Washingtons Blog

Monday, August 16, 2010

Corexit Is Being Sprayed at Night, Even Now (According to BP Vessel of Opportunity Workers and Others)

The government and BP have said that no dispersants have been sprayed in the Gulf since the well was partially capped on July 15th.

However, local residents have been saying for weeks that Corexit is still being sprayed.

Admiral Allen wouldn't unequivocally deny this allegation as of August 9th.

On August 10th, the Destin Log reported:

Lt. Cmdr. Dale Vogelsang, liaison officer with the United State Coast Guard, told The Log he had contacted Unified Command and they had “confirmed” that dispersants were not being used in Florida waters. “Dispersants are only being used over the wellhead in Louisiana,” Vogelsang said. “We are working with Eglin and Hurlburt to confirm what the flight pattern may be. But right now, it appears to be a normal flight.”
Vogelsang also said Unified Command confirmed to him that C-130s have never been used to distribute dispersants, as they “typically use smaller aircraft.”

But according to an article by the 910^th Airlift Wing Public Affairs Office, based in Youngstown, OH., C-130H Hercules aircraft started aerial spray operations Saturday, May 1, under the direction of the president of the United States and Secretary of Defense. “The objective of the aerial spray operation is to neutralize the oil spill with oil dispersing agents,” the article states.

A July Lockheed Martin Newsletter states that “Lockheed Martin aircraft, including C-130s and P-3s, have been deployed to the Gulf region by the Air Force, Coast Guard and other government customers to perform a variety of tasks, such as monitoring, mapping and dispersant spraying.”

Neither of the articles specify the operations have taken place in Florida.

After The Log spoke with Vogelsang Friday morning, he once again reiterated that “no dispersants were being used in Florida waters,” and no dispersants have been used anywhere since mid-July. When The Log asked Vogelsang about the two articles, which state C-130s have been used for dispersant spraying, he said “if they were being used here locally to spray dispersants, then Unified Command didn’t know about it.”

In fact, there are photos and video of C-130s dropping dispersant in the Gulf.

On July 4th, marine biologist and toxicologist Dr. Chris Pincetich - who has an extensive background in testing the affects of chemicals on fish - said that the Coast Guard was spraying Corexit at night over the Gulf:

Dr. Pincetich made this allegation before the well was partially capped on July 15th.

However, on August 9th, award-winning journalist Dahr Jamail wrote:

Dean Blanchard, one of the most important seafood purchasers in Louisiana, recently attended a Town Hall Meeting with a BP representative in Grand Isle, Louisiana.

In the meeting, Blanchard stands up and addresses the BP representative at length.
***
Blanchard had clearly heard enough of BP’s propaganda. To the representatives’ request to have someone explain to him why BP would not want to clean up the oil, Blanchard angrily obliged:

“Because it’s more cost effective for ya’ll to come at night and sink the son-of-a-bitch! When the oil’s coming around, they call ya’ll, they tell ya’ll where the oil’s at, and the first thing ya’ll do is tell them to go the other way, ya’ll send the planes, and ya’ll fucking sink it! [Spray dispersants from the air] That’s what ya’ll are doing, come on man!” He sits back down angrily. “Let’s quit playing over here and tell the truth. Ya’ll are sinking the oil, Jason! You know ya’ll are sinking it. You know what ya’ll are doing. Ya’ll are sending all the boats, you’re putting them all in a group at night, we all hear the planes, and the next morning there’s nothing but white bubbles! What do you think, we’re stupid? We’re not stupid! Ya’ll are putting the oil on the bottom of my fishing grounds! Ya’ll not only messing me up now, ya’ll are messing me up for the rest of my life! I ain’t gonna live long enough to buy anymore shrimp!”

Today, Jamail reports that several people working with BP's Vessels-of-Opportunity program have confirmed this allegation. Here is an excerpt from the must-read essay (this is one of the most important stories about the oil spill, worth taking the time to read word-for-word):

[PhD marine biologist Ed Cake, who has worked for the past couple of decades growing the Gulf oyster industry along side the oil business, usually working for both industries simultaneously] wrote of the experience: "When the vessel was stopped for sampling, small, 0.5- to 1.0-inch-diameter bubbles would periodically rise to the surface and shortly thereafter they would pop leaving a small oil sheen. According to the fishermen, several of BP's Vessels-Of-Opportunity (Carolina Skiffs with tanks of dispersants [Corexit]) were hand spraying in Mississippi Sound off the Pass Christian Harbor in prior days/nights. It appears to this observer that the dispersants are still in the area and are continuing to react with oil in the waters off Pass Christian Harbor."
***

A resident, who has a yacht in the harbor, spoke with Truthout on condition of anonymity due to fears of reprisal from BP. "Last week we were sitting on our boat and you could smell the chemicals," he explained. "It smelt like death. It was like mosquito spray, but ten times stronger. The next day I was hoarse and my lungs felt like I'd been in a smoky bar the night before."

***
Truthout spoke with another man, who was recently laid off from the VOO program. He also spoke on condition of anonymity. "Just the other day one of the Carolina Skiffs passed us spraying something," he said. "We went west instead of east as we turned and a group of Carolina Skiffs was spraying something over the water."

A Carolina Skiff is a type of boat, usually between 13' and 30' long, very versatile and can function well in shallow or deep waters. They are known for having a large payload capacity and a lot of interior space.

Alarmed by what he saw, the former VOO worker called the Coast Guard to report what he believed was a private contractor company spraying dispersants. "We were later told by the Coast Guard they'd investigated the incident and told us what we saw were vacuum boats sucking oil, and they were rinsing their tanks," he said. "But we know this is a lie and that BP is using these out of state contractors to come in and spray the dispersant at night and they are using planes to drop it as well."

He worked in the VOO program looking for oil. When his team would find oil, upon reporting it, they would consistently be sent away without explanation or the opportunity to clean it. "They made us abort these missions," he said. "Two days ago I put out boom in a bunch of oil for five minutes, they told me to abort the mission, so I pulled up boom soaked in oil. What the hell are we doing out there if they won't let us work to clean up the oil?"

He told Truthout that as his and other VOO teams would be going out to work on the water in the morning, they would pass the out-of-state contractors in Carolina Skiffs coming in from what he believed to be a covert spraying of the oil with dispersant in order to sink it. He believes this was done to deliberately prevent the VOO teams from finding and collecting oil. By doing so, BP's liability would be lessened since the oil giant will be fined for the amount of oil collected.

"BP brings in the Carolina Skiffs to spray the dispersant at night," he added, "And they are not accountable to the Coast Guard."

James Miller, who had taken the group out into the Mississippi Sound that found the oil/dispersants on August 11, told Truthout that the Carolina Skiff teams spraying dispersants were "common" and that it "happened all the time."

Miller, who was in the VOO, is an eyewitness to planes spraying dispersants, as well as the Carolina Skiff crews doing the same.

"We'd roll up on a patch of oil ½ mile wide by one mile long and they'd hold us off from cleaning it up," Miller, speaking with Truthout at his home in D'Iberville, Mississippi, said. "We'd leave and the Carolina Skiffs would pull up and start spraying dispersants on the oil. The guys doing the spraying would wear respirators and safety glasses. Their boats have 375 gallon white drums full of the stuff and they could spray it out 150 feet. The next day there'd be the white foam that's always there after they hit the oil with dispersants."

Some nights VOO crews would sleep out near the work sites. "We'd sleep out there and some nights the planes would come in so close the noise would wake us from a dead sleep," Miller added. "Again, we'd call in the oiled areas during the day and at night the planes would come in and hit the hell out of it with dispersants. That was the drill. We'd spot it and report it. They'd call us off it and send guys out in the skiffs or planes to sink it."

Mark Stewart, from Ocean Springs, Mississippi, was in the VOO program for 70 days before being laid off on August 2. The last weeks has seen BP decreasing the number of response workers from around 45,000 down to around 30,000. The number is decreasing by the day.

Stewart, a third generation commercial fisherman, ... like Miller, is an eyewitness to planes dispensing dispersant at night, as well as the Carolina Skiff crews spraying dispersant. "I worked out off the barrier islands of Mississippi," Stewart said. "They would relentlessly carpet bomb the oil we found with dispersants, day and night."

Stewart, echoing what VOO employees across the Gulf Coast are saying, told Truthout his crew would regularly find oil, report it, be sent away, then either watch as planes or Carolina Skiffs would arrive to apply dispersants, or come back the next day to find the white foamy emulsified oil remnant that is left on the surface after oil has been hit with dispersants.

