NEWS Brazil seeks origin of oil slick lapping at beach Monday, August 10, 2010
•••A large oil slick reached beaches along the Atlantic Ocean in the Lakes Region in the north of the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro, local media reported early Monday.
The origin of the oil was not immediately known, and naval inspection technicians took samples of the water and the sand to determine if the fuel comes from a ship or an offshore platform. The relevant tests, however, could take up to 20 days.
Petroleo Brasileiro SA, Brazil’s state-controlled oil producer, said it’s not responsible for an oil spill that appeared on five of the country’s beaches. Petrobras, as the oil producer is known, is assisting Brazil’s Navy with clean-up efforts, a spokesman, who declined to be named because of the Rio de Janeiro-based company’s policy, said today in a telephone interview. Petrobras did a flyover and wasn’t able to spot any oil slick, he said.
Oil washed up today at five beaches, said a spokeswoman at the Rio de Janeiro state government environment agency. Petrobras is helping to investigate the spill’s origin, said the spokeswoman in a telephone interview. She can’t be named under internal policy.
The size of the spill hasn’t been determined yet, she said.
The affected beaches are near Cabo Frio, about 93 miles east of the city of Rio de Janeiro. The leak in Rio comes after Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva strongly criticized the oil giant BP over the disaster caused by its well in the Gulf of Mexico. He said such a disaster would never happen in Brazil. According to Lula, the technology used by Brazil’s state-operated oil company Petrobras is superior to that which is used in the United States. • Latest News & Headlines » Home «
NEWS Doug Suttles happy to eat Gulf seafood BP executive ‘absolutely’ would eat Gulf seafood Monday, August 02, 2010
•••One of BP’s top executives said that not only would he eat Gulf seafood, but he would feed it to his family too. While many fear that the unprecedented amount of chemical dispersants, such as Corexit, in the water has turned it into a toxic soup, more water has been opened. Fears run high, but many in the seafood industry give a different point of view. While acknowledging the amount of toxic chemicals (over 1 million gallons of Corexit) is unprecedented and unlike anything ever seen before; the rigorous testing by the EPA, NOAA and U.S. Fish and Wildlife fisheries have caused some to conclude that seafood is safer than it has ever been. Water tests, air quality samples and soil tests have been conducted regularly and the data is used to determine which federal and state waters would be closed or opened. With the high amount of testing, some feel the seafood is the safest it’s been. Others disagree. They want to know exactly what is being tested. What byproducts result from Corexit and oil and are they being tested in the seafood? Though NOAA has opened more federal waters and people are returning to beaches, there are many who will not eat Gulf Coast seafood, regardless of what Doug Suttles chooses to feed his family. • Latest News & Headlines » Home «
NEWS U.S. Owners Of BP Stations Seek Rebranding Sunday, August 1, 2010
•••BP is reportedly facing pressure to rename its U.S. petrol stations under their old Amoco brand as the backlash in America shows no sign of easing.
The distributors who control most of BP’s U.S. forecourts are pushing the group to revert back to the traditional American Amoco branding for fear of further sales pain following the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, according to The Sunday Telegraph.
BP shed the Amoco brand shortly after merging with the U.S. oil group in 1998, but the 475 distributors believe its revival across petrol stations could help bring customers back.
They are reportedly seeing sales fall by up to 40 percent in the worst hit sites as Americans shun the BP brand.
The firm’s petrol stations in the U.S. are also said to be suffering growing instances of vandalism and protests.
John Kleine, executive director of the BP Amoco Marketers Association, which represents U.S. distributors, told The Sunday Telegraph in Britain: ‘They (the distributors) are interested in where the brand is going and want it to be returned to its premier place.’ He added: ‘Those fires have been fueled in the last week by a former Amoco executive (Bob Dudley) being named to assume the role of chief executive.’
A separate report also suggested BP may be forced to wind down its operations in the Gulf of Mexico after American lawmakers passed a bill that could halve its production there.
The Gulf accounts for 10 percent of BP’s global production, but the legal move proposed freezing the firm out of new drilling leases for seven years.
BP last week confirmed Mr. Dudley would take over from under-fire boss Tony Hayward in October as it revealed a $32.2 billion blow from the spill.
The group is understood to be preparing to ‘static kill’ the leaking well this week.
The well erupted when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank on April 20, killing 11 workers and triggering the worst oil spill in U.S. history.
BP was not immediately available for comment. • Latest News & Headlines » Home «
NEWS Engineers prepare to seal ruptured oil well Saturday, July 31, 2010
•••Engineers are preparing a plan to permanently seal a damaged Gulf of Mexico well, despite delays to the process caused by debris left behind by a recent tropical storm.
As the work continues, incoming BP boss Bob Dudley has vowed his company will not abandon residents affected by the spill after the well is finally sealed.
BP hopes to drown the well in an operation dubbed a ‘static kill’ in which mud and cement will be injected down into the ruptured wellhead via a cap installed on July 15.
Dudley said on Friday the operation had been pushed back a day, saying ‘we are hopeful by Tuesday the static kill will have been performed’.
The U.S. pointman on the crisis, Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, said on Friday the delay was needed to allow engineers to clear debris from the damaged wellhead caused by Tropical Storm Bonnie, which briefly halted spill operations.
But BP senior vice president Kent Wells said the company was confident the static kill would proceed successfully.
A cap in place for two weeks has shown no sign of leaks, ‘giving us more confidence that this well has integrity’, which is a positive sign for the operation, Wells said at a technical briefing on Friday.
Wells said BP hopes the static kill will be able to overcome the flow of oil, but that a second sealing method – via an intercept through a relief well – will go ahead afterwards regardless.
BP said the relief well is likely to intersect the existing well deep below the ocean floor within eight to 10 days, allowing the second sealing process – a bottom kill – by the end of August.
Making his first trip to the region since being named to replace outgoing BP CEO Tony Hayward, Dudley said on Friday the firm’s focus will shift to long-term recovery for the region now the spill is being contained.
‘We’ve had some good news on the oil… but that doesn’t mean we’re done,’ Dudley told reporters in Mississippi, one of the five states hit by the massive oil spill.
