NEWS Alabama Sues BP, Transocean, Halliburton over Gulf Oil Spill Alabama AG Sues BP, Transocean, Halliburton For “Catastrophic” Gulf Oil Spill Friday, August 13, 2010
•••The U.S. state of Alabama is suing BP and Transocean for damages sustained from the Gulf of Mexico oil leak.
‘We are making this claim because we believe BP has inflicted catastrophic harm,’ said the state’s attorney general, Troy King.
‘We are suing them for the amount it will take to make Alabama whole.’
Mr. King did not name a figure.
Sky’s U.S. correspondent Robert Nisbet said: ‘This is particularly interesting within the state of Alabama because the state’s governor (Bob Riley) disagrees with the attorney general’s course of action. He wants to wait to see what compensation BP offers first.’
King defended his decision, arguing that it put the state in the strongest legal position.
Nisbet added: ‘Some 300 federal lawsuits have already been filed against BP and other companies involved in this spill in over 12 states – so a huge amount of legal complication and difficulty now facing BP.’ Louisiana sustained the most damage to its coastline and waters from the oil spill that began in April and was plugged with cement on July 15.
But oil also damaged the economies of Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.
Alabama’s suit also names Anadarko Petroleum Corp, among others. ‘It is believed the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon was a blowout relating to the cementing work,’ according to the suit.
On the leak itself, meanwhile, National Incident Commander Thad Allen says they are still deciding when to resume work on the relief well.
Ambient pressure tests on the temporary, ‘static kill’, solution had been completed, he said, and those results suggest pressure is being maintained – although there is minor leakage from the flange.
However, they are concerned that proceeding with the ‘bottom kill’, the final cement plug using the relief well, could disrupt what they have done already and create increased pressure. More tests will be conducted. • Latest News & Headlines » Home «
NEWS BP Agrees to Record $50.6 Million Fine for Texas City Blast Thursday, August 12, 2010
•••BP has agreed to pay a record $50.6 million fine related to the deadly 2005 blast at its Texas City refinery and spend $500 million on safety improvements, U.S. officials said on Thursday.
The fine relates to BP’s repeated failure to meet safety standards both before and after the explosion that killed 15 workers and injured 170 others.
BP has also been slapped with huge fines for the pollution released from the troubled facility.
Those fines pale in comparison to the billions the British energy giant is liable for in the wake of the massive oil spill unleashed in the Gulf of Mexico after a deadly explosion sank the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in April.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration initially fined BP a record $21 million after it determined that BP failed to protect its workers ahead of the 2005 blast.
The penalty was increased to $50.6 million in 2009 after inspections found that BP failed to correct significant safety deficiencies.
‘This agreement achieves our goal of protecting workers at the refinery and ensuring that critical safety upgrades are made as quickly as possible,’ said Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis.
‘The size of the penalty rightly reflects BP’s disregard for workplace safety and shows that we will enforce the law so workers can return home safe at the end of their day.’
The settlement does not impact ongoing litigation over the $30 million fine imposed for 439 new ‘willful violations’ discovered in the 2009 inspection.
‘It is perfectly within BP’s means to make that facility safe,’ OSHA Deputy Assistant Secretary Jordan Barab said in a conference call.
The settlement ‘commits them to a schedule to address those issues and it provides OSHA with an unprecedented level of oversight to make sure they do what they’re supposed to do,’ he added. • Latest News & Headlines » Home «
NEWS BP Prepares for Final Drilling Phase Monday, August 9, 2010
•••BP today advanced on what it hopes is the final lap towards permanently killing the source of the world’s worst offshore oil spill and kicked off a $20 billion compensation fund with a first $3 billion deposit.
A relief well being drilled by BP is on track to start this week to provide a definitive “bottom kill” shutdown of the crippled Gulf of Mexico well, unless an approaching weather system disrupts the timing, the top U.S. oil spill response chief said.
The biggest environmental response operation ever launched in the United States passed a critical milestone last week by subduing the blown-out deep-water well with injections of heavy drilling mud, followed by a cement seal.
BP’s Macondo well, 1 mile down in the Gulf of Mexico, had been provisionally capped on July 15th after spewing an estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf, soiling marshlands, fisheries and tourist beaches along several hundreds of miles of the Gulf Coast.
But the relief well is regarded as the final solution to plug the well 2.5 miles beneath the seabed.
“They are closing in on the last 30-40 feet . . . it’s ongoing and going in segments,” response chief retired Coast Guard admiral Thad Allen said in an update on the relief well. “We expect that sometime before the end of the week we will be able to . . . commence the kill,” he told a conference call. As the deep-water engineering operation progressed, BP said it was also moving to fulfill its public commitments to compensate for economic damage caused by the spill.