Stewart added, "Whenever government people, state or federal, would be flying over us, we'd be instructed to put out all our boom and start skimming, acting like we were gathering oil, even when we weren't in the oil."
***
There is a clear pattern that VOO workers in all four states are consistently reporting:

VOO workers identify the oil.
They are then sent elsewhere by someone higher up the chain of command.
Dispersants are later applied by out-of-state contractors in Carolina Skiffs (usually at night), or aircraft are used, in order to sink the oil.
The oil "appears" gone and, therefore, no additional action is taken.

If Corexit is, in fact, being sprayed at night after being "called in" once oil is spotted, this would be one of the most important stories on the oil spill.

Relief Wells Delayed ... New Tests Show "Gap" in Oil "Well Column" Causing Loss of Pressure ... Does the Government Have ANY IDEA What It's Doing?

An oil and gas industry veteran with 30 years experience who goes by the alias Fishgrease gave a pretty good recap of BP and the government's record of failure in capping the oil well:

BP does a superhuman job of creating conditions favorable to loss of control of what is very possibly the largest well in the history ot the Gulf of Mexico. Result: Blowout. FAIL

For more than a day, BP insists there is no leakage. Result: Wrong. FAIL

BP admits that well is leaking. Says leak is 1000 BOPD. Result: Wrong. FAIL

NOAA, USCG and independent groups say the leak sure looks more like 5000 BOPD. BP says... DEAL! It's 5000 BOPD! How silly of us! Result: Wrong. FAIL

Round about here, BP succumbs to pressure from ... Congress and other groups and begins to release video feeds of that is happening under a mile of Gulf water, at the damaged well.

BP builds a huge metal barn to lower over one of the leaks. Result: G@*!@^$ thing clogs with hydrate ice within seconds. FAIL

BP installs Insertion Tube Technology. Result: Captures a very small and day-by-day-smaller portion of the leak. FAIL

BP tries Diamond Wire Saw Technology to cut the damaged riser off the top of the BOP, leaving a clean even surface to seat a cap. Result: Wire gets stuck. FAIL

BP tries Crunchy... a huge hydraulic Jaws-of-Death to snip the riser. Result: Jagged, bent, uneven surface upon which nothing will seal. FAIL

BP lowers cap #4. Steam Punk fans rejoice! Result: This cap is capturing only a minor fraction of the leak. FAIL

BP is ordered to increase containment capacity by the USCG. Says it will. Doesn't. Starts piping a portion of the leak to the Q4000 where it is all burned, unmeasured. Result: They're capturing or burning an estimated 50% of the leak, when they were ordered to catch it ALL. FAIL

BP is again ordered to increase capture capacity via sternly-worded letter. Finally installs another processing boat. Result: Still not getting much more than 50% of the leak. Makes excuse that there's not enough room in the fucking Gulf of Mexico to park another boat. FAIL

BP installs "Capping Stack Technology" in order to more effectively capture leak. Result: Vented riser immediately freezes off. This is the beginning of the end of capture. FAIL

BP comes up with "Integrity Test Technology" which completely shuts in the well to test its integrity. Result: Works... immediately starts leaking... but does stop the leak. BP keeps moving goal line for integrity downward from 9000 psi to 8000 psi to 7500 psi to whatever the hell pressure they're seeing that day....

... Well remains shut in. Leaks are nominal but increasing....

BP comes up with "Static Kill Technology" says it can kill well....

Along about here, BP quits releasing data. Video feeds start blacking out and "Rogue ROVs" appear... we can't see the feeds of those. They're assigned to monitor the BOP leaks and anything else BP doesn't want us to see.

"Magic Cement Technology!" BP convinces Government to put the question of total capture and measurement out of the question. All work on containment stops cold. BP pushes a shitload of mud and cement into well. Result: Even though there's no way on God's Green Earth that they could know where the cement goes, they say they successfully cemented the casing... just the casing... not the annulus. News Media interprets this as a complete plugging of the well and questions whether the relief wells are even needed....

But the well is still leaking, now out of a very energetic leak on the bottom flange seal on the FelxJoint. There is still pressure on the BOP because you can't have leaks without pressure. Plugged wells don't LEAK!

BP says they're going to get some pressure readings off the BOP after venting to see if they can establish flow up the annulus... or something. No one can figure out what the hell they're talking about here and they don't elaborate beyond Thad Allen blubbering a bunch of stuff NO ONE understands.... They freeze off their chokes atop the Capping Stack by flowing hydrocarbons through them with a very large pressure drop. ALL feeds showing anything that is going on are blacked out. After promising to release data, BP and Thad Allen.... don't....

Bob Cavnar continues the timeline, bringing us up to date:

Things keep getting curiouser and curiouser with the Well that Won't Die. In his presser this morning, Adm Allen announced that they are still trying to decide what to do about the relief well, the weak components on the old BOP, and how they're going to approach the relief well, which is still just sitting there, a tantilizing 3 1/2 feet from the blowout wellbore. Dithering seems a strong word, but one I'll now use. You'll recall that right after BP started the surprise "well integrity test" back in July, they announced the surprise "static kill", characterizing it as low pressure, low risk, and an effort to "stabilize" the well. They pumped that procedure on August 3rd, and, declaring the well "static", then pumped 500 barrels of cement announcing that the entire job went right down the casing and out into the formation. That was 11 days ago.

Since, BP and Adm Allen raised the ominous possibility that there was something mysterious going on in the annulus, the space between the production casing and the intermediate casing. Adm Allen has gone on and on about 1,000 barrels of oil in the annulus, "near ambient" pressure testing, rising pressure, falling pressure, holding pressure, and bleeding pressure, to the bewilderment of everyone, including me. Kent Wells, the star of the BP "Technical" McBriefing's, where no technical data is provided, and only few questions are taken (notice I didn't say answered), has been AWOL since his last appearance 6 days ago. The purpose of the "new ambient" pressure test is still unclear, but, after being hounded for over a week by the DailyKos Gulf Watchers, the Admiral compelled BP to release the BOP pressure readings, but BP left out basic information like starting point, whether the well is shut in at the surface or seafloor, the fluid in the riser, etc, so the data is pretty much useless, like most other information that's been disclosed.

Today, the Admiral admitted that there were three components in the the BOP stack that is of concern; we know which ones those are, since we've been talking about them for over a month. The weak components are the flex joint, right on top of the old stack, the riser adapter, and what they call the transition spool are all rated below the other components in the stack, between 5,000 psi to 6,000 psi maximum working pressure. In each of these procedures that BP has undertaken, the top kill, the well integrity test, the injectivity tests, and static kill, the pressures that BP announced actually exceeded the rated pressures of at least one of those components. After performing all of these machinations, they are now suddenly concerned about pressure on the BOP, and are actually talking about changing out the entire stack before completing the bottom kill. What?

All of this delay and dithering is confusing, at best. Pulling the stack at this point is even more concerning, especially with drill pipe and God know what all inside, including the casing hanger. Had they followed the original plan of set the capping stack, hooking up the risers that were supposed to be completed in mid-July, and producing the well to the surface while they were killing it from below, all of this new discussion would be moot. This static kill, where they really have no idea where the cement and mud went, has only complicated matters, created more uncertainty, and absolutely more delay.

In addition, Admiral Allen said today that new tests show “gap” in “well column” causing loss of pressure:

Does the government have any idea what it's doing? Does BP?

Gulf Shrimpers Find Oil In Reopened Fishing Areas. Governnment Says "Shut Up". Sierra Club Alleges Areas Were Solely Reopened to Limit BP's Liability

While the government says that the oil is gone, shrimpers say its still there.

The Press-Register reports:

Opening state offshore waters to fishing and winding down the cleanup effort on the coast is premature, said Louie Miller, state director of the Mississippi Sierra Club.
"We've got shrimpers out there saying there is oil out there," Miller said. "We had a meeting Wednesday night where we had over 150 shrimpers... who are saying there is oil out there and these underwater plumes are varying in size and shape. This stuff is obviously moving around out there."
***
[William Walker, executive director of the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources] "If you are not going to validate what you are saying through accepted scientific protocol and approaches, then quit talking about it without any evidence what you are saying is true," Walker said.

In other words, shut up.

Obviously, gulf shrimpers have a strong motivation to have everyone think that the shrimp is safe and the oil is all gone. They wouldn't be speaking out unless the problem was fairly bad.

