http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2012-07-13/pdf/2012-17048.pdf

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2012-07-13/html/2012-17048.htm

Special thanks to Richard Charter

By ANDREW E. KRAMER
Published: July 11, 2012

MOSCOW – A Russian oil company will delay drilling its first exploratory well off the northern coast of Cuba, about 180 miles from Florida, after apparently struggling to find a drilling rig that would not violate a United States embargo.

The Russian company, Zarubezhneft, said in a statement on Wednesday that it had planned to drill in August but now planned to start in November.

Finding rigs can be a challenge for oil companies operating in Cuba. To avoid violating the trade embargo the United States imposed on Cuba 50 years ago, rigs can have only a small portion of their parts manufactured in the United States.

Zarubezhneft, a small state-owned company, obtained the exploration rights to potential oil fields in the waters off Cuba three years ago. Last month, it obtained a rig from the Cyprus-based drilling operator, Songa Offshore.

Cuba produces little oil now, but petroleum experts say the country’s northern coastal waters could hold reserves, which may help revive the island’s economy and ease its dependence on oil imported from Venezuela.

Half a dozen companies have signed deals to work in Cuban waters on projects that concern United States authorities. Many of the projects would be close to the United States but beyond the reach of its safety regulators. Cuba’s maritime border is in some places 50 miles from the coast of the United States.

Zarubezhneft updated its plans during a visit from Raúl Castro, Cuba’s leader and the brother of Fidel Castro, who is on a tour of former Communist allies. Seeking money for Cuba, Castro met with President Vladimir V. Putin after visiting China and Vietnam.

Songa Offshore once operated from offices in Houston, but has since moved to Singapore and Cyprus, according to its Web site.

After it contracted for the Songa rig, Zarubezhneft hired a third-party auditing company to confirm that the machine had fewer than 10 percent United States-made parts, the Russian company said in a statement. The rig is on its way from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Cuba. The company plans to drill at a site called Block L near the Cuban coastal town of Cayo Santa Maria.

A version of this article appeared in print on July 12, 2012, on page B6 of the New York edition with the headline: Russian Oil Drilling Off Cuba Is Delayed by Old Embargo.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

wwltv.com: New study finds microorganisms along Gulf Coast impacted by BP oil spill

Posted on July 10, 2012 at 6:27 PM / Updated yesterday at 6:42 PM
Maya Rodriguez / Eyewitness News

Email: mrodriguez@wwltv.com | Twitter: @mrodriguezwwl
GRAND ISLE, La.– To the casual observer, the beaches along the Gulf Coast look back to normal, more than two years after oil marred the shoreline. In a new study, though, scientists sampled the sand and sediment, taking a closer look at the microorganisms there.

“You can think of them as forming the basis of any eco-system,” said Holly Bik of the University of California, Davis, one of the study’s lead researchers. “So, they really underpin all the food webs in ecosystems.”

Bik personally collected samples from Grand Isle, looking for microbial life: tiny worms, crustaceans, amoebas and fungi, which are not visible to the naked eye, but crucial to the food chain. What she and other scientists discovered was a major shift.

“It was very low diversity, there were very few things living there,” Bik said. “It looked like they represented a disturbed habitat.”

Loyola University biology professor Dr. Jim Wee did not participate in the study, but looked at its findings. He said microorganisms are often overlooked because they can be harder to relate to.

“There was a the shift in the composition or the diversity,” Dr. Wee said. “Because we don’t ordinarily see them, we often don’t take the microbial organisms as seriously as we should, in terms of how they affect our environment.”

However, a change in microorganisms can have a huge effect. After the Exxon-Valdez spill in Alaska, a similar change in microorganisms came before a collapse in the herring fisheries there. Whether something similar could happen here is still not clear. UNO Biological Sciences Department Chair Dr. Wendy Schluchter did not take part in the study, but said this latest one shows more research is needed.
“Many people want to know– what’s the immediate effect? And obviously, we don’t know,” Dr. Schluchter said. “It’s going to take a long time to study this– to really understand what the effects are.”