Mr. Allen said the spill response authorities were closely watching a tropical weather system moving east over the Florida peninsula, which forecasters see crossing in a few days near BP’s Deepwater Horizon spill site.
He said that depending on its strength and direction, this system could affect the timing of the relief well “bottom kill” operation. Forecasters were giving this disturbance a 30 percent chance of strengthening into a tropical cyclone.
Elsewhere, BP said it had made an initial deposit of $3 billion into a $20 billion escrow fund.
The chief executive of BP’s Gulf Coast Restoration Organization, Bob Dudley, said the $3 billion initial contribution to the escrow fund was intended to back up the company’s repeated pledge to “make good” economic losses caused by the spill to Gulf Coast fishermen, tourism operators and home owners.
“Establishing this trust and making the initial deposit ahead of schedule further demonstrates our commitment to making it right in the Gulf Coast,” Mr. Dudley said in a statement.
The U.S. Justice Department confirmed the contribution, saying it had completed negotiations with BP on the fund. • Latest News & Headlines » Home «
NEWS BP begins to seal runaway well in Gulf of Mexico Thursday, August 5, 2010
•••BP has begun sealing its runaway oil well in the Gulf of Mexico with cement, one of the final steps to plug the gusher at the center of the worst U.S. environmental disaster on record.
Some 15 weeks after the well ruptured and 21 days after the flow was stemmed with a temporary cap, the massive slick which once stretched for hundreds of miles is rapidly disappearing from the Gulf.
But officials cautioned that a great deal of clean-up work remained and that the long-term impact of the disaster could be felt for years, even decades.
In a long-awaited breakthrough, BP brought the well under control on Wednesday after pumping heavy drilling fluid into the busted Macondo well for eight hours, forcing the oil back down into the reservoir miles beneath the seabed.
The British energy giant then began pumping cement at 09.15 CDT on Thursday after the procedure was approved by U.S. officials.
‘The aim of the procedure is to assist with the strategy to kill and isolate the well,’ BP said in a statement. ‘This procedure will complement the ongoing relief well operation.’
In giving the green light, spill response chief Thad Allen emphasised that the cementing should ‘in no way delay the completion of the relief well,’ expected to be finished in mid-August to seal the well permanently. ‘So, the long battle to stop the leak and contain the oil is finally close to coming to an end. And we are very pleased with that,’ U.S. President Barack Obama said. ‘Our recovery efforts, though, will continue. We have to reverse the damage that’s been done.’
It took 106 days to shut the well down in the wake of a devastating explosion on April 20 that killed 11 workers and sank the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig, unleashing a torrent of oil into the Gulf.
At 4.9 million barrels – or enough oil to fill 311 Olympic-sized swimming pools – the disaster is the biggest maritime spill on record.
It threatened the fish and wildlife-rich U.S. Gulf coast with environmental ruin and plunged residents of coastal communities into months of anguish over their livelihoods and the region’s future.
A government report released on Wednesday found that a third of the oil was captured or mitigated through burning, skimming, chemical dispersion and direct recovery from the wellhead.
Heat from the sun helped some of the chemicals in the crude evaporate. Waves and currents broke the slick up into smaller patches. Then the microbes which feed on natural oil seeping in the Gulf got to work, it said.
‘At least 50 percent of the oil that was released is now completely gone from the system,’ said Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
‘And most of the remainder is degrading rapidly, or is being removed from the beaches.’ But Lubchenco was quick to stress that scientists will not be able to determine for a long time the full extent of the damage.
‘The oil that was released and has already impacted wildlife at the surface, young juvenile stages and eggs beneath the surface, will likely have very considerable impacts for years and possibly decades to come,’ she told reporters at the White House briefing.
The problem, she explained, is that oil is still toxic even when it has been broken down into very small droplets.
About 24 percent of the Gulf’s federal waters remain closed to fishing, and even when fishermen are able to fill their nets they fear consumers might not believe the seafood is safe to eat.
With tourists likely to avoid Gulf beaches for years and oil industry jobs under threat from Obama’s moratorium on new deep sea drilling permits, the future remains bleak for many coastal communities.
BP, meanwhile, is hoping to rebuild its shattered reputation but must also meet the claims of thousands of individuals and businesses whose livelihoods have been washed away, while a mammoth civil trial looms.
BP senior vice president Kent Wells expressed relief that 20 days after the flow of oil in the sea was stemmed with a temporary cap ‘it’s very difficult for us to find any oil anywhere on the surface.’
