Back to Basics

“There’s just no data to suggest this is an environmental disaster, “said Marine Scientist and former LSU professor Ivor Van Heerden who also works as a BP spill-response contractor. “I have no interest in making BP look good — I think they lied about the size of the spill — but we’re not seeing catastrophic impacts. There’s a lot of hype, but no evidence to justify it.”

In fact these observations came– not a year after the Deepwater Horizon blew-up — but a mere three months afterwards, making them all the more blasphemous at the time. By now they’ve been amply vindicated, making the Obama team’s “moratorium” and more recent stonewalling on Gulf of Mexico drilling permits all the more preposterous.

Your loyal servant here grew up in South Louisiana and spends most week-ends along the Louisiana coast hooking, spearing, gaffing, blasting and otherwise assassinating the raw ingredients of his family meals. He also shares the resulting joys and debacles with readers and TV-show hosts. So he had more than a casual concern with the BP oil spill.

The reasons for this “disasters’” fizzling out are many and were apparent to non-hack scientists from the get-go. To wit:

“People don’t comprehend how so much oil could break down in such a short time period,” explains Dr. LuAnn White, a toxicologist with the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, who also serves as Director of the Center for Applied Environmental Health. “But we have natural oil seeps in the Gulf, and over 200 genera of microbes that break down oil already exist there.”

“It cannot be repeated often enough,” says Louisiana Marine Biologist Jerald Horst , Crude oil is a natural substance, its biodegradable. It’s a feast for microbes. And these consumed most of it from the BP spill.”

The horrid black goo that leaked into the Gulf of Mexico from the BP spill last year is certainly toxic—but so are broccoli, beer and salt. It all depends on the dosage. In fact that horrid black goo has spilled naturally into the Gulf of Mexico for millennia— at the rate of two Exxon Valdez spills annually.

A study by the Dept. of Oceanography at Texas A&M found 600 “oils spills,” into the Gulf of Mexico, all ancient if not prehistoric, all antiseptically “natural”, and all courtesy of Earth Goddess Gaia. In fact these “spills” probably saved the survivors of Hernando De Soto’s plucky band of explorers in 1542, who record caulking their boats with the abundant tar balls found along an east Texas beach. The study also reports that in 1909 a genuine gusher was spotted in the same area, shooting crude oil high into the air from the Gulf floor.

Not all these gushers lie below the Gulf of Mexico however.

I’ll have much more in my syndicated column tomorrow on federal judge Martin Feldman’s new ruling on the Obama Interior Department’s “determined disregard” for the rule of law. For now, I’ve obtained and am embedding here the full decision issued yesterday.

Read, share, use:

Judge spanks Obama Interior Department – again

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News coverage of the decision at the WSJ:

The ruling by Judge Martin Feldman of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana means the Interior Department could have to reimburse Hornbeck Offshore Services LLC, a Louisiana drilling company, for the costs of litigation that the firm brought last year challenging the legality of the drilling moratorium.

The drilling halt was first ordered last May after the April 20 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion, in which 11 workers died, and the resulting oil spill. Judge Feldman struck down the initial ban in June, and the Interior Department quickly ordered a second one.

In his ruling, Judge Feldman said Hornbeck was owed the money because the government’s conduct amounted to contempt of court.

A spokeswoman for Interior Secretary Ken Salazar declined to comment late Wednesday. In a written statement, Hornbeck’s general counsel, Sam Giberga, said “What is striking about today’s ruling is that it holds the government, acting through its highest levels, in contempt of a federal court order.”

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Previous blog posts on loathsome cowboy Ken Salazar and the Obama War on the West here.

Deep under the Gulf of Mexico, beyond the light, beyond the waves, beyond most humans’ sight, dark death lingers.

When the BP Deepwater Horizon oil disaster occurred the world’s attention became riveted on the spectacle of horror and disaster that terrorized Gulf residents, sent the media into a frenzy, and galvanized environmentalists around the globe.

The federal government’s response came late. When state and federal officials finally did react their response was more political than scientific.

