Gulf Coast Disaster - Wednesday News Roundup, July 14
Posted July 14, 2010 in Moving Beyond Oil, Reviving the World's Oceans, Reviving the World's Oceans, The Media and the Environment
Day 86
Highlights in this issue:
- BP freezes work on capping Gulf well, suspends relief well drilling, too
- Fed regulators tell banks to help customers affected by oil spill
- Mitsui refuses to pay its partner - BP - for oil spill expenses
- Oil spill muddies chances of bank mergers
This afternoon’s summary:
There’s an abundance of caution going on right now in the Gulf of Mexico. BP halted two efforts to contain the oil – a new cap to choke the flow and drilling of relief wells expected to be completed in late July or early August. It’s a tough setback at a time the skies are clear and there is no hurricane on the horizon just yet. BP is continuing with surface operations, using ships and skimmers to collect the oil on the water’s surface. But officials don’t want to aggravate anything underwater under engineers are certain the cap or the drilling won’t destabilize the situation. Meanwhile, federal regulators are telling banks to do what they can to help customers affected by the oil spill, loosen the rules and delay foreclosures. The oil spill has had many impacts on money. It is making it hard for banks in the region to merge and Mitsui, one of BP’s Gulf partners, is refusing to ante up $111 million to help pay for the Gulf oil spill. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will look into whether BP helped a terrorist get released in Libya
Quotable Quote:
"Our basic position was, if you can give us the answers we need ... then go ahead," one federal official said. Until then, "they can't go forward.”
National News
AP: Work on capping Gulf well frozen, relief well drilling halted
In an extraordinary move, BP's work on capping the Gulf of Mexico gusher was frozen Wednesday after the federal government raised concerns the operation could put damaging pressure on the busted well that could make the leak worse. In another setback, BP halted the drilling of two relief wells.
Read more:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_oil_spill
Los Angeles Times: Reasons for BP’s concern over cap
BP ‘s senior vice president Kent Wells says the "24-hour timeout" on testing the cap was ordered due in part to questions about whether the test would be able to determine a key issue: Whether the oil, if leaking, was coming from a shallow or a deep part of the well.
Reuters: Clinton will look into whether BP helped terrorist get released
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Wednesday she would look into a request by U.S. lawmakers that the State Department investigate whether BP Plc had a hand in the release of Lockerbie bomber Abdel Basset al-Megrahi.
Read more:
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/07/14/us/politics/politics-us-oil-spill-clinton.html?hp
Wall Street Journal: Fed regulators tell banks to help customers affected by oil spill
Financial institutions whose customers are affected by the BP PLC oil spill should try to expedite loans, ease credit terms and consider waiving late fees and penalties, U.S. banking regulators said Wednesday.
Read more:
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/07/14/fed-urges-banks-to-help-customers-affected-by-bp-oil-spill/
AP: Mitsui refuses to pay its partner- BP – for oil spill expenses
Japan’s Mitsui Oil Exploration Co., which owns MOEX Offshore – a BP partner in the Gulf oil exploration, says it will not going to help BP clean up the oil spill. The company turned its back on a $111 million cleanup bill that BP requested last month. The other minority owner, Anadarko Petroleum Corp., has refused to pay a $272 million bill from BP last month.
Read more:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hbcOnChs9DK4m1dn8Xo_wMYg8xtAD9GUD5PG4
Reuters: Oil spill muddies chances of bank mergers
The worst offshore spill in U.S. history is likely to have a broad impact on banks serving communities in the Gulf region, hurting consumer credit and real estate values, both residential and commercial, not to mention mergers and acquisitions.
Read more:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE66D32F20100714
Politics
New York Times: New Orleans mayor had a full plate before oil spill
His name is Landrieu, Mitch Landrieu. His sister, Mary, is a U.S. senator from Louisiana. His father, Moon, was mayor of New Orleans 32 years ago. And now he became mayor of that glorious city 13 days after the Gulf oil disaster began. “The oil spill’s much worse than we ever thought,” Landrieu said. “The budget’s much worse, the dysfunction is much worse ... But, you know, that’s why I signed up.”
