EPA Backs Down on Dispersants

Late this afternoon, EPA director Lisa Jackson backed down on the agency's order, issued last week, that BP cease using its Corexit 9500 dispersant. Instead, she said, the agency would continue to research and monitor dispersant use.

On May 20, in EPA's own words, the agency ordered BP --

to identify a less toxic alternative – to be used both on the surface and under the water at the source of the oil leak – within 24 hours and to begin using the less toxic dispersant within 72 hours of submitting the alternative.

On the same day, however, BP replied that the large store of Corexit it had on hand:

was the only dispersant that was available immediately in sufficiently large quantities, to be useful at the time of the spill. Subsequent efforts have identified Sea Brat # 4 as a possible alternative that is equally effective at dispersing oil, but has fewer acute toxicity effects.

However, BP's letter added:

Sea Brat #4 contains a small amount of a a chemical that may degrade to a nonylphenol (NP). The class of NP chemicals have been identified by various government agencies as potential endocrine disrupters, and as chemicals that may persist in the environment for for a period of years. The manufacturer has not had the opportunity to evaluate this product for those potential effects, and BP has not had the opportunity to conduct independent tests to evaluate this issue either.

Several years ago, the EPA described nonylphenol in a previous advisory as --

an organic chemical produced in large quantities in the United States. It is toxic to aquatic life, causing reproductive effects in aquatic organisms. Nonylphenol is moderately soluble and resistant to natural degradation in water. It is used as a chemical intermediate and is often found in wastewater treatment plant effluent as a breakdown product from surfactants and detergents.

At this afternoon's brief news conference, EPA director Jackson said the agency will continue to evaluate the dispersants identified by BP for both effectiveness and toxicity. If an alternative to Corexit 9500 in sufficient quantities can be found, she implied the agency would proceed with orders for BP to make the switch.

The root problem, however, Jackson said as she began winding up the presser, is that "the science of dispersants has not in any way kept up with the science and technology" of deep sea drilling.

Last week, Sylvia Earle, a famed oceanographer in her own right and former NOAA director, told a congressional committee, "Until we know more about the dispersants, I'd follow up with BP and EPA and tell them to stop, stop."

Monday May 24: BP Oil Spill Update

1. Local Air quality.

The hourly Air Quality Index for Pensacola, including observed particulate matter, can be accessed here. Earlier today, it looked rather normal for this time of year; fair but not good. How much of the particulates in the air may be due to Mother Nature's insistence that flowers and plants continue send their propagating pollen into the air and how much to man's preparations of the planet for the ants we will not hazard a guess.

2. Gulf Coast Oil Forecast.

WKRG-TV out of Mobile has begun posting a useful daily "oil forecast" on its web site, along with links to other important information. For now, it appears, the oil is expected to continue moving primarily "west and south," as you can see and hear below:

3. Pensacola Oil-cast.

As for Pensacola and nearby beaches, three screenshots we took this morning give you some idea of why forecasting the future direction of BP's spreading lake of oil is so tricky. The screenshots are taken from the University of South Florida's "Ocean Circulation Group" web site.

Within the Gulf and along the coast, the mix of winds, surface water currents, and subsurface water currents is complex and sometimes contradictory. Below is the final frame of an animation forecasting prevailing wind direction:

And a second screenshot, below, is the final frame for the same time of an animated forecast for prevailing surface water currents:
Notice how the arrows for wind and water don't always agree?

Finally, below is a screenshot of the subsurface oil measured by as of the end of the animation period, May 27:
To see each of the full animations, and more, visit the web site for USF's "Ocean Circulation Group."

4. Mobile 'Graduation' Day on Pensacola Beach.

On one Sunday in May, every year, a large and predominantly black crowd from Mobile, Alabama, makes the trek to Pensacola Beach. We've written about this before here here and here and here. It's one of the larger events on Pensacola Beach distinguished by crowds of visitors motivated in some way by a particular cultural affinity.

The so-called "Mobile graduation" Sunday ranks right up there on the stress-o-meter of some local residents with the invasion of drunken Bubbas for the Mardi Gras parade; the hormone-driven invasion of college students over Spring Break; and Pensacola Beach's unique "Gay Memorial Day Weekend." We would have added early August's "Bushwhacker Festival," but we're not sure excessive drinking and listening to ear-splitting music is a recognized cultural identity.

This year, the Mobile 'graduation' thing went off without a hitch. The feared violence of past years, the overtly racist reception occasionally experienced by some visitors, and BP's oil spill were not in evidence.

"By 2 p.m.," Thyrie Bland of the PNJ reports, "the crowd remained light and some of the extra deputies assigned to work at the beach Sunday were let go." A few thousand more showed up late in the afternoon, but "it wasn't as big as last year," according to Deputy Sheriff Sgt. Mike Ward.

5. Pensacola Geography Lesson.

The other day we mentioned that a few tarballs washed up on the beach at Ft. Pickens. An estimable neighboring blogger we admire, Rick Outzen, did the same.

One of our readers, another estimable object of our admiration, took umbrage at Rick's referring to the fort as being on "Pensacola Beach." Then he, so we understand, took umbrage at her for taking umbrage.

We were going to ignore the minor contretemps, but then, last night, a question popped up on the Internet Tubes. "Admin" for something called RAEstate ("Consumption and Real Estate") posted this:

Question for anyone who lives or ever been to Pensacola Beach? [I]n the current there in June and I wonder how Pensacola is and how close is the public beach? [sic]

It is not uncommon for otherwise intelligent folk to confuse Pensacola or even Ft. Pickens with Pensacola Beach. Technically, they are all separate legal entities, just as Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan each has separate legal status, although most folk broadly refer to each of them as "New York City."

We see no harm in that. The five boroughs of New York may seem vastly different to those who live in New York, but to the rest of us they all kind of mush together in one huge, crowded, smelly, exciting, ugly, dangerous, wonderful metropolis.

So, too, Pensacola and nearby environs probably mush together in the eyes of past and prospective visitors. The area shares essentially the same ecology and weather (not to mention the same economy, politics, and culture).
Even more so are Pensacola Beach and Ft. Pickens part of the same barrier island environment. They border one another and share about twenty miles of the same stretch of beach, the same winds, and the same water currents. Click here or on the map:

The political differences are vast, of course. One is an unincorporated Golden Goose without democratic representation that Escambia County seems intent on killing with higher and higher taxes, tolls, high rise buildings, and ridiculous elevated highways. The other is part of the federally-protected Gulf Islands National Seashore and, except for the nineteenth century fort, actually looks like a barrier island should.

