Don't Buy British Petroleum (BP)

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Message 1022586 - Posted: 4 Aug 2010, 23:00:48 UTC - in response to Message 1022532.  

Anyone believe it?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10867731


Nope. Wonder how much BP paid for that "breakdown".


Nope. Unbelievable that has been pushed into the news!

But then again, enough dumb casual readers might believe it to sway whatever political votes are hanging on it.

Let's hope there is enough honesty in the news media to carry on reporting the real story...


A very gentle hint is given in:

How much damage has the BP oil spill done?


Looks like there's going to be a LOT of sponsored spin and FUD on this one for some time yet. I hope whatever scientists do not get blackened and sunk in the mess.

There's a very clear message in that news that BP and Obama want this episode to be over and well away from public interest ASAP.


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Message 1022680 - Posted: 5 Aug 2010, 12:16:04 UTC

Meanwhile, looks like some more of BP's practices are catching up:


BP hit with $10bn lawsuit over Texas City ‘chemical leak’

Tony Buzbee, a Texas lawyer also representing Gulf residents affected by the spill, on Tuesday filed the class action lawsuit on behalf of 2,000 claimants linked to an incident in April and May.

Mr Buzbee told The Daily Telegraph that his clients were seeking compensation for “health effects including all symptoms associated with acute benzene exposure”. ...




It's a dirty business all round. The only people to profit are going to be the lawyers settling everyone's arguments...

Still a big mess.

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Message 1022859 - Posted: 6 Aug 2010, 0:17:19 UTC

Looks like the BP Gulf gusher has been capped with cement:


BP Completes Cementing Macondo Oil Well From Top

... BP Plc completed cementing its Gulf of Mexico well from the top, moving closer to permanently plugging the source of the world’s biggest accidental offshore oil spill on record.

The company continues to work on a relief well that will probably intercept Macondo in the middle of this month, BP said in an e-mailed statement. ...


Still very painfully polluting for how long that has taken.


Meanwhile, two other aspects are:

Deepwater Horizon: A scientist at the centre of the spill

Vernon Asper was one of the first researchers in the Gulf of Mexico to study the oil gushing out from the BP well. But it has not all been smooth sailing, reports Mark Schrope.

Note how the scientists onboard the RV Pelican found plumes of oil in the (life fatal) range of "ppm" and additionally found lowered levels of oxygen... Even if the lowered level of oxygen isn't in itself fatal to marine life, I would expect the marine life to suffer and so be more susceptible to being wiped out by the oil plume at much lower ppm concentrations...


BP’s Strategy to Limit Liability in Regard to Its Gulf Oil Gusher

... This article briefly discusses BP’s strategy to limit its liability in regard to the Deepwater Horizon blowout. This strategy includes, but is not limited to, intentionally underestimating the rate of flow of oil that’s being released into the Gulf of Mexico, prohibiting independent measurement of the BP oil gusher by unbiased third party scientists and engineers, the excessive and unprecedented use of dispersants (both on the surface and underwater), systematically and intentionally collecting as small an amount of oil as possible from the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, and controlling and restricting media access to the areas affected by the Deepwater Horizon oil gusher. ...



Here's hoping this is the beginning of the end. However, I suspect the 'end' may well be decades from now for this one...

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Message 1023081 - Posted: 6 Aug 2010, 15:00:01 UTC
Last modified: 6 Aug 2010, 15:00:20 UTC

These two articles give a very worrying contrast:


BP finishes cementing damaged Gulf of Mexico oil well

BP has finished pumping cement into the top of its damaged Gulf of Mexico oil well as part of its "static kill" procedure.

The move comes the day after it was announced that almost three-quarters of the oil spilled had been broken down by natural forces or cleaned up.

Oil leaked into the Gulf from 20 April when the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion killed 11 workers. The flow was stopped on 15 July. ...

... About a quarter of the oil released by the well evaporated or dissolved in the Gulf in the same way sugar dissolves in water, federal officials said.

Another one-sixth naturally dispersed when leaking out of the well, and an additional one-sixth was burned, skimmed, or dispersed using chemicals.

At a news conference, NOAA administrator Dr Jane Lubchenco said degraded oil was not a threat any longer because "when it is biodegraded it ends up being water and carbon dioxide so if it has been biodegraded, if it is gone, then it is not a threat". ...



Scientists call new gulf spill report 'ludicrous'

Scientists have labelled the new U.S. government report that claims it has taken care of the gulf oil spill as 'ludicrous'.

