~Happy Mama~

The Ant and the Grasshopper

2011-06-16T13:58:00.003-05:00

ORIGINAL VERSION
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house
and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the
summer away.
Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.
The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

MORAL OF THE ORIGINAL STORY:
Be responsible for yourself!

MODERN VERSION
The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving.
CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.
America is stunned by the sharp contrast.
How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, 'It's Not Easy Being Green...'
ACORN stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing, "We shall overcome."
Then Rev. Jeremiah Wright has the group kneel down to pray for the grasshopper's sake.
President Obama condemns the ant and blames President Bush, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope for the poor grasshopper's plight.
Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair
share.
Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity and Anti-Ant Act, retroactive to the beginning of the summer.
The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government GreenCzar and given to the Grasshopper.
The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn't maintain it.
The ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again.
The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house, which is now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the ramshackle, once prosperous and peaceful, neighborhood.
The entire Nation collapses bringing the rest of the free world with it.

MORAL OF THE MODERN STORY:
Be careful how you vote in 2012.

On Memorial Day...

2011-05-30T06:56:00.005-05:00

Remember (It was the Veteran)
Author Unknown

IT WAS THE VETERAN,

Not a reporter, who has given us freedom of the press.

IT WAS THE VETERAN,

Not a poet, who has given us freedom of speech.

IT WAS THE VETERAN,

Not a lawyer, who has given us the right to fair trial.

IT WAS THE VETERAN,

Not the campus organizer,who has given us the right to demonstrate.

AND IT IS THE VETERAN,

Who salutes the flag,

Who served under the flag,

And whose coffin is drapped by the flag!

ETERNAL REST GRANT THEM O LORD,

AND LET PERPETUAL LIGHT SHINE UPON THEM.

Our Day in Pictures

2011-05-05T21:12:00.000-05:00

Strip searched for a hamburger

2011-05-05T15:15:00.000-05:00

We went to lunch at the Ronald Reagan building today and it was an interesting experience.
We, all 300 of us, had to go thru security much like airport security. So after waiting in line, in the rain, for 20 of our 45 minute lunch break, we finally get inside the building where we have to empty our pockets, take off our jackets, take off our belts and surrender our bags for inspection before walking through the metal detectors.
Really?
Do terrorists usually travel in groups of 300, the majority of which being 11 year olds and all wear "traffic cop yellow" t-shirts?

Arlington cemetery

2011-05-04T08:07:00.000-05:00

The great great grand daughter of George Washington married Robert E. Lee
1864 first burials
330,000 graves
Head stones marble from GA
Grave of JFK. Nov 1963
Tombs of unknown fro ww2, korea & vietnam. - vietnam is empty identified in 98
Guarded only by army volunteer basis. 3 guard rotation work in24 hour shifts Spring/summer every 1/2 hour. Fall/winter. At night every 2 hrs. Since 1937 have been eyes on tomb.
1864 first burial
24 symbols of faith
Must have died in line of duty or the spouse - buried together & unmarrried children under 18
Medal of honor recep
Presidents
20yrs service
Freedman's Village - site of current Arlington
Freed Slaves in city of WA - a village to teach a trade, an education prepare for life as a free person.

Tuesday - VA & DC

2011-05-03T13:16:00.001-05:00

We just took 300 people (7 buses full) to Union Square Mall in VA for a 45 minute lunch & bathroom break!

Last day in Williamsburg

2011-05-02T21:49:00.001-05:00

Wow! Awesome, interesting and exhausting day.
Spent the day touring Colonial Williamsburg. Started w/ a walking tour that included the Palace, the courthouse, jail, clothing store, wig maker, apothecary, silversmith and the blacksmith. Some of the things we learned were be the origin of and reasoning behind our judicial system, takeout and liquor were allowed in jail, have at least one friend who will be willing to pull on your feet, even back then women loved shoes, the bigger the wig the wealthier the man, red M&M's are made with bugs, urine can be used as bleach and its taste can be useful in diagnosing illness, silver coins were turned into jewelry, eating utensils and serving dishes as a type of savings acct, the word used before smith identifies the craftsman's raw material or specialty and always be first in line to take a bath.

The day ended with a DJ dance party. The kids loved it. And for me it was interesting, enlightening and more than a little troubling to watch the kids interact. Some of those girls are going to be trouble. They made me want to reconsider home schooling.

Went to shower and found B snoring peacefully when I got out. This was about 10 minutes after he declared that wanted to stay up all night. I love that kid!!!

Day 2 -Williamsburg

2011-05-01T15:12:00.001-05:00

Yay!! We made it to Williamsburg. And even better we have two hours of FREE time! Had an awesome time @ Monticello. Thomas Jefferson, or TJ as B has started calling him, was a brilliant man and so far beyond his time. At a period in history when most people where determining the time of day by the sun's position in the sky, he designed a clock that was accurate to the second and even tracked the day of the week. There were many inventions in his home that made daily tasks easier and more efficient - the dumb waiter from the dining room to the wine cellar, his lazy susan desktop, a lazy susan book rack with tilting shelves to angle the book for best reading light, his whirlygig reading chair and the revolving "food door" just to name a few.

Pizza party for dinner tonight followed by the much anticipated Ghost Tour.

Day 2

2011-05-01T05:20:00.001-05:00

On the road again...
Got to the hotel around 8:30 last night. Trip was long but safe. As tired as I was I thought I'd be asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. But it took about an hour to fall asleep and then I still didn't sleep well. I don't think B did either. Heard him wiggling around all night. When the alarm went off @ 4:45 he got right up. He even made me coffee - what a sweetheart!

I'm impressed w/ how smoothly everything has so far gone considering there are more than 300 people on this trip. Props to the folks who put it all together!

We're headed to Monticello today for the Jefferson tour. And then on to Williamsburg. Going to be a fun day. Long but fun.

Shew!

2011-04-30T19:04:00.001-05:00

Someone has been passing gas since we got on this bus @ 6:00 this morning. I'd hoped it was just that his/her breakfast didn't agree with them but now I'm beginning to wonder if that is just how they are. I SO hope not!!!

Sad

2011-04-30T14:37:00.001-05:00

Just passed thru a town in Virginia that was heavily damaged by a tornado. I've seen entirely too much of that this past week.

DC trip

2011-04-30T07:00:00.000-05:00

Every year the fifth grade class @ my son's schhol goes on a trip to Monticello, Williamsburg and Washington DC. I am currently sitting on one of seven buses with about 30 very excited 11 year olds and their not quite awake parents. I am looking forward to this time with B. Of course right now he is busy playing a racing game on his buddy's iPad and doesn't remember that I'm here! By the way, who gets an iPad for an 11 year old? Hate to admit it but I'm slightly jealous of this child. I really want an iPad. But I really don't want to shell out the money. Oh well. I got next anyway!

Chuckle for the day

2011-04-05T09:46:00.001-05:00

In the hospital, the relatives gathered in the waiting room, where a family member lay gravely ill.
Finally, the doctor came in looking tired & somber & said,

"I'm afraid I'm the bearer of bad news, he said as he surveyed the worried faces. The only hope left for your loved one at this time is a brain transplant. It's an experimental procedure, very risky, but it is the only hope. Insurance will cover the procedure, but you will have to pay for the BRAIN."

The family members sat silent as they absorbed the news. After a time, someone asked, 'How much will a brain cost?'

The doctor quickly responded, "$5,000 for a Democrat's brain; $200 for a Republican's brain."

The moment turned awkward. Some of the Democrats actually had to 'try' to not smile, avoiding eye contact with the Republicans. A man unable to control his curiosity, finally blurted out the question everyone wanted to ask, "Why is the Democrats brain so much more than a Republicans brain?"

The doctor smiled at the childish innocence and explained to the entire group, "It's just standard pricing procedure. We have to price the Republicans brains a lot lower because they've been used."

Congress and the Budget -- Why Doesn't Congress Understand How Dire Our Fiscal Situation Really Is?

2011-04-05T09:12:00.002-05:00

By: Penny Young Nance

Luxury versus necessity.

That's the debate around every kitchen table these days, and it is reflected in Congress. American families need to cut back and stretch their budgets, and Congress needs to cut way back in order to regain some semblance of fiscal sanity.

But while American families deal painfully in reality, some members of Congress are divorced from reality. Freshman Republican congressmen — straight from the kitchen table — look at a federally funded program supporting "cowboy poetry" as a luxury, while the Senate Majority Leader — who has been in Washington for 24 years, literally one-third of his life — says his state of Nevada can't live without its federally funded, annual "cowboy poetry" event.

Think of how this would sound at the kitchen table as a husband and wife discuss tightening their belts in order to make their family budget work.

HE: "We're really in a financial hole and the only way out is to cut back, no question."

SHE: "But honey, you know I can't live without the Nieman Marcus furs?"

Or, just to be fair …

SHE: "We have to find places to cut back if we're going to have enough money to cover the basics this year."

HE: "But honey, I thought we agreed my golf clubs are outdated. I absolutely need a new set this year."

These conversations don't exist outside of Washington. Gasoline alone, at nearly $4.00 a gallon, is already forcing families to reconsider commutes, vacations, and trips to purchase basic goods for basic needs.

Outside of Washington, necessity trumps luxury, and it is easy to distinguish between the two. With a $1.6 trillion budget deficit and a $14 trillion national debt, Americans expect Congress to make the same distinctions.

In fact, the word "trillions" is a fairly new one for Americans to wrap their collective heads around. We had become accustomed to "billions" over the past few decades. We know many state government budgets are in the billions, we know Bill Gates and Ross Perot are billionaires, even the New York Mets — with all of their problems — are worth close to a billion dollars. "Billions" doesn't seem like that much anymore.

"Trillions" is a lot. "Trillions" is a problem. "Trillions" gets people's attention, and not in a good way.

First it was President Obama's trillion-dollar stimulus package that only saw unemployment get worse and threaten a double-dip recession. Then it was President Obama's $2 trillion health care law that may not even be constitutional.

The budget deficit, national debt, and the outstanding money owed by Social Security and Medicare — over $100 trillion — have exploded, leaving a nation more uncertain about its future than at any time since the Great Depression. Knowing this, how does a congressional leader say — with a straight face — the nation cannot live without a federally funded, yearly symposium on "cowboy poetry?" What family, trying to get itself out from under a large credit card debt and struggling to pay its mortgage, decides it cannot live without Nieman Marcus furs or a brand new set of Taylor Made golf clubs?

This is why Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), President Obama and other liberal leaders in Washington don't realize that if the government shuts down because an agreement cannot be reached it is they who will be blamed. No one will blame conservatives and Tea Party members who are trying to get the country's fiscal house in order.

Democrats who believe Republicans will get blamed by the public for a government shutdown are stuck in 1995 when "trillions" wasn't a household word and America's financial future wasn't imperiled. Americans know the difference between luxury and necessity; they have already undergone the rude awakening that awaits Harry Reid and the rest of his gang in Congress.

Penny Young Nance is CEO of Concerned Women for America, the nation's largest public policy women's organization.

FW: Fwd: What the heck happened!

2011-03-30T10:23:00.000-05:00

Interesting!

$1,000,000,000

How many zeros in a billion?

This is too true to be funny.

The next time you hear a politician use the
Word 'billion' in a casual manner, think about
Whether you want the 'politicians' spending YOUR tax money.

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend,
But one advertising agency did a good job of
Putting that figure into some perspective in
One of it's releases.

A.
A billion seconds ago it was 1959.
B.
A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.
C.
A billion hours ago our ancestors were Living in the Stone Age.
D.
A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.
E.
A billion dollars ago was only
8 hours and 20 minutes,
At the rate our government
Is spending it.

While this thought is still fresh in our brain...
let's take a look at New Orleans ...
It's amazing what you can learn with some simple division.

Louisiana Senator,
Mary Landrieu (D)
Is presently asking Congress for
250 BILLION DOLLARS
To rebuild New Orleans . Interesting number...
What does it mean?
A.
Well .. If you are one of the 484,674 residents of New Orleans
(every man, woman, and child)
You each get $516,528.
B..
Or... If you have one of the 188,251 homes in New Orleans , your home gets
$1,329,787..
C.
Or... If you are a family of four....
Your family gets $2,066,012.

Washington , D. C
HELLO!
Are all your calculators broken??
Building Permit Tax
CDL License Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Federal Income Tax (Fed)
Federal Unemployment Tax (FU TA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax
Gasoline Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax)
IRS Penalties(tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax
Luxury Tax
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Property Tax
Real Estate Tax
Service charge taxes
Social Security Tax
Road Usage Tax (Truckers)
Sales Taxes
Recreational Vehicle Tax
School Tax
State Income Tax
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)
Telephone Federal Excise Tax
Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Tax
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax
Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax
Telephone State and Local Tax
Telephone Usage Charge Tax
Utility Tax
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft Registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax
(And to think, we left British Rule to avoid so many taxes)

STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY?

Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago.....
And our nation was the most prosperous in the world.
We had absolutely no national debt...
We had the largest middle class in the world.....
And Mom stayed home to raise the kids.

What happened?
Can you spell:
'POLITICIANS!'

And I still have to
Press '1'
For English.

I hope this goes around
the U S A
At least 1 billion times

What the hell happened???

__________________________________________________________

_____

No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com <http://www.avg.com/>
Version: 9.0.872 / Virus Database: 271.1.1/3396 - Release Date: 01/22/11
01:33:00

Love my new phone!!!

2010-10-07T06:56:00.001-05:00

Some oil spill events from Monday, July 19, 2010

2010-07-19T11:07:00.001-05:00

By The Associated Press (AP) – 3 hours ago

A summary of events Monday, July 19, Day 90 of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill that began with the April 20 explosion and fire on the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon, owned by Transocean Ltd. and leased by BP PLC, which is in charge of cleanup and containment. The blast killed 11 workers. Since then, oil poured into the Gulf from a blown-out undersea well until BP managed to stanch the leak Thursday — at least temporarily — with a massive, deep-sea cap.
CAP ON
The federal government's point man for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill says he authorized BP to keep the cap on its busted well for another 24 hours after the company pledged to closely monitor the seafloor for signs of a new leak. Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen says federal scientists got answers they wanted about how BP is monitoring the seabed for leaks, in a conference call Sunday night with BP representatives. Earlier Sunday, he had demanded BP step up monitoring because a seep had been detected a distance from the well. On Monday, Allen said the cap may remain only if BP keeps careful watch for signs that it could possibly worsen the situation.
SEEP
The concern all along — since pressure readings on the cap weren't as high as expected — was a leak elsewhere in the wellbore, meaning the cap may have to be reopened to prevent the environmental disaster from becoming even worse and harder to fix. When asked about the seep and the monitoring, BP spokesman Mark Salt would only say that "we continue to work very closely with all government scientists on this."
COST
BP said Monday that the cost of dealing with the oil spill has now reached nearly $4 billion. The company said it has made payments totaling $207 million to settle individual claims for damages from the spill along the southern coast of the United States. To date, almost 116,000 claims have been submitted and more than 67,500 payments have been made, totaling $207 million.
DISAGREEMENT
With the newly installed cap keeping oil from BP's busted well out of the Gulf during a trial run, this weekend offered a chance for the oil company and government to gloat over their shared success — the first real victory in fighting the spill. Instead, they spent two days disagreeing over what to with the undersea machinery holding back the gusher. The apparent disagreement began to sprout Saturday, when Allen said the giant stopper would eventually be hooked up to a mile-long pipe to pump the crude to ships on the surface. But early the next day, BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles said the cap should shut the oil in until relief wells are finished.
RICO
Using a law originally enacted to combat the Mafia, attorneys are filing lawsuits accusing BP PLC and Transocean Ltd. of committing a longterm series of crimes by concealing flaws in deepwater drilling plans and lacking safeguards to contain a catastrophic Gulf of Mexico spill. BP has been named in at least three lawsuits brought under the federal law known as RICO, for Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations. Transocean, which leased the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon drilling rig to BP, has been named in two. The lawsuits accuse both companies of committing wire and mail fraud over a number of years by filing false documents with the U.S. government, and by misleading investors through other documents and falsehoods. They also allege an overall oil and gas industry effort to "infiltrate" federal regulators through favors such as alcohol and drugs, sex, golf and ski trips, concert and sports tickets.
FORECASTERS
Call it cloudy with a chance of tar balls. TV forecasters along the Gulf Coast have been trying to predict the path of oil spewing from the Deepwater Horizon rig. But that's proving more difficult than predicting sunshine or showers. Forecasters began adding the slick to the outlook soon after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in April, but their initial success was spotty. The oil didn't move as quickly as meteorologists predicted, and residents in some areas like the Florida Panhandle spent days anticipating oil before it appeared. Even though BP PLC cut off the oil flow for the first time last week, forecasting oil's landfall will remain a challenge for months as the sticky stuff continues to wash up.
FEEDING FISHERMEN
Grow up on the water, the children of southern Louisiana learn, and you'll never go hungry. As long as you can toss a line, a net or a trap, you can eat — and eat well. Or you could, until now. Millions of gallons of oil from the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig have fouled some of the world's richest fishing grounds from Florida to Texas. Even though BP stopped the leak for the first time Thursday, more than a third of the Gulf of Mexico remains closed. For thousands who feed their families from the water, what once seemed like a never-ending, free buffet of high-protein, low-fat shrimp, crabs, oysters and fish is off limits. It's not that people are starving. With compensation checks from BP and the help of charities such as Second Harvest Food Bank, they're able to stock their pantries with staples — rice and beans, grits and cereal, peanut butter and jelly. But they're forced to pay for protein they used to get for free. And not the kind they want.

Results inconclusive as BP well tests continue

2010-07-16T18:41:00.001-05:00

No sign of new leak but pressure readings not ideal

NEW ORLEANS — Engineers struggled to make sense of puzzling pressure readings from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico on Friday, trying to determine whether BP's capped oil well was holding tight or in danger of springing a new leak.

No immediate leaks were spotted, which was encouraging. But midway through the testing period on the new temporary cap that was bottling up the crude inside the well, the pressure readings were not rising as high as expected, said retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government's point man on the crisis.

Allen said two possible reasons were being debated by scientists: The reservoir that is the source of the oil could be running lower than expected three months into the spill. Or there could be an undiscovered leak somewhere down in the well. Allen ordered further study but remained confident.

"This is generally good news," he said. But he cautioned, "We need to be careful not to do any harm or create a situation that cannot be reversed."

He said the testing would go on into the night, at which point BP may decide whether to reopen the cap and allow some oil to spill into the sea again.

"No news is good news, I guess that's how I'd say it," Kent Wells, a BP PLC vice president, said on a conference call two hours after Allen spoke.

Wells said pressure in the well was climbing slowly but in a manner that could indicate that the well has partially depleted itself.

Throughout the day, no one was declaring victory -- or failure. President Barack Obama cautioned the public "not to get too far ahead of ourselves," warning of the danger of new leaks "that could be even more catastrophic."

Even if the cap passes the test, more uncertainties lie ahead: Where will the oil already spilled go? How long will it take to clean up the coast? What will happen to the region's fishermen? And will life on the Gulf Coast ever be the same again?

"I'm happy the well is shut off, that there's a light at the end of the tunnel," said Tony Kennon, mayor of hard-hit Orange Beach, Ala. But "I'm watching people moving away, people losing their jobs, everything they've got. How can I be that happy when that's happening to my neighbor?"

On Thursday, BP closed the vents on the new, tight-fitting cap and finally stopped crude from spewing into the Gulf of Mexico for the first time since the April 20 oil-rig explosion that killed 11 workers and unleashed the spill 5,000 feet down.

With the cap working like a giant cork to keep the oil inside the well, scientists kept watch on screens at sea and at BP's Houston headquarters, in case the buildup of pressure underground caused new leaks in the well pipe and in the surrounding bedrock that could make the disaster even worse.

Pressure readings after 24 hours were about 6,700 pounds per square inch and rising slowly, Allen said, below the 7,500 psi that would clearly show the well was not leaking. He said pressure continued to rise between 2 and 10 psi per hour. A low pressure reading, or a falling one, could mean the oil is escaping.

But Allen he said a seismic probe of the surrounding sea floor found no sign of a leak in the ground.

Benton F. Baugh, president of Radoil Inc. in Houston and a National Academy of Engineering member who specializes in underwater oil operations, warned that the pressure readings could mean that an underground blowout could occur. He said the oil coming up the well may be leaking out underground and entering a geological pocket that might not be able to hold it.

But Roger N. Anderson, a professor of marine geology and geophysics at Columbia University, said the oil pressure might be rising slowly not because of a leak, but because of some kind of blockage in the well.

"If it's rising slowly, that means the pipe's integrity's still there. It's just getting around obstacles," he said. He added that "any increase in pressure is good, not bad."

The cap is designed to prevent oil from spilling into the Gulf, either by keeping it bottled up in the well, or by capturing it and piping it to ships on the surface. It is not yet clear which way the cap will be used if it passes the pressure test.

Either way, the cap is a temporary measure until a relief well can be completed and mud and cement can be pumped into the broken well deep underground to seal it more securely than the cap. The first of the two relief wells being drilled could be done by late July or August.

In a positive sign, work on the relief wells resumed Friday. The project had been suspended earlier this week for fear that the capping of the well could interfere with it.

There was no end in sight to the cleanup in the water and on shore. Somewhere between 94 million and 184 million gallons have spilled into the Gulf, according to government estimates.

In Orange Beach, Ala., long strands of white absorbent boom strung along the shore were stained chocolate brown after a fresh wave of BB-size tar balls washed up. Charter boat captains who can't fish because of the spill patrolled the shore, looking for oil slicks. Fishing guides spent their time ferrying Coast Guard personnel. A flotilla of fishing boats operating as skimmers plied the waters across the Gulf.

Click here for related content

Large sections of the Gulf Coast have been closed to fishing and shellfish harvesting. Many fishermen have been hired out by BP to do cleanup work.

Cade Thomas, a 38-year-old fishing guide from Pine, La., said the whole mentality of the place is different.

"It's all changed dramatically. The fishing stories aren't there," he said. "There's no stories to tell except where we went to today and how much oil we saw."

In Grand Isle, La., most of the summer rental cottages are vacant, tables at the single high-end seafood restaurant are empty, and souvenir shops are barely doing enough business to pay the bills. A hand-painted sign along the main road rechristens the tourist town "Grand Oil."

Folks are grateful the gusher has been stopped, but many say it is too late to save this summer. Thousands of tourists have gone elsewhere.

Scientists cannot say for certain what the long-term environmental effect will be. But long after the well is finally plugged, oil could still be washing up in marshes and on beaches as tar balls or patties.

There is also fear that months from now, those tar balls could move west to Corpus Christi, Texas, or travel up and around Florida to Miami or North Carolina's Outer Banks.

Tim Kerner, mayor of Lafitte, La., said the crisis isn't over by a long shot.

"There's millions and millions of gallons of oil out there, and they need to keep the fishermen working," he said. "We need to constantly have that boom up absorbing oil along the banks and hard boom in the bayous to protect the marshland. It's no time to pull back. It's time to continue to fight until we know it's over."

Kerner added: "I don't want everybody to think we won this battle. This battle's going to be ongoing for a while."

No oil leaking during test of BP's new cap

2010-07-15T15:33:00.001-05:00

HOUSTON — For the first time since the Gulf oil spill disaster started on April 20, the entire flow of oil was being contained Thursday as part of BP's pressure testing of a new cap, BP and federal officials said.

If the cap holds, the idea is to keep it on — and the flow checked — until a relief well can plug the blownout well in August.

If the cap does not hold, BP has added to its siphoning capacity and expects to be able to siphon up most if not all of the oil starting next week.

BP had slowly dialed down the flow as part of the pressure test. Engineers are now monitoring the pressure to see if the busted well holds.

BP Vice President Kent Wells said that oil stopped flowing into the water at 3:25 p.m. ET.

The federal Joint Information Center confirmed that the flow had stopped.

Pensacola, Florida

2010-07-12T16:59:00.001-05:00

My father-in-law lives in Pensacola and went to visit him this past weekend. While we were there we drove to the beach to check it out for ourselves. The beach was clean - no oil or tar balls to be seen. You couldn't see oil floating on the water but it looked murky - not the clear aqua blue we are used to seeing. It was a stormy afternoon and the water was far from calm so that may be why it was so dark. I've heard people say that you can smell the oil at the beach - no weird smells either.

