NEW ORLEANS — In another serious setback in the effort to stem the flow of oil gushing from a well a mile beneath the Gulf of Mexico, BP engineers said Saturday that the “top kill” technique had failed and, after consultation with government officials, they had decided to move on to another strategy.
Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer for exploration and production, said at a news conference that the engineers would try once again to solve the problem with a containment cap and that it could take four to seven days for the device to be in place.
President Barack Obama's Inaugural Address, January 20, 2009:
We will restore science to its rightful place...
The New York Times, May 19, 2010:
Tensions between the Obama administration and the scientific community over the gulf oil spill are escalating, with prominent oceanographers accusing the government of failing to conduct an adequate scientific analysis of the damage and of allowing BP to obscure the spill’s true scope.
The scientists assert that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other agencies have been slow to investigate the magnitude of the spill and the damage it is causing in the deep ocean. They are especially concerned about getting a better handle on problems that may be occurring from large plumes of oil droplets that appear to be spreading beneath the ocean surface.
The scientists point out that in the month since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, the government has failed to make public a single test result on water from the deep ocean. And the scientists say the administration has been too reluctant to demand an accurate analysis of how many gallons of oil are flowing into the sea from the gushing oil well.
The New York Times, May 24, 2010:
In a tense standoff, BP continued to spray a product called Corexit in the Gulf of Mexico on Monday to break up a vast oil spill despite a demand by federal regulators that it switch to something less toxic.
The Environmental Protection Agency had set a Sunday night deadline for BP to stop using two dispersants from the Corexit line of products. The oil company has defended its use of Corexit and taken issue with the methods the agency used to estimate its toxicity.
At a news conference Monday, the E.P.A. administrator, Lisa P. Jackson, said that she was “dissatisfied with BP’s response” and had ordered the oil giant to take “immediate steps to scale back the use of dispersants.”
WDSU-TV, New Orleans TV station:
LAFITTE, La. -- More and more stories about sick fishermen are beginning to surface after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The fishermen are working out in the Gulf -- many of them all day, every day -- to clean up the spill. They said they blame their ailments on the chemicals that BP is using.
One fisherman said he felt like he was going to die over the weekend.
"I've been coughing up stuff," Gary Burris said. "Your lungs fill up."
Burris, a longtime fisherman who has worked across the Gulf Coast, said he woke up Sunday night feeling drugged and disoriented.
[...]
Burris said that when he went to a doctor after feeling ill on Sunday, the doctor told him his lungs looked like those of a three-pack-a-day smoker, and Burris said he has never smoked.
The Washington Post, May 26, 2010:
Members of Congress from both parties sharply criticized the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service on Wednesday, a day after the release of a report showing that the agency's inspectors routinely took gifts such as college football tickets from the companies they were supposed to be policing.
Lawmakers unloaded about their concerns during a hearing by the House Natural Resources Committee on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The hearing followed the release of a memorandum by another panel, the House Energy and Commerce Committee, that described an internal BP investigation into the Gulf oil spill. The internal probe points to a series of equipment failures, mistakes and missed warning signs that led to the blowout and fire on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, according to lawmakers briefed by the company.
[...]
In the first of a series of oversight hearings by the House Natural Resources Committee, which has jurisdiction over offshore oil and gas drilling, lawmakers grilled Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on reports of misconduct at the Minerals Management Service (MMS), the Interior Department agency that regulates offshore drilling while also collecting revenue from it.
[T]he report adds to a growing portrait of the Minerals Management Service as corrupted by industry: Many inspectors, the inspector general found, were already friends with industry officials. Some had worked in the oil and gas business before their stint in government and would again. One official inspected four platforms owned by one company at the same time he was negotiating for a job at that firm.
The result, the report found, was regulation that often looked less than rigorous. One confidential source, it said, told investigators that service inspectors let the oil and gas companies fill out their inspection forms -- in pencil. Then an inspector would trace over their writing in ink.
