http://www.wwl.com/The-Gulf-of-Mexico-oil-spill-at-a-glance/18840949

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Posted: Friday, 18 April 2014 3:13PM

April 20 marks the fourth anniversary of an explosion on the BP-operated drilling rig Deepwater Horizon, which killed 11 workers about 50 miles off the Louisiana coast in the Gulf of Mexico and set off the nation’s worst offshore oil disaster.

WHAT HAPPENED

The Deepwater Horizon well was drilling the night of April 20 when it was rocked by an explosion and began burning. The rig sank less than two days later and crude oil gushed into the Gulf from the blown-out Macondo well. The well’s location about a mile below the Gulf surface and the pressure of oil and natural gas erupting from it severely hampered efforts to cap the well. In July 2010, a cap was successfully placed over the well after an estimated 200 million gallons of oil escaped, though that amount is one of many points that remain in dispute. The collapsed rig remains on the Gulf bottom. The spill led to a moratorium for a time on deep-water drilling in the Gulf and assurances from federal officials that offshore oil drilling regulation and monitoring would be tightened in an effort to prevent future disasters like the BP spill. Drilling has since resumed.

CLAIMS, SETTLEMENTS, DISPUTES

Two phases of a trial in U.S. District Court have been held in New Orleans and a third is schooled to begin in January, dealing with matters of fault, questions of negligence, how much oil ultimately was spewed into the Gulf – all of which will determine how much the oil giant will have to pay in penalties under the federal Clean Water Act.

Meanwhile, BP estimates that, since May 2010, it has paid out roughly $11 billion so far in claims to individuals and businesses over economic losses and damages, plus nearly $1.5 billion to government. In 2012, the company and a committee representing numerous plaintiffs agreed to a settlement resolving most economic and property damage claims. However, a court-appointed administrator’s interpretation of that settlement remains in dispute. The company initially estimated the settlement would result in it paying $7.8 billion in claims. Later, as it started to challenge the business payouts, the company said it no longer could give a reliable estimate for how much the deal will cost.
CRIMINAL CASES

In 2012, BP agreed to pay $4.5 billion in a settlement with the U.S. government and to plead guilty to felony counts related to the deaths of the 11 workers and lying to Congress. The figure includes nearly $1.3 billion in criminal fines – the largest such penalty ever – along with payments to several government entities. Two BP well site leaders are charged with manslaughter, and a former executive is charged with lying to authorities.

In 2013, the Justice Department reached a $1.4 billion settlement with rig owner Transocean Ltd., requiring the Switzerland-based company to pay $1 billion in civil penalties and $400 million in criminal penalties and plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of violating the Clean Water Act.

Also in December 2013, former BP engineer Kurt Mix was convicted in federal court of obstruction of justice after prosecutors said he deleted text messages to and from a supervisor and a BP contractor to stymie a grand jury’s investigation of the spill. He has motions pending before the trial judge to have the jury’s verdict thrown out.

HEALTH ISSUES
BP and plaintiffs agreed in 2012 to a settlement providing oil spill cleanup workers and residents in specified areas close to the coast with payments for medical claims related to the spill. BP does not have an estimate of how much it will likely pay out. Lawyers have estimated as many as 200,000 people may benefit.

ENVIRONMENT

Oil from the busted well spread north after the blowout, eventually soiling marshes, beaches and barrier islands from Louisiana to Florida and forcing rich seafood grounds to be closed. Rescue and cleaning centers were set up for animals affected by the spill. Researchers continue to monitor marshlands, marine life and oyster beds lingering effects from the oil.

(image from Louisiana GOHSEP)

Special thanks to Richard Charter

Coast Guard, BP, issue dueling news releases on state of Gulf oil spill recovery

Seafood Business News from Beneath the Surface

April 17, 2014, 4:03 pm

BP said that the “active cleanup” of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill had been brought “to a close” as of Tuesday night, but the Coast Guard begs to differ, stating in response on Tuesday that the spill response isn’t over yet.

“Not by a long shot,” the Coast Guard said.

Dueling news releases came out just before the fourth anniversary of the April 20, 2010, blowout on BP’s Macondo well, reports the Washington Post.

The Deepwater Horizon drilling rig caught fire and sank, 11 workers were killed and more than 4 million barrels of crude spilled into the gulf.

BP, which has vowed to “make things right,” said it issued its press release because the Coast Guard ended “patrols and operations” along the final three miles of Louisiana shoreline, capping a four-year effort that BP said cost more than $14 billion.

From now on, the Coast Guard and BP will not be scouring the coast for oil, but rather responding to specific reports of oil washing ashore.

BP said it wanted to note the “milestone” and said nearly 4,400 miles had been surveyed, with teams detecting oiling on 1,104 miles and doing at least some cleanup on 778 miles.
But Coast Guard Capt. Thomas Sparks, the federal on-scene coordinator of the Deepwater Horizon response, sought to stress that the switch to what he called a “middle response” process “does not end cleanup operations.”

“Our response posture has evolved to target re-oiling events on coastline segments that were previously cleaned,” said Sparks. “But let me be absolutely clear: This response is not over – not by a long shot.”

BP has been trying to bring the oil spill episode to a close and circumscribe costs that so far have reached $27 billion. Litigation over economic damages and federal fines under the Clean Water Act continues in New Orleans. The company has set aside roughly $42 billion for total costs.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/four-years-after-devastating-bp-oil-spill-scientists-search-for-life-in-the-gulf/

CBS Evening News

By CHIP REID CBS NEWS April 17, 2014, 7:11 PM

It happened four years ago Sunday.

