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BP Clashes with Scientists over Deep Sea Oil Pollution
Obama team 'incensed at being kept in the dark' as company denies existence of underwater oil clouds
BP has challenged widespread scientific claims that vast plumes of oil are spreading underwater from its blown-out rig in the Gulf of Mexico. The denial comes as the oil giant prepares for a new operation to put an end to the worst oil spill in US history - which could see the leak get worse before it gets better.
A shrimp boat outfitted with booms to collect oil makes its way to port on May 27, near Grand Isle, Louisiana. BP officials warned Monday they may not be able to plug the Gulf of Mexico oil leak until August, as Louisiana residents warned the spill could wipe out dozens of fish species and their centuries-old way of life.
(AFP/Getty Images/File/Win McNamee) The company's challenge to several scientific studies is likely to put it further at odds with an increasingly angry Obama administration, which has accused it of playing down the size of the leak in an effort to limit possible fines.
BP's chief executive, Tony Hayward, said it had no evidence of underwater oil clouds. "The oil is on the surface," he said. "Oil has a specific gravity that's about half that of water. It wants to get to the surface because of the difference in specific gravity."
Hayward's assertion flies in the face of studies by scientists at universities in Florida, Georgia and Mississippi, among other institutions, who say they have detected huge underwater plumes of oil, including one 120 metres (400ft) deep about 50 miles from the destroyed rig.
BP's claim is likely only to further anger environmentalists and the White House, which has grown increasingly suspicious of the company's claims to be frank and transparent on developments. The president's environmental adviser and director of the Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, Carol Browner, has accused BP of misstating the scale of the leak.
"BP has a vested financial interest in downplaying the size of this," she said on CBS television. "They will pay penalties at the end of the day, a per-barrel per-day penalty."
Ed Markey, chairman of the House of Representatives environment committee, has also accused BP of underplaying the scale of the disaster and suggested that it may have a criminal liability.
"The fine that can be imposed upon them is based on how many barrels [pour in to the sea]. It could wind up in billions of dollars of fines," said Markey. "They had a stake in low-balling the number right from the beginning. They were either lying or they were incompetent."
In the White House, under increasing criticism for not taking charge of the effort to stop the spill, some officials are saying they have been misled by the company or kept in the dark at key moments.
The Politico website reported that the Obama team was incensed that the company failed to inform it for a day and a half after suspending the failed "top kill" operation to plug the spill using rubber tyres and mud.
Obama is expected to hold his first meeting today with the leaders of an oil spill commission he established to make policy recommendations about US offshore oil drilling. The commission will be similar to those that looked into the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986 and the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979.
Also today, US attorney general Eric Holder will meet federal prosecutors and state attorneys general in New Orleans. It will be Holder's first trip to survey the damage before what legal experts believe will be a criminal investigation into the disaster.
The dispute between the administration and BP comes as the company readies its latest effort to contain the flow of oil in to the sea, following the failure of top kill. The new plan involves an intricate operation to cut the top off the damaged riser that brought oil to the surface of the destroyed rig. The intention is to create a flat surface to which to attach a valve that would divert the oil into a pipe and on to a ship.
But slicing the top off the damaged pipe may result in oil flowing into the sea at a faster rate until the new valve is fitted. Even if successful, the operation would only limit, not entirely stop, oil from flowing into the sea. If this measure failed, BP's best hope of halting the oil would remain the drilling of a relief well that would ease the pressure on the damaged one. But the US government has warned that the spill could continue into August.
The attempts to stop the oil flow have been given added urgency by the start of the hurricane season tomorrow.
Forecasters are predicting an unusually high number of storms over the next six months. If the oil is still spread across the sea, a hurricane is likely to disperse it over a much wider area and push it deeper into marshlands and other inland areas, making the environmental disaster even worse.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is predicting between eight and 14 hurricanes this season, with perhaps a similar number of smaller storms.
The US military has ruled out taking charge of the operation to stem the flow of oil from the blown-out BP rig. The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, today said that military chiefs had looked at the available equipment and concluded that "the best technology in the world, with respect to that, exists in the oil industry".
A day earlier, the former US secretary of state, Colin Powell, said the military should step in because the crisis was now "beyond the capacity" of BP to stop.
