Govt declares NATIONAL DISASTER as oil reaches Louisiana coast

[h3rm35]

Govt declares national disaster as oil reaches Louisiana coast
By FRANCE 24 the 30/04/2010 - 05:15

US President Barack Obama is dispatching senior cabinet members, including the heads of homeland security and environmental protection, to assess the situation in the Gulf of Mexico as a BP oil spill reached the shores of Louisiana early on Friday.


Oil from a giant slick in the US Golf Coast lapped onto Louisiana shores Friday, threatening to devastate the rich ecosystems in the area and forcing US President Barack Obama to call for a “thorough review” of the disaster.

As much as 200,000 gallons of oil per day are seeping into the Gulf after BP’s “Deepwater Horizon” rig exploded and sank last week about 75 kilometres off the Louisiana coast. The oil slick comes from a blown-out well, located about 1,550 metres underwater.

Obama said some 1,900 federal response personnel are in the area with 300 boats and aircraft to combat a slick measuring at least 600 square miles (1,500 square kilometers).

"We've laid 217,000 feet of protected boom and there are more on the way," Obama said in Washington.

The president said he asked Interior Secretary Ken Salazar "to conduct a thorough review of this incident and report back to me on 30 days" on precautions required to prevent a recurrence of such a disaster.

The White House said new domestic offshore oil drilling was on hold until the disaster had been fully investigated.

State of emergency

After reports started pouring in that oil had hit the US Gulf Coast Thursday evening, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal declared a state of emergency and called for the federal government’s help in averting an environmental disaster.

Local officials from Plaquemines Parish, near the mouth of the Mississippi River, disclosed that oil had indeed reached the fragile coastland on Thursday evening. However, Coast Guard officials waited for a flyover scheduled early on Friday to confirm whether the oil slick had actually touched land.

FRANCE 24’s special envoy at the scene, Nathan King, reported that strong winds toward the coast were moving the slick much more quickly than expected.

“This coastline is gearing up for one of the worst ecological disasters in living memory”, King said from the town of Venice, Louisiana, approximately 100 kilmetres souhtwest of New Orleans.

According to the Times-Picayune, a local newspaper, a pungent fuel smell was wafting over much of the New Orleans area, prompting alarmed residents to jam the Louisiana government phone lines for information.

Economy, wildlife in peril

The worst is still to come according to FRANCE 24’s special envoy, who stressed that experts are still unable to cap the ruptured underwater well.

“The oil continues to pour out at about 5,000 barrels a day….The slick is now the width and the size of Jamaica”, King said.

Local residents fear the oil spill could spell a massive economic disaster. The Gulf Coast region is home to crucial fishing and seafood industries which experts warn could be ruined should authorities fail to prevent the spill from spreading.

Ryan Lambert, who lives in Plaquemines Parish and operates a fishing business, told FRANCE 24 by phone that residents were anxiously waiting for the oil slick.

“We’re exactly where hurricane Katrina hit in 2005”, Lambert said. “Here again it’s going to wipe a lot of industries out. A lot of people are making their living with shrimp, oysters, crabs… And all this will be shut down for quite some time”, said Lambert.

As the front edge of the giant slick washed ashore, environmentalists warned of fragile wetlands ecosystems being devastated by the spill.

According to Allain Bougrain-Dubourg, president of a prominent French animal protection group, Louisiana’s wilderness sanctuary is under imminent threat.

“It could be an ecological catastrophe, because this region is reputed for its biodiversity”, Bougrain-Dubourg told FRANCE 24. “We reckon that about 400 species could be affected: turtles, whales, dolphins, sharks, tuna, birds…. I don’t see how we could possibly save all the animals there”.

Race against time

The US government declared a national disaster Thursday, as President Barack Obama pledged to “use every single available resource” to alleviate the effects of the oil slick. The White House also made clear that petrol giant BP would be responsible for the cost of the clean-up.

BP crews tried a controlled burn on Wednesday of one of the thickest parts of the slick, but such operations were suspended indefinitely as the heavier winds blew in. As a back-up, engineers were constructing a giant dome that could be placed over the leaks to trap the oil, allowing it to be pumped up to container ships on the surface. The operation is expected to take weeks.

In the meantime, oil booms have been placed on 20 nautical miles at the entrance to vital estuary habitats. According to another FRANCE 24 special envoy in Louisiana, Emmanuel Saint Martin, the Federal government is now considering using alternative techniques.