‘We’ll be here for years,’ he said, as BP announced a $100 million charitable fund to aid unemployed rig workers who are experiencing economic hardship due to the US government’s ongoing moratorium on deepwater drilling.
Dudley will take over as BP’s chief executive on October 1, when Hayward, who was widely criticised for his handling of the crisis, hands over the reins.
With the focus now moving towards mitigating the long-term impact of the worst-ever US oil spill, Dudley said there will be signs that the operation is changing. Miles of protective boom will be withdrawn from coastlines, and fewer clean-up crews in hazmat suits will be seen on beaches as oil stops washing ashore.
‘So you’ll probably see that kind of a pullback. But commitment, absolutely no pullback,’ he pledged.
It remains unknown just how much oil has spilled into the Gulf since the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank in April, killing 11 workers. Best estimates put the amount at between three and 5.3 million barrels.
Allen said a team of experts is carrying out an ‘oil budget’ to calculate how much was released, how much was captured and how much has evaporated, adding he hopes the report will be released in the coming days.
‘It’s something we ultimately need to know,’ Allen said.
In another encouraging sign, the NOAA said southern Florida and the U.S. eastern seaboard is not likely to experience any effects from the remaining surface oil, as had been feared, as the ‘oil continues to degrade and is hundreds of miles away from the loop current’.
With the leak capped, ‘the light sheen remaining on the Gulf’s surface will continue to biodegrade and disperse but will not travel far’, said Jane Lubchenco, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief. • Latest News & Headlines » Home «
NEWS Gulf oil clean-up resuming after storm Saturday, July 24, 2010
•••A drill rig working on a relief well is returning to the site of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill after an oncoming storm system weakened, a BP spokesman says.
‘The Development Driller 3 is on its way back,’ BP spokesman Bryan Ferguson said on Saturday. ‘It’s the one that’s drilling the first relief well and its the most critical one and it is turned around and is headed back right now.’
Officials are eager to return to work on operations that should finally seal the leaking well, months after the April 20 explosion aboard BP-leased Deepwater Horizon oil platform, which killed 11 workers and sunk the rig.
The DD3 drill rig was disconnected from the spill site ahead of Tropical Storm Bonnie, which has now weakened to a tropical depression.
‘The assessment was made that the storm intensity has decreased,’ Ferguson said. ‘So the decision was made overnight to return the DD3.’
The DD3 rig is drilling the first of two relief wells that will be used to definitively plug the devastating spill.
Locals and officials had feared that evacuating crews ahead of bad weather associated with the storm system could set back operations to finally seal off the well by up to 12 days. But on Saturday morning, several ships, including some operating underwater surveillance robots, remained at the spill site.
Ferguson said it would take around 21 hours for the drill rig to reconnect to drilling operations some 5000 feet beneath the sea surface, after which a decision would be made on whether to restart drilling.
BP and U.S. officials currently plan two operations to kill the well.
The first, a ‘static kill,’ involves pumping heavy drilling fluids known as mud through the blowout preventer valve system that sits on top of the well, and then injecting cement to seal it.
The process is similar to the ‘top kill’ attempt that failed, but official say a cap placed over the leak that has sealed in the flow of oil since last Thursday will made the operation easier and more likely to succeed.
However, officials have always said the ultimate solution to the leak will be via a relief well, which will intersect the original well.
Using the same process as the static kill, drilling fluid, which is denser than oil, will then be pumped via the relief well until the flow of crude is overcome and the well and be sealed with cement. • Latest News & Headlines » Home «
NEWS Storm puts Gulf spill work on hold BP Oil Spill: Ships Head to Shore as Bonnie Barrels Toward Spill Site Friday, July 23, 2010
•••A tropical storm barrelling towards the Gulf of Mexico oil spill site has forced crews to suspend operations and halt work to permanently plug the BP well.
Admiral Thad Allen, the U.S. official overseeing the spill response, said crews aboard two drilling rigs and a container ship were drawing up thousands of metres of pipes from beneath the sea, while non-essential personnel were being evacuated as Tropical Storm Bonnie took aim at the area.
Officials said a cap that has kept oil from escaping the well since Thursday last week would stay in place, after a week of tests suggested pressure would not force oil out through new leaks.
With Bonnie expected to hit the area on Saturday, Allen said the evacuation would set back efforts to finally ‘kill’ the leaking well by up to 12 days.
But with the safety of workers at the well site a top concern, Allen said the weather had forced crews to collect boom and return ships to shore and some of the 2,000-strong crew responding to the spill headed back to land.
‘The intention right now is to put the vessels in a safe place so they can return as quickly as possible to resume their operations,’ he told reporters. He said officials estimated ‘if we abandon the scene, it would be 48 hours before we would be back on’.
The oncoming storm has forced a halt to the process of concreting the casing on the first of two relief wells.
Once concrete can be placed and set, a process expected to take up to a week, officials hope to perform a ‘static kill’ to plug the well by injecting heavy drilling mud and cement through the cap at the top.
The final operation to cement the reservoir through a relief well would be expected five to seven days after that.
First Lady Michelle Obama, visiting Pascagoula, Mississippi, promised the U.S. government would not forget those affected.
‘This isn’t over yet. And this administration is going to stand with the people of the Gulf until folks are made whole again,’ she said.
Officials ordered crews to begin preparing for Bonnie on Thursday, after forecasters said the system would affect Florida’s Gulf Coast and parts of Louisiana. Bonnie struck south Florida on Friday. Allen said the storm might be mild enough to allow some vessels on remain at the site of the ruptured well.
‘The seismic survey vessels, the acoustic vessels and the vessels operating the ROV’s (underwater robots) will stay as long as possible, and if conditions allow it they will remain through the passage of the storm,’ he said.
But if the ships are forced to depart, engineers will have no real-time information about the state of the wellbore below the sealing cap.
Hydrophones will take recordings, but Allen said the information could be analysed only after the fact.
‘Our only real-time feedback will be aerial surveillance and satellite imagery,’ he said.
Oil has washed up on the shores of all five U.S. states in the Gulf of Mexico since the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig sank on April 22, two days after an explosion that killed 11 workers.
Separately, a former rig worker told federal investigators an alarm that should have alerted Deepwater Horizon workers to a deadly build-up of gas had been muted months before the April 20 blast.