Some day soon, perhaps, Pensacola Beach and the Fort Pickens part of the National Seashore will be physically separated. In the meantime, everyone is right, as far as we are concerned. They ought to save their umbrages for a better opportunity, like throwing them at BP.

Gulf Oil Gusher Estimates

PBS News Hour:

Here's a look at some of the other numbers that form the basis of our oil leak range, including our update on May 21 about reports of a new estimate on the way:

* NOAA | 210,000 gal/day
* Outside Estimates | 1,050,000 gal/day
* BP (Worst Case as of May 5) | 2,520,000 gal/day
* Experts' Worst Case | 4,200,000 gal/day

A new "flow rate technical team" comprised of outside experts and multiple government agencies is beginning work on a new estimate of the leak's magnitude, which could come as early as this weekend. We'll update both our widgets until the leak is stopped.

Still Waters Wednesday: May 19 BP Oil Spill Report

"Pensacola Beach has rarely looked cleaner or more inviting."

UPDATED BELOW

1. Still Waters on Pensacola Beach.

A reader was wondering early this morning if the Internet web cam images of Pensacola Beach were showing an oily sheen. The simple answer is "no."

What is visible is one of those glorious beach days when the sun is shining, the wind has died, the sand is blindingly white, the surf is so calm you can see it reflect birds as they fly overhead, and a small pod of dolphins lazily gambols above the underwater sand bar offshore, feeding off a school of mullet (click here or photo, left). The still waters are running clean.

There is, as yet, no sign of oil on Pensacola Beach. Quite the opposite: Pensacola Beach has rarely looked cleaner or more inviting. The reason is, no one is here. The beach is weirdly empty. Tourists have, with few exceptions, simply fled.

The operator of the sand cleaning machine, a standard fixture on the beach as early morning beach walkers know (click here or on photo, above), told us this morning he hasn't even found much of the usual Thoughtless Tourist Trash -- cigarette butts, plastic cups, beer cans, etc.

"It's almost empty," he complained, pointing at the collection hopper (photo insert, above). "Not much trash 'cause nobody's here. And I've just finished a run down the entire beach."

2. The Oil Straw.

The new BP videos released yesterday by senators Bill Nelson and Barbara Boxer have raised public apprehension over the amount of oil that continues pouring into the Gulf. They also should have thoroughly killed whatever faith the public and our elected officials still may have invested in the credibility of BP executives. As the old sarcasm would have it, 'Who you gonna believe, the suits at BP or your own lyin' eyes?

One more thing the videos have done: reawaken concern over the injection of a secret chemical mix generically known as "dispersants" at the point of the leak. Distributing dispersants at this depth and with a leak this size is an untested palliative with unknown consequences for the environment, sea life, and human health. The one thing we do know is the dispersants don't destroy the oil; they merely break it up into smaller molecules that likely will behave, chemically and physically, in different ways.

3. What Lies Beneath: Dispersants Damage

A couple of days ago Joel Achenbach of the Washington Post published an article whose importance cannot be over emphasized. ["Oil Spill Imperils an Unseen World at the Bottom of the Gulf".] In it, he warns that the larger threat of the BP oil disaster is not what we see, but what lies beneath, hidden in the deep:

Fan corals, lacylike doilies, form gardens on the seafloor and on sunken ships. The deep is full of crabs, sponges, sea anemones. Sharks hunt in the dark depths, as do sperm whales that feed on giant squid. The sperm whales have formed a year-round colony near the mouth of the Mississippi River, and have been known to rub themselves on oil pipes just like grizzlies rubbing against pine trees.

This is the unseen world imperiled by the uncapped oil well a mile below the surface of the gulf. The millions of gallons of crude, and the introduction of chemicals to disperse it, have thrown this underwater ecosystem into chaos, and scientists have no answer to the question of how this unintended and uncontrolled experiment in marine biology and chemistry will ultimately play out.
* * *
The well is surrounded by a complex ecosystem that only in recent years has been explored by scientists. Between the uncapped well and the surface is a mile of water that riots with life, and now contains a vast cloud of oil, gas and chemical dispersants and long, dense columns of clotted crude.
* * *
More is known about the surface of the moon than about the world at the bottom of the sea.
* * *
The depths of the gulf are also a potential answer to a question that has been in the air for weeks now: Where, exactly, has all the oil gone? A partial explanation is that the slick has been bombed with more than half a million gallons of the chemical dispersant Corexit 9500, made by Nalco. More dispersants have been applied at depth, directly on the main leak. Much of the oil sinks to the bottom.

"If you apply the dispersants to the source of the oil down there, you are completely hiding the problem," said Kert Davies, research director for Greenpeace. "It looks like it's gone away, but there is no 'away' in the ocean. It's like sweeping it under the rug."

4. Banned in Britain.

ProPublica today adds this (with supporting links, to its great credit) to the dispersants debate:

• "The two types of dispersants BP is spraying in the Gulf are banned for use on oil spills in the U.K."
• "[T]wo products" from BP's "Corexit" line of dispersants are "more toxic and less effective in handling southern Louisiana crude than those made by competitors.
• Equally chilling, "Corexit was also used after the Exxon Valdez disaster and was later linked with human health problems including respiratory, nervous system, liver, kidney and blood disorders."
• One of the two Corexit products also contains a compound that, in high doses, is associated with headaches, vomiting and reproductive problems.

The inescapable truth is that no one knows for sure what BP may be doing to the entire chain of life in the Gulf of Mexico as it applies its favored dispersants at the source of the oil gusher. As NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco told PBS' News Hour Monday, both oil and dispersants are toxic to sea life. NOAA decided to approve BP's use of dispersants only because they are considered "less of an evil" than oil.

But one is left to wonder, just how can she know it's a "lesser" evil when the effects of dispersants applied at the depth of BP's oil gusher have never been studied or tested?

5. Keys Tarballs Not from BP.

Those twenty-five tarballs found at a state park yesterday are not from the BP oil spill, the U.S. Coast Guard is saying. The tarballs were sent for analysis to "US Coast Guard Marine Safety Laboratory in New London, Connecticut."

According to the commanding officer of the coast guard's Key West sector, " these tar balls are not from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill incident."

5. Oil Slick Coming to Florida Keys, Nevertheless.

Not to worry. The Florida Keys will be seeing the BP river of oil soon, anyway.

According to computer models developed by the University of South Florida's College of Marine Science, the Florida Loop will be transporting it to beaches in the Keys "in the next eight to 10 days," reports Christine Stapleton of the Palm Beach Post.

