'Not for public': the oil spill may be getting much worse

[2012 Countdown]

This one has potential...

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Democracy Now: EPA Whistleblower Accuses Agency of Covering Up Effects of Dispersant in BP Oil Spill Cleanup

click above for video

With BP having poured nearly two million gallons of the dispersant known as Corexit into the Gulf of Mexico, many lawmakers and advocacy groups say the Obama administration is not being candid about the lethal effects of dispersants. We speak with Hugh Kaufman, a senior policy analyst at the EPA’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response and a leading critic of the decision to use Corexit.

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BP admits it 'Photoshopped' official images as oil spill 'cut and paste' row escalates
BP has ordered staff to stop manipulating photographs of its Gulf of Mexico oil spill response, as the row over its public relations campaign intensifies.
By Andrew Hough
Published: 11:45AM BST 22 Jul 2010



The oil giant was forced to issue new guidelines to staff to “refrain from doing (sic) cutting-and-pasting” after several official company images were found to have been doctored.

BP admitted on Thursday that it “Photoshopped” some of its official images that were posted on its website and vowed to stop the embarrassing practice.

For the second time in two days, the company was identified to have doctored images posted on its official website that were supposed to show how it was responding to the oil crisis in America.

In the latest image, a photo taken inside a company helicopter appeared to show it flying off the coast near the damaged Deepwater Horizon rig.

But it was later shown to be faked after internet bloggers identified several problems with the poorly produced image that contradicted the appearance that it was flying.

Among the problems identified included part of a control tower appearing in the top of the top left of the picture, different shades of colours, its pilot holding a pre-flight checklist and its control gauges showing the helicopter’s door and ramp open and its parking brake engaged.

The image was posted on the official BP website but later removed.

. . .

[DoYouEverWonder]

BP admits it 'Photoshopped' official images as oil spill 'cut and paste' row escalates
BP has ordered staff to stop manipulating photographs of its Gulf of Mexico oil spill response, as the row over its public relations campaign intensifies.
By Andrew Hough
Published: 11:45AM BST 22 Jul 2010



The oil giant was forced to issue new guidelines to staff to “refrain from doing (sic) cutting-and-pasting” after several official company images were found to have been doctored.

BP admitted on Thursday that it “Photoshopped” some of its official images that were posted on its website and vowed to stop the embarrassing practice.

For the second time in two days, the company was identified to have doctored images posted on its official website that were supposed to show how it was responding to the oil crisis in America.

In the latest image, a photo taken inside a company helicopter appeared to show it flying off the coast near the damaged Deepwater Horizon rig.

But it was later shown to be faked after internet bloggers identified several problems with the poorly produced image that contradicted the appearance that it was flying.

Among the problems identified included part of a control tower appearing in the top of the top left of the picture, different shades of colours, its pilot holding a pre-flight checklist and its control gauges showing the helicopter’s door and ramp open and its parking brake engaged.

The image was posted on the official BP website but later removed.

. . .

They have to fake the images because they're response has been so pitiful they don't have real images that they can use.

BTW: If BP is faking images, you can be sure that everyone else is doing it too. Including the US Gov. Including 9/11.

[ninakat]

Public health crisis looms in Gulf
By Tom Eley and Dwight Stoll
22 July 2010

A growing number of scientists, doctors, and health care experts have warned of the potential for a public health crisis as a result of the massive BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. They have also criticized BP’s control over health monitoring and the lack of public health infrastructure in the US to deal with the catastrophe.

The most acute health problems are likely to be experienced by cleanup workers, who were given little training and inadequate equipment before being sent by BP into oil cleanup operations.

. . .

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Experts: Health Hazards in Gulf Warrant Evacuations
Thursday 22 July 2010

by: Rose Aguilar, t r u t h o u t | Report

When Louisiana residents ask marine toxicologist and community activist Riki Ott what she would do if she lived in the Gulf with children, she tells them she would leave immediately. "It's that bad. We need to start talking about who's going to pay for evacuations."

In 1989, Ott, who lives in Cordova, Alaska, experienced firsthand the devastating effects of the Exxon Valdex oil disaster. For the past two months, she's been traveling back and forth between Louisiana and Florida to gather information about what's really happening and share the lessons she learned about long-term illnesses and deaths of cleanup workers and residents. In late May, she began meeting people in the Gulf with symptoms like headaches, dizziness, sore throats, burning eyes, rashes and blisters that are so deep, they're leaving scars. People are asking, "What's happening to me?"

She says the culprit is almost two million gallons of Corexit, the dispersant BP is using to break up and hide the oil below the ocean's surface. "It's an industrial solvent. It's a degreaser. It's chewing up boat engines off-shore. It's chewing up dive gear on-shore. Of course it's chewing up people's skin. The doctors are saying the solvents are making the oil worse."

. . .

[2012 Countdown]

This one is going to be a dud. Maybe 50 mph winds, but that seems the worst, and if that is the worst,putting aside the suspention of containment efforts, this is a non-event.
Corexit is the unknown though. I bought a gas mask a few weeks ago, and I always have hurricane supplies, so I'm good to go.

[Hugo Farnsworth]

Watched Democracy Now with the Kaufmann interview. I did not know that they injected Corexit at the wellhead. That was the reason for the weird orange color of the plume. Who knows what witches brew they concocted.