Because of that, the long term danger was never properly addressed and the warning signs that many experts pointed to were either roundly ignored or overlooked by officials and those that knew better.

Now new evidence has emerged that the entire ecology of the Gulf has been damaged, the biodiversity severely impacted, and the underwater currents themselves harmed.

Geohazards Specialist assesses actual Macondo Prospect damage

BK Lim, a Geohazards Specialist and underwater oil well blowout expert, has documented the true state of the blown out well and the sea bottom surrounding the Macondo site. The numerous new leaks from cracks, crevices, craters and seafloor chasms are not natural despite official pronouncements declaring they are normal ocean features. They are actually emerging changes occurring in the Gulf seafloor due to a terrible transformation of the Macondo region’s entire geological strata are ongoing.

Worse, the current state of the Gulf’s water—and it’s estuaries and coastal wetlands, marshes and beaches—is much more severe than official data leads the unwary media and now apathetic public to believe.

“The rock beds in the vicinity of a salt dome are highly fractured and permeable due to stress and deformation which occur as the salt dome thrusted upwards.” says BK Lim.

The BP oil disaster encompassed three distinct events

First, the main event—the well blowout—that the media, government, and rest of the world focused on, gushed between 70,000 to 100,000 barrels of oil a day into the Gulf for a period of 87 days. During the main blowout at the acondo Prospect, two smaller rogue wells also blew. They too began spewing oil into the region. Though briefly reported by some of the news media, attention was quickly refocused on the more spectacular drama unfolding at the Deepwater Horizon wellhead.

Next, the seafloor began fracturing. Fissures opened and megatons of methane began bursting into the Gulf. Oil also hemorrhaged into the waters. Scientific researchers on several vessels reported these occurrances. For the most part they were under reported or ignored completely.

Finally, first-had accounts by researchers, clean-up crews, volunteer boaters and some BP personnel on-site reported numerous leaks and small oil gushers were breaking out from the seafloor within an area as large as ten square miles surrounding the damaged well. Many of the observers reporting on the fissures and leaking anomalies knew the region well as they were fisherman that frequented the area and had never seen oil seeping into the ocean in that region previously.

Government officials and BP spokesmen dismissed the reports saying that natural fissures leak methane and oil into the Gulf all the time.

To absolutely no one’s surprise, an inspector general concluded that the White House edited a drilling safety report in a way that made it falsely appear that scientists and experts supported the administration’s six-month ban on new deep-water drilling.

The Associated Press reported that the inspector general concluded the White House’s changes “resulted ‘in the implication that the moratorium recommendation had been peer reviewed.’ But it hadn’t been. Outside scientists were asked only to review new safety measures for offshore drilling.”

In other words, the Administration lied about the need to halt offshore drilling in order to push its “Green” agenda. The result has been crippling job losses along the Gulf coast and increasing oil prices — up about $7 a barrel since the spill and still climbing.

Barack Obama and his minions claim to be on the side of the “working people.” But oil workers apparently don’t count. Nor do those in the coal industry. Nor does anyone else, who must deal with a falling dollar and rising prices resulting from the Administration’s feckless energy policies.

But he’s all for the government subsidizing inefficient, ineffective and unproven Green jobs. And he apparently has no problem with the United States becoming increasingly dependent on foreign oil.

That the Administration lied to achieve its ends is no surprise. It’s not the first Administration to do that. But that so many on the Left would sit silently by while it destroys an industry and continues to cripple the U.S. economy is a surprise.

Apparently, when it comes to going Green, the Left believes the end justifies the means.

I’ve been covering Loathsome Cowboy/job-killer Ken Salazar’s ongoing corruption of science and environmental policy at the Interior Department for you extensively here. He has largely escaped mainstream scrutiny. But with a new House GOP majority and independent watch dogs on his tail, he may finally get the lasting ass-kicking he deserves.

As you’ll recall, Salazar and his minions were roasted by federal courts in June and July for fudging data and misrepresenting and contradicting what Obama-appointed scientists recommended regarding the administration’s deepwater drilling ban. In September, the courts again rejected the drilling ban before the White House finally relented in an election-season feint.