A Post artist, working from the USF models, has prepared a graphic showing the expected route of the oil. (Click here or on graphic, left.) It's a little cartoonish for scientists, no doubt, but it does dramatically illustrate how far, and how quickly, the oil may reach:

Scientists and researchers said Monday that their data showed oil was sucked into the Gulf Loop over the weekend. On Tuesday scientists at the University of South Florida released trajectories based on five models.

"All the five model trajectory forecasts … show that this southern part of the oil slick will be transported along with the Loop Current," according to the University of South Florida oceanographers. "Our best estimates of the arrival dates of the oil spill, transported along with the Loop Current, for Key West, the middle Keys, and Miami are around May 23-24, May 26 and May 28, respectively."

Happy Memorial Day, Keys! It will be one to remember.

UPDATE - LATE AFTERNOON
5-19 pm

Mid- and late-afternoon beach walkers report a southwest breeze brought the distinct odor of oil along with it.

Escaping the Blame for the Oil Spill

There's plenty of blame to go around for the continuing catastrophe of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill: BP corp., Transocean, Halliburton, and the U.S. Interior Department agency known as "MMS," foremost among the guilty parties.

Last night, Rachel Maddow showed where some of the blame should be placed. She also gives us a glimpse at how the executive teams for these miscreants can gin up special stockholder distribution plans, if they have to, to avoid their own responsibility -- thus beggaring themselves before the bills comes due -- and how several Republican politicians in Washington, including Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) James Inhofe (R-OK), can enable them by misusing the dysfunctional rules of the U.S. Senate.

minor edit 5-19

Sen. Bill Nelson Releases New BP Oil Leak Video

UPDATED BELOW

Senators Bill Nelson (D-FL) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA) a day or two ago demanded that BP release to them all videos of the Deepwater Horizon oil leak. The senators doubtless did so for at least two reasons.

First, they want to aid scientists in calculating the leak rate. The more videos, the more exact scientists can be in determining the total volume of oil pouring into the Gulf.

Second, the senators also must be skeptical about the corporation's recent boasts that the leak has been diminished by "20 percent" or even "40 percent." That's a claim that we've noticed too many journalists are eager to swallow whole, despite the fact not much that BP claims about Deepwater has proved true.

Today, BP agreed to turn over more videos rather than be served with a Senatorial subpoena. Senator Nelson promptly posted one of the first new videos received on his official web site. Now, it's on Youtube and it looks to be about to go viral.

The video codes indicate it was filmed yesterday, May 17, at 1:05 am (Past videos establish BP uses military time and codes the dates in the European style, day-month-year.)

Below is the latest video. Does it relieve your concerns? Didn't think so.

UPDATE
Wed., May 19 6 am

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) narrates the above film clip:

Florida Oil Loop Image

"The oil pollution 'could endanger Florida’s shoreline mangroves, seagrass beds and the third-longest barrier reef in the world, the 221-mile-long Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.'"

-- Jeff Hoffmeyer, Univ. of Southern Mississippi Center
for Fisheries Research and Development
(quoted by Think Progress.org)

The composite image below comes via ThinkProgress.org. Brad Johnson laid a MODIS satellite image of BP's massive oil spill over a National Weather Service HYCOM model of Gulf water currents. For a detailed view, click the image or these words.

Hot Oil League Trade

Independent News publisher Rick Outzen, just back from an interview and photo trip to Louisiana, wants to trade Northwest Florida's congressman Jeff Miller (R-Oil Spill) for Massachusetts congressman Edward Markey (D-Medford), who represents the suburbs along the north side of Boston.

We know the north Boston suburbs, Rick. They're no Northwest Florida. They'll never fall for your scheme.

Misdirection Monday: May 17 Oil Spill Update

"I make the weather! All of this moisture coming up out of the Gulf is gonna push off to the east and hit Altoona."

-- Phil Connors (Bill Murray), Groundhog Day

1. Weekly Oil Spill Forecast.

For much of the past month since the April 20 BP oil platform explosion, Northwest Florida has been protected from direct damage by the river of oil in the Gulf of Mexico predominantly by Southeast-to-Northwest winds and water currents. The web site Windmapper, however, is forecasting a change for the first few days of this week.

Monday through Wednesday, it suggests, we are likely to experience a slowly strengthening trend of Southwest- to- Northeast winds. This is the worst kind for our beach.

One of the TV weathermen at local station WEAR-TV is saying, however, that the drift toward the northeast won't be strong enough to push BP oil onto Pensacola Beach. (click photo up and to the left). We'll see how well he imitates Bill Murray's Goundhog Day character in 'making the weather.'

To view Windmapper's daily forecast animation click here. For an hour-by-hour overview of each day of the week, click here.

2. Pipe Smoke Gets In Your Eyes.

Of course, one big news item yesterday was that on the third try, as McClatchy News puts it, the "BP Oil giant succeeded Sunday in connecting a mile-long pipe to help capture what it hoped will be a majority of the oil flowing from a damaged well into the Gulf of Mexico."

But confusion reigns. British Petroleum wasn't saying on Sunday how much oil it really was collecting on board the oil tanker tethered a mile above the wellhead pipe. All we could be sure about is that the pipe insertion didn't completely plug the "massive oil leak." According to Shaila Dewan of the New York Times, BP vice president Kent Wells "could not say how much oil had been captured or what percentage of the oil ... was now flowing into ... the insertion tube."

"Could not?" More likely, would not. The more BP talks, the less they seem to tell us. As a result, reporters can't even agree on the dimensions of the tube that BP inserted:

• WaPo's Steven Mufson and Joel Achenbach report the tube is "a four inch pipe."
• The UK Telegraph (London) yesterday claimed it was a "6-inch tube" that was inserted.
• Ms. Dewan of the New York Times reports it is a "4-inch-wide tube."
• The Los Angeles Times votes that it is a "6-inch suction tube."
• Bloomberg's Business Week says (with metric meretriciousness) that it's a "6 5/8 inch (17 centimeter) tube."
• CBS dodges the question by saying it's "narrow."
• AP voes for 6 inches.
• The Times Picayune casts its ballot for "a 4-inch-wide tube."
• Next door neighbor, NewOrleans.com, dissents; it is "a six inch hose," they say.
  
• The oil industry organ Marine Log bets on "a four-inch diameter."
  
• NPR this morning cautiously remained mum about just how wide they think the tube is.
  

We could go on. Near-endless examples exist. The real lesson to remember is that none of these reporters have a clue what they're writing about. Every one of them is dependent on BP, itself, for the numbers.

Apparently, the ancient adage 'You're entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts' is no longer operative in the Gulf of Mexico. BP drowned it.

