Homeland Security damage control in the Gulf

July 2 : CNN : "The US Coast Guard announced new rules keeping photographers, reporters and anyone else from coming within 65 feet of any response vessel or booms, out on the water or on beaches.Violators could face a fine of $40,000 and class D felony charges. The coast guard tried to make the exclusion zone 300 feet before scaling it down to 65 feet."

July 3 : MSNBC : A photographer taking pictures of a BP refinery in Texas was detained by a BP security official, local police and a man who said he was from the Department of Homeland Security.

July 4 : Bloomberg : The US government is expected to take over control of the central information website on the Gulf oil spill response that has been run jointly by various agencies and BP for the 2 1/2 months since the rig explosion.

The Department of Homeland Security wants a one-stop shop for information that is completely overseen by the government as it settles into the long-haul of dealing with the response to the disaster. The U.S. Coast Guard falls under Homeland Security's authority.

The deepwaterhorizonresponse.com site may still be maintained during the changeover, but ultimately it will be taken down altogether when the government moves the response information to its own website."

July 6 : Washington Post : "In the 77 days since oil from the ruptured Deepwater Horizon began to gush into the Gulf of Mexico, BP has skimmed or burned about 60 percent of the amount it promised regulators it could remove in a single day.

In a March report that was not questioned by federal officials, BP said it had the capacity to skim and remove 491,721 barrels of oil each day in the event of a major spill.
As of Monday, with about 2 million barrels released into the gulf, the skimming operations that were touted as key to preventing environmental disaster have averaged less than 900 barrels a day.

On Monday, the joint operations center for the federal government and BP reported that more than 671,428 barrels of an oil-water mixture have been captured and stored. About 90 percent of the mixture is water, so the true amount of oil skimmed is relatively small -- roughly 67,143 barrels of oil. Had the estimated amounts in the March response plan been accurate, 38 million barrels of oil could have been removed by now. "

Although the US House of Representatives voted 420 to 1 to give the presidential commission investigating the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico full subpoena power, the Republicans in the Senate have blocked it. There will be no real investigation.

Instead, the Coast Guard, under the auspices of Homeland Security, and Minerals Management Services, the federal body charged with (not doing any) oversight of oil drilling and now renamed the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, will announce this week the creation of an expert panel to conduct a "preparedness review" for Deepwater Horizon.
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How's that moratorium on offshore drilling in the Gulf doing?

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While waiting for the ban to be lifted, the Department of Interior's Minerals Management Services, these guys, have approved five new offshore drilling projects since June 2.

An Exxon Mobil site at a water depth of 1,000 feet and a Marathon Oil site at 775 feet were approved with waivers exempting them from detailed studies of their environmental impact.

A Chevron site 6,730 feet underwater and an Exxon site at 6,943 feet were approved after subjecting them to environmental reviews.

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The MMS has approved 198 new deepwater leases - the step before the submission of drilling plans - in the central Gulf since the BP spill began.

According to Defenders of Wildlife and the Southern Environmental Law Center, of the 198 deepwater leases sold, at least 10 are owned by BP and are located over a mile deep.

Lease Sale 213 covers 36 million acres in the central Gulf off the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

If federal regulators opt to cancel a lease once it's issued, the government must repay the company the fair market value of the lease or compensate it for the cost of its bid plus interest.

The Department of the Interior approves the leases, and then either the company gets to drill or the taxpayer pays them not to, with interest.

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Pocket change you can believe in.

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If it was my home / Hands Across the Sand

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Go to your beach on June 26 at noon. Join hands. That's it.
NO to Offshore Oil Drilling, YES to Clean Energy

Hands Across the Sand began in Florida in February to "protest the efforts by the Florida Legislature and the US Congress to lift the ban on oil drilling in the near and off shores of Florida."
Well it's a global movement now and here's the Vancouver Canada page.

But don't we already have a ban on tanker traffic and offshore drilling in BC?
Nope.
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Natural Resources Canada - Review of the Federal Moratorium on Oil and Gas Activities Offshore British Columbia
ERRATA :

The Terms of Reference for the “Report of the Public Review on the Government of Canada Moratorium on Oil and Gas Activities in the Queen Charlotte Region of British Columbia” state that “in 1972, the Government of Canada imposed a moratorium on crude oil tanker traffic through the Dixon Entrance, Hecate Strait, and Queen Charlotte Sound due to concerns over the potential environmental impacts.” However; the moratorium on oil and gas activities offshore British Columbia does not apply to tanker traffic.

Prior to 1972, a number of permits for oil and gas exploration were issued for offshore British Columbia. Due to environmental concerns, rights under those permits were suspended as of 1972 by way of Orders in Council, thus forming a de facto moratorium.

Thank you, Pierre Trudeau, for suspending those offshore oil and gas exploration permits in 1972.
However in 1982 the Canadian government brought in the Canada Oil and Gas Act which allows the permits to be "renegotiated into exploration agreements" and "the time frame for renegotiation to be extended and the rights continued to be valid."
In 1987, the Canada Petroleum Resources Act grandfathered the waiting exploration agreements.

"Thus, the moratorium continues to be maintained through government policy. No
activity can occur until the former permits are converted to exploration licences. The decision not to negotiate with industry to convert those permits is a pure policy decision. There is no statutory impediment to carrying out those negotiations."

Shorter Con : No actual laws against oil tankers or offshore drilling in BC
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The above "Errata", by the way, were added to the Natural Resources Canada webpage just last year.



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If it was my home uses Google Maps and the current situation of the Gulf oil spill to show what the extent of the disaster would look like overlaid on your neck of the woods. Click and it will find you.

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The Exxon Valdez spill of 1989 was 41 million litres of oil. It can still be found under the sand.

US government scientists are now pegging the Gulf Oil disaster at an Exxon Valdez-size spill every 5 to 13 days, with more oil gushing into the sea in an hour than officials originally said was spilling in an entire day.

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If it was my home ...

h/t Galloping Beaver co-blogger West End Bob for the Hands Across the Sand links.

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Gulf oil spill - That was then; this is then

Right. So they're just doing their very darnedest to deal with this completely unexpected environmental tragedy with their miles of boom and their top hats and junk shots and top kills - exactly the same useless shit that didn't work 30 years ago either.

Still, they have to tiddle about with something while the media cameras are rolling and Obama frowns on a beach.

Meanwhile the real plume is five miles away and spewing oil into the Gulf at the rate of 120,000 barrels a day according to this guy. What they're trying to cap now is just the sideshow. It's like the drunk looking for his carkeys under the streetlight; it's not where he dropped them but the light is better there.

'Plume' sounds pretty benign, doesn't it? Something you might wear on your tophat.
Underwater oil volcano - that's what they got.
Time to revisit this idea, courtesy of commenter Neil H at The Beav :


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