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Since Spill, Feds Have Given 27 Waivers to Oil Companies in Gulf
WASHINGTON — Since the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig exploded on April 20, the Obama administration has granted oil and gas companies at least 27 exemptions from doing in-depth environmental studies of oil exploration and production in the Gulf of Mexico.
The waivers were granted despite President Barack Obama’s vow that his administration would launch a “relentless response effort” to stop the leak and prevent more damage to the gulf. One of them was dated Friday — the day after Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said he was temporarily halting offshore drilling
The exemptions, known as “categorical exclusions,” were granted by the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) and included waiving detailed environmental studies for a BP exploration plan to be conducted at a depth of more than 4,000 feet and an Anadarko Petroleum Corp. exploration plan at more 9,000 feet.
“Is there a moratorium on off shore drilling or not?” asked Peter Galvin, conservation director with the Center for Biological Diversity, the environmental group that discovered the administration’s continued approval of the exemptions. “Possibly the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history has occurred and nothing appears to have changed.”
MMS officials said the exemptions are continuing to be issued because they do not represent final drilling approval.
To drill, a company has to file a separate application under a process that is now suspended because of Salazar’s order Thursday.
However, officials could not say whether the exemptions would stand once the moratorium is lifted.
MMS’ approvals are expected to spark new criticism of the troubled agency and the administration’s response to the spill.
Salazar announced Thursday that there’d be no new offshore drilling until the Interior Department completes the safety review process requested by Obama. The department is required to deliver the report to the president by May 28.
Given the MMS approvals, however, Galvin said the administration’s pledge appears disingenuous.
“It looks to me like they’re misleading the public,” he said.
MMS spokesman David Smith said his agency conducts a thorough review before it determines whether to grant such exemptions.
“It’s not a rubber stamp,” he said.
BP did not return calls for comment.
MMS set out rules that allow for the exemptions from some environmental requirements under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) as long as the sites in question are not relying on new or unusual technology, or within high seismic risk areas, or within the boundaries of marine sanctuaries or in regions with hazardous bottom conditions. MMS also assesses the impact on biological and archeological resources.
In the gulf, Smith said, MMS has a “wealth of environmental data” from studies of the region that it can rely on when reviewing the requests from the energy firms.
That’s why oil and gas companies that were given the exemptions said the approvals were routine and shouldn’t have raised any environmental concerns.
Apache Corp. said it was granted four exemptions for updating production equipment and drilling wells on existing sites and for drilling in the vicinity of an existing site. Appropriate environmental studies were conducted before the purchase of the leases for those sites, said Bill Mintz, a spokesman with Apache.
“We followed the procedures and the government didn’t change the procedures,” said Mintz. “The decisions are made according to rules in a framework that has been established.”
Anadarko also cited a previous environmental assessment of a site where it applied for a waiver.
“Protecting the environment and the safety of our personnel are our highest priorities,” said John Christiansen, a Anadarko spokesman, Walter Oil & Gas also received one for a survey of an existing site off the coast of Louisiana.
Environmentalists, however, say that MMS’ checklist for determining whether to grant such exemptions are far too broad and relies on sweeping environmental impact studies that are undertaken before the purchase of leases.
Holly Doremus, a professor of law at Boalt Hall, University of California at Berkeley, said MMS has had a culture of minimizing environmental reviews of oil and gas development dating back to its inception in 1982.
“That’s related to the fact that oil companies have a great deal of power over MMS and there hasn’t been much oversight,” she said. “My guess is that these things are routinely being signed off on as categorical exclusions even though they deserve a closer look.”
Other companies that received the waivers include: Shell, Kerr-McGee Oil & Gas Corporation, Royal Exploration Company, Inc., MCX Gulf of Mexico, Tana Exploration Company, Tarpon Operating & Development, Rooster Petroleum, Phoenix Exploration Company, and Hall-Houston Exploration III.
Tracy L. Austin, spokeswoman for Mitsubishi International Corporation, which owns MCX Gulf of Mexico, said she could not comment on MMS’ handling of the exemptions overall.
“While we understand that the MMS has come under criticism for failing to adequately regulate the industry, with respect to our operations, we believe the MMS has acted responsibly,” she said.
Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have already called for reform of MMS after news that BP was granted on exemption for the Deepwater Horizon site. That waiver was first reported by the Washington Post.
“If the conclusion is we need new regulation to prevent something like this from happening again, we’d welcome that because we believe we operate in a safe and environmentally responsible manner,” said Mintz with Apache. “But right now, the current rules say certain activities can proceed based on the studies that have been done.”
In 2008, a series of government watchdog reports implicated a dozen current and former employees of the MMS in inappropriate or unethical relationships with industry officials.