He refused, however, to declare victory until the well is permanently sealed. • Latest News & Headlines » Home «
NEWS BP says “static kill” operation at ruptured U.S. oil well Obama says long battle in Gulf close to end
New Report: 74% of Oil in BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill has been Contained or Mitigated Wednesday, August 04, 2010
•••About three-quarters of the oil spilled from the ruptured BP well in the Gulf of Mexico has disappeared, a top U.S. official said Wednesday.
‘The scientists are telling us about 25 percent was not captured or evaporated or taken care of by mother nature,’ said Carol Browner, a top energy adviser to U.S. President Barack Obama, on the ABC network’s Good Morning America program.
‘This is an initial assessment by our scientists in the government and outside the government. We think it’s important to make this available to the public. That’s what we’ll be doing today.’
Browner said the report to be released later on Wednesday was ‘encouraging’ but that more clean-up will be needed.
‘Mother nature will continue to break it down,’ she said.
‘But some of it may come onshore, as weathered tar balls. And those will be cleaned up. They can be cleaned up. And we will make sure they are cleaned up.’
An estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil leaked into the Gulf of Mexico over a period of 87 days after an explosion on a BP-leased offshore rig on April 20.
The leak was capped on July 15, and on Wednesday BP said it succeeded in controlling the pressure in the ruptured well through a procedure called a ‘static kill.’
The New York Times said the report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, indicated that fears that a huge underwater glob of oil would surface at some point to tar Gulf beaches looked increasingly unlikely.
‘There’s absolutely no evidence that there’s any significant concentration of oil that’s out there that we haven’t accounted for,’ Jane Lubchenco, head of the agency, was quoted as saying.
Today, a panel of government scientists released a report which said that the vast majority of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill has either evaporated or been burned, skimmed, recovered from the wellhead or dispersed much of which is in the process of being degraded. A significant amount of this is the direct result of the federal government’s aggressive response to the spill.
The chart below outlines the breakdown of what has happened to the oil released into the Gulf of Mexico since the oil spill began in April:
These interagency findings were generated using a scientific tool called the Oil Budget Calculator, which employs a combination of direct measurements and the best scientific estimates available. The calculator is based on 4.9 million barrels of oil released into the Gulf, the government’s latest estimates of the flow rate from Monday. More than 25 of the best government and independent scientists contributed to or reviewed the calculator and its calculation methods. Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Energy (DOE), as well as academic scientists are continuing to work to refine these calculations.
While we welcome the news contained in this report, we continue to be extremely concerned about what this oil spill means for the health of the Gulf ecosystem and the millions of people who depend on the Gulf for their livelihoods and enjoyment. To that end, our response effort will continue until the well is killed, the oil is cleaned up and until all of the people are made whole again.
For more information about the ongoing Administration-wide response to BP Oil Spill, visit RestoreTheGulf.gov. • Latest News & Headlines » Home «
NEWS BP Agrees to Sell Colombian Business to Ecopetrol and Talisman Tuesday, August 03, 2010
•••British oil giant BP says it will sell its Colombian business for a total of $1.9 billion.
The divestment is part of BP’s recently announced plans to sell off up to $30 billion of assets, as it struggles with the soaring cost of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster.
‘BP today announced that it has agreed to sell its oil and gas exploration, production and transportation business in Colombia to a consortium of Ecopetrol, Colombia’s national oil company (51 percent), and Talisman of Canada (49 percent),’ it said in a statement. ‘The two companies will pay BP a total of 1.9 billion dollars in cash… for 100 percent of the shares in BP Exploration Company (Colombia) Limited (BPXC), the wholly-owned BP subsidiary company that holds BP’s oil and gas exploration, production and transportation interests in Colombia.’
The transaction, which is subject to regulatory and other approvals, is expected to complete by the end of 2010.
News of the sell-off comes one week after BP’s vilified chief executive Tony Hayward resigned in the wake of a record second-quarter loss of $16.9 billion – the biggest quarterly loss in British corporate history.
Hayward will step down in October and hand over the reigns to American executive Bob Dudley. • Latest News & Headlines » Home « • Source(s): BP PLC
NEWS BP gears up to plug ‘world’s biggest’ oil spill A deadly addiction: figures confirm BP spill is biggest in history Tuesday, August 03, 2010
•••The U.S. government says BP’s ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico gushed an estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil, making it the largest accidental spill ever.
‘Overall, the scientific teams estimate that approximately 4.9 million barrels of oil have been released from the well,’ the joint response command that includes BP and the U.S. government said in a statement describing the new estimate.
‘Not all of this oil and gas flowed into the ocean; containment activities conducted by BP under US direction captured approximately 800,000 barrels of oil prior to the capping of the well,’ they said.