“They can also try to use chemical dispersants underwater to break down the oil”, he explained. “But are these measures going to work? It’s still a mystery, but we’ll get the answer in the next few days”.


Source URL: http://www.france24.com/en/20100430-loui...eopolitano

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Quote:From an article I read

Blowout Preventers, or ‘BOP’s” as they’re
called, are controlled with redundant systems from the rig. In the event of a serious emergency, there are multiple Panic Buttons to hit,
and even fail-safe Deadman systems that should be automatically engaged when something of this proportion breaks out. None of them
were aparently activated, suggesting that the blowout was especially swift to escalate at the surface.
Posted by: dgj at April 30, 2010 11:48 AM

Quote:Transocean Ltd., which operated the rig on lease from BP, has said Halliburton Co. had finished cementing the 18,000-foot well shortly before the explosion. BP has said while it assumes responsibility for the incident, the company is still waiting for an investigation to show Transocean's role in the matter.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/04/30/exa...oil-spill/

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/uscgd8/4551846015/

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Quote:[...]

BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles said interviews with Transocean workers on the rig revealed crewmembers tried to activate the BOP from the rig's bridge before the fire forced them to evacuate, but the BOP did not close off the well.

Suttles also revealed that BP remotely-operated vehicles (ROVs) had hit "subsea access points" that should close the BOP, but that they also failed to trigger the mechanism to shut.

"We don't know why the BOP failed to stop the flow," he said. "Ultimately we will recover the BOP, get it to the surface and find out."

"I'm sure Transocean, who actually owned blowout preventer, will be interested to find out why it didn't work," Suttles said.

An MMS official estimated that the SWAT teams would have all the Gulf's offshore drilling units inspected in the next seven days.

After that, the regulator would turn its attention to production platforms at the order of US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.

[...]

http://www.upstreamonline.com/live/article213497.ece

Quote:"Halliburton had completed the cementing of the final production casing string in accordance with the well design approximately 20 hours prior to the incident," the company said in a release.

"The cement slurry design was consistent with that utilized in other similar applications."

Halliburton also said the cement and casing job had been tested.

"At the time of the incident, well operations had not yet reached the point requiring the placement of the final cement plug which would enable the planned temporary abandonment of the well, consistent with normal oilfield practice," the company said.

[...]

http://www.upstreamonline.com/live/article213877.ece

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Quote:Drilling Process Attracts Scrutiny in Rig Explosion



By RUSSELL GOLD And BEN CASSELMAN

An oil-drilling procedure called cementing is coming under scrutiny as a possible cause of the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico that has led to one of the biggest oil spills in U.S. history, drilling experts said Thursday.

The process is supposed to prevent oil and natural gas from escaping by filling gaps between the outside of the well pipe and the inside of the hole bored into the ocean floor. Cement, pumped down the well from the drilling rig, is also used to plug wells after they have been abandoned or when drilling has finished but production hasn't begun.

In the case of the Deepwater Horizon, workers had finished pumping cement to fill the space between the pipe and the sides of the hole and had begun temporarily plugging the well with cement; it isn't known whether they had completed the plugging process before the blast.

Regulators have previously identified problems in the cementing process as a leading cause of well blowouts, in which oil and natural gas surge out of a well with explosive force. When cement develops cracks or doesn't set properly, oil and gas can escape, ultimately flowing out of control. The gas is highly combustible and prone to ignite, as it appears to have done aboard the Deepwater Horizon, which was leased by BP PLC, the British oil giant.

Concerns about the cementing process—and about whether rigs have enough safeguards to prevent blowouts—raise questions about whether the industry can safely drill in deep water and whether regulators are up to the task of monitoring them.

The scrutiny on cementing will focus attention on Halliburton Co., the oilfield-services firm that was handling the cementing process on the rig, which burned and sank last week. The disaster, which killed 11, has left a gusher of oil streaming into the Gulf from a mile under the surface.

Federal officials declined to comment on their investigation, and Halliburton didn't respond to questions from The Wall Street Journal.

According to Transocean Ltd., the operator of the drilling rig, Halliburton had finished cementing the 18,000-foot well shortly before the explosion. Houston-based Halliburton is the largest company in the global cementing business, which accounted for $1.7 billion, or about 11%, of the company's revenue in 2009, according to consultant Spears & Associates.

