I find it highly unusual that the “experts”  found tarballs on four beaches in the Keys.    And now the tests of the tarball samples, which could have been air shipped instead of sending them on a jet to deliver  them,  still can’t confirm where they came from.  A friend indicated that the oil will undergo changes as it is carried in the currents.   I am not convinced the tarballs weren’t from the BP Blowout.   DV

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/19/v-print/1636938/officials-florida-keys-tar-balls.html#ixzz0oU7u9MIt
 

Posted on Wed, May. 19, 2010
BY TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA And CAROL ROSENBERG
crosenberg@MiamiHerald.com

TIM CHAPMAN/MIAMI HERALD STAFF
Jennifer DeMaria picks up garbage off the wild shoreline on Big Pine Key on Wednesday.
News spread quickly Wednesday that tar balls found on beaches in the Lower Florida Keys were not from the Gulf of Mexico spill, a welcome reprieve for residents still fearful about the fate of their vacation mecca.

The development was tempered by a Coast Guard announcement that “a small portion” of Deepwater Horizon’s oil slick had entered the Gulf’s loop current and could reach the Florida Straits in seven or eight days.    Or, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association bulletin reported at day’s end, “the oil may get caught in a clockwise eddy in the middle of the gulf, and not be carried to the Florida Straits at all.”
It all added to an air of uncertainty about how and when the Sunshine State would grapple with fallout from the gulf catastrophe that could threaten both the state’s fragile ecosystem as well as its lifeblood industry: tourism.

“That’s a concern and we are monitoring it,” Gov. Charlie Crist told The Miami Herald editorial board, adding that state officials still have no fixed date on when spill pollution might hit the Keys, or anywhere else.   The governor said he had been in touch with federal officials, among them White House senior advisor Valerie Jarrett.   He said he could deploy up to 2,500 National Guard members, if need be, under a state of emergency he declared last month for the Florida Panhandle — and was considering widening the emergency sector to include Monroe County and possibly Miami-Dade.

Wednesday’s developments offered a mixed message — relief on the one hand that the catastrophe had not yet come to Florida, but dread that it still might come.  The Coast Guard outpost in the Keys revealed that it had rushed samples to its lab in Groton, Conn., by Falcon jet from Miami and determined that 50 or so three- to eight-inch tar balls did not come from the Deepwater Horizon.

It said the findings were conclusive, even as the source of the spill that spawned the tar balls remained unknown.    Specially trained pollution-control experts scooped up the hazardous waste on Monday and Tuesday in four locations: Smathers Beach in Key West; Big Pine Key; Loggerhead Key in the Dry Tortugas National Park, and the Fort Zachary Taylor State Park.

On Wednesday, Jeff Bryant, 44, was among a knot of swimmers at a near-empty beach cleared by rain showers at Fort Zachary Taylor.  “The tar balls aren’t from the Gulf, but we still could see oil remnants here,” said Bryant, a Key West resident who was gripping flippers and a heavy oxygen tank. “I’m hoping for the best, but my mind keeps going to the worst-case scenario.”

Monroe County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Becky Herrin, likewise, said she was relieved to learn that this week’s oil contaminants hadn’t come from the Deepwater Horizon. But, she said, “You have to keep in mind we’re still preparing for the possibility and keeping a close eye.”

And so Keys environmentalists redoubled efforts to organize coastal cleanups to clear the shores of litter that, if mixed with contaminated oil, could become toxic along the 120-mile string of islands that stretch south of Miami, part of a fragile interdependent ecosystem of mangroves and seagrass. “Preemptively removing artificial debris from the shoreline of the preserve will reduce potential impacts from oil, and it is good for the environment in any event,” a Nature Conservancy of Florida statement said, asking volunteers with kayaks and canoes to help clean up Little Torch Key on Saturday.

From Washington, Miami Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, whose district includes the Keys, lamented that the tar ball discovery had triggered “premature panic” and issued a stern warning: “It is imperative that the Coast Guard and other national agencies work to ensure that information related to the path of the spill is delivered in a timely fashion.”