Some oil spill events from Monday, July 12, 2010

2010-07-12T15:48:00.001-05:00

By The Associated Press © 2010 The Associated Press

July 12, 2010, 3:32PM

— A summary of events Monday, July 12, Day 83 of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill that began with the April 20 explosion and fire on the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon, owned by Transocean Ltd. and leased by BP PLC, which is in charge of cleanup and containment. The blast killed 11 workers. Since then, oil has been pouring into the Gulf from a blown-out undersea well.

NEW CAP
Undersea robots maneuvered a mile beneath the Gulf to delicately lower a new, tighter-fitting cap over BP's busted well — a fix the oil giant hopes can finally stop the leak after nearly three months. The new cap, a 150,000-pound metal stack, was about 300 feet from where it's supposed to be installed on top of the leaking well, BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said. A swarm of remote-controlled robots moved around heavy equipment near the seafloor on live video provided online by BP. It was not clear how close the cap was to the well, but Suttles said the operation was complex and could take longer than they expect.
NEXT STEP
BP's new cap is designed to snap into place atop the well, held by a connecting piece that was installed overnight on top of the well pipe, said Eric Smith, associate director of the Tulane Energy Institute. Once the cap is firmly in place, the company will begin closing perforated pipe at the top to see if the pressure rises inside the cap. If it does, that means there are no other leaks, and the cap is stopping oil from leaking into the Gulf. lower pressure readings may indicate leaking elsewhere in the well. In that case, Suttles said, the company will work to collect the leak with surface vessels and by dropping yet another cap on top of the stack. The testing should last about 48 hours, Suttles said.
STILL FLOWING
Oil could still be seen flowing freely from the top of the well where the cap will be attached. BP executive Suttles was careful to keep expectations grounded, stressing that once the cap is in place, it will take days to know whether it can withstand the pressure of the erupting oil and feed it through pipes to surface ships. The cap and vessels together make up BP's plan to stop oil from spewing into the Gulf for the first time since April 20.
MORATORIUM
The Obama administration was issuing a new revised moratorium on offshore drilling Monday. Two administration officials have told The Associated Press of the plans. Both requested anonymity so as not to pre-empt the official announcement. Last week, a federal appeals court rejected the government's effort to restore its initial offshore deepwater drilling moratorium, which halted the approval of any new permits for deepwater projects and suspended drilling on 33 exploratory wells. It was first rejected last month by U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said at the time that he would issue a new, refined moratorium.
COMMISSION
The presidential panel that is supposed to find out the cause of the Gulf oil spill is starting by focusing more on the response and impact. Monday was the start of a two-day New Orleans hearing by the National Oil Spill Commission. Amid interruptions by protesters, the talk from oil executives, experts and regular people was more about the aftermath of the spill than why it happened. Commissioners say that's by design. They want to know the disaster's impact.
MICHELLE OBAMA
First lady Michelle Obama arrived in Florida on Monday to meet with local community leaders and tourism officials. The Panhandle city recently opened a new international airport to draw additional tourists to the area, but the oil spill has kept many away — even though pollution on local beaches has been minor so far.
DRILLING REGULATOR
The former federal prosecutor who now heads the government agency that oversees offshore drilling says he is not afraid to fine lawbreaking oil companies or even put some executives in jail. But Michael Bromwich says he is not an anti-drilling zealot and will probably take actions that upset both industry groups and those who oppose drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and other sites. Bromwich says he comes at the matter straight down the middle. He spoke with The Associated Press in his first interview since being sworn in last month as head of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement — formerly the Minerals Management Service.
EMERGENCY CHECKS
The head of the $20 billion oil spill compensation fund says individuals filing claims will soon begin receiving six-month emergency checks instead of monthly payments. Appearing in Pensacola Beach on Monday, fund administrator Kenneth Feinberg said the company will start paying individuals in six-month payments in the next couple of weeks. Feinberg also said there's no reason for individuals affected by the massive Gulf of Mexico spill to file lawsuits — at least not yet. Feinberg urged claimants to see how much he'd be able to pay them for before suing.
BEACH CONCERTS
BP's oil money may pay for a series of free beach concerts to lure tourists to the Alabama coast, where the Gulf spill has wrecked the summer season. Jimmy Buffett gave a free show on the beach Sunday that drew thousands to Gulf Shores. Officials say they hope to follow up with more big-name performers through the fall. Buffett performed for free and promoters hope other artists would also donate their time. Promoters say acts may include country singers Faith Hill and Zac Brown and soft rocker Jack Johnson. The money for staging the shows would come from funding BP gave Alabama and other Gulf states to promote tourism hurt by the oil company's massive spill. BP's tourism grant to Alabama was $15 million, of which $3.5 million paid for the Buffett concert.
BABY ANIMALS
The smallest victims are the biggest challenge for crews rescuing birds fouled with oil from the Gulf of Mexico spill. There's no way to know how many chicks have been killed by the oil, or starved because their parents were rescued or died struggling in a slick. Chicks come in cold because oil has matted down the fluffy down that's meant to keep them warm. They must be warmed quickly just to survive long enough to be cleaned. And the youngest pelican chicks must be taught to eat. On the other hand, baby sea turtles — the vast majority of more than 100 rescued — are much easier to handle than adults. The babies weigh only a few pounds, while the two adults brought in weighed 85 and 150 pounds.

Oil spill confirmed to be in seabed off Alabama coast

2010-07-02T20:35:00.001-05:00

Published: Thursday, July 01, 2010, 8:50 PM

The Associated Press

View full size(Press-Register/Mike Kittrell)Vacationers from Arkansas play in the Gulf near the Romar Beach public access Thursday, July 1, 2010, in Orange Beach, Ala. A state official said oil has been confirmed to be in the seafloor off Alabama.

BAYOU LA BATRE, Ala. -- Alabama Conservation Commissioner Barnett Lawley says officials have found oil on the seabed just off the state's coast, confirming fears that the Gulf oil spill could be doing more damage than is readily apparent from the surface.
Barnett said Thursday that nets used by the state to determine what's on the bottom pulled up submerged oil and shrimp as recently as last week.
Scientists have said the massive spill off the coast of Louisiana could be contaminating the seafloor as badly or even worse than surface waters, and the discovery by the state indicates those predictions could be correct.
Large areas of oxygen-depleted water also have been found.
Lawley says the testing will continue to determine the extent of underwater pollution.

Whale sharks may be latest Gulf oil spill victims

2010-07-02T20:21:00.001-05:00

Fri Jul 2, 2010 11:32pm GMT

* Whale sharks swimming alongside oil in search of food
* Big fish could sink, leaving unknown death toll
* Large gathering of whale sharks seen in northern Gulf

By Leigh Coleman

OCEAN SPRINGS, Miss., July 2 (Reuters) - Whale sharks, the biggest fish in the sea, may be the latest victims of the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
Officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported this week that four of the polka-dotted creatures, stretching about 40 feet (12 metres) long, had been spotted swimming alongside oil in search of food.
Since whale sharks are filter feeders -- scooping up plankton and small fish with their gaping mouths as they swim just beneath the surface -- scientists are concerned they will swallow large amounts of toxic oil and die.
"The problem is that these are surface feeding animals and if they digest the oil they will sink and we will not know how many are dying," said Dr. Eric Hoffmayer, who has studied whales in the northern Gulf for the University of Southern Mississippi.
"I don't think there is any question we're going to lose whale sharks to this oil spill. That's why we need to tag these sharks so that we can determine how they are impacted by the oil," Hoffmayer told Reuters on Friday.
Hoffmayer spent three days on the Gulf where he and other researchers discovered an extraordinary gathering of more than 100 feeding whale sharks about 90 miles (145 km) south of Grand Isle, Louisiana.
The site where they were feeding was about 60 miles (95 km) west of BP Plc's (BP.L) (BP.N) blown-out Macondo well off the Louisiana coast and the gathering of whale sharks was among the largest seen in the northern Gulf of Mexico, Hoffmayer said.
In addition to the danger inherent in swallowing oil, it could cause untold harm to the giant but vulnerable fish when they force the water they feed on, after it is sucked into their mouths, to filter out through their gills.
HABITAT DISAPPEARING
Hoffmayer and a team of marine scientists came up with a plan on Thursday to tag the sharks so they can track their movements and hopefully find out if oil is being digested.
One of the big problems, he said, is that there is no known way of steering the whale sharks away from oil contaminated areas of the Gulf.
Marine scientists in Mississippi are hoping to save other species from the oil, which breached Mississippi's mainland this week for the first time since the April 20 BP well blow-out.
"This is like a forest fire in the Gulf," said Moby Solangi of the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Gulfport, Mississippi.
"The oil is spreading so fast through their habitat it is disappearing," Solangi said.
He said he and his team had rescued hundreds of oil-covered sea turtles and are making room at a facility run by the institute for dolphins that may succumb to the oil.
"Now that the oil is here in Mississippi the animals are running and there is nowhere to go," Solangi said.
"The problem we all face now is how to rebuild nature. People have the Red Cross and such to rebuild their lives after a disaster but dolphins, whales, turtles and everything in the Gulf have nothing but their own habitat, which is now in jeopardy." (Editing by Mohammad Zargham)
© Thomson Reuters 2010. All rights reserved. Users may download and print extracts of content from this website for their own personal and non-commercial use only. Republication or redistribution of Thomson Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters and its logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of the Thomson Reuters group of companies around the world.

BP says relief well meant to stop oil spill getting closer to target

2010-06-28T12:36:00.001-05:00

Published: Monday, June 28, 2010, 11:10 AM

The Associated Press

View full size This Times-Picayune graphic shows how relief wells are being driven to help stop the leak at the Deepwater Horizon site by relieving pressure through an alternative outlet source for the oil field.

HOUSTON -- BP says the rig drilling the relief well that's the best hope of stopping the Gulf oil spill has made it within about 20 feet horizontally of the blown-out well that's gushing crude.

BP Senior Vice President Kent Wells said today that the rig is going to drill an additional 900 feet down before crews cut in sideways and start pumping in heavy mud to try to stop the flow from the damaged well. It's currently about 16,770 feet down.

Wells says BP is moving extremely cautiously to make sure everything is lined up correctly and the relief well is still on target to be finished by early August. A second well is being drilled as a backup.

Wells says the company has a high degree of confidence in the relief wells.

(Associated Press Writer Harry R. Weber wrote this report.)

Oil spill makes first landfall on Mississippi mainland, hits Alabama beaches

2010-06-28T12:32:00.001-05:00

Published: Monday, June 28, 2010, 5:00 AM

George Altman, Press-Register

View full size(Joshua Dahl, Correspondent)Patches of oil and tar balls started washing up by Gulf Park Estates Pier in Ocean Springs, MS on Sunday, June 27, 2010.

Countless patches of light oil sheen moved into waters north of the barrier islands of Alabama and Mississippi on Sunday, as brown and orange blobs washed ashore from Orange Beach to as far west as Ocean Springs.

Boats worked to corral iridescent sheen just north of Dauphin Island's Katrina cut Sunday morning.

A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast for Sunday showed the main body of light oil completely surrounding Dauphin Island for the first time since oil started pouring into the Gulf of Mexico in late April.

On Saturday, cleanup workers collected some 2,700 pounds of tarballs from the island's west end, according to a report obtained by the Press-Register, and oil continued to land on the beach in that area Sunday.

But on the island's east end, there was very little sign of oil. A few dozen people sat on the public beach, sunbathing or reading, and several swam in the Gulf.

Dauphin Island is on the "front line" of the spill, Mayor Jeff Collier said Sunday.

"We've now entered the new normal," Collier said. "It's like, here we go again."

Collier added that the oil isn't coming in one big, solid blob but instead in patches scattered throughout Gulf of Mexico waters.

Oil sightings

Orange Beach: Oil hit the shores of Romar Beach Access and the Perdido Beach resort, according to an aerial survey.

Gulf Shores: Double red flags were flying at the public beach, where high tide brought in orange streams of oil, according to Brown. A large accumulation of oil was spotted about 12 miles offshore, and a major effort was under way Sunday with many skimmer boats working to clean the slick, he said. There was a faint smell of oil in the air and only scattered tourists on the beach Sunday, he said.

Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge: A few tarballs washed ashore, but there were no new major impacts, according to Bonnie Strawser, Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge spokeswoman. She said the area gets tarballs almost every day.

Fisher River and Weeks Bay: Fish River-Marlow Fire Chief Gib Hixon said Fish River was very clean on Sunday. On Friday, boats skimmed oil sheen about 400 yards for the mouth of Weeks Bay, which has been barricaded with barges and boom.

Dauphin Island: Large amounts of oil continued to land on the west end, with oil appearing in smaller amounts across the island's shores.

Magnolia Springs, Fairhope, Daphne, Spanish Fort, Bayou La Batre, Coden: There were no reports of oil by Sunday afternoon.

During an aerial survey conducted Sunday morning by the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary, such patches could be seen close to Alabama beaches all the way from Mississippi to the border with Florida. Hundreds of boats worked to gather and skim the oil.

Most of the oil came in the form of light sheen with occasional patches of orange mousse. Thicker patches of dark brown oil were spotted in the Gulf about five miles south of Little Lagoon.

Dark brown oil was also washing up in the surf on Dauphin Island's west end.

Recreational fishermen were out in force on Mobile Bay, and the surface waters of the upper and middle bay appeared to be free of oil. A long sheet of light sheen extended from the mouth of the bay near Fort Morgan north into the lower bay.

In Bayou Saint John, boom boats and skimmers were picking up oil that had seeped through Perdido Pass.

Since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank into the sea in April, the BP-owned well one mile below has spewed oil at a rate of between 1.5 and 2.5 million gallons per day.

The company is siphoning some of the leaking crude, but a permanent solution isn't expected until at least August, when BP hopes to complete two relief wells.

A report in Britain's Sunday Times quoted unnamed sources who said that BP could actually complete the relief wells and stop the leak by mid-July. A BP spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on the matter Sunday.

The NOAA forecast for Sunday, which was released late Saturday night, showed Mississippi's Petit Bois Island completely surrounded by light oil, with oil around all but the western end of Horn Island and making landfall in Pascagoula.

A NOAA map also showed the slick jutting well into Mobile Bay, farther north than the intersection of State Roads 188 and 193.

By Tuesday, NOAA predicted, oil will retreat south from Mobile Bay but encroach on the mainland of south Mobile County, near Portersville Bay. The slick is also projected to surround Mississippi barrier islands further west.

Far to the south Sunday, a weakened Alex re-entered the Gulf of Mexico, downgraded from a tropical storm to a tropical depression after striking Belize and Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.

A floating city springs up to contain Gulf spill

2010-06-28T09:06:00.002-05:00

Site of the Deepwater Horizon disaster is now a roaring industrial complex

Saul Loeb / AFP - Getty Images

More than 60 vessels are trying to capture the oil, burn it and disperse it while two giant rigs are drilling relief wells in the Gulf of Mexico.

by Joel Achenbach

updated 6/28/2010 4:47:41 AM ET

Dead ahead through the helicopter windshield, it appears like a mirage at the hazy horizon: a city in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico.

A city on fire.

Just a few months ago, the site of the disaster, 42 miles from the last marsh grass at the very tip of the Mississippi River Delta, boasted a solitary drilling rig called Deepwater Horizon. Now that rig rests upside down in the mud at the bottom of the gulf, and in its place is a roaring industrial complex, an emergency operation unlike anything in the history of the petroleum industry.

More than 60 vessels are trying to capture the oil, burn it, disperse it, whatever it takes, while two giant rigs are drilling relief wells and officials keep their eyes on the weather reports, racing to kill the leaking well before a hurricane forces everyone to scatter to calmer waters.

This waterworld is hot, noisy and dangerous. Two flares create hypnotic focal points for the flotilla. The drill ship Discoverer Enterprise, parked directly on top of the well that exploded on April 20, is capturing oil from the well and burning gas separately. The other flare, larger, brighter, looking like an umbrella of fire turned on its side, shoots from a pipe on the well-servicing rig Q4000, which is burning both oil and gas.

If the weather turns violent, all this will have to be hastily disassembled. Right now there's a storm in the southern gulf, named Alex, the first named Atlantic tropical storm of the season , but it is moving west and appears to be on a path to spare the Deepwater Horizon site.

Officials remain anxious. Forecasters say it will be a busy storm season. This makeshift city can't ride out a major storm. The Enterprise will need up to five days of warning before gale-force winds arrive to decouple from the well that BP named Macondo, after the fictional city in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude." Ships and rigs will sail away, leaving the well to gush freely until they return.

Among the vessels that would have to leave are the two enormous rigs that are drilling relief wells, which are critical to killing the Macondo well. Development Driller III was the first to begin operations, and it has burrowed more than 11,000 feet below the sea floor, homing in on the blown-out well. It can already pick up magnetic signals from Macondo's steel casing.

The second, Transocean's Development Driller II, started later and isn't as deep yet. It is 324 feet by 258 feet, dominated by a 228-foot derrick. It is here that a handful of journalists dropped in this weekend for a tour of disaster-response life.

Video: Oil-soiled Gulf still leery of storms

"We want to get this thing done so bad — it hurts. But you can only do it at a certain pace," said Mitchell Bullock, 61, the BP well-site leader, a job that more traditionally is known as "the company man." As with the Deepwater Horizon, this rig is leased by BP but is largely staffed by Transocean employees.

Even though this is an emergency operation, performed under the heat lamp of global media attention, it is also business as usual. There is no sense of crisis. The people on the rig are doing what they do best: drilling a well. They're making a hole in the bottom of the sea.

Jeremy Marts, 31, is a driller, operating out of the auxiliary drill shack. It's air-conditioned, with a glass top, protected by steel grating, that offers a view of 149 sections of drill pipe racked to the rafters, each pipe 122 feet long, at 34 pounds per foot: heavy-duty stuff that's ready to be linked together for the miles-long drilling operation.

"It's just a process that takes time," Marts said. "It doesn't happen overnight. We're out here, drilling a well. That's our focus. I wake up in the morning, my focus is to keep all these guys safe for the 12 hours I'm working."

Twelve hours on, twelve hours off — that's the schedule. There's foosball in the rec room. There's a Wii. There's TV and Internet. Two workout rooms, one for cardio, one with weights. Steak nights are Saturday and Tuesday; Friday is seafood and Sunday is fried chicken.

'Horseplay' prohibited This is an entirely planned environment. No drinking, no drugs, smoking only in designated areas. Clothes must be clean in the accommodations areas. No oily coveralls in the mess hall. No loud noises near the sleeping compartments. A training video declares that "horseplay" is absolutely prohibited.

"You spend half your life out here. Your co-workers become like family," said Tommy Lenoir, 46, a BP health and safety representative on the rig.

Robert Robinson, a rig safety training coordinator, calls Richmond home. His 5-year-old son, Mason, doesn't grasp what's going on, but his 10-year-old, Ty, knows that "Daddy's rig is trying to stop the leak," Robinson said. "He thinks it's pretty cool."

Matt Michalski, the rig's master, is 32 and has the easygoing nature of a surfer dude. No accident, that: When he choppers back to terra firma, he beelines for the New Orleans airport and, after changing planes in Houston, is in San Diego and then is riding the Pacific waves -- all in the same day.

What do fellow surfers think of what he's doing?

The relief wells are all-important for ending the gushing-geyser phase of the crisis. The idea is to send mud, then cement, to the root of the well, clogging the hole at the base before the rising hydrocarbons gain momentum. At the well's bottom, the oil and gas are moving like a train easing out of the station; by the time they reach the lower pressures at the top of the well, they're barreling along the tracks at top speed.

The endgame is tricky. No one knows the condition of the well bore deep below the gulf. It's conceivable that the bottom of the well has eroded around the steel casing, said Charles West, a geophysicist who has consulted for the petroleum industry and worked on relief wells. If that's the situation, he said, drilling into the casing would be "like trying to chase a strand of spaghetti around with a spoon."

That would force the drillers to back up and aim a bit higher on the well. Finding the target is critical. The drill bit can't turn on a dime; if it misses, it will have to be backed up for another approach.

Click here for related content

"They got to get it right," said Chris Wokowsky, 49, the offshore installation manager and Transocean's top guy on the rig.

He looks relaxed, confident. This is a steady operation, literally so: You can't even tell, moment to moment, that the rig is floating. Peer over a handrail and you can see, below the water, the white outline of giant pontoons that keep the rig afloat. Eight thrusters on the four corners continuously adjust to wind and wave to keep the rig positioned within a foot of where it is supposed to be.

A digital display on the bridge shows the distances to all the other vessels. The Enterprise is 0.45 miles away; the Q4000 is 0.63 miles; the DD3 is 0.47 miles. There are 64 ships within five miles.

Plus two robotic submarines nearly a mile below. Dean Miller is the submersible operator. "We regularly see deep-sea rays, squid, octopus," said Miller, 33 and British. At a reporter's request, he joysticks a sub to take a broad view of the blowout preventer on top of the well. It's a huge structure. Intact. The riser emerges from the top. This is what these things are supposed to look like.

The tour over, the visitors return to the helipad. The chopper rises and makes a half-circle around the city on the water, the roar of the flares drowned out by the thumping of the rotors. The flight crosses the vast oil slick, which is capricious, sometimes forming vast swaths of silver-gray sheen, other times streaking the surface with red-orange tendrils. The oil is invisible from some angles; from others it goes on and on into the distance, no end in sight.

Crude Oil Fact Sheet

2010-06-24T21:37:00.001-05:00

Crude oil contains hundreds of chemicals, comprised primarily of hydrogen and carbon (e.g., simple straight chain paraffins, aromatic ring structures, naphthenes), with some sulfur, nitrogen, metal, and oxygen compounds (see Table D-1 in CDC, 1999 linked below). Crude oil composition varies slightly by its source, but its toxic properties are fairly consistent. Chemicals such as benzene and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are very toxic components of crude oil and of high concern. These and other chemicals are volatile, moving from the oil into air. Once airborne, they blow over the ocean for miles, reaching communities far from the oil spill. They can be noticed as petroleum odors. Those working on the spill and people far from it can be exposed to crude oil chemicals in air.

We have prepared 1 page summaries for the public and for workers. You can download and print them.

www.sciencecorps.org/crudeoilhazards-public.pdf

www.sciencecorps.org/crudeoilhazards-workers.pdf

Chemicals being applied to the water, such as dispersants, are also of concern. We don't have chemical composition details at this time, so can't provide information on health hazards, beyond noting that most are reported to contain petroleum distillates, which pose health hazards when aspirated. See EPA's summary of oil spill response products (March 2010): http://www.epa.gov/emergencies/docs/oil/ncp/notebook.pdf

Exposure

Exposure can occur through skin contact, inhalation of contaminated air or soil, and ingestion of contaminated water or food. These can occur simultaneously. Exposure pathways may result in localized toxicity (e.g., irritation of the skin following contact), but most health effects are systemic because ingredients can move throughout the body. Exposure varies based on the duration and concentrations in contaminated media. Differences may result from location, work and personal activities, age, diet, use of protective equipment, and other factors. Concurrent exposure to other toxic chemicals must be considered when evaluating toxic effects. Some chemicals in crude oil are volatile, moving into air easily, and these can often be detectable by smell.

Basic Physiological Effects

Crude oil is a complex mixture of chemicals that have varying abilities to be absorbed into the body through the skin, lungs, and during digestion of food and water. Most components of crude oil enter the bloodstream rapidly when they are inhaled or swallowed. Crude oil contains chemicals that readily penetrate cell walls, damage cell structures, including DNA, and alter the function of the cells and the organs where they are located. Crude oil is toxic, and ingredients can damage every system in the body:

respiratory nervous system, including the brain

liver reproductive/urogenital system

kidneys endocrine system

circulatory system gastrointestinal system

immune system sensory systems

musculoskeletal system

Damaging or altering these systems causes a wide range of diseases and conditions. In addition, interference with normal growth and development through endocrine disruption and direct damage to fetal tissue is caused by many crude oil ingredients (CDC, 1999). DNA damage can cause cancer and multi-generational birth defects.

Acute Exposure Hazards - brief exposure at relatively high levels [1]

Crude oil contains many chemicals that can irritate the skin and mucous membranes on contact. Irritant effects can range from slight reddening to burning, swelling (edema), pain,and permanent skin damage. Commonly reported effects of acute exposure to crude oil through inhalation or ingestion include difficulty breathing, headaches, dizziness, nausea, confusion, and other central nervous system effects. These are more likely to be noticed than potentially more serious effects that don't have obvious signs and symptoms: lung, liver and kidney damage, infertility, immune system suppression, disruption of hormone levels, blood disorders, mutations, and cancer.