Growing worries about potential lawsuits and other costs of the oil spill in the wake of its rapid spread led investors to clobber stocks of companies involved in the Deepwater Horizon well Thursday.

Halliburton fell 5.3% to $31.60 and Cameron International Corp., which built the blowout-prevention equipment that didn't stop the explosion, dropped 13% to $38.70, both at 4 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading.

The timing of the cementing in relation to the blast—and the procedure's history of causing problems—point to it as a possible culprit in the Deepwater Horizon disaster, experts said.

"The initial likely cause of gas coming to the surface had something to do with the cement," said Robert MacKenzie, managing director of energy and natural resources at FBR Capital Markets and a former cementing engineer in the oil industry.

Several other drilling experts agreed, though they cautioned that the investigation into what went wrong at the Deepwater Horizon site is still in its preliminary stages.

The problem could have been a faulty cement plug at the bottom of the well, he said. Another possibility would be that cement between the pipe and well walls didn't harden properly and allowed gas to pass through it.

A 2007 study by three U.S. Minerals Management Service officials found that cementing was a factor in 18 of 39 well blowouts in the Gulf of Mexico over a 14-year period. That was the single largest factor, ahead of equipment failure and pipe failure.

The Halliburton cementers would have sought approval for their plans—the type of cement and how much would be used—from a BP official on board the rig before carrying out their job. Scott Dean, a BP spokesman, said it was premature to speculate on the role cement might have played in the disaster.

Halliburton also was the cementer on a well that suffered a big blowout last August in the Timor Sea, off Australia. The rig there caught fire and a well leaked tens of thousands of barrels of oil over 10 weeks before it was shut down. The investigation is continuing; Halliburton declined to comment on it.

Elmer P. Danenberger, who had recently retired as head of regulatory affairs for the U.S. Minerals Management Service, told the Australian commission looking into the blowout that a poor cement job was probably the reason oil and natural gas gushed out of control.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424...SecondNews

Quote:White House Declares Halt on New Offshore Drilling
Updated: 9 hours 45 minutes ago

Doug Simpson
AOL News
BATON ROUGE, La. (April 30) -- The White House said today it is halting all new offshore drilling in U.S. waters until there's an "adequate review" of a massive 600-mile-wide oil slick that has begun to drift into Louisiana's wetlands.

Florida's governor declared an emergency in six Pandhandle counties, and BP pledged to reimburse people whose property is damaged by the spill.

Winds, high tides and waves through the weekend were forecast by the National Weather Service, forces that could push oil into lakes and inlets around southeast Louisiana. Thunderstorms are expected today, along with seas of 6 feet to 7 feet that pushed tides several feet above normal.

Forecasters say the spill could reach Mississippi within a day, Alabama in two and Florida by early next week.

"The oil slick is generally moving in a northerly direction and threatens Florida's coast," Florida Gov. Charlie Crist said in his emergency declaration, which seeks to ensure a fast response in his state to the spill.

The federal government is defending its response to the spill, which began with an April 20 blast on one of BP's offshore rigs that burned for two days before sinking. Rescuers saved 115 workers, but 11 are presumed dead. It wasn't until Thursday -- nine days after the explosion -- that the White House declared it "a leak of national significance."

White House senior adviser David Axelrod told ABC's "Good Morning America" today that President Barack Obama has decided there will be no new domestic offshore drilling until an investigation of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is complete.

"All he has said is that he is not going to continue the moratorium on drilling, but ... no additional drilling has been authorized, and none will until we find out what happened here and whether there was something unique and preventable," Axelrod said, defending the administration's policy of expanding drilling.

Up to 210,000 gallons of light crude oil are thought to be oozing into the gulf daily, at a rate that means this spill could exceed the volume of Alaska's 1989 Exxon Valdez accident by the third week of June, making it the worst U.S. oil spill ever. The Exxon Valdez tanker rammed a reef in Alaska's Prince William Sound, spilling heavy crude oil, which experts say is far more difficult to clean up than light crude.
More Oil Spill Coverage
Oil from the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion approaches land from the Gulf Coast in Louisiana


"I want to assure you that the federal response has been sustained. It was immediate, and we know that we have a situation that has got to have every resource put toward it," Coast Guard Rear Adm. Sally Brice-O'Hara told NBC's "Today" this morning.

But Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal questioned whether BP had done enough to fight the spill.

"I do have concerns that BP's current resources are not adequate to meet the ... challenges we face and I have urged them to see more help," Jindal said at a Robert, La., news conference with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.

Strong southeast winds blew thin oil strands across the water's surface and into coastal wetlands near the mouth of the Mississippi River overnight, The Associated Press reported. The Coast Guard had crews out in small boats this morning to patrol coastal areas and see where the oil has spread.

Aerial crews dropped chemical dispersants onto the slick, but oil-skimming operations were halted because of rising waves, said Doug Suttles, a BP executive.

Suttles said a new dispersal technique -- pumping the chemicals near the leak's source, 5,000 feet below the water's surface -- could begin this evening.

On Thursday, Obama pledged "every single available resource" to plug the leak, dispatching "SWAT" inspection teams to the rigs in the area and three top administration officials to oversee the response. Jindal declared a state of emergency, and the state moved up the start of the shrimping season to help fishermen collect their catch before the oil reaches them.

Brent Roy, who charters fishing boats off Louisiana's coast, said rough seas forecast through Saturday could make it difficult for authorities to contain the spill offshore. "As it gets into the wildlife management area, it is going to kill us," he told Agence France-Presse.

"It's the worst-case scenario for shrimpers, oyster harvesters, crabbers -- all the commercial fishermen," Roy said, referring to Louisiana's $2.6-billion-a-year fisheries industry, which is in one of the world's richest seafood grounds.

Hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil are oozing into the Gulf of Mexico daily from an offshore rig that exploded April 20 and later sank. The spill endangers one of the world's richest seafood grounds, as well as hundreds of species of migrating birds. Here, birds fly Thursday over oily water near the Gulf's uninhabited Chandeleur Islands.

Gulf Oil Spill
Hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil are oozing into the Gulf of Mexico daily from an offshore rig that exploded April 20 and later sank. The spill endangers one of the world's richest seafood grounds, as well as hundreds of species of migrating birds. Here, birds fly Thursday over oily water near the Gulf's uninhabited Chandeleur Islands. Click through for more photos.
AP
Greenpeace

The slick also imperils the habitats of hundreds of species of migrating birds, nesting pelicans, river otters and mink along the coast's barrier marshes and islands. Brice-O'Hara said 180,000 feet of protective barriers have been floated out to try to protect "wetlands and fragile ecosystems."

"This has a danger of becoming an utter ecological disaster," said Ken Medlock, a fellow in energy and resource economics at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy in Houston. "This is going to result in remediation costs and is going to be burdensome, to say the least," he told Bloomberg News.

At least two lawsuits have already been filed against BP by shrimpers and fishermen who fear the spill could bankrupt their businesses, and by families of some of the 11 workers killed in the blast.

"We are taking full responsibility for the spill, and we will clean it up, and where people can present legitimate claims for damages, we will honor them. We are going to be very, very aggressive in all of that," BP CEO Tony Hayward told Reuters today.

http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/wh...g/19460060

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?

Quote:The Incredible Unlikelihood of the Transocean Deepwater Horizon Disaster
By David Middleton

On April 20, 2010 an explosion and subsequent fire destroyed the Transocean Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Eleven of the personnel onboard at the time are missing and presumed to have perished. The loss of the rig has resulted in an uncontrolled flow of oil from the collapsed marine riser (up to 5,000 bbls/day). The blow out occurred just after a production liner had been cemented into place and before a cement plug could be set so that the well could be temporarily abandoned (TA’ed). Deepwater discovery wells are often TA’ed and then completed at a later date.

The well was not drilled in an abnormally pressured section. It was not in a frontier area. The likelihood of such a catastrophic blowout of a US operated drilling rig in the US OCS Gulf of Mexico is infinitesimally small. Since 1964 only 14 rigs have been lost or seriously damaged by blowouts in the US OCS of the Gulf of Mexico. Since 1970 there have only been 2 blowout accidents with fatalities (1970 and 1987, each with 4 fatalities). From January 1980 through January 2008 there were 173 “blowouts/well releases from the US GoM OCS”. Almost 30,000 wells were drilled in the US Gulf of Mexico OCS over that same period of time (0.87% incident rate). Most of those blowout/well release incidents were minor and were quickly controlled. Only 11 of those blowout incidents resulted in serious damage or the total loss of drilling rigs (0.06% incident rate) and only 1 incident (Zapata Lexington, 1987) resulted in 4 fatalities (0.01% incident rate).