Constituent Jodi Weinhofer, president of the Keys Lodging Association, reported that the anxious tourist industry was in “wait-and-see mode” with “all the plans in place on how to manage this.”   She added that she was assured that the Coast Guard lab finding reinforced earlier NOAA reports that the currents had not yet brought the slick from the oil spill to South Florida. “The good news is that the information that we’ve been getting is accurate,” she said. “And that’s big. It’s really encouraging.”

Miami Herald staff writers Sergio Bustos, Jennifer Lebovich and Kenny Malone contributed to this report.

Associated Press
May 20, 2010

 http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_8559/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=AK8JaqtP

GRAND ISLE, La. (AP) – The spectacle many had feared for a month finally began unfolding as gooey, rust-colored oil washed into the marshes at the mouth of the Mississippi for the first time, stoking public anger and frustration with both BP and the government.

The sense of gloom deepened as BP conceded what some scientists have been saying for weeks: that the oil leak at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico is bigger than the company previously estimated.

Up to now, only tar balls and a sheen of oil had come ashore. But on Wednesday, chocolate brown and vivid orange globs, sheets and ribbons of foul-smelling oil the consistency of latex paint began coating the reeds and grasses of Louisiana’s wetlands, home to rare birds, mammals and a rich variety of marine life.

There were no immediate reports of any mass die-offs of wildlife or large numbers of creatures wriggling in oil, as seen after the Exxon Valdez disaster, but that was the fear.

Billy Nungesser, president of Louisiana’s Plaquemines Parish, toured the oil-fouled marshes Wednesday and said: “Had you fallen off that boat yesterday and come up breathing that stuff, you probably wouldn’t be here.”

A live video feed of the underwater gusher, posted online Thursday after lawmakers exerted pressure on BP, is sure to fuel the anger.

It shows what appears to be a large plume of oil and gas still spewing into the water next to the stopper-and-tube combination that BP inserted to carry some of the crude to the surface. The House committee website where the video was posted promptly crashed because so many people were trying to view it.

“These videos stand as a scalding, blistering indictment of BP’s inattention to the scope and size of the greatest environmental catastrophe in the history of the United States,” said Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass.

At least 6 million gallons have gushed into the Gulf – more than half the amount the Exxon Valdez tanker spilled in Alaska in 1989 – since the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform exploded 50 miles off the coast April 20. Eleven workers were killed.

The slow-motion disaster could become far wider. Government scientists said a small portion of the slick had entered the so-called loop current, a stream of fast-moving water that could carry the mess into the Florida Keys and up the state’s Atlantic Coast, damaging coral reefs and fouling beaches.

“It’s anger that the people who are supposed to be driving the ship don’t have any idea what’s going on,” E.J. Boles, a musician from Big Pine Key, Fla., said of both BP and the government. “Why wouldn’t they have any contingency plan? I’m not a genius, and even I would have thought of that.”

BP spokesman Mark Proegler told The Associated Press that the mile-long tube inserted into the leaking well pipe over the weekend is capturing 210,000 gallons of oil a day – the total amount the company and the Coast Guard had estimated was gushing into the sea – but that some is still escaping. He would not say how much.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said an interagency team using ships and planes is working on a new estimate of how much oil is gushing from the well. Agency officials would not speculate on how big the leak might be.

Washington, meanwhile, turned up the pressure on BP.

The Obama administration asked the company to be more open with the public by sharing such information as measurements of the leak and the trajectory of the spill. BP has been accused of covering up the magnitude of the disaster.

Also, the Environmental Protection Agency directed BP to employ a less toxic form of the chemical dispersants it has been using to break up the oil and keep it from reaching the surface.

BP is marshaling equipment for an attempt as early as Sunday at a “top kill,” which involves pumping heavy mud into the top of the blown-out well to try to plug the gusher. A top kill has been used before above ground, but like other methods BP is exploring, it has never been attempted 5,000 feet underwater.