Chronic Exposure Hazards - long-term exposure at relatively low levels

This type of exposure should be avoided, if at all possible, because the potential for serious health damage is substantial. Chronic health effects are typically evaluated for specific crude oil components (see CDC, 1999), and vary from cancer to permanent neurological damage. They cover a range of diseases affecting all the organ systems listed above.

Susceptible Subgroups

Children are vulnerable to toxic chemicals in crude oil that disrupt normal growth and development. Their brains are highly susceptible to many neurotoxic ingredients. Endocrine disruptors in crude oil can cause abnormal growth, infertility, and other health conditions. Children's exposures may be higher than adults and can include contaminated soil or sand. Newborns are especially vulnerable due to incompletely formed immune and detoxification systems.

Many people with medical conditions are more susceptible to crude oil toxicity because chemical ingredients can damage organ systems that are already impaired. Specific susceptibilities depend on the medical condition (e.g., inhalation poses risks for those with asthma and other respiratory conditions).

People taking medications that reduce their detoxification ability, and those taking acetaminophen, aspirin, haloperidol, who have nutritional deficiencies or who concurrently drink alcohol may be more susceptible. Some inherited enzyme deficiencies also increase susceptibility (listed in CDC, 1999).

People exposed to other toxic chemicals at work or home may be at higher risk.

Pregnancy places increased stress on many organ systems, including the liver, kidneys, and cardiovascular system. Chemicals in crude oil that are toxic to these same systems can pose serious health risks. Pregnancy also requires a careful balance of hormones to maintain a health pregnancy and healthy baby. Endocrine disruptors in crude oil can jeopardize the hormone balance.

The developing fetus is susceptible to the toxic effects of many chemicals in crude oil. Many cause mutations, endocrine disruption, skeletal deformities, and other types of birth defects.

Personal and Public Protection

It is critical that people who work with or around crude oil wear appropriate personal protective equipment such as gloves, masks, respirators, and water repellant clothing, to minimize exposure. The necessary equipment will depend on the kind of exposure that can occur (dermal, inhalation, ingestion). See OSHA guidance at OSHA 2010 link below. Susceptible members of the public require notice when exposure may occur (e.g., when contaminated air masses move inland) so they can take protective actions.

Latest blunder feeds frustration in the Gulf

2010-06-24T21:17:00.001-05:00

Sheets of oil close Florida beach, near Mississippi islands

The Associated Press

updated 8:31 p.m. CT, Thurs., June 24, 2010

NEW ORLEANS - Earlier this month, BP boldly predicted the oil gushing from the bottom of the sea would be reduced to a "relative trickle" within days, and President Barack Obama told the nation last week that as much as 90 percent would soon be captured. But those goals seemed wildly optimistic Thursday after yet another setback a mile underwater.

A deep-sea robot bumped into the cap collecting oil from the well, forcing a temporary halt Wednesday to the company's best effort yet to contain the leak. The cap was back in place Thursday, but frustration and skepticism were running high along the Gulf Coast.

BP's pronouncements have "absolutely no credibility," Jefferson Parish Councilman John Young said. The latest problem shows "they really are not up to the task and we have more bad news than we have good news."

Even before the latest setback, the government's worst-case estimates suggested the cap and other equipment were capturing less than half of the oil leaking from the sea floor. And in recent days, the "spillcam" video continued to show gas and oil billowing from the blown-out well.

BP officials said they sympathized, and laid out in new detail the company's plans to have additional ships in place that can capture even more oil.

"For BP, our intent is to restore the Gulf the way it was before it happened," BP managing director Bob Dudley, who has taken over the company's spill operations, said in Washington.

In other developments:

The spill began arriving in sheets of oil on the Florida coast, forcing the first closing of a beach in the state since the accident more than nine weeks ago, and fouled some of Mississippi's most fertile coastal waters.

The federal judge who struck down the Obama administration's six-month ban on deep-water drilling in the Gulf refused to stay his ruling while the government appeals.

Environmental groups asked the court to release additional information about U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman's holdings in oil-related stocks.

Dudley said BP had asked James Lee Witt, director of the Federal Emergency Management Administration during President Bill Clinton's administration, to review its response to the oil spill and recommend improvements.

At nearly every important juncture since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded April 20, killing 11 workers, the government's and BP's estimates on the size of the spill, its effect on wildlife and the time frame for containing it have spectacularly missed the mark.

Video: BP clean-up chief: 'This spill is going to change the industry'

On June 8, BP chief operating office Doug Suttles said the spill should be reduced to a "relative trickle" in less than a week. BP later said it would take more time for the spill to reach a trickle.

Obama used the 90 percent figure last week in his first address from the Oval Office and after meeting with BP officials at the White House, saying the company had informed him that was how much of the oil could be kept out of the water within weeks.

"It just doesn't look like that's in the cards," said Ed Overton, a retired professor of environmental science at Louisiana State University. "We're not even close to that, and the word today is that they were capturing less than the day before. I was hoping the president knew something that the rest of us didn't know."

BP said Thursday it was gradually ramping back up to capture about 700,000 gallons a day with the cap, and burning off an additional 438,000 a day using an incinerator ship. Worst-case government estimates are that about 2.5 million gallons are leaking from the well, though no one really knows for sure.

"This is a disaster that (has) a very low probability of happening to any oil company. It has happened," BP managing director Bob Dudley, who has taken over the company's spill operations, told NBC News on Thursday. "We need to pull it apart piece by piece by piece, undertsand what happened, learn from it, disseminate that knowledge around the world and through the industry so that it never ever happens again."

By mid- to late July, the company hopes to have the capacity to capture up to 3.3 million gallons a day, if that much is flowing, Curry said.

Video: Summer heat slows oil cleanup efforts

It cannot all be done immediately, Curry said, because the logistics of positioning four giant ships capable of collecting oil and connecting them to the seafloor are complicated. "There's a limit to the number of ships in the world that do these type of things," he said.

None of those efforts is expected to stop the leak entirely. The soonest that would happen is August, which is when BP says relief wells being drilled through thousands of feet of rock beneath the seabed will reach the gusher.

That seemed a long way off to many.

In Florida, officials closed a quarter-mile stretch of Pensacola Beach not far from the Alabama line when thick pools of oil washed up, the first time a beach in the state has been closed because of the spill.

Lifeguard Collin Cobia wore a red handkerchief over his nose and mouth to block the oil smell. "It's enough to knock you down," he said.

In Mississippi, which has so far been largely spared from the spill, a large patch of oil oozed into Mississippi Sound, the fertile waters between the state's barrier islands and its mainland.

BP has its supporters, or at least those still giving it the benefit of the doubt.

"I think BP has done more than any oil company has ever done for this kind of spill," said Stephen "Scooter" Resweber, a 62-year-old councilman in Grand Isle, La. "If they are saying 90 percent, they must be pretty confident. That's putting your money where your mouth is."

Others weren't happy about the situation but declined to second-guess the BP engineers.

"I have no clue at all about the correct way to stop it," said Rocky Ditcharo, a seafood dock owner in Louisiana's Plaquemines Parish. "'Powerless' — that's a good word for it."

Meanwhile, judge Feldman refused Thursday to put on hold his decision that blocked the Obama administration from enforcing its six-month ban on deepwater oil drilling after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Feldman in New Orleans rejected a request by the Obama administration to stay his decision that allowed deepwater drilling to resume after the Department of Interior ordered it halted temporarily when the BP well began gushing oil more than two months ago.

The Obama administration can still ask the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit for a stay.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar had asked for a stay until his office could issue a new moratorium that fits within the parameters set out by the judge earlier this week.

Review of Alaska project
Also Thursday, Salazar said his department is reviewing BP's plans for a drilling project off Alaska.

"We are looking into the issue right now," Salazar told lawmakers at a Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee hearing, when asked about a New York Times report that BP's planned Liberty project may not have received sufficient environmental review.

Michael Bromwich, the head of the recently renamed Minerals Management Service, said his office has reached out to its regional office in Alaska to get more details about the project's oversight.

The Times quoted federal government scientists who questioned a 2007 exemption granted to BP to proceed with its Liberty field, which is to be drilled from an island built by BP three miles off Alaska's shoreline in the Beaufort Sea.

"The whole process for approving Liberty was bizarre," one of the scientists said.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37899120/ns/disaster_in_the_gulf/

MSN Privacy . Legal

BP Oil Spill Comes Ashore Florida's Pensacola Beach

2010-06-24T09:15:00.002-05:00

by Andrew Hickey

Pensacola Beach covered in oil

Wednesday morning Pensacola Beach residents awoke to "beach closed" signs and miles of oil covering their usual pristine white sand shoreline. It has been over eight weeks since the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe and the black gooey plague is ruining what is suppose to be a busy time for Florida tourism.

Hundreds of BP workers have been out in the scorching Florida summer heat cleaning the beaches while wearing heavy outfits to protect them from the oil's fumes.

About 25 miles away at Perdido Key, oil has also come ashore, with BP workers cleaning up eight tons of tar balls. While Florida Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Mike Sole says they have a lot of skimmers offshore preventing even more oil from creeping to the sandy beaches of Florida, more still needs to be done.

Florida says in order to keep their beaches clean they will need more cash from BP. However the oil company does not seem to want to return their phone calls. A meeting has been set up for Wednesday with the U.S. Coast Guard and BP in order to ensure the funds get into the hands of the people that need it the most as soon as possile.

Has the BP oil disaster changed your summer travel plans? Share with us what has or has not changed by leaving a comment below.

Thick pools of oil wash up along north Florida coast

2010-06-24T09:03:00.002-05:00

By Melissa Nelson, The Associated Press
9:30 AM EDT, June 24, 2010

PENSACOLA BEACH
Thick pools of oil washed up along miles of national park and Pensacola Beach shoreline Wednesday as health advisories against swimming and fishing in the once-pristine waters were extended for 33 miles east from the Alabama/Florida border.

Park rangers in the Gulf Islands National Seashore helped to rescue an oiled juvenile dolphin found beached in the sand. Bobbie Visnovske, a park ranger, said a family found the young female dolphin Wednesday morning. Wildlife officers carried the animal into shallow water for immediate resuscitation and later transported it to a rehabilitation center in Panama City about 100 miles to the east.

More than a dozen oil skimming boats worked just yards off of the once-white sands of Pensacola Beach Wednesday afternoon. The beach looked like it had been paved with a ribbon of asphalt about six-feet wide. The thick crude was unlike the matted tar balls that had washed up about two weeks earlier.

"It is very disappointing. It is not a pristine, white beach anymore. This used to be a place where you could come and forget about all your cares in the world," said Nancy Berry, who fought back tears as she watched her two grandsons play in the sand far from the shore line.

Dozens of workers in protective clothing used shovels Wednesday to scoop up the oil and orange-tinged sand. There were a few sunbathers at the beach, but no one was in the water.

Tar balls stretch as far east as Panama City and heavier oil is predicted to wash ashore further east along the coast line in the coming days.

Gov. Charlie Crist toured Pensacola Wednesday morning. Crist said he has called for more skimmers and was disheartened so much oil had slipped through the 24-hour skimming operation that had been under way in the area for weeks.

"We got to stay on top of this," he said.

But Crist said the problem was the vast amount of coastline that has to be protected as the thicker oil creeps east from the tip of Louisiana toward the Florida peninsula.

The governor wants to call a special session of the Legislature as early as July to address tax relief and other spill-related issues. Crist said he has the support of Panhandle legislators, but legislative leaders in areas so far unaffected by the spill have been uncooperative.

The Walton County Health Department issued a health advisory Wednesday afternoon, following a report by its emergency operations center of oil substances coming ashore along a six-mile stretch of beaches. Crews were dispatched immediately to begin the cleanup.

Escambia County health officials warned beachgoers not to wade in oily water, not to touch the oil and not to fish in oily water.

"Young children, pregnant women, people with compromised immune systems, and individuals with underlying respiratory conditions should avoid the area," the health warning said.

The oil had a chemical stench as it baked in the afternoon heat.

"It's pretty ugly, there's no question about it," Crist said.

Linda Stephens and her family said under a beach umbrella nearby and watched the governor and his entourage.

"It just makes you angry and made because all of this was man made," Stephens said. "The worst part is when you look at that bird flying over there and think about what might happen to it."

PCB Oilspill Update – Light Tarballs Continue to Wash Ashore

2010-06-23T13:10:00.002-05:00

by Jason Koertge on June 23, 2010 ·

It's been more than a week since the first signs of tarballs began washing up on our shores. Dime-size to baseball sized tarballs have been reported and cleaned up from the west end of Panama City Beach to as far east as St. Andrew's State Park.

"It's really not that bad."
The good news? What's coming ashore is small, somewhat solid and very easy to clean up. In fact, landfall so far as been so easy to clean up that no sign of tarballs in places they've been reported is found even within 4 hours of them being called into central command.
Quick cleanup.
Yesterday evening, tarballs were reported at 6 pm on the east and west side of the Russell Fields Pier (at Pier Park), this morning when I was there streaming live, there were crews walking up and down the beach, but no sign of tarballs. They had been cleaned up already.
This seems to be consistent with what I've been finding up and down the beach. Every time I've gone to where tarballs had been reported within 24 hours, I've found nothing, with the exception of .5 miles east of Pinnacle Port. I got there two hours after tarballs were reported and crews were there cleaning up when I arrived. When I get there, and the tarballs are gone, the beach looks just as pristine as it always has.
Our latest HD video.

We try to get a high-quality video shot and produced every three days. The goal with this video was to show you what the actual tarball material looked like, but we couldn't find any. Which was actually, pretty great. The scattered material you see all over the sand was June grass.
Plans to protect our waters.
Bay County just approved a plan to implement a robust booming system for the pass to keep it more navigable and enable us to have better protection for our inland waterways. I'll have more on this later, but this will be implemented starting today.
Right now crews in ATV's and on foot are constantly walking the beaches spotting for signs of oil or tarballs. When oil is spotted, it's radioed in and crews are dispatched to clean up. Clean up workers are wearing latex gloves and are putting the tarballs into small plastic bags.

Latest Gulf oil spill forecast:

2010-06-23T13:02:00.001-05:00

Coastal regions between Ship Island and Panama City are threatened by shoreline contacts

Published: Wednesday, June 23, 2010, 6:18 AM Updated: Wednesday, June 23, 2010, 6:24 AM

Press-Register staff

View full size

NOAA nearshore surface oil forecast: Moderate SE winds (7-12 kts) are forecast to continue through Wednesday then become E on Thursday/Friday. Trajectories indicate developing westward currents within the Mississippi Bight region will begin to inhibit further movement of the slick to the east. Coastal regions between Ship Island, MS and Panama City, FL are threatened by shoreline contacts within this forecast period. Under persistent SE and E winds, the Chandeleur Islands, Breton Sound and the Mississippi Delta are increasingly threatened by shoreline contacts in this forecast period.

Tar Balls on Panama City Beach

2010-06-19T23:00:00.001-05:00

06/19/10 - 06:24 PM
By: Allyson Walker

Bay County, Fla:
Bay County is seeing evidence of the deepwater horizon oil spill washing onto its very shores. Tar balls have been found on the west end of Panama City Beach.
Late Friday night and early Saturday tar balls begin to appear on the west end of Panama City beach.
Mark Bowen, Bay County Emergency Operations director admits that "…we weren't surprised by it. We went out quickly and picked up and disposed of a number of tar balls, took one of the tar balls back and put it on the spectrometer and it matched deepwater horizon."
According to the EOC, the sizes of the tar balls range from the size of a quarter to the size of a soda can.
Bowen says oil sheen is currently just west of Lake Powell. Of the tar balls found Friday night and Saturday morning, he says, most are gone "…an outgoing tide moved all of those tar balls back out into the surf or wherever they reside when we don't see them on our beach."
Bowen says that first responders did find a bird in distress on the beach, but it's unclear whether or not the animal had been contaminated with oil. According to Bay County's public information officer Valerie Lovett, a second wave of tar balls washed ashore Saturday afternoon.
BP representative Vani Rao says preparation is in Bay County's favor "…this county has been phenomenally prepared and proactive. We've also had the benefit of time. So anybody to the west of us has had to struggle with not having a good amount of time."
BP and Bay County are providing skimmers to help clean up oil sheen if and when it appears.
You are encouraged to report anything you think might be oil on the county's local hotline at 850-248-6030.
There have also been tar balls in parts of Walton County. The Walton County hotline is 850-267-2000.
Emergency operations for both Walton and Bay counties do not recommend handling tar balls or oil.
There are no beach closures at this time.

Panhandle keeping pace with tar ball landings

2010-06-19T22:59:00.001-05:00

BY LAURA FIGUEROA AND NIALA BOODHOO
lfigueroa@MiamiHerald.com

Saturday morning, the tide had taken care of most of the tar balls that washed up the night before on Panama City Beach. So the beaches of the Panhandle's spring break capital remained open, even as wary residents braced for the newest onslaught of oil to hit Florida's coastline. That, plus reports that BP CEO Tony Hayward had taken the day off to attend a yachting event off the United Kingdom's Isle of Wright, did not sit well with Florida beachgoers on Saturday.

``So the tar balls keep coming our way and he goes further away?'' said Amanda Landers, 23, a tourist visiting Panama City from Alabama. ``Why doesn't he bring his yacht to the Gulf coast, take a dive, and see what we're dealing with?''

On Saturday afternoon, Bay County officials reported finding an oiled bird. It was to be sent to a wildlife clean-up center in Pensacola.

Five miles off the coast, a skimmer worked to scoop up a nearly mile-long strip of oil sheen mixed with large globs of tar patties.

About 90 miles west, at Pensacola Beach, a ribbon of reddish oil mixed with seaweed and sea grass 20 miles from the coast, the Associated Press reported, adding that a black tip shark was spotted swimming through the toxic muck.

The patch of nearly 70 tar balls that washed up along the Panama City's most western end Friday night was the farthest east yet for remnants to reach Florida.

``I started praying for the wind to blow it in another direction,'' said Dawn Otwell, 43, as she lounged in a blue beach chair sipping a bottle of beer. ``From the fishing industry to the tourism industry, it's been really agonizing waiting to see what will happen.

Bay County officials collected samples, compared the tar balls to a piece from Pensacola and confirmed the Panama City samples were from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill site off Louisiana.

But when clean-up crews arrived Saturday morning to collect more globs of oil, ranging in size from a nickel to a quarter, they were mostly gone, said Valerie Lovett, spokeswoman for Bay County.

``Certainly we're relieved that we haven't experienced the impact seen by the counties to the west of us, but we're not taking that for granted,'' Lovett said. ``We're prepared as we can be for what's to come.

Despite the oil's eastward march, the state emergency task force said Saturday that there was no indication oil would go further than Florida's northwest panhandle within the next three days.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration projections for the next 72 hours predict more tar in already-impacted areas. But NOAA observations showed Saturday that no significant amounts of oil were moving towards the loop current, the oceanic pattern that could drag the oil from the Gulf of Mexico into the Atlantic.

Perdido Pass, Pensacola Pass and Destin Pass remained closed.

Along the western fringes of Panama City Beach, Carmen Roca, 35, and her son David, 4, scooped seashells into a bright orange pail.

``We watch the news everyday and so far we've been lucky,'' Roca said. ``I'll keep on bringing him until they say I can't. But for now we're just trying to enjoy this beautiful water.''

In Panama City, as of Friday night, two skimmers were working off the shores of Bay County, and the county had plans to privately hire 23 more skimmers to protects its bays.

Bay County has also contracted with a private company to provide additional boom to supplement what has already been provided by BP and the U.S. Coast Guard.

``We've had the benefit of having a little more time to plan than our neighbors to the west,'' Lovett said.

For the past week, the majority of the impact from the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion had been felt nearly 100 miles west of Panama City in Pensacola Beach and Perdido Bay in Escambia County.

By Wednesday and Thursday the neighboring panhandle counties of Santa Rosa, Okaloosa and Walton started to feel more of the impacts with tar balls and tar patties dotting the otherwise pristine white sand shorelines in those counties, too.

When pie-sized globs of tar patties started washing ashore along Okaloosa Island on the outskirts of Destin, the county's health department issued a day-long advisory warning swimmers to keep out of the water.

By Friday, with less of the sticky tar balls washing ashore, and fewer oil slick sighting close to the shore line, clean up efforts were scaled back along those counties' coast lines.

``It seems this is going to be the exhausting cycle of our summer,'' said Dino Villani, public safety director for Okaloosa County. ``As the waves pull things in we'll ramp up efforts, and as the waves pull back, we'll stay prepared for the next time.''

Figueroa reported from the Florida Panhandle, Boodhoo reported from Miami.

© 2010 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.miamiherald.com

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/06/19/v-print/1689663/panhandle-keeping-pace-with-tar.html#ixzz0rMWjnDWG

Costner's 'dream' machines debut

2010-06-19T22:39:00.000-05:00

Actor Kevin Costner, left, founding partner of Ocean Therapy Solutions and BP CEO of Operations Doug Suttles, center, talk before boarding the barge holding Ocean Therapy's centrifuge machine designed to separate oil and water in Port Fourchon, La., Friday.

Hollywood star Kevin Costner debuted Friday in his supporting role as a Gulf oil-spill fighter.

News agencies reported on the actor's premiere staged at the docks in the oil industry supply port of Port Fourchon in southern Louisiana as BP began deploying 32 of his "dream" machines to separate oil from water. Costner's backdrop was an oil-finding barge with his machines mounted on the deck.

"At its core, my dream, this machine, was designed ... to give us a fighting chance to fight back the oil that's got us by the throat," Costner told reporters.

"When you are in a fight, anybody knows you go to confront it right where it is. You don't wait for it to come to your door," the actor said.

Costner's company, Ocean Therapy Solutions, signed a contract with BP to provide 32 units expected to work in the next 60 days.

BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles would not disclose financial details.

Costner said each machine, called a V20, can separate 210,000 gallons of oily water a day.

Costner, best-known for such films as "Dances with Wolves" and "Waterworld," stressed he was no overnight oil spill sensation. He has been trying to employ the technology designed by his company for the past 17 years, and has invested more than $20 million of his own money in its development.

The technology was developed two decades ago by a researcher at the Idaho National Laboratory by scientist David Meikrantz, who initially sought to use the machines to separate the components of nuclear substances.

In 1993, INL licensed the technology to Ocean Therapy Solutions, a company owned by Costner.

BP CEO Tony Hayward Steps Down From Gulf Oil Spill Oversight

2010-06-18T22:41:00.000-05:00

By SAM GUSTIN Posted 2:01 PM 06/18/10 Energy, Company News, Economy, People, BP

Comments: 759Print Text Size A A A

It looks like BP (BP) CEO Tony Hayward will be getting his life back after all.

One day after he was grilled by Congress, the embattled oil executive will step down from day-to-day oversight over the Gulf oil spill, BP chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg said Friday.

Svanberg told Britain's Sky News that BP managing director Bob Dudley will take over management of the worst oil spill in U.S. history. He said that Hayward's performance -- which has been mired by repeated public gaffes -- had compounded BP's woes.

"It is clear Tony has made remarks that have upset people," Svanberg told Sky News.

Evasive Testimony

On Thursday, Hayward delivered vague and evasive testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in which he insisted he "wasn't involved" with the decisions leading up to Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion and thus "can't pass judgment on those decisions."

Svanberg said that Hayward's operational performance stopping the leak has been wanting. "Everyone thought it would be done faster," Svanberg said.

Two months after BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, killing 11 workers and injuring 17 others, millions of gallons of oil continue to spew into the Gulf of Mexico

Confidence in BP's Future

Svanberg also said that he will now be taking a more prominent role in an attempt to burnish the battered oil company's image. "This has now turned into a reputation matter -- financial and political -- and that is why you will now see more of me," Svanberg said. "As this is now turning to a different type of crisis, that is where I come in."

In the Sky News interview, Svanberg acknowledged that "America is frustrated. The fisherman, the people living on the Gulf Coast are frustrated."

Svanberg declined to say whether there would be a more substantial management change -- including Hayward's removal as CEO. Svanberg expressed confidence that the oil company would survive the crisis.

"I still strongly believe in BP and that we will come through this," he said.

$20 billion oil spill payout a drop in the bucket for giant BP, figures show

2010-06-17T17:02:00.001-05:00

Published: Thursday, June 17, 2010, 4:28 PM Updated: Thursday, June 17, 2010, 4:30 PM

The Associated Press

View full size(AP Photo/Susan Walsh)BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg, left, speaks to reporters outside the White House in Washington, Wednesday, June 16, 2010, after a meeting with President Barack Obama. Financial analysts say that worries that a $20 billion payout for an oil spill compensation fund might bankrupt the British oil giant should be unfounded given the companies large reserves, high profit and small amount of debt.

