping the leak is named "DP." Damned Petroleum? View a promo here.

7. Beached Oil Map.

The National Resources Defense Council, long a respected advocate for the environment, has posted a new interactive map showing the latest info on beached oil, "closures, advisories, and notifications." Click on any dirty-looking "sand pail" and you get a pop-up screen with additional links to follow:

8. BP's Oily Lockerbie Leak.

Yesterday, four U.S. senators from New York and New Jersey wrote Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to demand an investigation into "whether oil giant BP played a role in winning last year's release of the man convicted of the Lockerbie airliner bombing." The "four Democrats said they were concerned BP may have put profits ahead of justice in the al-Megrahi case, given the petroleum giant's current handling of the Gulf oil spill."

There is not even a tenuous connection in any of this to the oil spill, of course. But, like the ongoing BP oil spill, it could be considered additional evidence that we are witnessing the early stages of an epic power struggle over who and by what means economic life on Earth is to be organized.

Is the paramount power now democratically-elected nation-states? Or, is it shareholder-owned mega-corporations? "Both," our friend who just retired from the oil industry told us last night.

The Lockerbie incident, like the oil spill, casts more light on that question. For those who don't remember, the BBC has a synopsis of events, with links to original news stories.

On December 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 from London to New York exploded 31,000 feet over Lockerbie, Scotland after taking off from London. Two hundred and seventy people were killed; the great majority of them Americans. Almost three years later, two suspected intelligence agents working for Moammar Ghadhafi's Libyan government were charged with multiple counts of murder. After intervention by Nelson Mandela, Ghadhafi finally agreed to surrender the defendants in April, 1999.

They were tried over a nine-month period in 2000-2001 by a Scottish court sitting, unusually, in the Netherlands. One defendant was acquitted and the other, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, was convicted. After al-Megrahi's last appeal was rejected in 2002, he began serving his life sentence in a Scottish prison. A year later, the government of Libya paid nearly $3 billion into a compensation fund for the Lockerbie victims.

And now we get to the BP angle:

On May 29, 2007, British Prime Minister Tony Blair signed "a memorandum of understanding" agreeing to "shortly 'commence negotiations' on prisoner transfer, extradition and mutual assistance in criminal law, with a final deal signed within 12 months."
February, 2008, it was "reported that Libya had just ratified a £450m contract with oil giant BP, after [British] ministers drafted a prisoner transfer agreement that [reports said] could cover al-Megrahi." The Scottish government protested. The British government, which had "said at the time that the [prisoner exchange] agreement did not cover Megrahi," now was admitting a prisoner exchange involving al-Megrahi was a "matter for discussion."
In October, 2008, al-Megrahi's lawyer publicly announced that the Libyan had been diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer.
In July, 2009, al-Megrahi applied to the Scottish courts for compassionate release because his cancer was terminal. The BBC reported at the time that "Traditionally, only applications from those with three months to live are granted."
On August 20, 2009 it was announced that Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill had issued a decision releasing al-Megrahi to go home. MacAskill said, among other things, that the decision was based on the statement by the Scottish prison system's Director of Health and Care "that a three-month prognosis is now a reasonable estimate" for al-Megrahi's life expectancy. Two other doctors examined him and concluded "Megrahi could live for 19 months."
A few days earlier, the London Times reported that "industry sources" and a Libyan informant were saying there was a direct connection between al-Megrahi's release and the British government's desire to "liberate Britain’s largest industrial company from a string of problems hampering its $900 million (£546 million) Libyan gas projects... ."
A year later, al-Megrahi is still alive and secure in Libya. The doctor who certified a year ago that he had three months to live is "embarrassed."

Moammar Ghadafi's son, Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, recently told CNN --

that Libya pressured the British government to include the convicted terrorist in the prisoner release agreement. Initially, he said, Britain refused to heed Libya's demands that Megrahi be included in the prisoner release agreement.

"There was no mention of Mr. Megrahi until the British said 'we are ready to sign but there should be a clause mentioning that Mr. Megrahi is excluded.' And then we said no," Gadhafi said. "We were very very angry. It's not acceptable."

Gadhafi said the agreement was that Megrahi would be released if Libya dropped its appeals in the Lockerbie case. But, Gadhafi said, Libya still believes he is innocent.

If you think it's all about politics, think again. "Sà, cle l'argent! Sà, cle l'argent," wrote another chronicler of the fourteenth century in the age when newly invented nation-states were growing powerful enough to rival the papacy. "Money, money! Such is the cry which all the day long sounds in the ears of the famished people." [Masson, The Story of Mediaeval France]

Both justice and democracy are secondary. "That's just the way it is," our retired oil industry friend says.

Cap Test Tuesday: July 13 BP Oil Spill Update

2010-07-13T13:52:00.006-05:00

1. Oilcast

Hot, largely dry, occasional brief summer storms here and there, and "more oil coming," according to Kris Wernowsky.

2. Containment Cap.

BP announced yesterday that "the three ram capping stack was installed on the Deep Water Horizon LMRP at 7 p.m. CDT. The stack completes the installation of the new sealing cap."

Jaquetta White, reporting for the Times-Picayune, has a lucid and detailed description of yesterday's swap-out of containment caps:

Oil was still leaking into the Gulf of Mexico Monday night, however. At least two openings in a "perforated pipe" attached to the new cap could be seen on BP's live video feed shooting oil. But that oil flow is expected until the cap is completely hooked up and the pipe is "closed in," BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said.

With the cap in place, BP will begin conducting "well integrity tests" on the blown-out Macondo well this morning, Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said. [This morning, BP announced at the daily morning briefing that testing will begin around noon.] The pressure readings will tell the company whether the cap will be enough to hold the oil inside the well until a relief well is drilled or whether crews should continue sucking oil from the well to ships on the surface.

That's the bottom line. As for how BP got to this point, click here for the rest of White's article. It makes for a slick read.

At an early morning briefing today, BP vice-president Kent Wells --

said tests will begin at mid-day of the 150,000 pound tight-fitting cap, placed Monday on the well in the Gulf of Mexico that began leaking April 20. He said the tests will take between six and 48 hours and scientists will monitor well pressure at "minute" intervals. During that time, oil will continue leaking.

3. Lasting Damage Done.

Another AP dispatch cautions that even assuming everything goes as hoped -- the new cap contains all the oil and the relief wells work to shutter the well permanently -- it will be years before Gulf Coast beaches return to normal:

Even if the flow of oil is choked off while BP works on a permanent fix, the spill has already damaged everything from beach tourism to the fishing industry.

Tony Wood, director of the National Spill Control School at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi said the sloppiest of the oil — mousse-like brown stuff that has not yet broken down — will keep washing ashore for several months, with the volume slowly decreasing over time.

He added that hardened tar balls could keep hitting beaches and marshes each time a major storm rolls through for a year or more. Those tar balls are likely trapped for now in the surf zone, gathering behind sand bars just like sea shells.

“It will still be getting on people’s feet on the beaches probably a year or two from now,” Wood said.

The difference is that the world will have moved on soon and the oil spill will be largely forgotten, except perhaps at family vacation time or by all of those thrown out of work as the local economy inexorably declines.

Americans will have resumed driving Hummers and similar gas-guzzling vehicles. BP Corp. will have changed its company name to something even more obscure (maybe just "B"), followed by a world-wide advertising campaign bragging that it's the world leader in developing new ways to 'protect Earth's delicate environment.'

Meanwhile, the company will be turning its attention to drilling deeper and riskier wells. Suddenly, one day, claims filed by coastal businesses and residents will start bouncing back "Address Unknown." The water will remain oily, the air foul, the summer days ever hotter and wetter with the worsening climate.

Who knows? In just a couple of years even deeply damaged residents of the Gulf Coast when they troop to the polls might wind up sending one or another "drill, baby, drill" politician to the White House.

We'd like to think the human animal is capable of learning from experience. But history offers little evidence of it; we can't even celebrate "International Year of Biodiversity" without killing off "billions of sea organisms."

4. Surrendering to Gambling Organizations.

Pensacola News Journal columnist Reggie Dogan today hoists the flag of surrender and goes all-in for turning to the casino gambling industry as Pensacola's only hope for economic survival. That's just about as senseless as turning to Laetrile when you're diagnosed with cancer. Worse, actually. Laetrile doesn't cure you, but it doesn't kill you, either.

We could put Dogan's terrible idea down to an unfortunate bout of temporary insanity brought on by the oil spill blues, except for the fact that the editorial board of the newspaper he works for similarly admitted defeat two weeks ago when it flip-flopped on gaming at Perdido Key.

The PNJ was once so strongly opposed to the idea of introducing gambling on this county's beaches that its unrelenting negative coverage scared off a hotel developer who was angling for the necessary permits. The newspaper now appears to have become so disheartened about Pensacola's future economic prospects that it might next endorse pole dancing classes at U.W.F. and cocaine parlors in the churches so long as it means a couple of dozen new jobs.

A couple of weeks after the BP leak started, we received a quick message from a cousin of ours who lives in the Far West. He's a smart and highly educated guy. His message was short but succinct. Here it is in its entirety:

"Re: oil spill.... How's the new casino construction going?"

Our cousin was thinking four steps ahead of most other people. He understood early on that the BP oil leak would soon become an unprecedented disaster. He foresaw that tourist-dependent communities like ours would be devastated economically. And, being a former elected official himself, he knew that local pols and civic leaders would reach, first, for the cheapest-seeming, easiest appearing, most common solution available.

In short, his message revealed an immediate understanding that there would be a direct line of descent from the devastating oil leak to equally ruinous gambling casinos. He also knows that this would be exactly the worst move we could make.

Not so much for moral reasons, as Dogan supposes many will think, but because when gambling casinos come to town it's like a second oil well blow-up. Casinos don't improve the local economy, they destroy it. As we said over a year ago when gambling for Perdido Key was first proposed --

Our objections are rooted mostly in concerns about maintaining the environmental sustainability of our fragile island paradise, the heightened risk of public official corruption that inevitably follows legalized gambling, the certainty that desperate poor people will become even more vulnerable to exploitation, and the increased vulgarization of American culture.

Widespread gambling inevitably cheapens an entire community. If you doubt it, visit Atlantic City.

Pensacola has more than its share of low income residents. Good-paying jobs already are scarce. According to our own back-of-the-envelope calculations, the area could lose as much as a third of its economy over the next decade or so, unless there is a bold and innovative commitment to making it much more like a great place to live as well as visit.

Throwing open the gates to gambling casinos will not improve the quality of life in Pensacola. It will disappear it altogether. The PNJ editorial and Dogan's proposals are precisely the kind of unthinking, ineffectual boosterism we have warned against.

5. "Best Places to Live in America."

CNN is touting a new ranking of the "10 Best Places to Live in America." Interestingly, not one is known as a gambling mecca. (Although Eden Prairie, "which doesn't have much of a downtown," comes close with at least one Indian casino about as far from what passes for the center of town as the Poarch casino in Atmore, Alabama, is from Pensacola.)

The attributes which these 10 towns share that make them attractive to employers are "excellent schools" (although Ft. Collins' schools are now endangered by state legislative budget cuts ); a "diverse" ethnic population; "pedestrian-friendly" parks, playgrounds, and shopping districts; "an embarrassment of arts and entertainment riches;" ample forested areas, ponds, and parks; and plenty of athletic facilities for soccer, golf, tennis, and the usual assortment of other sports enjoyed by people of every age.

There was a time when each of these 10 locales was down in the dumps. We know. We've been in most of them at one time or another. Several expressly rejected gambling proposals as a path for the future.

