Category Archives: Uncategorized

fossil fuels, gulf of mexico clean-up, Gulf restoration, marine pollution, offshore oil, oil pollution, Uncategorized

NOLA.com: Consultant’s report says unsafe welding led to fatal accident in Black Elk Energy platform

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http://www.nola.com/traffic/index.ssf/2013/08/consultantprivate_report_says.html#incart_river_default

blackelkrig
Black Elk platform fire
Three workers died after a November 2012 explosion in this oil platform owned by Houston-based Black Elk Energy. A report commissioned by the firm said unsafe welding led to the accident. (Photo by Michael DeMocker, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)

Manuel Torres, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune.By Manuel Torres, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune.
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on August 21, 2013 at 1:33 PM, updated August 21, 2013 at 7:30 PM

A consultant’s report for a Texas-based company says a deadly 2012 explosionon its Gulf of Mexico oil platform off the Louisiana coast happened when workers for a subcontractor used unsafe welding practices.

The report was released Wednesday, the same day two injured workers and their spouses filed a $180 million federal lawsuit in connection with the accident.

ABSG Consulting did the study and report for Black Elk Energy Offshore Operations, which released the report and also made it available on its website. Three Filipino workers died in the Nov. 16 accident, which occurred at a time when production was shut down and a construction project was underway on the platform, according to the report.

ABSG says Grand Isle Shipyard Inc. was under contract for construction work when the blast happened. ABSG says Grand Isle had committed not to use subcontractors on Black Elk projects. However, the report says, workers doing the welding were employees of a subcontractor: DNR Offshore and Crewing Services.

A series of explosions occurred when workers were welding a pipe leading to a tank, known as a “wet oil tank,” according to the report.

“The WOT contained hydrocarbons, and the piping leading to it had not been isolated and made safe for welding,” the ABSG report said.

The report said Grand Isle and another contractor overseeing work on the platform, identified as Wood Group PSN, did not properly carry out welding processes, sometimes referred to as “hot work.” It said Grand Isle and DNR failed to stop work when “unexpected conditions” — including the smell of gas — arose.

Grand Isle’s use of a subcontractor was a factor in the accident because it prevented Black Elk from “effectively auditing the employers of all personnel on their facilities,” the report said.

The consultant also recommended that Black Elk provide additional oversight for construction activities on platforms and discourage the use of “hot work” on platforms.

Black Elk, Wood Group and others are named as defendants in a lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in New Orleans by two workers injured in the accident, Antonio Tamayo and Wilberto Ilagan, and their spouses.

Alleging physical and mental injuries, numerous medical expenses and loss of future wages, among other things, the four ask for $20 million each in actual damages, plus a total of $100 million in punitive damages “if any of the defendants are found to have been grossly or intentionally negligent.”

Black Elk did not return a call Wednesday seeking comment on the lawsuit. Grand Isle officials did not immediately return a call for comment. A Louisiana attorney who has done work for DNR did not return a call for comment.

Wood Group responded to a telephoned request for comment with an emailed statement. “We are committed to preventing injuries to our people and everyone we work with. We will continue to review our procedures regularly and to provide our people with the training, knowledge and tools they need to work safely and prevent future accidents,” the statement said.

The federal agency that oversees offshore oil and gas safety, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, is still investigating the accident, a spokeswoman, Eileen Angelico, said in response to an email query. The bureau received the consultant’s report and was reviewing it, Angelico said.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

fossil fuels, fracking, tar sands, Uncategorized

TexasSharon.com: Kids in fracking sacrifice zones depict trauma in crayon drawings.

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Kids in fracking sacrifice zones depict trauma in crayon drawings.

by TXSHARON on AUGUST 6, 2013
in NDA, RANGE RESOURCES

“Drawing is a natural mode of communication that children rarely resist and that offers a way to express feelings and thoughts in a manner that is less threatening than strictly verbal means. For the child who has experienced trauma or loss, it helps to externalize emotions and events too painful to speak out loud and is one of the only means of conveying the complexities of painful experiences, repressed memories, or unspoken fears, anxieties, or guilt.” Using Drawing as Intervention with Traumatized Children.

Aly Hallowich expressed her trauma in a drawing done before she was gagged by Range Resources.

children's image

I’m guessing this drawing was made when Aly was 5 or 6 because according to the court transcript, she was 7 when she was gagged.

MRS. HALLOWICH: We have agreed to this because we needed to get the children out of there for their health and safety. My concern is they’re minors. I’m not quite sure I fully understand. We know we’re signing for silence forever, buthow is this taking away our children’s rights being minors now? I mean, my daughter is turning 7 today, my son is 10. How – I guess that concerns me that we need to keep them safe, but –

The tallest object looks like a flare. You can see the green tanks that depict gas wells, the drilling rig and the impoundment pond with black in it. The sun and sky are sad. Aly’s drawing was previously posted HERE.