Read more by Campbell Robertson
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/14/us/14landrieu.html?_r=1&hp
Feature
Forbes: Is oil spill opening a Pandora’s box for Obama?
Take one look at President Obama’s popularity polls on the slide, and you can see that something big is affecting him. And that big is the Gulf oil spill that is causing a decline in his poll numbers. The economy doesn’t help either, but that’s a different story. It’s not just America’s oil supply and energy security that’s in danger after the BP oil spill and the subsequent drilling ban. The Gulf economy is hanging by a thread, and it won’t take much to send it over the edge. And the disaster in the Gulf could be a game changer for the president.
Read more by Marin Katusa:
http://blogs.forbes.com/energysource/2010/07/14/has-the-gulf-spill-opened-pandoras-box-for-obama/
Editorial
New York Times: A new and necessary moratorium
The Obama administration has rightly chosen to reaffirm its decision in May to suspend deep-water drilling activities in the Gulf of Mexico. The important point is that the administration has reaffirmed one of the basic lessons of this mess: that industry claims cannot be accepted at face value, the New York Times writes.
Read more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/14/opinion/14wed1.html?hp
Regional
AJC.com: BP sued by Georgians who have property on Gulf coast
Two Atlanta law firms representing Georgians who have property on the Gulf Coast are suing BP for damages as a result of the oil spill.
Read more:
http://www.ajc.com/business/georgians-file-class-action-569602.html
Graphics:
Ø Methods used to contain the oil spill
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/25/us/20100525-topkill-diagram.html
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Comments
Jim Bullis, Miastrada Company — Jul 15 2010 03:54 PM
I appreciate your reporting which seems to offer more perceptive insight than other places; that being in particular your note about the caution and the halting of the 'relief well' drilling.
I repeatedly have pointed out that there is a serious question about the integrity of the geological structure around the outside of the casing; and this has already been full demonstrated by three months of gushing flow.
I read an AP report today and then a WSJ report. My comment to WSJ is here pasted:
Article author Susan Daker,
There seems to be some confusion in this article. But first let me point out that an AP article said that the 'relief well' drilling had beem stopped so as not to interfere with the integrity test. This would go to confirming my concern that there is a fundamental problem lurking under all this talk that the geological structure around the outside of the casing is the real integrity in question.
But testing that has already been done. Yes, the continued high rate of flow is the pertinent fact which tells us that the water column is being continuously supplied. This is the driver for the differential pressure that we see in the form of oil flowing out of the top.
The lurking disaster was indicated by a video someone provided some time ago that showed oil coming out of the sea floor. Once I saw that I realized that the differential pressure was being driven by the water pressure going down to the reservoir. A high pressure test result as the article mentioned would then be an indicator that shutting down the flow would be the worst thing that could be done, because it would cause oil to seek other pathways upward, and since the flaw seems to be in the geological structure, this could be very difficult to stop. It would come up through the same flawed structure that water is going downward.
If they find that the pressure is low, that would be contrary to what we have been seeing for three months. But that would be a good thing, because it would show that flow in the water path was limited. If that were the case then closing down the well would be more likely to not cause a further disaster. But given three months of flow, that seems like sillly wishful thinking.
The over-riding priority would seem to be to take all the oil out. But they designed this latest apparatus without having this as an objective. Each of the outlets should have high rate bottom hole pumps to keep the pressure low at the ocean floor level. Every barrel of oil coming up should be hauled out of there for processing. (I still can not comprehend the nonsense that the oil has to be processed before it is transported.)
To sustain operation through a hurricane there needs to be a tank on the ocean floor that can take up the slack and keep oil flowing while the hurricane is going on.
Perhaps some more penetrating questions should be asked?
Grizzly Bear — Jul 16 2010 08:03 AM
Thank you for your reporting on this! The cap is on an looks like it is holding. The oil has stopped, for the moment. But, let us not forget the damage, and the months of clean-up that is still ahead of us. I, for one, will not let BP slip into the night for this tragedy. They are a corporate giant that is just concerned with the bottom line, not all of us 'little ones'. Boycott BP, America!