NewsHammer Exclusive The big showdown yesterday June 15 between Big Oil's Top 5 and Chairman Ed Markey's House Subcommittee had about as much impact as a quart of oil spilled on the floor. Exciting at first, embarrassing and then slippery to talk about, but nobody bothered to clean it up. In the end there wasn't much anyone could do on the spot except blame BP and look forward to nuclear energy, what? Just 2-word bombshells going off now and then carelessly dropped into every Green energy future, oddly by the same people who were going mission critical on dirty dangerous BP oil destroying our way of life.

Riveting at first with BP America's Chairman looking stone-cold sober and ready to be lead to the gallows for about the first hour of opening remarks. Markey as Chairman sliced and diced first, kicking some BP walruses clean out of the Gulf as well as walruses found in 3 other Spill Response Plans just like BP's, all 4 with the same 500 page format and 90% identical even Shell's, all 5 with about the same cover art, but at least Shell with some background in fossils and maybe fossil fuels knew that there haven't been walruses in the Gulf for 3 million years, as Markey lectured the other Chairmen of Big Oil.



The other tipping points scored could have been boiled down to 5 minutes from the 5 hour hearing and have been of course even down to less than 2 minutes by AP video (alternate link) and by other media where just about everybody looks good. Not in the video above, some other essential answers wrung out later from 4 of the 5 Chairmen with Yes or No like admissions that they wouldn't have been ready either for a BP Size Spill. BUT they all said they wouldn't have had a BP Spill anyway if they had been drilling and filling BP's Well according to their own Better Industry Practices. Even so they didn't want to say that much, and Markey had to hit them again with Yes or No to get some answers. Even on the 14-page letter from Subcommittee members Waxman and Stupak to BP CEO Tony Hayward that rips out the bleeding heart of BP incompetence before the Deepwater Horizon "nightmare well" explosion and fire, the Big 5 were going to demure. Yes or No? Well, only if the facts were true, so Yes like 5 bad boys down the line.

For the first major confrontation between Capitol Hill and the Big 5, covering the BP backend disaster, the current BP hopeless mess and America's safe and maybe Green energy future and maybe without BP, only BP's Lamar McKay looked like he passed the audition for the Movie. Better at emotional depth as the scared shitless corporate martyr, saying nothing while waiting for a miserable end that might go on forever. One after another 30 committee members sharpened their opening remarks on his stony face and frozen dead body. An amazing study, but cut from the news videos.

It could have worn him down, but surprisingly he got used to it and thawed with only a few other House Members up to Markey's sharp facts and pointed go for the jugular style. Once the give and take of Q for A started an hour later you had to love the game change flip from Exxon Mobil. With that effortless industry leadership you might expect, the whole deal was cookie-cuttered into a Forbes Magazine spread. Exxon Mobil out in front, McKay had some cover and soon he was able to step out of his catatonic disaster suit into just another one of the guys from Big 5 eyeballing shareholders from another planet, the gentlemen and gentleladies from a House Subcommittee on Planet Washington.

It wasn't long before McKay got his clichés in a row. Still waiting for the investigations [elsewhere of course] and the final reports [years away]; and it hasn't been decided yet, escrow funds [BBBejesus]; BP will pay for the spill cleanup [good] and will mitigate its effects [not so good] and ducking and sliding by the storm of leading questions.

But McKay had one ace up his sleeve. Though it fell on the floor instead of on the table. Unified Command was responsible for Spill cleanup, so Unified Command was the shield for BP's slow and ineffective post-spill actions. Everybody's working together, BP hasn't held anything back. McKay didn't hammer it home, but he could have. There was still a backup ace, that could have piqued MMS and drawn blood from the Government that so far has approved everything BP wanted. It must have been a tough call with the long knives out. But it seems McKay remembered it was a hearing after all, a public relations exercise, and not a fight to the death in a dangerous fire and brimstone court of law. Why push his luck when the other Big 4 were circling the wagons around him? If they'd been out to burn British Petroleum in the interests of Industry Safety or business as usual, as rumor had it, well then nothing could have saved BP. They weren't, so relax. Oil was still in bed with Gas.