He refused to acknowledge his deception and instead strolled into a federal oil spill commish meeting and did this:

Undaunted, Salazar conjured up a “revised” moratorium rubber-stamped by oil spill czar Michael Bromwich, who sheepishly admitted that the new ban was “roughly congruent with the original moratorium.”

The sham changes would permit some drilling rigs to re-start operations – but only under onerous, fantasyland testing conditions that industry leaders say would be virtually impossible to meet. In short, Salazar’s “new” moratorium is a lot like Salazar himself: All hat, no cattle.

The Interior Secretary then strode into the first hearing of the presidential oil spill commission this week to tell the panelists that he wanted their work to “inform” his book-cooked deepwater drilling ban. It was, essentially, Salazar guiding the dog-and-pony show participants to bark and neigh on command. The panelists were “stunned” by Salazar’s explicit expectation of policy support, according to hearing observers, because weighing in on the moratorium had not been a part of their original mandate.

None of the panelists, conveniently enough, has actual technical expertise in deepwater drilling. So on what, exactly, can they “inform” Salazar? No doubt Salazar and his superiors at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue have soaked up the online anti-drilling rants of prominent oil spill panelist Frances Beinecke. She’s a leading official at the rabidly anti-corporate Natural Resources Defense Council, where she publicly called for offshore drilling bans five times over the past two months before snagging a seat on Obama’s “expert” panel. NRDC was one of the leading environmental lobbying voices pushing for the commission in the first placde. The eco-tail is wagging Team Obama’s dog.

Now, the Interior Department inspector general has officially confirmed what whistle-blowing scientists exposed this summer. Salazar and the Obama eco-radicals doctored their moratorium report to mislead the public. Whose fingerprints were all over the lies?

Carol Browner, again.

The White House rewrote crucial sections of an Interior Department report to suggest an independent group of scientists and engineers supported a six-month ban on offshore oil drilling, the Interior inspector general says in a new report.

In the wee hours of the morning of May 27, a staff member to White House energy adviser Carol Browner sent two edited versions of the department report’s executive summary back to Interior.

Very few people actually consider how the environmentalists work the system to fund their multi-million dollar political agendas …

A teachable moment is now presented by the Los Angeles Times …

“Tests warned of cement problems before well’s blowout”

“Weeks before the Deepwater Horizon explosion, oil company BP and subcontractor Halliburton were aware of test results showing that the cement mixture designed to seal the well was unstable — but they used it anyway, President Obama’s special commission investigating the environmental disaster reported Thursday.”

“The findings shed new light on troubles with the cement job on BP’s Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico, which exploded April 20, killing 11 workers and causing the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history. The cement is supposed to secure the well pipes and keeps oil and gas from flowing up the well.”

So now we have a genuine disaster with media-worthy headlines, loss of life and provable damages. And we also have a governmental panel who has preliminarily explained what happened and pointed to who might be responsible. Which is great for those who were actually damaged by this disaster of unprecedented proportions. And for those seeking to prevent a reoccurrence of the tragedy.

“Legal experts said the information could bolster plaintiffs’ cases in the multitude of spill-related lawsuits by helping to show that BP acted with gross negligence leading up to the spill. This could, among other issues, greatly increase the multibillion-dollar penalties BP might have to pay for violation of the Clean Water Act.”

Enter the environmentalists …

So now the environmentalist swoop in and sue on behalf of the United States or some designated plaintiffs and possibly seek certification as a class action. The rewards and the fees will be tremendous given the billions of dollars in play.

“There’s no question that it’s important evidence,” said Charlie Tebbutt, an attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, which has filed a lawsuit seeking $19 billion under the Clean Water Act. “It serves to confirm the previous reports of significant problems with the exploration and production of the well.”
The information was included in a letter to Obama’s commission by Fred. H. Bartlit Jr., its chief counsel.”

The lawsuit …

“Lawsuit Seeks $19 billion in Clean Water Act Penalties from BP”

“In the largest citizen enforcement action ever taken under the Clean Water Act, the Center for Biological Diversity today sued BP and Transocean Ltd., for illegally spewing more than 100 million gallons of oil and other toxic pollutants into the Gulf of Mexico. The suit was filed in federal court in New Orleans.”

