BP NOW BURNING THE OIL ON THE SURFACE
June 12th, 2010The article below states that BP, “Plans to burn hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil.”
They have already started burning the oil.
The latest Big Picture includes this image from the U.S. Coast Guard:
A controlled burn of oil from the Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill sends towers of fire hundreds of feet into the air over the Gulf of Mexico June 9. (U.S. Coast Guard Photo by Petty Officer First Class John Masson)
I found this photo on a KATU.com gallery. This woman has the right idea:
Sonja Daniel, who has a house on the Fort Morgan Peninsula, wears a mask Sunday, June 6, 2010 as she sunbathes on the beach of the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge in Baldwin County, Ala. (AP Photo/Mobile Press Register, Kate Mercer) 
Whether or not that mask will protect her from benzene and dioxins—and other toxic substances that result from burning crude oil—is a different matter. She gets a 10 for style points, though.
Via: Arizona Daily Star:
Plans to burn hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil from BP’s blown-out well are raising new questions about the health and safety of the thousands of workers on nearby rigs and vessels.
BP and the federal government are in new territory once again in dealing with the nation’s worst environmental disaster: There’s never been such a huge flaring of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, or possibly anywhere.
The incineration of such huge amounts of oil combined with the black clouds of smoke already wafting over the Gulf waters from controlled burns of surface oil create pollution hazards for the estimated 2,000 people working in the area.
Dozens of rigs and ships are clustered in the area around the spill site.
The Discoverer Enterprise, the main recovery ship, is recovering as much as 15,000 barrels of oil a day through a pipe from the wellhead. A second vessel, the Q4000, is being prepared to pull up more oil and burn it. Experts say it could be burning 10,000 barrels, or 420,000 gallons, a day.
Dr. Phil Harber, a UCLA professor, said the burning oil could expose workers to toxins that might cause severe respiratory irritation, asthma attacks and inflamed airways depending on how the burns are handled. Burning oil is a fairly common method of relieving pressure in refinery operations, he said.
“But the magnitude is a concern,” said Harber, who is also the chief of UCLA’s division of occupational and environmental medicine.
The other worry, he said, is if the wind carries off the thick clouds, “There are hundreds of ships in the area, and those workers could have significant exposures and perhaps less protection because the exposures would be unanticipated,” he said.
Harmful byproducts of burning the light crude flowing into the Gulf include fine particles; toxic gases such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide; polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which result from the incomplete burning of carbon-containing materials such as oil; and volatile organic compounds such as benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene.
…
Diane Bailey, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, questioned why the Coast Guard decided to allow the oil to be burned.
“It seems like a no-brainer that you wouldn’t want to do this,” she said. “Maybe there’s just such a logistical challenge in getting it onshore and getting it processed that they decided this is the cheapest, easiest thing to do. But the possible acute health problems should be of a greater concern.”
Daniel Ellsberg: WikiLeaks Founder’s Life Is In Danger
June 12th, 2010All states use their embassies and consulates to run intelligence operations. The U.S. Government is likely concerned that some of these activities, that are happening under official cover, could be compromised. Public exposure would represent a gigantic pain in the ass for the U.S. because of the Kabuki theater act that’s mandated to follow such revelations.
So, is Julian Assange’s life actually in danger? Very possibly, if the government believes that WikiLeaks will publish information related to active military or covert operations.
Now, would assassinating Assange accomplish anything, in terms of preventing WikiLeaks from publishing the information in question?
Almost certainly, no.
Assange isn’t a fool. The information would have been distributed through his network in a manner that would ensure that it would survive, even if he didn’t. Assange has been on the scene for a very long time and he doubtlessly has a long list people that he works with. The very real problem for the U.S. Government is that Assange himself doesn’t know who some of his associates are. (See: No Secrets: Julian Assange’s mission for total transparency.) In other words, torturing him wouldn’t work either. Some of his associates may be intelligence personnel that states have infiltrated into the WikiLeaks organization. But in other cases… Who knows?
Via: Fire Dog Lake:
Daniel Ellsberg, the former US military analyst who released the pentagon papers in 1971, appeared on MSNBC today with Dylan Ratigan. He said he fears for the safety of Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, who is reportedly on the verge of leaking secret State Department cables. The Daily Beast reports that Assange is currently being sought by the Pentagon, and Ellsberg advises him not to reveal his whereabouts.
