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Sea Turtles Being Burned Alive in BP Controlled Burns

According to Venice Boat Captain who was part of an effort to collect endangered sea turtles.

Efforts to Repel Oil Spill Are Described as Chaotic

Efforts to Repel Oil Spill Are Described as Chaotic

From the New York Times today:

BP’s growing cleanup operation, which includes more than 100 companies and has already cost $1.6 billion, has left an often dangerous vacuum of guidance and direction in one of the most fragile ecosystems on earth.

Cleanup workers on Queen Bess Island, La., have been spotted trampling pelican nesting grounds and tossing around pelican eggs.

Yellow caution tape has been strung up on beaches to keep the news media and civilians out, only to end up in the marsh, where it could harm birds and small mammals.

On the beach at Port Fourchon, Mr. Travirca said, cleanup workers left oil-soaked mops on the beach for days, where the tides buried them in the sand. The workers were finally told to pick up the mops and put them in garbage bags, which they did — but not before shaking the mops out and strewing the beach with oil again.

While officials and residents of southern Louisiana have criticized a response that has sometimes been absent, they have also often criticized the cleanup crews that do show up.

“BP could fire all their contractors because they’re doing absolutely nothing but destroying our marsh,” Mr. Nungesser told the Senate panel.

….

The BP plans do consider an uncontrolled blowout, one that releases 240,000 barrels a day into the gulf for at least 100 days — far worse than the current spill.

In the event of such an enormous spill, according to these plans, “no significant adverse impacts are expected” to beaches, wetlands or coast-dwelling birds.

Toby Odone, a BP spokesman, said in an e-mail message that the company’s oil spill response plan was “fully approved” by the Minerals Management Service.

More equipment needed at BP spill site

by the LA Times
June 11, 2010 | 12:06 pm
BP won’t have the capacity to capture most of the oil now thought to be flowing from the busted gulf oil well for several more weeks, Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said Friday.

A containment cap is now funneling a little more than 15,000 barrels a day of oil from the gulf floor to the processing ship Enterprise, less than half the amount that may be spurting from the blown-out well head.

Federal scientists Thursday released revised estimates of the well flow, saying between 20,000 and 40,000 barrels — 840,000 to 1.7 million gallons — could be leaking daily.

That far exceeds the capacity of the Enterprise, which can process and burn about 18,000 barrels a day.

The company is bringing in a platform vessel that by next week will add another 10,000 barrels of capacity. More ships will follow, but Allen said it won’t be until early July that BP will have enough equipment at the spill site to handle all the crude that may be gushing from the well.

BP announced earlier this week that it would donate its share of revenues from selling the captured oil to a new wildlife protection and restoration fund.

Two other companies, Andarko Petroleum Corp. and MOEX Offshore 2007, Inc. own a share in the lease for the area and could be entitled to 25% and 10%, respectively, of the revenue.

Rep. Nick J. Rahall II (D-W.Va.), chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, Thursday sent letters to the two companies requesting that they, “follow BP’s lead and donate [their] share of net revenues to help the people and environment of the Gulf.”

– Jennifer Martinez

Louisiana’s Lawmakers Just Can’t Pause for Regulations as the Coast Suffers

BP Oil Spill – Landrieu and Vitter Letter 6-10

BP’s Briefing

BP Spill

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BP Responsible for 97% of industry’s Flagrant Violations

Renegade Refiner: OSHA Says BP Has “Systemic Safety Problem”
97% of Worst Industry Violations Found at BP Refineries

By Jim Morris and M.B. Pell | May 16, 2010

BP is battling a massive oil well spill in the Gulf of Mexico after an April 20 platform blast that killed 11 workers. But the firm has been under intense OSHA scrutiny since its refinery in Texas City, Texas, exploded in March 2005, killing 15 workers. While continuing its probe in Texas City, OSHA launched a nationwide refinery inspection program in June 2007 in response to a series of fires, explosions and chemical releases throughout the industry.

Refinery inspection data obtained by the Center under the Freedom of Information Act for OSHA’s nationwide program and for the parallel Texas City inspection show that BP received a total of 862 citations between June 2007 and February 2010 for alleged violations at its refineries in Texas City and Toledo, Ohio.

Of those, 760 were classified as “egregious willful” and 69 were classified as “willful.” Thirty of the BP citations were deemed “serious” and three were unclassified. Virtually all of the citations were for alleged violations of OSHA’s process safety management standard, a sweeping rule governing everything from storage of flammable liquids to emergency shutdown systems. BP accounted for 829 of the 851 willful violations among all refiners cited by OSHA during the period analyzed by the Center.

Top OSHA officials told the Center in an interview that BP was cited for more egregious willful violations than other refiners because it failed to correct the types of problems that led to the 2005 Texas City accident even after OSHA pointed them out. In Toledo, problems were corrected in one part of the refinery but went unaddressed in another. Jordan Barab, deputy assistant secretary of labor for occupational safety and health, said it was clear that BP “didn’t go nearly far enough” to correct deficiencies after the 2005 blast.