NEW YORK -- BP holds enough oil in its reserves to single-handedly supply the United States for two years. It has little debt for a company of its size and makes more money than Apple and Google combined.

So when the White House arm-twisted its executives into setting aside $20 billion for the Gulf oil spill, investors weren't worried it would bankrupt BP. They barely batted an eye.

"The U.S. government will become insolvent before BP does," said Bruce Lanni, a stock analyst with Nollenberg Capital Partners.

Sure, BP stock has crumpled in half in a matter of weeks. Creditors are demanding ever higher interest. But this time it's not some inscrutable, high-flying Wall Street bank in trouble.

BP posted $17 billion in profit from its vast operations around the globe last year, compared with $5.7 billion for Apple and $6.5 billion for Google. More important, in the past three years the company generated $91 billion in cash flow from operations.

It's not highly leveraged with debt, as banks were during the financial crisis. And it has 18 billion barrels of oil in proven reserves, twice what the U.S. consumes every year.

BP has spent about $1.8 billion on the spill so far, but that's the first drop in a very large bucket. If BP faces criminal charges, for instance, it could end up having to pay tens of billions in legal costs alone.

Analyst estimates of BP's total cost range from $17 billion to $60 billion. If the worst predictions about the leak come true, that figure could surpass $100 billion, based on a Goldman Sachs estimate that each barrel of oil spilled could wind up costing as much as $40,000 in cleanup and compensation.

Such a big bill, even at the lower end of the estimates, would drive many companies under. But analysts said BP probably won't have to go to that extreme unless it wants to wall off liabilities from the rest of its operations to attract potential suitors.

Under Wednesday's deal with the Obama administration, BP will suspend its dividend for the rest of 2010, freeing up $8 billion. The company also plans to raise $10 billion from selling some assets. Add cash lying around in bank accounts and in short-term investments and BP could raise $25 billion without breaking much of a sweat.

What's more, BP is expected to generate $30 billion this year in operating cash flow, assuming oil prices don't fall. Investors like to focus on this figure because, unlike profits, it ignores costs for which money never changes hands, like wear and tear on rigs.

Much of this operating cash has to be plowed back into the company, but some of that spending -- $21 billion last year -- is discretionary and could be cut. On Wednesday BP said it will trim planned outlays this year by $2 billion.

BP also has relatively little debt for a company of its size. That means it has plenty of wiggle room to borrow. In fact, it already has lined up $10 billion with banks if it needs it.

The caveat: If BP did need to issue bonds or take out a loan, it would have to pay above-market interest rates because the risks posed by the oil spill have tainted its credit rating.

Fear of the unknown has taken a toll on BP's stock.

With BP's deepwater well in the Gulf of Mexico still spewing oil two months after it exploded, trying to guess how much the company will have to cough up for cleanup and damages seems a fool's game.

And after watching other seemingly impregnable companies collapse over the past two years, investors are not in the mood for much uncertainty.

Cleanup, fines and lawsuits stemming from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill are likely to cost BP tens of billions of dollars. Yet many investment analysts say the British oil giant can survive the crisis. Here's a look at some of the costs BP faces, and a snapshot of its finances.

BP'S COSTS ADD UP:

-- It's already paid $1.8 billion.

-- Cleanup tab could hit $20 billion, assuming worst-case spill estimates.

-- If BP is found "negligent" under federal law, fines quadruple to $4,300 per barrel spilled, adding perhaps $20 billion to the bill.

-- BP agreed to put $20 billion into a fund to pay fisherman and other workers who've lost money.

-- Court cases could add tens of billions to cost, especially if criminal charges are filed.

BUT ITS FINANCES ARE STRONG:

-- Strong cash flow from operations, estimated at $30 billion for 2010.

-- Suspending dividend, tapping cash and selling assets frees up $25 billion this year.

-- It could tap $10 billion in debt already lined up with banks.

-- Because it has borrowed little so far, BP can easily hit up lenders for another $15 billion.

"We are living in an era where there is no such thing as too big to fail," said Stephen Leeb, president of the money manager Leeb Group. That specter, he said, makes BP "very scary" to investors.

BP's agreement to the $20 billion fund -- and President Barack Obama's pledge that the company is strong and should remain so -- seemed to calm investors a bit. But they still fret about BP's total tab.

Fresh estimates warn that as much as 2.5 million gallons of oil a day have been leaking into the Gulf -- triple what scientists thought just a week ago. Worried that BP is more likely now to stiff its lenders, Fitch Ratings recently knocked BP's credit score down six notches to triple B.

BP's stock price has plunged 46 percent since the April 20 explosion, wiping out $87 billion in shareholder wealth. It's more than most pessimistic stock analysts expect the company will have to pay.

And that's got some of them quite animated.

"It's overdone," said Philip Adams of Gimme Credit. Fadel Gheit of Oppenheimer & Co. captures BP's stock performance in one word: "Ridiculous."

Gheit predicts BP shares will hit $55 by the end of the next year, up nearly 75 percent from where it was trading Wednesday. Before the explosion, BP's stock was at about $60, valuing the company at $187 billion.

But despite BP's enormous wealth, even bulls worry its stock might fall further.

Among their concerns:

A sharp drop in oil prices.

Oil falling from $75 per barrel to $60 or $55 "would be far more destabilizing to the company than any potential claim it might face in the Gulf," Oppenheimer's Gheit said. BP's annual cash flow fluctuates by $450 million for every $1 change in oil, he estimated.

If oil prices fell, BP would be more likely to explore selling itself to Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell or Chevron or at least divest its U.S. operations, analysts said.

Washington could restrict BP in the U.S.

BP's willingness to set up a compensation fund seems to have converted Obama into more of an ally than an antagonist. On Wednesday, the president called the company "strong and viable," adding that it was "in all our interests that it remain so."

But there's still a risk that political backlash could restrict BP's operations in the U.S. and reduce its government contracts.

Though it operates in more than 80 countries, BP is heavily dependent on the U.S. Forty percent of its assets are in the country, and the company is the biggest energy provider to the U.S. military.

"If the government has a single-minded focus to be punitive, it could take this company down," said Lawrence Goldstein, a director of the Energy Policy Research Foundation.

Alex Morris of Raymond James said he expected politicians to be careful meting out punishment because the dependency is mutual, given the country's oil addiction.

"We're not going to ban them from the Gulf," he said, noting that BP is the biggest producer there. "It's hard to imagine our politicians telling them to pack their bags."

Hurricane trouble.

If BP doesn't plug the leak soon, it runs the risk that a big storm during hurricane season will wash more oil ashore and add to damages, said Argus Research analyst Phil Weiss.

For bulls on BP stock, the company's greatest asset may be time.

Cases involving major companies tend to drag on for years in the labyrinth of the U.S. legal system, and the complexity and stakes involved in the Gulf spill probably will lengthen the process even more. With more time to pay, BP can stagger its costs instead of absorbing them all in a single financial blow.

"I would be stunned if all the criminal and civil cases against BP are wrapped up before the end of this decade," said David Logan, dean of Roger Williams University's School of Law in Rhode Island.

BP may be able to stretch out payments even longer, if the Exxon Valdez spill is any measure. The tanker spilled 11 million gallons in Alaska in 1989, but it took nearly two decades for the courts to determine what the company had to pay.

Said Raymond James analyst Morris, "Anytime you have lawyers billable by the hour, you know it's going to drag out."

(AP Business Writers Bernard Condon and Michael Liedtke wrote this report, with contributions from Associated Press writers Harry Weber in Houston and Mark Williams in Columbus, Ohio. Liedtke reported from San Francisco.)

Gov. Bob Riley disappointed in Barack Obama's oil spill speech

2010-06-17T16:57:00.001-05:00

Published: Wednesday, June 16, 2010, 1:23 PM Updated: Wednesday, June 16, 2010, 1:25 PM

The Associated Press

View full size(Press-Register/John David Mercer)Gov. Bob Riley, seen here on Monday touring the Theodore Staging Facility with President Barack Obama, said Wednesday he was disappointed in the president oval office speech.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- Alabama's governor says he was disappointed by President Barack Obama's speech on the Gulf oil spill.
Gov. Bob Riley said the president spent too much time on a political agenda Tuesday night and not enough time talking about what's being done to resolve the spill.
Riley says Obama showed the same type of rhetorical persuasion that he's very good at, but now is not the time for that. Riley says it's time for specifics, such as how the Gulf states are going to get more cleanup equipment.

Yellow flags fly again in Gulf Shores allowing beachgoers to swim with caution, while Orange Beach continues swimming ban

2010-06-17T16:56:00.002-05:00

Published: Thursday, June 17, 2010, 2:25 PM Updated: Thursday, June 17, 2010, 3:09 PM

Russ Henderson

GULF SHORES, Ala. -- The double-red flags seen on the beaches of Gulf Shores on most days since oil began coming ashore heavily last week were taken down today and replaced with yellow flags, city officials said. But in Orange Beach, one red flag remained flying at the beaches.
A double red flag means the water is closed to swimming. A single red flag advises swimmers to stay out of the water. A yellow flag means that swimming is allowed, but that visitors should use caution, said Gulf Shores Public Works Director Mark Acreman.
"A flight over the beaches this morning didn't show any oil near the shore, and our lifeguards didn't see any threat today, so we opened the waters to swimming," Acreman said.
If oil begins coming ashore again, the lifeguards will again raise the double-red flags warning beachgoers that they cannot go in the water due to hazardous conditions, he said.
While water condiditons were the same in Orange Beach, city officials there flew the red flag rather than the yellow flag because the Alabama Department of Public Health had not yet lifted its swimming advisory for the Gulf of Mexico, said Orange Beach City Administrator Ken Grimes.

Estimated BP oil spill size increased again to largest figure since spill began

2010-06-15T20:02:00.001-05:00

Published: Tuesday, June 15, 2010, 4:41 PM

Dan Murtaugh, Press-Register

View full sizeA 4:45 p.m. CDT Tuesday, June 15, 2010, view of a BP underwater camera trained on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill shows oil continuing to flow. Experts have released their latest estimates of the flow rate from the spill.

MOBILE, Ala. -- A team of U.S. government and independent scientists said that the most likely flow rate of oil from the Deepwater Horizon well is between 35,000 and 60,000 barrels per day, or 1.47 million to 2.52 million gallons a day.

The estimate is the largest of several that have been made since the spill began in April.

BP PLC and the U.S. Coast Guard originally said about 5,000 barrels of oil were spilling every day. A barrel holds 42 gallons.

By May 27, the federal government had increased the estimate to 12,000 to 25,000 barrels a day.

By June 10, the government estimated the spill to be gushing 25,000 to 30,000 barrels a day.

In a news release from the spill's Unified Command Center , the scientists cite two reasons why they are more confident in the new figure:

More and different kinds of data is available now: The improved estimates are informed by newly available, detailed pressure measurements from within the Top Hat taken over the past 24 hours. In addition, scientists could draw on more than a week of data about the amount of oil being collected through the top hat.

A single flow is easier to estimate: Prior to the riser cut, oil was flowing both from the end of the riser and from several different holes in the riser kink. This made estimates - particularly based on two dimensional video alone - more difficult.

Obama says country 'must make commitment to the Gulf Coast'

2010-06-15T19:44:00.001-05:00

Published: Tuesday, June 15, 2010, 7:27 PM

Press-Register

View full size(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)President Barack Obama is photographed after delivering a televised address from the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Tuesday June 15, 2010. President Obama said the nation will continue to fight the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico for "as long as it takes."

THE PRESIDENT: Good evening. As we speak, our nation faces a multitude of challenges. At home, our top priority is to recover and rebuild from a recession that has touched the lives of nearly every American. Abroad, our brave men and women in uniform are taking the fight to al Qaeda wherever it exists. And tonight, I've returned from a trip to the Gulf Coast to speak with you about the battle we're waging against an oil spill that is assaulting our shores and our citizens.

On April 20th, an explosion ripped through BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, about forty miles off the coast of Louisiana. Eleven workers lost their lives. Seventeen others were injured. And soon, nearly a mile beneath the surface of the ocean, oil began spewing into the water.

Because there has never been a leak of this size at this depth, stopping it has tested the limits of human technology. That is why just after the rig sank, I assembled a team of our nation's best scientists and engineers to tackle this challenge - a team led by Dr. Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and our nation's Secretary of Energy. Scientists at our national labs and experts from academia and other oil companies have also provided ideas and advice.

As a result of these efforts, we have directed BP to mobilize additional equipment and technology. In the coming days and weeks, these efforts should capture up to 90% of the oil leaking out of the well. This is until the company finishes drilling a relief well later in the summer that is expected to stop the leak completely.

Already, this oil spill is the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced. And unlike an earthquake or a hurricane, it is not a single event that does its damage in a matter of minutes or days. The millions of gallons of oil that have spilled into the Gulf of Mexico are more like an epidemic, one that we will be fighting for months and even years.

But make no mistake: we will fight this spill with everything we've got for as long it takes. We will make BP pay for the damage their company has caused. And we will do whatever's necessary to help the Gulf Coast and its people recover from this tragedy.

Tonight I'd like to lay out for you what our battle plan is going forward: what we're doing to clean up the oil, what we're doing to help our neighbors in the Gulf, and what we're doing to make sure that a catastrophe like this never happens again.

First, the cleanup. From the very beginning of this crisis, the federal government has been in charge of the largest environmental cleanup effort in our nation's history - an effort led by Admiral Thad Allen, who has almost forty years of experience responding to disasters. We now have nearly 30,000 personnel who are working across four states to contain and cleanup the oil. Thousands of ships and other vessels are responding in the Gulf. And I have authorized the deployment of over 17,000 National Guard members along the coast. These servicemen and women are ready to help stop the oil from coming ashore, clean beaches, train response workers, or even help with processing claims - and I urge the governors in the affected states to activate these troops as soon as possible.

Because of our efforts, millions of gallons of oil have already been removed from the water through burning, skimming, and other collection methods. Over five and a half million feet of boom has been laid across the water to block and absorb the approaching oil. We have approved the construction of new barrier islands in Louisiana to try and stop the oil before it reaches the shore, and we are working with Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida to implement creative approaches to their unique coastlines.

As the clean up continues, we will offer whatever additional resources and assistance our coastal states may need. Now, a mobilization of this speed and magnitude will never be perfect, and new challenges will always arise. I saw and heard evidence of that during this trip. So if something isn't working, we want to hear about it. If there are problems in the operation, we will fix them.

But we have to recognize that despite our best efforts, oil has already caused damage to our coastline and its wildlife. And sadly, no matter how effective our response becomes, there will be more oil and more damage before this siege is done. That's why the second thing we're focused on is the recovery and restoration of the Gulf Coast.

You know, for generations, men and women who call this region home have made their living from the water. That living is now in jeopardy. I've talked to shrimpers and fishermen who don't know how they're going to support their families this year. I've seen empty docks and restaurants with fewer customers - even in areas where the beaches are not yet affected. I've talked to owners of shops and hotels who wonder when the tourists will start to come back. The sadness and anger they feel is not just about the money they've lost. It's about a wrenching anxiety that their way of life may be lost.

I refuse to let that happen. Tomorrow, I will meet with the chairman of BP and inform him that he is to set aside whatever resources are required to compensate the workers and business owners who have been harmed as a result of his company's recklessness. And this fund will not be controlled by BP. In order to ensure that all legitimate claims are paid out in a fair and timely manner, the account must and will be administered by an independent, third party.

Beyond compensating the people of the Gulf in the short-term, it's also clear we need a long-term plan to restore the unique beauty and bounty of this region. The oil spill represents just the latest blow to a place that has already suffered multiple economic disasters and decades of environmental degradation that has led to disappearing wetlands and habitats. And the region still hasn't recovered from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. That's why we must make a commitment to the Gulf Coast that goes beyond responding to the crisis of the moment.

I make that commitment tonight. Earlier, I asked Ray Mabus, the Secretary of the Navy, a former governor of Mississippi, and a son of the Gulf, to develop a long-term Gulf Coast Restoration Plan as soon as possible. The plan will be designed by states, local communities, tribes, fishermen, businesses, conservationists, and other Gulf residents. And BP will pay for the impact this spill has had on the region.

The third part of our response plan is the steps we're taking to ensure that a disaster like this does not happen again. A few months ago, I approved a proposal to consider new, limited offshore drilling under the assurance that it would be absolutely safe - that the proper technology would be in place and the necessary precautions would be taken.

That was obviously not the case on the Deepwater Horizon rig, and I want to know why. The American people deserve to know why. The families I met with last week who lost their loved ones in the explosion - these families deserve to know why. And so I have established a National Commission to understand the causes of this disaster and offer recommendations on what additional safety and environmental standards we need to put in place. Already, I have issued a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling. I know this creates difficulty for the people who work on these rigs, but for the sake of their safety, and for the sake of the entire region, we need to know the facts before we allow deepwater drilling to continue. And while I urge the Commission to complete its work as quickly as possible, I expect them to do that work thoroughly and impartially.

One place we have already begun to take action is at the agency in charge of regulating drilling and issuing permits, known as the Minerals Management Service. Over the last decade, this agency has become emblematic of a failed philosophy that views all regulation with hostility - a philosophy that says corporations should be allowed to play by their own rules and police themselves. At this agency, industry insiders were put in charge of industry oversight. Oil companies showered regulators with gifts and favors, and were essentially allowed to conduct their own safety inspections and write their own regulations.

When Ken Salazar became my Secretary of the Interior, one of his very first acts was to clean up the worst of the corruption at this agency. But it's now clear that the problems there ran much deeper, and the pace of reform was just too slow. And so Secretary Salazar and I are bringing in new leadership at the agency - Michael Bromwich, who was a tough federal prosecutor and Inspector General. His charge over the next few months is to build an organization that acts as the oil industry's watchdog - not its partner.

One of the lessons we've learned from this spill is that we need better regulations better safety standards, and better enforcement when it comes to offshore drilling. But a larger lesson is that no matter how much we improve our regulation of the industry, drilling for oil these days entails greater risk. After all, oil is a finite resource. We consume more than 20% of the world's oil, but have less than 2% of the world's oil reserves. And that's part of the reason oil companies are drilling a mile beneath the surface of the ocean - because we're running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water.

For decades, we have known the days of cheap and easily accessible oil were numbered. For decades, we have talked and talked about the need to end America's century-long addiction to fossil fuels. And for decades, we have failed to act with the sense of urgency that this challenge requires. Time and again, the path forward has been blocked - not only by oil industry lobbyists, but also by a lack of political courage and candor.

The consequences of our inaction are now in plain sight. Countries like China are investing in clean energy jobs and industries that should be here in America. Each day, we send nearly $1 billion of our wealth to foreign countries for their oil. And today, as we look to the Gulf, we see an entire way of life being threatened by a menacing cloud of black crude.

We cannot consign our children to this future. The tragedy unfolding on our coast is the most painful and powerful reminder yet that the time to embrace a clean energy future is now. Now is the moment for this generation to embark on a national mission to unleash American innovation and seize control of our own destiny.

This is not some distant vision for America. The transition away from fossil fuels will take some time, but over the last year and a half, we have already taken unprecedented action to jumpstart the clean energy industry. As we speak, old factories are reopening to produce wind turbines, people are going back to work installing energy-efficient windows, and small businesses are making solar panels. Consumers are buying more efficient cars and trucks, and families are making their homes more energy-efficient. Scientists and researchers are discovering clean energy technologies that will someday lead to entire new industries.

Each of us has a part to play in a new future that will benefit all of us. As we recover from this recession, the transition to clean energy has the potential to grow our economy and create millions of good, middle-class jobs - but only if we accelerate that transition. Only if we seize the moment. And only if we rally together and act as one nation - workers and entrepreneurs; scientists and citizens; the public and private sectors.

When I was a candidate for this office, I laid out a set of principles that would move our country towards energy independence. Last year, the House of Representatives acted on these principles by passing a strong and comprehensive energy and climate bill - a bill that finally makes clean energy the profitable kind of energy for America's businesses.

Now, there are costs associated with this transition. And some believe we can't afford those costs right now. I say we can't afford not to change how we produce and use energy - because the long-term costs to our economy, our national security, and our environment are far greater.

So I am happy to look at other ideas and approaches from either party - as long they seriously tackle our addiction to fossil fuels. Some have suggested raising efficiency standards in our buildings like we did in our cars and trucks. Some believe we should set standards to ensure that more of our electricity comes from wind and solar power. Others wonder why the energy industry only spends a fraction of what the high-tech industry does on research and development - and want to rapidly boost our investments in such research and development.

All of these approaches have merit, and deserve a fear hearing in the months ahead. But the one approach I will not accept is inaction. The one answer I will not settle for is the idea that this challenge is too big and too difficult to meet. You see, the same thing was said about our ability to produce enough planes and tanks in World War II. The same thing was said about our ability to harness the science and technology to land a man safely on the surface of the moon. And yet, time and again, we have refused to settle for the paltry limits of conventional wisdom. Instead, what has defined us as a nation since our founding is our capacity to shape our destiny - our determination to fight for the America we want for our children. Even if we're unsure exactly what that looks like. Even if we don't yet know precisely how to get there. We know we'll get there.

It is a faith in the future that sustains us as a people. It is that same faith that sustains our neighbors in the Gulf right now.

Each year, at the beginning of shrimping season, the region's fishermen take part in a tradition that was brought to America long ago by fishing immigrants from Europe. It's called "The Blessing of the Fleet," and today it's a celebration where clergy from different religions gather to say a prayer for the safety and success of the men and women who will soon head out to sea - some for weeks at a time.

The ceremony goes on in good times and in bad. It took place after Katrina, and it took place a few weeks ago - at the beginning of the most difficult season these fishermen have ever faced.

And still, they came and they prayed. For as a priest and former fisherman once said of the tradition, "The blessing is not that God has promised to remove all obstacles and dangers. The blessing is that He is with us always," a blessing that's granted "...even in the midst of the storm."

The oil spill is not the last crisis America will face. This nation has known hard times before and we will surely know them again. What sees us through - what has always seen us through - is our strength, our resilience, and our unyielding faith that something better awaits us if we summon the courage to reach for it. Tonight, we pray for that courage. We pray for the people of the Gulf. And we pray that a hand may guide us through the storm towards a brighter day. Thank you, God Bless You, and may God Bless the United States of America.

BP: Fire shuts down oil recovery operations aboard drillship Discoverer Enterprise

2010-06-15T19:36:00.001-05:00

Published: Tuesday, June 15, 2010, 1:41 PM

Press-Register staff

(Press-Register/Bill Starling)The drillship Discoverer Enterprise burns off natural gas as it operates over the site of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in this photograph from June 8, 2010

BP says it has temporarily shut down oil recovery operations aboard the drillship Discoverer Enterprise because of a fire that may have been triggered by lightning.

At approximately 9:30 am CDT, a small fire was observed at the top of the
derrick on the Discoverer Enterprise, according to a BP news release. The fire, which BP officials believe was started by a lightning strike, was quickly extinguished.

There were no injuries, BP says, and all safety shut-down systems
operated as designed.

Final safety and operational assurance inspections are underway and
operations are expected to resume this afternoon.
The fire occurred on the drillship where engineers are siphoning about 630,000 gallons of oil a day through a cap on top of a blown-out well.
"At the moment, there's no capture, no containment going on, but we'll start up the Enterprise when it's safe to do so," BP spokesman Robert Wine told The Associated Press.

Gulf vacationers wait last-minute or go elsewhere

2010-06-14T21:18:00.001-05:00

Some vacationers wait until last minute, some change plans altogether

By Beth J. Harpaz

The Associated Press

updated 4:54 p.m. CT, Mon., June 14, 2010

George Govignon and his family usually vacation each summer on the Gulf, "somewhere between Destin and Panama City" in Florida.

But this year, Govignon, his wife, two kids and in-laws are heading to Myrtle Beach, S.C.

"The biggest thing was fear of tarballs," said Govignon, a lawyer from Calhoun, Ga. "We figured we'd be better off on the Atlantic Coast."

Govignon is among thousands of vacationers changing plans because of the oil spill. Some are heading to favorite beaches earlier than usual, worried that oil may wash up later in the season. Some are booking last-minute to make sure beaches are still OK. But others are taking no chances on a forecast like "sunny with a chance of tarballs," so they're going elsewhere, from Cape Cod to Costa Rica.