Indeed, the Sierra Club accuses the government of reopening oiled fishing grounds to limit BP's liability:

The existence of oil is irrefutable, Miller said. Oil has reappeared on beaches in Alabama, Petit Bois and Horn islands and continues to wash ashore in Louisiana, he said.
Miller said there also is evidence of submerged oil.

"It is a weird thing. It is like strands, this black water, as they are calling it. It is like strands that are about three to four times the thickness of human hair. These things can be about foot-and-a-half, to five- to six-feet-long."

Miller said the assumption is oil that has been dispersed.

"To open up these waters, in my opinion, is nothing more than to limit the liability of BP to pay claims," he said.

"Because now they can deny any claims after the time at which these waters were opened back up," Miller said.

PBS Newshour also covered the shrimpers' distrust of the government's claims that all is well:

PBS: [Vice president of the Louisiana Shrimpers Association Acy] Cooper says despite government claims that most of the oil is gone, there’s plenty of it still on the bottom.

COOPER: I went out there and we made about four or five passes with the wheel, with the boat, stirred up the mud, and before you know it, oil was coming up. So these are the kind of areas that we need to distinguish where it's at, and these are the new places we need to keep closed. We don't need to open this. Keep them out of there.

(Video here). And see this.

Truthout reports:

Two days after [William] Walker's announcement [that all was well] and in response to claims from state and federal officials that Gulf Coast waters are safe and clean, fishermen took their own samples from the waters off of Pass Christian in Mississippi.

The samples were taken in water that is now open for shrimping, as well as from waters directly over Mississippi's oyster bed, that will likely open in September for fishing.

Commercial fisherman James "Catfish" Miller, took fishermen Danny Ross Jr. and Mark Stewart, along with scientist Dr. Ed Cake of Gulf Environmental Associates and others out and they found the fishing grounds to be contaminated with oil and dispersants.
***

On August 13, Truthout visited Pass Christian Harbor in Mississippi. Oil sheen was present, the vapors of which could be smelled, causing our eyes to burn. Many ropes that tied boats to the dock were oiled and much of the water covered with oil sheen.

***

"BP has bought off all our government officials, and shut them up. You can't say the oil is gone, it's right here! Them saying it's not here is a bunch of bullshit."
***

He worked in the VOO program looking for oil. When his team would find oil, upon reporting it, they would consistently be sent away without explanation or the opportunity to clean it. "They made us abort these missions," he said. "Two days ago I put out boom in a bunch of oil for five minutes, they told me to abort the mission, so I pulled up boom soaked in oil. What the hell are we doing out there if they won't let us work to clean up the oil?"
***
"I can take anybody in here out and show them oil, every single day," David White, a local fishing charter captain responded. "I was in the VOO program, driving around calling in oil, telling them where it is and nobody ever came. I never saw any skimmers there and I'm talking about some serious oil. I can show you tar balls going across the bottom like tumbleweeds."

Yerkes provided Truthout with a written statement from Lawrence Byrd, a local boat captain who was a task force leader in the VOO program from June 4 to July 21. On July 27 and 28, Byrd took BP officials, Coast Guard officials and an EPA official on a fact finding mission in search of oil.

"The Coast Guard told us if we could show them the oil, they'd put us back to work," Yerkes told Truthout, "So Byrd took him, and other officials out on his boat and showed them the oil."

Byrd's statement contains many instances of the group encountering oil on the trips:

"Within 30 minutes in the Rocky Bayou and Boggy Bayou we found 4 different football field sized areas of oily sheen on the water ... We moved east from there in search of weathered oil, just past Mid Bay bridge we found a 2 acre oil slick with a water bottle full of crude oil. At this time the Coast Guard Lt. had seen enough to warrant a 2nd trip with BP officials and EPA."

The next day, July 28, Byrd wrote:

"On board were BP officials, a Parson official, 2 Coast Guard Lts and EPA. First stop Crab Island Destin where we found tar balls, dead fish and plenty of dead sargasm grass. All officials seemed very concerned about all of our findings."

***
"There are surfers coming in with oil on them," Yerkes continued, "There are divers telling us it's on the bottom. We have VOO workers coming in after finding oil three inches thick atop the water as of last week and they go back out there and it's gone."

Project Gulf Impact filmed local fishermen saying much the same thing:

“Fishermen do not want to lose our credibility or deliver contaminated seafood to market and make people sick.” – Kathy Birren

“While President Obama and state officials claim that the Gulf is ‘open for business,’ these fishermen say the spraying of dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico is ongoing and they’re concerned that seafood pulled from impacted waters is unsafe for eating.”

“The tissue testing of this seafood is inadequate and testing for the toxic dispersants is non-existent.” – Tracy Kuhns, Louisiana Bayoukeeper

“I think it is crucial for the public to be made aware of the concerns of the commercial fishermen. And if a commercial fisherman who makes his living off of those products doesn’t want to deliver them to the public, the public needs to know why.” – Chris Bryant, Commercial Fisherman.

And see this:

Indeed, fishermen hired by BP are still finding tar balls, but are being instructed to hide their discoveries.

Is the Sierra Club right? Are still-oiled fishing areas being reopened solely to limit BP's liability?

Are fishing areas instead being reopened to try to save the Gulf fishing industry (even though local fishermen and shrimpers would rather have dangerous areas remain closed so that Gulf seafood's reputation isn't permanently destroyed)?

Or is it just part of the same old attempt to cover up the severity of the crisis?

One thing is for sure: the oil is not just in the imaginations of shrimpers and fishermen. While government scientists claim that 75% of the oil has disappeared, independent scientists say that up to 80% of the oil is still there:

Saturday, August 14, 2010

Is Gulf Seafood Safe?

The FDA and NOAA say that Gulf seafood is fine. President Obama ate a fish taco yesterday made with Gulf fish.

So does that mean Gulf seafood is safe to eat?

I had hoped - for the sake of the Gulf fishermen and the entire Gulf economy - that the answer was yes. But after digging a bit, I'm not so sure.

For example, Local fishermen don't trust the safety of the fish:

"Fishermen here are calling it 'Voodoo seafood' because we are all cursed," said Bill Thompson of Long Beach, Mississippi. Fishermen from Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida gathered in Biloxi last week to discuss their fears.

"We do not think it is safe but the state officials say it is. Who do you trust? The people that know these waters or the government?" Thompson added.

Neither do local shrimpers:

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reports that of all the samples of seafood that have been tested since the oil spill, none have shown evidence of contamination.
While some in the coastal seafood industry agree with these assessments, a majority seem to view the news with a sense of betrayal.

"The cleanup isn't even close to being done," said Karen Hopkins of Dean Blanchard Seafood, which accounts for about 11 percent of the U.S. shrimp supply, on the barrier island of Grand Isle.

"The last thing I want to do is scare anyone away from the seafood down here," said Dawn Nunez, standing at the counter of the shrimp wholesale business and deli she owns in the tiny fishing town of Hopedale. "But if I’m not eating it or feeding it to my children, I can’t advise anyone else to eat it either."

Indeed, crabs and crab larvae have been discovered filled with oil. See this and this.

As AOL news notes:

Petroleum contamination is known to cause cancer and brain damage. But how much oil and gas does it take to make seafood dangerous?

Obviously, low doses of even the strongest poison won't cause health problems, so it is all a question of how much oil - if any - is making it into Gulf seafood. But as the AOL News article notes, BP might be lobbying to raise the amount of oil in seafood which is considered safe.

And its not just oil.

As Fox 8 in New Orleans reports:

Researchers at Tulane say it appears they've detected a Corexit sort of fingerprint in the orange blobs found lodged in the bodies of tiny blue crab larvae collected from marshes that stretch from Texas to Florida.
[University of New Orleans’ Martin O’Connell, Ph.D] said O'Connell said most components of oil won't bio-accumulate, meaning oil likely won't reach the food chain. As for Corexit, he said, "no one really knows." "If you're a small fish and you eat 1,000 of these small crab larvae and all of them have oil or Corexit droplets in them they could get into the fish.. that little fish could be eaten and so on and so on," said O'Connell.

Sky News notes:

[Dr George Crozier] director of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab is worried about the potential build up of some chemical compounds in the food chain.

[He] is particularly concerned about polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons… “If we do see over the years fish accumulating PAH, it will almost certainly be attributable to Deepwater Horizon… I can imagine 10 or 20 years from now there will be the same kind of health warnings about say, grouper or snapper from the centre of the Gulf, that apply to tuna from all over the world, for mercury.”