Do you suppose Pensacola could learn something from them? Is it within our capabilities to greatly improve our schools? Expand and beautify our parks and playgrounds? Create more "pedestrian-friendly" shopping experiences, more accommodating athletic and sports facilities? If not an "embarrassment of riches" in the arts, can we strive for "ample?"

Casinos prosper by playing only games where the house always wins in the end. We propose, instead, that Gannett Publishing Corp. organize Reggie Dogan, the entire PNJ editorial board, and select civic leaders for a fact-finding mission to see if the odds of reviving Pensacola's economy through improving its livability are any better than those the casinos will offer. They can't be any worse.

6. Son of Drilling Ban.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar yesterday issued revised rules declaring a six-month moratorium on deepwater oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. The rule replaces one which was disapproved last week by a three-judge panel of the ultra-conservative Fifth U.S. Court of Appeals.

The New York Times has the basics:

The revised moratorium would allow some drilling rigs to resume operating under certain conditions. To qualify, the rig’s owners must prove that they have adequate plans in place to quickly shut down an out-of-control well, that the blowout preventers atop the wells it drills have passed rigorous new tests, and that sufficient cleanup resources are on hand in case of a spill. Industry officials said it would be difficult to meet those conditions quickly, which could threaten thousands of jobs.

Will oil industry interests again sue to stop this regulation? Does oil on the beach stink?

7. BP Illness Records.

ProPublica has been compiling all of BP's illness reports since the day after the Deepwater Horizon platform explosion. There really isn't enough detailed information publicly available, yet, to draw definitive conclusions other than this: contact with oil, tarballs, and wet mousse can make you very sick.

8. The Dispersant Mystery.

David Hammer is covering the second day of the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling Commission hearings in New Orleans. He reports today on what can only be considered the completely incoherent and unconvincing case made by EPA assistant administrator Mathy Stanislaus over BP's authorized use of massive amounts of dispersants to submerge the oil leak.

Stanislaus painted a picture of an EPA that's putting a lot of effort into easing public fears about the chemical dispersants and other toxic impacts of the spill response, but commission members echoed concerns from some of Monday's public comments about the feeling of mystery surrounding the effects of chemicals being used.

It didn't help when Stanislaus said dispersants "are not as toxic" as oil, then moments later claimed "oil collected as waste showed it wasn't hazardous."

At the core of this issue lies the suspicion that "methane-heavy" dispersant pools actually worsen the toxicity of Gulf waters far more than would the massive oil leak itself. A review of the scientific literature suggests "most researchers (about 75 %) found that chemically-dispersed oil was more toxic than physically-dispersed oil."

About half of these found that the cause for this was the increased PAHs (typically about 5 to 10 times) in the water column. Others noted the increased amount of total oil in the water column. Two researchers noted the damage to fish gills caused by the increased amount of droplets.

Stanislaus, Hammer says, admitted that the EPA agrees "the process needs to be changed." It appears BP wasn't the only organization which didn't have a clue of the risks that attend deepwater drillng.

9. Corporations of Interest.

Kate Sheppard of Mother Jones Magazine, in an on-line article posted yesterday, brings us up to speed on the Justice Department's criminal investigation into the BP catastrophe. Turns out, there are multiple "corporations of interest," to paraphrase John Ashcroft, who are as shadowy and scary as any terrorist organization -- and much more capable of wreaking havoc on the U.S.

minor edit 7-13 pm

BP's Stack Swap Live Video Overnight

2010-07-12T17:58:00.003-05:00

Toggle the X (lower right) to enlarge all.

Is BP's Well Well?

2010-07-12T14:02:00.001-05:00

According to BP's COO, Doug Suttles, the New York Times reports today, we should know soon if the worst case scenario is still in the picture:

With the installation of a new cap on its runaway well in the Gulf of Mexico progressing smoothly, BP prepared on Monday to conduct tests to determine whether the flow of oil escaping from the well could be halted completely.
* * *
If the tests show the pressure rising and holding — an indication that there was no significant damage along the length of the well bore, which extends 13,000 feet below the sea floor — the valves could remain closed, effectively ending the three-month gusher.
* * *
On the other hand, the tests could show the pressure remaining lower than expected, which Mr. Suttles said would indicate a “problem with the integrity” of the well. In that case, he said, the valves would have to be reopened, oil would start escaping from the well again, and the collection systems would have to be turned back on.

The answer should be known within a few days, and certainly by the end of the week.

When the Deficit Doesn't Matter

2010-07-12T13:28:00.005-05:00

When is it that the federal deficit doesn't matter? When it comes to giving additional tax cuts to wealthy people who make more than $250,000 a year.

Steve at Washington Monthy:

Let's be real clear about this. When Democrats propose extending unemployment benefits in the midst of an unemployment crisis, Republicans insist that's out of the question and refuse to allow the Senate to even vote on the idea -- the deficit matters more. When Democrats propose aid to states to prevent hundreds of thousands of additional layoffs, Republicans insist that's out of the question and refuse to allow the Senate to even vote on the idea -- the deficit matters more.

But when tax cuts -- the single biggest cause of the current massive deficit -- are on the line, Republicans effectively say, "Screw the deficit. We believe deficit reduction is more important than economic growth, except when we believe the opposite."

It would be about this time that the Tea Party crowd, if it had any integrity or intellectual consistency, would pipe up and reject the GOP tax-cut rhetoric, reiterating its commitment to deficit reduction. Anyone prepared to place a wager on this one?
* * *
[T]he tax cuts didn't stimulate the economy when they were approved. The tax cuts passed in early 2008 didn't stimulate the economy and prevent a recession, either. The tax cuts in the stimulus package were the least effective measure in the entire recovery effort.

Guess what Florida politician wants to give more tax cuts to the rich? The answer is here.

Cap Stack Monday: July 12 BP Oil Spill Update

2010-07-12T09:48:00.010-05:00

1. Oilcast.

Ocean Circulation Group at the University of South Florida has an oilcast animation showing the projected spread of oil through Wednesday, July 14. It doesn't look good to see the black ooze off Pensacola Beach doubling and turning red.

We selected three static screenshots (click on above graphic). (All times are UTC, or -5 hrs. CDT) To see the full animation, click here.

2. Buffetmania.

Jimmy Buffett's beach concert drew "a sea humanity" estimated at 35,000 fans:

Buffett focused squarely on delivering his good-time music rather than using the occasion to stand on the soapbox about the spill. He did, however, slip in the line that "it's all BP's fault" during "Margaritaville," to a tremendous ovation.

The Mobile Register covers the event like oil sheets on water, with news lots of articles, commentary, photos, and videos.

Now back to our regularly-scheduled soapbox.

3. Spill Commissioners on the Beach.

Two members of President Obama's "National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling" and the state governor visited the Panhandle Sunday. Leading the tour was former U.S. Senator Bob Graham, co-chairman of the commission.

The two commission members spent part of the afternoon on Pensacola Beach listening to residents, business owners, and local politicians. Thyrie Bland covered it for the PNJ:

The meeting with former Florida governor and U.S. Sen. Bob Graham and Terry Garcia, executive vice president for mission programs for the National Geographic Society, was held at Pensacola Beach in the Santa Rosa Island Authority building.

Before settling in at the SRIA meeting room, Sen. Graham, Garcia, and Governor Charlie Crist "toured parts of the Florida Panhandle... to get feedback from residents and officials affected by the spill." Business owners tallied their personal losses, politicians talked about wanting more local control, and everybody complained about slow or no reimbursement from BP Corp.

The various meetings were unofficial, probably a fact-finding courtesy extended to Sen. Graham out of respect for concern about his home state. Other members of the commission weren't in attendance.

The SRIA's Buck Lee's singular contribution to the discussion, according to the newspaper, was a "sarcastic" line so common it has become a cliché: "You want al-Qaida cleaning up after 9-11?"

He might as well have asked how we feel about an indicted county commissioner being put in charge.

A small knot of protesters also attended the meeting. [Click for video.] Sen. Graham "chatted with them briefly," Bland reports. While almost everyone else was obsessed with their own wants and needs, protester Terry Holley of Pensacola focused on the large issue:

"The big message is a clean energy alternative for the future. If this is not a reason to do that, then there is never going to be a reason."

The full seven-member commission moves on today to New Orleans for two days of hearings. The Times-Picayune reports:

Monday's hearing will mainly be a status report from Coast Guard and BP representatives about the progress and challenges of the cleanup and containment efforts that have dragged on for nearly three months. The second meeting Tuesday will focus on fishers, oil industry workers, hotel operators and others in coastal communities hurt by the spill and the resulting forced stoppage of deepwater drilling.

You can follow the proceedings live on C-Span.

4. Cap Stack Exchange.

The cap-exchange that began this weekend is going well so far, we're told. But for the Gulf of Mexico this is looking a lot like "the operation was a success, but the patient died." The oil is now gushing virtually unimpeded.

CBS News' Mark Strassman yesterday offered a balanced report. He explains the negatives as well as the positives:

On the other hand, NPR's science reporter Richard Harris today positively gushes over it all. To hear him tell it, BP Corp. is engaged in the most exciting science since NASA landed men on the moon:

Among other omissions, Harris neglects to report that the "second pipe" seen on videos for some time, now, apparently has disappeared:

Earlier video had shown two pieces of drill pipe in the stub — one that should have been there and another that ended up there after the blowout.

"We don’t know where the second piece of pipe has fallen to," BP's vice-president told the Times.

5. BP Bankruptcy?

Hard-to-pin down rumors revived last week that BP might well take a "strategic bankruptcy," even as the oil mega-corporation's stock rose. The New York Times had the story in Saturday's edition.

Short-sellers trying to spook the market? Or, yet another cunning corporate business plan to shuck off consumer-victims and reemerge stronger than ever?

Sunday, the London Times reported what seems like a much more immediate prospect: BP apparently is in talks to sell a part of its Prudhoe Bay and Argentinian oil field rights to Houston-based Apache Corporation:

Reports on Sunday said the company was in talks to sell up to 12 billion dollars of assets, including a substantial stake in a giant Alaskan oil field, to its rival Apache Corporation.

Apache approached BP several weeks ago with the plan which would include a stake in Prudhoe Bay, the largest oil field in North America, the Sunday Times reported.

The Sunday Times also said BP wants to sell its 60-percent share in Pan American Energy, an Argentinian oil producer.

"Chinese oil giant PetroChina has indicated it would "welcome" closer ties with BP," too. "Closer" as in a strangle-hold, we suppose. There is no honor among these environmental predators.

P.B. video link added 7-12 am

Drilling for Dollar$ Sunday: July 11 BP Oil Spill Update

2010-07-11T14:19:00.006-05:00

UPDATE BELOW 1. Oilcast

If Windmapper has it right, southwesterly winds are likely to be pushing the offshore oil toward Pensacola Beach the first half of this week. Shown above, brisk breezes aimed straight from the leaking BP well site toward Pensacola Beach.

2. Blue Angels Show.

The annual Pensacola Beach Blue Angels air show went off yesterday without a hitch, despite the faint rumblings of small summer thunderstorms in the distance. It was just like old times. They didn't arrive in the Pensacola area until after the Blues had finished the show.

3. Crude Crowd Estimates.

The Island Authority's Executive Hypster, Buck Lee, claims a car count at the toll bridge exceeded last year's show by 842 vehicles. He assumes an average of three people per car, which would put the crowd somewhere north of 28,000. Certainly, traffic was backed up all morning long through Gulf Breeze and onto the 3-mile bridge.

Pensacola Beach Fishing Pier manager Sal Pinzone, however, filed a dissent with the Pensacola News Journal. His impression was attendance did not compare to that of last year:

Last year, you couldn't see the sand between people," Pinzone said. "This year there's plenty of room on the beach.