The system, which uses lights and alarms to warn of fire or high-levels of toxic or explosive gases, had been ‘inhibited’, Mike Williams, the chief electronics technician on the rig, told a hearing looking into the disaster. • Latest News & Headlines » Home «
NEWS Engineers detect seepage near BP oil well Monday, July 19, 2010
•••The U.S. government has raised concern over seepage near the Gulf of Mexico oil well but stopped short of asking BP to remove the cap which has halted the gushing crude for the first time since April.
BP had earlier acknowledged some bubbles appeared near the wellhead but expressed optimism that the cap could stay on, saying tests were ‘encouraging’ after three days and that a final solution was in sight.
But tensions emerged as the government’s pointman on the worst environmental disaster in US history ordered the energy giant to report swiftly on a ‘detected seep’ and ‘anomalies’ near the well head as experts monitored the seabed for cracks.
‘Given the current observations from the test, including the detected seep a distance from the well and undetermined anomalies at the well head, monitoring of the seabed is of paramount importance during the test period,’ Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen said in a letter to BP chief managing director Bob Dudley. Allen ordered BP to report to the government in no more than four hours when seeps are detected, and said BP must lay out its next steps in writing for ‘opening the choke valve as quickly as possible without damaging the well should hydrocarbon seepage near the well head be confirmed’.
Hydrocarbons occur naturally in crude oil, and their detection could mean that oil is seeping out from the area around the well, which began gushing oil after BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 20 and capsized two days later, killing 11 workers.
Speaking to reporters earlier in the day, BP’s chief operating officer Doug Suttles said pressure was rising slowly in the well, as expected, and touted ‘encouraging signs’ that would allow the newly placed cap to remain on the well until a permanent ‘kill’ operation takes place in August.
‘In two different locations we’ve seen a few bubbles. This is not uncommon but clearly it’s important that we check everything very closely so we’re monitoring that,’ Suttles said. The U.S. government was granting extensions to exhaustive well tests on a 24-hour basis, while BP said the valves on the containment cap that is staunching the flow would remain shut as long as no leaks are discovered.
‘Clearly we don’t want to reinitiate flow into the Gulf if we don’t have to,’ said Suttles.
Three days of respite from the unsettling images of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico raised hopes among residents that this could mark the beginning of the end of what estimates suggest is the biggest oil spill ever.
The start of the two-week operation to plug the well permanently by pumping in heavy drilling fluids and then cement is now less than two weeks away as engineers have only 98 feet left vertically to drill.
Gulf residents, who have seen the relentless flow of crude tarnish their shorelines and cripple the local economy, reacted cautiously to news that the cap was holding back the crude, wary of being given false hope after weeks of botched BP operations.
‘I don’t know if it’s going help. It’s still a short-term fix,’ New Orleans resident and medical researcher Ashok Pullikuth told AFP. ‘The permanent fix is the relief wells. This cap has saved a month’s worth of spill damage.’ • Latest News & Headlines » Home «
NEWS BP confirms placing new cap over oil leak in Gulf of Mexico Tuesday, July 13, 2010
•••BP has confirmed it has successfully placed a new cap over the Gulf of Mexico oil leak, hoping the giant valve will seal the well or contain all the gushing crude.
BP officials said on Monday evening the cap was mounted on the well after two days of preparing the site and a day of slowly lowering it into place. The company plans to run tests, starting on Tuesday, to see if the cap can withstand pressure.
‘It is expected, although cannot be assured, that no oil will be released to the ocean for the duration of the test,’ the oil giant said in a statement, adding however that it would not indicate if the flow had permanently stopped. The old cap, removed on Saturday, did not have a tight fit and allowed crude to escape.
The new cap will enable BP to capture all the oil and funnel it up to ships.
BP is drilling two relief wells so it can pump mud and cement into the leaking well for a permanent fix. • Latest News & Headlines » Home «
NEWS Oil spill hopes raise with BP’s latest effort to fix it Monday, July 12, 2010
•••BP reported good progress on its high-stakes effort to fully contain the Gulf of Mexico oil leak by fixing a tighter cap over the giant gusher.
Operations have reached a critical phase as engineers race to take advantage of a stretch of fine weather in the midst of the Atlantic hurricane season to install a new system with the potential to capture all the leaking crude.
Expected to take between four and seven days, the round-the-clock work began at midday on Saturday when the old, less efficient cap was ripped off a fractured pipe 1.6km down on the sea floor by robotic submarines.
‘We are pleased with our progress,’ BP Vice President Kent Wells told journalists almost 24 hours in. ‘We have carefully planned and practised this whole procedure. We’ve tried to work out as many of the bugs as we can.’
Sunday’s operations saw a transition spool being lowered into place which must be bolted onto the leaking pipe before a gigantic funnel – weighing 68 tonnes and dubbed the ‘Top Hat 10’ – can be installed.
The old ‘Top Hat’ system collected roughly 25,000 barrels of crude every day, but estimates suggest that could be less than half the leak.
BP says the new cap and the deployment of a third containment ship called the Helix Producer will raise the system’s capacity to between 60,000 and 80,000 barrels a day, enough to capture all the leaking oil.
The new system has also been designed so it can be disconnected and reconnected more easily in the case of a hurricane and has a built-in device that should give the first precise estimate of the overall flow. No permanent solution is expected until mid-August at the earliest when the first of two relief wells is due to be completed – allowing drilling fluids to be injected into the well, which would then be sealed with cement.
The decision to remove the old cap and allow most of the oil to pour unchecked into the sea was approved by Admiral Thad Allen, the former Coast Guard chief leading the US government’s response to the disaster.
Although the removal of the cap forced the suspension of the main containment operation, a separate siphoning system is taking a smaller proportion of the oil to be flared off on a surface vessel.
Wells said two more ships would join a fleet of 46 skimming vessels scooping up oil off the sea and said 15 controlled burns of the surface crude had been carried out on Saturday.
Oil has washed up on beaches in all five Gulf states – Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida – forcing fishing grounds to be closed and threatening scores of coastal communities with financial ruin.
The man charged with doling out compensation to victims of the spill said he could not estimate whether the initial $20 billion fund set up by BP would be enough to pay compensation claims.
