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Devastating BP Oil Spill was Inevitable as Government Failed to Learn from Past Tragedies
A catastrophic oil spill was waiting to happen.
As the number of spills mounted, no one paid attention. Now the big one is here, and nothing can hide that gushing hole at the bottom of the sea. (Photo: AFP) That's what one expert who has studied government data on the huge and growing number of Gulf of Mexico spills is saying.
"There have been thousands of spills from 1990 to 2009," said Walter Hang, head of Toxics Targeting, an Ithaca, N.Y., company that tracks and analyzes federal hazardous spill reports.
While many were small, the sheer number of incidents is mind-boggling, Hang said.
They include scores of oil platforms and rigs that were destroyed by hurricanes, wells that "lost control," deep-sea risers that became detached or severed, boats that collided into oil platforms and sank.
Spills have increased dramatically under the Bush and Obama administrations. The federal Minerals and Management Service has recorded some 330 significant spills - those over 2,100 gallons - since 1964. Nearly half happened in just the past 10 years.
And you can guess which company suffered the most spills since 2000?
That's right, BP.
Federal records show BP reported 23 significant oil spills in that time - including two within weeks of each other in 2003, on the same Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that was destroyed in the April 21 catastrophe.
Here a few samples of those BP reports. As you read them, keep in mind that the oil companies - and they alone - have historically provided the official estimates of their spills. By now, the whole world knows by now how much we can trust BP on that front.
- Jan. 19, 2000: "The weekly function test was performed from the
remote blowout preventer (BOP) panel in the off-shore installation
manager's office. Instead of testing the blind shear rams, the engineer
inadvertently pushed the LMRP [lower marine riser package].
"The control panel buttons for the LMRP did not have enough security to prevent activating the wrong function. It was determined that 2,400 barrels of 60% synthetic-based drilling mud [with approximately 60,000 gallons of oil]" leaked into the Gulf of Mexico. - May 21, 2003: "The spill occurred at Mississippi Canyon 778 ...
The drilling vessel was in the process of pulling up the [well]hole
when it experienced wave action heaving and jarring.
"The riser parted in two places ... There was a release of 2,450 barrels of 58% Accolade synthetic-based drilling mud (SBM). It is estimated that [it] contained approximately 1,421 barrels (59,000 gallons) of Accolade synthetic base oil." - June 30, 2003: "An emergency riser disconnect occurred when
drilling vessel failed to maintain station against 44 knot winds ...
and 12-to-14-foot sea conditions." Approximately "944 barrels of Nova
Plus synthetic base oil" were "released into the sea."
- Aug. 3, 2003, on the Deepwater Horizon rig: "While drilling and
using mud boost line to enhance cutting transportation in the riser,
the driller noticed he was losing mud ...
"The mud pumps were shut down and it was confirmed that the losses came from a leak in the boost line. At one point, the boost hose had ruptured and there were several other locations along the hose that were badly worn. The total losses were calculated to be 143 barrels ..."
In addition to human errors, frequent hurricanes in the gulf are a big problem the industry prefers not to talk about.
"Given the egregious record of off-shore oil problems, the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe was obviously forseeable and should have been prevented," Hang notes.
As the number of spills mounted, no one paid attention. Now the big one is here, and nothing can hide that gushing hole at the bottom of the sea.
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22 Comments so far
Show AllAnyone remember the last 50 years on the Great Lakes. It is a story of tragedy and Triumph. Tragic polution and dying lakes, ignored and accepted until the tragic 'acid rain' began to affect everyone and environmental legislation began turn the tide, and the lakes are begining to return to health. It is/was a long and very slow process. The Gulf story is just begining, a "fast destruction" taking place in slow motion, with ripple affects to increase for perhaps decades, affecting not just fish and wildlife, beaches, and wetlands, but acid rain, crop production, and health. The damage will heal, but perhaps not within the lifetimes of my generation (early 60's. Blame, punishment, basically useless -- but regulation, enforcement and a plan for recovery essential. We all will be punished by the effects and costs, and will all need to make life style change.