The 4.9 million barrels is at the upper end of an earlier official estimate, which said that between 3 million and 5.3 million barrels had spewed from the well between April 20, when the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, and July 15, when a cap placed over the wellhead was finally sealed.
The refined estimates ‘are the most accurate to date and have an uncertainty of plus or minus 10 per cent’, according to the statement.
The 4.1 million uncontained barrels estimated to have spewed into the water make the spill the biggest accidental oil disaster in the history of the petroleum industry, and second only to the intentional release of crude by Iraqi forces during the 1991 Gulf War.
The previous largest accidental spill was a 1979 disaster – also in the Gulf of Mexico – in which 3.3 million barrels gushed from the Ixtoc-1 well after an explosion on a rig operated by Mexican state oil company Pemex. The BP spill revision was based on ‘new pressure readings, data and analysis’ of oil reservoir modeling studied by teams comprised of federal and independent U.S. scientists, including a Department of Energy team of scientists led by President Barack Obama’s energy secretary, Steven Chu, the statement said.
‘The revised estimates are part of this administration’s ongoing commitment to ensuring that we have the most accurate information possible,’ Chu said.
When the well first ruptured, ‘62,000 barrels of oil per day were leaking from the well’, beyond the 35,000 to 60,000 barrels most recently estimated by U.S. authorities, but the flow rate decreased to 53,000 barrels per day just before the well was capped, the statement said.
‘As a result of depletion of the hydrocarbon reservoir, the daily flow rate decreased over the 87 days prior to the well’s closure,’ according to the statement.
The new figures are based in part on analysis of high-resolution videos taken by remotely operated underwater vehicles, acoustic technologies, measurements of oil collected by vessels on the surface, and readings of pressure measurements inside the containment cap.
‘Government scientists will continue to analyse data and may in time be able to further refine this estimate,’ the statement said. • Latest News & Headlines » Home «
NEWS BP begins ‘static kill’ operation in bid to finally seal Gulf of Mexico oil well The key lesson of the BP oil spill? Don’t panic spiked’s prediction that this was not ‘the worst environmental disaster’ in U.S. history has been proven right. Monday, August 02, 2010
•••BP will know within hours on Tuesday whether its attempt to plug the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico has worked.
Company engineers are preparing to pump heavy drilling mud and cement into the well in a procedure known as “static kill”.
Retired coast guard admiral Thad Allen, the U.S. official overseeing the federal spill response, said that the operation would begin either Monday night or early Tuesday morning.
A week later, mud and cement will be pumped in from below, via a relief well that has been dug deep into the earth, to seal the leak permanently.
Oil has stopped gushing from the well for the past two weeks after a temporary cap was placed on top of it. BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank on 20 April, causing what is thought to be the U.S.’s worst environmental disaster in history. • 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 Final efforts to permanently seal BP oil well in Gulf of Mexico begin soon Static kill could start Monday, Allen says Monday, August 02, 2010
•••After months of uncertainty and frustration, crews are ramping up efforts to permanently seal the ruptured Gulf of Mexico oil well as early as Monday night.
The operation is one of two bids to definitively ‘kill’ the damaged well, which has spewed noxious crude into the sea since April, devastating fragile habitats and bringing financial ruin to many residents along the U.S. Gulf Coast.
BP officials in recent days said they hoped the ‘static kill’ operation would take place on Tuesday, but on Sunday the U.S. point man for the spill response, Coast Guard admiral Thad Allen, said it ‘could start as early as Monday night, depending on final testing of the mud injection systems’.
If successful, the ‘static kill’ will allow crews to plug the well from above with cement, but the procedure is untested and similar to a previous ‘kill’ attempt that failed at the end of May.
Still, 104 days into the spill, Americans are desperate for a sign that the leak will soon be permanently capped, allowing the full focus of BP and government officials in the region to shift to clean-up operations and repairing the economic damage caused by the worst oil disaster in U.S. history.
Somewhere between three million to 5.3 million barrels leaked into the Gulf between April 20 and July 15, when a cap placed over the wellhead was sealed, fully containing the flow of oil for the first time.
Locals are eager to see the well plugged for good, but there are fears that a successful kill operation will prompt a mass exodus of officials brought into the region to respond to the crisis.
Crews have already begun collecting some of the millions of feet of protective boom after skimming vessels said they were having difficulty finding spilled crude on the sea surface anymore.
But the president of Plaquemines Parish in Louisiana told CNN it was too early to scale back those operations.
‘The oil is out there,’ Billy Nungesser insisted, saying that he had ordered his parish sheriff to stop 12 trucks carrying boom from leaving the area.