To be fair it is a good take on what happened and the shared responsibility for the Spill and cleanup that McKay left instead for the armies of lawyers to come and courts to settle maybe 20 years later. McKay's unspoken inference that everybody's to blame for all the failures and setbacks through Unified Command, notably the US Government including President Obama who took charge of operations through the USCG and his National Incident Commander Admiral Thad Allen way back as of May 1, and the dozen other agencies involved, was lost in the shuffle and spark of brittle questions and watered down answers.

Lowballing Estimates, Who's On First?

McKay did underline NOAA's 5,000 barrels per day estimate, as though BP did not lowball the estimates. Markey shot back but McKay noted that BP's, if in-house and confidential, original estimate was 1,000 per day up to 14,000, everybody in Government knew that.

Nobody told us though or Congress either until Markey went fishing.

Though everybody knows BP did say 1,000 barrels a day in public and then disputed NOAA's 5,000 estimate. Then BP tolerated NOAA's estimate while not bothering to analyze its own data, and not releasing video of the leaks until Markey jumped all over BP. Not wanting live feeds either of Top Kill until kicked by Capitol Hill. And still doing nothing on its own. Finally the Government got some hi-res video from BP for analysis of flow after Cut and Cap started, and still nothing more from BP until the Government recently figured out they needed some actual sensors in the Cap to monitor flow that BP was ordered to install finally. Now the Government's Flow Assessment Team is saying up to 60,000 barrels a day. But the same team had earlier also reported numbers that were oddly taken to be the full range of the leak at least in the media, that was in fact its low range of 12-25,000, with no upper range then possible according to Dr Ira Leifer in NewsHammer, "BP's Big Fix".

So who has been lowballing the numbers? Why everybody. But why? Easy for BP as huge and deadly eventual fines would be based per gallon of oil spilled. Why everyone else? Confusion, incompetence, stupidity or maybe just bureaucracy and its many insulting brain-numbing states? It has to be on form 1006.

Markey hit BP hard anyway on BP lowballing its numbers which had the disastrous effect of a minimal spill response. Everybody should have been prepared for a much bigger spill and they weren't because of BP. And BP wasn't either. Since it was their Spill and they were responsible they should have acted right away to contain a big spill underway with their 500 page plan. That was useless anyway, but anyway it was their Spill.

McKay on auto-pilot carelessly repeated BP's misleading smoking-gun soundbite hammered into the media, that the numbers had nothing to do with stopping the Spill as BP was always considering the kill of the Deepwater well as a worst case scenario. And anyway the Government had BP's data and BP's estimate. Which brings us to:


The Obama BP Inaction Plan

Is that why Obama has been playing Mr Nice President Guy? First saying it was BP's Spill and BP would clean it up. Then taking over after finding out he had to under law and BP was dragging its heels? Then still playing partners with BP on it until the media screamed and the people too that he wasn't taking the disaster seriously enough, wasn't even angry when everybody else was. So he got angry for awhile, for Larry King Live, and that wore off too by the time he figured he had to do something from the Oval Office. A talk with the American people. No, it wasn't exactly Obama in action, it was Obama politics.

These guys at BP who he even avoided talking to, if they weren't going to act decisively had to be given enough time to do it or enough rope to hang themselves. As much as possible he had to get some action from BP, not through confrontation and the courts, but playing along. Playing along because the ass he wanted to kick was technically out of reach, his own ass especially. The Buck Stops With Me came out so late because well he and the US government were co-responsible with BP since May 1st when he formally took over through Admiral Allen to run the Unified Command show. So BP messed up but Obama managed to get BP to pay for the cleanup, disregarding the $75 Million corrorate lifesaver cap law, that limited BP's liability in the Spill. Managed to get BP to start paying some claims from those suffering in financial hell.

The other and only straight option was go in guns blazing and sink BP's Corporate Ship. Charge them, lock'em up for the Deepwater Spill in light of their reckless record and hundreds of safety violations. Put BP in receivership where it belongs. Send in the Army and clean up the horrendous mess. That would have been the Change We Need, but as a political cat with 9 lives behind a podium, Obama didn't want to risk his Presidency on a gamble with American Oil or these 5 guys who might cut and run further Offshore to any of the many regulation-free Tax Havens abroad or to Dubai like Haliburton did, or try to anyway. So reform the whole rotten industry that's destroying the planet? Extreme, well not if you read up on it.