Reilly's google

Reilly Ruggiero created this fantastic Google Doodle. Check out the “L.” Half of Reilly’s world looks pretty wonderful but the other half is filled with diesel, drilling waste and scorched earth. I think Reilly was about 9 when she drew this. I posted it on my blog HERE before her parents started replying, “That matter has been resolved,” when asked about their issues with Aruba Petroleum.

children's drawing

During her first “free time” of the second grade, Emma Parr drew a picture of what was happening around her home. She says, “This is the oil rig next to our house. It is messing up our air.” And she tells the workers to clean up their mess.
Fracking is tearing apart families, dividing communities and traumatizing our children.

Villari’s firm “never encouraged the family to agree to it,” he told Yahoo! Shine. “I pushed them quite hard on the issue, said it was unusual, and that we did not believe it was constitutional.” But he said he understood the family’s decision, as the settlement was a “take it or leave it” offer, with the gag order attached. “They had to make a difficult decision at that point in time,” he explained, adding that the Hallowiches were under financial strain and needed the settlement money in order to move. “They made what they felt was the best decision for their family.”

Special thanks to Richard Charter.

Uncategorized

Discovery: Not Strong Enough: Oil Spill Disaster Preventers

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http://news.discovery.com/earth/oceans/oil-and-gas-disasters-continue-after-deepwater-horizon-130726.htm

JUL 26, 2013 08:45 AM ET // BY GAYATHRI VAIDYANATHAN

Flames engulfing a drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico decreased to a small fire yesterday, as officials worked around the clock to bring the well under control. The rig, called Hercules, is stationed 55 miles off the coast of Louisiana.

Crews were completing the well when they first lost control on Tuesday morning and natural gas started leaking out. The company, Walter Oil and Gas Corp., immediately evacuated all 44 workers on the rig. The methane ignited later that night.

World’s Most Dangerous Oceans Identified: Analysis

The incident is reminiscent of the Deepwater Horizon rig fire on on April 20, 2010, which exploded while drilling a well in the Gulf. Eleven men died in the explosion. The resulting oil spill, which continued for 87 days and spilled about 5 million barrels of crude, was the largest in the history of the United States.

There is a piece of equipment implicated in both the Hercules and Deepwater Horizon accidents: the blowout preventer or BOP. These are massive steel devices 25 feet tall, weighing a 100 tons that use sheer force to choke off a well.

The device is the last line of defense when workers lose control of an oil or gas well and fuel is spewing into the air. At that point, the BOP can be activated to seal off the well. It is critical equipment for all wells being drilled, and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) requires that companies maintain it very carefully.

When it is not maintained, loss of well control can lead to a blowout or an explosion.

Devastating Oil Spill Disasters: Photos

Companies lost control of their wells three times in the Gulf in 2011, four times in 2012, and five times this year, according to BSEE data. The BOPs were brought into action in some of the cases.

BSEE is in the process of updating its requirements for BOPs, and industry has been testing a number of new spill caps in recent years.

The increased attention to safety around the world following Deepwater Horizon has made the industry technically safer. But it still has not stopped offshore accidents, which are often caused by human error.

Oil Rig Runs Aground off Alaska Island: Analysis

Here’s a list of some of the latest:
July 23, 2013: Hercules rig blew out off Louisiana and 44 workers were evacuated. BSEE and Walter Oil and Gas Corp. are still bringing it under control.

July 12, 2013: a gas well located off Louisiana owned by Talos Energy LLC, began leaking. The spill was contained with minimal damage, but no one’s life was in danger.

Nov 16, 2012: a Black Elk Energy platform located off Louisiana exploded and caught on fire as workers were welding a pipe. Three men died.

March 26, 2012: the Elgin platform owned by Total SA in the North Sea off Scotland leaked natural gas for 52 days before it was brought under control.

Jan 16, 2012: A Chevron rig blew out off the coast of Nigeria, killing two men. The resulting fire burned for 46 days and the spill was the largest in the nation’s history.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

fossil fuels, fracking, Keystone XL, tar sands, Uncategorized

Lac-Mégantic, Que. The Canadian Press: Massive explosions strike Quebec town after train carrying oil derails

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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/massive-explosions-strike-quebec-town-after-train-carrying-oil-derails/article13050578/

Click on link for video clips. DV

Published Saturday, Jul. 06 2013, 8:31 AM EDT
Last updated Saturday, Jul. 06 2013, 12:06 PM EDT

A large swath of a Quebec town was demolished on Saturday after a train derailment sparked several explosions and a blaze that sent spectacular flames shooting metres into the sky. Up to 1,000 people were forced from their homes in Lac-Mégantic, about 250 kilometres east of Montreal. Some people were reported missing, although Quebec provincial police Lieutenant Michel Brunet said it was too early to say if there were casualties.

Flames and billowing smoke could be seen several hours after the derailment, which involved a 73-car train carrying crude oil. Authorities set up perimeters as firefighters battled to douse the persistent blaze which was still going despite a steady drizzle.

Worried residents looked on behind the perimeters amid fears some of their friends and loved ones may have died in bars and in their homes after the early-morning derailment. “We’re told some people are missing but they may just be out of town or on vacation,” Brunet told a news conference. “We’re checking all that, so I can’t tell you at the moment whether there are any victims or people who are injured.”