This sort of biffle happens every year. Tourist promoters want everyone to know what a swell job they're doing (as if they had something to do with attendance) and beach merchants like to mewl they didn't have enough customers (so you'll know they still have lots of stuff to sell you).

For one day, anyway, we're gratified that things returned to almost-normal.

4. Drilling for Dollar$.

Today's Sunday edition of the Pensacola News Journal gets out in front of almost all other Florida newspapers with a strong editorial supporting Governor Charlie Crist's call for a special legislative session. Crist wants the legislature to authorize a ballot measure this Fall asking if voters support a constitutional amendment to ban oil and gas drilling off the state's shores

"Let the People Vote", urges the PNJ's editorial board. The editorial's core point is that Crist is proposing that the people should decide on a constitutional prohibition against drilling rather than leave it in the hands of state legislators who have already shown their lust for drilling dollars clouds their judgment:

Gov. Charlie Crist's decision to call a special session of the Legislature to consider putting a constitutional amendment on the ballot to let voters decide on the fate of drilling in Florida waters has put a lot of pro-drilling legislators — mostly Republicans — on the spot.

And they are dancing like the devil, trying to avoid mentioning what's obvious to everyone — and to avoid talking about why the "people" they usually speak so reverently of, the ones they say should be given the power that politicians have so arrogantly grabbed, shouldn't be allowed to decide this issue.
* * *
[W]hat the pro-drilling crowd in Tallahassee really wants to forget is that the legislation they were pushing could have put drilling rigs within three miles of Florida beaches. Wait — scratch that. They aren't trying to forget about that ... they are hoping Florida voters will forget about that.

The truth is they still want to approve drilling and keep the lobbyist gravy train gushing. There was so much oil money in Tallahassee this past year they should have installed safety belts to keep legislators from slipping from their chairs and washing out the front door of the Capitol.
* * *
The oil spill currently licking at Florida's shores comes from a well 54 miles off the shores of Louisiana. To imagine it happening right off the Florida coast is sickening.
* * *
In opposing Crist's call for an amendment, Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fort Walton Beach, says that Crist is "putting politics over people." But it is Crist who is saying let's let the people decide ... it's Gaetz and the pro-drilling crowd who are opposed to letting the people vote.
* * *
If legislators truly respect the people, they should trust them and let them vote.

That's a tough and compelling case. After all, if your neighbor had been caught red-handed trying to burn down your house -- as so many state legislators were caught on the verge of slipping into law a new statute to allow drilling within 3 miles of all of Florida's coastline -- would you lend him a book of matches and a torch just a few months later?

That's what Florida's "drill, baby, drill" politicians are hoping.

Surprisingly, few newspapers in the state other than the PNJ and the St. Petersburg Times ["Crist's Worthwhile Gamble on Drilling Ban"] have even addressed the question yet on their editorial pages. And what little they've written is about as dumb as it comes.

The Orlando Sentinel has one of its "quick hits" editorials that reads more like graffiti scrawled on a bathroom wall than a reasoned opinion;
The Suwanee Democrat, an inconsequential rag out of Live Oak, Florida, offers the obligatory view that "it's all a matter of science" but then hilariously proves the only thing it cares about is protecting a "$60 billion industry;" and
The Naples News mysteriously concludes in a namby-pamby editorial that "[A]ny final decision on a drilling ban * * ** rests with the people and their legislators." Which would be true, of course, but only if the special session legislature approves putting the measure on the ballot, as the governor wants.

The absolutely wretched quality of newspaper editorials like the last three, bulleted above, is enough to make us proud to be a Pensacola resident and a home subscriber to the News Journal.

5. The Doomsday Post of DougR.

Almost one month ago, someone posting on The Oil Drum under the screen name "DougR" wrote a lengthy message comment in which he advanced a doomsday scenario that soon whizzed around the Internet like a viral video.

The Oil Drum is an unusual web site. Apparently, it's peopled by investors, geologists, "peak oil" alarmists, consultants, and others who have sufficient connection with the oil industry to be familiar with the lingo, at least, and source reports. DougR himself, for example, is thought to be a journalist who has covered the oil industry for some years.

Essentially, DougR argued -- based on circumstantial evidence, a few congressional reports, hearings transcripts, and direct observation of BP's underwater cameras -- that the Deepwater Horizon well leak might be unstoppable because it is leaking in multiple places from the seafloor.

The evidence, he suggested, "all lead to one inescapable conclusion. The well pipes below the sea floor are broken and leaking." In which case, DougR postulated, the leaking oil cannot be stopped -- ever.

The particular way BP had been trying over the preceding weeks to staunch the leak with a temporary cap, DougR wrote, "only makes sense if they want to relieve pressure at the leak hidden down below the seabed." He pointed out that such a "down hole leak is one of the most dangerous and potentially damaging kind of leak there could be."

A down hole leak is dangerous and damaging for several reasons. There will be erosion throughout the entire beat up, beat on and beat down remainder of the "system" including that inaccessible leak. The same erosion I spoke about... is still present and has never stopped, cannot be stopped, is impossible to stop and will always be present in and acting on anything that is left which has crude oil "Product" rushing through it.
* * *
This down hole leak will undermine the foundation of the seabed in and around the well area. It also weakens the only thing holding up the massive Blow Out Preventer's immense bulk of 450 tons. In fact...we are beginning to the results of the well's total integrity beginning to fail due to the undermining being caused by the leaking well bore.

We bring all of this up now, even as BP is promoting its latest "cap swap," because DougR suggested last month that one sign doubters should look for to determine if he's right is whether the malfunctioning Blow Out Preventer (BOP) appears on camera to be tilting:

I am convinced the erosion and compromising of the entire system is accelerating and attacking more key structural areas of the well, the blow out preventer and surrounding strata holding it all up and together. This is evidenced by the tilt of the blow out preventer and the erosion which has exposed the well head connection.

Now, there were many replies to DougR's post. Several of them disagreed with his conclusions. Many of these had the same aura of plausible expertise as his own. See, for example, this rebuttal by Oil Drum regular "Gail the Actuary."

6. New Backup Plan.

We mention all of this because of something that caught our eye in the New Orleans Time-Picayune article about yesterday's uncoupling of the BOP and top hat in preparation for installing a new structure. Most other newspapers we've seen haven't reported it:

In order to get ready to install it, BP first had to correct a lean that had developed in the equipment at the top of the blown out well.

BP officials have said the flex joint at the top of the well's blowout preventer tilted when the riser pipe fell over when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank in late April, killing 11 workers and unleashing the oil spill. But some engineers have said the well also could have developed a lean if the ground around it has been eroded by an underground oil leak, making the well less stable.

Wells said the flex joint was leaning by about 3 degrees, so BP used hydraulic jacks to straighten it and then supported the assembly with giant blocks. "We have that all perfectly aligned, so that's done," Wells said.

Now, we have no idea if a 3-degree "lean" really supports or refutes DougR's mid-June hypothesis. We also have no idea if BP officials are telling the truth about the degree of lean. They certainly have not earned anyone's trust.

Moreover, as Think Progress reported back on June 22, with a link to the supporting transcript (and an arresting graphic, left):

In a press teleconference Monday, National Incident Commander Thad Allen announced that the riser package is tilting “10 or 12 degrees off perpendicular,” twice the 5.5 degree tilt of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The entire arrangement is kind of listed a little bit. I think it’s 10 or 12 degrees off perpendicular so it’s not quite straight up.

The fact that the BOP is leaning, in itself, doesn't refute DougR's claim -- whether it's 3 degrees or 13 degrees. But something Rear Adm. Thad Allen said the other day could be understood to add more grist to DougR's mill.

Speaking of the possibility that the relief wells might not succeed in finding their target -- a possibility we mentioned the other day -- he disclosed there is yet another "backup plan," according to the Associated Press:

[O]ne backup being considered is transferring the crude to non-producing underwater wells that are miles away. BP would run the flow through pipelines across the floor of the Gulf of Mexico, said retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the Obama administration's point man on the crisis.

Pipes across the seafloor, carrying crude that escapes. This, then, is the backup plan to the backup plan for the backup plan.

But from where would this 'piped' oil be coming? The well bore and casing? Or, the seafloor itself?

And how many more "backup" plans will it take before this accursed leak is stopped at last?

Dept. of Further Amplification
7-11 pmAn additional editorial we should have mentioned appeared two days ago in the Tampa Tribune , now a sister publication to the St. Petersburg Tribune. The first three sentences say it all:

Florida residents do not want near-shore drilling, but on this issue, their representatives can't be trusted.

The pro-oil lobby is strong in Tallahassee. The existing prohibition against drilling in Florida waters could easily be changed.

minor edit 7-11 pm

Oilcam: Replacing the Cap (live streaming)

2010-07-10T12:15:00.008-05:00

Live streaming:

Toggle the images [X] below to see close-ups.

(Hit "escape" to return screen to normal)

Click here for alternate views by Alexander Higgins.

For our description of what's supposed to be going on, CLICK HERE.

Blue Angels Weekend: July 10 BP Oil Spill Update

2010-07-10T06:57:00.010-05:00

1. Oilcast.

Not much has changed in the weather forecast from yesterday. Chances of rain have increased somewhat. NOAA's surface oil forecast for the next three days warns there is a chance of "beached" tarballs in and near Pensacola Beach and the island.

2. Offshore Oil.

Yesterday, Skytruth.org posted a satellite photo (above) which they've been analyzing. The photo was taken three days ago, on July 7. It shows, Skytruth's analysts say, "A large dark area extending from west of Mobile Bay to beyond Panama City [that] may include patchy oil slicks and sheen... ."

3. Blue Angels Day Reminder.

Today's, local paper reports "The beach on Friday was a nearly perfect white and the water seemed mostly oil-free for the first time in weeks. The water was filled with swimmers, despite the presence of rip currents."

For those watching the Blue Angels show today here's our own public health alert: Don't go near the water ... be careful of toxic oil stains in the sand ... and don't breathe the bad air. Otherwise, have a ball.

4. BP's New 'Containment' Plan.

Yesterday's oil leak news cycle was dominated by U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen's announcement that he has authorized BP to proceed with a plan to try installing a new "capping stack" on the underwater riser pipe. Click here to read BP's response letter with attachments.

AFP News says the hope is the new containment system will substantially staunch the flow of oil. In the most optimistic circumstances it might stop it altogether:

If successful, the new cap could capture all of the crude spilling into the Gulf and allow it to be siphoned up to container vessels on the surface, in effect halting the devastating spill of crude into the sea that has imperiled fragile coastlines and wildlife across the Gulf Coast.

The bad news is the old cap has to be removed first, the replacement procedure could take seven to ten days, and that "means about 15,000 barrels of oil a day that had been collected through the old capping system will spew directly into the Gulf until the new cap is in place." The total amount of oil leaking from the well is commonly said to be estimated at 35,000 to 60,000 barrels of oil daily, although others fear it is higher.

Once again, nothing could possibly go wrong -- right?

5. Containment Cap Details.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune has a helpful graphic of the containment cap replacement process (click graphic, left, to enlarge). Reporter Jaquetta White adds:

Allen said remote operated vehicles, or ROVs, will begin working Saturday to remove the current cap, an ill-fitting device put in place a little over a month ago.

Taking off the cap requires unbolting the flange at the top of the blowout preventer, a five-story device resting on the sea floor over the well head. The blowout preventer should have stopped the Deepwater Horizon rig from exploding April 20 killing 11 people and leading to the oil spill. After the flange is removed, the ROVs will tie together what appear to be two drill pipes that are protruding from the top of the blowout preventer in order to make room for the new cap.