NOAA admitted in a Congressional hearing that seafood isn't being tested for dispersants, even though they may bioaccumulate. And see this.

It is well-known that the EPA buried the concerns of its own toxicologists about the application of Corexit. As the Guardian points out:

The Obama administration is facing internal dissent from its scientists for approving the use of huge quantities of chemical dispersants to tackle the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the Guardian has learned.

***

Jeff Ruch, the executive director of the whistleblower support group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, said he had heard from five [EPA] scientists and two other officials who had expressed concerns to their superiors about the use of dispersants.

"There was one toxicologist who was very concerned about the underwater application particularly," he said. "The concern was the agency appeared to be flying blind and not consulting its own specialists and even the literature that was available."

Veterans of the Exxon Valdez spill questioned the wisdom of trying to break up the oil in the deep water at the same time as trying to skim it on the surface. Other EPA experts raised alarm about the effect of dispersants on seafood.

Ruch said EPA experts were being excluded from decision-making on the spill. "Other than a few people in the united command, there is no involvement from the rest of the agency," he said. EPA scientists would not go public for fear of retaliation, he added.

***
Independent scientists also criticised the EPA for claiming that the combination of oil and dispersants posed no greater danger to marine life on its own.
On Wednesday, a toxicologist from Texas Tech University is scheduled to tell a Senate hearing that the unprecedented use of dispersants "created an eco-toxicological experiment".

"The bottom line is that a lot of oil is still at sea dispersed in the water column," said Ron Kendall. "It's a big ecological question as to how this will ultimately unfold." Previous studies, including a 400-page study by the National Academy of Sciences, have warned that the combination of oil and dispersants is more toxic than oil on its own, because the chemicals break down cell walls, making organisms more susceptible to oil.

The EPA issued a report on Monday, based on a study of how much of the mixture was needed to kill a species of shrimp and small fish, just two of the 15,000 types of marine life in the Gulf. The EPA test did not address medium- or long-term effects, or reports last week that dispersants were discovered in the larvae of blue crab, entering the food chain.

***

Hugh Kaufman, a senior EPA policy analyst, dismissed the tests as little more than a PR stunt.

But isn't this all old news, because the Corexit has already broken down in the environment? Maybe. But as the Press-Register noted on August 6th:

The stained, brown water seen washing up in pockets along Alabama beaches for the last two weeks appears to contain the dispersant widely used on oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill, according to a preliminary analysis.

Ed Overton, a Louisiana State University chemist… [who] is analyzing oil samples for the federal government… said… “indications [are] that there was a dispersant signal in the sample.” … [T]he signal was similar to a Corexit sample.

Harriet Perry, a scientist at the Gulf Coast Research Lab in Ocean Springs [said]… “It looks like they found [Corexit],” Perry said of work by research colleagues at Tulane University [researching crab larvae]… “For a droplet to be that small, it has to be dispersed oil… It’s supposed to biodegrade rapidly. It’s supposed to disappear in days, not weeks, but that may not be happening.”

In addition, some claim that even the chemicals left behind when Corexit breaks down are toxic, although I have seen no scientific evidence one way or the other.

The bottom line is that some Gulf seafood is probably safe and other Gulf seafood is probably not very safe, depending on where it swam in relation to the oil plumes and a host of other factors. But since the government is being close-lipped about the details of its test results - and isn't even testing for dispersants - it is hard to know whether a particular piece of seafood is safe or not.

BP Will Go Ahead with Relief Wells ... But Admiral Allen Warns That There is a "Weak Link"

A day after saying that relief wells may not be needed, the government has decided that they are.

That's good news, as it greatly increases the odds that the oil well will permanently be capped.

Oil industry expert Robert Cavnar pointed out on July 14th - in arguing against the well integrity test - that there was a weak leak in the capping stack:

I'm sorry, but I have to ask, What the hell are they doing? We now have an ability to capture all the oil and stop this massive pollution of the Gulf (as well as measure it). We have great weather to get the relief well completed. We already know, without the "well integrity test", that they have severe damage to the BOP and other surface equipment and casing. If that weren't true, the damn thing wouldn't have blown out in the first place. We also know that between the "capping stack" and the old BOP that there is a non-wellhead rated piece of equipment, known as the flex joint, along with the riser adapter, that we've talked about before. This piece of equipment, that normally sits above the BOP, is not rated to nearly those pressures encountered by wellhead equipment. All of the other components in this BOP are rated to at least 10,000 psi (new, off the shelf, and undamaged); this piece is by far the weakest link in the chain, especially since it took severe stresses as the rig sank and 5,000 feet of riser torqued it as it sank. Yesterday, Adm. Allen announced they were going to take the stack, including this flex joint, to as high as 9,000 psi for up to 48 hours. I have been unable to learn the model and rating of the flex joint here, but Oil States advertises their LMRP flex joints to be rated 600-6,000 psi, far below the 9,000 to which Adm Allen said they would potentially go; even with the 2,200 psi of hydrostatic pressure on the outside of the competent caused by it being in 5,000 feet of water, it's still at least 1,000 psi differential pressure over the rating of the component.

Today, Admiral Thad Allen said that the "spooling tool" was only rated to 7,500 psi, and that BP and the government are worried about blowing out that part:

Here's the full transcript from Admiral Allen's press briefing.

As Cavnar explained on July (using BP's illustration and explanation):

Here's a good illustration of the entire assembly:

As you can see, the bottom spool of the assembly bolts up to the flex joint flange at the top of the BOP (blowout preventer).

Because Cavnar and Allen name different - but adjoining - parts, I'm not sure whether it is actually one part or both the flex joint and the transition spool which are the weak leak.

But the bottom line is that BP has to be very careful when drilling the relief well.

And as I wrote on July 6th:

The team leader for BP’s relief wells – Boots and Coots – is 40 for 40 in successfully stopping oil spills using relief wells (around 6:10 into video).

Many oil drilling experts are hopeful that BP’s relief wells will succeed on the first try. I hope and pray that they do.

But the relief wells are not a slam dunk, especially at such extreme depths.

Friday, August 13, 2010

"A Sustainable Level of Bank Profits Appears to be About 1% of GDP". Higher Bank Profits Lead to a Ponzi Economy and a Depression

I've previously noted that concentration of all the poker chips in a couple of hands ends the poker game.

And I've repeatedly pointed out that when banks get too big, it hurts the economy.

I've also noted that the government actually encouraged the big banks to get bigger and bigger (and see this, this and this). As just one example, the Treasury Department encouraged banks to use the bailout money to buy their competitors, and pushed through an amendment to the tax laws which rewards mergers in the banking industry.

The government has also given the big banks many tens of trillions of dollars.

In that light, Phd economist and leading economic modeller Steve Keen makes an important new contribution to our understanding of the banking sector.

Specifically, Keen's new model shows that bank profits above 1% of GDP are unsustainable, and lead to a Ponzi economy and - eventually - a depression:

The record $6 billion profit that the Commonwealth Bank [Australia's largest bank] is expected to announce today is a sign of an economy that has been taken over by Ponzi finance. Fundamentally, banks make money by creating debt, and the amount of debt we’ve been enticed into taking on is the sign of a sick economy rather than a healthy one. The level of private debt that is actually needed to support business and maintain home ownership at historic levels (ownership levels have fallen over recent years!) is possibly as little as one sixth the current level.

Because of that debt level, bank profits have gone through the roof as a share of GDP. Back before we had a financial crisis—when debt levels were far lower than today—so too were bank profits as a share of GDP. A sustainable level of bank profits appears to be about 1% of GDP.
***

As readers of this blog know, I build models of financial instability, and in my models, one symptom of an economy that is headed for a Depression is a rise in bankers share of income at the expense of workers and capitalists. The model below has yet to be calibrated to the data, but the similarities with the actual data are still ominous.

One empirical reality illustrated by the model as well is that even if firms are the ones taking on the debt (as they are in this model—it does not include household borrowing), workers are the ones that pay for this in terms of a declining share of national income: rising debt is associated with a constant profit share of GDP but a falling workers share.

When the crisis really hits, both workers and capitalists suffer as bank income goes through the roof—leading to a Depression. The only way out of this is to abolish large slabs of the debt, and coincidentally to drive bankers share of income back down to levels that reflect is supportive role as a provider of working capital for firms—rather than a parasitic role as the financier of Ponzi schemes.