“The Center is seeking the maximum possibly penalty against BP. If BP’s violations are found to have been the result of gross negligence or willful misconduct, the maximum fine is $4,300 per barrel spilled. At this rate, the company is already liable for approximately $11 billion in Clean Water Act penalties. If the spill continues through August 1, 2010, BP’s liability will be approximately $19 billion.”

“The penalties will be paid to the U.S.

The Dems are finally slamming on the brakes — unfortunately for them they’ve already hit the tree (two can play the “car analogy” game).

From the New York Times:

The Obama administration on Tuesday plans to announce that it is lifting the moratorium on deep-water oil drilling, after putting in place new rules intended to tighten safety.

President Obama imposed the moratorium after the blowout of a BP well in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20 led to the largest maritime oil spill in American history. But the White House has come under intense pressure from the industry and from regional officials and businesses that have complained about the economic impact.

“The process is coming to its natural end,” Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, told reporters on Tuesday morning. “I believe the process will wrap up very soon.” The Interior Department later sent reporters an e-mail announcing that it would hold a telephone news conference at 1 p.m. to discuss the resumption of deep-water drilling.

According to the article, the moratorium was supposed to run through November 30th — that was of course until some genius realized that’s almost a month after the election, the moratorium is unpopular with voters, and, most importantly, the Dems are trailing badly. It’ll still take months for new drilling permits to be issued, and how many rigs have already abandoned the Gulf for greener pastures?

You know who pushed hard against the moratorium in the first place? The US Chamber of Commerce. I think the White House was having better luck scapegoating Fox News.

More on the moratorium here.

New Orleans TV station WDSU is reporting on a new mishap off the Louisiana coast involving a shallow water rig.

One person is missing after a rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, about 80 miles south of Vermilion Bay, the U.S. Coast Guard said.

It happened around 9 a.m., and as of 10:15 a.m., the rig was still burning, the Coast Guard said. Rescue crews from New Orleans and Houston are responding.

Officials said there were 13 people aboard the rig, and all but one are accounted for.

Pray for the workers. Brace for the political aftermath.

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Meanwhile, in Greenland (hat tip: reader Lynn S.), eco-radicals are obstructing oil rig operations and threatening more:

Four Greenpeace activists who climbed a Cairn Energy oil rig in Greenland waters were arrested this morning and are now being held in police custody in Greenland.

The activists first scaled the oil rig Stena Don on Tuesday. They attached hanging platforms to the underside of the rig where they camped out in tents with self-heating meals until last night.

Freezing gale-force winds forced the climbers and Greenpeace campaigners on the ship Esperanza anchored one kilometer from the rig to decide to end the occupation.

It took the Greenpeacers four hours of climbing in bitter winds to scale the rig from their hanging platforms up onto the platform gantry, where police were waiting for them. They were taken into custody and flown off the oil rig by helicopter at 2 am.

…Ben Stewart, communications officer onboard the Greenpeace ship Esperanza said, Looking out of my porthole at the massive waves, and feeling the movements of the Esperanza, there is no doubt in my mind that they took the right decision.”

“I hope and believe that this action will be remembered as the first step against our blind and reckless hunt for the last drops of oil on the planet,” Stewart said.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and the Obama job-killing machine get kicked in the ass one more time. They wanted federal judge Martin Feldman to dismiss the drillers’ lawsuit challenging their original moratorium. No dice.

Via Reuters:

A federal judge in New Orleans rejected on Wednesday the U.S. government’s request to dismiss a lawsuit challenging its original 6-month deepwater drilling moratorium…The drilling halt was subsequently amended, so the government sought to toss out the Hornbeck lawsuit, arguing it was no longer relevant.

But U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman, who earlier this summer blocked the first drilling halt, said in a 20-page ruling that the government’s amended moratorium offered “no substantial changes” from the first one.

