BP told feds it could handle oil spill 60 times larger than Deepwater Horizon

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

In its 2009 exploration plan for the Deepwater Horizon well, BP PLC states that the company could handle a spill involving as much as 12.6 million gallons of oil per day, a number 60 times higher than its current estimate of the ongoing Gulf disaster.

In associated documents filed with the U.S. Minerals Management Service, the company says that it would be able to skim 17.6 million gallons of oil a day from the Gulf in the event of a spill.

As of Tuesday, BP reported recovering 6 million gallons of oily water since the ongoing spill began four weeks ago. BP spokesman Tom Mueller said that only about 10 percent of the skimmed liquid was oil, which would amount to about 600,000 gallons of oil collected thus far.

Mueller also said via e-mail Tuesday that "the spill has stayed about the same size or even shrunk on the water as a result of our response efforts."

Skytruth.org, a website that monitors environmental problems using satellite imagery, reported Monday that the spill had grown to 10,170 square miles, based on NASA images. John Amos, head of Skytruth, told the Press-Register then that the spill had approximately doubled in size since Friday.

BP did not respond to questions about the NASA images.

BP's Deepwater Horizon Initial Exploration Plan suggests that the well's unchecked flow would be 6.8 million gallons a day.

An emergency would activate the company's Oil Spill Response Plan, a 582-page document submitted to federal regulators in 2008 and designed to cover all BP operations in the Gulf of Mexico.

According to the document, the response plan is triggered "in the event the spill cannot be controlled." It also calls for the company to "assemble a team of technical experts to respond to the situation."

The document provides no detailed discussions of how a runaway well would be stopped, nor does it reflect any plan for devices such as an insertion tube, which is now recovering an estimated 84,000 gallons of oil daily, or the failed containment dome.

The plan includes detailed descriptions of the merits and limitations of three primary mitigation methods used at the surface: dispersants, skimming, and burning.

The response plan is exhaustive when it comes to staging a mitigation effort. It provides lists of suppliers, contractors, and phone numbers for federal and state officials who should be notified in the event of a worst-case spill.

Extensive flowcharts describe who should be called, and when. Organizational charts provide titles and positions for dozens of people to be involved in managing the crisis.

The plan dictates staging areas for responders and their equipment. It gives phone numbers for local media, results of marine toxicology tests on various dispersants, and maps showing how long it will take to get supplies to various locations.

There is a list of equipment required to set up a Joint Information Center, including a podium, four to six telephones, an answering machine, photocopier, computer and printer, a wall clock, and various other office supplies.

In the document, BP states that the company "has the capability to respond, to the maximum extent practicable, to a worst-case discharge," which it defines as 300,000 barrels, or about 12.6 million gallons, of oil per day.

It goes on to detail dozens of skimming vessels available around the Gulf that could collectively recover 17.6 million gallons a day.

It says dispersants will be able to sink 6,080 to 7,600 barrels per day into the Gulf.

A safety data sheet about the principal dispersant that the company has reported using during the ongoing spill says "no toxicity studies have been conducted on this product," and labels "the potential human hazard: High."

The equipment section of the response plan's worst-case scenario chapter does not offer any source for fire boom. Burning, which requires such boom, is considered a primary response option for large spills in the Gulf, and its use was pre-approved by the government in 1994. The Press-Register has reported that in the days after the spill, federal officials had to purchase a boom from a company in Illinois to conduct the first test burn.

The BP plan contains two websites detailing locations where response supplies are stored on the Gulf Coast. One of the addresses directs the user to what appears to be a Japanese social networking site. Using the same address with the ".org" suffix rather than the listed ".com" leads to a spill response company.

http://blog.al.com/live/2010/05/bp_told_feds_it_could_handle_o.html

[one...two...tree 2,762]

...and add to this:

The Coast Guard commandant, Adm. Thad Allen, said that despite the siphoning, the spilled oil is spreading and now stretches from western Louisiana to Florida's Key West. The extent of the spill was straining even the substantial resources deployed for one of the worst ecological disasters in recent history, he said.

link

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Admiral Allen sounds like a durty God hatin' librul to me. BP is a corporation and everyone knows Jesus would have loved corporations. After all, he hung out with prostitutes himself, and what are corporations today if not the contemporary equivalent?