Same with the Hudson River. Activism involving ecologists, fisherman and local residents, Robert Kennedy Jr, and to some extent the pre-mummy Al Gore forced new regulations and policies that allowed the river to regain some health. Now the tide seems to be turning somewhat backwards, so to speak.
The story is available in the book "The Riverkeepers" and in a related video available on the web. The message is that activism and legal initiatives led by ordinary citizens can succeed. The politicians followed the creative and bold lead of the citizens in this case. It is quite a story. They took on powerful companies like Anaconda Copper and got somewhere.
I highly recommend that people read the book and watch this 48 minute video.
http://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/the_hudson_riverkeepers/
Joe
Reagan said___"Government is the problem, not the solution". Ever since, we have been eliminating regulations, and this is the result. Same thing with the budget__ Lower taxes on the rich and more money will come in. That is working great, also.
Anyone that likes the present sick condition of our country needs to vote for rich "conservative" bankers and oil men.
Or the new breed of Republican executive women - Sarah Palin lite.
Joe
Government IS the problem; You can't distinguish corporate interest from government interest!
She is not smiling all the time. Watch her closely for ten minutes and you will see flashes from somewhere inside her of abject humiliation.
There are no limits of apparent stupidity to which she will not go just to work a crowd that worships stupidity.
She has a whole cult following now. The past is not dead. It is not even past.
Remember the tobacco executives taking an oath that they did not believe tobacco to be harmful?
Remember that bunch of Republicans professing to believe the earth was no more than six thousand years old? Grown men, presumably capable of abstract thought, eager to be seen as a fool.
Nietzsche did not believe in human progress. He did believe in eternal recurrence. There were towns in Germany in the seventh and eighteenth centuries that had no women occupants at all. The inquisition had stayed long enough in one town after another to find every single female living there guilty of witchcraft. It was called the burning time.
Can you imagine what Pat Robertson would do if he got the bit between his teeth?
Who ever would have thought in 1776 that it would be the USA that still held out for the death penalty and torture and honest-to-God eye rolling religious seizures? They don't believe the death penalty is a deterrent or that the sky god watches everyone all the time, no less eager than they to catch some son-of-a-bitch smoking corn silk, but to stay in power-----that is when truth becomes relative.
>>
The inquisition had stayed long enough in one town after another to find every single female living there guilty of witchcraft. It was called the burning time.
<<
Psychotic old men in positions of power with the ability to convince others they are sane and know what they are doing. Some things never change.
Worse than inevitable. Given that BP is now potentially a takeover target and given the illogical order by BP to remove the protective mud layer (a last minute order by BP Houston to the rig BP company man), one has to wonder if it wasn't deliberate...
http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/05/hearings_rigs_blowout_prevente.html
"...The chief mechanic on the Deepwater Horizon testified Wednesday that he was at a planning meeting 11 hours before the rig exploded at which the BP company man overruled drillers from rig owner Transocean and INSISTED ON DISPLACING PROTECTIVE DRILLING MUD from the riser that connected the rig to the oil well.
"..."I recall a skirmish between the company man, the OIM (offshore installation manager), the tool-pusher and the driller," said Doug Brown, one of 115 rig workers who survived the April 20 disaster. "The driller was outlining what would be taking place, whereupon the company man stood up and said, 'NO, WE'LL BE HAVING SOME CHANGES TO THAT.' It had to do with displacing the riser for later on. The OIM, tool-pusher and driller disagreed with that, but the company man said, 'Well, this is how it's gonna be,' and the tool-pusher, driller and OIM reluctantly agreed."
"...The implication was that the Transocean employees expected they might have to take emergency action because of BP's PUSH TO REMOVE THE DRILLING MUD.
"...Before Brown came to the witness stand at the hearings in Kenner, a ship captain with 15 years of drilling experience told the joint investigative panel that he doesn't know why a rig would DISPLACE THE PROTECTIVE COLUMN OF HEAVY MUD with light seawater before closing off a well.”