BP, which leased the Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers and sparking the spill, has sought to reassure residents it will remain engaged and work to restore the area.
‘We’ve had some good news on the oil … but that doesn’t mean we’re done. We’ll be here for years,’ said Bob Dudley, an American chosen to replace the gaffe-prone Briton Tony Hayward as BP’s chief executive, as the energy giant tries to salvage what is left of its reputation.
Many fishermen whose grounds were closed in the wake of the spill due to food safety concerns have found work assisting the clean-up effort, but face an uncertain future.
They could soon lose their jobs again as there is less oil to mop up and there are no guarantees they will be able to return to fish soon in Gulf waters that could be contaminated for months or even years to come.
Documents released by Congress on Saturday detailing the use of chemical dispersants in the Gulf added to concerns about the long-term effects for the region.
‘BP carpet-bombed the ocean with these chemicals, and the Coast Guard allowed them to do it,’ said Democratic Representative Edward Markey, chairman of the House energy and environment subcommittee. BP and the U.S. response team have said more than 1.8 million gallons of dispersants have been used to break up the oil, but Markey said studies show the amount could be far higher.
‘The validity of those numbers are now in question,’ he said.
Admiral Allen addressed the concerns on Sunday, insisting to reporters that he was ‘satisfied that dispersants were only used when needed’, and that it was the U.S. government on-scene coordinator’s decision to use dispersants and not BP’s.
Meanwhile on Sunday engineers were carrying out final tests to ensure the integrity of the wellhead, BP said.
Once the static kill is underway, engineers will pump heavy drilling fluid called ‘mud’ into the cap in a bid to push the oil back down into the well reservoir.
If that works, crews will then seal the well from the top with cement.
Then, as early as next weekend, BP plans to begin a ‘bottom kill’ by intercepting the damaged well deep below the seabed with a nearly completed relief well.
Engineers plan to first drill into the pipe to check the ‘static kill’ has worked before cementing in the outer well bore and blocking the oil reservoir once and for all. • 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 Fishermen fear for livelihoods as Gulf focus shifts Friday, July 30, 2010
•••U.S. officials sought on Thursday to reassure fishermen they will not lose out in the next phase of the Gulf of Mexico oil clean-up, while legal wranglings began for the BP trial of the decade.
As final preparations were put in place for operations next week to permanently kill the well, U.S. spill chief Thad Allen convened a meeting of parish presidents in New Orleans to discuss how best to safeguard local jobs going forward.
With less oil floating in the Gulf, there are fears BP might scrap its ‘Vessels of Opportunity’ program which employs more than 1500 boats, providing desperate fishermen with vital skimming and boom-laying work.
‘If BP uses the capping of the well as an excuse to minimize its clean-up operations, then shame on them,’ said Captain Mike Frenette, whose five boats in Venice, Louisiana missed an entire summer’s fishing due to the disaster.
Frenette had to apply four times before getting two of his five boats onto the program, which pays between $600 and $3500 a day, depending on the size of the boat. ‘The paperwork kept getting lost,’ he said. ‘And all that our Vessels of Opportunity work is doing is counting against our compensation claim. We’re not making any money, here, we’re just trying to keep our heads above water.’
A large portion of the Gulf waters remain closed to commercial and recreational fishing and with lingering doubts about seafood safety, fishermen could effectively end up losing their jobs for a second time.
‘The fishermen have missed a year, and we don’t know what the impact is going to be next year, or the year after that,’ said Marty O’Connell, an environmental scientist at the University of New Orleans.
Clean-up crews are collecting samples of fish and shrimp at depths of between 30 and 360 feet to test them for contaminants, but it will take years to fully know the impact of the oil disaster on Gulf fisheries.
Allen pledged earlier this week to keep as many ‘Vessels of Opportunity’ as possible, hoping they could be redeployed to test for any underwater plumes. A massive task also lies ahead in picking up some 3 797 miles of protective boom laid to protect Gulf shores from the once-giant slick that has now diminished to just a few patches of light sheen.
Ahead of the meeting with Allen, Saint Tammany parish president Kevin Davis, said he was against reducing any oil-fighting resources for the time being.
‘Although the well is capped, we cannot let down our guard until we are absolutely certain that no oil lingers under our waters,’ he said.
Meanwhile, BP lawyers were set to come face-to-face on Thursday with victims of the spill during a first court hearing into the case, which is likely to become the trial of the decade.
The hearings in Boise, Idaho, will examine whether complaints submitted by some 200 plaintiffs can be consolidated.