The reports described "a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity'' in the Royalty in Kind program, in which the government forgoes royalties and takes a share of the oil and gas for resale instead. From 2002 to 2006, nearly a third of the RIK staff socialized with and received gifts and gratuities from oil and gas companies.
42 Comments so far
Show AllThe capitalistic corruption reaches every branch of the government and societal tree. Anything for money.
President Lyingsack Obama will soon be cracking oil leak jokes the way he cracks drone jokes.
Perhaps Aflac's new corporate symbol will be a goose with oily slicked back James Dean hair driving a Hummer?
Give that joke to Obama and you will never face legal trouble for life.
Apache flack Bill Mintz sez: “We followed the procedures and the government didn’t change the procedures.”
***
Corrected: “We [WROTE] the procedures and the government didn’t change the procedures.”
The dizzy denizens of the US Congress had approved under law a limit of liability to 75 million dollars to BP.
This means that all the environmental damage to the livelihood of fishermen, tour operators, dive companies and more will be able to only collect on a total of 75 million dollars.
Thanks Mr. Obamageddon for protecting the public from risky operation.
Good Grief.
“It looks to me like they’re misleading the public,” he said.
The Obama adminstration in a nutshell.
Nutshell or bombshell or moneymoneymoneyshell?
It could be a conscious decision by the administration, but I think it could also be not having a firm grip on the MMS. The people who work there have a long-term track record and until they are replaced or closely supervised, they will keep on doing what they have always done. What else could anyone expect?
Having worked for an elected official and seeing what happens when there is a change over, one quickly learns that there is an incredible lack of awareness on the part of the new officials of just what the old administration was doing.
Again, I don't know, but I don't think the people posting who say it is intentional know either. Now that the spotlight's on MMS, it will take a while to get it under control, that is if that is the plan. Then we'll know.
And, no doubt, it isn't just the MMS that is working along under assumptions and directives that are no longer in tune with anyone.
I guess the Obama administration felt the "ethics training" the MMS people "endured" was an adequate response to the bribes they've been taking from the oil companies.
Can you imagine some regular schmuck caught taking bribes ever getting ethics training instead of prison time? Yeah, sure.
It's so refreshing to find a voice of reason in an increasingly negative forum. More and more it seems everything, including CD, has been taken over by the Limbaugh/Palin/Beck/birthers, and others.
Some of us find the administration abominable and have less allegiance to the above than to 0.
That's crap. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has been in office for 16 months. Give me a break.
Salazar is a corporate shill. Always has been.
He doesn't require more time. He's got a corporate friendly track record as Senator and his performance to date as Interior Secretary has been a corporate free for all with our public lands.
That's why Obama picked him. Wall Streets choice for more disaster capitalism.
Obama = Stealth Bush
When you put foxes in charge of henhouses...
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/7/government_exempted_bp_from_environmental_review
"Then, thirdly, the President should start an initiation of an investigation of Ken Salazar and his role in allowing this to happen. Salazar has been a major proponent of the offshore oil drilling industry. He passed legislation as a senator in 2006 to open up the Gulf of Mexico in the first place to offshore oil drilling. He gets campaign contributions by British Petroleum. And then he walks into this agency he is supposed to reform, and instead of reforming it, pushes it to do even more offshore oil drilling. So Ken Salazar is part of the problem here, not the solution. He should not be doing the investigation of MMS. He should be under investigation for helping to cause this crisis."
Let's grant up front that none of us read minds and that any time any of us judge intentions we speculate.
Let us grant too that human intention is complex. None of us are close to conscious of the full consequences of our actions, and so in some sense all the human actions that we call "evil" can be meaningfully considered a huge misunderstanding.
That said ---
the case for gross and criminal negligence or purposeful in this case and in this business in general has already become monumental, and it would be terribly unusual if all the incriminating evidence had already reached even the news reading edge of the public.
Come on! They're still signing waivers! Does anyone want to argue that they have forgotten the spill? Is it possible that they prefer oily birds and coastlines for some aesthetic reason, or that government officials imagine that the toxins bearing down on hundreds of miles of coastline are nutritious for the people and creatures living there?
Someone somewhere has probably convinced himself or herself that he or she is on a sainted mission to fill gas tanks, and that the deaths and damage along the way are collateral damage. But given that these problems can be responded to otherwise at far reduced loss, the idea that innocent ignorance lies behind such actions or even such beliefs leaves a lot to be explained.
Malice aforethought and a huge network of lobbyists and bribes, on the other hand, is typical and wholly consistent with the evidence so far presented.