Another one.
http://www.countercurrents.org/eley140510.htm
"...A worker told the Wall Street Journal that the crew was in fact preparing to drop the cement plug down the riser—STANDARD PROCEDURE—WHEN THE ORDER CAME TO INSTEAD PUMP OUT THE MUD. “Usually we set the cement plug at that point and let it set for six hours, then displace the well,” he said. The worker told the Journal that this dangerous step was first cleared with the MMS. The MMS refused comment."
“Here's more from: http://www.congress.org/congressorg/bio/userletter/?letter_id=5186329156
After reading the following article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424... that covers testimony from Transocean Ltd., Halliburton and BP, regarding the Deepwater Horizon Exploratory Rig Disaster, fault and responsibility is placed upon the DECISION OF BP AND MMS to DEVIATE FROM ESTABLISHED, PROVEN, CEMENTING, CURING and PLUGGING PROCEDURES.
...According to this worker, BP ASKED PERMISSION from the federal Minerals Management Service TO DISPLACE THE MUD before the final plugging operation had begun. The mud in the well weighed 14.3 pounds per gallon; it was displaced by seawater that weighed nearly 50% less. Like BP, the MMS declined to comment on this account.” [I've read one place that they did NOT get permission.]
The ISSUE is WHY did BP REMOVE THE PROTECTIVE MUD LAYER?!?!?
Well done. Thank you for this comment. If the MMS did give permission to replace the mud with sea water then that puts the federal government on the hook right along with BP, thus, as usual, the taxpayers will be picking up the "external costs" of capitalism. Damn it! Those people, the BP "company man", whoever he is, and the MMS official(s) who gave permission need to go to prison for life (only because I disagree with the death penalty).
The two names are Donald Vidrine and Robert Kaluza. Kaluza appears to be experienced in land drilling and was gathering expierence in ocean/water drillling. BOTH did NOT testify. I've read also that the order came from the BP office in Houston to the BP "company man" on the rig. Now we have to see if either of these guys is "Wellstoned."
From
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/27/bps-top-two-officials-on_n_592690.html
"...Donald Vidrine, BP's "company man," overruled the rig's chief mechanic and driller and pushed to speed up the process BY REMOVE THE DRILLING MUD FASTER to save BP money on the day of the tragic explosion, according to testimony from rig owner Transocean's Doug Brown on Wednesday.
"...Vidrine did not testify as scheduled on Wednesday, citing an unspecified medical condition.
"...The other top BP official on the rig, Robert Kaluza, also declined to testify, invoking his 5th Amendment right not to incriminate himself.
[Note the highlighted text above. It is an obvious grammatically incorrect edit -- a hurried typo to spin the "to save time" mantra? I don't believe the current media mantra that removing the mud was done "to save time." From what I can gather, I believe that removing the mud was extremely non-standard.]
Whoa!!
What's 'accountability' doing, sneaking around the edges of a near perfect seamless meshing of state and corporation...?
The way it's supposed to work is, if you play along, you will keep your job. If you stray off the res, you will be fired w/o L of R.
If you try to keep your job by taking upper management with you, look out.
Those whistle-blowers had best get their testimony sworn, notarized, and in a safe place fast.
Let the festivities begin.
With all the talk of corporate person-hood and free markets today, it will be interesting to see if the stock market gives BP a death sentence and they go down like the Deep Water Horizon.
I'd like to know how many large block short sales are happening. The big money will drive the price to "nothing" and the BP capital assets will be sold off for pennies on the dollar to other "investors" and other oil companies. BP will no longer exist and will not be able to pay for cleanup of the gulf, which of course is impossible to start with. Thank goodness the taxpayers of the USA have bottomless pockets, and thank goodness the very wealthy still have their Bush tax cuts in place. All is well and all is as it should be.
BP has no interest in capping this well. They are trying to bring it into production and do not give one shit about the gulf or the people living there. Iran has offered to cap the well, telling us they have the ability. Why not let them try? Could they do worse than BP?