3. BP's PR.

There also is a yawning chasm between what BP seems to be saying and what, in fact, it is saying. Only lawyers and those journalists accustomed to dealing with slippery oil corporations have noticed that BP is playing a very "cagey" game -- to borrow the admiring word from the Jakarta Globe, a newspaper published in a country that has a long and sad history of being shamelessly exploited by underwater oil drillers.

For just one example, an early report Sunday afternoon by Shaila Dewan of the New York Times at 1:58 pm CDT clashed with another by Jeffrey Collins and Jason Dearen of the Associated Press which was originally published within minutes that same afternoon. Dewan reported that BP would not disclose "how much oil and gas were taken aboard the... drill ship... as it is siphoned off" by the 4- (or is it 6-?) inch pipe. Contrariwise, Collins and Dearen claimed that "BP said a mile-long tube was siphoning most of the crude from a blown well to a tanker... ." [emphasis added]

At mid-day Monday, BP owned up to the reality. As CBS News, France's wire service, and other sources are now reporting, only "about 20 percent of the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico is being swallowed up by its insertion tube system." That "20 percent," moreover, is based on now-discredited estimates that the leak consists of 5,000 barrels a day.

In fact, yesterday's insertion of the "mile-long pipe" enables BP to capture only 1,000 barrels a day. This means the "success" yesterday is far less consequential than either the Times or the Associated Press were saying yesterday.

As multiple news outlets are reporting today, the actual leak rate is now believed by scientists to "be between 25,000 and 80,000 barrels per day." Accordingly, a thousand barrels a day means the 4- or 6-inch pipe is capturing as little as one-and-one-quarter percent of the oil gushing into the Gulf every day.

Are we better off than we were on Friday? Reality has not appreciably changed. But insofar as public knowledge is concerned, in the space of just three days we've gone from 5,000 barrels of oil a day freely pouring into the Gulf to as much as 80,000 barrels a day, minus a measly one thousand barrels captured by the 4-inch -- or is it 6-inch? -- pipe plug.

4. Oil Lakes Beneath the Sea.

There are other, even more momentous issues, where it's useful to bear in mind all the misdirection going on. For example, independent researchers, like oceanography professor Vernon Asper of Southern Mississippi University, have found huge pools of oil "at substantial depths down to at least 1,300 meters, which is very close to the depth of the well."

We’re thinking that this oil is probably some fraction of the oil that’s not reaching the surface but instead is sort of spreading out and then the currents are taking it wherever the currents are going.

The pools of underwater oil are said to be just "too big" for the usual bottom-dwelling organisms that metabolize oil to "gobble" them up. (You can read the interview with Prof. Asper last Friday here; or, listen to the podcast here.)

As Justin Gillis of the New York Times reports:

Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick in spots.
* * *
“There’s a shocking amount of oil in the deep water, relative to what you see in the surface water,” said Samantha Joye, a researcher at the University of Georgia who is involved in one of the first scientific missions to gather details about what is happening in the gulf. “There’s a tremendous amount of oil in multiple layers, three or four or five layers deep in the water column.”

The plumes are depleting the oxygen dissolved in the gulf, worrying scientists, who fear that the oxygen level could eventually fall so low as to kill off much of the sea life near the plumes.

5. Damaging Dispersants.

This is especially worrisome given BP's practice of continuing to release hundreds of tons upon hundreds of tons of "dispersants" a mile below the surface near the wellhead. As USM professor Asper told The World radio program Friday, "we don’t know what affect the dispersants might have." And, as usual, BP isn't talking.

For more on the threat posed by excessive use of dispersants, check out The Truth about Gulf Oil Spill.

6. Swallowing BP's Word for It.

Journalists are one thing. Washington politicians should be even more embarrassed by their unquestioning acceptance of whatever BP says. As Sam Stein suggests over at the Huffington Post, foremost among them is our next-door neighbor, Alabama senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL):

Late this past week, Republicans in the Senate effectively blocked legislation that would have raised the cap on the amount of money oil companies like BP would have to pay for economic damages caused by oil spills.
* * *
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) suggested on Sunday that raising the cap was unnecessary because BP had given him it's word that it would cover the costs of the spill in the Gulf.

Not far behind is the Obama administration. It took them until last Friday to wake up to the legal reality that BP's oral word is meaningless when it comes to paying all "legitimate claims" for damages. As veteran reporter James Ridgeway writes, the company's reputation is "coated in sludge."

So far as we can tell, the oil company's only response to this hour has been to have their PR flack-catchers repeat the same oral assurances:

"What they are requesting in the letter is absolutely consistent with all our public statements on the matter," BP spokesman David Nicholas said.

But will they love us in the morning? We'll wait for an answer in writing, signed, and notarized by BP's chief executive officer and board chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg. Then, BP can kiss us.

Oral assurances that BP will fully pay all "legitimate" damages caused by this disaster are of no use whatsoever when the graven law imposes a $75 million limit on its liability.

Dept. of Amplification
05-17 pm
Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor, has additional thoughts along the same lines ["BP Stands for Bad Petroleum"]:

Saturday the White House warned BP that it expects the oil giant to pay all damages associated with the disastrous oil leak into the Gulf of Mexico, even if the costs exceed the $75 million liability cap under federal law. BP responded Sunday saying its public statements are “absolutely consistent” with the Administration’s request.

When you hear dueling public statements like these, watch your wallets. You can safely assume BP’s lawyers are already at work to ensure that the firm pays not a cent more than $75 million — not to taxpayers bearing cleanup costs, not to consumers whose gas bills will rise, not to businesses along the coasts that will lose a fortune. And BP won’t pay more unless or until there’s a law requiring it to.

BP * * * [is] the poster child for PR masquerading as CSR.

There's a good deal more worth reading ...

Slow Damage: Saturday: May 15 Oil Spill Update

"Dammit, Fernando, why shouldn't it? Why shouldn't a corpse be transmitted by express?"

-- Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano

1. Impatient for Disaster.

Most news journalists are in love with the story. When the story begins, say, with a spectacular explosion followed by a continuing oil leak of historic proportions, they want to know how it all will end. If the story seems be unfolding too slowly for their tastes, they grow querulous and impatient. They want to see the disastrous climax now.

If they can't have it, then some of them turn to writing peevish headlines like the one in today's Pensacola News Journal ["Where's the Oil?"] and captious complaints like Cain Burdeau's lede for the Associated Press: "For a spill now nearly half the size of Exxon Valdez, the oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster is pretty hard to pin down."