Arwen Delvecchio, marketing manager at CapeCodRentals.com in Orleans, Mass., said she's been getting calls from Southerners canceling trips to the Gulf, trying "to get as far away as possible" from the oil.

$1,400 a week for a place on the water? Not here
Because some of them have never been to Cape Cod before, they require some education: Warm, calm water means staying on the bay side, not the ocean. And no, $1,400 a week will not get you a three-bedroom on the water.

"That's just unheard of," Delvecchio said.

So some customers on a budget are settling for smaller, less upscale lodging than they'd get on the Gulf for the same price — a five-minute drive from the beach instead of across the street.

Michael Brown of Mead Brown, a vacation rental company in Costa Rica, said his company also had "many inquiries and bookings from families ... who typically vacation on the Florida panhandle or in Mexico, but because of the oil spill or perceived safety issues in Mexico, they are coming to Costa Rica."

Among them is Jody Bailey, who lives in Gulfport, Miss. He usually vacations in Seaside, Fla., with his wife and teenage children.

"This year due to the scare of all the oil hitting the shore and the onslaught of potential pollution for the beach, we're going to Costa Rica instead," he said.

The teens are looking forward to ziplining and jungle adventures, but Bailey hopes to return to Florida eventually.

"It's a family tradition, since I was a little kid," he said. "My parents went there as well. I just hope we get the beaches clean."

To hang on to potential visitors, a significant number of hotels and rental condos in the Gulf have adopted "worry-free cancellation policies," said Kathy Torian, a spokeswoman for Visit Florida, the state tourism agency.

Counting on repeat visitors
"It's a policy of not charging them anything, should they get down to Florida and find the situation is worse than anticipated when they first booked," she said.

Other places are offering refunds if beaches close after guests arrive or no penalties for last-minute cancellations.

Tourism is the No. 1 industry in Florida and 94 percent of tourists are repeat visitors, so long-term relationships with guests matter, Torian said. Her agency has added online features at VisitFlorida.com/FloridaLive with links to beach webcams, daily videos and Twitter feeds "so folks can see what's going on in those communities."

In Gulf Shores, Ala., "the parking lots look more like October instead of June," said Lee Sentell, a spokesman for Alabama Tourism, a state agency. "Since the oil arrived, the reservations have slowed dramatically."

Officials in Baldwin County, which includes Gulf Shores and Orange Beach, "fear that they are facing a billion-dollar loss in tourism revenue this season," or nearly half of the county's $2.3 billion tourism business, Sentell said.

But he said it's a misperception that local beaches are covered in oil.

"We have a little oil that may come with the morning tide, and it's quickly cleaned up," Sentell said. "Then we're sitting there with beautiful beaches all day long and only a fraction of the number of people who are normally there. The national media has been so focused on the gobs of oil that it gives the impression that there is oil everywhere and that's not the case."

Several organizations that handle meetings and conferences said they did not know of widespread cancellations, but the Knowland Group, which collects data in the industry, surveyed 50 hotels across the Gulf Coast June 2-3 and found 60 percent had group booking cancellations.

And Gulf hotels are nearly as full as last year, according to Smith Travel, which tracks hotel occupancy nationwide, spokesman Jan Freitag said that was probably due to relief workers taking rooms and vacationers frontloading trips in areas that have yet to see oil.
Travelers worried about unaffected areas, too
Genevieve Shaw Brown, senior editor of Travelocity, said the Web site is understandably "seeing cancellations" on the northern Gulf, but what's more disturbing are "queries from customers worried about vacation plans that will see little or no impact, like Orlando."

"People don't necessarily have a handle on geography," she said. "We don't want this to turn to a worse situation, with people worried about trips to places that are not affected."

Andy Newman, a spokesman for the Florida Keys Tourism Council, said one traveler from Arkansas called because she'd seen pictures of "no swimming" signs. It turned out the signs were from Pensacola, on the other side of the state.

Dan Rowe, CEO of Panama City Beach Convention and Visitors Bureau, said his area was "into a pattern where some people have canceled but other people are booking. They're continuing to look at the forecast and what the spill is doing."

Others "have moved up their trips here and decided to go ahead and come now while the coast was clear," he said.

To reward those who do show up, Panama City Beach is launching a "summer-long beach party" with concerts and street festivals, as well as "random acts of appreciation, a thank you to tourists for coming, whether we buy their dinner or pay for a round of mini-golf," Rowe said.

The destination has yet to get tarballs or a sheen on the water, though a metal container from the wrecked oil rig did wash up and was removed.

In the Keys, Newman said hotel occupancy has been strong since late May, but very last-minute.

"People are very apprehensive about making long-term reservations until they see a resolution where they put the plug in the hole at the bottom of the ocean," he said.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37691991/ns/disaster_in_the_gulf/

MSN Privacy . Legal

Documents reveal BP's missteps before blowout

2010-06-14T21:11:00.000-05:00

Oil giant engineer describes 'nightmare well' six days before rig explosion

By MATTHEW DALY, RAY HENRY

Associated Press Writers

The Associated Press

updated 6:15 p.m. CT, Mon., June 14, 2010

NEW ORLEANS - BP made a series of money-saving shortcuts and blunders that dramatically increased the danger of a destructive oil spill in a well that an engineer ominously described as a "nightmare" just six days before the blowout, according to documents released Monday that provide new insight into the causes of the disaster.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee released dozens of internal documents that outline several problems on the deepsea rig in the days and weeks before the April 20 explosion that set in motion the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history. The committee has been investigating the explosion and its aftermath.

"Time after time, it appears that BP made decisions that increased the risk of a blowout to save the company time or expense. If this is what happened, BP's carelessness and complacency have inflicted a heavy toll on the Gulf, its inhabitants, and the workers on the rig," said Democratic Reps. Henry A. Waxman and Bart Stupak.

The missteps emerged on the same day that President Barack Obama made his fourth visit to the Gulf, where he sought to assure beleaguered residents that the government will "leave the Gulf Coast in better shape than it was before."

The breached well has dumped as much as 114 million gallons of oil into the Gulf under the worst-case scenario described by scientists — a rate of more than 2 million a day. BP has collected 5.6 million gallons of oil through its latest containment cap on top of the well, or about 630,000 gallons per day.

But BP believes it will see considerable improvements in the next two weeks. The company said Monday that it could trap a maximum of roughly 2.2 million gallons of oil each day by the end of June as it deploys additional containment efforts, including a system that could start burning off vast quantities as early as Tuesday. That would more than triple the amount of oil it is currently capturing — and be a huge relief for those trying to keep it from hitting the shore.

Possible 'game changer'
"It would be a game changer," said Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Mark Boivin, deputy director for near-shore operations at a command center in Mobile. He works with a team that coordinates the efforts of roughly 80 skimming boats gathering oil off the coast.

Still, BP warned its containment efforts could face problems if hoses or pipes clog and engineers struggle to run the complicated collection system. Early efforts at the bottom of the Gulf failed to capture oil.

Meanwhile, congressional investigators have identified several mistakes by BP in the weeks leading up to the disaster as it fell way behind on drilling the well.

BP started drilling in October, only to have the rig damaged by Hurricane Ida a month later. The company switched to the Deepwater Horizon rig and resumed drilling on Feb. 6. The rig was 43 days late for its next drilling location by the time it exploded April 20, costing BP at least $500,000 each day it was overdue, congressional documents show.

As BP found itself in a frantic race against time to get the job done, engineers cut corners in the well design, cementing and drilling mud efforts and the installation of safety devices known as "lockdown sleeves" and "centralizers," according to congressional investigators.

In the design of the well, the company apparently chose a riskier option among two possibilities to provide a barrier to the flow of gas in space surrounding steel tubes in the well, documents and internal e-mails show. The decision saved BP $7 million to $10 million; the original cost estimate for the well was about $96 million.

'Crazy well'
In an e-mail, BP engineer Brian Morel told a fellow employee that the company is likely to make last-minute changes in the well.

Video: Local officials brace for oil onslaught

"We could be running it in 2-3 days, so need a relative quick response. Sorry for the late notice, this has been nightmare well which has everyone all over the place," Morel wrote.

The e-mail chain culminated with the following message by another worker: "This has been a crazy well for sure."

BP also apparently rejected advice of a subcontractor, Halliburton Inc., in preparing for a cementing job to close up the well. BP rejected Halliburton's recommendation to use 21 "centralizers" to make sure the casing ran down the center of the well bore. Instead, BP used six centralizers.

In an e-mail on April 16, a BP official involved in the decision explained: "It will take 10 hours to install them. I do not like this." Later that day, another official recognized the risks of proceeding with insufficient centralizers but commented: "Who cares, it's done, end of story, will probably be fine."

The lawmakers also said BP also decided against a nine- to 12-hour procedure known as a "cement bond log" that would have tested the integrity of the cement. A team from Schlumberger, an oil services firm, was on board the rig, but BP sent the team home on a regularly scheduled helicopter flight the morning of April 20.

Less than 12 hours later, the rig exploded.

BP also failed to fully circulate drilling mud, a 12-hour procedure that could have helped detect gas pockets that later shot up the well and exploded on the drilling rig.

A spokesman for BP could not immediately reached for comment on the findings, but executives including CEO Tony Hayward will be questioned by Congress on Thursday.

The letter from Waxman and Stupak noted at least five questionable decisions BP made before the explosion, and was supplemented by 61 footnotes and dozens of documents.

"The common feature of these five decisions is that they posed a trade-off between cost and well safety," said Waxman and Stupak. Waxman chairs the energy panel while Stupak heads a subcommittee on oversight and investigations.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37695879/ns/disaster_in_the_gulf/

MSN Privacy . Legal

Alabama summer...

2010-06-13T14:50:00.001-05:00

Alabama beaches filled with waves of oil

2010-06-12T19:38:00.000-05:00

Published: Saturday, June 12, 2010, 5:21 PM Updated: Saturday, June 12, 2010, 6:27 PM

David Ferrara

Sheets of oil washed ashore in Gulf Shores, Ala., early Saturday morning, June 12, 2010, from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. (Press-Register/Kate Mercer)

Beachgoers stand and talk about the oil that had washed ashore from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill as workers clean up along beaches in Gulf Shores, Ala., on Saturday, June 12, 2010. (Press-Register/Kate Mercer)

Crude oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill washes ashore in Orange Beach, Ala., Saturday, June 12, 2010. Large amounts of the oil battered the Alabama coast, leaving deposits of the slick mess some 4-6 inches thick on the beach in some parts. (AP Photo/Dave Martin)

GULF SHORES, Ala. -- Thousands of people lined Gulf Shores beaches this afternoon, but almost none dared even put a toe in the water.

In some sections, large pools of black oil sat on the shoreline.

As far east or west as the eye could see, oil stained the white sands.

Small groups of workers took turns for hours shoveling clumps of the oil into black plastic bags. But as quickly as they dug, the oil washed ashore -- in sheets, in globs, with each successive, dark wave.

Occasionally, a group of beachgoers would rise from their towels and stand at the edge of the oil, which kept them four or five feet from the water's edge.

They stared and took photographs of the devastation and the oil-stained sands.

A group of women walking the beach paused near the workers.

"This summer is ruined," said Barbara Nicholson, who lives in Mobile and owns a condo in Gulf Shores. "What I'm thinking about now is what tomorrow is going to bring and for how long."

Oil from the spill was obvious to visitors entering the Gulf State Park Pier in Gulf Shores this afternoon. The pier itself is protected by boom and fish were visible as they swam underneath the entrance to the structure.

Outside the boom, however, it appeared that workers had removed the material that washed ashore, revealing a 10-foot-wide swath of sand stained brown by the oil.

No fishing is allowed at the state-owned pier, but sightseers can still visit there.

Clumps of oil slapped the black specked shores this afternoon from Orange Beach to Perdido Pass.

At Gulf State Park Cotton Bayou, Heather Andrews of Orange Beach walked up to the waterfront.
"Oh my, it's way worse than it was before," she said. "It's terrible."
Her boyfriend, Steve Merna, bent down, dipped his finger into the oil and sniffed it.
"This could be the worst thing ever to happen to thse beaches," he said, as a four-by-four loaded with EPA workers and members of the Coast Guard rolled past.
The smell of oil hung in the hot, humid air.
Eastward, under the Gulf State Park Pier, gobs of oil hit posts and covered white boom in the area.
Over Perdido Pass, to the east beyond orange boom, there appeared to be no oil in the water, though pebble-sized tarballs were sprinkled in the sand.
Outside the Flora-Bama at the Florida state line, swimmers cooled off in the area where oil was not present.
(This story was updated at 5:21 p.m.)

Suddenly, a vulnerable coast fears it is all but defenseless

2010-06-12T10:26:00.001-05:00

By Zac Anderson
Published: Saturday, June 12, 2010 at 1:00 a.m.

PENSACOLA NEWS JOURNAL / KATIE KING

In the Panhandle, oil slipped right past the 18-inch-thick booms anchored in Perdido Pass this week, entering two Florida bays. The failure raises questions about the state's oil defense strategy.

Draped like holiday ribbon across the mouth of every bay, bayou and inlet in the Panhandle, 312,000 feet -- nearly 60 miles -- of floating plastic boom has been deployed by Florida as its primary defense against the oil slick widening in the Gulf of Mexico.
But when the first big test came this week, oil slipped right past the 18-inch-thick barriers, entering two Florida bays and shattering local residents' faith that the booms will protect their fragile inland waters.
There is a growing feeling that they offer little more than psychological security.
"I don't have confidence in the booms," said Tony Kennon, the mayor of Orange Beach, Ala., a barrier island town that controls the pass into Florida's westernmost waterway, Perdido Bay, about 20 miles west of Pensacola. "People need to start looking at what other options they have."
The booms' initial failure raises questions about the state's oil defense strategy as the Florida Department of Environmental Protection announced Friday that a huge plume of weathered oil, 2 miles wide and 40 miles long, loomed south of Pensacola Pass.
Another plume of oil, described as non-weathered, was reported 6 miles south of Escambia County.
For weeks, Florida emergency planners' mantra has been "protect the passes" from the blown Deepwater Horizon oil spill as it moved toward the state's vulnerable Panhandle coastline.
Beaches can be scraped clean of oil, officials have argued, but if the spill slips through barrier island passes and into sensitive inland waters, it will smother the sea grass beds and marshes that serve as nursery grounds for most marine life.
But large globs of crude entered the mouth of Perdido Bay on Wednesday, and by Thursday floating patches of oil had been spotted in Pensacola Bay, also supposedly protected by plastic booms.
The Perdido Bay impact was dramatic. Oil raced into the pass, past multiple strands of boom, and washed ashore at a popular public boat ramp, creating a thick, unbroken puddle that was ankle deep across 50 yards of shoreline.
Rocks, grass, hermit crabs and all manner of debris became coated in the big patch of rust-colored crude, and smaller patches washed ashore more than 3 miles east of the pass in the Intracoastal Waterway.
Some local residents were shocked to see the booms fail so badly. Others said they never thought the floating plastic was enough protection.
Orange Beach boat captain Charles Davis came to the oil-covered boat ramp to take pictures and shook his head in disgust. Then he pointed to the pass, where the swift-moving current made the water ripple and churn as it smacked into shallow sand bars.
"There's nothing these booms can do to stop the oil in a flow like that," said Davis, who captains a $3.5 million yacht owned by Coca-Cola. "The oil will hit the boom and go right underneath."
Mayor Kennon said the booms were never designed for the kind of protection Gulf Coast communities need.
Currents in the passes can reach speeds of three to four knots in the summer and eight knots in the winter, Kennon said.
Yet a Coast Guard official recently told the mayor that the booms will fail in any current greater than 0.7 knots.
"That's less than 1 mile per hour and the oil will go right past the boom. So really, if there's a current of any kind, they don't work," Kennon said. "It's not enough protection."
At best, officials say, the booms offer limited defense against small surface slicks. At worst, they are a worthless distraction sucking up precious time and diverting resources from finding real solutions.
Now local officials are trying to devise more substantial alternatives.
Orange Beach is planning to float heavy plastic pipes in the pass. Combined with an underwater curtain attached to the piping, the system will essentially create a bigger boom that extends 3 feet under water instead of 18 inches.
Other communities have positioned floating barges at the mouths of passes. Some have even closed passes by filling them with sand.
Rather than walling off the coast, many local officials would rather see BP and the Coast Guard put much more emphasis on skimming oil offshore and in near-shore waters.
"You can't have enough skimming boats," said Escambia County Commissioner Grover Robinson IV, who has been pushing for a better plan to protect Pensacola Bay. "If I was running this, we'd have one stationed permanently at the mouth of the pass. The inland waters are too priceless. We need to defend them with everything we have."
From his regular fishing spot at the popular Palafox Pier in downtown Pensacola, Cornelius Coram could see a wide sweep of Pensacola Bay.
Children ran through a nearby water fountain. Families picnicked on the grass. A band played "Sweet Home Alabama" on the brick walkway and Coram, standing in his socks, cast his line toward the setting sun to try and catch his fourth white trout of the evening.
With oil spotted in the bay, Coram had been thinking about whether it is safe for his evening fish fries.
He pointed to where he knew a gap existed between the distant barrier islands and wondered aloud how it could be so hard to protect such a small opening.
"This is such a beautiful place," he said, gesturing across the bay. "How do they let this get so far out of hand?"

This story appeared in print on page A1

Latest Gulf oil spill forecast: Onshore winds push slick toward barrier islands, Panhandle

2010-06-12T10:14:00.001-05:00

Updated: Saturday, June 12, 2010, 7:30 AM

Press-Register staff

View full size

NOAA surface oil forecast: Onshore (SE/S/SW) winds are forecast to continue into next week at speeds <10 knots. Persistent onshore winds have resulted in northward movement of the slick towards the Mississippi/Alabama barrier islands and the Florida Panhandle. Coastal regions in Mississippi Sound west of Freeport
may continue to experience shoreline contacts throughout this forecast period. Persistent southeasterly winds are also resulting in movement of oil towards the Chandeleur Islands, Breton Sound, and the Mississippi Delta. These regions are also threatened by shoreline contacts within this forecast period.

As oil comes ashore, Baldwin County beaches start to empty

2010-06-11T09:20:00.001-05:00

Updated: Friday, June 11, 2010, 5:00 AM Published: Thursday, June 10, 2010, 6:37 PM

Ryan Dezember, Press-Register

(Press-Register/Bill Starling)A work boat attempted to corral an oil slick of Gulf Shores beaches on June 4, 2010. Beach traffic has started to drop as the oil spill has approached the shore.

GULF SHORES, Ala. -- Less than a week after the first globs of oil smudged south Baldwin County's shores, the damage to the local tourism trade is glaring.

At Gulf Shores' public beach, which would normally be packed on a cloudless, 92-degree day in June, the sparse crowd was more mid-March than post-Memorial Day.

"We think we may be off 30 percent already," said Tony Kennon, mayor of neighboring Orange Beach. "We could easily see it going to 50 percent, and many of our businesses won't make it."

Dire as that prediction sounds, Gulf Shores Mayor Robert Craft considered it rosy.

"I think we'd be lucky to get 50 percent of what we normally do because I think we can get BP to fund 50 percent," he said.

Alabama's beach area, which includes Orange Beach, Gulf Shores, Foley and Dauphin Island, accounts for some $2.3 billion in annual tourism spending. And about $1.7 billion of that spending takes place in the three months from Memorial Day to Labor Day, Craft said.

Having $850 million evaporate could devastate south Baldwin County's economy and cripple the local governments and schools that tax that money.

About 10 percent of the Baldwin County Public School System's $280 million annual budget, for example, is derived from tourism-related spending, spokesman Terry Wilhite said.

"We think we may be off 30 percent already," said Orange Beach mayor Tony Kennon.

To put that in perspective, consider that when school officials asked taxpayers in March for a 1-cent sales tax, they did so intending to raise $25 million a year in order to avoid significant layoffs and program cutbacks.

But for BP PLC, which owns the leaking well and has pledged to reimburse Gulf Coast businesses and governments for all "legitimate" losses, $850 million is probably a manageable number.

The company's stock has swooned since April 20, when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, and oil began gushing from the Gulf floor. The stock closed Thursday at $32.92, 47 percent off its 52-week high.

But BP reported 2010 first-quarter profits of $6.08 billion -- which works out to about $68 million a day -- and is scheduled later this month to pay shareholders dividends totaling more than $2.6 billion.

Kennon took issue with pending dividend payments when, in an interview, he spoke of the difficulty his administration has had getting the oil giant to pay Orange Beach's claims.

On May 5, City Hall submitted a $39,000 bill to BP that accounted for the late April pay of four full-time employees and several part-timers, who were assigned to work exclusively on spill preparation.

After weeks of wrangling, BP sent Orange Beach a check for $12,000 and said that while it would repay City Hall for any overtime incurred because of the spill, it would not cover employees' regular pay.

"That's unacceptable," Kennon said. "We're withering on the vine, wondering if we're going to make it."

By many accounts, business along the beach this spring had been as strong as ever until oil washed ashore Friday afternoon at Gulf State Park.

"May wasn't that bad," Craft said, "but June's a disaster."

At The Hangout, the 18,000-square-foot restaurant and entertainment facility at Gulf Shores' public beach, business had been way ahead of last year until the crowds in town last week left and weren't fully replaced, said owner Shaul Zislin.

"This is the first day it's been empty," Zislin said Monday evening.

Johnny Fisher, general manager of Lulu's at Homeport Marina, said that sales over Memorial Day weekend broke records. But since then, business at the 450-seat restaurant has plummeted.

On Thursday morning a film crew was set up at the restaurant to make a commercial featuring owner Lucy "Lulu" Buffett for the Alabama Tourism Department.

Before oil struck, state tourism officials launched a BP-financed advertising campaign to convince vacationers that the state's surf was unspoiled. Now they're preparing a campaign featuring the famous singer's sister and American Idol winner Taylor Hicks to remind repeat visitors of off-beach offerings, such as golfing, dining and shopping, said Mike Foster, vice president of marketing for the Alabama Gulf Coast Convention and Visitors Bureau.

"We said, 'Let's use our star power to tell people that even if there's an issue with the oil, there's a lot to see and do down here,'" Foster said. "We're saying, 'Don't write us off. Don't forget about us yet.'"

Louisiana leaders want Gulf drilling to resume

2010-06-11T09:15:00.001-05:00

Politicians say moratorium is a knee-jerk reaction

By Alan Sayre and Chris Kahn

The Associated Press

updated 5:57 p.m. CT, Thurs., June 10, 2010

NEW ORLEANS - At the same time they are venting their fury on BP over the Gulf of Mexico spill and its calamitous environmental effects, Louisiana politicians are rushing to the defense of the oil-and-gas industry and pleading with Washington to bring back offshore drilling —now.

As angry as they are over the disaster, state officials warn that the Obama administration's temporary ban on drilling in the Gulf has sent Louisiana's most lucrative industry into a death spiral.

They contend that drilling is safe overall and that the moratorium is a knee-jerk reaction, akin to grounding every airplane in America because of a single crash. They worry, too, that the moratorium comes at a time when another major Louisiana industry — fishing — has been brought to a standstill by the mess in the Gulf.

"For God's sake, don't finish us off with a moratorium," Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell said this week.

The oil-and-gas industry is the backbone of the Louisiana economy, bringing in billions of dollars in revenue for the government and accounting for nearly one-third of the nation's domestic crude production.

It took a heavy blow when the government imposed a six-month offshore drilling moratorium in the wake of the spill that has sent upwards of 50 million gallons of oil into the Gulf in the biggest environmental disaster in U.S. history. The government imposed the ban while it reviews the safety of deepwater drilling in light of the BP disaster.

Louisiana lawmakers have railed against the moratorium, saying it could put more than 100,000 people out of work, shutter businesses and destroy livelihoods. A bill asking the administration to shorten the moratorium passed the Legislature unanimously.

But persuading the administration to take such action could prove to be extraordinarily difficult at a time when globs of oil are fouling marshes and beaches, images of oil-soaked birds are a fixture in the news and no apparent end to the spill is in sight.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has acknowledged the potential damage to energy companies and their employees and promised a Louisiana senator the administration would demand that BP compensate businesses for their losses.

The moratorium put a halt to the 33 deepwater exploratory rigs in operation in the Gulf in addition to all new deep-sea drilling permits. Platforms that are already producing oil along with rigs in shallow waters are allowed to remain in operation.