AFP adds that the device also has "quick-disconnect couplings which would allow container ships to shut down operations and exit the area quickly in the face of a hurricane."

Reporter White has succinctly described two possible outcomes, assuming installation of the new cap proceeds as planned:

The new cap's success in shutting in the well will depend largely on the pressure inside the well, Allen said. Now at 12,000 pounds per square inch, the hope is that pressure would equalize inside the well and fall to 9,000 pounds per square inch when the new cap is in place, Allen said. If that happens the well would be left alone until a relief well permanently seals it in mid- August... .

But if pressure falls below 9,000 pounds per square inch after the new cap is put in place it will be a sign that there is damage to the well and that oil is perhaps escaping from places beneath the surface, Allen said.

That last bit about oil leaking "from the beneath the surface" echoes the nightmare scenario we've written about here.

6. Mystery Pipe.

Welcome as yesterday's new containment cap plan may be, there is ample reason to suppose that, once again, BP isn't sharing the whole story. A companion piece by David Hammer in today's Times-Picayune is merely the latest evidence of wool being pulled over the public's eyes.

Hammer describes how yesterday BP and the Coast Guard "for the first time" acknowledged that "a mysterious second pipe, wedged next to the drill pipe in what remains of the Deepwater Horizon's riser" has been "fouling up the works" for months. This is the very same thing BP Corp. expressly denied long ago:

The Coast Guard's acknowledgment of the two metal tubes Friday -- and a subsequent reference by BP to its plans to tie the two pipes together as the company installs a new oil collection system over the shaved-off riser -- actually comes more than a month after the Department of Energy noted the existence of two pipes using special imaging technology. At the time, BP dismissed the Energy findings as "impossible" because only one pipe in sections was used for drilling, a Tribune News Service story reported last month.

Video images of the riser when it was cut in early June clearly showed the two pipes, raising speculation on blogs. Allen said the second pipe also led to a jagged cut on the larger riser pipe, forcing the response team to use the loose cap with a rubber seal. And now, the two pieces are forcing the team to spend several days tying them together and clearing the way for a new, hopefully more solid connection.

The second pipe, Adm. Allen conjectures, "presumably fell down beside [the present containment cap] as a result of the explosion and the riser pipe being bent over."

While Allen said he believes the second pipe fell from above, some experts have advanced another explanation. They believe poorly cemented casings -- tubes that are supposed to form solid walls down thousands of feet of the well bore -- may have been dislodged by the blast of natural gas that shot up out of the well and above the sea floor.
* * *
The idea that a loose pipe shot up from deeper in the well and prevented the shear ram from closing has been espoused by such experts as oil industry investment banker Matt Simmons and Bob Bea, a University of California at Berkeley engineer leading a scientific investigation into the blowout. But others have wondered if the mystery pipe isn't just a section of the same drill pipe that came loose, or even a pipe that fell down the riser from the rig 5,000 feet above.

It's also of interest that BP and the Coast Guard have been aware of this second pipe since the day they "used a diamond saw and ... got inside," Admiral Allen admits. It was over a month ago when the saw 'hit a snag.'

minor edit 7-10pm

Thinking the Unthinkable

2010-07-10T06:05:00.003-05:00

The time has come to candidly confront the terrifying possibility that the BP oil leak may never be stopped.

The oil industry has acknowledged that the only known, previously proven way to staunch a gushing well is to kill it with a "relief well." This is forty-year old technology. While it has been used, with mixed success, on shallow water wells, it has never before been tried on a deepwater well. And, as we've been warned many times, there's no guarantee the relief well will work, either.

We've been collecting the information suggesting such a possibility -- that BP's oil gusher simply cannot be stopped -- for some time. The information at hand is hardly conclusive, and on the face of it no one suggests it's the most likely outcome. But as we wait and wait and wait for something to stop the oil gusher, it is a possibility that must be considered.

1. First Relief Well.

We start with the frequent acknowledgment that the "relief" well being drilled at the Deepwater Horizon site might miss its mark. This is one of the reasons why the Obama administration back in early May "suggested" that BP drill a second backup "relief" well.

It's also been widely reported that it would take "about 90 days" to complete the first relief well. Back in the Springtime, when August seemed a long way off, the Washington Post carried an article dated May 31 and headlined "Oil Could Spew Until August, Officials Say."

Early or mid-August, so we have been told many times, was when BP expected to finish drilling the first relief well to stop the oil leak. From time to time, a BP spokesman says it might be as early "late July" -- but you know what BP's word is worth.

Many Americans, and certainly all of the tourists and residents we've spoken with on and near Pensacola Beach, realize at some level that there is a possibility the first relief well will not succeed. They know, in the miserable sports metaphors so often used in wars, that it's no "slam dunk."

As Texas A & M petroleum professor Gene Beck put it to the AP recently, the odds are "80 percent that the relief well will in short order kill the gushing well." Read the other way, there is a one in five chance it won't work.

2. Second Relief Well.

Those who know that there is a second relief well being drilled alongside the first probably assume that it will succeed if the other fails. That might mean another month or more, depending on the fickle hurricane season. Some speak of "Christmas" as a realistic target date.

It is surprising how many people know about the two relief wells. Last week, we found ourselves engaged in random conversation with a beach resident. We were both standing outside the Margaritaville beach hotel, waiting for a rain squall to pass. We had seen one another before, but had never met. He is a big, rough-looking guy with tattoos on his arms and a buzz hair cut. Ex-con or engineer? We couldn't tell.

But when we uttered something nasty under our breath about BP defecating on the beach, he responded knowledgeably and we saw our opportunity.

"What do you think will happen if both relief wells fail? we asked.

"That's the worse case scenario," he quickly replied. "I guess they'll just have to dig a third one."

"But what if no relief well can work? What if this works like flipping a coin, or the lottery, where the mathematical odds of winning are the same for every single ticket, whether you buy one or a hundred?"

"I don't play the lottery," he said.

"What if it doesn't matter how many relief wells you drill, that the chances of "winning" remain the same or even get worse?"

"Ain't possible," was his answer. "Practice makes perfect."

That's something of a comforting thought; until, that is, you consider that with each "practice" run there is an increasing risk BP could permanently screw the pooch.

3. Well Casing Damage.

Deep inside that same WaPo article of May 31 was this blockbuster information (bold italics added for emphasis):

Sources at two companies involved with the well said that BP also discovered new damage inside the well below the seafloor and that, as a result, some of the drilling mud that was successfully forced into the well was going off to the side into rock formations.

"We discovered things that were broken in the sub-surface," said a BP official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. He said that mud was making it "out to the side, into the formation." The official said he could not describe what was damaged in the well.

Four days earlier, the New York Times had reported "BP Officials Took a Riskier Option for Well Casing."

Several days before the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, BP officials chose, partly for financial reasons, to use a type of casing for the well that the company knew was the riskier of two options, according to a BP document.
* * *
BP records explain, the casing chosen by the company may also cause problems if drilling mud or cement is lost or pushed away from the well into porous rocks as it is pumped.

Federal and company records indicate that that is just what happened, on more than one occasion. The rig lost all of its drilling mud in an incident in March, and in the days immediately before the explosion, records show. The well experienced several other instances of minor losses of drilling fluid and gas kicks, according to interviews with workers from the rig.

4. Seeping Seabed.

One week later, on June 7, Florida Senator Bill Nelson uttered a shocker in the middle of an otherwise routine midday interview with Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC. It was almost certainly based on expert analysis of new information made available to Nelson. He said:

We’re looking into something new right now: that there’s reports of oil seeping up from the seabed - which would indicate, if that’s true, that the well casing itself is actually pierced underneath the seabed. If so, the problems we're facing could be just enormous.

Take a look at the interview. The shocker starts about 2:30, but Ms. Mitchell quickly smothers it with typical political trivia:

The Times followed up a week later, on June 14, with related news ["Documents Show Risky Decisions Before BP Blowout"] Internal BP Corp. documents just had been released by Rep. Henry Waxman's Committee on Energy and Commerce:

Sources at two companies involved with the well said that BP also discovered new damage inside the well below the seafloor and that, as a result, some of the drilling mud that was successfully forced into the well was going off to the side into rock formations.
Time and money were both concerns, the two representatives wrote, because the well was behind schedule. A problem in March had forced the company to apply for a “bypass,” in which a well is drilled around a problem area. By the day of the blowout, the Deepwater Horizon, leased by BP from Transocean for about half a million dollars a day plus contractors’ fees, was 43 days late for its next drilling location, the committee leaders wrote.
The choice of a tapered string meant that the well had only two barriers to upward gas flow that could cause a blowout: cement near the bottom of the well and a seal assembly near the top. The congressmen described three flawed decisions relating to the cement, and said the company also decided not to use a device called a “lockdown sleeve” to ensure that the top seal would hold.

Two weeks after that, on July 2, U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen at the end of a press briefing seemed to have all this mind when he added, almost as an afterthought:

If you’ll remember, I’ve stated earlier that we don’t know the status of the well bore right below the wellhead itself down about 1 or 2,000 feet. We don’t know if there are integrity problems with that.

What's the vague antecedent for the "that" which Allen mentions? The wellhead or the well bore ... or the seabed?

5. The Single-Point "Target."

A few days ago, science reporter Henry Fountain of the New York Times explored the ongoing "relief well" effort in some detail ["Hitting a Tiny Bull’s-Eye Miles Under the Gulf"]. There, we learn that the relief well consists of a "a string of drill pipe" that is "more like a wet noodle" than a rigid assembly.

A helpful graphic accompanied the article (click on graphic, left). It shows, among other things, that the expectation is the relief wells are 'targeting' a single "point of interception" just above the wellhead.

In order to be effective, Fountain writes, the first (or second backup) relief well "must hit the target -- the existing well’s steel casing pipe, only seven inches in diameter, more than 3 miles below the surface of the gulf."

That's a tough enough task by itself. Putting all of this together, however, one must wonder what happens if it's discovered when a relief well reaches its "point of interception" only to discover that the well bore is irreparably damaged and there are now large multiple gashes exposing the oil deposit directly to Gulf waters?

"Then, you drill deeper," an engineering friend who has spent most of his life in the oil and gas business reasoned.

6. The Ultimate Worse Case.

Another answer is suggested by one expert contacted by Bloomberg News late last week:

The ultimate worst-case scenario is that the well is never successfully plugged, said Fred Aminzadeh, a research professor at the University of Southern California’s Center for Integrated Smart Oil Fields who previously worked for Unocal Corp. That would leave the well to flow for probably more than a decade, he said in a telephone interview.

Other oil drilling experts have expressed similar doubts. In an on-line Q & A at WaPo last month, Shell Oil's recently retired president, John Hoffmesiter, said the well casing belown the seafloor may have been compromised:

[Question] What are the chances that the well casing below the sea floor has been compromised, and that gas and oil are coming up the outside of the well casing, eroding the surrounding soft rock. Could this lead to a catastrophic geological failure, unstoppable even by the relief wells?

John Hoffmeister: This is what some people fear has occurred. It is also why the “top kill” process was halted. If the casing is compromised the well is that much more difficult to shut down, including the risk that the relief wells may not be enough. If the relief wells do not result in stopping the flow, the next and drastic step is to implode the well on top of itself, which carries other risks as well.

If the well casing or seafloor essentially has been blown apart, relief wells cannot physically stop the leaking. They can only hasten the day when enough gas has escaped that the oil no longer is being forced out of the sea floor.