‘If they are eligible, we will give them up to six months emergency (compensation),’ Kenneth Feinberg told CNN, adding: ‘I can’t help people if they don’t file.’
Many fishermen and others who work in the Gulf get paid in cash and do not have paperwork to back up their claims. Some are also worried that if they ask for compensation, the government will seek taxes for previous income. While the containment effort and the claims process continued apace, the attorney general said the Justice Department was also still considering whether to bring criminal charges against the culprit or culprits.
‘The investigation is ongoing. We are in the process of accumulating documents, talking to witnesses on both the criminal side and the civil side,’ Eric Holder told CBS’s Face the Nation program.
Holder was quick to stress that when he announced the probe on June 1, he had been careful not to mention BP by name as it was not the only party involved with the Deepwater Horizon rig.
At congressional hearings back in May, BP, rig owner Transocean and oil services provider Halliburton blamed each other for the spill as executives from all three oil titans were grilled by U.S. lawmakers.
The man charged with doling out BP’s compensation to victims of the Gulf oil spill said on Sunday he is prepared to pay up to six months of expenses in advance, but getting people to file claims is a struggle.
Kenneth Feinberg told CNN he wanted to provide ‘some degree of financial certainty’, to people who have found their livelihoods hurt by the massive oil spill. ‘If they are eligible, we will give them up to six months emergency (compensation).’
But, he lamented, ‘I can’t help people if they don’t file.’
Many of the fishermen and others who work in the Gulf region regularly get paid in cash and do not have paperwork to back up their claims of lost income. They are also worried that if they ask for compensation, the government will seek taxes for previous income.
The BP-leased rig exploded on April 20 killing 11 workers. It sank two days later, unleashing the nation’s worst ever environmental disaster. • Latest News & Headlines » Home «
NEWS Solar Impulse HB-SIA has taken off for its first night flight Wednesday, July 7, 2010
•••An experimental solar-powered aircraft took off from a Swiss airbase in the early hours of Wednesday in a bid to make history by flying round the clock and through the night.
Solar Impulse whirred along the runway at Payerne in western Switzerland, reaching 22 mph as lone pilot Andre Borschberg gently lifted into clear skies at 06:51 am (12:51 am EDT) on a scheduled 25-hour flight.
‘This should be a great day if all goes well,’ said team chief Bertrand Piccard, who made the first non-stop round-the-world flight in a balloon more than a decade ago.
‘It’s clear that this is something that is completely different at least for aviation, but it’s also something completely different to what has existed in our society,’ he added moments before take-off.
‘The goal is to take to the air with no fuel. The goal is to show that we can be much more independent from fossil energy than people usually think.’
The ground control crew were due to decide about 13 hours later, shortly before dusk, whether Borschberg should press on through darkness.
The go-ahead will depend on the sun’s ability to charge up Solar Impulse’s batteries in the daytime and the threat of strong high altitude winds, joint flight control chief and former astronaut Claude Nicollier said.
‘We’re confident the plane can do it,’ he added.
The round-the-clock flight by the prototype built last year is the first major hurdle for the project since it started seven years ago, with the aim of flying around the world by 2013 or 2014.
A first attempt was called off an hour before scheduled take-off last Thursday after an electronic component failed, but it was replaced within days.
The single seater shaped like a giant dragonfly is clad with solar panels across a wingspan the size of an Airbus A340 airliner. But the high tech craft is powered by just four small electric motors – as the crew put it, the ‘power of a scooter’ – and weighs little more than a saloon car, saving even on an automatic pilot.
Borschberg, a former fighter jet pilot, has to stay alert for the whole flight with the help of a space mission-like ground control team.
Solar Impulse has completed at least 10 test flights since it first hopped along a runway seven months ago, staying aloft for up to 14 hours in the long summer daylight hours.
But the ultimate test will be to fly on through darkness and land back at Payerne shortly after dawn on Thursday having been fuelled by nothing but the sun’s rays.
The pioneering bid is being monitored by the international aeronautical federation (FIA), which oversees aviation records. • Latest News & Headlines » Home « • Source(s): Solar Impulse
NEWS Oil comes ashore in Texas as BP dismisses money fears Wednesday, July 7, 2010
•••Clean-up efforts in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill extended Tuesday to Texas and Lake Pontchartrain, Louisiana, as BP dismissed reports of deeper financial woes.
Officials said crews collected tar balls and waste from Lake Pontchartrain, the vast estuary near New Orleans, as rough weather continued to hamper the containment and skimming effort near the spill site in the Gulf.
U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen said the huge spill was now threatening all the states along the Gulf coast from Florida to Texas and that rough seas since the passage of Hurricane Alex had hurt the effort.
The first Atlantic hurricane of the year passed through the Gulf of Mexico last week without too much alarm for the oil containment efforts, but Allen said two nearby storm systems were being closely watched.
‘We’re watching very, very closely the swells and waves that might be generated by this current storm system,’ he said.
‘Sometime in the seven to 10 days we’ll look for a window of opportunity to put the containment cap on at the same time we will go on and continue with the drilling of the relief well.’ A BP spokeswoman in London denied the firm was planning to sell new stock to a strategic investor to raise money, amid reports the British government is working on a crisis plan if the company is sunk by the disaster.
‘We are not issuing any new equity,’ she said. ‘We welcome new shareholders to come onto the shareholder register and we welcome existing shareholders who want to take a bigger amount of shares.’
The Times newspaper in London reported that officials at the Department of Business and the Treasury were already considering contingencies for BP’s potential collapse.
‘It is not clear how bad this will get, but the government needs to be prepared for any eventuality,’ an anonymous source said to be familiar with the talks was quoted as saying.
BP has forked out some $3.12 billion in spill-related costs and has promised to pay another $20 billion into an escrow fund to compensate Americans affected by the spill.
The BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig sank on April 22, two days after an explosion that killed 11 workers, unleashing the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history. On Sunday, tar balls from the spill arrived on beaches in Texas, more than 310 miles away, though it was unclear how the crude got there.
Tests showed they did come from the BP Deepwater Horizon well but scientists and officials were working to determine if they arrived in Texas by currents or via ships operating in the vicinity of the well head.
The tar balls in Lake Pontchartrain were also being tested.
