Gulf Coast Disaster: Morning News Round-Up, May 27
Posted May 27, 2010 in Curbing Pollution, Health and the Environment, Moving Beyond Oil, Reviving the World's Oceans, The Media and the Environment
Highlights in this issue:
- BP: Effort to plug Gulf oil spill going as planned
- Obama holds 12:45 pm ET news conference on Gulf spill
- More testimony shows workers and a manager argued before well explosion
- BP worker takes the 5th, making prosecution a possibility
- Sen. Nelson: Send in military if BP can’t stop leak today
This morning’s summary:
Hurricane Katrina is a bad memory for the people of the Gulf coast, but the oil spill of 2010 is a living nightmare. Nothing has changed yet in the desperate effort to cap the leak. BP is moving on its next best effort to clamp it down. BP CEO Tony Hayward says it will be 24 hours before authorities know whether the “top-kill” effort to plug the ruptured well is working. Meanwhile, the federal government is facing growing criticism over seemingly inertia. The crisis in the Gulf of Mexico is being compared to the challenges of bringing Apollo 13 home. But there sure doesn’t seem to be the same kind of unified effort that brought the spacecraft back to earth safely to stopping the oil leak. Isn’t anyone in charge? Doesn’t anyone have a better idea than filling the pipe with mud? Where is the can-do atmosphere we need to get out of this chaos and save the Gulf? And when the oil is finally contained, will we have learned anything?
Quotable quote:
"We need to call it what it is—the BP oil spill.” Lt. General Russell Honore, who commanded the US recovery efforts after Hurricane Katrina.
National News
AP: BP: Effort to plug Gulf oil spill going as planned
As night fell over the Gulf of Mexico, the “top kill” effort appeared to be working—at least it didn’t appear to fail, but BP said it would take at least 24 hours—until midday Thursday, to make a more accurate assessment.
Read more:
Also see:
CNN: BP in wait and see mode
Reuters: BP monitoring to see if “top kill” plug working
It didn’t sound that promising when BP put the chances for success of the “top kill” at 60-70 percent. Industry experts say it’s more like 50-50. President Obama holds a 12:45 pm EDT news conference at and is expected to announce tighter regulations, an extended ban on offshore drilling permits and postponement of offshore drilling for the Arctic into 2011.
Read more
New York Times: BP and Gulf just wait
Minutes before the maneuver began, one technician working with BP said he was concerned that the effort could fail within minutes. But throughout the afternoon, as the blowout preventer filled with mud at increasing pressures apparently with no rupture, engineers following the procedure were more hopeful.
Read more from Clifford Krauss and John M. Broder
Los Angeles Times: Gulf oil spill: Jindal asks permission to dredge
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal took another boat tour of the despoiled marshes, this time with James Carville and Mary Matalin of CNN and once again called on the federal government to dredge the wetlands and build new sand barriers.
Read more
Wall Street Journal: Big spat on rig before explosion
More testimony in Coast Guard hearings in Kenner, La., from workers who were on the Deepwater Horizon before it exploded. Again they recounted a heated exchange between members of the Transocean crew and a top manager from BP. The argument was about how to shut down the rig and whether the heavy “drilling mud” should be replaced by lighter seawater. The workers say BP prevailed, and, hours later, the rig blew.
Read more from Miguel Bustillo
McClatchy Newspapers: BP worker takes the 5th, making prosecution a possibility
A top BP official who was on the Deepwater Horizon in the hours before the explosion has refused to testify in Coast Guard hearings, invoking the Fifth amendment. It is not clear if he was the BP manager cited as being in a squabble with Transcocean workers before the well blew, but his refusal to testify raises the possibility of possible prosecution.
Read more from Erika Bolstad, Joseph Goodman and Marisa Taylor
AP: Workers report failures on oil rig before explosion in Gulf of Mexico
As the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig burned around him, Chris Pleasant hesitated, waiting for approval from his superiors before activating the emergency disconnect system that was supposed to slam the oil well shut . The delay may have cost critical seconds, because when he finally got the go-ahead to throw the deadman’s switch, there was no hydraulic power to make it work.
Read more from Jeff Donn, Michael Kunzelman and Mike Baker
Los Angeles Times: Gulf oil spill: Before accident BP was warned to slow down
The chief mechanic testified that workers for Transocean were being rushed by BP to finish the job because it was going over budget.