Over the course of nearly three months, the BP oil leak has poisoned so much of the Gulf that NOAA recently expanded the federal no-fishing zone to encompass one-third of the entire Gulf of Mexico. If relief wells cannot staunch the oil gusher the Gulf of Mexico, it seems inevitable that The Gulf of Mexico will become uninhabitable for all sea life. Considering that no one particularly cares to live next to a dead sea, wide swaths of the Gulf Coast soon would empty of all humans, too.

We aren't 'expecting' such a catastrophic result. We certainly don't wish for it. Yet, the possibility must be kept in mind. BP has unleashed on the world a disaster of cataclysmic proportions. As bad as this is, it's only prudent to bear in mind, as our dear old father often counseled, that things are never so bad that they can't get worse.

'Come to Jesus ' Friday; July 9 BP Oil Spill Update

2010-07-09T14:23:00.009-05:00

1. Weekend Oilcast.

Blue Angels weekend looks like it will come off in weather good enough for the "high" show, although small, short squalls can and do randomly pop up just about any time in summer. Winds will be relatively light, but predominantly WSW and SW. Click on the screenshot of Windmapper's animation (left) to see the predicted direction of winds about an hour before Saturday's air show.

Pensacola Pass and all of Santa Rosa Island are within the northeastern-most quadrant of NOAA's projected on surface oil forecast. Still, there's reason to hope the heaviest oil mats may stay far enough offshore to miss the beach.

These days, scattered tarballs and oily mousse washing ashore are always a possibility. As you cast an eye upwards to watch the Blue Angels' high jinks, keep the other eye aimed straight at the ground in front of you to avoid stepping in goo.

2. Tarball Lanza.

You know about Typhoid Mary. Was she guilty or innocent? Historians and public health officials still debate it.

Escambia County's health director, Dr. John Lanza, is in danger of getting a similar rep. Is he scandalously promoting tourism on our oil-fouled beaches? Or, is he innocently advancing public health with ambiguous "oil impact" notices?

However you resolve it, the local health department is making more national news. Today, ProPublica takes the county to task, based mostly on last week's Christian Science Monitor article which we mentioned the other day. ["Despite Tar Balls and Health Complaints, Florida Beaches Stay Open"]:

At Pensacola Beach and others in Escambia County, Fla., health officials have said that some 400 people reported feeling sick after swimming along the Gulf coast, where the county's Citizen Information Center said that "sporadic tar balls" continue to wash ashore. But in the face of concern about the economic damage that would be caused by beach closings, the beaches remain open despite a warning from Environmental Protection Agency chief Lisa Jackson that the waters appeared unsafe and an oil impact notice posted by the county's health department.

In fairness, ProPublica should have done its own research. Between the date of the Monitor report and today, the county issued a press release claiming the number of people made sick by oil on the beach are many fewer than 400. As William at North Escambia County reported yesterday:

After some media organizations reported that swimming in Escambia County’s Gulf waters had sickened 400 people in one week, the Escambia County Health Department has issued a press release disputing the information.

“Recent news stories reported that 400 individuals complained of health problems after swimming in Escambia’s Gulf waters for one week. This is incorrect. The 400 individuals reporting sickness were for the period of April 1 – June 22, 2010 nationwide to the National Poison Data System.

The true figures, claims the county, for the period May 10-July 7 are: 5 reports of patient symptoms thought to be oil-related from "emergency department reports" and 22 from the Florida Poison Information Center Network (FPICN).

Not as bad as 400, certainly, but plenty high once you realize the reporting period covers only a month or so of the high season for tourism after school had let out.

On the third hand, we haven't seen any public health department notices on Pensacola Beach warning that even EPA director Lisa Jackson "wouldn't go into the water" when she was here.

3. Pollyanna No More.

Dr. Lanza surely knows, too, as Enid Sisskin has been warning, that what you don't see can be worse for you than the tarballs you do see. BP's strategy of widely dispersing the oil leak at the source with its own trademarked dispersant, Corexit 9500, is for superficial public relations -- not your good health. Millions of gallons of highly dispersed oil and "the introduction of chemicals to disperse it," as Joel Achenbach pointed out in May, have thrown the Gulf ecosystem into "chaos."

For almost a month, now, NOAA director Jane Lubchenco has been walking back her earlier adamant denials that the microscopic toxic oil particles now lurking beneath in Gulf waters can be harmful. Yesterday, in a CNN interview she finally changed her tune altogether:

In an afternoon public interview with NBC newswoman Andrea Mitchell at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Lubchenco said the tar balls and black oil now washing up in all five coastal gulf states may not be the worst of what’s coming out of BP’s broken Deepwater Horizon well.
* * *
"That layer is introducing a lot of carbon into this ecosystem and we don’t know what the fate of that will be,” she explained, describing the cloud as “highly toxic and undoubtedly poisonous.”

“This is really unprecedented ... . It is not like a black ooze that’s down there, it’s this cloud of fine mist and its impact is likely to be considerable,” she said.

Better late than never, we want to say to both Ms. Lubchenco and Dr. Lanza.

4. Crist Has Another 'Come to Jesus' Moment.

It's remarkable what wonders are worked when a politician is freed from the intellectual prison of a relentlessly stupid, reality-indifferent political party. Since leaving the Florida Republican Party before he was expelled for Tea Party apostasy, Governor Crist has --

saved state education for children from an insane right-wing legislative proposal;
defended the individual rights of women to individually consult with their own doctors free from the "mean-spirited," heavy-footed interference of Tallahassee politicians; and
vetoed hundreds of millions of dollars in eleventh-hour sweetheart projects the Republican-controlled legislature awarded to itself reminiscent of the corrupt airplane hangar scandal involving ex-House speaker Ray Sansom.

Now, in the wake of the BP catastrophe the governor has called a special session of the state legislature in order to put on November's ballot a constitutional amendment which would ban oil drilling off Florida's shores. Bryan over at Why Now? has the good news -- and then some.

As he points out, the Republican majority in the legislature was on the verge of 'sneaking' into law a new statute which would have opened all of the Florida coastline to drilling when BP's Deepwater Horizon well blew up:

[They] didn’t pull the bill to open the coast to drilling until after the Well from Hell blew up. They tried to sneak it in without debate because it was backed by the Republican leadership in the legislature.

Now, of course, state Republicans are claiming that since we already have an older state statute that bans drilling, there's no need for a constitutional amendment to make it permanent. What they won't acknowledge is that they are all but certain to try again next year and only a constitutional amendment can stop them.

It is elementary "Government 101" that the state constitution trumps state statutes. If a drilling ban is added to the state constitution, it could not be erased as this year's Republican majority nearly did without voter approval.

That's what makes the quoted reactions of Pensacola area state representatives so outlandishly deceptive. Click on the graphic (above) from today's Pensacola News Journal to see what three of them are saying.

Rep. Dave Murzin (R-Pensacola) claims, in predictably ungrammatical style, "Us banning something that's already illegal in the state of Florida doesn't help the situation."
Rep. Greg Evers (R-Baker): "It's already banned." Yeah, but only until your "drill, baby, drill" crowd gets back into session next year.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fort Walton Beach): "The constitution is not the appropriate place to resolve that question. It's not the place to debate the hot issues of the day."

Holy mother of oil spills! Either these guys are all blatantly lying -- and they know it -- or they are so utterly ignorant of the rudiments of law making that they should be completely disqualified from any public office higher than tarball spotter.

5. Hornbeck Offshore Oil Services, L.L.C. vs. Salazar.

The decision of a three-member panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals not to overturn a lower court's injunction against enforcement of the Interior Department's temporary drilling ban in the Gulf is an abomination. As the Government's brief explains, the temporary drilling was discrete and limited:

Interior reviewed information from scientists, industry, and agency experts in considering its course of action, and tailored its regulatory response to address the concerns it identified. The challenged suspension orders target only those deepwater operations that present safety concerns similar to those raised by the Deepwater Horizon event. In all, 33 drilling rigs were actively engaged in deepwater operations at the time of the issuance of [Salazar's order] -- a small fraction of the approximately 3,600 structures in the Gulf dedicated to offshore oil exploration and production.

This is the central finding of the 2 to 1 majority decision:

The motion for stay pending appeal is denied because the Secretary has failed to demonstrate a likelihood of irreparable injury if the stay is not granted; he has made no showing that there is any likelihood that drilling activities will be resumed pending appeal.

"Judges," the great Oliver Wendell Holmes once said with considerable authority, "are apt to be naïf, simple-minded men... . [They] need education in the obvious." (Holmes, Law and the Court: Speeches, 1934).

There is so much wrong with the court panel's abbreviated ruling that it would take a lawyer's brief to demonstrate it all (and you can be sure one will be coming to the full 5th Circuit Court panel).

First, as almost everyone in the world knows, the irreparable nature of a broken oil well in the deepwater Gulf has been demonstrated minute by minute over the past 81 days. It poses not a "likelihood" of irreparable injury, but a virtual certainty. The panel sorely lacks the very kind of "education in the obvious" of which Holmes spoke.

Second, the court panel turned the legal issue before them completely on its head. In the process, it also twisted the procedural history of the case inside out.

As Holly Doremus points out at Legal Planet, the case was filed initially by the oil industry to overturn an administrative order of the Secretary of Interior. Well before trial, it was the oil industry parties, not Salazar, who asked for a preliminary injunction to restrain enforcement of the order while the underlying case is pending trial.

The district court granted it and effectively 'blocked' the Secretary's order, wrongly as Doremus concludes. To reach that wrong result, the district court was required by civil rules and precedents too numerous to mention to find, among other things, that without the preliminary injunction the plaintiffs in the oil industry would suffer "irreparable injury," not Secretary Salazar. It is this finding that was appealed to the Fifth Circuit panel.

As Doremus writes --

In order to obtain an injunction, plaintiffs were required to show that they would suffer irreparable harm if the moratorium were left in place. Plaintiffs, it is worth noting, do not hold any Gulf leases. They provide services that support drilling, but they have no control over whether drilling goes forward, with or without a moratorium. They offered no evidence that drilling would proceed if the moratorium were lifted. In fact, as the US pointed out in its motion for a stay--
In conceding that Interior’s suspension orders would not cause it any irreparable injury, Hornbeck [Offshore Services, the lead plaintiff] necessarily admits that a temporary stay of the district court’s injunction would cause it no harm either.

It is true that the most likely large oil company drillers have been observing a voluntary halt to new deepwater drilling (more for PR reasons than any other, we suspect). Consequently, the court's action probably is of little practical effect. Still, it should be of concern to all to see such sloppy pettifoggery employed to halt reasonable government efforts to force a pause in the destruction of the planet.

Perhaps the world ends neither by fire nor by ice, as Frost would have had it, but by feckless judicial decrees written by judges who own stock in the companies that are killing the planet.

Toxic Thursday: July 8 BP Oil Spill Update

2010-07-08T12:59:00.001-05:00

1. Oilcast.

Southeast winds and currents will continue through Friday afternoon, local weather reports say. By Saturday, however, winds will have shifted and will be coming from the west and southwest.

Recent oil spill history suggests that means an increased chance of oil pollution spilling onto local beaches over the weekend and into early next week.

2. Panhandle Slide Show.

McClatchy News has a slide show of eighteen Panhandle photos taken by Steve Johnson and Lilly Echeverria over the 4th of July weekend from Perdido Key to Destin. Two dramatic photos (#5 and #6) show "oil mousse and tarballs" sloshing around just offshore of Pensacola Beach. Another (#4) is a closeup of tarballs in the sand.

The slide show makes a bit of news, too. #9 is a photo of wait-in-line-numbers-dispenser Frank Patti in front of the fish counter inside the popular Joe Patti's Seafood Market (named after his father). While Frank says he has no plans to close the doors, he admits "he might have to downsize."