Some 492 miles of Gulf Coast shoreline has been oiled, and fishing ground closures and tourist cancellations threaten financial ruin for residents who have reacted angrily to BP’s failure to cap the spill.
Up to 60,000 barrels of oil a day is believed to be leaking into the Gulf of Mexico, far outpacing the collection efforts of a system that is capturing around 25,000 barrels a day.
Officials hope to more than double that capacity to some 53,000 barrels a day by hooking up a third containment vessel, the Helix Producer, to the system that captures and siphons away the crude.
‘There is a partial hookup right now and they can sustain that unless they have really severe sea states,’ said Allen, the U.S. official coordinating the spill response.
‘We won’t know for several hours whether they’re able to do it. It currently is a work in progress.’ Officials were also testing a mega-tanker, A Whale, which could boost efforts to skim spilled crude from the sea surface.
The ship is believed to be able to suck up to 500,000 barrels of oily water a day through its ‘jaws’, a series of vents on the side of the ship.
By comparison, more than 500 smaller vessels in 10 weeks have only managed to collect some 31.3 million gallons of oil-water mix between them and high waves forced most of the boats to halt operations on Tuesday.
It will likely be mid-August at the earliest before the ruptured well is permanently capped by injecting mud and cement with the aid of relief wells.
The high end of the oil leak estimates means it has now surpassed the 1979 Ixtoc blowout, which took nine months to cap and dumped an estimated 3.3 million barrels into the Gulf of Mexico.
It is topped only by the deliberate release of six to eight million barrels of crude by Iraqi troops who destroyed tankers and oil terminals and set wells ablaze in Kuwait during the 1991 Gulf War. • Latest News & Headlines » Home «
NEWS Europe’s ‘Big Bang’ probe sends back first image of cosmos Tuesday, July 6, 2010
•••A space telescope designed to peer into the enigma of the ‘Big Bang’ has served up its first overall image of the cosmos, the European Space Agency says.
The picture ‘is an extraordinary treasure chest of new data for astronomers,’ ESA declared on Monday.
The image was painstakingly built up, slice by slice, by a $875 million (700 million euros) telescope, Planck, which ESA put in orbit in May last year.
Planck is designed to look at radiation in the microwave part of the energy spectrum.
Microwave signatures point to the birth and death of stars and galaxies, as well as the embers of the ‘Big Bang’ which, according to theory, brought the Universe into existence 13.7 billion years ago.
This primeval energy, known as cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR), washes across the sky.
But in order to spot it in Planck’s first ‘all-sky’ image, scientists will have to filter out background noise from our own galaxy, the Milky Way, ESA said. ‘We are opening the door to an Eldorado where scientists can seek the nuggets that will lead to deeper understanding of how our Universe came to be and how it works now,’ said David Southwood, ESA’s director of science and robotic exploration.
‘The image itself and its remarkable quality is a tribute to the engineers who built and have operated Planck. Now the scientific harvest must begin.’
Named after the 20th century German physicist Max Planck who founded quantum theory, the mission is equipped with a 4.8 feet telescope that focuses radiation onto two arrays of microwave detectors, each cooled to almost absolute zero.
By the end of its mission in 2012, Planck should have completed four all-sky scans, ESA said. The data release of the CMBR – in essence a map of the Big Bang – is also scheduled for 2012. • Latest News & Headlines » Home « • Source(s): European Space Agency (ESA)
NEWS Rough seas halt U.S. spill clean-up as crews test mega-skimmer Sunday, July 4, 2010
•••Clean-up work resumed in some areas of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, but heavy swells kept many boats docked, halting efforts to fight the ecological disaster.
A Taiwanese mega-skimmer dubbed the ‘A Whale’ was in position near the site of the leak and set to undergo 48 hours of ‘proof of concept’ testing, Coast Guard spokeswoman Ayla Kelley said. The 903 feet long tanker can vacuum up 21 million gallons of oily water a day, separating oil from water and spitting the seawater back out.
Small skimming boats that have been patrolling the Gulf for the past 10 weeks have only collected 28.2 million gallons of oily water to date, and rough weather made seas off Louisiana too choppy for them to even go out on Saturday.
Coast Guard Petty Officer Kelly Parker at a Houma, Louisiana information centre said crews were resetting protective booms along fragile coastal areas, but skimming and controlled burns of spilled crude had been halted.
However, around the Chandeleur Islands, a chain of uninhabited barrier islands and wildlife refuge at Louisiana’s easternmost point, boom and skimming operations resumed on Friday, said a representative of Admiral Thad Allen, the top official overseeing the spill response.
‘These are the most environmentally sensitive areas. The good news is that we saw only light oil and there were hundreds of boats working in the area resetting boom and skimming,’ rear admiral Paul Zunkunft told reporters after he flew over the islands.
‘The areas are critical to defend because they are home to turtles, shrimp and other wildlife,’ Zukunft said. Despite containment efforts, he warned: ‘We are not out of the woods yet.’
An estimated 35,000 to 60,000 barrels of oil per day has gushed from the ruptured well since the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon drilling rig sank on April 22, some 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana.
A containment system has captured about 557,000 barrels of oil, but rough seas delayed the deployment of a third vessel that could boost capacity from 25,000 barrels to 53,000 barrels a day.
That means an estimated 1.9 to 3.6 million barrels – or 79.5 to 153 million gallons – of oil has now gushed into the Gulf.
Using the high end of that estimate, the spill has now surpassed the 1979 Ixtoc blowout, which took nine months to cap and dumped an estimated 3.3 million barrels (140,000 million gallons) into the Gulf of Mexico.
It is topped only by the deliberate release of six to eight million barrels of crude by Iraqi troops who destroyed tankers and oil terminals and set wells ablaze in Kuwait during the 1991 Gulf War. And it will likely be mid-August at the earliest before the Gulf well is permanently capped by injecting mud and cement with the aid of relief wells. Skimmers had been collecting about 12,000 barrels of oil a day before they were sent back to port after Hurricane Alex whipped up waves earlier this week, while about 8,000 barrels of oil was being burned off the surface. But the spill has so far oiled at least 450 miles of U.S. shorelines, 74 days into the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.
Admiral Allen said he hoped to have the third containment vessel, the Helix Producer, in place by Wednesday.