If it doesn’t work, the backup plans include a “junk shot” – shooting golf balls, shredded tires, knotted rope and other material into the well to clog it up.

But Chris Roberts, a member of Louisiana’s Jefferson Parish Council, complained bitterly: “We don’t have time for BP to use the Gulf of Mexico as an experiment.”

BP officials have said repeatedly that no one could have predicted or prepared for such a disaster. But some lawmakers and others aren’t buying it.

Commercial fisherman Pete Gerica of New Orleans, a member of the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board, said the oil industry “needed to have a better tool box.” As for the government, he said, “The watchdog people failed us miserably.”

In Washington, environmental groups urged the government to take greater control of the situation from BP.

“The Gulf of Mexico is a crime scene,” said Larry Schweiger, president of the National Wildlife Federation, “and the perpetrator cannot be left in charge of assessing the damage.”
___
Associated Press writers Mike Kunzelman, Kevin McGill, Greg Bluestein and Janet McConnaughey in Louisiana, Ben Evans in Washington, Holbrook Mohr in Mississippi, and Tamara Lush and Matt Sedensky in Florida contributed to this report.
___
Online:
 http://globalwarming.house.gov/spillcam

Anchorage Daily News
May 20, 2010

 http://www.adn.com/2010/05/20/1287470/lawsuit-against-bp-filed-in-alaska.html

By BECKY BOHRER
The Associated Press
Published: May 20th, 2010 04:24 PM
Last Modified: May 20th, 2010 04:25 PM

JUNEAU — BP stockholders are suing top company officials, claiming in a lawsuit filed in Alaska that “gross mismanagement” has tarnished the company’s reputation and hurt its value.

The lawsuit, filed in Superior Court in Anchorage on Thursday, alleges officials did not take the necessary steps to ensure BP compliance with safety rules and environmental safeguards. It cites cases including last month’s oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico and concerns that U.S. lawmakers raised earlier this year about BP operations on Alaska’s North Slope.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages, and appointment of an “independent corporate monitor” to implement safety and environmental compliance measures.

Named defendants include BP chief executive Tony Hayward and members of BP’s board of directors.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

Kansas City Star
May 20, 2010

 http://www.kansascity.com/2010/05/20/1959836/low-oil-spill-estimate-could-save.html

By MARISA TAYLOR, RENEE SCHOOF AND ERIKA BOLSTAD
McClatchy Newspapers

BP’s estimate that only 5,000 barrels of oil are leaking daily from a well in the Gulf of Mexico, which the Obama administration hasn’t disputed, could save the company millions of dollars in damages when the financial impact of the spill is resolved in court, legal experts say.

A month after a surge of gas from the undersea well engulfed the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig in flames and triggered the massive leak that now threatens sea life, fisheries and tourist centers in five Gulf Coast states, neither BP nor the federal government has tried to measure at the source the amount of crude pouring into the water.

BP and the Obama administration have said they don’t want to take the measurements for fear of interfering with efforts to stop the leaks.

That decision, however, runs counter to BP’s own regional plan for dealing with offshore leaks. “In the event of a significant release of oil,” the 583-page plan says on Page 2, “an accurate estimation of the spill’s total volume … is essential in providing preliminary data to plan and initiate cleanup operations.”

Legal experts said that not having a credible official estimate of the leak’s size provides another benefit for BP: The amount of oil spilled is certain to be key evidence in the court battles that are likely to result from the disaster. The size of the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, for example, was a significant factor that the jury considered when it assessed damages against Exxon.

“If they put off measuring, then it’s going to be a battle of dueling experts after the fact trying to extrapolate how much spilled after it has all sunk or has been carried away,” said Lloyd Benton Miller, one of the lead plaintiffs’ lawyers in the Exxon Valdez spill litigation. “The ability to measure how much oil was released will be impossible.”