[Dr. Obvious 49]

BP told feds it could handle oil spill 60 times larger than Deepwater Horizon

Skytruth.org, a website that monitors environmental problems using satellite imagery, reported Monday that the spill had grown to 10,170 square miles, based on NASA images. John Amos, head of Skytruth, told the Press-Register then that the spill had approximately doubled in size since Friday.

BP did not respond to questions about the NASA images.

Doh!

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

BP lied

Water is wet.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

[spookyturtle 9,466]

Keep drillin'.

[mendeleev 68]

Back in the 1990s, BP argued (successfully) with the feds that they didn't need to replace a '50s-vintage reactor at their Texas City refinery. In 2005, the reactor exploded, killing 15.

Around that time, the Houston Chronicle reported that BP had the highest fatality rate, by a big margin, of any oil company operating in the USA.

Then in 2006 they spilled over 200,000 gallons of crude on the tundra in northern Alaska because they hadn't bothered to maintain their pipeline up there.

Everyone knows what BP has done lately in the Gulf of Mexico. It will be interesting to hear the rest of the story that a Transocean employee had to tell about the Company Man (that is, the boss from BP) deciding to change plans within a day of the explosion, overruling safety concerns.

BP has earned its reputation of not paying attention to safety issues the way other major oil companies do. They (and the rest of us) reap the consequences.

Now, please help me out, why is a company that perennially scoffs at safe work practices, and lies about its ability to handle the unexpected, somehow a problem caused by President Obama?

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

No ###### Sherlock! The Brits have been lying to us for years!

Looks like the shadow of a big Texas oil man.

ETA: With a very long nose.

Edited June 3, 2010 by ##########

[SMR 368]

Now, please help me out, why is a company that perennially scoffs at safe work practices, and lies about its ability to handle the unexpected, somehow a problem caused by President Obama?

I don't think most people are arguing that it's a problem caused by Obama, just like no reasonable person contends that Bush caused hurricane Katrina. The contention is that Obama is failing to address the problem, help those affected and otherwise solve the problem. I'm not altogether sure this assertion is accurate, but it's a quick, disingenuous bait and switch to contend that since Obama is not responsible for causing the problem he has no responsibility for solving the problem or accountability for failing to do so. If he didn't want to be responsible for solving the country's problems, many of which he didn't cause, he should have gotten a different job.

[evli1966 88]

I don't think most people are arguing that it's a problem caused by Obama, just like no reasonable person contends that Bush caused hurricane Katrina. The contention is that Obama is failing to address the problem, help those affected and otherwise solve the problem. I'm not altogether sure this assertion is accurate, but it's a quick, disingenuous bait and switch to contend that since Obama is not responsible for causing the problem he has no responsibility for solving the problem or accountability for failing to do so. If he didn't want to be responsible for solving the country's problems, many of which he didn't cause, he should have gotten a different job.

Also note that the large companies lobby not only Republican administrations but Democratic as well.

So as far as regulation and laws governing these large companies, it is a problem across the entire political spectrum and the majority of politicians are at fault.

This goes way back and to many USC get sidelined with personal agendas or views to see a large picture of the need to balance these laws and regulations with out lobbyists being envolved.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Also note that the large companies lobby not only Republican administrations but Democratic as well.

So as far as regulation and laws governing these large companies, it is a problem across the entire political spectrum and the majority of politicians are at fault.

This goes way back and to many USC get sidelined with personal agendas or views to see a large picture of the need to balance these laws and regulations with out lobbyists being envolved.

The government in power gets the lion's share of those lobbying efforts, and the lion's share of the campaign donations:

Obama received no PAC money from BP during his presidential campaign. As Media Matters noted, while Obama received $71,051 in BP-linked contributions during his presidential campaign -- more BP money than any other candidate received -- all of that money came from BP employees, not from BP's PAC or from the company itself. A spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics confirmed that "the $71,051 that Obama received during the 2008 election cycle was entirely from BP employees." The CRP spokesman also stated that "Obama did not accept contributions from political action committees, so none of this money is from BP's PAC. And corporations themselves are prohibited from donating directly to candidates from their corporate treasuries."

http://mediamatters.org/research/201005240069