Even during the Oval Office Address that night, when everybody thought there would finally be some action from the White House, it was more the winter fireside chat, fire out, without the Christmas Tree.

June 16 Update: Obama Inaction Plan Wins Big: $20 Billion From BP

If Obama is smart as a politico, is he smart enough to lead the nation? Or did he outsmart America's gut instincts and instead doom the Gulf to save some BP Corporate Paper and billions of lousy bucks? Stop and contain the Spill or get the money? Two long months later too late for anything else, there's only one smart choice left, play along and get the money.

Shaking down the BP Empire, the BP Corporate heads marshalled at the White House today to play ball, Obama scored an escrow account as promised at a tidy $20 Billion yet for those hurt by the BP Spill. To be run independently from BP and from the Government, the new setup is another chance for Gulf residents denied their money or nickel and dimed by BP. Plus another $100 Million for lost wages for rig crews idled by Obama's expanded 6 month moratorium on deep sea drilling until it's safe. Though BP gets a beak. Not $20 Billion now, but the damage fund topped up from time to time from BP's deep pockets, hopefully deep enough.

The new claims procedure is better and doesn't limit anyone or any State's rights to sue BP and the $20 Billion doesn't cap the damages either for BP. It's a win-win for everybody except BP and its shareholders who won't see a dime in dividends for at least a year.

Hopefully it will be easier to get claims processed and paid than understanding the White House video (CNN alternate link).



The White House Tries To Explain How To Get Money

Obama's other promise last night to capture Up To 90% of the Spill with built-in loads of room for error, is still weeks away. At least some sort of murky future is coming into focus. It could take years to bring back the Gulf and the Gulf way of life, but Obama also said he's getting a long-term Gulf Coast Restoration Plan in motion that he's asked Ray Mabus, the Secretary of the Navy, to develop. And on top of that big plans for a new Greener energy economy.

Wow. Good enough for starters. Better than we hoped from yesterday's homily, as long as BP keeps paying the bills. But how long do we have? Dr Leifer who's in charge of the Government's flow assessment said that if the Deepwater well can't be capped, it could spew oil for another 20 or 30 years.

Getting it right when it's too late?

--Alan Gillis

NewsHammer Exclusive If anything is clear 51 days into the BP Spill, the battle for the Gulf is turning into a war on the Gulf States, with surprise, even more oil releasing from BP's latest fix.

BP's cloudy crystal ball forecast of 60% to 70% success for the Top Kill, turned out to be a perfect 0% along with its first big idea, cofferdam containment that took 2 weeks to build and a day to fail while the slick spread from manageable to catastrophic. Now the new Top Cap from Cut And Cap that was supposed to capture most of the oil from the leaking BOP a mile under the Gulf, may have increased the escape of oil.

If BP says the new Cap or LMRP is working and latest numbers show 15,000 barrels of crude are being recovered daily by the Cap and riser assembly to a surface ship, a huge gain over the earlier 2,000 barrels a day recovery, spill cams don't show the expected improvement. A UC Santa Barbara researcher, Dr Ira Leifer, part of the government's new response team to estimate flow, thinks the release is much worse than before. Dr Leifer told The New York Times yesterday:

“The well pipe clearly is fluxing way more than it did before. By way more, I don’t mean 20 percent, I mean multiple factors.”

BP had said it expected only a 20% increase in flux or flow when the old damaged riser was cut off from the BOP to install the Cap. But now it seems the mile-long tangle of bent riser pipe that fell down to the sea floor from the destroyed Deepwater Horizon rig but still attached to the Blow Out Preventer, was producing much more back pressure that substantially limited the flow of oil into the Gulf. Now the Cap has to take way more pressure and oil.

The problem is the Cap to ship recovery is already working at about maximum 15,000 barrels a day capacity and still more oil seems to be escaping. Within a week BP will employ yet another system to capture 5,000 more barrels a day. A ship connected to a sea floor manifold, lowered earlier to inject 30,000 barrels of mud and some Junk Shot for the failed Top Kill, will be used to recover more oil. BP could be containing a total of 20,000 barrels a day by next week. Admiral Thad Allen, the National Incident Commander, says new estimates bump total capacity even higher, to 28,000 by next week.