Experts are also warning that majority of the oil is trapped under Gulf beaches and could remain there for years. ...

"It's almost comical," he said.

Hollander said that while 25 percent can be accounted for (by burning, skimming etc), 75 percent is still unaccounted for.

For instance, the report considers all submerged oil to be dispersed and therefore not harmful, but that's not the case. ...



Which do you believe?


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Message 1023083 - Posted: 6 Aug 2010, 15:05:59 UTC

"There are three kinds of lies. Lies, Damn Lies, and statistics. And that Sir is a damn lie." (Samuel Clemens)
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Message 1023650 - Posted: 8 Aug 2010, 12:12:55 UTC - in response to Message 1023081.  

[...]

Scientists call new gulf spill report 'ludicrous'

Scientists have labelled the new U.S. government report that claims it has taken care of the gulf oil spill as 'ludicrous'. ...


Which do you believe?


No surprise there's a few follow-on articles. One such is:

Gulf oil spill: White House accused of spinning report

Scientists say it is 'just not true' that the vast majority of oil from the BP spill has gone


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Message 1023727 - Posted: 8 Aug 2010, 16:43:18 UTC - in response to Message 1023650.  

BTW if you intend to avoid BP products consider not using Catrol Motor oil. it is also BP


In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
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Message 1023935 - Posted: 9 Aug 2010, 14:27:28 UTC

There's a lot of oil out there yet...


Space Station Crew Documents Oil Spill

This photo taken from the International Space Station on July 23, 2010, shows the Gulf of Mexico oil spill as part of ongoing observations of the region.

When this image was taken, three months after the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, the leak had been plugged for eight days.

Water surfaces appear bright and land surfaces appear dark in the image. The stark contrast is due to sun glint, in which the sun is reflected brilliantly off all water surfaces back towards the astronaut observer on board the station. The sun glint reveals various features in the Gulf of Mexico, especially sheens of oil as packets of long bright streaks seen on the left side of the image. ...



The high-res photo is sharp enough to see the sea swell. The oil streaks are obvious. And this is for one small area...


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Message 1024034 - Posted: 9 Aug 2010, 20:31:28 UTC - in response to Message 1023941.  

Be under no misapprehension that there are heavy political machinations going on behind the scenes at the moment. The UK Prime Minister has made it clear to Obama and his administration that BP will be fully expected to fund every last cent of whatever it takes to clean up this oil leak. However that does not include putting up with simple BP bashing of the like that we have recently seen.

It needs to be borne in mind that when BP applied for an offshore drilling licence, they were only awarded one on the basis that they lodged an acceptable disaster containment plan which they did. In the event, they did not have the technical ability to deal with this sort of emergency at that sort of depth.

Time and time again BP have said they were using untried technology and procedures to try and deal with the situation. In which case their containment plan was NOT acceptable, and the USA administration that approved it are also just as much culpable and responsible.

But will we see any USA officials taken into court and charged with dereliction of duty? I rather think not.



BP made claims they could handle any problem. They obviously could not. They claimed safety was the #1 priority, obviously it was not. They say they will pay
"Any proven damages". And are fighting every expense they can. They claim most of the oil is gone, obviously it is not. They say they will clean it up. It appears to me they can not.

The ecco systems have been devastated. When or if they can ever recover is pure speculation. But they have refused to pay fishermen average yields based on they could not prove how much the catches would have been THIS YEAR. Shrimp, clam fields destroyed, wetlands poisoned.. distillites raining down that "evaporated" from the spill all across the country....

The US officials failed their supervision under the banner of energy independence while completely failing any constructive move towards renewable energy sources.

It is not only time to move "Beyond Petroleum". It is time to move "Beyond BP"


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Message 1024038 - Posted: 9 Aug 2010, 21:03:54 UTC

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Message 1024384 - Posted: 12 Aug 2010, 23:02:22 UTC - in response to Message 1024034.  

... BP made claims they could handle any problem. They obviously could not. They claimed safety was the #1 priority, obviously it was not. They say they will pay
"Any proven damages". And are fighting every expense they can. ...


Note just now:

BP agrees to pay record $50.6m fine for Texas explosion

... The agreement is the latest financial penalty for BP following the Texas explosion.

The company paid a $21.3m fine to OSHA in 2005 and entered into a four-year agreement to repair hazards at the refinery.

In 2007 the oil giant agreed to pay $373m to settle a number of both criminal and civil charges.