“We have after all for the first time, that I ever perhaps in any democratic country, we have a president who has announced that he feels he has the right to use special operations operatives against anyone abroad, that he thinks is associated with terrorism,” says Ellsberg. “Now as I look at Assange’s case, they’re worried that he will reveal current threats. I would have to say puts his well-being, his physical life, in some danger now. And I say that with anguish. I think it’s astonishing that an American president should have put out that policy and he’s not getting these resistance from it, from Congress, the press, the courts or anything. It’s an amazing development that I think Assange would do well to keep his whereabouts unknown.”
FAA Imposes Flight Restrictions Over Oil Spill Area
June 12th, 2010In other words, no media related aircraft below 3000 feet.
Via: FAA:
All aircraft operations are prohibited except those flights authorized by ATC, routine flights supporting offshore oil operations; federal, state, local and military flight operations supporting oil spill recovery and reconstitution efforts; and air medical and law enforcement operations.
CNN on Media Blackout on Oil Spill
June 12th, 2010Very poor audio quality.
Via: CNN / YouTube:
Judge Limits DHS Laptop Border Searches
June 11th, 2010Via: Cnet:
A federal judge has ruled that border agents cannot seize a traveler’s laptop, keep it locked up for months, and examine it for contraband files without a warrant half a year later.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White in the Northern District of California rejected the Obama administration’s argument that no warrant was necessary to look through the electronic files of an American citizen who was returning home from a trip to South Korea.
“The court concludes that June search required a warrant,” White ruled on June 2, referring to a search of Andrew Hanson’s computer that took place a year ago. Hanson arrived San Francisco International Airport in January 2009.
The Justice Department invoked a novel argument–which White dubbed “unpersuasive”–claiming that while Hanson was able to enter the country, his laptop remained in a kind of legal limbo where the Bill of Rights did not apply. (The Fourth Amendment generally requires a warrant for searches.)
“Until merchandise has cleared customs, it may not enter the United States,” assistant U.S. attorney Owen Martikan argued. “The laptop never cleared customs and was maintained in government custody until it was searched…”
This is not exactly a new dispute: two years ago, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection announced that it reserves the right to seize for an indefinite period of time any laptops that are taken across the border.
Last year, the department reiterated that claim, saying laptops and electronic gadgetry can still be seized and held indefinitely. There’s no requirement that they be returned to their owners after even six months or a year has passed, though supervisory approval is required if they’re held for more than 15 days. The complete contents of a hard drive or memory card can be perused at length for evidence of lawbreaking of any kind, even if it’s underpaying taxes or not paying parking tickets.
Obama “Let the World’s Most Dangerous Oil Company Get Away with Murder”
June 11th, 2010Via: Rolling Stone:
On May 27th, more than a month into the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, Barack Obama strode to the podium in the East Room of the White House. For weeks, the administration had been insisting that BP alone was to blame for the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf – and the ongoing failure to stop the massive leak. “They have the technical expertise to plug the hole,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs had said only six days earlier. “It is their responsibility.” The president, Gibbs added, lacked the authority to play anything more than a supervisory role – a curious line of argument from an administration that has reserved the right to assassinate American citizens abroad and has nationalized much of the auto industry. “If BP is not accomplishing the task, can you just federalize it?” a reporter asked. “No,” Gibbs replied.
…
Most troubling of all, the government has allowed BP to continue deep-sea production at its Atlantis rig – one of the world’s largest oil platforms. Capable of drawing 200,000 barrels a day from the seafloor, Atlantis is located only 150 miles off the coast of Louisiana, in waters nearly 2,000 feet deeper than BP drilled at Deepwater Horizon. According to congressional documents, the platform lacks required engineering certification for as much as 90 percent of its subsea components – a flaw that internal BP documents reveal could lead to “catastrophic” errors. In a May 19th letter to Salazar, 26 congressmen called for the rig to be shut down immediately. “We are very concerned,” they wrote, “that the tragedy at Deepwater Horizon could foreshadow an accident at BP Atlantis.”
Tim Dickinson blogs about all the news that fits, from the Beltway and beyond on the National Affairs blog.
The administration’s response to the looming threat? According to an e-mail to a congressional aide from a staff member at MMS, the agency has had “zero contact” with Atlantis about its safety risks since the Deepwater rig went down.
Oil Spill May Cost $4.3 Billion in Property Values
June 11th, 2010Via: Bloomberg:
BP Plc’s oil spill may drive down the Gulf Coast’s shore-area property values by 10 percent for at least three years, according to CoStar Group Inc.