It might not be enough if Dr Leifer is right. The earlier government maximum spill estimate before Cut and Cap was 25,000 barrels per day. As discussed in NewsHammer, BP Top Kill And The Oily Bottom Line, the actual spill could have been 50,000 barrels a day. BP originally said the Deepwater spill was only about 1,000 barrels a day.

There's still no accurate assessment, but Dr Leifer's government team is working on it. Their latest high end figure is about 43,000 barrels a day. In any case the government has decided that a quicker turnaround and more capacity should be on site just in case. Due to arrive in a few days, an oil barge on the way from the North Sea is being brought in to transfer oil to the mainland. The big news for extra capacity is the deployment of a new oil/gas burner to be installed on a rig by mid-June. The EverGreen Burner is designed to vaporize the oil/gas for a smokeless burn and could process another 13,000 barrels a day. If everything goes right, by mid-June BP could capture about 41,000 barrels a day from the leaking Deepwater well. In part, that seems to depend on another better sealing replacement Cap now in the works to maximize oil and gas capture. Knowing BP I'd say that's tempting fate. BP should know by now that BP Science has been shown to have limits.

Even so, there are other major holes in the damaged BOP itself and they will continue to leak though at a reduced rate, even if all the flow from the 21 inch cut-off riser is captured by the new improved Cap.


The real solution is the Bottom Kill, when BP drills way down into the well itself and plugs it permanently with mud and cement, hopefully in August. That won't be easy. Not even with a backup relief well also being drilled now.

The Top Kill failed because the pressure from the well was so great the heavy drill mud wouldn't stay down. When pumping stopped, the 30,000 barrels of mud shot up and out of the well into the Gulf. Pumping in still more mud was considered, then abandoned by BP. It could have ruptured the well pipe and casing, which was not a standard BP design according to BP's drilling engineer, Mark Hafle, during USCG/MMS Joint Hearings on the BP spill May 28.

Try more mud deeper down?

It's going to be a long hot sticky summer.

In an update June 9, Dr Ira Leifer interviewed by Democracy Now! (alternate video link and transcript) ballparks his estimate on total oil flow to over 100,000 barrels a day. He goes on to say that earlier government estimates of 12,000 to 25,000 barrels a day were only low-end in any case, and there was no upper-end as data was too poor for evaluation. Yet somehow or other those figures were misconstrued and reported by the media as the full range of the spill.

Like the other unsubstantiated 5,000 barrels a day that was reported for weeks, all we've been hearing since then are more wrong numbers.


With just about everything going wrong with the BP Spill, now including the numbers, you begin to wonder if there's a conspiracy theory to cover it? Why didn't BP or Admiral Thad Allen or President Obama or Robert Gibbs at the White House brief the Press that this was clearly the low end, 12-25,000 barrels a day? Is fudging the numbers the only way to minimize the spill? Or is this the best we can do? Win the PR war? Everything is being done, is it? Not exactly.

This is what Dr Leifer says about the level of science going on, again worse than you would expect, and what the real potential of the BP Spill could be:

"During the event of a spill, typically, as we’re seeing now, the scientists are kept away. We have to stop the spill right away; we don’t have time to let the scientists come in and take a look. We scientists will come in after the fact, much later. There’s government support for a few years, and then it completely dries up. And little bits of research still continue, and new developments are made; however, these tend not to be implemented. . . .

"This reservoir is massive, and it could easily flow that kind of oil for the next twenty or thirty years, if it was left to go unattended. So the amount of oil that could end up in the environment if measures are not successful is at what I would call unimaginable. . . ."

See the US Government's Ongoing Response Timeline since the Deepwater Horizon Explosion and Fire, April 20, 2010.

More news and updates from Deepwater Horizon Unified Command.

--Alan Gillis

NewsHammer Exclusive 34 days and counting at the Deepwater Horizion Blowout. Just a stone's throw from the last major disaster to hit Louisiana, the FEMA/Bush relief effort before and after Hurricane Katrina rolled into New Orleans in 2005.

Apart from Obama's rhetoric which always sounds great, the biggest offshore oil spill since Mexico's IXTOC I, has blown away a big chunk of Obama's credibility, at least a million tons of media inspired paper since Yes We Can.