In October last year, following an inspection of safety practices at the Texas plant, OSHA issued BP with an $87.4m fine, made up of two parts.

The first part cited 270 violations that BP had failed to correct after the explosion, totalling $56.7m, later corrected to $50.6m, which BP has now agreed to pay.

The remaining part of the fine, of more than $30m, is for 439 "new wilful violations". BP continues to contest it.


That is quite a sour litany... Looks very bad for their latest exploits off the Libyan coast in the Mediterranean...


It is not only time to move "Beyond Petroleum". It is time to move "Beyond BP"


The politics meanwhile look to be very much to keep BP operating...


It's all a dirty game.

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Message 1026144 - Posted: 18 Aug 2010, 15:59:46 UTC

No surprises in this, only in that the oil industry has 'got away with it' for so long:


US government calls for new laws to halt repeat of deepwater oil spill

Announcement follows White House report that found BP received exemptions for its Gulf well based on decades-old [out of date] data


Why does it take a vast disaster to gain the necessary attention?...


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Message 1026685 - Posted: 20 Aug 2010, 13:46:59 UTC - in response to Message 1023650.  
Last modified: 20 Aug 2010, 14:00:09 UTC

[...]

Scientists call new gulf spill report 'ludicrous'

Scientists have labelled the new U.S. government report that claims it has taken care of the gulf oil spill as 'ludicrous'. ...


Which do you believe?


No surprise there's a few follow-on articles. One such is:

Gulf oil spill: White House accused of spinning report

Scientists say it is 'just not true' that the vast majority of oil from the BP spill has gone


No surprise with this, other than for how many it may have fooled:


BP oil spill: US scientist retracts assurances over success of cleanup

Bill Lehr, a senior scientist at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) departed from an official report from two weeks ago which suggested the majority of the oil had been captured or broken down.

"I would say most of that is still in the environment," Lehr, the lead author of the report, told the house energy and commerce committee.

The growing evidence that the White House painted an overly optimistic picture when officials claimed two weeks ago the remaining oil in the Gulf was rapidly breaking down fuelled a sense of outrage in the scientific community that government agencies are hiding data and spinning the science of the oil spill. No new oil has entered the Gulf since 15 July, but officials said yesterday the well is unlikely to be sealed for good until mid-September.

... By some estimates, as much as 90% of the oil was unaccounted for. Lehr said 6% was burned and 4% was skimmed but he could not be confident of numbers for the amount collected from beaches. ...




And this is what just one "missing oil plume" looks like:


BP oil spill: scientists find giant plume of droplets 'missed' by official account

A 22-mile plume of droplets from BP's Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico undermines claim that oil has degraded



I'm sure there's no need to describe that a tinge of brown means a large proportion of oil mixed/dissolved in the water. Less obvious is that the non-brown coloured water may well be also fatally contaminated with an oil concentration that is not so very obviously visible. We can't breathe and drink oil and oil fumes and live. Neither can sea life.


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Message 1028703 - Posted: 26 Aug 2010, 18:43:25 UTC
Last modified: 26 Aug 2010, 18:44:40 UTC

After the big spill:


BP frozen out of Arctic oil drilling

British energy giant BP forced to abandon hopes of Greenland exploration owing to tarnished reputation from Gulf oil spill

... Despite the Deepwater Horizon disaster, major oil companies – BP included — still hope to begin drilling in the Arctic off the coast of North America soon. Barack Obama opened up US waters there to exploration shortly before the Deepwater Horizon explosion, but suspended the plans while investigations into the disaster took place.



But what of all the other companies working to similarly cut-throat costs and using similar practices that may well have just been a little more lucky so far?...

And are there any improved methods for a clean up when the inevitable happens?


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Message 1029926 - Posted: 31 Aug 2010, 11:17:07 UTC

Two articles that are rather worrying in different ways for the Gulf spill:


Carol Browner Says 75% of Spilled BP Oil Is Gone, Georgia Sea Grant Scientists Say 70-79% Remains in Gulf

... The high loss rate scenario results in 70 percent of the oil that entered the waters of the Gulf still being there and the low loss rate scenario predicts that 79 percent of the oil is still in the Gulf. Recall from above that this dissolved and dispersed oil "can be highly toxic".

The residents of Grand Isle have a very good innate understanding of the fact that most of the oil is still present in the waters of the Gulf and still in a toxic form. Here is an excerpt...