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35 Comments so far
Show All"The US military has ruled out taking charge of the operation to stem the flow of oil from the blown-out BP rig. The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, today said that military chiefs had looked at the available equipment and concluded that "the best technology in the world, with respect to that, exists in the oil industry."
A more perfect reason for nationalizing BP and getting these criminal bastards out of the way could not be voiced. They haven't one iota of interest in the well being of people, country, or planet, just profits and liability mitigation.
Arrest BP's top management, revoke thier permits and charters and seize their assets for the restoration of the GOM.
"A day earlier, the former US secretary of state, Colin Powell, said the military should step in because the crisis was now "beyond the capacity" of BP to stop."
HOLY SHIT BATMAN... is this the SAME Colin Powell who informed the world that the US military had to "step in" to Iraq because the danger was beyond the rest of the worlds' ability to stop it???
The troll who wrote this piece of unmitigated propaganda "pitting the poor US Whitehouse against the BP Goliath" will undoubtedly get a nice fat check for the disinformation peice, when in fact the US Gov't is the wholly owned subsidery of BP, EXXON, Conoco Phillips, Goldman Sachs, Halliburton etc and our amazin' "HOPE (for spare) CHANGE" rez in the Whitehouse is just the latest and smoothest of a long series of hucksters, snakeoil salesmaen and PR hacks hired to play a televised "Three Card Monty" for a gullible audience.
Bowen and Camili of Woods Hole Mass. Oceanic Research Institute are quite willing and capable of measuring the gusher flow.
But Obomber refuses to authorize them to measure the gusher flow.
Com'on Glenn... the GREAT BLACK HOPE just doin' his job!
Interesting isn't it that Obama is "incensed" that the partner they have been dancing with has played them. Who do they think these oil companies are? Is there anyone in the Obama administration who was capable of issuing a warning, of expressing suspicion, of reminding how badly Exxon treated the victims of the spill in Alaska? NO, THERE IS NOT ONE. And Obama is certainly not the only Democrat in this camp. Senator Casey, of Pennsylvania had the same mindset--excoriating private for profit health insurers for bad behavior but then saying to the Tea baggers in his jeering audience that he hated government run health care more than they did. The core belief of all these guys, and many Democrats who call themselves "progressive" is that there is nothing really wrong with the capitalistic setup we have, with with giving the real power to run things to corporate interests. It's just that these guys go a little too far, behave a little too badly, embarrassing the ones who support them and making it harder for them to hold onto the legitimacy needed for political power-- To tack, they become two faced-- publicly critical of the corporate interests to gain legitimacy but privately supporting and expecting to be supported in turn by those same corporate interests. It can't go on much longer. Obama--we see your truly fluorescent orange colors shining through. And Baby that's why we want to get rid of you.
"And Baby that's why we want to get rid of you."
Of course we do - and his successor is now being groomed by the same oligarchs who groomed him to replace the Dick&Bush they previously groomed, etc., etc. This "Brer Rabbit" scam has been running successfully for the past 30 years. And American Idolators never catch on.
First they buy up all of the legislators.
Then they fuck (in some cases, literally) the regulators.
Now we're still trusting them with the clean up?
What a world!
Liars all, they even brought in a specialist, Collin Powell.
I have to admit, this is one of the most hilarious articles I have read in a while, i couldn't stop laughing. It was like watching a Keystone Cops flick. To whit:
"increasingly angry Obama administration, which has accused it of playing down the size of the leak in an effort to limit possible fines."
"Increasingly angry"? You mean he wasn't absolutely furious from the beginning?
"accused it of playing down the size"? As if that wasn't a given?
"White House, ..... has grown increasingly suspicious of the company's claims to be frank and transparent on developments."
"increasingly suspicious"? You mean he wasn't suspicious before? Suspicious enough to demand a full environmental impact statement and demonstration of adequate technology to take care of foreseeable problems?
"claims to be transparent"? A private company which would allow no one else on site, transparent?
"In the White House, .... some officials are saying they have been misled by the company or kept in the dark at key moments."
"mislead by the company"? Oh my, how could that be? one of our big contributors, misleading us?
"his first meeting today with the leaders of an oil spill commission he established to make policy recommendations about US offshore oil drilling."
"FIRST meeting"? He mean he's been pushing drilling, giving waivers and permits, and hadn't even met with his OWN commission on policy recs? Or is it that he never even HAD a commission until AFTER the blowout? Where were his policy recs coming from before? BP?