The scientists focused mainly on Grand Isle and Dauphin Island, Alabama in these results. They collected more samples from Louisiana to Florida, though, and additional research is ongoing at Auburn University. To see the current study, click here

——————————————-
http://msbusiness.com
Mississippi Business Journal: Study: Oil spill’s impact could take years to become apparent

by Associated Press
Published: July 10th, 2012

GULF OF MEXICO — New research by an Auburn University professor and other scientists suggests that the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill could have significant impacts on microscopic life that might not become apparent for years.

Auburn professor Ken Halanych and scientists from the University of New Hampshire, the University of California Davis Genome Center, and the University of Texas at San Antonio, published their work last month in the scientific journal PLoS ONE.

The Press-Register of Mobile (Ala.) reports researchers collected soil samples from five spots around Alabama’s Dauphin Island and Mobile Bay, as well as a persistently oiled beach in Grand Isle, La.

What they found, according to their report, was that diverse communities of microscopic animals had given way to fungi, some of which are associated with oil spills.

Complete URL: http://msbusiness.com/2012/07/study-oil-spills-impact-could-take-years-to-become-apparent/

————————————
Press-Register: Gulf oil spill had dramatic impact on microscopic life, study suggests
Published: Tuesday, July 10, 2012, 6:00 AM Updated: Tuesday, July 10, 2012, 3:04 PM
By Brendan Kirby, Press-Register

MOBILE, Alabama — Months after BP PLC capped the gushing well in the Gulf of Mexico and crews had cleared oil from coast, Alabama’s beaches looked like they had returned to normal.

New research by an Auburn University professor and other scientists, though, suggests that significant changes had taken place in creatures too small to be seen by the naked eye. Those changes, professor Ken Halanych said, bear further study and could have big impacts that might not become apparent for years.

“When the samples were taken, there wasn’t any obvious oil on the beaches, wasn’t anything obvious to indicate that the oil spill had happened,” he said. “When you went outside and looked at it, it looked rather normal. There was clearly (microscopic) community change and hidden effects.”

Halanych and scientists from the University of New Hampshire, the University of California Davis Genome Center, and the University of Texas at San Antonio, published their work last month in the scientific journal PLoS ONE. The researches collected soil samples from 5 spots around Dauphin Island and Mobile Bay, as well as a persistently oiled beach in Grand Isle, Louisiana.

The researchers collected the first set of samples after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig had exploded in April 2010 but before oil reached the coast. They then compared those samples with soil collected at the same locations in September of that year.

What they found, according to the academic paper, was that diverse communities of microscopic animals had given way to fungi, some of which are associated with oil spills.

“Based on this community analysis, our data suggest considerable (hidden) initial impacts across Gulf beaches may be ongoing, despite the disappearance of visible surface oil in the region,” they wrote.

Potential Ripple Effect
Halanych said the long-term effects are unknown but potentially dramatic, since the organisms that lost ground after the spill form the base of the food chain. He pointed to the collapse of the herring population in Prince William Sound after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. That collapse, which did not occur until several years after the 1989 spill, has been traced to changes at the microscopic level.

“When you change the ecosystem, all these things have a ripple effect,” he said. “Some of these effects can take years to develop.”

Patricia Sobecky, the chairwoman of the Biological Sciences Department at the University of Alabama, said the study sheds new light on a Gulf environment that many scientists contend has received too little attention.

“What they reported is completely in line with what you would expect,” said Sobecky, who was not part of the research. “How to interpret that is going to the tricky part.”

Sobecky was part of a team that expects to publish its own paper in PLoS ONE in the coming weeks. She said her work focused on the impact of the oil spill on microscopic life in salt marshes near Bayou La Batre.

Sobecky said the work of Halanych and others is important for establishing a baseline to track changes over time.

“I think it will ready us for future events,” she said.