The New York Times, September 10, 2008:
WASHINGTON — As Congress prepares to debate expansion of drilling in taxpayer-owned coastal waters, the Interior Department agency that collects oil and gas royalties has been caught up in a wide-ranging ethics scandal — including allegations of financial self-dealing, accepting gifts from energy companies, cocaine use and sexual misconduct.
In three reports delivered to Congress on Wednesday, the department’s inspector general, Earl E. Devaney, found wrongdoing by a dozen current and former employees of the Minerals Management Service, which collects about $10 billion in royalties annually and is one of the government’s largest sources of revenue other than taxes.
“A culture of ethical failure” pervades the agency, Mr. Devaney wrote in a cover memo.
The reports portray a dysfunctional organization that has been riddled with conflicts of interest, unprofessional behavior and a free-for-all atmosphere for much of the Bush administration’s watch.
The New York Times, December 17, 2008:
WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama’s choice to lead the Interior Department, Senator Ken Salazar of Colorado, will inherit an agency demoralized by years of scandal, political interference and mismanagement.
He must deal with the sharp tension between those who seek to exploit public lands for energy, minerals and recreation and those who want to preserve the lands. He will be expected to restore scientific integrity to a department where it has repeatedly been compromised. He will be responsible for ending the department’s coziness with the industries it regulates. And he will have to work hard to overcome skepticism among many environmentalists about his views on resource and wildlife issues.
Environmental advocates offered mixed reviews of Mr. Salazar, 53, a first-term Democratic senator who served as head of Colorado’s natural resources department and as the state’s attorney general. Mr. Salazar was not the first choice of environmentalists, who openly pushed the appointment of Representative Raul Grijalva, Democrat of Arizona, who has a strong record as a conservationist.
Oil and mining interests praised Mr. Salazar’s performance as a state official and as a senator, saying that he was not doctrinaire about the use of public lands. “Nothing in his record suggests he’s an ideologue,” said Luke Popovich, spokesman for the National Mining Association. “Here’s a man who understands the issues, is open-minded and can see at least two sides of an issue.”
The Rocky Mountain News, January 15, 2009:
Sen. Ken Salazar faced a veritable love-fest during his confirmation hearing to become Interior Secretary today.
[...]
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., tried to break the mood, saying the hearing was “on its way to becoming a full-fledged bouquet-tossing contest.”
Wyden pressed Salazar on his commitment to reversing “politically-tainted judgments” made in the name of science during the Bush administration, and he pressed Salazar to “drain the swamp” and fix the scandal-plagued Minerals Management Service.
The Washington Post, Post Carbon, May 25, 2010:
A group of several dozen conservation groups and scientists -- including more than 30 who urged President Obama not to appoint Salazar in the first place -- are now calling for his resignation.
WildEarth Guardians, an environmental group based in Santa Fe and Denver, has begun circulating a letter calling on Obama to fire Salazar on the grounds that he has failed to restore scientific integrity to the Minerals Management Service and the Interior Department as a whole.
Noting that 36 of the signatories had sent a letter in January 2009 urging Obama not to appoint Salazar to the post, the environmentalists write: "The intervening 16 months, unfortunately, have confirmed that Mr. Salazar will not fulfill your administration's promises to safeguard the environment in this country or globally. Rather, Mr. Salazar has either embraced or failed to reform many of the destructive policies of the previous administration."
[...]
Noting that Salazar had planned to clean up MMS, the activists write, "Today we know that real reform at MMS never happened. MMS continued its reckless lack of oversight of the oil and gas industry, this time in the form of rubberstamping off-shore oil and gas development."
ThinkProgress, May 29, 2010:
The administration has been keeping an ecological criminal in charge of the crime scene during a national crisis. Seventeen nations have offered assistance — but “the final decision is up to BP” to accept it, according to the State Department — and only Canada, Mexico and Norway have been allowed to help so far.
No comments:
Post a Comment