"The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, today said that military chiefs had looked at the available equipment and concluded that 'the best technology in the world, with respect to that, exists in the oil industry'."
"the best technology in the world"? This is the best they have? Mud and golfballs? And you let them drill with THIS?
Of course many of us know the answer to these questions. But it seems to me we should hear the answers coming directly from the horse's mouth.
Incompetence or corruption, take your pick, in the end it amounts to the same ....
Loved your post!
Very little blame seems to be put on the root cause of these recent events. The gutting of oversight & regulation by the very people in government now wringing their hands and pointing at the out of control corporations they helped create & who now own them.
Considering the billions in profits for conclomerates, they really do buy these politicians at a very cheap price (in their minds) of only millions in reelection donations (bribes) & other perks, (bribes)
Right on. The entire 'confrontation' between BP [and other oil corporations] and the US Government is a semi-staged act to be put on for the Fox Network viewers [60% of the US population]. It is an ugly joke. The same stage company will bring us a outraged response and the subsequent whitewash of the Israeli attack on a humanitarian flotilla. Fine per barrel of oil dumped into the ocean? One that 'could be' billions? Right. Just like the Exxon fine turned out. Pissant. BP profits were over a billion per month for the first quarter of this year. Like the gummint will fine them enough to bother....
I don't understand. An oil plume that is miles long and wide and hundreds of feet thick shouldn't be that hard to verify. I mean, these thing are bio-terror time bombs sneaking up on our coastline. Shouldn't there be hundreds, thousands of boats out there trying to map these things? Hell, tie a rock to a rope, throw it overboard, pull it up, and repeat until you get an oily rock/rope (or not). Conspiracy seems to be a derided word, so let just say I think there is a criminal "collusion" to keep the truth from us about the mind boggling scale of this catastrophe.
NedB, I agree. What part of 'catastrophe' doesn't this administration understand? Why hasn't Obama convened an emergency council of scientists to figure a way to stop the gusher and employ every resource possible to ply the Gulf and sop up as much as possible? We can play the blame game and litigate later - get out there and do something!!
This crap about BP not admitting this or that is criminally negligent on Obama's part. Direct the proper authorities to find out the truth and not rely on an oil company for the information. It's almost as if Barry doesn't want the awful extent of the leak to be known; as if he's shielding BP from future lawsuits.
Can we set the BP executives on fire? Are we allowed to do that?
Still don't know what gusher they showed Friday night
after top kill failure.
It was coming from the ocean floor, shooting straight up
a giant gusher with tremendous pressure.
There was nothing attached to it, not the rizor , not
anything.
They showed this gusher for several hours, right after
they claimed to pull that one ROV to surface , that they
showed.
Did anyone one else see this Friday night, and Sat. morning.?
BABOON said "It was coming from the ocean floor, shooting straight up
a giant gusher with tremendous pressure.
There was nothing attached to it, not the rizor , not
anything."
I don't know if I saw that but I do go to their website fairly often. I saw a group of five gushers, but I think that was mud. Then there was the flames and black plumes coming out of a pipe. I have taken beaucoup screen shots because I want to preserve this FU for posterity. Also, it is fascinating and terrifying.
Somebody on Thom Hartmann this morning said that the pipe far below the surface may have ruptured because oil is seeping massively through the earth's surface around the well.
Anytime one of these hacks appears in public we need to be throwing oil on them. Let them feel our pain quite literally.
1. Does anybody really believe BP has enough money to compensate all of the people who have lost their livelihoods or their businesses, and pay for the environmental cleanup? They will get out of it in court, or file bankruptcy.
2. Does anybody really believe that any kind of human intervention will be able to clean the water, beaches, marshland, animals, and whatever else was destroyed or damaged by oil? Nature will fix it in time - decades maybe.
3. Everybody seems to have forgotton: 11 MEN WERE KILLED! How about having discussions about negligent homicide?
BP could only be sued for what happens to the environment that humans can see. That why the use of "corexit" (corrects-it/hides-it) is good for BP.
But all that is on the surface. The water itself contains life. Earth is a living planet, 2/3 of which is ocean. "decades" - yes, I think at least that.