3. Two Tries at Lessening the Leak.

Mark Seibel, also of McClatchy News, has a sobering analysis of the two ideas BP has developed for lessening the oil gusher as early as this month. ["Oil Containment Effort Facing Two Key Moments"]

The first will happen for sure: the connection of a third ship to the jury-rigged containment system through which BP has been capturing about 24,000 barrels of oil per day since early June. That may take place as soon as this weekend, depending on how rough the seas are....

Three huge tankers and countless skimmer boats trying to scoop up oil and distill "product" from a mile-deep broken well and off the surface of the water has never been tried before. According to BP's latest public face, Doug Suttles, it's an approach that has serious risks for "several hundred people...working in a confined space with live hydrocarbons on up to four vessels."

Moreover, Suttles adds, "This is significantly beyond both BP and industry practice." BP is still making it up as the leak goes along.

Stopping the oil slime altogether is what everyone wants, of course. One way to do that quickly, according to Seibel, is to a install "a new containment cap" that would seal off the well completely by "being bolted directly to the blowout preventer rather than sitting loosely atop a sheared-off pipe."

That's the second idea. Fred Tasker of the Miami Herald suggested late last week this could be tried as early as July 15.

It's far from certain, however, that an attempt at this should be made at all. The risks are huge. If installing a new containment cap were to be unsuccessful it's likely the well would rage beyond all control.

Seibel again:

The new containment cap was the subject of Cabinet-level meetings in Washington last week, including one with President Barack Obama and the decision remains uncertain.

Doubtless, the White House is gnawing its tail, wondering if it should take a chance on another of BP's improvised engineering solutions and approve the experiment. The oil company's engineers have failed so many times before it's hard to imagine trusting their judgment again.

4. Relief Wells.

There is a third possibility. The long-anticipated first relief well begun by BP on May 2 is now said by WaPo to be "just 12 feet away laterally, and with only about 200 feet to go before it reaches the interception target." We could know as early as July 27 if it works to staunch the oil gusher permanently, according to BP's newest happy-face, Bob Dudley.

The blown-out well will be intercepted at a point where there is both a 9-inch steel casing and a 7-inch pipe inside of it. It is unknown whether the oil and gas is flowing inside those structures or in the space between them, or both. Oil and gas may be surging between the original wall of the hole and the outside of the steel casing -- a space that was cemented before the well erupted on April 20. Or the flow could be taking place in the "annulus" between the casing and the pipe. Or it could be within the pipe itself -- or some combination of all that.
More than one mud shot may be necessary in order to fill the spaces where hydrocarbons are surging to the surface. After the mud comes cement. Each mud and cement shot could take a week to 10 days, Allen said.

Coast Guard Admiral (ret.) Thad Allen does not agree with the end of July prediction.

Allen said the relief well will be in place to penetrate the leaking borehole in seven to 10 days. The process of filling the hole with mud and then capping with cement will take another seven to 10 days and, he said, might have to be done a number of times, depending on where the oil is coming out.

Furthermore, Allen cautions that weather and the distinct possibility that the first relief well fails to precisely find the target may delay things further.

The second relief well which the Obama administration ordered to be drilled started two weeks after the first, on May 16.

5. Toxic Pensacola Beaches.

Marine toxicologist and Exxon Valdez survivor Riki Ott late yesterday joined the chorus pointing out that local government officials in Pensacola are working hand-in-hand with BP Corp. to "downplay" the "public health risk from oil and dispersants."

Three days later on Pensacola Beach, I watched BP's HazMat-trained workers shovel surface oiled sand and oily debris into bags early in the morning. The workers followed the waterline like shorebirds, scurrying up the beach in front of breaking waves and moving back down with receding waters.

The late morning sun retired the workers to the shade of their tents and the job of "observing," while it brought out throngs of beach-goers -- children, parents, grandparents -- who happily plunged into the "contaminated" ocean without a second thought.

"I was astounded," Dr. Ott adds. "Why did people think the ocean was safe for swimming?"

One photo from the slide show accompanying her travelogue hints at the answer:

Ott says people should keep in mind an aphorism she learned in toxicology studies: "Dose plus host makes the poison."

A small child is at risk of breathing a higher dose of contaminants per body weight than an adult. Children, pregnant women, people with compromised or stressed immune systems like cancer survivors and asthma sufferers, and African Americans are more at risk from oil and chemical exposure - the latter because they are prone to sickle cell anemia and 2-butoxyethanol can cause, or worsen, blood disorders.

And when they find themselves at the beach they might ask themselves a common-sense question since local, state, and federal public health officials have fallen so silent: "If oil was so nontoxic, then why are the spill response workers giving hazardous waste training?"

6. Jimmy Buffettology.

Jimmy Buffett continues to work on replacing Country Music singers Kenny Chesney and Zac Brown, who can't make the re-scheduled Gulf Shores beach concert this coming Sunday because of prior commitments. The concert definitely will go on, although from the weather reports it shouldn't surprise anyone if the concert stage is surrounded by tarballs and oil mousse.

In the meantime, Buffett whipped out a snappy answer to some reporter's political question, 'Who besides BP caused this ungodly mess, anyway?'

Buffett, a supporter of President Barack Obama, said the roots of the spill lie with the administration of former President George Bush, which was often criticized for being too cozy with the petroleum industry.

"To me it was more about eight years of bad policy before (Obama) got there that let this happen. It was Dracula running the blood bank in terms of oil and leases," he said.

Now, that bon mot just might have the makings of a timeless song lyric, if Buffett ever wants to widen his repertoire to include protest music.

Oily Incentives for a Disappearing Beach Real Estate Market

2010-07-08T06:21:00.001-05:00

The BP oil spill has pushed Pensacola Beach real estate sales off a cliff. A local broker told us yesterday her phone has gone dead. Prospective buyers have disappeared. She has no hope that things will improve, either.

Apart from business, she's personally so distressed that she's seriously considering moving away.

"The beach will never be the same," the broker told us. "Even if they eventually stop the leak tarballs will continue washing up on the beach and getting buried in the sand for years. My child will never know the beach like I have. It makes me want to cry."

Coincidentally, PNJ columnist Mark O'Brien mentioned on his newspaper blog space a similarly dismal picture for Perdido Key real estate. "[A] month that might have brought 30 sales on Perdido Key," he writes, "drew merely six in June."

This drew a response from one of Mark's readers. "YouAreNotBob" noted a shockingly thin crowd gathered on Pensacola Beach yesterday to watch the Blue Angels practice. He predicts for Pensacola Beach:

Beach businesses will start closing before long and the real estate on all the businesses will suffer as badly as Perdido Key. There will eventually be a disastrous reduction in revenue to local government. A public dialogue needs to begin RIGHT NOW to debate what form the reaction to this should take.

Hey! We have an idea for county government. Why not offer tax incentives to Pensacola Beach home buyers and businesses to stimulate interest in buying, just as governments often do when they want to attract new industries? Something like, say, 99-year leases "with no ad valorem taxes or assessments on property or improvements."

Escambia County's word is its bond, right? After all, what could go wrong?

Mac McClelland in Pensacola

2010-07-07T12:56:00.001-05:00

Mac McClelland has been covering the BP oil gusher for Mother Jones magazine almost from the beginning. The first week of May she packed up and headed to her old home in New Orleans.

Over the ensuing two months in her regular column "The Rights Stuff" from the Gulf Coast she has published some of the very best, most incisive and most informative reporting about the oil catastrophe available. We noticed she was slowly working her way eastward and wondered if she might eventually arrive here.

Hypocrites, liars, polluters, pols, and shameless promoters beware! Mac McClelland is now on Pensacola Beach. Today, she published her first article from Northwest Florida: "Pensacola: Come On In, The Water's Oily!"

Here's a small taste:

Some of the tar mat is so thick that it's visible to the naked eye. Other traces of contamination are so subtle that they can only be seen with Kirby's ultraviolet light, which makes crude fluoresce an unnaturally bright orange.

We trek around Pensacola Beach with the oversize light, illuminating oil everywhere: on decks, driveways, boardwalks, handrails. Blobs of it, smears of it, perfect imprints of footprints glowing neon, far beyond the waves washing oil from the Deepwater Horizon leak ashore.

If you're a tourist or a local thinking of letting your kids swim in Pensacola Beach water anytime soon, do yourself a favor and read the whole thing.

If you're the county health director, try to buy up all the copies of Mother Jones you can before your professional colleagues see what you've been ignoring.

If you're the "anonymous health department employee" who knows the only way Buck Lee is going to close Pensacola Beach "is if it's on fire" -- you deserve the Albert Schweitzer Award.

Board Game Wednesday: July 7 BP Oil Spill Update

2010-07-07T11:58:00.010-05:00

1. Oilcast.

Continued southeasterly winds and currents should keep BP's visible oil lake away from Pensacola Beach another day or two, although NOAA warns "the coastlines of MS, AL, and the Florida panhandle west of Pensacola continue to be threatened by shoreline contacts." By our reckoning, the public beaches on Pensacola Beach are southeast of Pensacola, though not by much. Accordingly, there should be less chance of tarballs and mousse.

Beach Report No . 31 from EscambiaDisasterResponse.com says, "temperatures are expected to be near 88 degrees... Chance of rain is 30 percent."

2. We Get the Blues.

The beach is revving up for the annual Blue Angels weekend air show. There will be a short morning practice today, a longer practice tomorrow, and the dress rehearsal on Thursday. Saturday's official show starts at 2 pm.

Troy Moon's below-the-fold front page headline in the dead-tree Pensacola News Journal sums up the growing anticipation: "Blues Fly In, Oil Clears Out: As winds push mess west, businesses hope for the best."

Time was, as we recall it, when Troy Moon was the PNJ's main cultural events reporter. Now he covers oil spills, jet airplane stunts, and business economics. Truly, the BP oil spill has changed everything.

3. Burning Turtles.

Just before the holiday weekend commenced, the Sea Turtle Restoration Project and other environmental groups announced settlement of a lawsuit which is supposed to result in "placing wildlife observers on board every vessel" engaged in oil burning near the site of the BP oil spill.

The observers will ensure compliance with BP's agreement to clear all sea turtles out of the oil 'boxes' rounded up for burning.

Additional details (and a gruesome photo) about the courageous whistle-blower who exposed BP Corp's cruelty, the lawsuit that followed, and the settlement are available h ere.

4. Family Games BP Plays.

You may have thought that BP was an international mega-corporation singularly focused on poisoning the Earth with its criminally negligent drilling practices. No way. BP, also known as British Petroleum, is a far-flung conglomerate with its paws in all kinds of businesses.

For example, not long ago someone remembered that in the 1970's British Petroleum designed and marketed in Great Britain a family board game called "Offshore Oi l Strike." The game box came complete with the misleadingly green BP logo (see below):

The oil strike game is out of print now, but older ones still occasionally show up for sale on game trading web sites or even Ebay. We have a screenshot of one recently-completed sale on Ebay.uk.

The used game sold for £30, or roughly $60 -- plus, of course, shipping, handling, and haz-mat suit (see left). The web site "Hardware" has some of the rules:

Two to four players compete at exploring for oil, building platforms, and laying pipelines to bring the offshore oil back to the player's home company. Players take on the roles of either BP (Hull), Amoco (Bergen), Chevron (Rotterdam) or Mobil (Dieppe) in their quest for oil. As with other games focusing on offshore oil exploitation (e.g., Omnia's North Sea Oil), there is also the risk that storms will reduce production on, or eliminate, one's oil platforms. The first player to make $120,000,000 in cash is the winner.