Once the Producer is working, officials will also have a better sense of just how much crude is leaking, ‘just by the visual evidence of how much oil is actually coming out around that cap’, Allen said.
They will then have to decide if the existing system should stay in place, or if it would be best to undergo a risky procedure to replace the cap with another system capable of capturing up to 80,000 barrels of oil a day.
‘The decision window associated with that would be sometime in the next, I would say, seven to 10 days,’ Allen said in a conference call on Friday.
In addition to boosting capacity, the new system would also greatly reduce the amount of time oil could gush freely into the sea if crews had to evacuate due to a bad storm.
Meanwhile, Environmental Protection Agency chief Lisa Jackson was headed to Pensacola, Florida to oversee coastal clean-up operations in the state, where tourist draws Miami and the Florida Keys face the likelihood of fouled beaches. • Latest News & Headlines » Home «
NEWS Hurricane Alex threatens Mexico, Texas coasts Wednesday, June 30, 2010
•••U.S. President Barack Obama has declared a state of emergency in Texas as Alex strengthened into a hurricane, disrupting oil cleanup in the Gulf of Mexico.
Obama’s move allows the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to co-ordinate all disaster relief efforts, a White House statement says.
It came as Alex forced the suspension of oil skimming operations from the disastrous BP spill as visiting Vice President Joe Biden heard complaints about the pace of cleanup efforts in the disaster zone.
Ten weeks after the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon platform exploded, setting off the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, Biden was given an earful from Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal about the slow response.
Some 413 miles of once-pristine shorelines have been oiled, as well as countless birds and other wildlife, since the rig sank on April 22.
Since then crude has gushed at an alarming rate into the Gulf of Mexico, leaving the region’s vital fishing and tourism industries in tatters. Meanwhile, the State Department announced that the United States will accept offers from 12 foreign countries to help clean up and contain the spill.
Offers of booms have been accepted from Canada, Japan, Mexico and Norway; skimmers have been accepted from France, Japan, Mexico and Norway; and a sweeping arm system has been accepted from the Netherlands, a spokeswoman told AFP.
On his trip to the region, Biden was greeted by protesters holding signs reading ‘oil kills’ as he entered a command centre in New Orleans for an hour-long briefing before meeting with local fishermen.
He also travelled to the Florida panhandle, where the slick has forced authorities to close down some of the area’s fabled white sand beaches.
Jindal, a Republican who has been highly critical of the federal response, asked Biden for help cutting through red tape and deploying more resources to keep the oil from coating fragile coastal wetlands and fishing grounds.
‘The federal government needs to increase their sense of urgency,’ Jindal said in a statement after meeting with Biden.
‘They need to treat this spill like a war and get in it to win it. We’re here to defend our way of life.’
At the leak site 50 miles offshore, winds of up to 22 knots churned up large waves that made it too rough for crews to deploy a third vessel set to nearly double the capacity of BP’s containment system.
The now-delayed Helix Producer was set to increase the capacity to gather the gushing oil to between 40,000 and 50,000 barrels per day by early July, from the current 25,000 barrels. The current containment system is capturing nearly 25,000 of the estimated 30,000 to 60,000 barrels of crude spewing out of the ruptured well every day.
That could all end up gushing directly into the sea if Alex – which is forecast to pass hundreds of kilometres from the site and strike land near the Texas-Mexico border late on Wednesday – changes path and threatens a more direct hit on the slick.
Forecasters are not predicting such a dramatic shift. But U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, who is overseeing the spill response, said that even the threat of gale force winds – upward of 45 mph – would be enough to force drilling and containment ships to withdraw.
Alex’s winds late on Tuesday had reached 75 mph, with higher gusts, and the storm was expected to strengthen before making landfall on Wednesday night, the National Hurricane Centre said.
Hurricane force winds extend outward only about 30km from the centre but tropical storm force winds extend up to 174 miles, according to the NHC.
In the event of an evacuation, operations will be shut down for about two weeks to ‘take down the equipment, move it off to a safe place, bring it back and re-establish drilling’, Allen said.
That would be another major setback for the ill-fated oil collection effort, and would probably delay until September the completion of relief wells designed to permanently plug the well.
An estimated 1.6 million to 3.6 million barrels of oil have already poured into the Gulf from the ruptured wellhead some 1 mile below the surface.
BP hopes a new mooring system will make the containment cap deep down on the sea floor easier to disconnect and reconnect in the case of bad weather – a vital contingency as hurricane season gets into full swing.
The rough seas have already shifted parts of the slick closer to sensitive areas in Florida and Louisiana and could also push the oil deeper into fragile coastal wetlands.
Waves at the site of the sunken BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig were up to two metres, a Coast Guard spokesman told AFP. • Latest News & Headlines » Home « • Source(s): NOAA / National Weather Service (NWS)
NEWS Tropical Storm Alex Heads Towards Gulf of Mexico Sunday, June 27, 2010
•••Tropical Storm Alex headed toward the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday, but while it was not expected to hit the oil spill area, experts warned strong waves and winds could hamper clean-up efforts there.
With oil continually gushing into the fragile waters for the past 68 days, President Barack Obama’s pointsman on the disaster cautioned that volatile weather conditions could set back oil recovery operations for up to two weeks.
Meanwhile, Alex moved over Belize, dumping heavy rains over the Yucatan Peninsula before moving back into the Gulf after the weekend, meaning BP can continue its process without disruption, for now.
‘The storm is not an issue for the spill,’ said National Hurricane Center spokesman Dennis Feltgen.
Feltgen said forecasters did not expect Alex to head into the northeast Gulf, where the spill is located, ‘but that doesn’t mean there won’t be some wave impact.’
The storm, which packed sustained winds of 60 mph, entered Belize late on Saturday just 19 miles northwest of Belize City, dumping heavy rain on the affected area.
It was expected to weaken as it moved over Yucatan, but regain some punch as it moves over the Gulf of Mexico on Monday.
‘We are very pleased that there is no weather impact right now,’ BP spokesman Ron Rybarczyk told AFP on Saturday.
But while the latest forecasts had BP breathing a sigh of relief, Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen sounded the alarm about the potential for a devastating impact to efforts to contain and siphon off the oil.