To be sure, Burdeau quickly returns to the objective voice of the Impartial Journalist and tells us exactly where the oil can be found, just as shown by the imagery (above) at the Center for Southeast Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing (CSTARS) of the University of Miami:

Satellite images show most of an estimated 4.6 million gallons of oil has pooled in a floating, shape-shifting blob off the Louisiana coast. Some has reached shore as a thin sheen, and gooey bits have washed up as far away as Alabama. But the spill is 23 days old since the Deepwater Horizon exploded April 20 and killed 11 workers, and the thickest stuff hasn't shown up on the coast.

Still, Mr. Burdeau can't help himself from continuing to carp, "So, where's the oil? Where's it going to end up?"

This chronic impatience well may account for the chronically lousy job journalists do with news stories that don't lend themselves to a quick wrap-up. We're thinking, for example, of global climate change, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Dick Cheney's still-secret meetings with oil industry executives at the outset of the George Bush administration, and the century-long collapse of the Chicago Cubs.

Like children, one suspects the attention span of journalists grows shorter with every new television season. We don't know what's to be done about it. Somehow, the news mavens must find a way to sustain their own interest in slow to develop, long-lasting disasters if the public is to be expected to pay attention.

2. Out of Sight, Out of Life.

Though the whereabouts of the oil spill may be out of sight for most journalists, that doesn't mean it's disappeared or that it's a benign presence. National Geographic points out ["Dead Zone in the Making?"] that --

Even if oil never washes up in the refuge, the region's birds may be silenced if the crude lingers deep in the Gulf of Mexico, experts say.

That's because 5,000 barrels of oil (210,000 gallons, or 794,937 liters) a day are thought to be bleeding from a damaged wellhead at the nearby site of the Deepwater Horizon rig disaster. All that oil is poisoning the less photogenic creatures—plankton, sand crabs, and fish larvae, among others—at the base of the region's food web, Schweiger noted.

If the oil spill can't be contained, the Gulf of Mexico could have another "dead zone in the making," according to Sylvia Earle, a marine biologist and National Geographic explorer-in-residence. (National Geographic News is owned by the National Geographic Society.)

As surely as disaster will follow if we continue ignoring the scientific data on global warming, BP's oil spill will have catastrophic consequences up and down the western hemisphere's food chain if Americans do not learn from it.

3. Complex Currents.

Peter Spotts of the Christian Science Monitor does a good job of describing the whys and whereabouts of the large oil lake that's been infiltrating Gulf waters for nearly a month. It's not your father's Exxon Valdez.

For anyone using the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska's Prince William Sound as a visual reference point, it might look as though the Gulf spill so far is a dodged bullet.

But the differences between the two events are significant, cautions Michelle Wood, a marine biologist who recently became head of the ocean chemistry division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Atlantic and Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory in Miami. Not the least of those differences is the seascape into which the oil is flowing.

The Exxon Valdez spill involved a large, single, intense pulse of oil into Prince William Sound – "a shallow, near-shore environment with a rocky coast," she explains. The heavy crude had lots to cling to as it came ashore. In the Gulf, "spill" is a so-far continuous infusion of a lighter grade oil, which at least initially forms a foamy mousse rather than tarry blobs. And so far, the oil has remained far at sea.
* * *
The system is chaotic enough that given enough time, say 90 days, oil in some form could wind up anywhere from the Mexican Coast to Palm Beach, research suggests.
* * *
Once it reaches the surface, currents and ever-shifting winds can carry the oil just about anywhere, adds Peter Niiler, a researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., who has conducted extensive studies of current patterns in the Gulf.

Results of a 5-year experiment by Peter Niiler of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., give some idea of who along the Gulf Coast most likely will be effected: everyone.

In a five-year experiment in the late 1990s, Dr. Niiler and a colleague dropped between 700 and 800 drifters – devices to help track currents -– into the Gulf at locations where offshore drilling was taking place.

Within 90 days, the drifters could be anywhere in the Gulf, including Mexico or even as far away as Miami Beach, he says.

4. Floating "Vessels."

Speaking of unpredictable drifting, this week hundreds of lawsuits were filed against BP, Transocean, and Halliburton over the mounting losses caused by the continuing oil spill. The oil corporations are responding with legal filings in Houston which allege that oil platform owner Transocean enjoys limited liability under an 1851 act of Congress still on the books and as owner of the oil platform its liability is limited to no more than $27 million.

1851? That's the year Herman Melville published Moby Dick! This is, as the saying goes, an argument only a lawyer could love. Transocean became a foreign company two years ago when it moved its headquarters from the U.S. to Switzerland. It owns the Deepwater Horizon rig that blew up on April 20.

Because underwater drilling rigs can be floated from one well to the next, the argument goes, it is a "vessel" at sea. Accordingly, Transocean is arguing that it is protected by "Limitation of Liability Act of 1851" and owes the entire universe of claimants no more than a grand total of $26 million and change.

Never mind that Transocean already has collected a "partial" payment of $ 401 million in insurance benefits. As the Wall Street Journal explains it:

Under the LLA of 1851, a vessel owner is liable only for the post-accident value of the vessel and cargo, so long as the owner can show he or she had no knowledge of negligence in the accident, maritime lawyers say. Since “the remains of the. . . Deepwater Horizon now lay sunken” about a mile deep in the federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the value of the rig and its cargo comes to no more than $26,764,083, Transocean claims in the filing. Before the accident, the rig was worth around $650 million.

Federal court procedural rules make special provision for admiralty lawsuits. Under Supplemental Rule F (9) --

The complaint shall be filed in any [Federal court] district in which the vessel has been attached or arrested to answer for any claim with respect to which the plaintiff seeks to limit liability; or, if the vessel has not been attached or arrested, then in any district in which the owner has been sued with respect to any such claim. When the vessel has not been attached or arrested to answer the matters aforesaid, and suit has not been commenced against the owner, the proceedings may be had in the district in which the vessel may be, [1] but if the vessel is not within any district and no suit has been commenced in any district, then the complaint may be filed in any district. For the convenience of parties and witnesses, [2] in the interest of justice, the court may transfer the action to any district; if venue is wrongly laid the court shall dismiss or, if it be in the interest of justice, transfer the action to any district in which it could have been brought. If the vessel shall have been sold, the proceeds shall represent the vessel for the purposes of these rules. [numerals added]

You can see where this likely is headed. One obvious point-counterpoint is [1] because "the vessel is not within any district" Transocean (and BP, following it) are seeking the oil-friendly venue of Houston, Texas. But [2] lawyers representing hundreds of individual claimants and perhaps tens upon tens of thousands of potential class members likely will be claiming "the interests of justice" require all their cases be returned to a Multi-District court panel in Louisiana.