There is a solution. Imagine a giant vise powered by eight monstrous hydraulic cylinders, four to a side. Place the vice over the existing malfunctioned blowout preventer and squeeze the well shut. Crimp it shut. But of course then it would become a non-producing "liability" for BP. Can't have that now, can we?
When will people stop driving, consuming oil and polluting? We need car-free cities, bicycle cities, eco-cities, local organic farms, rooftop gardens, backyard gardens, local agriculture jobs.
http://EcoCityBuilders.org -- http://CarFree.com -- http://BicycleCity.com -- http://new.carfreecity.us -- http://PostCarbon.org -- http://PostCarbonCities.net -- http://CultureChange.org --
SHUT DOWN OFFSHORE OIL DRILLING:
http://www.imaja.com/lists/deepwaterhorizon.html
The Consequences of Automobiles:
http://www.natcap.org/sitepages/pid56.php
SHUT DOWN THE OIL-ADDICTED WAR CRIMINALS:
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/ -- http://www.warcriminalswatch.org/ -- http://www.couragetoresist.org -- http://WorldCantWait.net -- http://DefundWar.org -- http://www.unitedforpeace.org/ - No Nukes! No Wars! Fund Human Needs! Protect the Environment!
All are excellent technical comments, but let me add political reality: BP gives our politicians bribes (campaign contributions) to keep hands off, and they do that well. Get the money out of the political system and these jokers will be voting in the best interest of the nation. Visit www.FairElectionsNow.org and pressure your congressmen to co-sign the bill.
"The federal Minerals and Management Service has recorded some 330 significant spills - those over 2,100 gallons - since 1964. Nearly half happened in just the past 10 years."
And those are the same ten years in which the oil profiteers recorded a string of double-record profits, for at least five of those years, and today enjoying perhaps as much as 20 times total of the average annual profits during the previous decades.
This may tell you something about Merka in general. It tells me that we have a huge population of baby boomers who are basically paralyzed when it comes to their civic duty.
As long as the grass is always greener on the other side,people will want to go there.
Yep, and someone will write the same thing after the next major oil disaster.
We keep waiting for someone to take the lead in ending our dependence on oil. We've been waiting since at least the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s, when our government vowed to step up the research and production of alternative energy, and virtually nothing has been accomplished. And we're still waiting.
I think we'd better start, ourselves. Americans have got to end their love affairs with their cars. Drive less, if you must drive at all. Otherwise, use public transportation, even if you don't like the inconvenience; after all, it might motivate you to join the call for a comprehensive, affordable public transportation system like Europe has -- which government has been promising for decades. It's not enough to just switch your light bulbs. If you know how, organize people. Educate and motivate people. Bother your legislators -- a lot.
It has to start with us.
Change we could believe in ...
Appoint Amory Lovins as the Energy-efficiency Secretary.
Appoint Michael Pollan as the Agriculture Secretary.
Appoint Gretchen Morgenson or Elizabeth Warren as the Treasury Secretary.
Appoint Lester Brown as the Interior Secretary.
Appoint Howard Dean as the Secretary of Health and Human Services
Appoint Shai Agassi as the Secretary of Transportation
Appoint Paul Hawken as the Secretary of Commerce
Problems arrise when you have the wrong people aboard and that's why we are seeing little change.
Obama has three more years to make change happen. So far, not so good.
Surgically remove ALL politicians who are in the backpockets of big business - oil or whatever. Then limit the terms Senators and Congressmen can serve: this should reduce corruption by quite a bit. And it would also help if the US wasn't such a materialistic country that sees everything through the sign of the dollar.It isn't that government failed to learn from past tragedies...rather, it is government (all of them) who is in cahoots with the criminals. There is more to life than money - ask all the animals that are dying. BOYCOTT BP!!!
BP, eh? Bad People!
I wonder such incorrigible act of BP is classified as terrorism act? LOL!