Tag: Deepwater Horizon

Locals still feel BP is unable to manage the situation properly When news of the disastrous BP oil well explosion reached the residents of Jean Lafitte, Louisiana last April, Mayor Tim Kerner did the only thing he could think of to stop the oil from destroying his community. He encouraged everyone in his town to join him on the water, working day and night throughout the disaster to clean-up the spill.Now, one year after BP managed to cap the runaway well that fouled the Gulf of Mexico with an estimated five million barrels of oil, most of those people are ill."I'm afraid my neighbors will come to me and say, I wouldn't have listened to you and kept my job if I knew it would kill me," Kerner said.Kerner's story was one of many shared by Kerry Kennedy, president of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, at a briefing Wednesday evening, the day after she led a delegation to the Gulf Coast to assess the scope of the emerging healthcare crisis in the wake of the BP drilling disaster."The residents are sick," Kennedy said. "They don't know what the exact cause of their illness is, but ...

A study by WHOI team More than a year after the largest oil spill in history, perhaps the dominant lingering question about the Deepwater Horizon spill is, "What happened to the oil?" Now, in the first published study to explain the role of microbes in breaking down the oil slick on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) researchers have come up with answers that represent both surprisingly good news and a head-scratching mystery.In research scheduled to be published in the Aug. 2 online edition of Environmental Research Letters, the WHOI team studied samples from the surface oil slick and surrounding Gulf waters. They found that bacterial microbes inside the slick degraded the oil at a rate five times faster than microbes outside the slick-accounting in large part for the disappearance of the slick some three weeks after Deepwater Horizon's Macondo well was shut off.At the same time, the researchers observed no increase in the number of microbes inside the slick-something that would be expected as a byproduct of increased consumption, or respiration, of the oil. In this process, respiration combines food (oil in this case) and oxygen to create carbon dioxide and energy."What did ...

Re the emergency restoration of seagrass impacts from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is seeking comments on its Environmental Assessment (EA) and Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) relating to the emergency restoration of seagrass impacts from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill response.Comments should be submitted by August 16.For more details, click here.Source: NOAA

Analysis shed more light Towering flames illuminated the pre-dawn darkness, casting shadows on the ship Ocean Intervention III as it floated over the sunken remains of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. The resonant hum of helicopters fused with the roar of fires on either side of the ship, and Chris Reddy could feel the heat on his face.The night of June 21, 2010, Reddy and colleagues from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution were whisked off their research vessel Endeavor to collect samples directly from the blown Macondo well, which had been spewing oil and natural gas into the Gulf of Mexico for two months.They had 12 hours to do something that had never been done before: Use a robot arm to stick a special bottle directly into the hot hydrocarbons. Now, a year later, their analysis explains just what came out of the well, and sheds more light on what happened to it.It turns out that certain chemicals in the well behave differently under high pressure than they do at the surface. This explains why some chemicals, but not others, made their way into the huge 22-mile plume of oil that Reddy et. al uncovered last summer. It also explains ...

According to Trannsocean's investigation A series of risky decisions made mostly by BP PLC (BP, BP.LN) led to the Deepwater Horizon oil-spill disaster, according to an internal investigation by Transocean Ltd. determined that a series of risky decisions made mostly by BP PLC led to the Deepwater Horizon oil-spill disaster, contrasting with earlier U.S. government reports that put a large share of the blame on the Switzerland-based offshore-drilling contractor.The decisions in the two weeks leading up to the incident were made because BP worried that it was running out of time, according to the Transocean investigation, released Wednesday.The U.K. oil company was concerned that the high-pressure injections of mud and cement needed to keep the deep-water well sealed would end up fracturing the rock formation that held the oil in the reservoir, endangering future exploitation of the new discovery, the Transocean report said.BP couldnt immediately be reached for comment.Transocean owned the doomed Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which was drilling BPs Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico. In April 2010, the rig exploded and sank, killing 11 and touching off the worst marine oil spill in U.S. history. The well spewed 4.9 million barrels of crude oil before it was ...