As the game box reads, you too can experience "The Thrills of Drilling, the Hazards and Rewards As You Bring in Your Own Offshore Oil Strike." Buy the game -- or, if you can't find one, then visit Pensacola Beach and experience it like a reality show.

5. More Oil Spill Board Games Coming.

As it happens, our little group that visited beach restaurants the other day talked about this very thing. Someone suggested there is now a need for a BP Oil Drilling board or video game. We figure a wide variety will be spilling onto the market very soon.

Here's one of the ideas we came up with. We call it "Witness for the Petroleum Prosecution."

The rules are simple. Players select one of six playing pieces:
The "bank" starts each player off with a pile of credits and debits. The oil company gets $300 billion on the positive side and six lawsuits filed against it on the negative. Everyone else begins with 200 dollars, a $300 mortgage or credit card debt, and one of the injury or loss claims against the oil company.

Players move around the 'globe' on the board according to the roll of dice. They may land on scattered "good fortune" or "bad fortune" squares where they must draw a fortune" card from the deck. Good fortune cards can award such things as "oil company check," "get well soon credit," "tar-off packet" and "trip to the mountains." Bad fortune cards impose fines, illness, shareholder revolts, or financial ruin.

Players compete to buy up all the available expert witnesses for the pending lawsuits. The first one to hire every last expert wins the game, just as in real life.

Look for the game in your local toy store just as soon as BP sends us a check.

Weekend Beach Business: Tuesday July 6 BP Oil Spill Update

2010-07-06T15:56:00.000-05:00

"The citizens whom BP's chairman famously called 'the small people' need to unite — to clamp down on powerful corporations, hold government more accountable and stiffen environmental regulations."

--Chris Dargusch, quoted by Associated Press, July 5, 2010

1. Oilcast.

Prevailing southeasterly winds have been pushing the bulk of the oil spill closest to the Gulf Coast westward from Pensacola Beach back toward where it came from. Still, as the latest NOAA oil forecast shows (see above) Santa Rosa Island isn't quite out of the zone of possible tarballs for the coming few days. If the past weekend is any guide, however, any evidence of oil on the beach should be light and scattered.

The week continues with rain and breezy conditions which are likely to continue intermittently through the next couple of days. East-Southeast winds will continue through Wednesday, then turn to southerly and southwesterly winds through the weekend. One way or another, the oil will return.

2. Weekend Beach Business.

Thyrie Bland for the PNJ has it about right: there were few people and little oil to be seen on the beach July 4. The changeable weather had as much to do with the thin crowds as any oil news.
According to Reuters News:

The impact on the Gulf of Mexico tourist industry was evident on Sunday, the 76th day of the disaster, as dozens of workers picked up tar balls along Pensacola Beach.
"It's ... sad to see the beach is not as crowded as it normally is, there's not as many people here. Not as many people in the restaurants. Very sad because you know they need the business," said Derek Robbins, a tourist from Houston who has been coming to Pensacola every year for decades.

We didn't see it as quite that bad the rest of the weekend. The dirty little secret of beach businesses, as a souvenir shop owner told us a few years ago, is that most of them pray for sun to draw large crowds to the beach and hope for rain once they get here to send everybody inside to spend their money.

This past weekend, half their prayers were answered. While the beaches were eerily empty, several businesses seemed to be doing a fair amount of business. The rain didn't keep everyone away.

In fact, the crowds at the major restaurants and bars we saw were fairly decent, all things considered; more like a moderately good weekend in the shoulder season. Parking was at a premium only for a short time on Sunday, when some who wanted to dine at the boardwalk had to park across the street at Casino Beach.

Monday, a steady crowd kept the staff of the new dining room and bar at the Margaritaville Beach Hotel hopping, but no one we saw had to wait for a seat. Ditto for The Grand Marlin, where we saw the Pelican Rescue Squad.

3. Beach Oil Dissonance.

A few foolhardy youngsters ventured unsupervised into the Gulf (left), although not much beyond their waists. Vigorous waves and rip currents presented a more immediate and visible threat to their safety than the occasional tarballs or emulsified oil.

The Asso ciated Press quoted various beach-goers about their reaction to the oil-fouled beaches of the Gulf Coast. Words like "glum"... "dispirited" ... 'frustrated'... and "ridiculous" were descriptive of the attitudes of both tourists and locals.

Our favorite quote was from Chris Dargusch, a part-time resident of Seaside, Florida:

The citizens whom BP's chairman famously called "the small people" need to unite — to clamp down on powerful corporations, hold government more accountable and stiffen environmental regulations.
"The small people are this country," she said.

An accompanying photo from Dauphin Island encapsulates the discordance, or whatever one might call it, of swimming in oil-infested waters (see left). Sunbathers stripped down almost to nothing but their bare skin enter the water while a nearby cleanup-worker wearing a protective haz-mat suit picks up toxic tarballs.

Someone's got it wrong, there.

4. Underwater Hazards.

One explanation for the disparate approaches to toxic oil tarballs likely is that most visitors do not know the risks they are running to their health when they swim in water infected by the oil spill.

How could they? Even scientists have never before seen an oil spill of this size or intensity combined with the huge amounts of dispersants BP has been dumping to hide the hazardous substance from view. Most are reluctant to announce findings until they have conducted reproducible long-term experimental results.

But what they repeatedly say is, it's not just the oil you see that presents a danger. Because of the dispersants which break the oil down to microscopic particles, it's also the invisible risks posed by "submerged oil."

Some sense of what those risks represent for humans can be seen in a video about how it has affected fish and shellfish. "Prophetic Seer" uploaded the video on July 4 for the Mobile Register newspaper:

5. Oil Beneath the Sand.

Oil lies hidden beneath superficially clean-looking sand, too, as National Geographic reports based upon an inspection by two geologists of Pensacola Beach sand late last week:

Oil patties and tarballs were discovered as deep as 2 feet (0.6 meter) beneath beaches dirtied by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill—the deepest oil yet found by a team of University of South Florida coastal geologists that's been studying the effects of the oil spill on Gulf beaches since early May. The previous record had been 6 inches (about 15 centimeters) deep, said geologist Ping Wang, the team's leader.

The discoveries suggest that toxic oil lies hidden under even "clean" patches of beaches along the U.S. Gulf Coast—and that oil-spill cleanup crews are only scratching the surface.

Because the buried oil is both harder to clean and slower to break down, it could be a long-lasting threat to beachgoers, both animal and human, experts say.

The under-sand oil presents a potential danger to everyone, but especially children.

If [oil's] buried and you have a five-year-old out here next summer building a sand castle and they uncover a layer of tar and oil, that's not going to be good," said Tiffany Roberts, a Ph.D. student working in Wang's lab.
Contact with oil can cause skin irritation, and inhaling evaporated oil particles may cause nausea, headache, and dizziness—ailments already reported by some Gulf oil spill cleanup workers, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

It also poisons "small sand-dwelling invertebrates, such as bloodworms, which could be killed by the oil" or eaten by shore birds.

6. No Fishing.

NOAA scientists celebrated the Fourth of July by expanding the no-fishing zone in the Gulf of Mexico. It now encompasses about one-third of the entire Gulf. Here's the latest dead zone fish map:

In case you're wondering if we ate any sea food on the beach this weekend, the answer is yes. Relying on our memory and a friend's I-phone to quickly surf the 'net, we ordered only seafood known to inhabit waters other than the northern Gulf of Mexico. The calamari was excellent.

The Alaskan king crab legs looked good, too, although we were a little squeamish about them since the Exxon Valdez oil still fouls the water and shoreline of Prince William Sound. Twenty- one years after the Exxon Valdez tanker "ran aground on Bligh Reef in Alaska's Prince William Sound" and spilled eleven million gallons of oil" the toxic oil is still there in overhwelming quantities:

To the naked eye, Prince William Sound may appear "normal." Visitors can see spectacular, unspoiled vistas of islands surrounded by blue-green waters and mountain-rimmed fjords. But if you look beneath the surface, oil continues to contaminate beaches, national parks and designated wilderness.

In fact, the Office of Technology Assessment estimated beach cleanup and oil skinning recovered only 3-4 percent of the Exxon Valdez oil, and studies by government scientists estimated that only 14 percent of the oil was removed during cleanup operations.

When a wait-person -- who was born after the Exxon-Valdez disaster -- couldn't verify that the crab legs came from some other, oil-free part of Alaska, we passed.

CSI: Pelican Rescue Squad

2010-07-06T05:29:00.001-05:00

While doing our bit to help island businesses yesterday, we witnessed a slowly-unfolding drama (above) in the Sound from the balcony of The Grand Marlin restaurant on the beach. Opened just this year on the site of the old "Boy on a Dolphin" restaurant, The Grand Marlin is a favorite within our circle of friends, a couple of whom are connoisseurs of good food and wine.

Unexpectedly, two people showed up near our table to stand at the railing with binoculars. One was a finely-mannered, fit-looking gentleman of retirement age from California. The other was a lovely young woman from Louisiana. Their singular purpose seemed to be to scan the Sound below.

Intrigued, we left our table to ask what was up. While they continued focusing with singular attention on the Sound below they told us they were volunteers for a nonprofit Wildlife Rescue organization. They've been on the Gulf Coast for over a month, they said, spotting oiled birds and arranging for their rescue.

In answer to our questions, they explained they had been dispatched by their nonprofit organization but have to personally pay their own way. BP has "promised" them eventual reimbursement.

"Good luck with that," we told them.

"Yes," the woman replied with a beleaguered smile. "The receipts are mounting up."

It developed that local officials had received and passed on to them a call from an anonymous person that a pelican with what appeared to be oil stains on its head had been seen balancing on a piling in the Sound near the restaurant. The volunteers, using binoculars, spent fifteen minutes on the restaurant's balcony inspecting each of the half dozen or more pelicans visible among the pilings.

Finally, they saw what they judged might be an oiled pelican, but a closer look was required. They left the balcony to get a closer look from the shore. We watched the silent show unfold from above.

As it happens, a man and a boy of about ten or twelve were drifting along in a small motorboat, fishing among the pilings. The volunteers must have asked for their help, because the man hauled his line in. He didn't start the motor, but instead slowly began moving the motorboat toward the suspect pelican by pulling the boat along by hand from piling to piling so as not to startle the bird.

While the volunteers watched from the shore, it took the fisherman and boy nearly twenty minutes to silently navigate to a point near enough to the bird to see its feathers. The man then signaled back to shore that the bird was normal, after all.

The case was over. There was no victim of BP's crime here. Not today, anyway. The volunteers departed to answer another call and we were left filled with admiration for the dedication of the two volunteers and the ready help offered by a local fisherman.

Gulf of Mexico - Underwater

2010-07-05T08:06:00.000-05:00

Click the photo, below, to view the YouTube film by 'PropheticSeer' which shows what lies beneath the water in the surf off Fort Morgan, Alabama.

Or, see the film right here:

The Latest News from Philadelphia

2010-07-04T06:36:00.004-05:00

The respected Marist Poll this week released a national telephone survey of 1,004 U.S. residents, ages 18-29, asking this one question: "From which country did the United States win its independence?"

The results are jaw-dropping. Better than one out of four Americans, on average, have no idea from whom the U.S. won its political independence:

Cynical as we can be sometimes, we had our doubts that Americans could be this dumb. So, yesterday we conducted a very unscientific, impromptu poll of customers randomly lined up at a check-out counter in the local Winn-Dixie grocery store (where, incidentally, freshly-baked $6 apple pies briefly went on sale for 99 cents apiece).