This is the real debt story of our economy right now. As the first chart above indicates, private debt is far higher than Government debt, even after the increase last year due to Rudd’s stimulus package. Government debt is currently 5.5% of GDP, whereas private debt—even though it has fallen slightly due to business deleveraging—is over 150% of GDP: 27 times the size of Government debt. The so-called debate that the major parties are having over the size of Government debt is an embarrassment.

Given that giant, super-profitable banks lead to a Ponzi economy and a depression, we must break up the too big to fails, which would allow smaller banks to thrive and to lend out more money to Main Street.

Either that, or let's just replace the entire private banking system with state public banking. See this, this and this.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Include Us As a Google News Source

If you like the site, click here to recommend WashingtonsBlog.com for inclusion in Google News search results.

Thanks.

Will BP Skip the Relief Well, Declare Mission Accomplished, and Abandon Ship Without Permanently Killing the Oil Leak?

Yesterday, I pointed out that - while everyone is claiming that the oil well has been capped - it hasn't really been capped.

AP reported last night:

BP, U.S. mull whether to skip 'bottom kill'

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The federal government and BP have recently raised the possibility that they won't need to perform the operation at all, since the well was plugged last month with mud and cement pumped in through the top.

(Bottom kill is, of course, just another phrase for relief wells.)

Similarly, Bloomberg writes today:

BP Plc may not finish drilling a relief well to its Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico, National Incident Commander Thad Allen said during a conference call today.

The relief well, which for months has been touted by the U.S. government as the ultimate solution to stopping the flow from Macondo -- a process known as “killing” the well -- may not be needed after all, Allen said.

Oil industry expert Robert Cavnar has a must-read piece today on the situation:

For the last several days, I've been trying to figure out what BP is doing and what is the actual condition of BP's MC252 well after their "static kill" and cementing procedure last week apparently didn't work. You'll recall that when [BP's] Kent Wells announced this procedure, he actually used the words "killed" and "dead".
***
To add to the argument to go ahead with the kill, Adm. Allen said in his July 22nd briefing:

"We have a pressure head up there that would help us now fill the top part of the well with mud. That would actually ultimately enhance the relief well effort that would take place five to seven days later." (emphasis added)
On August 2nd and 3rd, BP ran the "static kill" pumping 2,300 barrels of mud. Early in the morning on the 4th, BP issued a press release saying the the well had reached a "static condition" with well pressure "controlled by the hydrostatic pressure of the drilling mud." In his McBriefing later that day, Wells actually said that when they pumped the mud, they could actually see it go into the reservoir by pressures, and that they pumped up to 15 barrels per minute. They studiously avoided the terms "dead" and "killed". During the briefing, Wells also said:

"And what we - what we're doing now is, every six hours, we just inject a little more mud into the well, just to continue to give ourselves confidence that we can do that, keep our equipment live, and we're seeing a very, very static set of conditions as we continue to monitor the pressure, which is all very encouraging." (empasis added)
With all the encouraging signs, [U.S. Secretary of Energy] Steve Chu approved pumping cement, which they did on the 5th. In a briefing on the 6th, Doug Suttles declared victory, say that the "...cement job is performing as expected". He also said that they pumped 500 barrels of cement, leaving about 200 inside the casing.

All was right with the world. Except, it wasn't. Day before yesterday, Adm. Allen announced they were going to start a "pressure test", babbling about the annulus and raising the ominous spectre that they are still actually communicated to the reservoir. Wells confirmed that fear in the afternoon, admitting that they indeed had 4,200 psi on the well when it's supposed to be dead. At the seafloor, the well should have no more than 2,200 psi on it, and conceivable less, if the hydrostatic of the mud in the closed well had overcome reservoir pressure. Then it got really confusing. Wells said that it wouldn't hold 4,200 psi because of "bubbles" leaking out of the wellhead, implying that they are pumping on it to keep it there, but that they're going to "test" it by relieving pressure. ?? Also, the more Adm. Allen explains what's going on, the more the press gets confused. Hell, I understand this business and I'm confused.

To add to the jumble, Adm Allen said this in his briefing yesterday:

"Sure, there's a very low probability that we might have actually sealed the annulus with the cement that came down the pipe casing and came back up around it. What we want to do is understand whether or not there's what we call free communication. In other words whether there, the hydrocarbons in the reservoir can actually come up through the annulus outside the casing, if that's the case when we go in and we drill in we put the mud and cement we're just going to drive that down and seal the well. OK? If there's cement there and there's no communication that means we have what we call stagnate oil trapped around that casing up to the well head. If you go in and you start pumping mud and cement in there the chances are you could raise the pressure and push that up into the blow out preventer. And that's a very low possibility, low probability event but we want to, we want to test the pressure in the blow out preventer and see if we actually have pressure coming up that would indicate that we have free communication with the reservoir. If not that would change our tactics and how we do the final kill."
Clear as drilling mud. What's going on here is that the "static kill" looks like it did the opposite of what BP and Allen had suggested at the beginning. It certainly hasn't accelerated the relief well. To the contrary, it has caused interminable delays. As a matter of fact, since July 13, the DDIII has only drilled 70 or 80 feet and set one string of casing. With all of the shut downs for the "well integrity test", then the "well injectivity test", then the "static kill" plus cementing, they haven't been able to get much work done for a month, especially with the 2 weather delays.

The mis-information and confusion is also taking its toll. I got asked in an interview yesterday that since the well is "dead" now, why are they bothering with the relief well? AP reported last night that BP and the government are contemplating skipping the bottom kill. Every time Wells, Suttles, or Allen get in front of a microphone, everyone gets even more confused, mis-informed, or both; everyone just wants this to go away, but it's not going away; not until the relief well kills from the bottom as we've been saying for over 3 months.

In actuality, this "static kill" did nothing that BP and Allen said it would do. Certainly the well is not dead or "static". It hasn't accelerated the relief well, but it has obscured the well's pressures, making it more difficult to kill. Hence, these new tests to figure out what's going on. BP and the government don't really have a clue where the 2,300 barrels of mud and 500 barrels of cement went. They originally claimed it all went down the casing and out to the reservoir. I would set the probability of that actually having happened at zero. Here's why: The positive test on the casing the night of the blowout was rock solid. The casing was good. It is possible that they may have collapsed the production casing during the blowout, but that would have been relatively high up in the wellbore, probably where they had displaced with seawater on the inside. If that happened, it would be communicated with the backside. In addition, at the bottom of the production casing is a float shoe, 134 feet of cement in the shoe track, then a float collar, then 2 cementing plugs with probably cement on top of those. Oh, and don't forget about the 3,000 feet of drill pipe hanging inside all of that. There is no way, unless that entire float assembly blew off, that they pumped down the casing and up the backside. On top of all that, there are HUGE lost circulation zones both below and above the reservoir. During drilling they lost 3,000 barrels of mud trying to drill that last section.

So, where did all the mud and cement go? It likely went down the backside of the production casing and either out through some damage that was caused during the aborted top kill, or out the lost circulation zone right below the 9 7/8" liner at 17,100. The fact that they're getting pressure now tells me that they are indeed communicated to the reservoir below, probably obscured by the fact that they now have mud strung through the annulus. If they are indeed communicated, pressure will build on the wellhead, which is exactly what's happening. Adm. Allen pledged to get BP to release the pressure data 3 days ago. The next day, when asked about it, he said it was released, but "nobody can find it." The data is still AWOL.

So, now, here we sit, waiting on weather again, and then we're going to pressure test a well that's supposed to be dead instead of getting the relief well finished. The press is confused; the public is bored.

BP has tried to cover up every aspect of the spill. See this, this and this.

The bottom kill - the procedure which all oil industry experts agree has the best chance of killing the leak - hasn't yet been performed. The underwater cameras still show methane and oil leaking into the Gulf.

And yet the country's attention is already drifting away from the Gulf and to celebrities, stocks, and other issues.

I'm beginning to wonder whether BP keeps on doing one confusing procedure after another, and keeps on saying that the well has been capped, hoping that everyone stops paying attention so that BP can just pack up its bags and slink away while people aren't paying attention.

Relief wells are the best hope for permanently capping the well. But it is possible that BP has messed up the well so badly that the relief wells will fail.

As Cavnar notes, BP has already taken down or blurred most of its underwater camera feeds. BP might just declare "mission accomplished" and skip the relief wells, leaving a ticking time bomb which will pollute the Gulf for years to come.

Note: I hope that BP and the government do complete the relief wells next week after the tropical storm passes. I am not predicting that BP will skip the bottom kill ... I am only warning that they are considering it, and am writing this so people can put pressure on BP and the government to complete both relief wells.