Concluding that it was the result of a succession of interrelated design and abandonment decisions Transocean Ltd. today announced the release of an internal investigation report on the causes of the April 20, 2010, Macondo well incident in the Gulf of Mexico.Following the incident, Transocean commissioned an internal investigation team comprised of experts from relevant technical fields and specialists in accident investigation to gather, review, and analyze the facts and information surrounding the incident to determine its causes.The report concludes that the Macondo incident was the result of a succession of interrelated well design, construction, and temporary abandonment decisions that compromised the integrity of the well and compounded the likelihood of its failure.The decisions, many made by the operator, BP, in the two weeks leading up to the incident, were driven by BP's knowledge that the geological window for safe drilling was becoming increasingly narrow. Specifically, BP was concerned that downhole pressure -- whether exerted by heavy drilling mud used to maintain well control or by pumping cement to seal the well -- would exceed the fracture gradient and result in fluid losses to the formation, thus costing money and jeopardizing future production of oil.The Transocean investigation team traced the ...

What's being done to prevent another disaster in the future? A year ago, the Gulf Coast region was preparing for a summer of misery. The Deepwater Horizon spill and resulting oil spill threatened to soak its tourist beaches in oil, devastate wildlife, destroy the careers of watermen and and ground the offshore oil industry. Now, months after the spill was capped, the region is heading into a summer of uncertainty. Will its natural resources rebound? Can the region's economy recover? And what's being done to prevent another disaster in the future?We start with a look at the spill's effects on oystermen. Oysters were once a prime harvest from the Gulf of Mexico. Before the 2010 oil spill, 67 percent of the oysters Americans ate were grown and harvested there. But the oil and efforts to contain it shut down much of the region's seafood production, and many Louisiana oyster beds were killed by fresh water diverted from the Mississippi River to push oil away from shore. Our special correspondent, documentary filmmaker Michael Davie, visits with an industry leader to find out he and others are coping.

Transocean insists the blast did not result from poor upkeep The owner of the oil rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico last year said Wednesday that a Coast Guard report that faults the company for a poor safety culture and other shortcomings that preceded the disaster is full of errors.Transocean said in a 112-page response submitted to the U.S. government that the April 22 draft report should be corrected. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Regulation and Enforcement is expected to release a joint final report with the Coast Guard by late next month.Switzerland-based Transocean insists the blast did not result from poor upkeep, that the blowout preventer was properly maintained and that the general alarm on the rig did not fail to operate automatically. It also said the engines on the rig did not fail to shut down upon detection of gas."When a report of this importance purports to reach conclusions and makes findings so at odds with the evidence, questions must be raised about the fact-finding process and whether an agenda, rather than evidence, served as the report's foundation," Transocean said in its response.A spokeswoman for the joint federal investigation team declined to comment.Multiple government and ...

Political statements for the Gulf matter When members of Congress want to figure out whats really going on in the Gulf these days, itseasy to tell if they just want to make political statements or get to the truth of the matter.This week, political statements ruled the day. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, turned tradition on its head by first trotting out Gulf politicians and businessmen intent on bashing Obama administration oil drilling policies. The man responsible for ensuring drilling safety was allowed to speak -- last.The hearing,Making the Gulf Coast Whole Again: Assessing the Recovery Efforts of BP and the Obama Administration after the Oil Spill,couldinstead have been called Making the Oil Industry Whole Again: How the Obama Administration Put Safety BeforeProfits.Mississippi Gov.Haley Barbour was the lead witness, and he didnt disappoint. The former energy industry lobbyistmade it clear where his priorities were,telling the committee this was an economic disaster, not an environmental one.; The governor even blamed the media for making oil-coated wildlife look like "chocolate pelicans." And Barbour emphatically told the panel all seafood testing so far has found to be safe whilethe beaches of Mississippiare all clean ...

Consumed in 120 days A technical comment published in the current (May 27) edition of the journal Science casts doubt on a widely publicized study that concluded that a bacterial bloom in the Gulf of Mexico consumed the methane discharged from the Deepwater Horizon well.The debate has implications for the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem as well as for predictions of the effect of global warming, said marine scientist and lead author Samantha Joye, University of Georgia Athletic Association Professor in Arts and Sciences.Based on methane and oxygen distributions measured at 207 stations in the Gulf of Mexico, a study published in the January 21, 2011 edition of Science concluded that "nearly all" of the methane released from the well was consumed in the water column within approximately 120 days of the release.In the current paper in Science, Joye and co-authors from 12 other institutions make the case that uncertainties in the hydrocarbon discharge from the blowout, oxygen depletion fueled by processes other than methane consumption, a problematic interpretation of genetic data and shortcomings of the model used by the authors of the January study challenge the attribution of low oxygen zones to the oxidation of methane gas."Our goal is to ...