Results: 3 out the 4 we polled had no idea what country we fought for our independence. One attractive, manifestly well-to-do mother said "Europe." Her teen-aged daughter thought hard for half a minute and finally said, "Wasn't it Austria?" Another middle aged man mulled the question over for a full minute, shook his head, and said, "I'm not sure."

None of the four could correctly identify the century, much less the year, in which we won our independence.

So, for all of those Americans who haven't heard -- below is the latest news from Philadelphia, as it appeared on Page One of the two-page New York Gazette for July 15, 1776. (News traveled slower in those days). Click on the image below for a readable close-up.

Here's to Your Health: July 4 Weekend BP Oil Spill Update

2010-07-03T11:46:00.006-05:00

"Y'all come on down, now, and have a good time! We've got the funniest county pols and doctors in the land."

1. Oil cast

Erin Kourkounis of the Pensacola News Journal grabs the prize for Best Headline of the Month (see above). And we're only three days into July!

The forecast from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration indicates that easterly winds could mean continued oil impacts on area beaches through Sunday.
These winds, along with a 40 percent to 60 percent chance of rain and 3- to 5-foot seas may hamper some oil recovery efforts both onshore and offshore throughout the weekend, according to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.
Bob West, Pensacola Beach public safety director, predicts red flags will fly on Pensacola Beach today and Sunday due to rough surf and rip currents.

EscambiaDisasterResponse.com headlines its weekend advisory (click on graphic, above) by telling us "The beaches are open and ready for business!"

Indeed they are open. County officials have worked hard to be sure no one in the county or state health department, state EPA, or Island Authority will close them no matter how much oil washes onto the beaches. As the Associated Press reports, "Pensacola Beach is doing its best to make its sands presentable."

Whether the beaches really are safe, well, that's another matter.

2. Escambia Beaches.

News photographer Katie King at the PNJ has a gallery of stunning photographs showing how awful Pensacola Beach looked yesterday. (Click the photo, left, to see the entire gallery.)

Louis Cooper reported earlier this week that "Aerial reconnaissance flights observed streamers of mousse and sliver sheen hovering just offshoreStreamers of mousse and sliver sheen hovering just offshore near Johnson Beach, Fort Pickens and Pensacola Beach." Conditions are not likely to improve over the weekend.

The same Associated Press dispatch mentioned above, says:

About 1,300 BP employees and county crews are working overnight to clean whatever oil washes up during high tide. By most mornings, the tourist sections are largely clean, with only orange and brown stains in the sand left behind.

A for effort, but brisk winds and a strong current continue from the southeast this morning, and they likely will wash more of the oil Cooper saw on shore to foul beaches throughout the weekend.

3. Navarre Beach.

On Navarre Beach in neighboring Santa Rosa County, "plate-size" tarballs were "all over the beach" and oil booms were "placed at Santa Rosa's inland waterways... due to the threat of oil forecast by trajectory maps over the next several days." The boom-blocked canals and waterways include "Zamarra Canal, Gilmore Bayou, Woodland Bayou, Villa Venyce, Santa Rosa Shores, Hoffman Bayou and Polynesian Isle."

On the same day, astoundingly, Santa Rosa County health director Sandy Park declined to issue a health warning for county beaches.

4. Ft. Walton Beaches.

The Northwest Daily News -- in ways that echo its pathetic predecessor publication, the Playground Daily News -- offers the reading public very few facts about the extent of oil pollution on Okaloosa Island in Ft. Walton Beach. The best we could find is Dusty Rickett's vague dispatch claiming, "Local beaches remained relatively free of tar balls and oil on Friday."

When we learn what 'relatively' means to Ricketts, we'll get right back to you.

In Destin the big news is about the deadly crash of a W.W. II stunt plane just offshore, in which two Niceville men died. The bodies have not yet been recovered.

As for oil, earlier in the week The Destin Log reported that Hurricane Alex was causing "multiple tarballs" as large as baseballs to 'dot the surfline' all along local beaches. An oil sheen estimated to be as much as two miles long was seen "a quarter to a half mile outside Destin Pass" and other smaller ones at the mid-bay bridge and in Niceville.

5. Walton County Beaches.

In Walton County, the same Northwest Daily News more candidly reports:

Oil continued to wash up Thursday at many points along the Walton County shore, from Miramar Beach to Rosemary Beach, according to State Emergency Response Team reports. Heavy tar balls hit Grayton Beach, while tar mats were reported farther east.

There too, however, county health officials have lifted all health advisories, according to the Walton Sun. Indeed, the South Walton "Tourist Development Council" claims "there are no health advisories at this time."

6. The Rhetoric of Health Warnings, Advisories, and Notices.

All across the Florida panhandle, Friday saw county health department directors rescinding previous "health warnings." Many now are substituting a generic "health advisory" or "oil impact notice." (Click on graphic, left, to read.)

The wording differences are subtle, but the purpose is obvious. By removing the word "warning" tourist promotion organizations can claim "no health warnings" have been issued for their beaches. (Think, "It depends on what the meaning of the word is is.")

Except that some, like the Walton County Tourist Development Council, haven't received the memo yet. They're screwing things up by claiming, "There are no health advisories at this time."

No, no, tourist promoters! You're supposed to say, "no health warnings." That's the whole point of this rhetorical health department strategy. The hope is that ''advisory" or 'impact notice' is less attention-getting and more ambiguous than a "warning." It's supposed to look more like a humdrum announcement than a compelling admonition.

How many times have you seen a dog owner post a "Canine Impact Notice" instead of one reading, "Warning - Dangerous Dog"?

7. Who's Behind the Curtain?

Initially, we were fooled, too, into supposing that Escambia County's health director, Dr. John Lanza, finally had found the cajones to say something other than what Buck Lee scripted for him. Now, so it looks to us, there is a coordinated effort underway to find a way to minimize the health risks of oil polluted waters while casting blame for its consequences on someone else.

From the sudden appearance of permanent "oil impact notices" all over the panhandle, we're guessing it's orchestrated out of Tallahassee by the state Department of Health or Florida's Department of Environmental Protection. County officials are only too happy for the help.

Dr. Lanza obviously feels conflicted by the warring interests of business and human health. Out of one side of his mouth, as Doug Hanks reports for the Miami Herald, Lanza says, "We are not advising that anyone go in the water." Out of the other side, he articulates "a more permissive view of the notice in his comments to reporters, urging beachgoers to avoid the water only if they could see oil in the water or felt an oiliness on their skin while swimming."

It is, as the subhead of Jamie Page's article in today's PNJ puts it, how the county "stalls on keeping swimmers from the water." ["Close Beach? County Won't take the Risk Yet"]

In this land of Tea Party sympathizers, where the demand so often is heard for the federal government to keep its hands off purely local concerns like national health insurance reform, county commissioners like the criminally-indicted Gene Valentino are petulantly stamping their feet in front of the cameras to complain that they can't close their own beaches until the feds come up with health standards for this unprecedented oil pollution event.

It's a hilarious show not to be missed, and a worthy site for tourists to see all by itself. Y'all come on down, now, and have a good time! We've got the funniest county pols and doctors in the land.

Lessons Learned -- and Now Forgotten

2010-07-02T15:03:00.005-05:00

From the description of Island Authority Buck Lee's actions and Dr. John Lanza's rationalizations over the past two weeks which appears in today's Christian Science Monitor ["After Gulf Swimmers Report Illness, Questions about Opening a Beach"] the county and Santa Rosa Island Authority have forgotten the hard lessons once learned on Pensacola Beach. (HT to Rick Outzen for pointing to the CSM.)

Santa Rosa Island officials flew the double-red flag – no swimming – over Pensacola Beach in Florida after a swath of thick oil washed ashore from the Gulf oil spill June 23.

Two days later, against the warnings of federal health officials and based on a visual survey of the beach, the local island authority director, Buck Lee, reopened the beaches for swimming, urging residents and tourists to come back to the beach. Officials left the ultimate decision on whether it was safe to swim to beachgoers.

Several hundred beach visitors took him at his word, and this is what happened:

This week, health officials in Escambia County, Fla., which includes Pensacola Beach, reported that about 400 people claimed they felt sick after visiting the beach and swimming in the Gulf.

What Buck Lee has done since the BP oil catastrophe reached Northwest Florida threatens to wipe out nearly a decade of laudable progress by the governing board in restoring the reputation of Pensacola Beach -- and the agency itself. What Dr. Lanza has offered as an excuse Lee could use ('the situation changes from one hour to the next") is equally contemptible.

Over a decade ago, beginning in the late 1990's and through the early years of the present decade, Pensacola Beach became known around the nation as "Death Beach." This wasn't because of oil. It was because of a series of tragic drownings of local and visiting swimmers over many years in the tricky rip-currents along the beach.

As the U.S. Life Guard Association notes in an older annual report, in those days Pensacola was known as a destination where "the hazards are many and lifeguards are few." There was a different head administrator of the Island Authority, then, and mostly a different board than we have today. But the lessons the agency came to learn are just as applicable to the oil catastrophe of today.

Beginning in the year 2000, thanks largely to the intrepid efforts of former SRIA board members Don Ayres and Chuck Emling, and now current board member Thomas Campanella, the SRIA agency was pushed, pulled, and dragged into budgeting substantial funds for a comprehensive public safety program on Pensacola Beach. Permanent life guard stations were built at all the major beaches. A professional, certified staff of skilled lifeguards was hired. State of the art life-saving equipment was purchased. Mobile beach vehicles for patrolling less frequently used beaches were put in service. And, equally important, an easy-to-understand and reliable public alert system candidly describing the daily swimming conditions was implemented.

It is no exaggeration to say that these efforts by those former board members not only saved countless lives, they also rescued the reputation of Pensacola Beach. And that kind of reputation is the best "tourist promotion" money can buy.

Over the past several weeks, however, Buck Lee has been throwing that restored good reputation away. We are now in danger of being known as Prevarication Beach -- the vacation destination that won't tell you the truth about current oil conditions affecting your health.

The danger of oil is different than the danger of rip currents, of course. But there are striking parallels, too. Both involve hidden dangers not readily recognizable by temporary tourists, as well as obvious ones. For some particularly vulnerable visitors, each of the hazards can be life-threatening. And, with both kinds of hazards the risk can be mitigated only if the authorities are honest and forthright in warning the public of the danger -- even to the point, when necessary, of closing the beach.

The lame excuses not to take any particular action, once offered by the former SRIA general manager and now offered by the present one, also are strikingly similar. Back then, now-retired general manager Monte Blews often was quoted as saying about the dangerous rip currents some of the very same things Buck Lee and his comrades-in-promotion are saying today about the oil on the beach. Things like:

swimmers should use common sense;
water hazards of the Gulf change from day to day and hour to hour;
every person is unique and reacts to the hazard in unpredictable ways;
we can't anticipate every dumb move some tourist might make;
many more people aren't being injured;
Y'all come on down and have some fun, ya' hear?

We like to think that ultimately the old SRIA board and Mr. Blews did the right thing for ethical reasons and they were justly rewarded with a restored -- even enhanced -- beach reputation. But a couple of board members, we suspect, never were much impressed by the argument that the agency had a moral responsibility to do everything reasonably possible to protect the lives and health of people whom they had encouraged to visit Pensacola Beach.

Even those heart-hardened ones eventually went along, however, for the sufficient reason that they came to realize all the advertising money in the world isn't worth a damn if a beach destination earns a reputation for being cavalier about the safety of its visitors or if it lies to the public about the condition of the beach.

That's a lesson Buck Lee and quite a few Escambia County officials need to re-learn, whatever their moral or political compass may direct. If they don't, you can be sure there will be more articles like today's in the Christian Science Monitor.