A Facebook group was quickly set up to help people track down loved ones who couldn’t be reached by phone. A woman offering to locate people at an emergency centre set up at the local high school received hundreds of requests for help.
The mayor of Lac-Mégantic, Colette Roy-Laroche, spoke with a shaky voice as she described the devastation.

“As mayor, when you see the majority of your downtown destroyed like that, you’ll understand we’re asking how we’re going to survive it,” Ms. Roy-Laroche told reporters at the scene. Fire officials said around 30 buildings in the town centre were destroyed, some by the initial blast and others by the subsequent fire. Lac-Mégantic resident Claude Bedard described the scene as “dreadful.”

“It’s terrible,” Bedard said. “We’ve never seen anything like it. The Metro store, Dollarama, everything that was there is gone.”
Some of the train’s 73 cars exploded and the fire could be seen for several kilometres spread to a number of homes. “The flames in the sky were really impressive,” said resident Pierre Lebeau.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper expressed his concern on Twitter. “Thoughts & prayers are with those impacted in Lac Megantic,” he tweeted. “Horrible news.”

A large but undetermined amount of fuel also reportedly spilled into the Chaudiere River. Lac-Mégantic is part of Quebec’s picturesque Eastern Townships region, close to the border with Maine and Vermont. Several neighbouring municipalities, including Sherbrooke and Saint-Georges-de-Beauce, were enlisted to help Lac-Mégantic deal with the disaster.

Emergency services south of the border were also lending a hand. A fleet of fire trucks were deployed from northern Maine, according to a spokesman at the sheriff’s office in Franklin County.

The train belongs to Montreal Maine & Atlantic, which says on its website that it owns more than 800 kilometres of track serving Maine, Vermont, Quebec and New Brunswick.

The train was reportedly heading toward Maine. The cause of the derailment was not immediately known. Environment Quebec spokesman Christian Blanchette said the 73 cars were filled with crude oil and that four were damaged by fire and the explosions.

“Right now, there is big smoke in the air, so we have a mobile laboratory here to monitor the quality of the air,” Blanchette said in an interview. “We also have a spill on the lake and the river that is concerning us. We have advised the local municipalities downstream to be careful if they take their water from the Chaudiere River.”

With reports from Reuters and Les Perreaux, The Globe and Mail

Special thanks to Richard Charter

Uncategorized

PEER (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility): FATAL GULF RIG EXPLOSION STILL UNRESOLVED MONTHS LATER– Black Elk Blast Killed Three; Agency “Cannot Estimate” Investigation Completion

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http://www.peer.org/news/news-releases/2013/07/02/fatal-gulf-rig-explosion-still-unresolved-months-later/

For Immediate Release: Jul 02, 2013
Contact: Kirsten Stade (202) 265-7337

Posted on Jul 02, 2013

Washington, DC – A fire sparking an explosion on an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico last November is still under investigation, according to documents posted today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The federal safety agency states that it has no fixed timeline for completing its inquiry pinpointing the accident’s cause yet has ordered the company to improve its safety performance.

On November, 16, 2012, a fire broke out on a shallow-water oil platform operated by Black Elk Energy. That fire apparently triggered an explosion which killed three workers and injured 11, including four hospitalizations, from a 20-member crew. In a letter dated November 21, 2012, the federal offshore safety agency, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), sent Black Elk a strongly worded letter, placing the company on a “performance improvement plan” but applied no further penalty. Nor did the letter identify any specific safety practice the company needed to improve.

On November 19th, PEER submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for a number of documents, including the latest BSEE inspection report for the crippled rig, permit conditions, risk assessments and any after-explosion analyses. Over the succeeding months, BSEE produced very little information but, ultimately, in a letter dated June 20, 2013 declared that it had nothing more to give, stating:
“Since the Black Elk panel investigation is still ongoing, the documents you requested do not exist at the present time. Also, due to the amount of time it will take to complete the investigation, we cannot estimate when the documents will be available.”

“After more than seven months, the lead federal safety agency cannot say what happened or why or even when it might be able to offer a clue,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. “Prevention of future rig blasts is problematic when the cause of the Black Elk explosion has yet to be established.”

The explosion took place days after a BSEE inspection resulted in citations against Black Elk for 45 violations. Agency records show that safety violations by the company ballooned from 99 to 158 between 2011 and 2012. Despite the fatal fire and the cascade of citations BSEE issued even more permits to Black Elk for a third more drilling rigs in the Gulf, raising the number of the company’s operating rigs in the Gulf to 98 from 65 the year before.

“The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement was created in the wake of the 2010 BP Gulf disaster to, as its name implies, strengthen enforcement of safety and environmental safeguards,” Ruch added. “The Black Elk explosion experience suggests that BSSE has yet to live up to its name.”

Mounting frustration about the inability to get timely information on oil industry mishaps has renewed calls for the creation of a Gulf of Mexico Regional Citizens Advisory Council, modeled after a similar panel created in Alaska following the Exxon Valdez debacle.

Special thanks to Richard Charter