Update: BP will finish the relief well after all. That is good news. Does that mean that my essay was alarmist and counter-productive? No ... if the government announced that it was considering doing something really destructive like launching nuclear war, then it would be writers' duty to speak out against it. If the government subsequently announced that it had decided not to launch such a war, that wouldn't make the writers wrong. (Indeed, the outcry by the writers might be the reason that the government decided not to launch the nukes. )

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

BP Is Hiding Dead Animals to Avoid Fine of $50,000 Per Dead Animal (and the Bad Publicity)

BP has been trying to hide dead birds and other sealife.

Fox News reports that BP is trying to keep animal carcasses away from public view:

Local Gulf Coast residents and those monitoring turtles say that BP is removing carcasses at night to hide them from the public:

Jerry Cope and Charles Hambleton report:

The numbers of birds, fish, turtles, and mammals killed by the use of Corexit will never be known as the evidence strongly suggests that BP worked with the Coast Guard, the Department of Homeland Security, the FAA, private security contractors, and local law enforcement, all of which cooperated to conceal the operations disposing of the animals from the media and the public.
The majority of the disposal operations were carried out under cover of darkness. The areas along the beaches and coastal Islands where the dead animals were collected were closed off by the U.S. Coast Guard. On shore, private contractors and local law enforcement officials kept off limits the areas where the remains of the dead animals were dumped, mainly at the Magnolia Springs landfill by Waste Management where armed guards controlled access. The nearby weigh station where the Waste Management trucks passed through with their cargoes was also restricted by at least one sheriff's deputies in a patrol car, 24/7.
Robyn Hill, who was Beach Ambassador for the City of Gulf Shores until she became so ill she collapsed on the job one morning, was at a residential condominium property adjacent to the Gulf Shores beach when she smelled an overwhelming stench. She went to see where the odor was coming from and witnessed two contract workers dumping plastic bags full of dead birds and fish in a residential Waste Management dumpster, which was then protected by a security guard. Within five minutes, a Waste Management collection truck emptied the contents and the guard departed.

Independent biologists are also being blocked from investigating wildlife.

What's the reason for this cover up?

I had assumed that all such shenanigans were just to keep the dead wildlife away from public view.

But as the Christian Science Monitor pointed out in June:

Federal laws makes BP liable for up to $50,000 per dead animal on the endangered species list, such as a Kemp's Ridley turtle.

It's not just the Kemp's Ridley. Sperm whales and hawksbill turtles are also endangered animals living in the Gulf.

So are Brown pelicans, which have been hit hard by the oil spill.

In fact, the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service lists 29 endangered species in the Gulf which could be harmed by the spill.

You already know that BP is trying to hide the amount of oil which has leaked into the Gulf in order to reduce the amount of fines it has to pay under the Clean Water Act (see this and this).

Similarly, BP is also trying to secretly dispose of endangered animals killed by the spill in order reduce its fines under the Endangered Species Act.

The Fed's New Round of Quantitative Easing Is Like Trying to Patch Leaking Pipes by Pumping in More Water

Bernanke announced additional quantitative easing yesterday, primarily in the form of buying treasuries to monetize the U.S. debt.

Jeff Harding points out that those worried about deflation within the Fed won out over the scared-of-inflation camp:

The Fed Open Market Committee voted today to roll its holdings of maturing Fannie and Freddie debt into longer term Treasurys. This represents a significant change in Fed policy and it appears that the anti-deflationist wing of the Fed, led by James Bullard, president of the St. Louis Fed, won over the anti-inflationists led by Thomas Hoenig, president of the Kansas City Fed.

As I reported last week, there is a significant movement in the Fed, led by James Bullard, to increase its Open Market Operations purchases of Treasurys in order to prevent deflation. They see that money supply is decreasing and that zero interest rate policy (ZIRP) has been ineffective. In a groundbreaking paper just published by Bullard, he advocates the purchase of Treasury debt which is, in effect, a monetization of U.S. debt. They believe that such purchases, called "quantitative easing" is the only effective tool the Fed presently has to increase money supply.

This reveals that the Fed is very worried about deflation.
***
Presently (as of August 4) the Fed holds a total of $2.054 trillion of debt. Commencing last year and continuing through April of this year, the Fed bought $1.25 trillion of GSE debt (MBS of the government sponsored entities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) and the balance consists of Treasury paper. They intend to keep their holdings at this level. According to a subsequent release today by the NY Fed, which carries out the Fed's Open Market Operations, Treasury paper purchases will be "in the 2- to 10-year sectors of the nominal Treasury curve, although purchases will occur across the nominal Treasury and TIPS yield curves."
***
While the initial impact of this new policy on the economy will be modest, it sets a precedent for the Fed to substantially increase its attempts to inflate the money supply as the economy declines.

Given that the Fed has until recently taken extraordinary measures to avoid inflation, this may be a major shift.

Tyler Durden notes:

BofA's Jeffrey Rosenberg provides the breakdown of the total amount of securities that roll off (MBS, Agency and USTs) over the next 12 months: the total is $340 billion, including the $230 billion (and possibly more) in MBS. Alas, this means that on a straight line monthly basis (and the finally outcome will likely be far more jagged), there will be on average just under $30 billion a month in incremental 2-10 Year Treasury Purchases. As Joseph Abate said earlier, this is not nearly enough to be considered a new stimulus, and at best seeks to retain the status quo. What is notable is that BofA believes today's action should have been priced into the market.

So is another round of quantitative easing the right prescription for the economy?

It depends on whether or not you think debts and deficits matter.

As I wrote last month:

"Deficit hawks" like top economic historian Niall Ferguson says that America's debt will drive it into a debt crisis, and that any more quantitative easing will lead our creditors to pull the plug. See this, this and this. Indeed, PhD economist Michael Hudson says (starting around 4:00 into video):
If the problem that is grinding the economy to a halt is oo much debt, and if no one in the government - in either party - is looking at solving the debt problem, then ... we're going to go into a depression as far as the eye can see.
Yet the U.S. hasn't reined in its profligate spending. While modern economic theory shows that debts do matter (and see this), the U.S. is spending on guns and butter.

As PhD economist Dean Baker points out, the IMF is cracking down on the once-proud America like a naughty third world developing country. (As I've repeatedly noted, the IMF performed a complete audit of the whole US financial system during Bush's last term in office - something which they have only previously done to broke third world nations.)

Indeed, economics professor and former Senior Economist for the President’s Council of Economic Advisers Laurence Kotlikoff wrote yesterday:

Let’s get real. The U.S. is bankrupt.
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Last month, the International Monetary Fund released its annual review of U.S. economic policy.... The IMF has effectively pronounced the U.S. bankrupt.
***
Based on the CBO’s data, I calculate a fiscal gap of $202 trillion, which is more than 15 times the official debt.
***
This is what happens when you run a massive Ponzi scheme for six decades straight....
***
Bond traders will kick us miles down our road once they wake up and realize the U.S. is in worse fiscal shape than Greece.

On the other hand, as I also pointed out last month, the government isn't even stimulating in an effective way:

"Deficit doves" - i.e. Keynesians like Paul Krugman - say that unless we spend much more on stimulus, we'll slide into a depression. And yet the government isn't spending money on the types of stimulus that will have the most bang for the buck: like giving money to the states, extending unemployment benefits or buying more food stamps - let alone rebuilding America's manufacturing base. See this, this and this.

(Yes, Congress has just thrown twenty billion dollars at jobs and the states, but it is a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the many tens of trillions of dollars in handouts to the giant banks.)

Keynes implemented his policies in an era of much less debt than we have today. We're now bankrupt, with debt levels so high that they are dragging down the economy.

Even if Keynesian stimulus could help in our climate of all-pervading debt, Washington has already shot America's wad in propping up the big banks and other oligarchs.

More important still, Keynes implemented his New Deal stimulus at the same time that Glass-Steagall and many other measures were implemented to plug the holes in a corrupt financial system. The gaming of the financial system was decreased somewhat, the amount of funny business which the powers-that-be could engage in was reined in to some extent.

As such, the economy had a chance to recover (even with the massive stimulus of World War II, unless some basic level of trust had been restored in the economy, the economy would not have recovered).

Today, however, Bernanke, Summers, Dodd, Frank and the rest of the boys haven't fixed any of the major structural defects in the economy. So even if Keynesianism were the answer, it cannot work without the implementation of structural reforms to the financial system.

A little extra water in the plumbing can't fix pipes that have been corroded and are thoroughly rotten. The government hasn't even tried to replace the leaking sections of pipe in our economy.