And that is just one coupling of the arguments. There will be many more -- whether an oil rig fixed to the ocean floor is a "vessel;" if so whether it was within a federal court "district" other than Southern Texas; whether on balance "the interests of justice" of injured claimants outweigh those of needy oil companies; whether the insurance proceeds to be paid fix a minimum value for the rig; etc., etc., etc. And each of those seemingly dry procedural arguments are, in theory, subject to appeal in higher courts.

The WSJ sums up --

[I]n actuality, the Act very rarely helps companies limit liability. It can, however, allow a defendant to gain some control over the legal process, since a judge could place a stay on all pending litigation, which would then have to be refiled in the federal court where the limitation of liability was sought. Vessel owners routinely seek protection under the act following accidents at sea, lawyers said.

Pensacola Beach residents who've had experience with property insurance claims law after the hurricanes of 2004 and 2005 will recognize what's really going on here. The oil companies are sending a message: 'If you think the environmental effects of the BP oil spill are destined to last a lifetime, wait until your great-grandchildren live long enough to see the end of your lawsuit.'

Standing on the White House lawn, Barack Obama can throw all the "angry" fits he wants over the "ridiculous spectacle" of oil companies publicly blaming each other during congressional hearings. Obama is a lawyer. He knows what's really going on in the courtroom clinches. The oil companies are a tag-team, united in one purpose: to beat down all the fishermen, unemployed service workers, tourist-dependent businesses, beach front property owners, and other claimants.

They'll need a lot more from the president than angry rhetoric.

Dramatic Views of the Gulf Oil Slick

The "amateur video" below was uploaded to Youtube in the last twenty-four hours by Alabama resident John Wathen. Although it was taken a full week ago, on May 7, it shows some of the most dramatic footage of BP's spreading river of oil.

Imagine how much larger this "red mass of floating goo" has grown in the seven days since the video was taken:

Crude Possibilities - Thursday May 13 Gulf Oil Leak Update

1. 3-Day Coastal Oil Slick Projection.

Wind and water current will continue to be favorable for Pensacola Beach over the next three days, according to the latest projections by L.S.U.'s Coastal Studies Institute. Not so much for coastal points west of here, though. CLICK HERE or on the map, above, for a closeup.

Scientists at LSU and other research facilities that study the Gulf Coast are telling us that southeast-to-northwest winds and water currents are the norm for Pensacola Beach throughout Spring and Summer. While there will be exceptions on occasion, they generally are brief. So, if BP's Deepwater Horizion well gusher can be capped soon -- a possibility that still seems remote -- there is a rational basis in fact for hoping that we will escape the worst of the oily sludge.

2. Crude possibilities.

One scientist, who asked for anonymity because he does not want to be misunderstood as speaking for a well-known Gulf Coast employer, told us this week that much of the leaking oil appears to be "very buoyant" and "very light" in weight. It shows signs of "fragmenting," he says, into smaller pools and slicks.

"For a sandy beach like yours," he said, "this would not present much of a clean-up problem. It's worse for marshes with fine grained soils and cohesive particles that have the ability to retain that kind of oil for a long time."

"Over time, you probably will get occasional tarballs -- the flat, hard kind of heavy tar -- washing up on the beach," he forecast. "But that's nothing new."

He pointed out that over the decades occasional tarballs have washed up on Pensacola Beach before. Most of them are thought to be from long-forgotten tanker spills or small leaks from in-shore drilling rigs elsewhere in the Gulf. "Winter storms and of course hurricanes over time can transport the heavier crude patties almost anywhere."

When we asked about Escambia County's proposed plan to scrape the beach and build a landward berm in advance of any oil arriving, this expert said he considered it "unconscionable." He thought is was a waste of money and potentially harmful to the beach ecology. Scrape the beach afterwards if the worst should happen, he advises, but don't go throwing away money now on a worse-than-useless defense.

3. Eye Candy.

Today's New York Times has a report straight from Dauphin Island, Alabama. Reporter Shaila Dewan is there, bemused at the contrast between barefoot bathers enjoying the sun and surf and "National Guard troops and scores of laborers in hazmat gear and gloves" patrolling the beach and fortifying the island. They're there "for the coming war on oil," armed with what one resident calls "eye candy" -- hopelessly inadequate booms, hay bales, and skimmers.

Although 35 pounds of tarballs have been collected this week on Dauphin Island, the slick itself is still well offshore and out of sight:

At this time, it is perfectly possible to enjoy the beach, which is being kept unbelievably clean by the Tyvek battalions, so numerous that there was not enough trash to go around and their nearly empty garbage bags streamed behind them in the wind. But no one knows how long the oil will stay away, nor at what moment the Tyveks will suddenly drive past in four-wheelers towing trailers of hay, or wade into the water with strings of what look like pompoms and affix them to metal posts to catch incoming oil.

Even the normal beach trash is so sparse, Dewan writes, that "nearly empty garbage bags" stream behind the hazmat battalions.

Dauphin Island residents seem as divided as Pensacola Beach islanders. Some are grateful for the flurry of preparatory activity, others deeply skeptical.

David Probst... approached a television satellite truck Tuesday evening in hopes of showing off a small paper bag full of tarballs he had collected.

Mr. Probst opined that the floating booms, hay bales, and skimmer booms — strings of pompom-like material that trail through the water and are supposed to collect oil — were nothing more than “eye candy” whose weaknesses would be exposed as soon as a sustained south wind came along, pushing the disaster right onto Dauphin Island’s doorstep.

4. "Red Flag" Drilling Days.

On the beach everybody knows what a red flag day is: stop playing in the water for your own safety and that of others. Turns out, based on yesterday's congressional committee hearings, there were plenty of red flags waving in BP's face before the April 20 Deepwater well blowout -- but it proceeded with drilling activities, anyway.

WaPo summarizes:

A House energy panel investigation has found that the blowout preventer that failed to stop a huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico had a dead battery in its control pod, leaks in its hydraulic system, a "useless" test version of a key component and a cutting tool that wasn't strong enough to shear through steel joints in the well pipe and stop the flow of oil.

In a devastating review of the blowout preventer, which BP said was supposed to be "fail-safe," Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's subcommittee on oversight, said Wednesday that documents and interviews show that the device was anything but.
* * *
In Washington, Stupak said the committee investigators had uncovered a document prepared in 2001 by Transocean, the drilling rig operator, that said there were 260 "failure modes" that could require removal of the blowout preventer.