More scathing criticism for Salazar, via the WSJ:

Judge Feldman also noted that in crafting the second moratorium, Mr. Salazar appeared to have relied heavily on documents and data that he had at the time of the first moratorium order. “Nearly every statement in the July 12 decision memorandum is anticipated by documents in the May 28 record, or by documents that were otherwise available to the Secretary before May 28,” the judge said.

Related: A bipartisan call to lift the de facto shallow drilling ban NOW:

Rep. Gene Green (D-TX) and Rep. Charles Boustany (R-LA) have again written to Department of the Interior Secretary Salazar regarding the issuance of new permits for shallow water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. The letter, co-signed by 37 Democrats and Republicans from across the country, is the second letter that Rep. Green and Rep. Boustany have sent to Secretary Salazar reminding him of the significance of the Gulf Coast economy and urging the immediate issuance of new permits.

“Before the Deepwater Horizon disaster, new shallow water drilling permits were being issued at the rate of 10-15 per week,” Rep. Green stated. “Since the shallow water moratorium was lifted on May 28, a total of 4 new permits have been issued.”

In a letter to Secretary Salazar sent May 20, Reps. Green and Boustany with 54 of their colleagues warned of the potential impact of losing shallow water oil and natural gas production. Since then, 14 rigs have been idled in the Gulf which represents 30% of the shallow water fleet. If the pace of new permits does not accelerate by the end of September, over 70% of the shallow water rigs will be inactive.

“There are thousands of jobs directly connected to shallow water drilling,” Rep. Green continued. “At a time when the economy is still coming back from the worst recession in recent memory, we just can’t afford to lose more jobs. My colleagues and I continue to share concern over this de facto moratorium and the deepwater moratorium as domestic energy production is not only vital to energy independence, but to the Gulf Coast economy.”

I’m trying to make sense of the moratorium of drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. This cannot be good for the U.S. economy. But it is interesting that it comes along right when Government Motors is about to release the Chevy Volt. You know, the electric car that costs $41,000 which no one wants. They are going to steal around $6,000 from your neighbor to entice you to buy it so the cost does go down in that regard.

I ran the numbers. Let’s say you managed to buy this little vehicle for a discounted price of $35,000 including rebates, incentives and tax credits. Let’s say gasoline is $3 gallon. Let’s also assume given that cost you would spend $2,000 for fuel a year. It’s a decent average. Depending on your car maybe you blow through $200 a month or so on fuel. Let’s also assume you could buy a used Honda for $7,000 which is roughly the same size as the Volt. That is a difference of  $28,000. Think maybe you could buy a lot of gasoline for that money? Yea, about 14 years worth before breaking even on your Volt purchase. It’s just a dumb purchase for all except the elite earth and granola people.

So why are they pushing to sell this thing and stop drilling in the Gulf? The Five Minute Forecast gives us clues:

The Obama administration’s six-month ban on exploratory deep- water drilling has four more months to go. What happens after that, nobody knows. Analysts from Morgan Stanley to our own Byron King say it could easily become a 12-18-month ban.

The result: As existing Gulf of Mexico fields deplete, fewer new ones would come on line to replace them. The resulting shock could see 6% of all the oil the U.S. uses — 1.2 million barrels a day — disappear over time.

New legislation tightening the rules on offshore drilling could come up for a vote in the House as soon as tomorrow (today). Never mind that existing rules were neither followed nor enforced in the Deepwater incident, we need new rules. The new rules would further crimp Gulf production.

In the end, the U.S. could need to import 80% of its oil from foreign producers. That’s up 20% from current needs. At current levels of consumption, the U.S. will need to import 15 million barrels of oil a day.

Where are those imports coming from? From these “iffy, at best” sources:

* Venezuela: Hugo Chavez is making noises about cutting off the U.S. supply if border tensions with U.S. ally Colombia heat up any further. Sure, he’s said this before and it’s always been a bluff. But we’re not talking about the most stable of leaders here… His socialist schemes have cut Venezuelan oil production more than 25% over the last decade

* Nigeria: Elections next year could easily heat up the split between Muslims in the north and Christians in the south. And it might give new life to the warlords in the south who’ve bedeviled the oil industry for years.