"Innocent until proven guilty" does not mean beyond suspicion: Let's give these people a fair and speedy trial, not a 1-way ticket to Gitmo. But harsh words on CD? That's taffy and posies. These suspicions are not only palpable; their probability is manifestly obvious.
Our sense of polite debate must not prevent us from airing suspicions about the intentions of public officials.
In honor of a free press, without so much as a view of Alaska from the doorstep:
We Live Without Feeling
Our lives no longer feel ground under them.
At ten paces you can’t hear our words.
But whenever there’s a snatch of talk
it turns to the Kremlin mountaineer,
the ten thick worms his fingers,
his words like measures of weight,
the huge laughing cockroaches on his top lip,
the glitter of his boot-rims.
Ringed with a scum of chicken-necked bosses
he toys with the tributes of half-men.
One whistles, another meows, a third snivels.
He pokes out his finger and he alone goes boom.
He forges decrees in a line like horseshoes,
One for the groin, one the forehead, temple, eye.
He rolls the executions on his tongue like berries.
He wishes he could hug them like big friends from home.
by Osip Mandelstam
Translated by W. S. Merwin
Will the expense of the petrochemical based dispersant BP is using in the gulf go toward the $75 million dollar liability cap? Are they buying the dispersant from themselves?
"a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity?"
Big Oil was supplying drugs and prostitutes to government regulators during the Bush regime? Did Salazar fire any of those people?
MMS -- Here's the article: http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_10431998
Basically MMS was a literally a cocaine-fueled orgy where MMS employees ("MMS chicks") had sex with lobbyists among other things. Perhaps the most far reaching and damaging example of corruption and government-industry collusion in recent memory.
Just another corporate connection revelation demonstrating Obama is not, has never been, and will never be an environmental president. First and foremost is to insure the cash cow continues to pour millions into his campaign coffers while behind closed doors hand out whatever waivers that will maximize profits, hegemony, and close oversight against the type of catastrophic environmental implosion we are now witnessing in the golf. Of course, the marketing gurus will continue to sell Obama as an environmentalist to insure the closed door deals and corporate dominance is complete.
BodhiHawk, you make a very good point about President Obama not being the environmental President that Greens can support.
The Corporations have taken over our government like Kurt Vonnegut's "Hocus Pocus" and are driving us into dispair just like the end of Atlas Shrugged. Do we secede or emmigrate?
Immigrate where?
One often escapes American corporations better entering the States than by leaving - unless you can afford the coveted "first world," I suppose. Even so - 60% of Canadian business is US owned, as I recall. And when we talk about messes, we should not forget the spreading toxic sink around the Tar Sands.
People will eventually stand and fight, and things will change when we do. The question is when and how and how much will be trashed before the conflict and by the conflict itself.
I can't say I see time on the popular side in any of that.
Here's to the cob house in Wales or the palapa in Ibiza, but however we search for foothold, we should understand that Far Enough is not going to happen.
This Perspective article, excerpted below, is from the World Socialist Web Site. A couple of paragraphs are excerpted below. Read the full article here:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/may2010/pers-m08.shtml
The BP oil spill and American capitalism
Tom Eley
8 May 2010
The explosion on the BP oil rig Deepwater Horizon on April 20 off Louisiana’s coast, which took the lives of 11 workers and has resulted in a massive oil slick that threatens economic and environmental ruin for the Gulf Coast, stands as a powerful exposure of American capitalism.
Each day brings new revelations that federal regulators under both the Bush and Obama administrations aided and abetted BP and the oil industry as they disregarded safety and environmental precautions that might have prevented the disaster.
Some of the most recent revelations include:
• In 2000 the Minerals Management Service (MMS) requested industry advice on problems related to the cementing used around deep sea well caps to stop blowouts. The oil industry never produced recommendations, and no regulation was put in place.
...
(six more revelations are included.)
In industry after industry the story is the same—mining, auto production, transportation, telecommunications and, of course, the finance industry. Indeed, the eruption of toxic oil from the bottom of the sea has its parallel in the eruption of toxic assets that set off a financial crisis in 2008. Led by the Obama administraiton, national governments responded to this disaster by bailing out those responsible—the financial elite—and leaving the working class to foot the bill. In this sense, the crisis in the Gulf and the crisis in Greece are connected by a common social and economic system.
The assets of BP, Transocean, Halliburton and their executives—hundreds of billions of dollars—must be appropriated and used to make the people of the Gulf whole and to put in place a massive environmental cleanup program. The executives and regulators whose policies caused the disaster should be criminally prosecuted.
The stranglehold of the corporate and financial elite over society and its resources must be broken. This requires the implementation of a socialist program for energy production. The big energy corporations must be seized and converted into public utilities, democratically run by the working class in the interest of social need.