"How can a device that has 260 failure modes be considered fail-safe?" Stupak asked.
* * *
Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), who said the committee has collected more than 100,000 pages of documents, focused on the cementing job by Halliburton. He said statements and documents indicated that a test performed on the work about five or six hours before the explosion showed other dangerous flaws.

Waxman said James Dupree, BP's senior vice president for the Gulf of Mexico, told committee staffers Monday that the test result was "not satisfactory" and "inconclusive." Waxman said the test showed wide discrepancies in pressure between the drill pipe and the kill and choke lines in the blowout preventer. Dupree told committee staffers that the pressure readings should have been the same.

At the hearing, Halliburton's chief health, safety and environmental officer, Tim Probert, conceded in questioning that the pressure readings "would be a significant red flag."

5. The Color of Research Money.

Yesterday, we mentioned the inevitably ugly stampede of hungry academic researchers trying to belly-up to the money trough they hope will soon be spilling out of the BP oil disaster. Today, the PNJ editorial board does its best to clear a place at the table for Florida universities by calling on Governor Charlie Crist to "knock some heads in Tallahassee and raise some cane with BP to get Florida's universities fully engaged."

By "fully engaged" the newspaper means Crist "could make some of the $25 million BP fronted to the state available for the effort, and then he should politely ask BP for more cash."

It's a very old joke that the most exciting words in science are not, "Eureka, I have found it" but "Your research grant has been approved.'" Scholars follow the money, as Phillip Mauser once said.

We have no doubt that some, possibly even many, of the Florida academics the PNJ wants to receive BP money have only the best of intentions. But where were they when Congress and the Florida state legislature were busy passing drill-baby-drill bills?

Where was the scientific curiosity in the Florida university system then? Some professors, surely, must have been researching questions like, "What would an oil well blowout do to the cycle of life a mile below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico?;" or "What innovations in drilling safety have been overlooked by the oil industry in the past three decades?;" or "How can a deep sea oil well blowout be rapidly shut off?"

As far as we're concerned, if anyone was seriously examining these or related questions, they're the ones who deserve to go to the head of the grant-money breadline. It shouldn't matter where they live or work -- in or out of "Florida's universities" or, for that matter, the state as a whole.

The issues are too important to the public at large to be treated like so much pork in the Florida educational funding barrel.

What we should be aiming for is superior, independent, and courageous research that won't disappear from public view behind some corporate claim to copyright or trade secrets, or be watered down to the taste of this year's partisan political fashion or to hike corporate profits.

6. White House Oil Slick Plan.

Speaking of money and research, the White House yesterday publicly released a $118 million supplemental budget request to take account of the BP oil spill. As Reuters reports, "the bulk" of the money is expected to be paid by BP Corp. and a one percent hike in oil drilling fees paid by the oil industry.

In addition to substantial funds to pay for U.S. Coast Guard services, fishermen and other coastal workers' unemployment, and Gulf Coast economic recovery monies, the budget request includes --

• $29 million additional appropriation request "for the Secretary of the Interior for additional inspections, enforcement, studies and other activities that may not qualify as recoverable from the responsible parties or the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund;"
• $5 million for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for activities that support the response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, but may not qualify as recoverable from the responsible parties or the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund; and
  
• $2 million to the FDA to monitor and respond to the environmental impact of the oil on seafood.

The full text of the detailed supplementary request is here. A Fact Sheet summary is here.
Details of the plan.

Oops! Title change 5-14 am

BP's Deepwater Oil Gusher Video

Yesterday, British petroleum released the first video which gives a good look of the oil leak that threatens all life in the Gulf of Mexico. Rachel Maddow narrates and adds context, including news about yesterday's congressional hearings and commentary:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Swamp Your Own City with BP's Oil Slick

Readers far and wide -- North, East, and West -- may find it hard to imagine the enormous size of the BP river of oil that is sloshing toward us in Pensacola. Not to worry! Google has an app for that, too.

Via Atlantic Magazine editor James Fallows: "If You Think You Have a Sense of the Oil Spill's Scale":

Try this utility from Paul Rademacher's site, which overlays a scaled representation of the Deepwater Horizon spill onto a Google Earth view of any city you choose.

Below, you'll see an idea of what the BP oil slick would look like if it were bearing down on Reginald Dogan's beloved Chicago or the boyhood campus in Boston where Mark O'Brien used to dodge Father McCarthy. (Carl Wernicke doesn't need this; he's living it.)

-------

To try it yourself for the city of your choice (a harmless, free plug-in is required) --

CLICK HERE

Waxman Committee Cleans Oil Companies' Clocks

Yesterday, the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources was largely treated to a circle jerk of reciprocal finger-pointing. BP Oil Corp. blamed Transocean, Transocean blamed Halliburton, Halliburton blamed BP.

Today, the House Commerce Committee of Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) is showing how a committee hearing should be conducted. The razor-sharp Firedog Lake blogger Marcy Wheeler has the details and the links to committee documents.

As this is written, the committee is still in session and all the evidence has not yet been heard. But right now it's looking very much as if the three oil company executives were all correct: every one of their companies screwed up.

• Halliburton, indeed, may have made a bad cement pour.
• Transocean's "blow out preventer" had been modified in "unexpected ways," [and according to one witness "under the direction of" and "at the expense of" BP]; it wasn't "powerful enough to to cut through joints in the drill pipe;" and it "failed" at the crucial task of receiving and acting on the signal to trigger the device.
• British Petroleum performed "negative pressure" tests on the BOP at least twice the day of the explosion; the BOP failed at least some of those tests; but nevertheless "company officials determined" to end the testing and proceed with well operations.

Today, you can watch the hearings on C-Span 3.

The Stages of Oil Grief

It's becoming apparent that the BP oil catastrophe, for lovers of Pensacola Beach, among others, is going to be like a death in the family. As the smells and the toxins come ever closer, each of us is likely to experience something very much like Elisabeth Kübler-Ross' "stages of grief" as first outlined in her book On Death and Dying.

A common representation of her ideas boils things down to this graphic, showing shock and denial... anger... depression.... bargaining... and acceptance:

One could quibble over the number and the exact nature of each of these stages, but the basic idea resonates with almost everyone who has lost a loved one.