A decision is expected around two weeks after the hearing, but the session will give trial lawyers a test run for the arguments they will make during what could be years-long legal proceedings. • Latest News & Headlines » Home «
NEWS BP well-killing process scheduled to start in a week Tuesday, July 27, 2010
•••U.S. officials laid out on Monday a detailed timeline of how BP plans to permanently plug the Gulf of Mexico oil well, saying the all-important ‘static kill’ would begin in one week’s time.
By Saturday or Sunday at the latest, a final 656 yards of casing will be inserted into the bottom of the relief well to strengthen it so it can withstand the long-awaited ‘static kill’ intact.
Some 12 hours after the cement has set, engineers will begin the crucial operation to pump mud and cement down through the cap on the damaged well, which finally cut off the flow of crude earlier this month.
‘That’s an attempt to fill the inside of the well from the top down and then cement to secure it and make it stable,’ explained Thad Allen, the retired Coast Guard admiral leading the U.S. response to the disaster. While it is hoped this operation can effectively plug the well, the ‘static kill’ will be followed five days later by a ‘bottom kill’ operation just to make sure.
Engineers will drill through the relief well into the annulus at the bottom of the damaged well. The annulus is the area between the pipe and the outside of the well bore.
The ‘static kill’ can only plug the area inside the pipe, while the ‘bottom kill’ also aims to cement over the annulus to be certain the oil reservoir is permanently sealed.
‘So when we enter the well bore of the Macondo well we will first fill the annulus full of mud and then cement it in,’ said Allen. ‘When that cement dries then we will go back and drill through it again and into the pipe.
‘We will ascertain at that point whether or not the top kill or static kill have actually killed it or whether we have to do more. That’s when we will know absolutely that the well’s been killed.’
If all goes according to plan, the leaking well could be plugged once and for all during the second week of August.
If upper estimates above four million barrels are confirmed, the disaster that began on April 20 with an explosion on the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig will be the biggest accidental spill ever. • Latest News & Headlines » Home «
NEWS BP boss Hayward to get job in BP-Russian venture BP boss Tony Hayward resigns Tuesday, July 27, 2010
•••BP says CEO Tony Hayward will step down on October 1.
He’ll be succeeded by American Robert Dudley.
It is understood he will be offered a job on the board of the companies Russian arm.
BP is jettisoning CEO Tony Hayward, whose verbal blunders have made the oil giant’s image even worse as it struggles to contain the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, and will assign him to a key job in Russia, a person familiar with the matter says.
Hayward is set to step down in October and take a post at TNK-BP, the company’s joint venture in Russia, a source told the Associated Press on Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity because an official announcement had not been made by the British company’s board.
Other news reports said Hayward could be cut loose by the British energy giant as early as Tuesday, when BP announces its quarterly earnings and battles to rebuild its reputation amid the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.
Hayward could get a payoff and pension package worth about $18.67 million, The Times and the Financial Times newspapers reported in London.
His reported payoff would be the equivalent of one year’s salary plus a guaranteed pension for the 53-year-old who started his career with the firm 28 years ago and took over as chief executive in 2007.
According to the BBC, Hayward will get an immediate annual pension worth about $1.614 million when he leaves in October.
BP said, however, there was no decision on Hayward, whose string of public relations gaffes during the crisis include telling reporters ‘I want my life back’ and joining a yacht race as Gulf residents battled the massive oil spill.
‘BP confirms that no final decision has been made on these matters,’ a spokesman for the energy giant said on Monday.
‘Any decisions will be announced as appropriate.’
BP’s board met on Monday, and a statement was expected early Tuesday, when the company files its second quarter results – which are expected to reveal a $30 billion provision for funding the disaster.
Hayward is expected to be replaced by Bob Dudley, who grew up in Mississippi and is now in charge of the oil cleanup operation.
BP has said Dudley has a ‘deep appreciation and affinity for the Gulf Coast’.
Hayward left BP’s headquarters after Monday’s board meeting without speaking to reporters.
His silver Lexus was mobbed by photographers, who chased the car down the street in central London.
Hayward has drawn criticism in recent months from U.S. President Barack Obama – who said he would have fired him – and other senior U.S. figures and Gulf residents over his handling of the aftermath of the disaster.
The White House Monday warned BP that any decision to replace Hayward would not change its obligation to clean up the Gulf of Mexico and compensate victims.
In Washington, a key Democratic congressman called on BP to withhold any big payouts to the chief executive.
‘BP should be dedicating its resources to compensating the residents of the Gulf Coast who are the victims of this tragedy, not handing out multi-million-dollar golden parachutes,’ Representative Ed Markey said.