Yes their about the best, I check them out at least once a day,
Welcome the World as run by The Council on Foreign Relations, Tri-Lateral Commission, Bilderberg Club and all those Masons working for the betterment of themselves, their wealth, and power....Thank you David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski for all those wonderful years of Viet Nam, Afghanistan, and Iraq Invasions, and The Wall Street Theft of Trillions...Thank you Barack Obama for appointing all those members of those organizations to your administration and agreeing to every one of their policies...And thank you for establishing a Mafia like "Assassination List" and continuing to murder innocent civilians as you continue to con the American People that it is in their best interest to be murderers...
BP will pay a maximum of 75 Million Dollars in damages and the U.S. Taxpayer will be burdened with another trillion dollar debt. Great Job BO!
While Obama continues to sell out America, I got my corn and beans planted today. When the corn gets one foot tall, the winter squash gets planted. Obama is aiding the criminals and soon I will be placing tomato and cucumber plants in the garden. I can't do anything about Obama except keep my promise and not vote in the next election. I will not vote for the least worse candidates. Instead I'll be caring for my garden and eating healthy foods. We know the Washington sociopaths are going to smash America to pieces and we also know that your fellow citizens show no signs of caring; so, stock up on necessities to cushion your way through the crisis.
Yes, and if you really want to tear guts out of all capitalists, eat nothing processed by man or animal. BINGO -- bankruptcy for the most greedy, from the medical industry butchers down to the feeder lot filthy.
"I can't do anything about Obama except keep my promise and not vote in the next election."
Huh? You can grow vegetables, but not democracy?
Not voting? That's like not gardening. It's like eating out of a can. Whatever they're serving, you're eating. Stop the futility!
I know Obama is Stealth Bush. (I knew that by February 2008, because I looked at his voting record in the U.S. Senate.) His shtick was shit, and it's demoralizing.
But, you have to stay informed, participate, teach, and vote. That's your responsibility as a citizen of a democracy. Don't pick the least worst candidate—hopefully, that's obvious by now—vote third party, write someone in, or leave a particular race blank.
Grow democracy, or tyranny will surely grow in it's place. What would you say to your grandchildren? "I tended my vegetables while tyrants destroyed what our forefathers built?"
I am shocked-- shocked!-- to find that the Obama administration freely grants oil and gas companies exemptions from doing in-depth environmental studies of oil exploration and production in the Gulf of Mexico!
Why, it gives the tawdry impression that ours is an amoral and mendacious government in which the only crime is getting caught... too often!
Oil keeps a puppets strings supple and responsive.
does anyone besides me think obomber is as much of a president as Hamid Karzai? look- we all talk about corporate rule, plutocracy, corporatocracy- I'm pretty sure most of the people here know this. so then don't keep getting all worked up about barry- he doesn't really do this stuff. neither does congress- there's all those others, those shadowy figures in the wings- bankers and oil men and big pharma and big agra- i don't need to list them all. actually they are not even shadowy are they?
Think of the Republicans as the oil spill and the Democrats as the dispersants. From what's been said these dispersants are toxic and for cosmetic purposes only; they actually make things way worse; it's unlikely they're "the lesser of two evils"
excellent
"The lessor of two evils". The best analogy that I can come up with for the Democrats and the Republicans is James Carville Democrat and Mary Madeline Republican that are married to each other and pretend on talk shows to be opposed to each other, but climb in bed together at night! The lessor of two evils is like Barry, a con job for the sheeple!
Let's take a quess,... Obama didn't fire the Bush/Cheney appointees at the MMS! Just like he didn't fire the Bush/Cheney Federal Prostitutors, oh, sorry, I meant Persecutors, no no Prosecutors thats it.
Obama, just another corporate rat!
Sorry, Double Clutched!
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
This is quintessential disaster capitalism at work. These waivers were used like this beginning under Bush II, the archetypical presidential disaster capitalist from a dynasty of these creatures. Every critical system, institution, government check & balance, Constitutional legal protection, federal law or treaty obligation they scuttle or deregulate, or capitalist enterprise they simply deregulate they know will become a ticking time bomb. And they deliberately deregulate it anyway to accelerate their looting of the Treasury and the planet, and their economic subjugation of the masses, and also because they know that when it blows up, usually not on their watch, that they can use the economic, environmental, foreign policy or other mass trauma that results as another smokescreen to help convert our former democratic republic into the imperial homeland of a globalized form of violent totalitarian capitalism more resembling the current government of China than the one conceived of by our founding fathers.
Deleted by author.
These people and this situation almost give Ted Kaczinski's {the Uni-Bomber} madness A whole new meaning...Google: "Ship of Fools"....