Obama Strikes Oil

Not only did the Obama Administration approve without any review, the BP permits for offshore drilling at the Deepwater site, a month before the BP accident Obama called for an end to the 20 year moratorium on offshore drilling in most US coastal waters. Or Blast foreign oil. Fire all torpedoes. Not the environmentally friendly Obama we expected, but the way out of left field way beyond more oil, the new let's go nuclear Obama. What? What happened? No nukes but go nuclear?

Time for a rethink. Here's half the answer, through the Wall Street backdoor to the dirty BP Meltdown in the Gulf of Mexico. Do we need the other half, a big bucks nuclear meltdown to stop being stupid about energy?

Back to square one: New offshore drilling on hold pending a 30 day review says Obama. Exciting turnaround, but a bit late for Deepwater spewing death in the Gulf. Then let's not get too serious in Washington when there's a slew of new permits to approve anyway, another 30 odd for more offshore drilling. Now granted according to The New York Times despite the new emergency moratorium. Not a real moratorium on drilling, just one for Public Relations purposes it seems. Frightening coming from the government, when as Obama said back at his Inauguration "Words mean something." Even old Deepwater-type do your own thing permits to be outlawed still handed out lately like candy thanks to the same loophole in permit regulations that covers exemptions like building outhouses from government scrutiny, that covered BP and Deepwater Horizon.

Shows you can't make policy when you don't know the industry in question. Whether it's Oil & Gas or nuclear. Same problem in Congress when lawyers and moneymen (the usual credentials for office) want to improve things or muddle into war. Worst of all, is the lame billions of dollars more of public money to be thrown at a nuclear renaissance because nuclear is the Green Option to energy independence and carbon capping. Wrong again, Mr President. Sorry. Stick to law on this one, like "certain unalienable Rights...Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."


BP or MMS in Deepwater

Though the old Obama surfaced for awhile and kicked some ass at Mineral Management Service which collects Oil & Gas royalties for DOI (the #2 US revenue source after the IRS) while awarding permits for exploration like it did for Deepwater. Obviously a federal department based on conflict of interest, money or safety, should be split. Obama ready to swing the ax, got a bonus when the Head of deep sea oil exploration, Chris Oynes, rolled out of his MMS office on May 18, a month after Deepwater Horizon blew up. Now a followup report on MMS shows just how cozy the relationship to Big Oil was, with freebies and other incentives for some staffers, some resigning, some fired, others up for criminal prosecution.

Hope some of the guys at BP's Head Office noticed that for a disaster of this size, fallguys are mandatory. So far there haven't been any pleas of Mea Culpa at BP. No they're all doing their best. Always have, goes without saying. It's all over the BP corporate website if nowhere else. No one at BP seems to be remotely responsible for what happened in the best of all possible PR worlds. An "incident" or PR jargon for accident we're investigating. We're on it. We'll clean up every drop of oil. There's that at least. BP is doing everything it can (34 days later).

What is BP Doing?

"22,000 personnel deployed"
Says the BP website. Yeah? Where? Whose personnel? BP's? Has everybody in BP London or BP Houston been schlepped over to the wetlands of Louisiana in Wellington boots? Doubt it. Maybe if you count the Coast Guard, NOAA, maybe 800 or so crew on 10 BP ships and platforms at Deepwater now, maybe a thousand BP engineers world-wide on cell phones, but there's still a big shortfall. Well, add thousands of BP made redundant Louisiana fishermen donating their time to lay boom and contain the spill. I guess you've still got to add the Louisiana State Legislature and Congress too, plus a few thousand concerned citizens wringing their hands in the neighborhood. Oh yeah, and just how many rapid response 12 man teams from BP in the Gulf? One fat guy?

"1,100 vessels on site"
Says the BP website. That explains it, not BP vessels, not 22,000 BP personnel, but BP takes the credit. Terrific PR!

If BP has bleached its record clean on its website, past and present, and in soundbites for the media, Obama has been in Make No Mistake mode, knocking BP for lack of transparency and action. It's BP's oil spill and BP will pay. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar who might be the cowboy in charge of this BP mess, has his boot on BP's neck he said. But so far government heavy breathing hasn't been effective either on the oil spill or on BP. But Obama is gearing up for more effective invective with a new bipartisan commission to investigate BP. Good luck. Last time the EPA investigated BP in 2006 for negligence on the Alaska North Slope BP pipeline spill, BP buried the investigation with 62 million pages of documents. Blink, it's no typo. And that was for a small BP spill of 250,000 gallons.