"Every one of these deepwater wells employs directly hundreds of people and indirectly thousands," said Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana. "This is one company. This is one well. It's a terrible situation and no one is making light of it, but what I'm saying, as strongly as I can, to this president is the economic analysis is devastating to many companies, thousands of companies.

BP hopes that it can stem the flow of oil soon and remove some of the heat that has been put on the company and energy industry by politicians, the American public and investors, who have dumped BP stock and driven its price down to the lowest level in 14 years out of fear that the spill could spell the company's ruin.

Trade groups estimate that the 33 deepwater rigs idled the moratorium employed 5,900 to 9,200 people. Rig workers earn up to $1,800 per week, so that amounts to a loss of tens of millions dollars in salaries. In addition, those jobs support an additional 26,000 to 46,000 industry workers.

"It's going to put us out of business," said Glenn LeCompte, owner of a Louisiana catering company that provides food to offshore rigs. "My payroll probably runs about $150,000 a week. That payroll is going to disappear."

Gulf communities already are seeing the livelihoods of thousands of fisherman, property owners and tourism workers jeopardized by the spill. Fishing and tourism contribute $10 billion to Louisiana's $210 billion economy, while energy contributes $65 billion.

"Those two things, fishing and oil, coexist together and form a way of life down here," said Jefferson Parish Council Chairman John Young.

The Energy Department estimates that 25 million barrels of oil production will be lost in 2011 because of the six-month moratorium. That's less than what the country burns in two days, but production will drop even more if the ban is extended to a year or more, as a number of analysts expect.

Many of the drilling jobs could end up going to Brazil, which recently discovered numerous oil fields off its coast. Brazilian oil company Petrobras wants to tap those fields but lacks the rigs.

"They're licking their chops saying, 'We'll take them'" from the U.S., said industry analyst Collin Gerry.

Barry Graham, general manager of Barry Graham Oil Service LCC, which operates 21 petroleum support vessels from Alabama and Louisiana, said he is hoping to avoid layoffs among his 150 employees.

"It's like sitting here waiting for the storm to approach," he said. "You sit and wait for a hurricane when you get the news it's coming. That's what this feels like — just waiting to get hit."

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37625734/ns/business-us_business/

MSN Privacy . Legal

Oil spill may be twice as bad as earlier thought

2010-06-11T08:54:00.001-05:00

'This is a nightmare that keeps getting worse every week,' activist says

By HARRY R. WEBER, SETH BORENSTEIN

Associated Press Writers, Associated Press Writers

The Associated Press

updated 8:07 a.m. CT, Fri., June 11, 2010

HOUSTON - New figures for the blown-out well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico show the amount of oil spewing may have been up to twice as much as previously thought, according to scientists consulting with the U.S. government.

That could mean 42 million gallons (160 million liters) to more than 100 million gallons (380 million liters) of oil have already fouled the Gulf's fragile waters, affecting people who live, work and play along the coast from Louisiana to Florida — and perhaps beyond.

It is the third — and perhaps not the last — time the U.S. government has had to increase its estimate of how much oil is gushing. Trying to clarify what has been a contentious and confusing issue, officials on Thursday gave a wide variety of estimates.

All the new spill estimates are worse than earlier ones — and far more costly for BP, which has seen its stock sink since the April 20 explosion that killed 11 workers and triggered the spill. Most of Thursday's estimates had more oil flowing in an hour than what officials once said was spilling in an entire day.

"This is a nightmare that keeps getting worse every week," said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club. "We're finding out more and more information about the extent of the damage. ... Clearly we can't trust BP's estimates of how much oil is coming out."

The spill was flowing at a daily rate that could possibly have been as high as 2.1 million gallons (8 million liters), twice the highest number the federal government had been saying, U.S. Geological Survey Director Marcia McNutt, who is coordinating estimates, said Thursday. But she said possibly more credible numbers are a bit lower.

Estimate for before the riser was cut
The estimate was for the flow before June 3 when a riser pipe was cut and then a cap placed on it. No estimates were given for the amount of oil gushing from the well after the cut, which BP said would increase the flow by about 20 percent. Nor are there estimates since a cap was put on the pipe, which already has collected more than 3 million gallons (11 million liters).

The estimates are not nearly complete and different teams have come up with different numbers. A new team from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute came in with even higher estimates, ranging from 1 million gallons (3.8 million liters) a day to 2.1 million gallons (8 million liters). If the high end is true, that means nearly 107 million gallons (400 million liters) have spilled since April 20.

Even using other numbers that federal officials and scientists call a more reasonable range would have about 63 million gallons (238 million liters) spilling since the rig explosion. If that amount was put in gallon milk jugs, they would line up for nearly 5,500 miles (8,850 kilometers). That's the distance from the spill to London, where BP is headquartered, and then continuing on to Rome.

By comparison, the worst peacetime oil spill, 1979's Ixtoc 1 in Mexico, was about 140 million gallons (530 million liters) over 10 months. The Gulf spill hasn't yet reached two months. The Exxon Valdez, the previous worst U.S. oil spill, was just about 11 million gallons (41 million liters), and the new figures mean Deepwater Horizon is producing an Exxon Valdez size spill every five to 13 days.

'Unimaginable grief'
On Thursday, President Barack Obama consoled relatives of the 11 workers killed in the oil rig explosion, acknowledging their "unimaginable grief" and personally assuring the families he will stand with them.

One man who lost a son asked Obama to support efforts to update federal law limiting the amount of money the families can collect.

"He told us we weren't going to be forgotten," said Keith Jones of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. "He just wanted us to know this wasn't going to leave his mind and his heart."

Video: Oil-filled jellyfish found near artificial reef

Jones' 28-year-old son, Gordon, was working on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig leased by BP PLC when it exploded April 20 and then sank.

Later in the day, the White House released a letter from Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, who is overseeing the crisis for the government, inviting BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg and "any appropriate officials from BP" to meet Wednesday with senior administration officials. Allen said Obama, who has yet to speak with any BP official since the explosion more than seven weeks ago, would participate in a portion of the meeting.

As the crude continues to foul the water, Louisiana leaders are rushing to the defense of the oil-and-gas industry and pleading with Washington to immediately bring back offshore drilling. Though angry at BP over the disaster, state officials warn that the Obama administration's six-month halt to new permits for deep-sea oil drilling has sent Louisiana's most lucrative industry into a death spiral.

They contend that drilling is safe overall and the moratorium is a knee-jerk reaction. They worry that it comes at a time when another major Louisiana industry — fishing — has been brought to a standstill by the Gulf mess.

The oil-and-gas brings in billions of dollars in revenue for Louisiana and accounting for nearly one-third of America's domestic crude production, and it took a heavy blow when the government imposed the moratorium.

With all sorts of estimates for what's flowing from the BP well — some even smaller than the amount collected by BP in its containment cap — McNutt the most credible range at the moment is between 840,000 gallons (3.1 million liters) and 1.68 million gallons (6.3 million liters) a day. Then she added that it was "maybe a little bit more."

But later Thursday, the Interior Department said scientists who based their calculations on video say the best estimate for oil flow before June 3 was between 1.05 million gallons (4 million liters) a day and 1.26 million gallons (4.7 million liters) a day. The department mentioned only a cubic meter per second rate from Woods Hole — not a rate that translated into actual amounts — and those numbers only added to the confusion on just how much oil is gushing out.

Previous estimates had put the range roughly between half a million and a million gallons a day, perhaps higher. At one point, the federal government claimed only 42,000 gallons (160,000 liters) were spilling a day and then it upped the number to 210,000 gallons (795,00 liters).

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37636151/ns/disaster_in_the_gulf/

MSN Privacy . Legal

Brits blame Obama as BP-linked pensions plummet

2010-06-10T18:13:00.002-05:00

By Jennifer Carlile, msnbc.com staff
The oil polluting Louisiana's marshes lies about 5,000 miles away from Britain's coastline. But while wildlife, the fishing industry and tourism here are safe from the slick, the leak is hitting Britons' pockets and their pride.
By Wednesday night, BP's shares had lost more than half of their market value -- or at least $71 billion -- in the 52 days since the crisis began. Almost every pension fund in the U.K. owns shares in the energy giant, raising serious questions about the impact the firm's plummeting value will have on the retirement plans for millions of Britons. President Barack Obama's threat to block a BP dividend payment in order to ensure victims of the spill get compensation has also sparked widespread alarm.
"Obama's boot on the throat of British pensioners" read the front-page headline in Thursday's Daily Telegraph, which added that the president's "attacks on BP were blamed for wiping billions off the company's value."
'Aggressive rhetoric'
"U.K. alarm over attack on BP" was the Financial Times' take on the crisis, which it suggested could damage transatlantic relations. The newspaper accused President Barack Obama of employing "increasingly aggressive rhetoric" against BP.
Shares in BP hit their lowest level in 13 years on Thursday. According to the Telegraph, BP executives are so worried that Obama's comments could continue to drive down BP's share price that the firm has asked Prime Minister David Cameron to intervene. Cameron is due to speak with Obama this weekend.
Obama and U.S. officials have repeatedly referred to BP as "British Petroleum" -- despite the fact that the company officially changed its name in 2000. Some have interpreted this as an attack on the country's reputation.
Last Friday, Obama declared "what I don't want to hear is, when they're spending that kind of money on their shareholders and … TV advertising, that they're nickel-and-diming fishermen or small businesses here in the Gulf."
'Matter of national concern'
Some are concerned about the battering the U.K.'s image is taking in the U.S.
"I do think there's something slightly worrying about the anti-British rhetoric that seems to be permeating from America," Boris Johnson, London's New York-born mayor, told the BBC on Thursday. "I do think that it starts to become a matter of national concern if a great British company is being continually beaten up on the international airwaves.
"I would like to see a bit of cool heads and a bit of calm reflection about how to deal with this problem rather than endlessly buck passing and name calling."
At London's King's Cross train station, Thelma Aengenheister echoed the mayor's sentiments.
"It's easier for Obama to kick a British company than an American one; there will be fewer repercussions," said the 80-year-old, who was on her way to Brussels. "It's like kicking someone when they're down. But I do feel for the people of Louisiana, it must be dreadful for them."
While making cappuccinos and lattes, coffee-stand owner Haroon admitted he was "worried" about the impact losing BP's dividend would potentially have on his pension plan.
"A lot of pension funds will have invested in BP because of the dividend," said the 34-year-old, who lives in south London.
But despite fear over the value of their pensions, there is little sympathy for Tony Hayward, BP's gaffe-prone chief executive who has been criticized for his handling of the disaster.
Kirsty Anthony, a 41-year-old teacher, said that she believed Hayward should be "sacked."
"I'm worried about the wildlife and I think most British people think he should be held accountable; Obama would blame a U.S. company just the same," Anthony added.
Harsher treatment?
However, some newspaper columnists have claimed that the language used against BP has been much harsher than the treatment of U.S. company ExxonMobil after the Exxon Valdez oil tanker sank off Alaska in 1989.
Others have noted that when the North Sea oil rig Piper Alpha exploded in 1988, killing 167 people, then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher did not verbally attack its American owners.
Some pundits even claim Obama has a deep-seated dislike for Britain.
Stephen Glover, a columnist for the right-wing Daily Mail tabloid, wrote: "The president's public evisceration of BP cannot merely be explained by his feelings of impotence or his political predicament.
"I don't wish to sound paranoid, but it is pretty clear that Mr Obama does not much like anything that is British. There is an anti-British undertow throughout his book 'Dreams From My Father', with slighting references to the country and its citizens."
Glover suggested that Obama's allegation that his grandfather was tortured by British authorities in Kenya in the 1950s "helped to shape his feelings about Britain."
He added that Obama displays "no affection for, or interest in, this country and its history," and noted how upon entering the Oval Office, he immediately returned a bust of Winston Churchill that had been loaned to George W. Bush.
However, that view didn't find much support on the streets of London.
IT consultant Paul Titley said that blame for such an environmental catastrophe had to be placed somewhere.
"I don't think Americans dislike British people," he said. "Thankfully, I don't have money tied up in BP. I don't have a pension. … I live for today."

Study: Spill bigger than previously thought

2010-06-10T18:12:00.002-05:00

Study: Spill bigger than previously thought

Scientists say busted well most likely spewed 30,000 barrels daily

By Joel Achenbach, Juliet Eilperin and David Fahrenthold

The Washington Post

updated 3:26 p.m. CT, Thurs., June 10, 2010

The Deepwater Horizon well has most likely spewed 25,000 to 30,000 barrels of oil a day, more than previously estimated, according to a group of scientists appointed by the federal government to study video of the dark geyser at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.

The new estimate suggests that, if the flow has been more or less consistent since the April 20 blowout, approximately 1.3 million to 1.5 million barrels, or 53.6 million to 64.3 million gallons, of oil have emerged from the well. That is roughly five to six times the amount spilled in Alaskan waters in 1989 by the Exxon Valdez.

Much of the oil flowing into the gulf has been skimmed, burned, or dispersed with chemicals, and the well is now capped and partially contained, with 15,800 barrels siphoned to a ship at the surface on Wednesday. But the new figures, obtained Thursday by The Washington Post and soon to be officially announced by the U.S. Geological Survey, indicate that early estimates of the flow rate by the federal government and oil giant BP were not even close to the mark.

Last month, with the government sticking to an estimate of 5,000 barrels a day, and independent scientists arguing that the amount had to be much higher, national incident commander Adm. Thad Allen appointed the Flow Rate Technical Group to come up with a better estimate.

The group, comprised largely of scientists in academia, had several subgroups, including one that looked at satellite imagery of the spill, and one, the "plume team," which examined low-quality video of the leaks from the damaged riser pipe. The group's May 27 report cited the best estimate for the flow at 12,000 to 19,000 barrels, but the plume team had a broader range in its own estimate, saying that the flow was "at least" 12,000 to 25,000 barrels a day and adding that it could be "considerably larger if the conservative numbers used to make the estimate were relaxed."

"Our best estimate was 12 to 25, but we realized we could be wrong. We knew it couldn't be lower but it could be higher," said plume team member James Riley, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Washington.

Since then the team members examined more low-quality video of the leaking riser. The video was taken prior to last week's shearing of the riser, which reduced the multiple leaks to a single, coherent plume that was soon capped. The extra scrutiny enabled the scientists to come up with their more precise estimate of 25,000 to 30,000 barrels, adding that it "could be as low as 20,000 barrels per day or as high as 40,000 barrels a day."

New estimate coming
But more numbers are coming. The plume team and other members of the flow rate group are preparing another estimate, this one based in part on high-definition video taken by submersibles after the riser was cut and provided to the scientists on Tuesday. That estimate could be released any day, and might nudge the official estimated flow still higher. The government had said that the cutting of the riser might increase the flow by up to 20 percent, because the kinked pipe would no longer be inhibiting the well.

The flow rate is significant on several fronts. First, it gives the government and BP a sense of how much capacity they'll need among surface ships to handle all the oil gushing out the well and up a pipe to the Enterprise drillship, which is capable of processing only about 18,000 barrels a day. Other ships are being added to the effort. The site above the blown out well has become crowded with 25 to 30 different vessels at any given time, Allen said Thursday.

Second, the fines that BP faces for polluting the gulf will be tied to how many barrels of oil have leaked.

Third, the higher figures call into question the circumstances that led to the much lower estimates of the spill earlier in the crisis. On April 28, after having received estimates of the size of the spill from both BP and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, the Coast Guard announced that the well was leaking about 5,000 barrels a day. That remained the official estimate for weeks.

Allen rejected the suggestion this week that the government has been lowballing the flow rate.

"I can guarantee you unequivocally, nobody is lowballing anything that works for me," he told reporters. "And I will never lowball anything. We will give you the honest data that we've got, and what — the basis for the assumptions and where that led us."

An internal BP document marked "confidential" shows that BP on April 27 had arrived at three different estimates for the size of the spill: low, best guess and high. The calculations were based on satellite imagery of the oil slick. The low estimate was 1,063 barrels a day. The best guess was 5,758 barrels. The high estimate was 14,266 barrels.

The next day the Coast Guard announced the 5,000 barrel estimate.

'BP screwed up'
Oceanographer Ian MacDonald of Florida State University, who early in the crisis announced his own estimate of 26,500 barrels a day, said the confidential BP document reveals that the company made basic errors in calculating the thickness of the oil at the surface.

"BP screwed up a fundamental engineering calculation, and as a consequence they had some bad numbers out there, and they gave these numbers to the Coast Guard," MacDonald said. "They underestimated the size of the slick on the surface and they neglected to account for the oil that was being lost in the midwater."

BP spokesman Andrew Gowers said Thursday by e-mail, "There is no secret about this. It was our contribution to the Unified Command estimate that was published shortly afterwards. We have always said we made a contribution to that estimate but that it was an estimate by the Unified Command."

The plume team estimate is still considered preliminary. The team's method tracks individual billows and estimates how far they traveled over a very short period, such as one-twentieth of a second. The speed of the features does not reveal, however, precisely how fast the oil inside the plume and out of sight is moving.

Peter Cornillon, of the University of Rhode Island, said his group came up with a lower bound for their estimate — 12,000 to 25,000 barrels a day — but couldn't agree on an upper bound.

"We never came up with a number on the upper end," Cornillon said. "If we came up with an upper bound, it would have to be quite large . . . The concern was that the press would focus on the upper bound."

Once the riser was cut, said Steve Wereley at Purdue University, "The flow must go up," because the oil is no longer held up by the kink in the pipe. But Wereley said the flow was so poorly understood that he didn't believe estimates that the flow had increased by 20 percent.

"I would be suspicious of that 20 percent number. I would be suspicious of any number, from anybody else, that does not have some sort of supporting documentation," Wereley said.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37622825/ns/us_news-washington_post/

MSN Privacy . Legal

Divers Find Oil Under Surface; BP Continues to Deny

2010-06-09T10:08:00.001-05:00

Carolyn Presutti | Washington09 June 2010

A cloud of oil in the water

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) confirms that some of the oil escaping from that ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico is staying beneath the surface, raising new environmental concerns about the disaster. BP says there is no significant oil staying underwater.
Scuba divers showed U.S. legislators video of the spill which they shot while 20 meters under the sea and 64 kilometers off the U.S. Gulf coast. The oil is so thick below this depth that it blocks out almost all light. "Something I've never seen in diving, in my whole life out here," said diver Al Walker.

Fellow diver Scott Porter says the substance feels like a mixture of clay and wax. He had to scrape it off his hands. Soap had no effect. "I don't know of anything that would be able to live through that," Porter said.

Yet on Wednesday, BP continued to deny any large amount of oil under the surface.

"No one has yet found any concentrations that measured higher than the parts per million," said BP's Doug Suttles.

Meantime, Congress conducted five oil spill hearings on Capitol Hill Wednesday. Legislators want to know why risks weren't studied when oil rigs drill 5,000 feet below the water.
"I'm just terribly bothered about the lack of foresight, both by our government and of BP and, of course, BP will pay a price for that," said Congressman Vernon Ehlers. "Perhaps even a failure of the corporation at the rate it's going."

"The industry pretends that accidents simply can't happen and the government pretends that industry is the most reliable source of information for making regulatory decisions," said Jeffrey Short. "In the end, this socializes all the risks and privatizes all the profits."

Scientists say BP's usage of nearly four million liters of dispersants is forcing the oil to remain at lower depths in the ocean, where it is carried along the water columns with the currents. The result is a plume, which depletes oxygen and kills off living organisms.
Representative Mario Diaz-Balart posed this question to the Environmental Protection Agency's Albert Venosa: "We know the effects of crude oil are coming to the surface and oiling the animals, but we do not know what the long-term effects are of this thing floating along in the water column. Could it be worse than if it would have been allowed to just float?"

"I can only speculate," said Venosa. "I don't really know."

"So, here we are releasing hundreds of thousands of gallons [liters], whatever the number is gallons....of this chemical into the ocean, not knowing what the affect is going to be longterm, if it's worse or not," said Diaz-Balart. "That to me is inconceivable."

However, if no dispersants were used, all the oil would be surfacing. Visible on the beach. Visible on the animals. Scientists now say it's what they can't clearly see that's starting to worry them.

Find this article at:
http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/Divers-Find-Oil-Under-Surface-BP-Continues-to-Deny-96005799.html

Subsea oil plumes found 142 miles from rig

2010-06-08T15:47:00.003-05:00

Crude moving under surface could threaten marine life
Reuters
updated 7:37 p.m. CT, Tues., June 8, 2010

Experts investigating reports of undersea oil plumes emanating from BP's stricken well in the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday confirmed the presence of low levels of oil below the surface.

"NOAA is confirming the presence of very low concentrations of subsurface oil," Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told a briefing in Washington.

It was the first government confirmation of undersea oil near BP's blown-out well a mile beneath the ocean. Previously, both NOAA and BP have played down the possibility of undersea plumes.

When university researchers aboard the Pelican research ship last month reported finding an underwater plume roughly 20 miles long, NOAA issued a statement criticizing the findings as "misleading, premature and, in some cases, inaccurate."

BP officials have said that oil from the well rises to the surface because it is lighter than water. "There aren't any plumes," BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward said on May 30.

But after analyzing underwater samples gathered by researchers aboard the University of South Florida's research vessel, the Weatherbird II, a different conclusion emerged.

"The bottom line is yes, there is oil in the water column," Lubchenco said.

"NOAA is confirming the presence of very low concentrations of subsurface oil at sampling depths ranging from the surface to 3,300 feet at locations 40 and 42 nautical miles northeast of the well site and another sampling station at 142 nautical miles southeast of the wellhead," Lubchenco said.

The oil is "in very low concentrations" around 0.5 parts per million," and other NOAA research ships are in the Gulf to gather additional samples, she said.

Undersea oil depletes the water's oxygen content and threatens marine life like mussels, clams, crabs, eels, jellyfish and shrimp.

Small concentrations
One researcher who recently studied the undersea oil aboard the NOAA research ship Thomas Jefferson said the oil detected south of the spill site appeared to be in small concentrations.

"These are not like rivers of oil flowing down deep," said Daniel Torres, a scientist with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. "We're detecting pretty low levels."

Video: Disaster in the Gulf: Day 50

NOAA has been trying to "fingerprint" the oil to confirm that it came from the BP well. Surface samples taken 40 miles northeast of the well were "consistent with the BP oil spill," but hydrocarbons from samples taken 42 miles and 162 miles from the well "were in concentrations too low to do the actual fingerprinting," Lubchenco said.

The U.S. government and BP have concentrated their efforts on corralling the oil that floats to the surface and washes ashore in what is the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

But the government has little experience in dealing with subsea oil, said Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the top U.S. official overseeing the cleanup effort.

"We have not generally done subsurface responses," Allen told the news conference. "In my own personal experience I have not dealt with it."

BP has sprayed about 1 million gallons of chemical dispersant on oil at the ocean surface and wellhead, which causes the oil to either dissipate or sink to the ocean floor.

"Additional work is needed to better understand the fate and transport of hydrocarbons within the deeper waters of the Northern Gulf of Mexico," NOAA said in a document that detailed the findings.

Scientists involved in the studies will testify on Wednesday before a House Energy and Commerce Committee panel that is probing the spill.

Among those testifying will be Samantha Joye, a University of Georgia marine sciences professor who last month reported finding a plume roughly 20 miles long, six miles wide, and 100 feet thick.

It could take years to assess the impact of the spill on underwater life, Joye said.

"When you interfere with the natural processes in a system, when you alter the carbon cycle and the oxygen cycle, it's very likely that impacts will cascade up the food web to the top predators," she said.

Copyright 2010 Reuters. Click for restrictions.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37572167/ns/disaster_in_the_gulf/from/toolbar/

MSN Privacy . Legal
© 2010 MSNBC.com

How much oil is leaking into the Gulf?

2010-06-08T15:20:00.001-05:00

Live from the Ocean Floor: New Oil Leak Widget Features 'Spillcam'
By: Hari Sreenivasan

BP's live video stream of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico is simultaneously tragic and hypnotic. With each passing second, more gallons of crude oil and natural gas escape into the ocean.

Until Thursday, BP and NOAA had stood by their early estimate -- produced April 29, a week after the Deepwater Horizon rig sank -- that about 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons) were leaking per day from the damaged well, although they had acknowledged that the estimate was not precise.

And after the world first witnessed the 30-second video clip that BP released on May 12, scientists began to wonder more loudly how the estimate could be that low.