One the one hand, Sobecky said, the presence of microorganisms attracted to hydrocarbons may have helped break down the oil faster. Whether those organisms remain and what the effect will be is harder to tell, she said, adding that other large-scale oil spills — like the Valdez — do not offer a conclusive explanation because the environments are so different from the Gulf.

“What does that mean? Is it more resilient? Less resilient?” she said.

John Valentine, the director of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, said other research he has reviewed indicates that microbes harmed by the oil spill had rebounded by the end of the year.

“It was pretty clear in the microbial community that there was a pretty dramatic effect immediately after the oil spill,” he said. “It would be interesting to know if (Halanych and his partners) persisted beyond September 2010.”

More research needed
Halanych said he did, in fact, collect samples a full year after the oil spill. But he said he has not yet analyzed the results. He said other research suggests that changes in bacteria reverted to normal conditions fairly quickly after the spill. But he said that does not necessarily mean that microscopic animals will behave the same way.
He agreed that more research is needed. He said funding for his project from a National Science Foundation grant has run out, but he or others might be able to get renewed support if a follow-up paper shows interesting results.

“What this research shows is we have to keep watching,” he said.

Halanych said he and his team used hand-held tools to scoop up soil at the same depth in different locations. They sent those samples to a lab in New Hampshire, where researchers performed a genetic sequencing. Scientists also made observations with microscopes.

He said large animals and fish either moved or died when the massive oil slick reached them. His team focused on the tiny creatures that live between the sand grains.

“They’re not going to be able to get up and swim and move,” he said.

After the spill, fungi and organisms associated with hydrocarbons were dominant, Halanych said.

“A lot of these things might have been there (before) but in very low numbers, and the conditions didn’t favor them” he said.

The question that cannot be answered without more research, Halanych said, is whether the new species will remain without the oil.

“I would hope they would shift back, but we need the data to tell us for sure or not,” he said.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2012/07/08/BP-oil-spill-fine-plan-is-complex/UPI-17221341773439/print#ixzz209eQQUIr
www.sun-sentinel.com/fl-everglades-backers-seek-bp-billions-20120708,0,2981402.story
South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com

Published: July 8, 2012 at 2:50 PM
NEW ORLEANS, July 8 (UPI) — NEW ORLEANS, July 8 (UPI) — A distribution formula that takes coastal populations into account could put a damper on the gulf oil-spill compensation Louisiana receives, documents indicate.

The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune reported Sunday that while Louisiana will still receive the largest cut of the fines levied in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, Florida could siphon off some of the total because it has more people living along the Gulf Coast.

The newspaper said the complex distribution formula is contained in the compromise Restore Act passed by Congress last week. The bill, which was signed by President Obama, directs that Louisiana, Florida and three other gulf states received 80 percent of an estimated $5 billion-$21 billion in fines levied on the British oil producer BP for Clean Water Act violations.

The money will be used for state projects such as tourism promotion, parks improvements, flood control and wildlife habitat.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

Environmentalists eye billions to shore up Florida ecology
By William E. Gibson, Washington Bureau
10:24 AM EDT, July 8, 2012

WASHINGTON — Everglades restoration backers are aiming to get a big piece of the billions of dollars of fines that oil giant BP is expected to pay for polluting the Gulf of Mexico and disrupting Florida’s delicate ecology during the Deepwater Horizon spill of 2010.

BP’s fines are expected to range from $5 billion to $21 billion, and most of the money would go toward restoring the marshes, fishing industry and oil-damaged businesses and resources along the Gulf Coast. But environmental leaders estimate that hundreds of millions of dollars could be devoted to ecological projects all the way down to South Florida.

They’re not just dreaming.

Last month, Congress passed a bill that will steer 80 percent of any fine money to Florida and other Gulf Coast states. And while the Florida Legislature passed a law last year that says 75 percent of the state’s share must be devoted to the oil-damaged counties along its northwest coast, the rest can be spent on ecological restoration elsewhere.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told the South Florida Ecosystem Restoration Task Force last month that the BP money would provide significant funding for conservation and that he considers the Everglades “a great example for the work that we do for conservation and for jobs.”

