Gulf Coast Disaster - Tuesday, September 21

Highlights in this issue

- BP joins effort to contain future oil spills
- Hurricanes could carry oil as far north as New England
- BP faces a long climb back from killing the well
- What’s next for the oil industry?
- The boom comes of age in the oil crisis

Today’s summary:
Okay, the well has been killed, but the disaster remains alive. It will take months, maybe generations, to pick up the pieces. The spill has cost BP and the government billions. The impact on citizens, businesses, and wildlife is impossible to calculate. Now the company is waiting for what will surely be a catalogue of criminal investigations and possibly criminal and civil lawsuits. At the moment, it is not known how much liability BP will be made to accept. The Deepwater Horizon incident is in violation of the Clean Water Act, and it is almost a certainty that BP could face huge fines of up to $17.5 billion if a Federal investigation finds BP to have acted negligently. There are costs associated with the clean-up effort (about $8 billion so far), and compensations which will definitely run into billions of dollars. BP plans to sell up to $30 billion of its assets to defray these costs. A lot of ancillary players have been sucked into a sea of black oil such. That includes other oil companies, the owners of BP gas stations, the still to be determined victims of the Gulf oil spill and even claims administrator Ken Feinberg who is being roundly criticized from all sides for moving too slowly and paying out claims that are much too small.

Quotable Quote

"It's going to go on as long as it takes to get the marshes and the beaches clean," said National Incident Coordinator Thad Allen. "We have detailed plans that we've negotiated with the states and the parishes in Louisiana to determine, if you will, how clean is clean."


National News

Reuters: BP joins effort to contain future oil spills
BP Plc is using its newly acquired knowledge of oil spills to help the oil industry develop methods to contain future ones. It’s part of a $1 billion industry effort to develop a new, rapid-response oil spill containment system in the Gulf. "We believe the addition of our recently gained deepwater intervention experience and specialized equipment will be important to the marine well containment system," Richard Morrison, BP vice president for Gulf of Mexico operations, said in a statement.

Read more
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE68J4HX20100920

Check this one out, too
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100920-711074.html


Huffington Post: Hurricanes could carry oil as far north as New England
The footprint from the Gulf oil spill has not yet evaporated. In a new video from National Geographic, scientists show how toxic hydrocarbons lingering in the Gulf of Mexico from BP's oil spill could potentially be carried as far north as New England by a hurricane.

Read more
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/20/gulf-oil-spill-hurricanes_n_731923.html?ref=email_share


Christian Science Monitor: BP faces a long climb back from killing the well
Killing the well was the easy part of BP’s job. The hard part comes now for the beleaguered corporate giant, whose image will be stained, and bottom line impacted, for years to come.

Read more
http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2010/0920/Oil-spill-cleanup-After-digging-deep-to-kill-well-BP-faces-long-climb


NPR: What’s next for the oil industry?
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Energy Secretary Steven Chu convene an expert panel Wednesday to discuss responses to future potential blowouts from offshore oil drilling. Last week, Salazar ordered oil and gas companies operating in the Gulf to plug nearly 3,500 nonproducing wells and dismantle about 650 production platforms no longer in use. But expert more policy changes to gird against any more oil disasters.

Read more
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129995445&ft=1&f=1001


Christian Science Monitor: Will Gulf regain lost jobs?
Economists are skeptical that conditions will be favorable for oil companies to restore the thousands of jobs lost after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in late April. Add the moratorium to the chaos in the Gulf right now and the prospect that oil companies may be moving overseas to find oil exploration with far less government regulation and you may find even more job loss in the Gulf region by the end of the year.

Read more
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0920/Gulf-oil-spill-aftermath-Will-region-regain-lost-jobs


Courier-Press: The boom comes of age in the oil crisis
The patented boom, a product made by Carmi, Ill.-based Elastec American Marine, become one of the positive discoveries out of the oil spill disaster. Because of its success in capturing huge amounts of oil in Gulf, other oil companies with offshore operations are taking a much closer look at Elastec's Fire Boom system

Read more
http://www.courierpress.com/news/2010/sep/20/boom-system-passes-gulf-spill-ordeal/


Telegraph.co: Drilling relief well came close to crisis
John Wright, the man responsible for drilling the relief well that killed the leaking Macondo well, said he was close to disaster before its successful completion. Wright said the drilling came close to crisis in the final stages, because the tools used to steer the relief well the final 1,000ft had a very low signal – "Lower than any job I had ever been on," Wright says.

Read more
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/8014495/John-Wright-the-man-who-killed-BPs-Gulf-of-Mexico-oil-spill-well.html


Regional

WKRG.com: Scientists research spill effect on sharks
Ridley turtles aren’t the only marine life under observation in the Gulf of Mexico for the effects of the oil spill. Now scientists will be going shark fishing to see what effects, if any, the nation's worst oil disaster has had on those creatures. "I think the picture is still cloudy," said Michael Hirshfield, the chief scientist at Oceana, an international conservation group based in Washington, D.C. "One of the things we know is that death is not necessarily immediate. There can be slow deaths and slow problems."

Read more
http://www.wkrg.com/gulf_oil_spill/article/scientists-research-oil-spill-effects-on-sharks/933012/Sep-20-2010_10-26-am/


Al.com: KevinCostner calls for $895 million Gulf oil spill disaster plan
Actor and activist Kevin Costner is not staying idle after the Gulf oil spill. He’s proposing an $895 million, 190-vessel plan to respond to future disasters in the Gulf of Mexico.

Read more
http://blog.al.com/live/2010/09/kevin_costner_calls_for_895_mi.html


Editorial

New York Times: Measuring the oil in the Gulf
The Obama administration is finally embarking on a plan to measure how much oil is really in the Gulf of Mexico. This is very good news. Though the full effects of the spill on the water quality and animal life in the Gulf will not be known for years, getting a handle on what’s happening now is essential to shaping the right strategy for restoring the gulf to good health, The New York Times writes.

Read more
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/20/opinion/20mon1.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss


Feature

Houston Chronicle: Floating city at spill site about to disappear
A sign of success. The floating city that gathered around BP's failed Macondo well this summer in the Gulf of Mexico is beginning to disband. Some of the ships that operate the remote-controlled submarines will remain on scene helping BP retrieve equipment that was positioned on the seafloor. But most of the vessels and other equipment will soon be gone.

Read more
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/energy/7210162.html

Graphics:
Allen video: Well is dead, much work remains in Gulf
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/US/09/20/gulf.oil.disaster/