Now, thanks in part to congressional pressure, we have a way to watch the environmental crisis unfold in real time via a live video feed. We modified our original Gulf Leak Meter because the video takes our sliding scale out of the abstract and into reality.

Embed Code:

View original ticker. Last updated 11 a.m. ET on May 27.

Our first oil widget, which we released May 9 and continue to update, allows readers to choose scenarios based on the best guesses (because that is truly what they were) of the spill's size. On May 14, we spoke with some outside experts for more perspectives on how much oil might be flowing from the leak. And on May 17, we factored in that BP was reporting some success in siphoning 2,000 barrels of oil per day out of the leaking well.

Here's a look at some of the other numbers that form the basis of our oil leak range, including our update on May 21 about reports of a new estimate on the way:

■NOAA | 210,000 gal/day
■USGS (Added May 27) | 504,000 to 798,000 dal/day
■Outside Estimates | 1,050,000 gal/day
■BP (Worst Case as of May 5) | 2,520,000 gal/day
■Experts' Worst Case | 4,200,000 gal/day

A new "flow rate technical team" comprised of outside experts and multiple government agencies is beginning work on a new estimate of the leak's magnitude, which could come as early as this weekend. We'll update both our widgets until the leak is stopped.

Wire services reported Friday evening that the White House plans to name former Florida Sen. Bob Graham and former EPA administrator William K. Reilly to lead the presidential commission investigating the oil leak.

Obama lashes out at BP on Gulf visit

2010-06-04T18:24:00.000-05:00

Company begins capturing oil spewing from underwater well
NBC, msnbc.com and news services
updated 8:03 p.m. CT, Fri., June 4, 2010
GRAND ISLE, La. - BP began capturing some oil spewing from its ruptured Gulf of Mexico well Friday as President Barack Obama warned the company against skimping on compensation to residents and businesses hurt by the nation's worst spill.

With tar balls washing ashore in Florida and political pressure mounting on BP to free up cash for damages, company executives told investors they were putting off a decision on whether to suspend the next quarterly dividend.

"Future decisions on the quarterly dividend will be made by the Board, as they always have been, on the basis of the circumstances at the time," the British energy giant said in a statement. Its annual dividend totals $10.5 billion.

BP CEO Tony Hayward said the company had plenty of money to meet its obligations, including $5 billion in cash and additional credit lines it could tap. It has already spent well over $1 billion on its oil spill response.

Obama, facing a monumental test of his presidency amid criticism he has failed to demonstrate leadership or emotion in the crisis, showed a flash of anger as he seized on the dividend issue in a meeting with state and local officials in Kenner, La.

"They say they want to make it right. That's part of their advertising campaign. Well, we want them to make it right," Obama said, criticizing BP for spending lavishly on television ads to burnish its corporate image while the company considers the dividend payout.

"What I don't want to hear is, when they're spending that kind of money on their shareholders and spending that kind of money on TV advertising, that they're nickel and diming fishermen or small businesses here in the Gulf," he said.

Limited progress
It was Obama's third trip to the region since the April 20 rig explosion that killed 11 workers and unleashed the worst oil spill in U.S. history. In an interview on Thursday, he said he was "furious" at the disaster, which threatens fishing and tourism, two of the cornerstones of the local economy.

BP on Thursday was able to attach a containment cap atop the ruptured well, which came after several failed attempts to choke off or curtail the oil flow. It will take a few days for the operation to reach optimum performance, at which point the company hoped to be able to siphon off as much as 90 percent of the leaking oil.

Video: Oil takes terrible toll on wildlife

The U.S. Coast Guard said Friday the containment cap placed atop the gusher a mile beneath the Gulf's surface was collecting some of the oil.

"Progress is being made, but we need to caution against overoptimism," said Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government's point man for the crisis. Early in the day, he guessed that the cap was collecting 42,000 gallons a day — less than one-tenth of the amount leaking from the well. Since it was installed, it had collected about 76,000 gallons, BP said in a tweet Friday night.

BP does not expect to be able to fully halt the oil flow until August, when two relief wells are to be completed.

In the meantime, Hayward vowed BP will "stand by our obligations."

"We will halt this spill and put right the damage that has been done," he said.

BP's share price, which has fallen sharply since the beginning of the crisis, gyrated in London and New York. Standard & Poor's cut BP's credit rating to AA-minus from AA, following the example of two other rating agencies on Thursday.

Oil reaches Florida
The BP catastrophe arrived with the tide on the Florida Panhandle's white sands Friday. The oil has now reached the shores of four Gulf states — Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida — turning its marshlands into death zones for wildlife and staining its beaches rust and crimson in an affliction that some said brought to mind the plagues and punishments of the Bible.

Video: Reports of oil strike fear in heart of Florida

"In Revelations it says the water will turn to blood," said P.J. Hahn, director of coastal zone management for Louisiana's Plaquemines Parish. "That's what it looks like out here — like the Gulf is bleeding. This is going to choke the life out of everything."

He added: "It makes me want to cry."

Oil sheen and tar balls washed up along a stretch shoreline crowded with beachgoers in northwest Florida.

"You see shells and jellyfish and trash, but I've never seen oil here. It's crazy," said Anthony Cross, while walking along Pensacola Beach with his three daughters, holding a child's fishing net full of tar.

NOAA on Friday opened more than 16,000 square miles of previously closed fishing area off the Florida coast, including a 13,653-square mile area just west of the Florida Keys and Dry Tortugas.

The area was initially closed on Wednesday as a precaution to ensure that seafood from there is safe, but oil did not move in.

Signs of displeasure
On Grand Isle, La., where homes bear quirky names like "Shore Thing" and "The Sand Bar," residents hung new signs before Obama's visit. "Tony Bologna," read one, a dig at BP's CEO. On another home, named "Mama-Pappy Dream," a new sign was added: "Dream is Gone." Still another said: "End this nightmare."

"He ain't much of a leader," Eugene Ryman Jr. said of Obama. "The beach you can clean up. The marsh you can't. Where's the leadership? I want to hear what's being done. We're going to lose everything."

When he arrived in Louisiana, Obama indicated he felt the frustration locally and from the rest of the country.

"This has been a disaster for this region, and people are understandably frightened and concerned about what the next few months and the next few years may hold," Obama said after a briefing with the Coast Guard's Allen and the governors of Louisiana, Florida and Alabama.

White House visit
On his trip to the Grand Isle on the coast, his motorcade passed a building that had been adorned with his portrait reminiscent of posters of him during his presidential campaign. Instead of "hope" or "change," the words "what now?" were on his forehead.

Once there, Obama rolled up his sleeves and sat down at a table with the fishing industry workers, and they all ate shrimp and corn on the cob. One by one, they told Obama their horror stories, which he then related to reporters.

"Terry's been shrimping out here for 45 years. Right now things are completely shut out," the president said. "Floyd has oil seeping into these oyster beds."

The mayor of Grand Isle, David Camardelle, choked up as he told of staying up nights worrying, "looking at the ceiling fan."

"We don't know what's going to happen tomorrow," Camardelle said. "I'm trying to keep Grand Isle alive."

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs announced to reporters traveling with the president that the families of the 11 workers killed when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded will visit the White House on Thursday.

Gibbs said that Obama had written to the 11 families to extend the invitation so that he can pay personal condolences.

Also Friday, a federal panel of about 50 experts recommended the continued use of chemical dispersants to break up the oil, despite its harm to plankton, larvae and fish.

Panel member Ron Tjeerdema said they decided the animals harmed by the chemicals underwater had a better chance of rebounding quickly than birds and mammals on the shoreline. Tjeerdema chairs the Department of Environmental Toxicology at the University of California, Davis.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration asked for the panel to be assembled to provide the federal government and BP with guidance on whether they should continue to use the controversial dispersants.

The Associated Press, Reuters, NBC News and msnbc.com staff contributed to this story.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37463005/ns/disaster_in_the_gulf?GT1=43001/from/toolbar

Now confirmed: Oil's washing ashore at Baldwin County beaches

2010-06-04T16:37:00.000-05:00

Published: Friday, June 04, 2010, 8:00am Updated: Friday, June 04, 2010, 3:50 PM

Ryan Dezember, Press-Register

e(Press-Register/Bill Starling)A child pokes a stick into some oil that came ashore on the beach at Gulf Shores, Ala., on Friday, June 4, 2010. Oil began to be sighted on the beaches as it washed ashore from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

GULF SHORES, Ala. -- Baldwin County's first landing of oil has been confirmed in Gulf Shores. Globs of oil were coming ashore today on the west side of Gulf State Park near Gulf-front condos and in some other areas.
A park official said that oil has come ashore throughout the state park, though the highest concentrations are at the west end. When the oil came ashore around noon, the beach was crowded and people were swimming in the Gulf. When the oil washed onto the beach, tourists began collecting it in water bottles, poking at it with sticks and even touching it, the official said.
The reddish globs have the consistency of honey and don't wash off easily.
Cleanup crews had yet to arrive an hour and a half after the oily material washed ashore. Two boats tried to corral the oil with boom but appeared unsuccessful. A cleanup crew chief who arrived at the scene said the water was too rough to corral the oil, and that he was waiting for about 100 laborers to arrive to clean up the mess with shovels.
In Orange Beach, Coastal Resources Manager Phillip West said that he had responded to reports of tarballs and oil-covered debris, like beer bottles and bits of Styrofoam but he said no oil had yet made landfall east of the state park.
Isolated small patches of oil have washed ashore at the Bon Secour National Wildlife Rufuge, Jereme Phillips, refuge manager said.
The small patches were discovered between Mobile Street and Laguna Key subdivision, Phillips said. The oily material came ashore around 3 p.m., he said.

"Tar Balls" in Gulf Shores

2010-06-04T15:47:00.002-05:00

by Rob Shaw
Published: June 04 2010 - 3:13 pm Last Updated: June 04 2010 - 3:18 pm

They came armed with cups, plates, bottles, plastic bags, anything they could get their hands on. As tar balls and other small globs of oil began to wash up on Pensacola Beach this morning and into the afternoon, ordinary people became the cleanup crew.

They weren't wearing gloves or protective clothes. They wore swimsuits and had a simple mission in mind: try to save the white beach they love.
Dale Balsavich sees himself as sort of a one-man cleanup crew.
While most people go to the beach to collect seashells, he was on a mission this morning to collect as many tar balls as he could in a small plastic blue bowl.

"Where's the government? Where's the BP people?'' the 26-year-old personal trainer asked as he walked along the beach, stooping every few steps to gather more gunk. "They're the ones supposed to be cleaning this up.''

Balsavich had gone less than 100 yards on the beach and already his bowl was overflowing with a brown mixture of goo that looked like melted fudge.
"It's a travesty,'' the Pensacola native said. "The beach will be affected and won't come back for a long, long time. Toxic sludge is what we are dealing with.''

Sonya Daniels, spokeswoman for Escambia County emergency management, said a dozen teams of 10 people each were combing the beach to look for oil, which had impacted about a 10-mile stretch of the shore.

"They would really like to find it in the sand, right on the shore, not where someone has handled it," Daniels said. "Be our lookout, spot it and then let the assessment teams go out and do the collection."

The oil is considered a contaminated substance and should not be touched, the spokeswoman said. Globs of oil ranging from a quarter to the size of a dinner plate were washing up, she added.

As children frolicked in the waves and parents and toddlers built sandcastles, members of the media gathered around folks such as Balsavich who were finding oil washing up on the formerly pristine white beaches.

"This is just the tip of the iceberg,'' Balsavich said. "It's a shame. It's really sad because there are a lot of people who depend on this beach for their livelihood.''

And more may be on the way, according to a consortium of disaster officials from several Gulf states that make up the Deepwater Horizon Unified Command. Winds gusting up to 28 mph from the southwest are expected through Sunday and that could push portions of the oil plume onto the western Panhandle beaches. Seas of up to 6 feet also are expected.

Officials say a 30 to 50 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms over the weekend could hamper some recovery operations.

According to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration oil plume model updated today, a large oil slick is 17 miles from Pensacola, more than 100 miles from Gulf County, and 280 miles from St. Petersburg. Some smaller globs of oil are scattered across the Gulf, officials say, and may be closer to shore, although they can't be seen in satellite photos.

States of emergency have been declared in 10 coastal Panhandle counties. Emergency operations centers have been activated in six of those counties. None of the beaches has been closed.

Carol Van Kay of Venice was visiting her sister, Kathy Stanton, in Pensacola when they both headed to the beach with tiny plastic bags on their hands. They compared picking up the tar balls to picking up after a dog.

"This beach is so nice,'' Van Kay said, admitting she was worried about west coast beaches such as Venice, Sarasota and elsewhere. "If people can pick these tar balls up, the more, the better. It will keep the beach that more clean.''

Edie Manning has been coming to Pensacola Beach since she was 15.

The 49-year-old Tennessee resident was getting ready for a day of sun as news crews blanketed the sandy white beaches.

"It hurts me," she said of the oily mess that began to wash ashore. "It hurts my heart to think that this beach could be closed at the peak of the season."

Manning said she has been to beaches all across the country but that this destination in Escambia County is her favorite.

"Pensacola Beach is my beach," she said. "It's home to me."

She said she was most worried about the economic impact it would have on everyday workers -- at docks, restaurants, hotels and other places.

"You can see it in their faces," she said. "It's their livelihood."

John Hughes of New Orleans brought his wife and twin 10-year-old daughters to Pensacola Beach because he said it might be the last time they ever see it this white.

"It is so pretty and white and beautiful,'' Hughes said as Camryn and Courtney frolicked in the large waves crashing ashore. "It could ruin it for the rest of their lifetime.''

Hughes, who brings his family on vacation to the Panhandle a couple of times each year, said it has been heartbreaking to see the devastation in his own state of Louisiana.

"Every day the girls ask if I can take them to the coastline to help rescue those animals,'' he said.

Courtney's biggest worry is that "all the animals will die and they won't be able to be rescued.'' She is most worried about pelicans, dolphins and turtles.

"It makes me really sad to see that,'' she said of television images of blackened, dying birds and other wildlife.

As for Camryn's biggest fear? "The sand will turn black and it won't ever be pretty again.''

Pensacola Beach wasn't the only place getting tar balls. Waves of gooey tar blobs were washing ashore in growing numbers elsewhere in the Panhandle and nearby Alabama beaches today as a slick from the BP spill drifted closer to shore.

Spotters who had been seeing a few tar balls in recent days found a substantially larger number starting before dawn on the beaches of the Gulf Islands National Seashore and nearby areas, a county emergency official said. The park is a long string of connected barrier islands near Pensacola.

Keith Wilkins from Escambia County emergency management said tar patties were common on parts of the beach, as much as one every foot.

Small gobs of reddish brown oil washed up in the surf for the first time in nearby Gulf Shores, Ala., this morning and a petroleum smell tinged the air.

Officials have said it is inevitable oil will eventually wash up on Panhandle beaches after a slick from the Deepwater Horizon spill was spotted about 9 miles offshore this week. The edge of the spill had moved to four miles off the coast Thursday, Gov. Charlie Crist said after a flyover.

Crist said the news of today growth in tar balls was "very disturbing."

"Obviously, it's not the kind of news that we want to hear," Crist said on CNN's "American Morning."

Escambia County emergency officials have been preparing for the oil by shoring up miles of boom. The county plans to block oil from reaching inland waterways, but left its beaches unprotected because they are too difficult to shield and easier to clean up.

Joe Fairleigh and his son, Henry, of Kentucky were going for a stroll on Pensacola Beach when they found a gooey mess of tar. And another. And then another.

"It is all along the beach. We must have seen a hundred," the father said as he held a clump of oil mixed with sand perched in a children's sand toy.

"It's really scary to think how big the Gulf is and how much coastline could be impacted by this," he added.

BP turns to giant shears to cut leaking Gulf pipe - Disaster in the Gulf- msnbc.com

2010-06-03T09:21:00.002-05:00

BP turns to giant shears to cut leaking Gulf pipe - Disaster in the Gulf- msnbc.com
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37463005/ns/disaster_in_the_gulf?GT1=43001/from/toolbar

Field Notes - Oil seeps deep into marshes

2010-06-03T09:08:00.001-05:00

By Kerry Sanders, NBC News correspondent

GRAND ISLE, La. – Five miles into the Louisiana marshes, a team of scientists from Tulane University motors along on a flat-bottomed aluminum jon boat.

Here, deep into the marshes and well past the oil-soaking booms where few independent scientists have ventured, the team has made a disheartening discovery: oil.

Dr. Michael Blum, a coastal marsh ecologist, said he had received reports from fishermen that oil had penetrated up to 17 miles into the marshes.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

His team hoped to travel that full distance and would have but for an engine failure on the second jon boat with more scientists. (Jon boats are usually used for shallow water fishing, not searching for oil).

It was only after towing the second boat back to the dock that the team was able to make its way past the barrier islands into the marshlands.

Blum noted that oil in the Gulf is not unusual. “Oil leaks naturally in the Gulf every year. Tens of thousands of gallons and the marshes can handle that.”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And studies done at Nicholls State University reveal the marshes can survive small oil spills.

“I want to give people hope that the marshes can recover,” said Dr. Kerry St. Pé, a professor who has conducted those studies.

But both St. Pé and Blum noted this situation is different. “We’re talking about millions of gallons of oil,” Blum said.

While exploring the marshes, Tom Shannon, another ecologist with Tulane, found marine hermit crabs coated in oil, climbing the marsh reeds. “This is insane,” he said.

Marine hermit crabs are supposed to live in the water, which is why it was unusual to see them climbing the grasses. “It looks to me like they’re trying to breath,” said Shannon.

BP has deployed hundreds of miles of booms to trap the oil before it gets to the marshes. But as the Tulane scientists witnessed, often those booms have failed.

Their anchors are not holding – which allows even a gentle breeze to push the booms now soaked in oil into the marshes they’re supposed to protect. This is a problem,” said Blum. “These need attention now.”

Blum was unwilling to go so far as to say those who are placing the booms have little experience in this work, but several shrimpers doing the work here admit they’re learning as they go along.

Is it time to give up on the booms?

“Not at all,” said Blum. “This can work, it just needs to be done correctly and monitored.”

BP’s Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said the oil company is committed to saving the marshes.

“If it’s done in the right way, the marsh will come back, and there’s evidence for that,” he said.

Happy feet!

2010-05-30T12:30:00.002-05:00

No oil. No dead or oil covered creatures. Just peace and beauty.

But as I sit here I can't help but think "how long will it be before the oil hits?".

Which leads to the thought... "Will I EVER see the beach this way again?"

Key events in days, minutes before rig blast

2010-05-26T18:37:00.000-05:00

Cement, mud and pressure tests were part of the picture on April 20
updated 6:14 p.m. CT, Wed., May 26, 2010

What happened aboard the Deepwater Horizon that led to the blast that killed 11 workers and led to the massive Gulf oil disaster? Below's what is known so far.

April 10: The blowout preventer (BOP), equipment atop the wellhead designed to seal the well in an emergency, is “fully tested” by employees of Transocean Ltd., the drilling operator, under supervision of BP employees.

April 17: After reaching an oil reservoir, drilling is halted at 18,360 feet below sea level. The drill bit is retracted and the crew of the Deepwater Horizon begins making preparations to plug and temporarily abandon the well, which is to be brought into production by BP at a later date.

April 19: On April 19, employees of Halliburton, the cement contractor on the Deepwater Horizon, pump cement into the casing and to the bottom of the well. The cement passes through a one-way valve, then rises back up into the annulus, the narrow gap between the steel casing and the rock walls of the drill hole. The cement used in such an operation is “the consistency of a gray Cream of Wheat,” according to Robert MacKenzie, managing director of energy and natural resources at FBR Capital Markets and a former oil industry cementing engineer. “It’s like taking a straw and blowing into a cup of water. The bubbles — or the cement in this case — go down the middle and come up the outside.” The cement is intended to hold the drill pipe in place, protect it and prevent gas from leaking up the outside of the well.

After the cement is pumped, a rubber wiper plug — similar to the rubber element in a syringe — is inserted in the casing and pushed down to the lower valve by heavy drilling liquid pumped in behind it.

April 20, 12:30 a.m.: “Positive tests” — in which pressure inside the casing is increased as high as 6,500 pounds per square inch to test the wellhead seal assembly — are conducted through 7:30 a.m. and produce satisfactory results, according to BP documents later provided to Congress.

April 20, 10:30 a.m.: Crew members again test the blowout preventer through noon, including testing the “blind shear rams” designed to cut and seal the drill pipe. The device also passes this test, the documents show. (During this period, a crew from the testing firm Schlumberger that had been on the rig for two days preparing to conduct an acoustic test of the cement — known as a “cement bond log” — is placed on a regularly scheduled helicopter flight to the mainland without ever having been asked by BP to perform the test, according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune, which quoted a spokesman for Schlumberger. The omission of that test — described by Halliburton official Tim Probert during congressional hearings on May 11 as “the only test that can really determine the actual effectiveness of the bond between the cement sheets, the formation and the casing itself” — is likely to be a focus of the investigation.

April 20, 5 p.m.: About 16 ½ hours after the cement was pumped, a “negative” pressure test — in which pressure inside the casing is lowered to see if gas is leaking into the casing — is conducted. BP officials later acknowledge that the test produced an “anomalous” result — a reading of 1,400 pounds per square inch in the drill pipe, but zero pressure in the “kill” and “choke” lines attached to the blowout preventer.

(There is disagreement among BP officials about what happened next, according to Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. He said at a hearing on May 12 that James Dupree, BP senior vice president for the Gulf of Mexico, told staff members that the well didn’t pass the test and that a follow-up test proved unsatisfactory as well. But BP lawyers told the committee that further pressure tests were taken and that company officials determined that the additional results justified ending the test and proceeding with well operations.)

April 20, 8 p.m.: The crew aboard the Deepwater Horizon begins displacing drilling mud in the casing pipe with seawater prior to placing cement plugs in the well and temporarily abandoning it.

April 20, 9:08 p.m.: The crew discontinues pumping operations to displace the drilling mud with seawater. But real-time pressure readings from a “standpipe” – piping on the oil rig that is connected to high-pressure pumps and the drill pipe – indicate pressure of 1,000 pounds per square inch within, rather than the zero reading that would have been expected.

April 20, 9:46 p.m.: The real-time data show “several abnormal-appearing entries” between 9:46 p.m. and 9:48 p.m., indicating that pressure within the standpipe has reached nearly 3,500 pounds per square inch.

April 20, 9:49 p.m.: Transmission of real-time data ceases. Methane gas and possibly other hydrocarbons “kick” up the well toward the Deepwater Horizon, pushing a mixture of drilling mud and seawater before them.

Crew members aboard the Deepwater Horizon unsuccessfully attempt to activate the blowout preventer on the seabed to cut off the escaping gas and oil. BP officials later tell congressional investigators that the complex 450-ton piece of “failsafe” equipment only partially restricted the torrent. Crewmembers also try to activate the “emergency disconnect,” which shuts the BOP and disconnects the rig and riser from the well bore. It too fails.

After pushing out the oil and drilling mud, the escaping heavier-than-air gas cascades out of the top of the rig, about 240 feet above the deck of the Deepwater Horizon, and spills down into the operations area. Moments later, it ignites and causes an explosion, killing 11 crew members and forcing 115 others to flee for their lives. A supply vessel working alongside the rig reports that in addition to oil and water, cement-like debris also rains down on its deck, suggesting that cement from the bottom of the well also was hurled upward by the escaping gas.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37337280/ns/disaster_in_the_gulf/

MSN Privacy . Legal
© 2010 MSNBC.com

Deepwater Horizon Explosion – Breaking News

2010-04-21T18:45:00.002-05:00

Published: April 21st, 2010 by Mike

BREAKING NEWS:

We’ll update as more information comes in, but what we know so far is that an explosion has occurred on Transocean’s oil rig, Deepwater Horizon, 52 miles Southeast of Venice, LA forcing all personnel to abandon ship. The USCG responded to a call at approximately 10 p.m. Tuesday of an explosion and fire aboard the MODU Deepwater Horizon.

This image above, posted to the gCaptain forum, shows Transocean’s Deepwater Horizon on fire and was taken from about 10 miles away (click for higher resolution). The AP has also confirmed the fire and reported 126 workers on board:

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Authorities were searching for missing workers early Wednesday who evacuated after an explosion at an oil drilling platform off the coast of Louisiana.

The explosion happened around 10 p.m. Tuesday, 52 miles southeast of Venice, La., while 126 workers were aboard the platform, Coast Guard Senior Chief Petty Officer Mike O’Berry said.