To Eat or Not To Eat: The Dilemma of Gulf Seafood

..."Colbert: Do you live down there?
Blum: Yes I do.
Colbert: Do you eat seafood?
Blum: Yes I do.
Colbert: Are you going to eat this seafood now?
Blum: Absolutely.
Colbert: Good man."

[...]

... seems like elementary logic. Not only do I not want to eat the fish because it’s CONTAMINATED, I don’t want to eat it so it can have an opportunity to RECOVER faster. Sorry fishermen. ...



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Message 1030639 - Posted: 4 Sep 2010, 1:42:30 UTC

A while ago, there was the "big spill" from the Itox 1 platform in relatively shallow water:

In 1979, Less Complicated Oil Leak Took 10 Months To Stop

We then have the very big spill from the BP Deepwater Horizon rig...


And now we have the Vermillion Platform on fire...


Meanwhile, Greenpeace is protesting the new oil exploration in the pristine cold waters of the Arctic off Greenland...


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Message 1036893 - Posted: 29 Sep 2010, 12:14:02 UTC - in response to Message 1031139.  

We have to be pragmatic here Martin. There is a continuing worldwide demand for oil and petroleum products, and while that continues, people will cut corners to meet that demand. Deals will be struck, safety compromised, and politicians will look the other way.

Things won't change until the oil runs out, it is uneconomic to extract it, or a cheaper energy source, or an alternative product becomes available. ...


And that's a rather depressingly good summary of the present state of play.

Another "Gulf Spill" disaster can be expected. Rather than "if", it's more a question of "when".


Doesn't mean that we can't or shouldn't do anything about that. We may even hold off the "when" to until other better energy sources dominate to push oil-for-burning out of the way.

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Message 1036894 - Posted: 29 Sep 2010, 12:17:47 UTC
Last modified: 29 Sep 2010, 12:18:11 UTC

A bad mess compounded by bad politics?


Barack Obama under fire for grossly underestimating Gulf oil spill

The Obama administration lost the public trust and may have sabotaged clean-up operations in the Gulf of Mexico by grossly underestimating the amount of oil gushing from BP's broken Macondo well, according to a White House commission appointed to investigate the spill.

In a scathing critique of the administration's handling of the disaster, the two co-chairs of the commission yesterday said government officials made a serious blunder by releasing early estimates of the spill that were about 60 times too low.

"It's a little bit like Custer underestimating the number of Indians on the other side of the hill and paying a price for that," ...



Looks like the game of politics continues whilst the world burns (cue manic laugh of Nero!). (Just to play on the analogy game!)

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Message 1036979 - Posted: 29 Sep 2010, 16:36:45 UTC

Seems like BP and the government are all too eager to say the oil has gone.

http://www.postbulletin.com/newsmanager/templates/localnews_story.asp?z=49&a=469982



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Message 1037056 - Posted: 29 Sep 2010, 20:02:31 UTC - in response to Message 1036979.  
Last modified: 29 Sep 2010, 20:02:50 UTC

Seems like BP and the government are all too eager to say the oil has gone.

Scientists find BP oil at bottom of Gulf


Thanks for that. I'm sure this story will linger for some time yet. Apart from the damage to the Gulf (and tuna?), will it sweep away Obama and BP with it?...


A two inches thick coating of tar?! From that link:

Joye said 10 of her 14 samples showed visible oil, including all the ones taken north of the busted well. She found oil on the sea floor as far as 80 miles away from the site of the spill.

"It's kind of like having a blizzard where the snow comes in and covers everything," Joye said.

And the look of the oil, its state of degradation, the way it settled on freshly dead animals ... the oil will be tested for the chemical fingerprints that would conclusively link it to the BP spill.

"It has to be a recent event," Joye said. "There's still pieces of warm bodies there."

A disappearing act

Since the well was capped on July 15 after some 200 million gallons flowed into the Gulf, there have been signs of resilience on the surface and the shore. Sheens have disappeared, while some marshlands have shoots of green. This seeming recovery is likely a result of massive amounts of chemical dispersants, warm waters and a Gulf that is used to degrading massive amounts of oil, scientists say.

Animal deaths also are far short of worst-case scenarios. But at the same time, a massive invisible plume of oil has been found under the surface, shifting scientists' concerns from what can be easily seen to what can't be.

... especially a report on the subject by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in August — were too optimistic.

The oil "did not disappear," he said. "It sank."



Quite a mess... For some time yet...

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