‘The weather is unpredictable, and we could have a sudden last-minute change,’ said Allen, telling reporters that oil recovery operations would have to be suspended for two weeks if Alex, the first named storm of the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season, were to hit the area. Such a stoppage would exacerbate the spill that has defiled the Gulf Coast’s once pristine shorelines, killed wildlife and put a big dent in the region’s multi-billion-dollar fishing industry.
It would also mean the estimated 30,000 to 65,000 barrels of oil gushing from a ruptured wellhead down on the seafloor would be billowing crude and gas unchecked for days.
An estimated 1.9 to 3.5 million barrels have poured into the Gulf since the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20.
Allen said vessels currently recuperating some of the oil and gas would need up to 120 hours to evacuate the site if weather conditions were deemed dire enough.
‘If we get an indication that we have a chance for gale-force winds 120 hours before, we’ll make the decision,’ he added before noting that ‘right now, we haven’t met that threshold.’ BP said it recovered 24,550 barrels of oil on Friday, a 3.5 percent increase from its Thursday total, and collected approximately 413,000 barrels since May.
Still, hundreds of demonstrators came to Manatee County Florida beaches on Saturday to protest offshore oil drilling and support clean energy strategies advocated by President Obama.
About 350 people formed a human chain at Manatee Public Beach, according to local officials.
‘We grew up coming to these beaches, and we want to make sure future generations – like my daughter, here – have a place like this to come to,’ said local resident Joshua Spaid.
BP’s shares meanwhile plummeted to a 13-year low in London trading after BP ramped up the costs of the spill so far to $2.35 billion. The company’s share values have been cut by more than half since the disaster that killed 11 workers and unleashed the worst oil spill in US history. The British energy giant said its plans to drill through 2.5 miles of rock were on track. No permanent solution to the spill is expected before the relief wells are due to be completed in August.
Heavy drilling fluids would then be pumped into the existing well to drown the oil flow, allowing it to be plugged for good with cement.
Vice President Joe Biden heads to the region on Tuesday and is due to visit the New Orleans-based National Incident Command Centre before travelling to the Florida panhandle.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Carol Browner, who heads the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, will also visit.
In Toronto, Canada, Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron held their first face-to-face talks ahead of a G20 leaders’ summit and agreed BP should ‘remain a strong and stable company,’ Downing Street said. • Latest News & Headlines » Home « • Source(s): NOAA / National Weather Service (NWS)
NEWS After Earlier Troubles, BP Says It Restored Cap Thursday, June 24, 2010
•••BP on Wednesday reinstalled an oil containment system sucking up crude from a ruptured pipe in the Gulf of Mexico, which had been removed following a collision with a robotic submarine.
The oil cap ‘was successfully reinstalled on the Deepwater Horizon’s failed blow-out preventer’ at 6.30 pm Wednesday, BP said in a statement, adding that ‘the system resumed collecting oil and gas’ a half hour later.
Oil spewed unhindered into the Gulf of Mexico when BP detached the “top hat” cap, which traps leaking oil and then siphons it up to a container ship, and made repairs after a remote-controlled submarine crashed into it.
The setback marked a terrible start for American Bob Dudley in his first day as BP’s disaster coordinator, brought in by the firm to replace gaffe-prone British CEO Tony Hayward.
Admiral Thad Allen, leading the U.S. government effort to confront the nation’s worst ever environmental disaster, said earlier the cap had been removed for inspection after crews detected gas.
“Out of an abundance of caution … they moved the containment cap with the riser pipe and moved away so they can assess the condition,” Allen told reporters earlier on Wednesday, before the cap was reattached.
“They indicated the problem was a remotely-operated vehicle had bumped into one of the vents,” Allen said, adding that the vent had then closed, creating pressure that had forced up gas and other materials.
The cap is siphoning away some 25,000 barrels of oil each day, and keeping it off would have exacerbated the dire effects of the massive leak that has allowed between 35,000 and 60,000 barrels of crude to gush into the sea, according to the latest U.S. government estimates.
Completing a disastrous start for Dudley, Allen said two people involved in the clean-up efforts had been reported dead in separate incidents. One was killed in what he described as “an accident regarding a swimming pool,” and the second individual died of a likely self-inflicted gunshot to the head, according to the local Alabama coroner who treated the body.
Dudley assumes command from Hayward, who faced massive criticism of his handling of the spill, including accusations of insensitivity, and was ridiculed as out of touch.
Unlike Hayward, Dudley is an American citizen who spent much of his childhood in Mississippi, one of the four southern U.S. states whose coastlines face an environmental catastrophe.
The news came as administration officials pledged to redouble efforts to freeze new deepwater oil drilling while they assessed safety regulations.
On Tuesday, Judge Martin Feldman overturned a drilling moratorium authorised by President Barack Obama in the spill’s aftermath, saying it was ‘arbitrary and capricious’.
But the White House pledged to appeal the decision and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told lawmakers at a hearing on Wednesday that he would soon issue a new order to ensure the freeze sticks.
“We will move forward with the executive authority which I have to make sure that the moratorium stays in place,” Salazar said.
The Obama administration believes the decision flies in the face of mounting evidence that there are serious safety risks with the 33 deepwater wells in question.
But oil workers and executives argue the freeze is driving away business, and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, a Republican, said the moratorium hurt the same people already being negatively impacted by the spill.
An internal BP document released by a U.S. lawmaker this week showed the firm contemplated a worst-case scenario of up to 100,000 barrels, or 4.2 million gallons, a day leaking.
America’s worst previous oil spill, the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, dumped nearly 11 million gallons off the Alaskan coast, but even under the low end of current estimates, more than 90 million gallons have entered the Gulf.
BP has spent $2 billion so far on cleaning up the spill and compensating residents and businesses facing ruin. • Latest News & Headlines » Home «
NEWS Egypt oil spill threatens marine life Sunday, June 20, 2010
•••An oil spill off the Egyptian Red Sea coast of Hurghada threatening to damage marine life in the area has prompted environmental agencies to demand tighter regulation of offshore oil platforms.
Large quantities of oil have appeared in recent days around the resorts of Hurghada, which draw millions of tourists who come to dive or snorkle, according to the Hurghada Environmental Protection and Conservation Agency (HEPCA).