Last night, to judge from his late-night blog post, the estimable Rick Outzen of Pensacola's Independent News leaped way ahead of most of us in the Pensacola Beach grieving process. Most people in Pensacola are still in denial or they're mad as hell. Rick already is plunging into feelings of depression and hopelessness:

We aren’t supposed to win. British Petroleum is a global oil company, which made $5.6 billion the first three months of 2010. We are a community recovering from three hurricanes, a depressed real estate market and national recession. I am the publisher of a weekly newspaper and creator of a little blog.
* * *
BP will buy people off. They will run ads convincing us that all is fine. They will pay a bunch of $5000 claims, settle with the federal and state governments and continue to make billions every month. They will blame our claims and the cost of cleanup for “making” them raise the price of gas at the pump. Greedy Pensacola will pay for its claims at each fill-up.

We can’t win.

There's more, along the same lines. But his post was (as he confesses) written in the lonely hours after midnight.

Not to sound like an insipid neighbor trying glibly to help him buck up, but Rick Outzen has been doing a tremendous job sitting by the bedside of a desperately ill Gulf of Mexico. And he's been doing it for a very long time, often running extremely good and sometimes prescient articles in the Independent News calling attention to pollution of our waters and the indifference or outright hostility to the environment manifested by the voting records of too many of our elected leaders.

Lately, he's also become a regular contributor to The Daily Beast. The Daily Beast is an innovative and important news web site who writers often are guests on the razor-sharp, informative, and entertaining Rachel Maddow Show and Keith Olbermann's Countdown . Rick recently has been among them, too.

Kübler-Ross suggests that in circumstances such as we have now, friends and relatives should let those who grieve "talk, cry, or scream, if necessary. Let them share and ventilate, but be available."

You can be available for Rick by checking out his collected Daily Beast articles right here.

Categorial Surprise

WaPo, buried on page 4:

The Interior Department exempted BP's calamitous Gulf of Mexico drilling operation from a detailed environmental impact analysis last year, according to government documents, after three reviews of the area concluded that a massive oil spill was unlikely.

The decision by the department's Minerals Management Service (MMS) to give BP's lease at Deepwater Horizon a "categorical exclusion" from the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) on April 6, 2009 -- and BP's lobbying efforts just 11 days before the explosion to expand those exemptions -- show that neither federal regulators nor the company anticipated an accident of the scale of the one unfolding in the gulf.
* * *
While the MMS assessed the environmental impact of drilling in the central and western Gulf of Mexico on three occasions in 2007 -- including a specific evaluation of BP's Lease 206 at Deepwater Horizon -- in each case it played down the prospect of a major blowout.

In one assessment, the agency estimated that "a large oil spill" from a platform would not exceed a total of 1,500 barrels and that a "deepwater spill," occurring "offshore of the inner Continental shelf," would not reach the coast. In another assessment, it defined the most likely large spill as totaling 4,600 barrels and forecast that it would largely dissipate within 10 days and would be unlikely to make landfall.

In recognition of BP's predictive skills, MMS gave it a safety award last year. Then, the agency probably invited BP to get back in bed with it.

BP's Cofferdam Claim

Late today BP's chief exec, Tony Hayward, told the Associated Press that the company's experimental underwater containment vessel, known generically as a "cofferdam," will be sunk at the site of the Deepwater Horizon well by Thursday. If everything goes as planned, it will be "hooked up to a drill ship over the weekend.

The plan is to lower the 98-ton, 40-feet tall concrete and metal box "over the source of the leaking oil about a mile underwater" and then connect it to a pipe.

In theory, once in place oil will flow into the containment system’s dome through the pipe to a barge on the surface.

As always when learning about a BP assertion, don't let yourself be as credulous as a certain congressman we know. At least, not unless BP is paying you more than a measly $5,000 to act like a simpleton.

If it works, according to Hayward, "then you would have the principal leak contained by the early part of next week. But there's no guarantees."

Our blogging neighbor Bryan, over at Why Now?, points out that BP has not previously built a cofferdam capable of operating at 5,000 feet "because it 'seemed inconceivable' the blowout preventer would fail." He then reminds readers that BP and its subcontractor, Transocean, were first alerted to problems with the same blowout preventer when one failed off the coast of Mexico a decade ago.

As the blogger known as The Maritime Lawyer explains:

Back in 2000, BP informed Transocean that there were problems with the blowout preventer on its rig, the Discover Enterprise. BP issued a notice of default to Transocean, and the latter admitted that there were issues with the blowout preventer. While BP was finding out about the problems with the blowout preventer on the Discover Enterprise, the same blowout preventer was being installed on the Deepwater Horizon, the semisubmersible offshore rig that blew up in the Gulf of Mexico this month. The blowout preventer was manufactured by Houston-based Cameron International. and Hydril. which is now owned by BP.

Of course, everyone is hoping the cofferdam works. But no one knows what the odds might be that sinking a four-story stack of concrete and metal under the sea next to the broken drilling pipes will make things many times worse.

River of Oil to Rush Around All of Florida

A Pensacola Beach resident writes to ask if there could be any truth to this prediction from University of Florida Professor Y. Peter Sheng, as reported a few days ago in the Ocala Star-Banner:

The oil slick that's growing south of the Louisiana coast could get caught in what's called the “Loop Current,” which flows through the Florida Straits and becomes the Gulf Stream.

The Gulf Stream runs up the eastern coast of Florida. Sheng said he believes it is entirely possible, even probable, that this will happen, thus impacting the beaches from Miami to Jacksonville. The Loop Current is about 35 miles south of the slick, which currently is 125 miles wide and 40 miles long.

“I would say the east coast of Florida has the higher probability (of being impacted by the oil spill),” said Sheng, adding his opinion is based on NOAA's ocean current forecast and wind direction.

Our correspondent's question and the professor's prediction triggered a faint memory. Sadly, the answer appears to be 'yes' it could happen. Funny enough, it's a decade-old news item involving Great Britain that offers substantiation.

Way back in 2005 we reported on this blog that a photo had been recovered from the detritus of hurricane evacuations. It was a small treasure that somehow had survived two hurricanes. The whole story is worth reading. ["Message in a Bottle"].

The short of it is, sometime in the late 1990's two boys at Pensacola Beach Elementary School stuffed a message in a bottle one day, with their teacher's name on it, and dropped it into the Gulf of Mexico just beyond the breaking waves. The bottle was found by two young girls and a boy on Camber Beach in Southwestern England a year or two later.

The girls' mother -- ironically, an environmental worker of some sort -- sent an email to the beach residents' association of the time and sent along a picture of the three kids holding the bottle. Today, of course, the two boys would be men. The British adolescents would be adults. But the message in the bottle from Pensacola Beach remains somewhere in England.

If a message in a bottle can navigate south through the Gulf of Mexico, around the Florida Keys, and across the Atlantic, it's no stretch to imagine BP's river of oil eventually will follow the same path.