Statistically speaking, the odds of such a catastrophic accident happening to a modern semi-submersible rig like the Transocean Deepawater Horizon, under these operating parameters are less than 1 in 20,000.

The Transocean Deepwater Horizon was a modern (5th generation) semi-submersible drilling rig. The rig was operating well inside of its “envelope” and it was conducting an operation in which a blowout simply should not have been able to occur.

The timing of the disaster is also odd… Less than a month after Pres. Obama announced plans to expand offshore drilling and two days before Earth Day… And without having a clue as to what caused the explosion, Enviromarxist nitwit Lib’s are wailing about how this proves that offshore drilling is too environmentally risky to be allowed off the East Coast…

The explosion came less than a month after President Barack Obama’s decision to open portions of the East Coast to oil and gas exploration, and opponents of the move have seized on the blast as a reason to reverse course.

“The bottom line is that when you drill for oil, there is always a risk that not only puts lives on the line, but a risk that puts miles of coastline and the economy on the line as well,” Sens. Robert Menendez and Frank Lautenberg, both New Jersey Democrats, said in a statement.

The Huff Puff

The Enviromarxists are simply ignoring the incredible drilling and production safety record in the Gulf of Mexico over the last several decades. The volume of oil released by this blowout will be more than the sum total of oil spilled in the last 40 years of offshore drilling and production operations in the US Gulf of Mexico OCS…

Since 1980, OCS operators have produced 4.7 billion barrels (bbl) of oil and spilled only 0.001 percent of this oil, or 1 bbl for every 81,000 bbl produced. In the last 15 years, there have been no spills greater than 1,000 bbl from an OCS platform or drilling rig. The spill risk related to a diesel spill from drilling operations is even less. During the 10-year period (1976-1985) in which data were collected, there were 80 reported diesel spills greater than one barrel associated with drilling activities, compared with 11,944 wells drilled, or a 0.7 percent probability of occurrence. For diesel spills greater than 50 bbls, only 15 spills have occurred, or a 0.1 percent probability.

Natural seepage of oil in the Gulf of Mexico (unrelated to natural gas and oil industry operations) is far more extensive. Researchers have estimated a natural seepage rate of about 120,000 bbl per year from one area (23,000 square kilometers) offshore of Louisiana.


Freak accident and political opportunism? Or deliberate sabotage for political reasons?

http://debunkhouse.wordpress.com/2010/04...-disaster/

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http://cajunconservatism.wordpress.com/2...r-horizon/ - burning rig photos

[FastTadpole]

Great posts guys. Let's hear the Human side of the story from the eyes and heart of Louisiana Shrimper, Clint Guidry.

Quote:From a Fishing Village, to an "'Oil Town": Hell Has Come to South Louisiana
by Dahr Jamail
Global Research, July 12, 2010
Dahr Jamail's Dispatches - 2010-07-11


Photo by Erika Blumenfeld © 2010

Clint Guidry is a shrimper from Lafitte, Louisiana. As we sit together, he shows me a picture of his house with 18 inches of water in it as a result of Hurricane Ike in 2008.

In his deep voice, he looks me in the eye and says, “My fear is repeating this situation, but with this water with oil on top of it.”

Guidry represents all the shrimpers in Louisiana, given that he is the Shrimp Harvester Representative on the Louisiana Shrimp Task Force that was created by the state’s governor.

Prior to this fishing season, he, like the rest of Louisiana’s fishermen, was excited for good season, with the price of shrimp per pound finally weighing more in their favor.

“We were primed for a great season,” Guidry says, “And it all got taken away.”

Unlike most fishermen who’ve had their livelihoods decimated by BP’s oil disaster, Guidry has chosen not to work for BP doing skimming and booming operations with his boat.

“I worked for Brown and Root in the oil industry,” Guidry informs, “I know the dangers of oil and chemicals, so there’s no way I’m going to go work out in this stuff. Instead, I’m trying to help make sure BP is paying people, and being safe. But I’m not accomplishing either one yet.”

Guidry is incensed at what he is seeing.