Quantitative easing can't patch a financial system with giant holes in it.

Has the Oil Well Really Been Capped?

Everyone is saying that the well has been capped.

I hope so.

But even the government's spokesman, Thad Allen, isn't saying that it's been capped.

Here's an interchange from yesterday's press briefing:

Joel Achenbach: Yes thank you Admiral, I’m sorry if I’m a little bit confused, is there some concern that there are hydrocarbons in the annulus or is there some kind of reading or was it a model that someone examined and decided this was a concern? Can you explain that just a little bit better?…

Admiral Allen: … We do not know the status of the annulus, OK? It, there could be nothing in it or it could be full of hydrocarbons. It could be full of hydrocarbons that are being pressured up from the reservoir, there could be hydrocarbons that are in there that have been sealed off because cement actually did that from the top kill.

Or there could be a way that because of the seals at the top of the annulus between that and the well head there could be a path for hydrocarbons to go forward. We’ve never known that from the, from the beginning…

Oil industry expert Bob Cavnar notes: "It's pretty clear they have pressure on the wellhead when they shouldn't." Cavnar translates Allen's comments as meaning:

BP continues to have pressure on the wellhead from down below and have been letting me believe for a week that the well is static.

On August 8th, Cavnar pointed out in a must-read article that it is impossible to say whether or not the well has been capped given the available information:

The problem is that there are lots of questions that remain unanswered. Here's what I want to know:
Is the well dead?
What is the pressure on the well? Now?
If the well is open to the surface, what is that pressure?
What was the pressure during the "static kill"? Did it change at any time? What was total volume pumped?
What was the pressure during the bullhead cement job? Did you do the "hesitation squeeze" that Kent Wells mentioned in passing? What was displacement volume?
How do you know all the cement went down the casing?
What was the pressure on the well after the job?
Why is the flex joint flange leaking?
Why are the ROV feeds no longer provided in a decipherable resolution?
Why are some ROV feeds not being provided?
Has the well kicked since the bullhead cement job?
What pressure did the bullhead cement job test to?
Have you had to pump mud into the well since the bullhead cement job? How much?
Why are clouds of debris continuing to obscure the view several days after the well was supposedly "static"?
Were the rams of the old BOP opened for the static kill or bullhead cement job?
If so, could you tell if the drill pipe fish stuck in the BOP dropped into the well?
Can you close the blind shear rams now?
What is the damage to the rams in the old BOP?
Until these questions are answered by BP, we have no real information to tell us that the well is dead, or even safe. As long as they continue to stonewall critical data, I'll only continue to believe that the well is not "static" or safe.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

When University Scientists Found Underwater Oil Plumes, the Government Said Shut Up, Don't Tell Anyone ... and Then Tried to Discredit Them

As I've previously reported, a senior EPA policy analyst says that NOAA and the EPA have been "sock puppets" for BP.

NOAA has repeatedly denied the existence of underwater oil plumes (see this and this), calculated the spill to be only 5,000 barrels a day, and buried core data on the oil spill.

Now, university scientists have revealed the NOAA used strong-arm tactics to try to silence any information on underwater plumes. As the St. Petersburg Times reports:

The reaction that [the University of South Florida] announcement [of the discovery of huge underwater plumes] received from the Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal agencies that sponsored their research:
Shut up.
"I got lambasted by the Coast Guard and NOAA when we said there was undersea oil," USF marine sciences dean William Hogarth said. Some officials even told him to retract USF's public announcement, he said, comparing it to being "beat up" by federal officials.
The USF scientists weren't alone. Vernon Asper, an oceanographer at the University of Southern Mississippi, was part of a similar effort that met with a similar reaction. "We expected that NOAA would be pleased because we found something very, very interesting," Asper said. "NOAA instead responded by trying to discredit us. It was just a shock to us."
NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco, in comments she made to reporters in May, expressed strong skepticism about the existence of undersea oil plumes — as did BP's then-CEO, Tony Hayward.
"She basically called us inept idiots," Asper said. "We took that very personally."
Lubchenco confirmed Monday that her agency told USF and other academic institutions involved in the study of undersea plumes that they should hold off talking so openly about it. "What we asked for, was for people to stop speculating before they had a chance to analyze what they were finding," Lubchenco said. "We think that's in everybody's interest. … We just wanted to try to make sure that we knew something before we speculated about it."
"We had solid evidence, rock solid," Asper said. "We weren't speculating." If he had to do it over again, he said, he'd do it all exactly the same way, despite Lubchenco's ire.
***
USF's first NOAA-sponsored voyage to take samples after Deepwater Horizon, the one that turned up evidence of the undersea plumes, was designed to gather evidence for use in an eventual court case against BP and other oil companies involved in the disaster. At the end of the voyage, USF turned its samples over to NOAA, expecting to get either a shared analysis or the samples themselves back. So far, Hogarth said, they've received neither.
NOAA's top oil spill scientist, Steve Murawski, said Monday that he was "sure we will release the data" at some point. However, he said, because NOAA has collected so many samples over the past three months, when it comes to the samples from USF's trip in May, "I'm not sure where they are."

A government official named "Lubchenco" strong-arming scientists to toe the party line, and a government agency "losing" samples instead of sharing results with the scientists who had taken them.

Sounds like the Soviet Union, doesn't it?

Too bad it's America.

Monday, August 9, 2010

The Government is Dealing with the Oil Spill Like the Soviets Dealt with Chernobyl

The Soviet Union was famous for covering up its environmental disasters.

As award-winning journalist Dahr Jamail points out in a must-read article about the oil spill:

“It is well known that after the Chernobyl accident, the Soviet government immediately did everything possible to conceal the fact of the accident and its consequences for the population and the environment: it issued “top secret” instructions to classify all data on the accident, especially as regards the health of the affected population,” journalist Alla Yaroshinskaya has written.

In 1990 Yaroshinskaya came across documents about the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe that revealed a massive state cover-up operation, coupled with a calculated policy of disinformation where the then Soviet Union’s state and party leadership knowingly played down the extent of the contamination and offered a sanitized version to the public, both in and out of Russia. To date, studies continue to show ongoing human and environmental damage from that disaster.

When the disaster at Chernobyl occurred, it was only after radiation levels triggered alarms at the Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant in Sweden that the Soviet Union admitted an accident had even occurred. Even then, government authorities immediately began to attempt to conceal the scale of the disaster.

But it's not just the communist Soviets ...

The U.S. also has a long history of covering up environmental and health disasters, as shown by the following examples.

The Bush administration covered up the health risks to New Orleans residents associated with polluted water from hurricane Katrina, and FEMA covered up the cancer risk from the toxic trailers which it provided to refugees of the hurricane.

The Centers for Disease Control - the lead agency tasked with addressing disease in America - covered up lead poisoning in children in the Washington, D.C. area.

The government's response to the outbreak of mad cow disease was simple: it stopped testing for mad cow, and prevented cattle ranchers and meat processors from voluntarily testing their own cows (and see this).

The government also underplayed the huge Tennessee coal ash spill. As the New York Times noted in 2008:

A coal ash spill in eastern Tennessee that experts were already calling the largest environmental disaster of its kind in the United States is more than three times as large as initially estimated, according to an updated survey by the Tennessee Valley Authority.
***
The amount now said to have been spilled is larger than the amount the authority initially said was in the pond, 2.6 million cubic yards.

(The former head of the National Mine Health and Safety Academy says that the government whitewashed the whole coal ash investigation.)

And the government allegedly ordered Manhattan Project scientists to whitewash the toxicity of flouride (flouride is a byproduct in the production of weapons-grade plutonium and uranium). As Project Censored noted in 1999:

Recently declassified government documents have shed new light on the decades-old debate over the fluoridation of drinking water, and have added to a growing body of scientific evidence concerning the health effects of fluoride. Much of the original evidence about fluoride, which suggested it was safe for human consumption in low doses, was actually generated by “Manhattan Project” scientists in the 1940s. As it turns out, these officials were ordered by government powers to provide information that would be “useful in litigation” and that would obfuscate its improper handling and disposal. The once top-secret documents, say the authors, reveal that vast quantities of fluoride, one of the most toxic substances known, were required for the production of weapons-grade plutonium and uranium. As a result, fluoride soon became the leading health hazard to bomb program workers and surrounding communities.