“It’s always a bottom-line issue,” said Marilyn Heiman, a former Clinton administration Interior Department official who now heads the Arctic Program for the Pew Environment Group. “Any company wouldn’t have an interest in having this kind of measurement if they can help it.”

The size of the spill has become a high stakes political controversy that’s put the Obama administration and the oil company on the defensive. In congressional testimony Wednesday, an engineering professor from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., said that based on videos released Tuesday he estimated that the well was spewing at 95,000 barrels of oil, or 4 million gallons, a day into the gulf.

The Obama administration Thursday demanded that BP publicly release all information related to the disaster.

BP officials had pledged in congressional testimony to keep the public and government officials informed, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson said in a letter to BP chief executive officer Tony Hayward.

“Those efforts, to date, have fallen short in both their scope and effectiveness,” they wrote.

That letter came after members of Congress made similar demands of BP, leading to the release Tuesday of the new videos. One showed oil still billowing from one underwater pipe, despite an insertion tube BP now says is capturing 5,000 barrels of crude a day – its entire initial estimate of the spill. The other showed a previously unseen leak spewing clouds of crude from just above the well’s dysfunctional blowout preventer.

The EPA on Thursday ordered BP to switch to a less toxic version of the chemical mix it’s using to disperse the oil. The EPA also for the first time posted on its website BP’s test data of the dispersant’s use in deep water. Those orders came days after McClatchy Newspapers reported doubts about the dispersant’s safety and members of Congress made a similar demand.

Scientists and environmentalists praised the government for demanding that more information be made public.

“This is exactly the role the government needs to be playing – they need to be overseeing BP’s actions to assure that health and natural resources are protected, as much as possible, and that information is available to the public,” said Gina Solomon, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration head Jane Lubchenco told reporters on Thursday that a team of government scientists was assembled this week, a month after the spill began, to try to come up with a better estimate of the leak’s volume.

She said the 5,000-barrel estimate was based on visual observations on the surface. “As the spill increased in size and began to break up it was no longer possible to use that effort, which is why we have shifted to using multiple paths to try to get at better estimates,” she said.

Scientists have the instruments and the knowledge needed to figure out the flow rate, and several have complained publicly that they were turned down when they offered to help, as McClatchy reported Tuesday.

“The decision was made that the first priority had to be to stop the flow,” Lubchenco said. Robotic vehicles were being used for that purpose and there was limited space for more of them to operate there at the same time, she said.
John Curry, a BP spokesman, said he hadn’t seen the letter from Napolitano and Jackson and couldn’t comment specifically, but added: “We’re just trying to provide the information people are asking for at the same time we are trying to position a lot more resources to stop the flow of oil.”

Curry offered no new estimate of how much oil is flowing from the leaks, but acknowledged that capturing 5,000 barrels of oil a day in the insertion tube is evidence that the official 5,000-barrel per leak estimate is low.

“We’ve said at best it’s a highly imprecise estimate,” Curry said.

Curry said he knew of no efforts by BP to use its robotic equipment on the sea floor to measure the flow, but said that the efforts were entirely focused on containing the spill.

BP agreed Thursday to allow the posting of a live feed of the video of the oil spill, which lawmakers said would help scientists arrive at independent estimates of the spill.

“I’m sitting here looking at it right now, and it ain’t 5,000 barrels a day. I’ll guarantee it,” said Bob Cavnar, a Houston engineer and blogger who’s been involved in oil and gas exploration and production.

“In Houston, there’s about 125,000, 150,000 engineers,” he said. “And all the engineers can calculate what the flow is.”

The feed eventually was overwhelmed by the number of people trying to view it and was removed from congressional websites.

Calling the disaster site a “crime scene,” Larry Schweiger, the president of the National Wildlife Federation, accused BP of a cover-up.

“BP cannot be left in charge of assessing the damage or controlling the data from their spill,” Schweiger said. “The public deserves sound science, not sound bites from BP’s CEO.”

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs denied that the government was trying to cover up the size of the spill.