“There has been a BP cover-up from day one,” he says, as I write furiously in my notepad, trying to keep up, “The US Government, OSHA [Occupational Safety and Health Administration], the Coast Guard, NIOSH [National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health], all of them are in on it.”

On May 24th, in Galliano, Louisiana, Guidry testified to a delegation of US Senators, Congressmen, and Agencies and departments under Obama’s administration. He sent the testimony to the president as well, urgently requesting help.

Here is his testimony, verbatim:

–

My name is Clint Guidry. I am a third generation Louisiana Commercial Shrimp Fisherman. I am sixty-two years old and a lifelong resident of Lafitte, LA. I am a Vietnam Veteran and the son of a WWII Veteran.

I am on the Board of Directors of the Louisiana Shrimp Association and the Shrimp Harvester Representative on the LA Shrimp Task Force created by Executive Order of Gov. Bobby Jindal.

I have been invited here today to testify about the current disaster that is occurring concerning the blowout and oil spill from the British Petroleum (BP) DeepWater Horizon Catastrophe and what effects it is having on the fishermen and the families I represent.

Ladies and gentlemen, HELL has come to South Louisiana. A HELL created by British Petroleum (BP) and a failed U.S. Government response to the disaster.

First of all I would like to put into perspective BP’s role in this disaster and show them for what they are.

BP committed fraud in furnishing oil spill response data required to obtain a permit to enable them to drill the MC 252 location. The reality is they were not prepared to handle or control a blowout and resulting oil spill of this magnitude. Simply put, they LIED.

BP, in their haste to cut corners and save money in the completion process on the well location at MC 252, exhibited willful neglect in their duties to complete the well safely which led to the blowout and explosion that killed eleven people. Eleven souls that will never come back. Eleven families with mothers and fathers and wives and children. Children who will never see their fathers again.

This neglect and loss of life constitutes negligent homicide and all involved should be arrested and charged as such.

So now I have established what kind of people we are dealing with, LIARS and KILLERS. It appalls me that they are still in total control of this disaster after almost a month has passed.

Now I would like to speak about our Federal Response to the disaster.

The first response to the disaster was the U.S. Coast Guard, who has assumed duties of protecting BP and aiding them in downplaying the spill, providing BP representatives with armed guards to keep away the press and TV camera crews and sending representatives to local communities to provide false information on safety and health dangers related to the oil spill and the chemical dispersants used.

The second response came from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), who in an effort to minimize the spill and save BP face, unleashed two dangerous chemical dispersants which were injected into the water column at the sea floor and sprayed on the surface over the oil and workers in the areas of the spill and along the coast close to coastal fishing communities. These chemical dispersants contain solvents that are dangerous to marine populations in the Gulf and coastal estuaries and were never fully tested for dangers to humans. In the product sheets for these chemical dispersants, there is always a disclaimer: “This listing does not mean that EPA approves, recommends, licenses, certifies or authorizes the use of this product on an oil discharge.”

And that IS exactly what EPA did and is still doing with total disregard to marine populations that will collapse because of it and human populations that will get sick and may die because of this decision.

“Kill the Ocean, Save the Beaches,” a “Trade-Off” decision. Under what logic does this work? The Gulf is the Mother and the Estuaries are the nurseries. If the Mother dies, there will be no children to incubate.

The reality is the oil and chemical dispersants are entering our estuaries as we speak. The “Trade-Off” logic FAILED.

As I stated, I represent commercial shrimp fishermen. I have members, friends and family presently working to contain and clean-up the spill. They are relating to me BP’s total disregard for providing workers with proper Personal Protective Equipment (PPE).

I have extensive experience working with hazardous chemicals associated with petroleum. In the 80’s and 90’s I worked with Brown and Root Industrial Services as a supervisor, General Superintendant and Area Superintendant. I supervised maintenance work in oil refineries and was responsible for worker safety and getting the work done on time. Safety and health of my workers ALWAYS came first with me.

I am being told by workers and family members that proper respiratory protection is NOT being provided to the fishermen workers.

Petroleum, as it surfaces and spreads over the water and heats, releases dangerous carcinogens and these carcinogens are most concentrated directly over the leaking well and surrounding area where my fishermen are working. There has been NO respiratory protective PPE issued to workers working directly over this most dangerous area, even as a precaution to have available given they are working 60 miles offshore. In fact, when some individuals brought their own respirators, they were told by BP representatives on site that if they wore the respirators they would be released from the job. That disturbs me greatly.