Read more:
Los Angeles Times: Gulf oil spill: Rifts between workers common on rigs
According to the testimony, tension between oil rig workers and “company men” is common.
Read more:
Huffington Post: Sen. Nelson: Send in military if BP can’t stop leak today
Florida Senator Bill Nelson, increasingly outraged about the Gulf oil spill, said Wednesday that if the “top kill” doesn’t work, the President should take over and put the military in charge, because it would be able to organize people, technology and machinery to do the job.
Read more:
Los Angeles Times: Oil cleanup workers report illness
Fishermen who can’t fish have been hired to do cleanup, but they are reporting severe headaches, dizziness, nausea and trouble breathing. A local congressman has asked Health and Human Services for help, because BP, which promised to provide medical help, has not. Cleanup workers were not issued protective gear.
Read more from Nicole Santa Cruz and Julie Cart
Los Angeles Times: U.S. to suspend exploratory oil drilling in Arctic
Fearful of a disaster worse than the Gulf of Mexico spill, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar plans to postpone consideration of drilling off Alaska. New drilling was to have begun this summer.
Read more from Kim Murphy and Jim Tankersley
Politics
MSNBC: Obama to address spill in news conference
President Obama will hold his first news conference since February on Thursday and plans to address the Gulf oil spill a day before he leaves for Louisiana. Obama plans to announce that a moratorium on new deepwater oil drilling permits will be continued for six months while a presidential commission investigates, and controversial lease sales off the coast of Alaska will be delayed pending the results of the commission's investigation.
Read more
Also see:
AP: Revolving door between BP and its regulator gets more attention
"Few or no regulations or standards." This is a note that a former MMS regulator made during a conference in 2005, and it might seem like a note of sanity with everything we have learned. Except that same person left the MMS two years later to join BP as a manager. Last fall at a conference, he cautioned regulators not to “affect opportunities for economic growth.” Now the Inspector General promises to look into the industry-regulator revolving door.
Read more from Frederic Frommer
Propublica: Government subsidizes deep-water drilling with big tax breaks
Big Oil, which makes big profits, gets big tax breaks and big subsidies from the U.S. government. We all knew this was true but now we are faced with the implication of what this policy does.
Read more from Marian Wang
Business
PRWatch.org: Shifting BP clean-up costs to consumers, say it ain’t so
The liability cap for the oil spill is $75 million. BP made 186 times that in 2009, profits of $14 billion. So far it has spent $760 million on the spill and, according to this column, that probably leaves the customer/taxpayer to foot the bill.
Read more from Lisa Graves
Editorial
Washington Post: Why doesn’t Obama ‘take charge’ of oil spill?
According to Post editorial writer Stephen Stromberg, the truth really is that the White House can do little more than oversee the efforts of BP, just as Incident Commander Thad Allen has been saying. All of the deepwater expertise in drilling that counts to contain the fiasco is in the hands of the oil companies, and, like it or not, BP right now is Obama’s right hand.
Read more from Stephen Stromberg
CNN: Lt. Gen Russell Honore: Take punitive action against BP now
The man who commanded the federal effort in Hurricane Katrina says he is fascinated by the willingness of the public to buy BP’s public relations spin. He says to call it what it is “the BP oil spill,” the government needs to take over, take punitive action against BP and any federal regulators who let this happen.
Read more:
New York Times: Obama’s oil and energy opportunity
It’s fitting that President Obama visited a solar cell-maker in California Wednesday. When he visits Louisiana on Friday, he has a unique opportunity to galvanize the American public to turn from dirty energy to new clean technologies.
Read more from Andrew Revkin
Feature
Huffington Post: BP: New ad demands leadership on climate legislation from Senate Democrats
The NRDC is now taking its climate change aid local to key states and key legislators to enact climate change legislation in view of the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf. The point is, not just to take aim at climate deniers but also at Democrats to get off the fence, the time to act for the climate, finally, is now.
Read more from San Stein
Video
Live BP video of the oil leak and the top kill, also with a running estimate of how many gallons possibly leaked.
BP officials said it might take at least 24 hours from the time they initiated the top kill to see if it has worked, so the earliest possible indication may come Friday, May 27th at 2pm EDT.
Watch
CNN: Anderson Cooper
“It’s just dead out there.”
Watch:
Graphic
“Top Kill” graphic
NOAA Trajectory Map for May 27, 2010