Losses may total $4.3 billion along the 600-mile (966- kilometer) stretch from the Louisiana bayous to Clearwater, Florida, the property-information service estimates.
“It’s just another blow to an already depressed real estate market,” Norm Miller, CoStar’s vice president of analytics, said yesterday in a telephone interview from San Diego. “The best thing you can do if you’re in real estate in this area is bide your time, don’t panic and don’t try to sell in this environment.”
Falling real-estate values are one consequence of the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history as oil keeps gushing from a BP well once pumped by the Deepwater Horizon rig. An April 20 explosion there killed 11 workers. Oil washing ashore will further harm property values in an area where Moody’s Economy.com estimates prices fell as much as 34 percent from the peak of the U.S. residential real estate market in 2006.
Musical Chairs with Peter Sutherland
June 11th, 2010Goldman Sachs Sold $250 Million of BP Stock Before Spill:
The brokerage firm that’s faced the most scrutiny from regulators in the past year over the shorting of mortgage related securities seems to have had good timing when it came to something else: the stock of British oil giant BP.
According to regulatory filings, RawStory.com has found that Goldman Sachs sold 4,680,822 shares of BP in the first quarter of 2010. Goldman’s sales were the largest of any firm during that time. Goldman would have pocketed slightly more than $266 million if their holdings were sold at the average price of BP’s stock during the quarter.
If Goldman had sold these shares today, their investment would have lost 36 percent its value, or $96 million. The share sales represented 44 percent of Goldman’s holdings — meaning that Goldman’s remaining holdings have still lost tens of millions in value.
The sale and its size itself isn’t unusual for a large asset management firm. Wall Street brokerages routinely buy and sell huge blocks of shares for themselves and their clients. In light of a recent SEC lawsuit arguing that Goldman kept information about a product they sold from their clients, however, the stock sale may raise fresh concern among Goldman’s critics. Goldman is also a frequent target of liberals and journalists, including Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, who famously dubbed the firm a “vampire squid.”
Via: Trilateral Commission:
Peter Sutherland is chairman of BP plc (1997 – current). He is also chairman of Goldman Sachs International (1995 – current). He was appointed chairman of the London School of Economics in 2008. He is currently UN special representative for migration and development. Before these appointments, he was the founding director-general of the World Trade Organisation.
“These Are Company Towns”
June 11th, 2010Via: ABC News:
Reporting is often about access, but journalists along the Gulf Coast covering the BP oil spill have had some trouble getting it.
As BP faces more pressure from the government and from its own shareholders unhappy with the company’s falling stock price, it seems to be clamping down on who can talk to reporters.
Despite company statements that anyone on cleanup crews can share their views, ABC’s Matt Gutman reports that’s not necessarily the case. Today during a “World News” Conversation, he saw firsthand how a BP manager took pains to keep workers away from the press.
While preparing for a video chat on his laptop from a public beach in Alabama, Gutman was hassled by the manager of a nearby crew, asking Gutman why he was on the beach.
“You mind if I ask why you’ve set up a camera right here while my guys are working?” the man asked. After Gutman explained that he was a reporter for ABC News, the manager responded, “I find it interesting.”
For Gutman and other journalists along the Gulf, it’s tough to report when so many are barred from talking.
“It’s incredibly frustrating working here because of those conditions,” Gutman told ABC’s Dan Harris. “Everywhere you go, you find police barricades, people telling you, you can’t do this, you can’t do that, or you can’t talk to these people. We’re not exactly sure why that is.”
Experts Double Estimate of BP Oil Spill Size
June 11th, 2010Experts also tell us what the unemployment numbers are. So, double or triple it again and maybe we’ll be in the ballpark.
Via: BBC:
As many as 40,000 barrels (1.7m gallons) of oil a day may have been gushing out from a blown-out Gulf of Mexico well, doubling many estimates.
The US Geological Survey says that flow rate could have been reached a capping device was put on the well on 3 June
BP’s chairman has been invited to meet President Barack Obama next week, as concerns grow over the effect of the spill on US-UK ties.
UK Prime Minister David Cameron is to speak with Mr Obama at the weekend.
Oil has been leaking into the Gulf since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on 20 April and sank off the coast of the US state of Louisiana, killing 11 workers.
BP said the device placed on the well collected 15,800 barrels of oil on Wednesday – slightly up on the 15,010 barrels collected in the previous 24-hour period.