‘It started four or five days ago and the companies responsible didn’t notify anyone. It is catastrophic,’ HEPCA managing director Amr Ali said.
The spill was caused by leakage from an offshore oil platform north of Hurghada and has polluted protected areas and showed up on tourist beach resorts.
‘The companies have said they will pay damages, but it is the environmental damage that we are concerned about,’ Ali said, declining to name the companies for legal reasons.
‘We will take all measures, including legal, to make sure this does not happen again,’ he said.
HEPCA’s warning comes amid ongoing efforts to contain the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico which has damaged fragile ecosystems along the U.S. south coast and halted the region’s multibillion-dollar fishing industry.
HEPCA, a non-governmental organisation based in Hurghada, has been working for the protection of natural resources in the Red Sea.
Egypt’s environment and tourism ministries said the oil spill was contained and measures were being taken to ‘deal with the pollution caused by the spill’, the official MENA news agency reported.
Authorities protective of the lucrative tourism industry were eager to resolve the matter quickly. Environment Minister Maged George and Petroleum Minister Sameh Fahmy visited the area of the spill on Saturday, but HEPCA said it was too little too late.
‘Visits won’t help. We would like to see a clearer plan of action on the ground,’ Ali said.
‘We would also like to see more stringent standards imposed on these offshore platforms to ensure natural areas are protected,’ he said. • Latest News & Headlines » Home « • Source(s): Middle East News Agency (MENA) • The Middle East News Agency was established on 15 December 1955. MENA is now one of strongest regional news agencies and the biggest Arab and African agency as it rated 11th on the list of international news agencies (according to UNESCO’s report).
NEWS Tornadoes Rip Through Minnesota, Killing 3 Friday, June 18, 2010
•••An emergency official says a third death has been confirmed in a series of tornadoes that tore through Minnesota.
Freeborn County’s Emergency Management Director Mark Roche says one person was killed at a farm in southern Minnesota when the tornadoes struck Thursday night.
Roche estimates that up to nine tornadoes churned along a 18- to 20-miles path in rural parts of the county.
He says the tornadoes damaged 40 to 60 farms, but spared communities.
An elderly woman was killed when a twister wiped out her home near Almora in Otter Tail County, in northwestern Minnesota.
Farther north, officials say a man was killed when a tornado destroyed a gas station. • Latest News & Headlines » Home « • Source(s): National Weather Service
NEWS 5.7 earthquake rattles U.S. – Mexico border region Tuesday, June 15, 2010
•••An earthquake has rocked Southern California, shaking the Los Angeles area and forcing a halt to the Toronto Blue Jays-San Diego Padres baseball game in San Diego.
The U.S. Geological Survey says the magnitude-5.7 quake was 5 miles southeast of Ocotill, near the U.S. – Mexico border.
It struck on Monday at about 9:26 pm PDT.
The quake was initially reported as a magnitude-5.9 temblor.
It was felt as a gentle rolling motion in Los Angeles, Long Beach and Orange County.
San Diego’s Petco Park swayed during the earthquake, and the public address announcer asked that everyone at the ball game remain calm. The crowd cheered.
The Padres’ David Eckstein had just grounded out in the bottom of the inning when the stadium began shaking.
The next batter, Chase Headley, stayed out of the batter’s box for a few seconds, then stepped in.
San Diego Sheriff’s dispatch supervisor, Becky Strahm, said some of her colleagues reported things falling off their shelves, but there were no immediate reports of significant damage or injury.
The quake follows a series of temblors that struck Southern California over the weekend, including a pair of moderate earthquakes that rattled a desert area east of San Diego.
Residents in downtown San Diego could feel the ground rumbling during at least one of the Saturday quakes.
There are no immediate reports of damage or injuries from Monday night’s earthquake. • Latest News & Headlines » Home « • Source(s): USGS
NEWS Heavy Rains Bring Flooding in Oklahoma City Area Saturday, June 12, 2010
•••Flash floods hit Oklahoma City, the capital of U.S. state of Oklahoma on Monday, paralyzing the city and causing scattered power outages.
The city’s fire department estimated that there were 20 to 30 rescues of people trapped in cars, homes or businesses Monday morning, according to CNN.
TV footage showed people were trapped by floods, which officials described as “the worst” that the city has seen in some 25 years.
Evacuations are under way in some neighborhoods, said Mayor Mick Cornett.
A local electricity company said about 4,000 customers are out of power.
Portions of several highways in the city are closed, and authorities urged motorists to stay home.
Oklahoma City Police spokeswoman Kristy Yager said police are trying to manage stalled vehicles, barricade flooded streets and help people.
The floods are caused by heavy rains, officials said.
No injuries were immediately reported but drivers were being warned to stay off the roads, Oklahoma Police Lt. Gamille Hardin said. Portions of interstates 35, 44 and 235 were closed, as were numerous smaller thoroughfares in and out of the metro area.
Parts of northwest Oklahoma County have received more than 10 inches of rain since 03:00 am.
Commuters coming from Edmond are urged to avoid the Broadway Extension. Flooding has closed the highway near N.W. 50th Street.
Arcadia Lake is closed. The lake has now risen 10’4″ and is expected to continue to rise at a rapid rate. The Corp of Engineers is watching it closely and will take any necessary action. Edmond and Spring Creek parks are now closed. No new campers are being allowed in, but campers at Scissortail and Central State Park have been moved to higher ground.
A Red Cross Emergency Center has been set up at Will Rogers Elementary. • Latest News & Headlines » Home « • Source(s): KWTV News 9
••• A large oil slick reached beaches along the Atlantic Ocean in the Lakes Region in the north of the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro, local media reported early Monday.
Petrobras, as the oil producer is known, is assisting Brazil’s Navy with clean-up efforts, a spokesman, who declined to be named because of the Rio de Janeiro-based company’s policy, said today in a telephone interview. Petrobras did a flyover and wasn’t able to spot any oil slick, he said.
The leak in Rio comes after Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva strongly criticized the oil giant BP over the disaster caused by its well in the Gulf of Mexico. He said such a disaster would never happen in Brazil. According to Lula, the technology used by Brazil’s state-operated oil company Petrobras is superior to that which is used in the United States.
Despite containment efforts, he warned: ‘We are not out of the woods yet.’
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