Salazar’s encouraging words and the tantalizing prospect of a giant pot of restoration money prompted environmentalists to start drawing up proposals designed to buffer the coast from future oil spills and to clean and store water that now rushes out to sea. These proposals will focus on Florida’s west coast but affect the entire Everglades watershed and potentially free up other federal and state money for projects in South and Central Florida.

The pie is potentially so huge that even a small slice would make a major impact on the re-plumbing work in the ‘Glades.

“This is really the largest source of funding for ecological restoration in the history of the world,” said David White of St. Petersburg, director of the Gulf restoration campaign for the National Wildlife Federation. “This is a big deal for the ecology for the Gulf of Mexico and by extension the Everglades system, which is part of that ecology.”

BP and its contractors are trying to settle a federal court case in New Orleans accusing them of violating the Oil Pollution Act – which is guided by standards set by the Clean Water Act – when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in April 2010 and spewed nearly 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf.

Fines under the law would amount to $1,300 per barrel if the companies are guilty of simple negligence — or $4,300 per barrel if they are guilty of gross negligence.

Environmentalists say a national commission co-chaired by former Florida U.S. Sen. and Gov. Bob Graham that investigated the disaster essentially established gross negligence, prompting them to think the total fines will reach as high as $21 billion.

A sweeping transportation bill passed by Congress on June 29 included legislation known as The Restore Act, which says 80 percent of BP’s eventual fine payments must go to the five Gulf states – Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas – most affected by the spill.

The Restore Act also established a formula for distributing the money:

Pot One: 35 percent – as much as $7.35 billion — to be divided equally among the Gulf states, or 7 percent (nearly $1.5 billion) for each. The 2011 Florida law says 75 percent of the state’s share of this pot — $1.1 billion — must go to eight hard-hit Gulf counties, and 25 percent can go to the rest. The still works out to $367 million.

Pot Two: 30 percent – up to $6.3 billion — to be distributed by a federal-state ecosystem restoration council comprised of six federal members and five state members.

Pot Three: 30 percent to pay for state proposals for environmental restoration and economic recovery work. These plans must be approved by the federal-state council.

Pot Four: 5 percent — just over $1 billion — to ecosystem monitoring and fisheries work administered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and scientific Centers of Excellence in each Gulf state.

Money for South or Central Florida projects potentially could come from any of these pots. The council is expected to give priority to plans that promise lasting protection for the Gulf and the coastline against future spills.

These could be new proposals, but “shovel-ready projects” already designed and studied for their environmental impact – including much of the work surrounding the Everglades – could have an advantage.

Audubon of Florida, which pushed hard for passage of the Restore Act, is considering making proposals that would clean polluted water now channeled into the Gulf and store and release it when needed to nurture the Everglades.

“That would put one less stress on Lake Okeechobee, which helps everybody in South Florida,” said Julie Hill-Gabriel, director of Everglades policy at Audubon of Florida.

Southeast Florida is tied to the Gulf by the Loop Current, which brings water – and potentially an oil slick — around the Florida Keys and up to the shores of Broward and Palm Beach counties. The Everglades watershed is also interrelated, so that work along the west coast indirectly affects water projects closer to the east coast.

Using oil money in the western Everglades might allow more federal and state restoration funding to be devoted to the central and eastern Everglades.

The money could eclipse any one year’s federal appropriation for Everglades restoration, usually less than $200 million. The oil money would come at no expense to taxpayers, and it would not need to be matched by the state.

“This thing has statewide impact,” said Jay Liles, policy consultant for the Florida Wildlife Federation in Tallahassee. “It mostly affects the west coast, but nobody needs to exclude any of these ideas. It just has to have a nexus to the Gulf.”

Wgibson@Tribune.com or 202-824-8256

Special thanks to Richard Charter