EPA and BP: Clash of the Titans

According to CNN the other day, the EPA is on BP's case again, this time ordering BP to stop using a toxic dispersant that's been airplane sprayed over the gigantic oil slick, and injected by ship into the undersea plume, about 715,000 gallons so far. BP has disputed the order saying that Corexit is better than what the EPA has approved, yet BP had already purchased an EPA recommended substitute, Sea Brat 4. Hundreds of thousands of gallons of this less toxic dispersant are idling on the mainland in the hot sun, waiting for who knows what as the oil slick moves into the wetlands of Louisiana where it has already fouled 65 miles of shoreline there.

The injection by BP of Corexit into the undersea plume of oil, also ordered stopped by EPA, is potentially the more serious problem long term. BP has always minimized the amount of the spill, relying on surface oil slick and sheen to estimate the flow, ignoring the outflow from the ruptured riser and the Blow Out Preventer. That BOP malfunctioned and failed to stop the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform from exploding when a giant bubble of gas ruptured it and caught fire. The BOP a mile down on the seafloor still capping the wellhead still doesn't work. Otherwise it would have been possible to simply shut off the well.

Besides BP and the BOP, MMS is also in the loop for blame. It granted BP's drilling permit without any impact or safety study on a very deep well in very deep water, a mile down to the seafloor and drilling another 4 miles down to the oil. That's five miles of rock and water pressure on the BP oil under the seafloor.


BP's Top Kill Next

Stopping the leak with mud, cement and junk shot, what BP wants to do as early as May 26, chances are will only plug the BOP. Is that enough to stop an extremely high pressure leak? Probably not. It might reduce the flow. Though BP will try to go down deeper below the BOP and plug the well itself. If the well can't be filled with mud and cement, then a partial BOP cap could blow out of the water. Tremendous oil pressures, 5 miles of rock and water on the oil bed, could pop a few tons of plugged up BOP clean out of its way. Then we could have a much bigger eruption of oil, totally out of control. Deepwater could spew for months and destroy the the entire US Gulf of Mexico coastline.

The IXTOC I spill of 1979 in the Gulf of Mexico ruptured for 9 months before it was finally plugged. And it was a much easier to control 2 mile well in 160 feet of water west of the Yucatan. It wound up fouling Texas beaches 600 miles away.


Underestimating The Deepwater Spill

Initially BP claimed the spill was 1,000 barrels a day. Outflow based on surface water conditions analyzed by NOAA was revised to 5,000 barrels a day. BP disputed NOAA's figures. But BP said it was also impossible to measure the undersea flow, and the actual flow was irrelevant. Now BP is siphoning off about 2,000 barrels a day from the leaking well to a surface ship--and yet that's only sucked up a modest amount of what is still leaking out furiously. How wrong can you get BP? Try 50,000 barrels a day.

Other estimates in the NYT based on analysis of video of the leaks have gone as high as 100,000 barrels a day of oil/gas mix leaking, though as the flow seems to be about half gas/ half oil according to BP, the oil volume has been adjusted down to about 50,000 barrels of pure oil escaping into the Gulf per day or maybe twice the oil spill of IXTOC I.

So why does the still enormous spill look smaller on the surface water than it should be if we do have 50,000 barrels a day leaking? Enter Corexit. As a dispersant it acts on oil to break it down into small droplets by binding to the oil molecules. But Corexit is itself toxic according to the EPA. The resulting droplets although more easily biodegradable than liquid oil, are even more toxic to marine life breathing it in like fish do. Using Corexit doesn't reduce the amount of oil pollution. It's still there. Diluted oil should be less likely to foul shorelines and birds though it still does as we've seen from Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal's presentations, fouling 65 miles of shoreline so far while BP and the Feds dither about what to do next. In an emergency you've got to have action as Katrina should have demonstrated. Instead according to Jindal there's a terrible shortfall in equipment needed while some resources available are tied up in approval procedures so committees can sit around calling for studies before they approve anything Jindal wants to do.