All I know is that separately, they are toxic. Mixed, the VOCs from the crude are allowed to aerosolize, no longer held in check by the viscous asphaltenes and wax. Mixed together they become something else, maybe 3x or 4x more toxic. Almost no one who handled the dispersants used in Prince William Sound is still alive today.

[2012 Countdown]

Yeah...One of my favorite things to do during a hurricane is to go outside and feel the elements. Its very invigorating and exciting. I'm not going out there in that shit. Can't even enjoy the forces of nature anymore.

[norton ash]

My condolences, 2012 Countdown. Beyond the unbelievable disaster, having nature de-natured must really hurt.

[82_28]

Is there not something creepy about this headline on several levels?

Deepwater Horizon emergency alarm was silenced so crew could sleep

By ROBBIE BROWN

The New York Times

KENNER, La. — The emergency alarm on the Deepwater Horizon was not fully activated the day the oil rig caught fire and exploded, killing 11 people and setting off the massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a rig worker on Friday told a government panel investigating the accident.

The worker, Mike Williams, the rig's chief electronics technician, said the general safety alarm was habitually set to "inhibited" to avoid waking up the crew with late-night sirens and emergency lights.

"They did not want people woke up at 3 a.m. from false alarms," Williams told the federal panel of investigators.

The alarm system monitored for fire, explosive gas and toxic gas. Williams said that if the system had been fully active, an alarm likely would have detected a buildup of gas and would have sounded before the April 20 explosion.

While it is not known whether it would have saved the workers who died, the lack of a fully functioning alarm hampered the effort to safely evacuate the rig, Williams said. Without the alarm, workers had to relay information through the loudspeaker system.

In a statement, Transocean, which leased the rig to BP, said workers were allowed to change settings on the alarm to prevent it "from sounding unnecessarily when one of the hundreds of local alarms activates for what could be a minor issue or a nonemergency."

"It was not a safety oversight or done as a matter of convenience," the company said. Transocean also pointed to a separate audit of the rig in early April, in which inspectors testing the fire-detection system found no detectors inhibited.

Earlier in the drilling operation, one of the panels that controlled the blowout preventer — the last line of defense against a gusher — had been placed in "bypass mode" to work around a malfunction, Williams said.

A six-member panel is investigating the disaster that unleashed the largest oil spill in U.S. history. The Marine Accident Investigation panel was meeting this week in the New Orleans area. The panel consists of Coast Guard members and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, formerly the Minerals Management Service.

At the hearings, crew members have described repeated failures in the weeks before the disaster, including power losses, computer crashes and leaking emergency equipment.

The rig's history of mechanical errors was documented in a confidential audit conducted by BP seven months before the explosion and reviewed by The New York Times.

According to the September 2009 document, four BP officials discovered that Transocean, the rig's owner, had left 390 repairs undone, including many that were "high priority," and would require a total of more than 3,500 hours of labor. It is unclear how many of the problems remained by the day of the catastrophe.

The audit found that previously reported errors had been ignored by Transocean.

In a statement, BP said it had expected Transocean to take the audit seriously. "As we have previously said, the Deepwater Horizon tragedy had multiple potential causes, including equipment failure."

During Friday's hearing, witnesses described how shortcuts and mistakes compounded the rig's troubles.

An engineering expert told investigators the crew members had incorrectly performed a critical test of emergency equipment and did not detect a dangerous "kick" of gas roughly an hour before the explosion.

John Smith, a petroleum-engineering professor at Louisiana State University, told investigators that rig data showed crew members had failed to correctly test the pressure in the well.

"The reality is, it's not a test at all, in my opinion," Smith testified, after reviewing records of the crew's actions. For months, survivors and Transocean officials have maintained the well-pressure test had been properly conducted.

Technician Williams, who filed a lawsuit against Transocean in federal court in New Orleans on April 29, added several new details about the equipment on the rig, testifying that another Transocean official had turned a critical system for removing dangerous gas from the drilling shack to "bypass mode." When Williams questioned that decision, he said he was reprimanded.

"No, the damn thing's been in bypass for five years," he said he was told by subsea supervisor Mark Hay. "Why'd you even mess with it?"

Williams recalled Hay added, "The entire fleet runs them in 'bypass.' "

Problems existed from the beginning of drilling, said Williams, a former Marine who survived by jumping from the burning rig. For months, the computer system had been locking up, producing what the crew called the "blue screen of death."

Replacement hardware had been ordered but not installed, he said.

In the final weeks of drilling, supervisors were under intense financial pressure to complete the ill-fated well, several witnesses have testified. BP was 43 days behind schedule when the rig exploded, costing about $1 million a day in rig-rental rates, company officials say.

The confidential BP audit has been referred to by lawyers and investigators but not detailed publicly. The inspection was conducted Sept. 13-17.

Material from The Washington Post and The Associated Press is included in this report.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/n ... oil24.html

[bks]

Hugo,

Have a link for this claim? Thanks.

Almost no one who handled the dispersants used in Prince William Sound is still alive today.

[Hugo Farnsworth]

Hugo,

Have a link for this claim? Thanks.

Almost no one who handled the dispersants used in Prince William Sound is still alive today.

No link, sorry. Kaufmann stated this in his interview on Democracy Now. And I heard it in a documentary about the Alaska oil spill also.
Not my most rigorous moment there. It just seems like something that is being repeated.