If a tree falls in the forest, and no human is there to witness, did it really happen? Apparently not as far as BP's liability is concerned.
If geysers of oil are erupting under water, scientists in related fields more or less have to know already that "vast plumes of oil" are spreading from the rig:
Where else would the vast plumes go?
Any scientists with historical knowledge of corporate-funded disasters would also know not only that BP will lie about quantities, but that it will lie as much as possible. The relation to profit structure is elementary and universal to this kind of organization.
It is also certain that the US government is also lying, also minimizing the catastrophe, even while it makes gestures of concern and criticizes BP's inappropriate response. These are measures to minimize culpability. This does not indicate a fissure between BP and Barack 0 & Co, much less the oil magnates in general. The oil biz would love to let 0 look like he is already fiercely regulating. What they do not want is authentic regulation --- and, particularly, the outright ban on offshore drilling that will have to at least come under discussion, if not "on the table."
No surprise here.
When is Obama going to move from impotent rage to action? How much more devastation has to happen until this man does something?
Science is the art of the falsifiable.
If BP claims there are no deep sea plumes and slicks, then this claim is falsifiable by sampling and measurements, both direct and indirect.
I hope the scientists have taken measurements which they will be allowed to freely publish. After publication BP and its teams of lawyers will then argue that the measurements do not mean what they are supposed to mean.
The argument from BP about oil specific gravity relative to water, depends on oil makeup, its crudeness, water temperature and pressure. Tarry oil will sink. In a disaster of this magnitude, it is for BP to disprove with science, that is measurement. Failure to measure is closing ones eyes for public denial.
World oil criminal number one, the US government, the enabler of the actions of BP, and many oil war crimes, is also still in the phase of denial shock. What other powerless people warned about has come about. How shocking.
Colin Powell believed in WMD's and I bet Tony Hayward did, too!
Well the good news is that we only had to kill 11 humans to get the oil this time instead of the upwards of 1 million Iraqi's to get theirs.
See... we're improving
So...It's going to be a BIG hurricane season....
Hurricanes suck up a lot of water into the atmosphere and drop it elsewhere....
Do they also suck up oil?
Hurricanes have lots of lightening.
Is there a KAWHOOOM in our future????
One nice thing about the Internet is the ability to link to satellite views of the planet.Under the right light conditions both N.A.S.A. and N.O.A.A. views have clearly shown the underwater plumes.I believe that the dispersant/emulsifier may have aggravated the sinking oil problem by making it less buoyant.
I suppose the Billionaire polluters are also bullshitting polluters.
peace
"the former US secretary of state, Colin Powell, said the military should step in because the crisis was now "beyond the capacity" of BP to stop"
How to make a bad situation worse -the military will probably want to "nook" it.
Doubtless BP execs are making lots of money on this by shorting their stock.
If the US is under attack by oil, then Obama should be able to use the powers for anti-terrorism to confiscate BP's equipment, lock the personnel in Guantanamo, and send in NASA and any other smart folks who work for the US government in to solve the problem.
Tell the space agency and whoever that if they can't get the leak plugged then their funding is history. (What's the point of having rocket scientists if they can't solve earth-bound problems?)
I'm only half joking but seriously, why does our nation have to wait around for some lame corporation to muddle around when the ecosystem is threatened? Fix it and send them the bill. If they don't pay the bill then confiscate their assets.
Who cares if the well is operable afterwords? To paraphrase Nike - Just Plug It!
What do you suppost the response would be to the same situation in the Gulf if the oil company, platform, riggers etc. would have been owned by the Iranians or Venezuelans.
Let me ponder a guess ??? We would be preparing to NUKE them back to the Stone Age??? ...Oh, wait... I think we are anyway... Nevermind.
The Royal Crown would like nothing more than to destroy the US of A, their vengeance. They have done nothing but wreck havoc the world over for centuries.
dmgreenaz ..."send in NASA and any other smart folks who work for the US government in to solve the problem."
Let me guess... You've never met an actual NASA employee. I have... many, and actually had to work with them. Most actually do NOT work for the Gov't, but work for private contractors (gotta love that phrase)where their employeers rake in $$millions$$ soaking Unca Sam. Secondarily, many would not last a day flippin' burgers at Micky D's - it would be far too stressfull for their delicate sensibilities.
Got any more suggestions???