Dead Zones Underwater

If there's some surface benefit to dispersants, injected directly into the undersea plume of oil there are other effects. It's happily preventing more oil from reaching surface waters, but at the same time this oil is now trapped under the surface of the Gulf of Mexico where it may persist for a much longer time. Oil under water doesn't biodegrade easily, in the absence of sunlight, mechanical wave action and bacteria. Huge plumes of treated oil from Deepwater have been discovered underwater 20 miles away creating giant dead zones. They too could move into ocean currents while some of the oil may be settling on the seafloor contaminating shellfish.

This trapping of oil probably occurs even without dispersant applied, as the BOP leak is a mile underwater, the deepest oil spill yet. As oil/gas mixture rises in extremely cold water, the temperature is so cold and the pressure of water so high, that there is already a tendency for oil to congeal and in the case of gases like methane involved, for the methane and seawater to freeze forming methane ice or hydrates as they're calling them on the news. Hydrates formed in the containment cofferdam over the BOP in BP's first attempt to seal the leak and the cofferdam was abandoned.

The EPA did order BP to stop such injections of Corexit. But BP continues to use it underwater and on the surface spill. If the oil spill looks better that way, appearing to be a much smaller spill, all the spilled oil is still there underwater or on the surface except for some natural evaporation of volatiles like gasoline in the oil. By underestimating the flow and stubbornly refusing to measure the actual outflow from the leaks, by using a lot of dispersant, BP may be counting on not only better public relations fallout from a smaller looking spill, but less liability if it comes down to eventual court actions including possible criminal charges filed by the US government or by other claimants for damages. It's cover your ass time at BP and in Washington.


The BOP and BP's Safety Record

Fixing blame might never happen. Who did what? Besides BP, Transocean the owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig that was destroyed in the accident, Halliburton which did the cement work on the well and the maker of the failed BOP, Cameron International, are blaming each other. Yet it's clear from the recent House subcommittee investigation of the accident that there were many defects in the BOP, from poor modifications to it to improper maintenance. Its failure has to be the main cause of the explosion and fire that killed 11 workers, and for the continuing disastrous oil spill as well.

There's a lot of anger and grief too as the oil washes into wetlands and birds, potentially a greater tragedy in the wings if the oil isn't stopped soon. So far BP has been getting all the heat, partly because of warnings before the Deepwater Horizon fireball and their US corporate record on maintenance and safety, the worst by far in the entire industry.


BP makes more money than 90 Oprahs in a bad year. $19 Billion profit in 2005, $25.59 Billion in 2008 and $13.96 Billion in 2009. It has pursued an aggressive expansion of its business and has never been much impressed with government meddling in its affairs. Being big is good and drowning in money helps. Its PR machine and army of lawyers are up to any environmental challenge as BP has demonstrated twice over the last 5 years.

Besides the 2006 Alaskan North Slope BP pipeline spill due to maintenance issues, BP's Texas City refinery explosion and fire of 2005 killed 15 people and injured another 180. BP negotiated a settlement with the Bush Justice Department of $20 Million for the first accident, and $50 Million for the second. Chump change, considering the seriousness of the violations that the lead EPA investigator Scott West wanted to pursue for the BP Alaska spill. At that time the EPA was considering damages of $672 Million from BP plus possible felony charges against some BP executives just for the Alaska spill.

If that was then and this is now, here's what the BBC reported recently on Deepwater:

In BP's 2009 exploration plan for the well, the firm suggested an oil spill was unlikely or virtually impossible, AP news agency reports.

Breaking News

CNN reports that 51 minutes before the Deepwater Horizon explosion April 20, there were several warnings of trouble on the rig. Witnesses said there were 3 ruptures of fluid and pressure on the drill pipe "unexpectedly increased".

Read The New York Time's account of the Deepwater Horizon's last troubled hours, based on reports from the Congressional Committee investigating.

In the Los Angeles Times, Kent Wells a senior BP Vice President said that the Top Kill could start Wednesday May 26 or later this week.

See the CNN animation of the Top Kill for what to expect if it works.

Live BP video of the Top Kill attempt, in some doubt until Capitol Hill pressure was applied, will be available on the BP website and CNN Live.

--Alan Gillis