“The best and brightest minds in all of this government, and in the scientific community and in the world of commerce are focused on this problem. Everything that can be done is being done,” he said.

Sens. Bill Nelson of Florida and Barbara Boxer of California, both Democrats, called on the Justice Department to investigate BP’s drilling permits to determine whether the company had misled the government by claiming it had the technology needed to handle a big spill.

Since the spill, BP has announced five different approaches to sealing the leak. Three of those have been at least partially used: a 78-ton containment dome that failed; a small “top hat” dome that was placed on the seafloor May 11 but hasn’t been used, and the insertion tube now siphoning a fraction of the spill. Of the two others, the “junk shot,” which would fire shredded tires and debris into the damaged blowout preventer, is rarely mentioned, and the “top kill,” which would force mud into the blowout preventer, may be tried this weekend.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration head Jane Lubchenco told reporters on Thursday that a team of government scientists was assembled this week, a month after the spill began, to try to come up with a better estimate of the leak’s volume.

She said the 5,000-barrel estimate was based on visual observations on the surface. “As the spill increased in size and began to break up it was no longer possible to use that effort, which is why we have shifted to using multiple paths to try to get at better estimates,” she said.

Scientists have the instruments and the knowledge needed to figure out the flow rate, and several have complained publicly that they were turned down when they offered to help, as McClatchy reported Tuesday.

“The decision was made that the first priority had to be to stop the flow,” Lubchenco said. Robotic vehicles were being used for that purpose and there was limited space for more of them to operate there at the same time, she said.

 
(Margaret Talev and David Lightman contributed to this article.)

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/todays-paper/cleanup+unlikely+coast/3049464/story.html
Montreal Gazette 
Drilling under way; Spill redress ‘difficult,’ Chevron said in 2005
 
BY ANDREW MAYEDA, CANWEST NEWS SERVICE MAY 20, 2010
 
 
Chevron Canada warned regulators five years ago it would be unable to clean up the vast majority of any big oil spill at a rig off the coast of Newfoundland that is poised to set a record for the deepest offshore oil well drilled in Canada.

Chevron began exploratory drilling this month in the Orphan Basin, about 430 kilometres northeast of St. John’s. The project is known as Lona O-55. At 2,600 metres below sea level, it is considerably deeper than the existing White Rose, Terra Nova and Hibernia rigs off the Newfoundland coast. Those three rigs are the only active offshore projects in Canada.

The well at BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico is about 1,500 metres deep.
The unprecedented nature of the Lona O-55 project has raised concerns among environmentalists and industry observers about how Chevron would respond were the well to blow out, as it did in the Deepwater Horizon case.

An environmental assessment commissioned by Chevron and its partners in 2005 estimated there is only a 0.0086 per cent probability of an “extremely large” oil spill of more than 150,000 barrels. The probability of a “very large” spill, defined as greater than 10,000 barrels, was pegged at 0.026 per cent.

There is considerable dispute over the size of the Gulf Coast spill, but U.S. government officials believe it is leaking at a rate of 5,000 barrels a day, meaning it is approaching 150,000 barrels. The Chevron report notes that, before the Gulf Coast disaster, there were only five extremely large spills in offshore drilling history.

However, the report also concedes that, were a large spill to occur on the rough seas off Newfoundland, the company would be hard pressed to clean it up.

“Physical recovery of spilled oil off the coast of Newfoundland will be extremely difficult and inefficient for large blowout spills,” the report states.” First, the generally rough sea conditions mean that containment and recovery techniques are frequently not effective. Second, the wide slicks that result from subsea blowouts mean that only a portion of the slick can be intercepted.”

The Chevron report estimates that only two to 12 per cent of an offshore spill could be retrieved under “typical wind and wave conditions.”

Stephen Hazell, a lawyer with environmental-law organization Ecojustice, said big offshore projects such as the Lona O-55 should be subject to tougher reviews.
Last week, the Newfoundland government appointed a marine safety and environmental management expert to review the province’s prevention and response plans.

Special thanks to Richard Charter