‘At a time when BP should be devoting every possible resource to ending the spill, cleaning up the Gulf and fully compensating the residents who have had their livelihoods impacted, I find it extremely troubling that BP’s board would consider providing such a large severance package to Mr Hayward,’ he added.
BP has already agreed to set up a $20 billion fund to pay for the Gulf clean-up and compensation, as it works to plug the BP well that ruptured in the April explosion and sinking of its leased Deepwater Horizon rig that killed 11 workers.
Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, who is leading the U.S. government’s response to the oil spill, said on Monday that efforts to kill the damaged well for good would not likely start before next week.
Originally expected as early as Tuesday, Allen said BP had given a ‘refined and revised’ timeline as it redeployed vessels and personnel following a recent storm in the region.
Even if BP then manages to kill the well, Allen warned there was ‘the possibility that shore will be impacted I guess for the next four to six weeks.’
The ruptured wellhead was sealed on July 15 with a giant cap, which for the first time in three months halted the flow of oil into the sea. But up to four million barrels of crude is already estimated to have spewed into the Gulf.
Toxic crude has washed up on the shores of all five US states on the Gulf Coast and vital tourism, fishing and oil industries in the region have been hit hard.
BP faces hundreds of pending lawsuits into the cause of the April 20 rig blast that should determine eventual liability.
It’s not yet clear what Hayward’s role will be with TNK-BP, but the job suggests BP still holds more faith in Hayward than much of the U.S. public and political establishment do.
Analysts consider the Russian venture one of BP’s crown jewels; it accounts for a quarter of the company’s production.
Repeated calls to TNK-BP‘s offices in Moscow went unanswered on Monday. • Latest News & Headlines » Home «
NEWS ‘No final decision’ made over Tony Hayward BP Boss Hayward ‘To Take Russian Role’ Monday, July 26, 2010
•••BP has said no decision has been taken over the future of beleaguered chief executive Tony Hayward, amid reports he is about to depart with a pension of almost $ 17.05 million.
Mr. Hayward’s fate looks set to be finalised at a board meeting in London, with a formal announcement on his future expected soon afterwards.
The oil firm’s current managing director, Bob Dudley, is the favourite to succeed him.
‘BP notes the press speculation over the weekend regarding potential changes to management and the charge for the costs of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill,’ the company said in a statement.
‘BP confirms that no final decision has been made on these matters.’
Mr. Hayward – who even very recently was told he had the ‘full support’ of the board and senior management – was reported to be discussing his severance package with senior management over the weekend.
His employment terms entitle him to a payout of at least $1.55 million, but The Daily Telegraph has reported the figure could reach as much as $16.73 million.
‘Tony Hayward’s departure as BP’s chief executive will, as I’ve reported several times during the last 36 hours, not be formally ratified until the oil company’s board meets,’ Kleinman said.
‘Even then, a number of factors could intervene to delay his resignation or conspire to manufacture another outcome altogether.’
A U.S. government official briefed by senior BP figures confirmed to the Associated Press news agency a change of leadership was under way. BP chief executive Tony Hayward is to step down from the top job, but he will be put forward for the board of the oil firm’s Russian operations.
He exclusively revealed that along with details of his plans to step down, BP would also announce that Mr Hayward was likely to be proposed for a non-executive role on the board of Russian venture TNK-BP.
‘The role on the TNK-BP board is not about keeping Hayward sweet,’ said Kleinman.
‘Much more importantly, if it is confirmed as I expect in the next 12 hours or so, it would underline the streak of realpolitik that courses through the veins of all multinational companies.’
BP’s current managing director Bob Dudley is the favorite to succeed Mr Hayward following the crisis that has engulfed the company since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in April.
But as the head of TNK-BP in 2008, Mr. Dudley had a huge falling-out with the Russian authorities and ended up fleeing the country in fear for his safety.
‘At a time when BP is already fighting one political fire on one international front, in the US, there has to be a risk that Dudley’s appointment as chief executive ignites another,’ commented Kleinman.
‘That’s where Hayward comes in.’
‘He may be damaged goods in Washington, but BP insiders say that one of his significant achievements during his three years as chief executive was helping to negotiate a new governance structure at TNK-BP.’
‘His relationships in Moscow are said to very strong.’
Mr. Hayward was reported to be discussing his severance package with senior management over the weekend.
His employment terms entitle him to a payout of at least $1.55 million, but his pension pot from a 28-year career with BP is around $16.73 million and he has also received impressive numbers of shares in recent years. • Latest News & Headlines » Home « • Source(s): Sky News / BskyB / News Corporation
NEWS BP to Discuss CEO Hayward’s Exit on Monday BP chief Tony Hayward ‘negotiating exit deal’ Sunday, July 25, 2010
•••The boss of troubled oil giant BP, Tony Hayward, is poised to quit within days, the Sunday Telegraph newspaper reports.