My fishermen are more concerned with losing their jobs and the income they desperately need to pay bills and feed their families than their health. From years of experience I know that, when protected, work in very hazardous environments can be completed safely using the proper PPE.

Is BP sacrificing my fishermen’s health and lives to protect themselves from liability issues at a later date?

How can we believe liars and killers when they say the worksite is safe?

This is the same game plan Exxon used in Alaska 20 years ago and Alaska fishermen ¬never collected a penny in settlements from Exxon for sickness and deaths related to working clean-up after the Valdez spill. Exxon never issued respiratory protection to fishermen in the Valdez spill.

These workers safety issues are my top PRIORITY and need to be addressed IMMEDIATELY.

If we are going to allow BP “We the people” 5th Amendment rights in court and use “Taking of Future Profits” to let them off the hook for full responsibility of this disaster, we will be playing the same part as the Alaskans did in the Exxon Valdez Playbook that BP is using on us.

It is past time for our elected officials, Departments and Agencies to abandon the influence of “Big Oil’s” “Big Money” and do what they were elected and appointed to do, represent and protect “We the People” who voted them in office.

This Administration needs to treat BP like what they really are, LIARS and KILLERS and take control of this monumental disaster.

This administration was elected to office on a platform of “CHANGE.” So far, as it applies to “Big Oil” it is business as usual. The only change we are experiencing in dealing with “Big Oil” is being “Short-Changed.”

On behalf of the Commercial Shrimpers I represent and the coastal communities who are losing their way of life, I ask that you take control of this out of control situation.

Clint Guidry
Louisiana Shrimp Association

–

Like so many others in Louisiana who have any affiliation with the response effort to the oil disaster (which is basically everyone), as his statement indicates, Guidry is appalled at the seeming lack of concern about the heath effects of the dispersants on response workers.

“There are incidents the Coast Guard itself has recorded and documented of planes spraying Coast Guard boats, platforms, and fishermen with dispersant,” he tells me, “Our biggest battle now is trying to get people protected, and it’s pissing me off.”

Guidry is hearing directly from fishermen he knows participating in the response effort, and they are telling him they are being sprayed.

To make matters worse, despite BP being directed by the so-called EPA and Coast Guard on May 26 to dramatically decrease their use of dispersant in the Gulf, recently released Coast Guard records show that BP has exceeded dispersant limits on a near daily basis since that order.

Guidry, like everyone I’ve met thus far in Southeastern Louisiana, is all too aware of the fact that, as he succinctly stated in his testimony, “Hell has come to South Louisiana.”

Yet he knows the future could bring even worse. “If we have another bout of storms during August, September, and October, which is our severe storm time, that brings one Category 3 hurricane, we’ll have oil and dispersant everywhere. Every area of Southern Louisiana beyond hurricane protection will lose their homes, their living, and their heritage.”

Guidry speaks fondly of how he used to fish for Tuna out in the area where the well is gushing oil into the Gulf.

“Blue, White, Brown Tuna, Marlin, Sailfish, it is all out there,” Guidry says urgently, “This disaster has punched holes in our marine eco-system that we won’t know about for a long time. We don’t know what we’ve done.”

A short while later Guidry invites us, along with several other friends, on a short boat ride up the Bayou. He expertly guides his boat across the water while pointing out dormant remains of the local commercial shrimping industry.


Photo by Erika Blumenfeld © 2010

“Nunez Seafood is the only processing plant we have in Lafitte,” Guidry explains, “That’s where we used to box and freeze our shrimp before it would be sent out across the country. Right now, that freezer space should be completely full of shrimp.”

Tracy Kuhns, the executive director of Louisiana Bayoukeeper, is riding with us, and watches me staring at the empty facility, that is also surrounded by many empty shrimping boats.


Photo by Erika Blumenfeld © 2010

“We went from a fishing village, to an oil town,” Tracy adds as we pull away from the emptiness that used to be Nunez Seafood.

© Copyright Dahr Jamail, Dahr Jamail's Dispatches, 2010

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?c...&aid=20101

[scaramanga667]

How certain can we be that the 'cement' used by Halliburton wasn't nanothermite?

[h3rm35]

from what I heard recently there were actually chunks of the bit that got lodged in the blowout preventor. No link, but I saw the news yesterday somewhere.