A well drilled by the BP oil company blew out, killing 11 workers on the Deepwater Horizon rig and unleashing a gusher into the Gulf of Mexico for 87 days.

Now for the first time since 2010, scientists got a close look at the seabed not far from the capped well.

Fifty miles off the coast of Louisiana we climbed aboard the research vessel Atlantis.
This is where we found Mandy Joye, a University of Georgia oceanographer and the leader of this expedition. She’s been studying the Gulf of Mexico for 20 years.

“People who have never seen the bottom of the ocean can’t appreciate how just phenomenal it is,” Joye said.

Joye and her team of 22 scientists are spending this month diving to the Gulf floor in a Navy research submarine named Alvin. They want to know how the bottom is doing four years after the oil spill.

The answer is a mile down, a two-hour descent into darkness.
“We are on the bottom at 1,607 meters,” Joye can be heard saying.

Alvin landed just two miles from the well that spewed 210 million gallons of oil into the Gulf.

This is the first time Joye – or any human – has been down here since 2010.

What kind of marine life did she find down there four years ago?

“Four years ago there was nothing,” she said. “I saw one crab in an eight-hour dive. It was gut-wrenching to go down there and see just nothing on the sea floor. ”

And now?

“It’s very different,” Joye said. “Now, we saw eels and skates and a vampire squid, which I’d never seen before.

What does it mean to find a vampire squid in an area that had been dead?

“It means there’s a lot of food,” she said.

That was the good news.

But there was potential bad news in sediment samples collected from the sea floor. The mud contains an oily layer from the spill, and Joye worries the residue could adversely affect marine life in the longer term.

“This material that’s on the sea floor, there’s a lot of it,” she said. “It’s widespread. And it’s just sort of sitting there. And nothing’s happening to it.”

What does it mean to see that life is at least beginning to come back after the devastating oil spill?

“I was prepared to see little recovery and I was so relieved,” Joye said.
But there’s still a long way to go, she said.

“Because, again, this is one spot,” she said. “And you can’t apply what you see at one spot to the entire system.”

Joye and her team plan to keep a close watch on the Gulf with four or five research cruises a year. She said it could be a decade before the full impact of the oil spill is known.

_________________________Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.nola.com/health/index.ssf/2014/04/study_finds_high_rates_of_depr.html

By Jennifer Larino, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune

on April 11, 2014 at 4:23 PM, updated April 11, 2014 at 4:25 PM

Researchers studying the health of nearly 33,000 people who did clean up work during the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill say it’s still too early to tell what impact exposure to oil and dispersants will have on their bodies in the long-term. But early results show widespread symptoms of depression and anxiety. Researchers hope a second phase of more intensive health tests conducted over the next year will help paint a more detailed picture of the spill’s health impact.

Scientists with the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences on Friday (April 11) provided an update on the study, known as the Gulf Long-Term Follow-up Study, or GuLF STUDY, in a conference call with reporters. Researchers have enrolled close to 33,000 who were hired or volunteered for cleanup work since the study began in 2010. About 24 percent are Louisiana residents. In addition to more than 12,000 telephone interviews, researchers have completed in-home health screenings with 11,000 participants, collecting blood and home dust samples and doing basic blood pressure and diabetes screenings.

Dale Sandler, a principal investigator with the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences epidemiology group and leader of the research effort, said early data show symptoms of depression are prevalent among cleanup workers. The study group reported symptoms at a rate 30 percent higher than other people in areas affected by the oil spill.

Sandler said the findings are “not a surprise” given the stressful and dirty work most cleanup workers were involved in. Most were residents of communities impacted by the spill, which prior research show are prone to higher rates of depression and anxiety, she said. Still she said there is no definitive link between the spill and mental and physical health problems. Sandler said her team is still gathering key data, including how much oil and dispersants each participant was exposed to. “It will be many years before we can know if the oil spill had an impact on the risk of developing chronic disease such as lung disease or cancer,” Sandler said.

BP, the owner of ill-fated Macondo well that was the source of the spill, responded to the early findings by underscoring its role in ensuring the health of and safety of cleanup responders. BP said in statement it collected 3,000 air monitoring samples evaluating dispersant and oil compound exposure in addition to providing training and protective equipment for each worker. “BP worked closely with OSHA, the U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and other U.S. government agencies to take extraordinary measures to safeguard the health and safety of responders,” BP said.

The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences research team is now partnering with the Louisiana State University School of Medicine in New Orleans and the University of South Alabama in Mobile to complete a second phase of the study, which includes in-depth research exams with some 4,000 participants within a 60-mile radius of each testing center. The research exams will include a battery of tests measuring proper lung and neurological function and heart health. In addition to blood and urine samples, researchers will use saliva samples to test for stress hormones. Participants will receive $150 for their time and additional funds for travel.

Sandler added participants who are found to have chronic diseases such as diabetes will be eligible to receive health care at the network of clinics being funded by the multibillion-dollar Deepwater Horizon Medical Benefits settlement. Sandler said a key hurdle moving forward is ensuring participants remain engaged in the study, which could last decades. “The issue of keeping people in Š is a very big challenge,” she said.

Sandler said being able to plug into cancer registries and scour other long-term data is key to getting a full picture of the health impact of the oil spill. She added long-term data prevents results from being skewed by economic or social factors – someone playing up their medical problems in order to get a bigger pay out from the settlement, for example.

She said her team is getting creative to make sure those who enrolled in the study keep in touch with researchers, in some cases going door-to-door to maintain contact with participants.

Special thanks to Richard Charter