Studies commissioned after chemical mishaps by the medical division of the “Manhattan Project” document highly controversial findings. For instance, toxic accidents in the vicinity of fluoride-producing facilities like the one near Lower Penns Neck, New Jersey, left crops poisoned or blighted, and humans and livestock sick. Symptoms noted in the findings included extreme joint stiffness, uncontrollable vomiting and diarrhea, severe headaches, and death. These and other facts from the secret documents directly contradict the findings concurrently published in scientific journals which praised the positive effects of fluoride.

Regional environmental fluoride releases in the northeast United States also resulted in several legal suits against the government by farmers after the end of World War II, according to Griffiths and Bryson. Military and public health officials feared legal victories would snowball, opening the door to further suits which might have kept the bomb program from continuing to use fluoride. With the Cold War underway, the New Jersey lawsuits proved to be a roadblock to America’s already full-scale production of atomic weapons. Officials were subsequently ordered to protect the interests of the government.
After the war, ... the dissemination of misinformation continued.

These are just a few of many examples showing that the U.S. has long acted just like the Soviets in covering up the magnitude of environmental disasters.

Government Says Oil Has Disappeared

The government is now saying that almost all of the oil has already disappeared, and that the small amounts of remaining oil are not toxic.

Many have pointed out that it is still easy to find oil even on the surface. As National Geographic points out:

In fact, scientists are still finding plenty of spilled Gulf oil—whether it's bubbling up from under Louisiana's islands, trapped underneath Florida's sugar-white beaches, or in the ocean's unseen reaches. (See pictures of spilled Gulf oil found just under Florida beaches.)

This week, biological oceanographer Markus Huettel and colleague Joel Kostka dug trenches on a cleaned Pensacola beach and discovered large swaths of oil up to two feet (nearly a meter) deep.

Oil gets trapped underground when tiny oil droplets penetrate porous sand or when waves deposit tarballs and then cover them with sand, said Huettel, of Florida State University in Tallahassee.

(Read more about oil found under "clean" Florida beaches earlier this month.)

And see photographer Julie Dermansky's report.

As the Washington Post points out, scientists aren't buying the government's spin either:

But, in interviews, [government] scientists who worked on the report said the figures were based in large part on assumptions and estimates with a significant margin of error.

Some outside scientists went further: In a situation in which many facts remain murky, they said, the government seemed to have used interpretations that made the gulf -- and the federal efforts to save it -- look as good as possible.

"There's a lot of . . . smoke and mirrors in this report," said Ian MacDonald, a professor of biological oceanography at Florida State University. "It seems very reassuring, but the data aren't there to actually bear out the assurances that were made."
***
But scientists who worked on the report said many of the numbers on the White House's pie chart had significant margins of error. The estimate of how much oil evaporated was calculated using a formula designed for spills near the surface, not 5,000 feet underwater. The calculation of how much oil would be "dispersed" as it flowed from the well was a new one, extrapolated from data about the way oil is broken by waves.
***
The situation is "being portrayed as 'the oil is out of the environment; it's gone,' " said Michael J. Blum, a professor at Tulane University in New Orleans. But, he said, all that's certain is that "the form of the oil has shifted. Dispersed oil is still oil. It's just in a different form."

Indeed, because - according to the US Minerals Management Service and a consortium of oil companies, including BP, themselves - as little as 2% of the oil which spilled from BP's oil well ever made it to the surface, any formula based on surface spills is worthless. In other words, as much as 98% of the spilled oil may not yet have even made it to the surface, but may have been suspended under the surface the whole time.

And since the government and BP have been using Corexit to sink the small proportion of oil visible from the surface, that means that more than 98% of the oil might be lurking beneath the surface.

National Geographic makes a similar point:

To University of South Florida chemical oceanographer David Hollander, the NOAA estimates are "ludicrous."
"It's almost comical."
According to Hollander, the government can account for only about 25 percent of the spilled Gulf oil—the portion that's been skimmed, burned off, directly collected, and so on.
The remaining 75 percent is still unaccounted for, he said.
For instance, the report considers all submerged oil to be dispersed and therefore not harmful, Hollander said. But, given the unknown effects of oil and dispersants at great depths, that's not necessarily the case, he added.
"There are enormous blanket assumptions."
***
Oil cleanup is mostly getting rid of what's on the surface, [Robert Carney, a biological oceanographer at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge] said. There's a common perception that "as long as you keep it off the beach, everything's hunky dory," he added.
***
Whether microbes munch the oil—the most common way oil breaks down—depends on how much oxygen is available for the tiny organisms to do their work....
"So far, we haven't seen any rapid degradation in these deep layers," [biological oceanographer Markus Huettel] said, though he noted oil at the top of the sand has been disappearing within days.
With little oxygen, the buried oil may stay for years, until a storm or hurricane wipes away the upper sand layers.
Previous oil spills suggest that the buried beach oil may continuously migrate not only out to sea but also into groundwater, where it can harm wildlife, Huettel said.
Oil-laden groundwater in Alaska following the Exxon Valdez spill, for instance, led to "significantly elevated" death in pink salmon embryos between 1989 and 1993, he said....
Another "open question" remains, FSU's Huettel noted: What is happening to the oil deep in the Gulf?
For the first time during an oil-spill response, officials used chemical dispersants to break up oil at ocean depths between 4,000 and 5,000 feet (1,200 and 1,500 meters). The dispersant-treated oil bits may have sunk to the seafloor, Huettel said.
In the cold, dark ocean, this mixture of oil and chemical dispersants may be suspended and preserved, causing long-term problems for deep-sea animals, Texas Tech University ecotoxicologist Ron Kendell said during August 4 testimony before the U.S. Congress.
"We have very limited information on the environmental fate and transport of the mixture of dispersant and oil, particularly in the deep ocean," Kendall said.
Some oil fragments are so tiny they can't be seen with the human eye, said the University of South Florida's Hollander. Others are big enough to be gobbled up by baby fish that mistake the oil for food....
Predicting what will happen to the deep-sea ecosystem is "uncharted territory," said Hollander, who's studying what the oil is doing to deep-sea creatures during a series of research cruises this summer and fall.
***
"We're getting into something different than the 2-D petroleum spill" on the Gulf's surface, he added. "All of the sudden you've taken this 2-D disaster and turned it into a 3-D catastrophe."

And the Guardian notes:

"Recent reports seem to say that about 75% of the oil is taken care of and that is just not true," said John Kessler, of Texas A&M University, who led a National Science Foundation on-site study of the spill. "The fact is that 50% to 75% of the material that came out of the well is still in the water. It's just in a dissolved or dispersed form."

Would I Lie To You, Comrade?

Florida State University oceanographer Ian McDonald points out that the government scientists claiming almost all of the oil is gone are the same folks who said that only 5,000 barrels of oil were leaking a day, and who denied that there were underwater plumes:

Anderson Cooper made a similar point:

The bottom line is that the government's entire response to the oil spill is to try to cover it up, just as the Soviets tried to do with Chernobyl, and just as the U.S. government has done with the financial crisis, torture, 9/11, the anthrax attack, and every other crisis.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Corexit Is Being Sprayed at Night, Even Now (According to BP Vessel of Opportunity Workers and Others)

Relief Wells Delayed ... New Tests Show "Gap" in Oil "Well Column" Causing Loss of Pressure ... Does the Government Have ANY IDEA What It's Doing?

Gulf Shrimpers Find Oil In Reopened Fishing Areas. Governnment Says "Shut Up". Sierra Club Alleges Areas Were Solely Reopened to Limit BP's Liability

Saturday, August 14, 2010

Is Gulf Seafood Safe?

BP Will Go Ahead with Relief Wells ... But Admiral Allen Warns That There is a "Weak Link"

Friday, August 13, 2010

"A Sustainable Level of Bank Profits Appears to be About 1% of GDP". Higher Bank Profits Lead to a Ponzi Economy and a Depression

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Include Us As a Google News Source

Will BP Skip the Relief Well, Declare Mission Accomplished, and Abandon Ship Without Permanently Killing the Oil Leak?

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

BP Is Hiding Dead Animals to Avoid Fine of $50,000 Per Dead Animal (and the Bad Publicity)

The Fed's New Round of Quantitative Easing Is Like Trying to Patch Leaking Pipes by Pumping in More Water

Has the Oil Well Really Been Capped?

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

When University Scientists Found Underwater Oil Plumes, the Government Said Shut Up, Don't Tell Anyone ... and Then Tried to Discredit Them

Monday, August 9, 2010

The Government is Dealing with the Oil Spill Like the Soviets Dealt with Chernobyl

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Monday, August 16, 2010

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