Homeland Security damage control in the Gulf

July 2 : CNN : "The US Coast Guard announced new rules keeping photographers, reporters and anyone else from coming within 65 feet of any response vessel or booms, out on the water or on beaches.Violators could face a fine of $40,000 and class D felony charges. The coast guard tried to make the exclusion zone 300 feet before scaling it down to 65 feet."

July 3 : MSNBC : A photographer taking pictures of a BP refinery in Texas was detained by a BP security official, local police and a man who said he was from the Department of Homeland Security.

July 4 : Bloomberg : The US government is expected to take over control of the central information website on the Gulf oil spill response that has been run jointly by various agencies and BP for the 2 1/2 months since the rig explosion.

The Department of Homeland Security wants a one-stop shop for information that is completely overseen by the government as it settles into the long-haul of dealing with the response to the disaster. The U.S. Coast Guard falls under Homeland Security's authority.

The deepwaterhorizonresponse.com site may still be maintained during the changeover, but ultimately it will be taken down altogether when the government moves the response information to its own website."

July 6 : Washington Post : "In the 77 days since oil from the ruptured Deepwater Horizon began to gush into the Gulf of Mexico, BP has skimmed or burned about 60 percent of the amount it promised regulators it could remove in a single day.

In a March report that was not questioned by federal officials, BP said it had the capacity to skim and remove 491,721 barrels of oil each day in the event of a major spill.

As of Monday, with about 2 million barrels released into the gulf, the skimming operations that were touted as key to preventing environmental disaster have averaged less than 900 barrels a day.

On Monday, the joint operations center for the federal government and BP reported that more than 671,428 barrels of an oil-water mixture have been captured and stored. About 90 percent of the mixture is water, so the true amount of oil skimmed is relatively small -- roughly 67,143 barrels of oil. Had the estimated amounts in the March response plan been accurate, 38 million barrels of oil could have been removed by now. "

Although the US House of Representatives voted 420 to 1 to give the presidential commission investigating the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico full subpoena power, the Republicans in the Senate have blocked it. There will be no real investigation.

The Coast Guard, under the auspices of Homeland Security, and Minerals Management Services, the federal body charged with (not doing any) oversight of oil drilling and now renamed the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, will announce this week the creation of an expert panel to conduct a "preparedness review" for Deepwater Horizon.

BP gets 10 new deepwater drilling leases in the Gulf

While waiting for the six month moratorium on granting new permits for offshore wells deeper than 500 feet to be lifted, the Department of Interior's Minerals Management Services, these guys, have approved five new offshore drilling projects since June 2.
An Exxon Mobil site at a water depth of 1,000 feet and a Marathon Oil site at 775 feet were approved with waivers exempting them from detailed studies of their environmental impact.
A Chevron site 6,730 feet underwater and an Exxon site at 6,943 feet were approved after subjecting them to environmental reviews.
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The MMS has approved 198 new deepwater leases - the step before the submission of drilling plans - in the central Gulf since the BP spill began.
According to Defenders of Wildlife and the Southern Environmental Law Center, of the 198 deepwater leases sold, 92 lease tracts are at deeper depths than the Deepwater Horizon well and at least 10 are owned by BP and are located over a mile deep.
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Lease Sale 213 covers 36 million acres in the central Gulf off the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

If federal regulators opt to cancel a lease once it's issued, the government must repay the company the fair market value of the lease or compensate it for the cost of its bid plus interest.

So the Department of the Interior approves the leases, and then either the company gets to go ahead and drill or the taxpayer pays them not to ... with interest.
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Pocket change you can believe in.

BP oil spill at your house

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If it was my home uses Google Maps and the current situation of the spill to show what the extent of the disaster would look like in your neck of the woods. Click and it will find you.
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The Exxon Valdez spill of 1989 was 41 million litres of oil. It can still be found under the sand.
US government scientists are now pegging the Gulf Oil disaster at an Exxon Valdez-size spill every 5 to 13 days, with more oil gushing into the sea in an hour than officials originally said was spilling in an entire day.
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute estimates the spill at 3.8 million litres to 8 million litres per day.
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The Montreal Gazette reports that after a 16% dip on the NYSE Wednesday due to "concerns over BP's ability to meet mounting costs", shares rebounded by more than 12% yesterday "partly because of speculation that Petro-China, Asia's top oil and gas firm, was considering making a bid for BP."
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Meanwhile here in Canada, one of the provisions in the just-passed budget gives the environment minister the power to bypass environmental assessments on major projects he wants passed just as Enbridge insists it wants its Northern Gateway pipeline shipping tankers of tarsands oil to Asia via the BC port of Kitimat by 2016.

Last year Natural Resources Canada - Review of the Federal Moratorium on Oil and Gas Activities Offshore British Columbia was quietly amended with an "Errata" that read :

"the moratorium on oil and gas activities offshore British Columbia does not apply to tanker traffic"

and as regards the grandfathered BC offshore drilling exploration agreements awaiting negotiation and approval :

"The decision not to negotiate with industry to convert those permits is a pure policy decision. There is no statutory impediment to carrying out those negotiations."

If it was my home ...

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Gulf oil spill - That was then; this is then

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Right. So they're just doing their very darnedest to deal with this completely unexpected environmental tragedy with their miles of boom and their top hats and their junk shots and their top kills - exactly the same useless shit that didn't work 30 years ago either.

Still, they have to tiddle about with something while the media cameras are rolling and Obama frowns on a beach.

Meanwhile according to this guy the real plume is five to seven miles away and spewing oil into the Gulf at the rate of 120,000 barrels a day. What we've all been watching is just the ancillary leak, says oil industry insider Matt Simmons, just the sideshow. It's like the drunk looking for his carkeys under the streetlight; it's not where he dropped them but the light is better there.

Today BP CEO Tony Hayward denied the existence of the large undersea plumes scientists say they've discovered.

'Plume' sounds so benign, doesn't it? Like something you might wear on your 'tophat'. Underwater oil volcano - that's what they got.

Time to revisit this idea, born out of the Exxon Valdez spill and left by commenter Neil H at The Beav :