Gulf coast oil spill

[classicman]

gotcha - after I posted I was thinkin it had to be something like that.

[classicman]

Judge halts Obama's oil-drilling ban

A federal judge in New Orleans halted President Obama's deepwater drilling moratorium on Tuesday, saying the government never justified the ban and appeared to mislead the public in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Judge Martin L.C. Feldman issued an injunction, saying that the moratorium will hurt drilling-rig operators and suppliers and that the government has not proved an outright ban is needed, rather than a more limited moratorium.

He also said the Interior Department also misstated the opinion of the experts it consulted. Those experts from the National Academy of Engineering have said they don't support the blanket ban.

"Much to the government's discomfort and this Court's uneasiness, the summary also states that 'the recommendations contained in this report have been peer-reviewed by seven experts identified by the National Academy of Engineering.' As the plaintiffs, and the experts themselves, pointedly observe, this statement was misleading," Judge Feldman said in his 22-page ruling.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said the administration will appeal the decision, and said Mr. Obama believes the government must figure out what went wrong with the Deepwater Horizon rig before deepwater drilling goes forward. Still, the ruling is another setback as Mr. Obama seeks to show he's in control of the 2-month-old spill.

Democrats and Republicans from the Gulf states have called on the president to end the blanket moratorium, saying it is hurting the region.

Oil company executives told Congress last week they would have to move their rigs to other countries because they lose up to $1 million a day per idle rig, and said there are opportunities elsewhere.

Here we go . . . . WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

[Happy Monkey]

View from space.

[classicman]

At what cost? We still don't know WTF those chemicals are doing to the environment.

[TheMercenary]

I don't know, and I don't think anyone else does either. But there is a lot of speculation out there on the issue of the use of disbursants.

[busterb]

IMHO. The disbursants we used back in the 70s were to sink the oil, so no one could see the slick and report it.

[classicman]

Well after 2 months we have our commission.

The presidential commission investigating offshore drilling safety and the Gulf of Mexico oil spill came under fresh fire Thursday with Republicans accusing President Barack Obama of stacking it with environmental activists.

Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., charged the Obama administration with keeping oil and gas drilling experts off its seven-member commission in favor of people who philosophically oppose offshore exploration.

And Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, said there was a huge conflict of interest in putting environmental advocates on a panel responsible for investigating the spill and recommending new safety mandates for offshore drilling.

Obama launched the commission last month and tasked it with conducting a six-month probe of the Deepwater Horizon disaster and a rigorous review of drilling safety. Its findings could dictate the future of offshore drilling and lead to major changes in the way the government polices oil and gas production along the nation's coasts.
Scientists, engineers

The roster of members includes science and engineering experts, as well as a renewable energy advocate who has complained about America's oil addiction and a marine science professor who recently appeared to endorse a delay of planned drilling along the East Coast.

There are no representatives with deep ties to the oil and gas industry, although one of the co-chairmen, William Reilly, was administrator of the EPA under President George H.W. Bush and a director of ConocoPhillips before temporarily stepping down to serve on the commission.

The other co-chairman is Bob Graham, a Democratic former Florida governor and U.S. senator who has opposed offshore drilling near the Sunshine State.

The panel's just-appointed executive director, Richard Lazarus, is a legal expert at Georgetown University who has represented environmental groups in arguments before the Supreme Court.

The commission's makeup already has drawn criticism from oil and gas industry boosters and in some newspaper editorials.

In a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing Thursday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar defended the commission's members, saying they were "very distinguished people ... who will transcend partisan politics and ideology" in investigating what caused the Deepwater Horizon rig to explode April 20.

Barrasso and Bennett targeted Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of several environmental groups that unsuccessfully defended the Obama administration's deep-water drilling ban against a legal challenge in a court hearing Monday.

Bennett called Beinecke's appointment troubling because she "has an ideological position with respect to drilling and, indeed, heads an organization that's filed a lawsuit on this area."

In a blog entry on NRDC's website Thursday, the group's New York City-based litigation director, Mitch Bernard, defended Beinecke as an independent and said she had been excluded from all decision making and communications about the council's legal work since her appointment.

Barrasso said the panel's makeup defied Obama's assertion that he wants an independent review of the oil spill.

"The commission's background and expertise doesn't really include an oil or drilling expert, so … people across the country are wondering about the administration's goals," Barrasso said. "Is it really about making offshore energy exploration safer? Or is it about shutting down our offshore and American oil and gas?"
Promises fairness

Salazar dismissed the senators' criticism.

"What is wrong is the playing of politics with this issue," Salazar said. "This is an issue of a national crisis."

Salazar likened the group to the commissions that have investigated other disasters, including the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle and the partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant.

The panel members are elder statesmen and stateswomen, Salazar said, adding that he was confident the commission would be thorough and even-handed. When studying areas where it doesn't have expertise, he said, the panel will interview professionals who do.

[classicman]

In his Oval Office address last week, Obama described the oil spill in unmistakable warlike terms, talking about "the battle we're waging" against oil and "our battle plan" going forward, and promising to "fight this spill with everything we've got."

But while the response to the spill is clearly under Obama's control, the federal effort so far seriously lacks anything like military precision. More than two months into this crisis and there's still ongoing confusion about who's in charge, bureaucratic bumbling and rising complaints that far less than "everything" is being done to contain the oil.

Indeed, a recent New York Times story called the response effort "chaotic," noting that "from the beginning the effort has been bedeviled by a lack of preparation, organization, urgency and clear lines of authority among federal, state and local officials, as well as BP." As a result, "damage to the coastline and wildlife has been worse than it might have been."

Who's in Charge?

In his speech, Obama said that that "from the very beginning of this crisis, the federal government has been in charge."

But while Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen is the point person for the cleanup, "who's in charge" remains an open question. Consider:

The Associated Press reported after Obama's speech that "local officials in the gulf region have complained that often they don't know who is in charge -- the government or BP."

At a congressional hearing this month, Billy Nungesser, president of Louisiana's Plaquemines Parish, said, "I still don't know who's in charge. ... I have spent more time fighting the officials of BP and the Coast Guard than fighting the oil. We've got people in charge who don't know what they're doing."

Link

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Dispersants, people. A disbursant would be something quite different, nor am I sure it is a valid word, as disburser covers the matter. Sure, they're spending a lot of money... but those chemicals are still dispersants. Which make a dispersoid, ya wanna go that far.

[SamIam]

Unhappy count

The Fish and Wildlife Commission puts out a daily count of dead animals due to the oil spill. Here's the count for the last 24 hours:

429 sea turtles
1,128 birds
51 dolphins and other mammals

http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse....010.715539.pdf

Multiply these numbers by the days the oil spill has gone on and will go on. The poor critters! How many of them will be left by August (or whenever)?

[classicman]

What are the baseline numbers from prior to the spill?
Those numbers are terrible, but can be quite misleading as well.
Of those 429, only 9 were visibly oiled.
Whats with the 338 pending? How hard is it to tell if there was oil on them or not?

[xoxoxoBruce]

Pending seems to be awaiting a determination of whether the critters died because of the oil spill, but I don't see how that would affect whether they were "visibly" oiled, or not?

[ZenGum]

I'm a bit at the "dolphins and other mammals" category. A rat is a mammal.

No doubt, though, that this is a grade one eco-SNAFU, however you count it.

[classicman]

Absolutely - I knew long ago this disaster was going to be far worse than the Valdez or Katrina, maybe even both combined.

[Shawnee123]

We're all going to die.

http://daviddegraw.org/2010/06/will-...sonic-tsunami/