Permits for offshore oil drilling, including deep water drilling and specifically the Deepwater Horizon, were rubber stamped without environmental impact studies under the Bush administration, and shamefully, under the Obama administration as well. These so-called “categorical exclusions” exempting them from an environmental impact study are reserved for projects that could never possibly harm the environment, like building a hiking trail or an outhouse. Well, we’ve built a very big outhouse, and its contents have hit the fan. How many trees have died to print these meaningless permits that we rubber stamp with no government oversight? Well, this video contains a little information on the paper industry as well, specifically on Botnia, the Finnish paper mill in Uruguay that was recently the center of international controversy, at least here in South America, due to accusations of treaty violations and pollution of a shared river on the border between Uruguay and Argentina. The international court just passed down a ruling… and showed a clear bias in favor of big business. They claimed the evidence of pollution presented by Argentina was unreliable because Argentina has an interest in protecting its people from pollution… but the evidence presented by Uruguay, compiled BY THE PAPER MILL ITSELF, was admissable and proved that there was no contamination. The governments of the world have been taken over by big business interests, and every industry, from the coal … Video Rating: 4 / 5
Who was ignoring Ken Abbott 2 months ago? Everybody – including the public, government agencies, elected officials, newspeople – and BP. Now when a whistle blows – listen. NEW ORLEANS — The Deepwater Horizon leak is now leading to safety concerns on another BP rig in the Gulf of Mexico. The BP Atlantis is located in more than 7000 feet of water, 150 miles south of New Orleans. According to a lawsuit filed Monday in Houston, the rig is plagued by some of the same possible safety problems as the Horizon. It claims the Department of the Interior allowed Atlantis to operate without completed engineering blueprints needed to operate the rig safely. “This is not a mere paperwork. Without these as-built drawings, the people that are working on these rigs, are flying blind from the standpoint of how to safely operate BP rigs in the Gulf of Mexico,” said plaintiffs’ attorney Mikal Watts. Watts represents the environmental group Food and Water Watch and former BP sub-contractor Ken Abbott. BP fired Abbott, a project control supervisor, last year after he voiced concerns about a lack of documentation on Atlantis. “At BP, I beat my head against the wall, they didn’t care, the government agencies didn’t care,” said Abbott. Abbott said a congressional investigation into the Deepwater Horizon spill indicated that BP could not locate detailed drawings for the rig’s blowout preventer and that workers wasted half a day trying to shut off a valve that had already been disconnected. “BP and … Video Rating: 5 / 5
SPECIAL REPORT – Deepwater spills and short attention spans
NUEVO CAMPECHITO, Mexico (Reuters) – Within a week of the explosion of Mexico’s Ixtoc offshore oil well in June, 1979, Misterveel Rodriguez and other village fishermen were pulling up nets choked with tarballs instead of red snapper. Read more on The Star
Dispatches from the Edge:The Oil Spills You Never Heard Of
While the news about British Petroleum’s (BP) Deepwater Horizon platform blowout in the Gulf of Mexico is on a 24-hour news feed, it took a long boat ride and some serious slogging by John Vidal of The Observer (UK) to uncover a bigger and far deadlier oil spill near the village of Otuegwe in Nigeria’s Niger Delta. Read more on The Berkeley Daily Planet
When animal rescues fall short, evidence of oil spill’s toll on wildlife is collected
Veterinary morgues hold the remains of about 1,000 animals so far Read more on New Orleans Times-Picayune
Footage about the greatest oil disaster of all times (2010 Gulf) Watch at ur Planet like it would be ur Child! dont close ur eyes! do ur part! Video Rating: 4 / 5
Cousteau Jr.: ‘This Is a Nightmare… a Nightmare’ Philippe Cousteau Jr. and Sam Champion take hazmat dive into Gulf’s oily waters. 05/25/2010 Regulators Accepted Gifts From Oil Industry, Report US Coast Guard estimates of the amount of oil surging into the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon rig may be low by a factor of 10 or more, National Public Radio has reported. Analysis of sea floor video made available Wednesday by BP suggests that 70000 barrels a day are pouring into the Gulf, not 5000 barrels a day as estimated by the Coast Guard, the report says. If the analysis by Purdue University professor Steve Werely is correct, the amount of oil in the Gulf has already exceeded, every 4 days, the 250000 barrels spilled in the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker accident in Alaska. The amount of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico may be at least 10 times the size of official estimates, according to an exclusive analysis conducted for NPR. At NPR’s request, experts examined video that BP released Wednesday. Their findings suggest the BP spill is already far larger than the 1989 Exxon Valdez accident in Alaska, which spilled at least 250000 barrels of oil. BP has said repeatedly that there is no reliable way to measure the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico by looking at the oil gushing out of the pipe. But scientists say there are actually many proven techniques for doing just that. Steven Wereley, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, analyzed … Video Rating: 5 / 5
BP Oil Spill’s Tony Hayward active Bilderburg member (with a hair piece) Could the catastrophic Gulf of Mexico oil rig explosion be part of a larger scheme to reform the energy industry, just as the Obama administration has reformed healthcare, banking and automobile manufacturers? Worse, is cap and trade—possibly the worst legislation ever penned—the ultimate endgame behind this spill, which they are now capitalizing upon? The first red flag receiving virtually no attention is that Halliburton (of Dick Cheney fame) had finished a cementing process only 20 hours prior to Deepwater Horizon erupting in flames. Lawsuits have already been filed, with Reuters reporting on April 29, Halliburton improperly and negligently performed its job in cementing the well, increasing the pressure at the well and contributing to the fire, explosion and resulting oil spill. As a result, a high-pressure pocket of deep oil 30000 feet beneath the ocean floor erupted with the force of a gigantic, non-stop fire hose. A surviving worker on the rig, John Kersey, said it sounded like a war zone as alarms were triggered, electricity shorted out, and flames shot 300 feet into the air. The inferno-like blaze could be seen 35 miles away. CONNECTIONS Suspicions arise when an ownership paper trail is followed. Halliburton subcontracted for a company named Transocean, which leased and operated Deepwater Horizon for British Petroleum (BP). Transocean is a subsidiary of Sonat Inc., which merged with the El …
This was from The Rachel Maddow Show, 05/26/2010. I watched this, and I think for better or worse, it gives an interesting perspective on the off shore drilling going on both now, and in the past.
Government placing blame squarely on oil giant’s shoulders Video Rating: 5 / 5
The world’s worst oil spills
PARIS: According to latest estimates, the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico has resulted in an oil spill of between 70,000 and 110,000 tonnes of crude oil. Read more on New Straits Times
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