Hayward, who has been heavily criticized over his handling of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill crisis, is set to step down before BP announces its half-year results on Tuesday, the paper said.
Reports have suggested for days that Hayward would resign at some point in the coming weeks as British-based BP battles to recover its reputation in the wake of the spill.
The Sunday Telegraph said that there could be wrangling over Hayward’s severance package, under which he is likely to be paid a minimum figure just over £1.045 million ($1.614 million).
BP has said that Hayward ‘has the support of the board and management’ but has declined to make further comment on media reports. The Press Association learned that the BP board will meet ahead of Tuesday’s release of the oil giant’s latest interim results.
Meanwhile the BBC has claimed that Hayward is currently in talks over a compensation deal, with the outcome likely to be settled and made public by the close of tomorrow.
A spokesman for BP maintained that the chief executive continued to have the ‘full support of the board and senior management’ and that the company would not comment on ‘speculation.’ • Latest News & Headlines » Home « • Source(s): Telegraph Media Group Ltd., Press Association, British Broadcasting Corporation and Independent Television News
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 Storm forces Gulf oil spill ships back to port Oil cap in Gulf to remain despite approaching storm Thursday, July 22, 2010
•••The U.S. government has ordered certain ships working on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill back to port amid fears that a brewing storm could force a mass evacuation and derail efforts to plug BP’s runaway well.
A full-scale evacuation could delay by up to two weeks the final operation to plug BP’s runaway well, which has unleashed millions of barrels of crude on Gulf Coast shorelines in one of America’s worst ever environmental disasters.
‘Activities that are under way for storm preparedness include evacuating specialized vessels from the path of any severe weather to prevent damage and ensure that oil recovery operations can resume as soon as possible after a storm,’ a Coast Guard statement said on Thursday.
With no crews on site to monitor pressure inside the well, top U.S. official Admiral Thad Allen has warned that the cap that has prevented any toxic crude from entering the sea for the past week may have to be opened up again or even removed.
Storm warnings have been extended from the Caribbean around the Florida Keys to the Gulf Coast, but there has been no immediate order from BP or the U.S. government to suspend operations entirely and pull staff back to shore.
If the depression developing near the Bahamas, expected to become Tropical Storm Bonnie lateron Thursday, takes aim at Louisiana it will delay a so-called ‘static kill’ to seal the well with cement originally planned for this weekend.
Officials have warned it will take up to five days to get some of the biggest vessels, in particular the massive drilling platforms working on relief wells, back to port.
‘We’ve always said we need 120 hours in advance to be able to start redeploying them and then the total time off-scene would be anywhere between 10 and 14 days,’ Allen said on Wednesday.
As for what to do with the cap, this would be ‘a judgment call based on the risks,’ he said.
The first relief well was expected to intercept the damaged well as early as next week but if the storm hits that could be more like mid-August and any final operation to seal the well with cement might be delayed until September.
The storm threat was already delaying progress as work on the final casing of the relief well was suspended so a ‘storm packer’ plug could be fitted to stabilize it.
A full evacuation would be a huge blow for local residents. Tourism is in tatters and a vast swath of the Gulf has been closed to commercial and sport fishing since the BP-leased Deep water Horizon rig sank on April 22, two days after an explosion that killed 11 workers.
As millions of barrels of crude spewed into the sea, the region was further hit by President Barack Obama’s decision to impose a moratorium on new deep sea drilling – a move fiercely opposed by local leaders and the oil industry.
Four of the world’s oil giants say they will create a $1 billion system to capture oil in case of another catastrophic spill.
Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Conoco Phillips and Royal Dutch Shell will each contribute $250 million to create a non-profit group, the Marine Well Containment Company.
The new venture would design, build and operate a flexible system that could mobilise within 24 hours to siphon and contain 100,000 barrels of oil per day in depths of up to 1.86 miles, the companies said.
It’s main goal would be to prevent a spill as large as the one unleashed by BP’s busted Macondo well, which sits 1 mile below the surface and was estimated to have spewed up to 60,000 bpd into the sea.
The companies said the system could be up and running within 18 months.
If an upper estimate of over four million barrels is confirmed, the BP disaster would be the biggest accidental oil spill ever. • Latest News & Headlines » Home «
••• The U.S. state of Alabama is suing BP and Transocean for damages sustained from the Gulf of Mexico oil leak.
Louisiana sustained the most damage to its coastline and waters from the oil spill that began in April and was plugged with cement on July 15.
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