Gulf Coast Disaster - Thursday News Roundup, July 22

Day 94

Highlights in this issue:

- Air quality in Gulf like L.A. on a bad day
- BP missing from Big Oil lineup to deal with oil disasters
- Why did BP wait so long to deploy the cap?
- 3 out of 4 oil lobbyists once worked for government
- Scientists to Adm. Allen: Stop the sand berms
- Hayward gets another invitation to testify on Capitol Hill

This afternoon’s summary:
There’s tropical trouble in the Gulf today. And ships and vessels are packing up to pull out. The tropical depression racing toward the Gulf of Mexico Thursday increased pressure on BP and the U.S. government to decide whether to evacuate dozens of ships at the site of the ruptured oil well. Forecasters said the storm system, which has already caused flooding in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Haiti, could become Tropical Storm Bonnie later Thursday and reach the Gulf of Mexico by Saturday. Adm. Thad Allen, the government’s point person in the Gulf, is expected to decide later today just what to do about protecting the oil spill site, knowing it could take up to two weeks to get the rescue effort restarted. Drilling has already stopped on the relief wells, and it was still unclear whether the government would order the containment cap lifted as a precaution. That would allow thousands of gallons of oil to spew into the Gulf for days. But there’s already a change in the mission. Instead of reinforcing the relief tunnel with cement, BP’s engineers have been diverted to building protections against the storm, which is expected to reach the well in two-and-a-half days.

Quotable Quote:
"We could have a tropical storm at Macondo, and we have to be able to get out of the way. We have to watch the weather very, very carefully and adjust plans accordingly," BP vice president Kent Wells 

National News

Propublica: Air quality in Gulf like L.A. on a bad day
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said most of the pollution levels in the Gulf of Mexico were comparable to a bad day in an urban area such as Los Angeles, but in places near the Deepwater Horizon site, it was "well above maximum concentrations measured recently over the Los Angeles urban area."

Read more by Marianne Wang:
http://www.propublica.org/blog/item/areas-of-moderate-health-risk-dot-the-gulf-coast


Marketwatch: BP missing from Big Oil lineup to deal with oil well disasters
Four Big Oil companies announced they are forming a nonprofit company, setting aside $1 billion to develop a system that mobilizes within 24 hours of a blown oil well in water up to 10,000 feet deep to capture up to 100,000 barrels a day. Missing from the lineup: BP.

Read more:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/oil-giants-launch-spill-fighting-effort-without-bp-2010-07-22?reflink=MW_news_stmp

Wall Street Journal: Why did BP wait so long to deploy the cap?
For weeks, BP tried a bunch of stopgap measures to stop the gushing oil leak that failed. Finally, they turned to the containment cap. But now the real question is, Why did they wait so long? "With the benefit of hindsight, it's fairly obvious they should have intervened directly on the well and not resorted to stopgap measures," said Gene Beck, professor of petroleum engineering at Texas A&M University. "It's one of the lessons we've learned from the incident."

Read more:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703954804575381241624701892.html?modWSJ_hpp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection


Washington Post: 3 out of 4 oil lobbyists once worked for government
As the Gulf oil disaster grinds on, we are getting more and more details about just how involved Big Oil is with the fabric of Washington life and how plenty of controversial issues are getting decided by the influence of a single sector of the economy. In the latest analysis by the Washington Post, three out of every four lobbyists who represent oil and gas companies previously worked in the federal government. And that gives new meaning to the idea of the revolving door. These hires include 18 former members of Congress and dozens of former presidential appointees.

Read more by Dan Eggen and Kimberly Kindy:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/21/AR2010072106468.html?hpid=topnews

AP: Independent oil commissioners had connections to Big Oil
Oil runs so deep in American life that when President Barack Obama formed an independent commission to investigate the Gulf spill, he ran into something of an oil patch of his own. The oil industry is so thoroughly connected with government and academia that it can be difficult to find prominent people for a commission who have not been touched by oil money. A review of each commissioner’s oil connections.

Read more:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/07/22/politics/main6702802.shtml?tag=cbsnewsSectionContent.2


Washington Post: US oil moratorium opens door for other nations
While the US is turning off the deepwater oil spigot at least temporarily in the Gulf, other countries are looking at their own opportunities to look ahead to the very kind of exploration that caused the biggest oil disaster in US history. Countries including Norway, Brazil, Canada, Nigeria and Angola are moving forward with drilling, lured by oil reservoirs they are discovering that are two to six times as big as the average Gulf of Mexico reservoir and taking advantage of new opportunities offered by the U.S. moratorium.

Read more by Juliet Eilperin and Steven Mufson:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/21/AR2010072105937.html


Los Angeles Times: BP official never saw document warning of well problems
It’s looking more and more like warning signs were ignored everywhere before the April 20 Deepwater Horizon disaster. A top BP official acknowledged Thursday the he didn’t review a key document that could have hinted of a potential problem with the well. The document was a report by Halliburton, the company responsible for cementing the well's casings and sealing the well,  that showed computer-generated projections that a well design plan considered on April 18 could result in a “severe gas flow problem.”

Read more:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2010/07/bp-official-review-document-well.html


UK Telegram: BP’s Tony Hayward gets another invitation to testify on Capitol Hill
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is asking BP Plc chief executive Tony Hayward to testify on July 29 at a hearing on the release of the Lockerbie bomber. The senators want to learn whether the British oil giant influenced Scottish authorities' decision last year to release the Libyan man convicted of the 1988 bombing. It would be his second appearance before a congressional committee, and you may remember that the last one did not go very well.

Read more:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/7903796/US-Senate-panel-on-Lockerbie-bomber-asks-BPs-Tony-Hayward-to-testify.html


Regional:

New York Times: Scientists to Adm. Allen: Stop the sand berms
In an open letter to Ret. Adm. Thad W. Allen, almost two dozen coastal scientists from Louisiana and around the country have urged the federal government to halt the construction of sand berms in the Gulf of Mexico, calling the project ineffective in the fight against the oil and a waste of resources that could have heavy environmental consequences.

Read more:
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/22/stop-the-sand-berms-scientists-plead/


Times-Picayune: Hearings slated in New Orleans on drilling safety
Michael Bromwich, the federal government's chief oil regulator said Thursday that he will hold a series of meetings, beginning Aug. 4, in New Orleans to hear from industry groups, environmentalists and others on way to improve drilling safety in light of the BP disaster.

Read more by Bruce Alpert:
http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/07/oil_regulator_to_hold_meetings.html


Feature:

Times-Picayune: "Mother Nature just doesn't want us to drill here”
The stories about the last days and hours before the Deepwater Horizon explosion continue to haunt the people of the Gulf and the investigations into what went wrong. On Thursday, the widow of Roughneck Shane Roshto said that before her husband's death on the Deepwater Horizon, he told her the Gulf oil well he was drilling was "from hell" and that "Mother Nature just doesn't want us to drill here.”

Read more by David Hammer:
http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/07/hearings_killed_worker_told_wi.html


Graphic:

Interactive map showing path of the storm
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/storm/