“The only thing you can conclude is that BP has a serious, systemic safety problem in their company,” Barab said.

The head of OSHA, David Michaels, said the safety problems aren’t limited to BP. “We are very concerned about the commitment of the refining industry to worker health and safety,” he said.

BP officials did not respond to requests for comment about the OSHA data.

According to the company’s website, “BP’s commitment to safety begins at the most senior levels of our organization—with robust systems to implement, audit, report on and improve our performance.

“Creating a safe and healthy working environment is essential for our success. Since 1999, injury rates and spills have reduced by approximately 75 percent,” the BP website says.

BP, which calls itself the country’s largest oil and gas producer, operates five U.S. refineries that collectively process about 1.5 million barrels of crude oil per day. Last October, OSHA proposed a record $87 million fine against the Texas City refinery. The agency proposed a fine of $3 million against the Toledo refinery in March. BP is contesting both penalties.

Separately, BP’s Cherry Point refinery in Blaine, Wash., was cited by state regulators for 13 serious violations earlier this month. Penalties totaling $69,200 have been proposed. These citations are not included in data analyzed by the Center.

No other oil company inspected by OSHA since June 2007 was even close to BP in the number of citations issued. Sunoco Inc. was cited for 127 alleged violations, eight of which were willful. ConocoPhillips Co. was cited for 119, four of which were willful, and Citgo Petroleum Corp. for 101, two of which were willful.

OSHA defines a willful violation as one “committed with plain indifference to or intentional disregard for employee safety and health.” An egregious willful violation is considered so severe that it can result in a penalty each time a violation occurs, rather than a single penalty for all violations of a regulation. A serious violation is described as one creating a “substantial probability” of death or serious injury. OSHA can refer cases involving worker deaths and wanton disregard for safety rules to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution.

Under the nationwide program, OSHA has finished inspecting, or is in the process of inspecting, 55 refineries under federal OSHA jurisdiction, with 12 left to inspect. Another 23 U.S. refineries are exempted because they participate in a voluntary program for employers that have agreed to adopt safety rules stricter than what OSHA requires. Some inspections were performed by regulators in states such as Washington and California, which have their own worker safety programs. There are 55 refineries in these states.

In a letter to refinery managers last year, OSHA’s enforcement director, Richard Fairfax, wrote that in the previous 15 years, the refining industry had recorded “more fatal or catastrophic incidents related to the release of highly hazardous chemicals … than any other industry sector covered by the [process safety management] standard.” OSHA inspectors, Fairfax wrote, were finding “many of the same problems repeatedly.”

Lawsuit Seeks Full Disclosure of Dispersant Impacts on Gulf’s Endangered Wildlife

Lawsuit Seeks Full Disclosure of Dispersant Impacts on Gulf’s Endangered Wildlife.

Lawsuit Seeks Full Disclosure of Dispersant Impacts on Gulf’s Endangered Wildlife

SAN FRANCISCO— The Center for Biological Diversity today filed an official notice of its intent to sue the Environmental Protection Agency for authorizing the use of toxic dispersants without ensuring that these chemicals would not harm endangered species and their habitats. The letter requests that the agency, along with the U.S. Coast Guard, immediately study the effects of dispersants on species such as sea turtles, sperm whales, piping plovers, and corals and incorporate this knowledge into oil-spill response efforts.

“The Gulf of Mexico has become Frankenstein’s laboratory for BP’s enormous, uncontrolled experiment in flooding the ocean with toxic chemicals,” said Andrea Treece, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. “The fact that no one in the federal government ever required that these chemicals be proven safe for this sort of use before they were set loose on the environment is inexcusable.”

Dispersants are chemicals used to break oil spills into tiny droplets. In theory, this allows the oil to be eaten by microorganisms and become diluted faster than it would otherwise. However, the effects of using large quantities of dispersants and injecting them into very deep water, as BP has done in the Gulf of Mexico, have never been studied. Researchers suspect that underwater oil plumes, measuring as much as 20 miles long and extending dozens of miles from the leaking rig, are the result of dispersants keeping the oil below the surface.

On May 24, EPA Administrator Jackson expressed concern over the environmental unknowns of dispersants, which include the long-term effects on aquatic life. Nonetheless, the federal government has allowed BP to pump nearly 1 million gallons of dispersants into the Gulf of Mexico.

“Pouring dispersants into vital fish nursery grounds and endangered species habitat simply trades one evil for another. Had the government first examined dispersants before the disaster, we would not be left wondering what sort of havoc BP is wreaking on the ecosystem just so it can make the oil less visible,” added Treece. “We cannot and will not allow this to happen again.”

Studies have found that oil dispersed by Corexit 9527 damages the insulating properties of seabird feathers more than untreated oil, making the birds more susceptible to hypothermia and death. Studies have also found that dispersed oil is toxic to fish eggs, larvae, and adults, as well as to corals, and can harm sea turtles’ ability to breathe and digest food. Formulations of the dispersants being used by BP, Corexit 9500 and 9527, have been banned in the United Kingdom due to concerns over their impacts on the marine environment.

The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 260,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.