No deaths were reported, but O’Berry said there were some injuries. He did not know how many.
Read USCG’s UPDATE 1: Coast Guard responding to oil drilling platform fire

Transocean Press Release: Transocean Ltd. Reports Fire on Semisubmersible Drilling Rig Deepwater Horizon

Update 1100 PST: It is being reported that the 11 missing persons have all been accounted for at this time.

These reports have never been confirmed by the USCG and now appear to be false.

We just got word that a good friend of gCaptain who works on that rig has been contact with his family and is OK. We’ll update as soon as we have confirmation on the rest of the crew.

Update 1300 PST: The following is an update just released by the USCG. Read more HERE

NEW ORLEANS, La. — The Coast Guard continues the search for 11 missing crewmembers from the mobile offshore drilling unit (MODU) Deepwater Horizon.

Watchstanders at the U.S. Coast Guard District Eight command center here received a report at approximately 10 p.m. Tuesday of an explosion and fire aboard the Deepwater Horizon, approximately 42 miles Southeast of Venice, La.

Updated reports indicate that there were 126 people on board the MODU at the time of the explosion.

One-hundred-fifteen crewmembers have been accounted for. Of those accounted for:

•Seventeen crewmembers were medevaced from the scene
•Ninety-four crewmembers are being transferred to shore at Port Fourchon aboard the Damien Baxton, an offshore supply vessel. There are no major injuries reported for these members.
•Four crewmembers have been transferred to another vessel
Read gCaptain forum thread Tansocean’s Deepwater Horizon is on fire for members posting the latest information, including photos.

Official Release from BP (4/21/2010): BP Offers Full Support to Transocean

A big THANK YOU to the gCaptain community for submitting information. Another a big thanks to the Workboat Crews and USCG on the scene. Our thoughts are prayers are with everyone affected by this.

•Message from Captain John Konrads, founder of gCaptain.com
USCG UPDATE 3: USCG has just released this official update. Read More HERE

NEW ORLEANS, La. — The Coast Guard continues the search for 11 missing crewmembers from the mobile offshore drilling unit (MODU) Deepwater Horizon.

Coast Guard is actively searching for all 11 crewmembers and will continue throughout the night with the following assets:

•Coast Guard cutters Cobia, an 87′ cutter homeported in Mobile, Ala.
•Coast Guard cutter Zephyr, a 179′ cutter homeported in Pascagoula, Miss.
Video is available at the following link: http://cgvi.uscg.mil/media/main.php?g2_itemId=46

Further updates will be available on the following Web site: www.jointinformation.com

Family members can contact the following number for additional information: (832) 587-8554.
USCG UPDATE 4: Coast Guard continues searching for 11 missing persons. Here is what happend overnight:

Overnight, the Coast Guard continued active search and rescue operations with two cutters that remained on scene:

•Coast Guard cutters Cobia, an 87′ patrol boat homeported in Mobile, Ala.
•Coast Guard cutter Zephyr, a 179′ coastal patrol boat homeported in Pascagoula, Miss.
Two aircraft are scheduled to be on scene at first light to continue the search efforts and two Coast Guard cutters are expected to be on scene later in the morning to relieve the Zephyr and Cobia. These assets include:

•One MH-65 Dolphin rescue helicopter and crew from Air Station New Orleans, La.
•One HC-144 Ocean Sentry rescue plane and crew from Aviation Training Center, Mobile, Ala.
•Coast Guard cutters Pelican, an 87′ patrol boat homeported in Abbeville, La.
•Coast Guard cutter Coho, an 87′ patrol boat homeported in Panama City, Fla.
Seventeen total sorties have been completed by air and surface assets and approximately 1940 square miles have been searched.

•Read more HERE
This website has been set up for updates.

UPDATE: Officials confirm that the Deepwater Horizon has sunk:

(CNN) — An oil rig that has been burning in the Gulf of Mexico for more than a day has sunk, the U.S. Coast Guard said Thursday.

Lt. Cmdr. Cheri Ben-Iesau of the Coast Guard announced this latest development as the search continued for 11 workers who have been missing since an explosion on the rig Tuesday night off the Louisiana coast.

Crude oil was leaking from the rig at the rate of about 8,000 barrels per day, Coast Guard Petty Officer Ashley Butler said. The Coast Guard also is preparing for possible leaks of up to 700,000 gallons of diesel fuel but can do little to protect the environment until the fire is out, Butler said.
Here’s the latest update from Transocean (4/22/2010): Transocean Ltd. Provides Update on Semisubmersible Drilling Rig Deepwater Horizon

UPDATE 5 from USCG: Search and rescue continues; joint environmental response efforts in place

http://gcaptain.com/maritime/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/IMG_1089.jpg

2010 State FBLA Conference

2010-04-19T10:31:00.001-05:00

My son, Trey, competed in the 2010 State FBLA Conference last week and placed second in his division! We're so proud of you Trey!!!

2010 State FBLA Conference

(He is wearing a dark blue shirt in the awards ceremony and a gold/rust colored shirt in the group shots.)

He's a little confused!!

2010-02-13T07:43:00.000-06:00

God is speaking to my son!!

2010-02-02T19:26:00.001-06:00

Brandon's revelation: God protects us the way a firewall protects a computer. God is like a firewall - satan is a virus. God protects us from satan's attacks & we are safe as long as we don't do something we aren't supposed to (sin)-when we do, we open a door for satan to attack. Computers are safe until we do something we aren't supposed to like open an infected file & allow the virus to attack.
Yes, I'm smiling... BIG!!

Governmental Flow Chart

2010-02-01T12:46:00.000-06:00

govt_flow_chart_cartoon.jpg

IMG00411.jpg

2010-01-01T15:20:00.001-06:00

On our way to my father in laws in Pensacola for one more Christmas get together.

"You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it" ~Adrian Rogers

2009-12-17T14:14:00.000-06:00

An economics professor at a local college made the statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had once failed an entire class.

That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan". All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.

As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little. The second test average was a D!
No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.

The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else. All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

Could not be any simpler than that.

GOD IS SO GOOD!

2009-12-16T11:58:00.000-06:00

Since he was a child my husband has wanted to have his own company. Whenever he was asked what he wanted to be when he grew up he would say “I want to own my own business”. He didn’t know what kind of company but he knew he wanted his own company.

Several years ago, God made it happen for him. When He gave Don the business He told him to “dream big or move out of the way” and that is exactly what Don has done. He has dreamed big and trusted God and God has done so much! And there is so much more that He has put in Don’s heart to do with and through this company. It has been incredible to be along on this ride!

Just as it has been for most companies (and people) this year has been stressful for our company. The budget has been tight! Financial ups and downs have kept us on an emotional rollercoaster. But God has seen us through it all. He has made a way and provided for our every need, every time. And we are so very grateful and give Him all the praise, glory and honor.

But being human, we are tired.

And being God, He has comforted and reassured us as only He can.

This past Sunday at church, part of Pastor’s message was that “God hasn’t forgotten you or your dreams”, “He is still in control” and that we should “dream big because God is a big God”. I looked at Don while Pastor was saying this and he was very moved. God had spoken to him and you could almost see the tension leaving him. Awesome!

So all week we’ve been reminding each other to “dream big”.

This morning, Don answered a customer service call and during the conversation the lady suddenly paused, gasped (loudly) and stated (not asked, stated) “You are a Christian”. When Don replied, “yes, mam” she said, “God just told me to tell you that your dreams are coming true”.

Through a perfect stranger, during a business call, God reassured us once again that He is in control, He loves us, He is concerned about us and He is working on our dreams!

"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" Hebrews 11:1

Delightfully Fancy

2009-10-28T20:22:00.007-05:00

This past Friday evening I had the pleasure of meeting Crystal, the author of Pink Lucy. I've followed her blog for about five years now. We've exchanged blog comments and emails (she was especially comforting and sweet to me when my dog passed away) but we've never met. Despite the fact that we live only about twenty minutes from each other. We recently discovered that she drives by my house often!

A few weeks ago I saw a link to her new website, Delightfully Fancy and went to check it out. I have to tell you I was "delighted" by what I found on this site. Crystal has created some of the most adorable Christmas tree ornaments I've ever seen. And they are all hand painted, original creations. I am SO impressed by the ornaments and Crystal's talent.

As I was checking out the Delightfully Fancy site, I found one that I HAD to order for a friend. It was absolutely perfect for her. So I emailed Crystal and ordered it. A couple of weeks later she emailed me to let me know it was ready and we made arrangements to meet.

When we met it was like we'd known each other for years. She is just as sweet and funny in person as she is on her blog. We talked for about 30 minutes and could have chatted much longer but she had to go pick up her husband from work - as it was she was about 45 minutes late! Sorry Daniel!

Before she left she handed me this adorable box that is stamped with the DF logo - very pretty...

Here are pictures of the front and back of the ornament. The pictures really don't do it justice. The colors are very bright and the painting is perfect! And the little poof on top - too cute!!

In the box was a business card with Crystal's contact information.

These ornaments are so cute! If you are looking for something adorable for your own tree or for a one of a kind present for someone else go visit Delightfully Fancy and then contact Crystal. You will not be disappointed.

P.S. This was not a paid post. Just the ramblings of a very satisfied customer! And yes, the ornament is in my coffee maker in the photos. Hey, it worked!

What a happy dog!

2009-10-28T19:41:00.002-05:00

He always looks like he is smiling!

Pioneer Woman test

2009-10-27T22:02:00.001-05:00

This is a test.
A test of the search power in the words Pioneer Woman.
I love her website. Not sure why, but I do.
I don't read it every day but often enough to know that Ree Drummond draws a crowd.
Especially when she is having one of her famous Pioneer Woman Giveaways.
I like to enter the giveaway and then just hit "refresh" a few times and watch the number of comments grow. It is freaking amazing how many people flock to enter these contests.
And YES, I am one of them.
As I said, this is a test. I want to see how many hits will be on my site meter from the words:
Pioneer Woman
and
Ree Drummond
Call it weird. Call it crazy. Call it stupid. Call it stalker like. I don't really care. My curiosity won. I just have to see what will happen.

Oops!

2009-10-03T20:24:00.002-05:00

I just realized that on my profile, I said that Don and I have been married 19 years. Not so. We've been married 18 years. It won't be 19 until next month.
:-)

Aaawwww....

2009-09-22T16:31:00.001-05:00

Look what my sweet hubby gave me.
For no special reason. It wasn't our anniversary or my birthday.

He said he likes to watch me smile when I look at them.

What the heck are these????

2009-09-22T08:58:00.001-05:00

These freaky looking things, which I assume are some sort of mushroom, are growing in my flower bed. Does anyone know what they are?

30 Day Shred - Day ???

2009-09-21T20:54:00.002-05:00

I was right about Aleve being my best friend! But so far so good with this workout. I've been as sore as I've ever been in my life. Getting up 30 minutes earlier has not been fun. But it is paying off. A little while ago Trey was picking at me (as usual) and poked me in the back of my arm and said "hey, it's not as jiggly". I'm going to take that as a compliment. :-)

Still not smoking!!!

30 Day Shred - Day 1

2009-09-15T09:39:00.002-05:00

God has been dealing with me about my health in general - physical, mental and spiritual (The mental and spiritual are another post altogether). The physical aspect started about 4 months ago when I watched the show "The Biggest Loser". There was a marathon of some sort on, I was home by myself and watched several episodes back to back. I was so inspired by these people! And I realized that losing weight wasn't complicated. But it wasn't easy either. Almost immediately I started making better food choices and in just a few days I noticed that I felt better. Within a couple of weeks I noticed I'd lost a few pounds. I've been watching what I eat for about 4 months now and have lost some weight (I don't own scales so I don't know how much), I feel better and my clothes fit better. It's been really good! What I didn't realize 4 months ago was that God was preparing me for even more changes.

I quit smoking. Again. I've been cigarette free since August 23rd. Didn't use the patches this time, just the gum. I was sick of smoking and determined to give it up so it has actually been pretty easy. I'd been praying about it for several weeks and just made up my mind to do it.

Last time I quit smoking, I started eating. Alot!!! I went from a size 6 jeans to a very tight size 12 (should've been a 14 but I wouldn't buy them). I learned from my mistakes last time and haven't allowed myself to eat like a pig. I gained a little back in the first couple of weeks - I allowed myself the comfort of a couple of pints of Ben & Jerry's but have started making good choices again.

For the past couple of weeks, I've felt God leading me to exercise. I have to admit, I'm not a huge fan of exercise. I'd much rather sit in a nice comfy chair, and read or watch TV or play on the computer. Last week, while sitting in my comfy chair playing on the computer, I read a twitter comment from someone I admire about something called the 30 day shred. I immediately googled it and guess who I saw staring back at me - Jillian Michaels from "The Biggest Loser"! I immediately knew that God was saying, "it's time to get out of the comfy chair and sweat!"

So, I went to my Netflix account and added this video to my list (even bumped it to the top).

I started this morning and WOW!! Jillian doesn't play! I made it through the workout with only a couple of short breaks (she says no more than 5 seconds - I stuck to that). But let me just say that I'm thinking that Aleve will be my best friend tomorrow!!

A picture is worth a thousand words...

2009-08-18T16:22:00.000-05:00

ObamaCare and me

2009-08-08T16:31:00.001-05:00

ObamaCare and me

Shared via AddThis

No More Circles!!!

2009-07-22T11:27:00.001-05:00

Circles in the Sand
Sharon Jaynes
Today's Truth
"The Israelites had moved about in the desert forty years until all the men who were of military age when they left Egypt had died, since they had not obeyed the LORD. For the LORD had sworn to them that they would not see the land that he had solemnly promised their fathers to give us, a land flowing with milk and honey" (Joshua 5:6 NIV).

One night, I was sitting on my sofa doing some paperwork when I noticed a large red fire ant crawling across my sand colored carpet. Being that I was comfortably molded into the seat cushion, I didn't want to get up. So I waited until the ant was within striking distance before I reached for my shoe to put an abrupt end to his journey. The carpet was just a few months old and I didn't want Mr. Ant's remains to leave a permanent mark, so I just banged on him softly. Just in case he wasn't "all the way dead," I left my shoe lying on top of him until I was ready to get up.
To my surprise, a few minutes later, a shaken ant eased his way out from underneath his leather prison and began to limp away. I guess his vision, equilibrium, or left side was impaired, because instead of making a mad dash toward the door, he began to totter, making a series of left turns and going in circles.
Thirty minutes later, my husband, Steve, walked into the room. "There's a big ant crawling on the floor."
"Yeah, I know," I nonchalantly replied.
"Why don't you get a tissue and get rid of him?" he asked.
"I will when I get up," I answered.
"Aren't you afraid he'll crawl away by that time?"
"Nope," I responded confidently. "He's been going around in circles for thirty minutes. I'll get rid of him when I get up."
Sure enough, forty minutes after the ant's trip to nowhere began; I finished my work, got a tissue, and sent him on a trip to visit the city's water treatment plant.
This scenario made me think about another creature that traveled in circles. Well, a lot of creatures in fact: about two millions Israelites - and not for forty minutes, but for forty years.
The Israelites had been under the Egyptians' shoe for 400 years. Then God called Moses to convince the Pharaoh that their brick making days were over and it was time for them to move on. Moses was to lead this band of slaves to freedom - to a land flowing with milk and honey. With plagues that would excite any professional exterminator, God convinced the Pharaoh that letting the Israelite go would be a good idea. He yelled, "Get those Israelites out of here!"
So they gathered up their belongings (not to mention a few belongings that weren't theirs) and left. Led by a pillar of fire by night and a cloud by day, they moved forward. After marching between the towering walls of the parted waters of the Red Sea, they sang for joy. "Hip, hip hooray! Now we're on our way!" Or so it seemed.
But they didn't joyously parade on to the land flowing with milk and honey. They didn't continue in reverence and awe of a God who had already performed more miracles in their presence than most people see in a thousand lifetimes. Instead they started to grumble and complain. "We're sick of this food." They started to doubt God. "Did He bring us out here to die?" They started to question Moses' leadership. "What are we going to drink?" They bickered among themselves, argued with Moses, and disobeyed God. And each time they stiffened their necks, God told them to take a left turn.
For forty years, they wandered in circles in the sand, like my little friend the ant crawling in circles on my sand colored carpet. An entire generation died out and a new generation was born. One day the stiff necks' prodigy had a light bulb moment. "Hey, we've got an idea," they reasoned, "let's try obeying God and see where that leads us."
Of course, we know where it led them, where obedience to God always leads, on a straight path to the Promised Land.
As I studied the Israelites' journey, I noticed a strange phenomenon. As long as they were going in circles in the dessert, bickering among themselves, they didn't encounter many outside enemies. They didn't fight many battles. There was only one.
But as soon as they crossed over the Jordan and headed in the path called obedience, they were under attack left and right. And so it is with us today. Many have been led out of Egypt (saved from the bondage of sin) and passed through the Red Sea (Jesus' blood) only to continue their Christian walk going in circles going nowhere. And amazingly, in the circular walk, there are very few battles. It's safe - not much action. Satan doesn't need to spend his energy attacking this bunch because they're absolutely no threat to him. But let God's children start walking in obedience and moving toward the Promised Land of spiritual maturity, and the battle's on.
Why didn't I get up from my comfy seat and dispose of the ant? Because I knew he wasn't going anywhere, so why bother. But if he had started heading for the door, I'd have taken care of him immediately.
Are you experiencing spiritual warfare in your life ... Jebusites, Amalekites, Hittites, Gossip-ites, Mocker-ites, In-law-ites, Neighbor-ites? Well, praise the Lord! It must mean you're headed in the right direction and someone's not happy about it. Just keep obeying God and marching forward. The Promised Land is just ahead.

Let's Pray
Dear Lord, I don't want to be like the Israelites who wandered around in the desert, going in circles for forty years. My heart's desire is to hear Your voice and obey Your bidding. Lord, I let go of the things that keep me in a holding pattern, circling over the runway of life. Lord, anything that keeps me from spiritual maturity, I give to You. Like the obedient second generation Israelites, I step forward with the anticipation of someone headed toward her personal Promised Land.
In Jesus' Name,
Amen.

2009-07-21T18:37:00.001-05:00

I'm at football practice with B.
Yes, the madness has begun. For the next couple of months our lives will revolve around football. T and B are both playing. They love it so I'm happy that they have the opportunity.

Work lately has been stressful. Sales are down. Bills are still due. We may have to make more employee cuts. I so hope we don't have to let anyone else go.

T got stung on the hand by a wasp Saturday and at one point it was swollen to 3 times its normal size. Poor guy has been in a Benadryl haze for three days now. Today his hand finally looked like a hand again.

Recently ran into a friend that I lost touch with about 10 years ago. We had a great time catching up. She turns 40 this Friday and her husband is throwing her a surprise party. Can't wait to see her reaction. I still have a hard time believing were 40!!!

We are really enjoying our new church. My kids are excited about church again and that makes me unbelievably happy. But I've got to say that 'breaking up' with your pastor is NOT fun. Even though we knew it was time to leave it was still hard to do. Emotions the past few weeks have been raw.

I am so ready for another beach trip!!

"Dinner with President Obama" - a parable

2009-07-16T09:45:00.003-05:00

Once upon a time, I was invited to the White House for a private dinner with the President.

I am a respected businessman, with a factory that produces memory chips for computers and portable electronics. There was some talk that my industry was being scrutinized by the administration, but I paid it no mind. I live in a free country. There's nothing that the government can do to me if I've broken no laws. My wealth was earned honestly, and an invitation to dinner with an American President is an honor.

I checked my coat, was greeted by the Chief of Staff, and joined the President in a yellow dining room. We sat across from each other at a table draped in white linen. The Great Seal was embossed on the china. Uniformed staff served our dinner.

The meal was served, and I was startled when my waiter suddenly reached out, plucked a dinner roll off my plate, and began nibbling it as he walked back to the kitchen. "Sorry about that," said the President. "Andrew is very hungry."

"I don't appreciate..." I began, but as I looked into the calm brown eyes across from me, I felt immediately guilty and petty. It was just a dinner roll. "Of course," I concluded, and reached for my glass. Before I could, however, another waiter reached forward, took the glass away and swallowed the wine in a single gulp. "And his brother Eric is very thirsty," said the President.

I didn't say anything. The President is testing my compassion, I thought. I will play along. I don't want to seem unkind. My plate was whisked away before I had tasted a bite. "Eric's children are also quite hungry."

With a lurch, I crashed to the floor. My chair had been pulled out from under me. I stood, brushing myself off angrily, and watched as it was carried from the room. "And their grandmother can't stand for long."

I excused myself, smiling outwardly, but inside feeling like a fool. Obviously I had been invited to the White House to be sport for some game. I reached for my coat, to find that it had been taken. I turned back to the President. "Their grandfather doesn't like the cold."

I wanted to shout - that was my coat! But again, I looked at the placid smiling face of my host and decided I was being a poor sport. I spread my hands helplessly and chuckled.

Then I felt my hip pocket and realized my wallet was gone. I excused myself and walked to a phone on an elegant side table. I learned shortly that my credit cards had been maxed out, my bank accounts emptied, my retirement and equity portfolios had vanished, and my wife had been thrown out of our home. Apparently, the waiters and their families were moving in.

The President hadn't moved or spoken as I learned all this, but finally I lowered the phone into its cradle and turned to face him. "Andrew's whole family has made bad financial decisions. They haven't planned for retirement, and they need a house. They recently defaulted on a sub-prime mortgage. I told them they could have your home. They need it more than you do."

My hands were shaking. I felt faint. I stumbled back to the table and knelt on the floor. The President cheerfully cut his meat, ate his steak and drank his wine. I lowered my eyes and stared at the small grey circles on the tablecloth that were water drops.

"By the way," He added, "I have just signed an Executive Order nationalizing your factories. I'm firing you as head of your business. I'll be operating the firm now for the benefit of all mankind. There's a whole bunch of Erics and Andrews out there and they can't come to you for jobs groveling like beggars."

I looked up. The President dropped his spoon into the empty ramekin which had been his Creme Brulee. He drained the last drops of his wine. As the table was cleared, he lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair. He stared at me I clung to the edge of the table as if it were a ledge and I were a man hanging over an abyss. I thought of the years behind me, of the life I had lived. The life I had earned with a lifetime of work, risk and struggle. Why was I punished? How had I allowed it to be taken? What game had I played and lost? I looked across the table and noticed with some surprise that there was no game board between us.

What had I done wrong? As if answering the unspoken thought, the President suddenly cocked his head, locked his empty eyes to mine, and bared a million teeth, chuckling wryly as he folded his hands. "You should have stopped me at the dinner roll," he said.

Sad but true!

2009-07-16T09:18:00.002-05:00

John Smith started the day early having set his alarm clock (MADE IN JAPAN ) for 6 am. While his coffeepot (MADE IN CHINA ) was perking, he shaved with his electric razor (MADE IN HONG KONG ). He put on a dress shirt (MADE IN SRI LANKA ), designer jeans (MADE IN SINGAPORE ) and tennis shoes (MADE IN KOREA).

After cooking his breakfast in his electric skillet (MADE IN INDIA ) he sat down with his calculator (MADE IN MEXICO ) to see how much he could spend today. After checking his Computer (made in MALAYSIA for job listings, and setting his watch (MADE IN TAIWAN ) to the radio (MADE IN INDIA ) he got in his car (MADE IN GERMANY ) filled it with GAS (from Saudi Arabia ) and continued his search for a good paying AMERICAN JOB.

At the end of yet another discouraging and fruitless day, John decided to relax for a while. He put on his sandals (MADE IN BRAZIL ), poured himself a glass of wine (MADE IN FRANCE ) and turned on his TV (MADE IN INDONESIA ), and wondered why he can't find a good paying job in AMERICA.

AND NOW HE'S HOPING HE CAN GET HELP FROM OUR NEW PRESIDENT (MADE IN KENYA).

Uurrgg!!!

2009-06-23T15:17:00.002-05:00

The level of customer service in the country is pathetic. Most people whether its the receptionist at the doctor's office or the person working the drive thru act like the are doing you a favor by doing what they get paid to do!!!

Americans, for the most part, are lazy, spoiled, immature brats with severe entitlement attitudes!

I've got news for you people, I don't owe any of you a damn thing. Grow up. Do your job and do it with a good attitude. I hate it that your job sucks. But guess what? Its not my fault. Stop taking your frustrations out on everyone around you.

And smile when you hand me my freaking french fries!!!

Cupping Therapy

2009-06-20T08:57:00.004-05:00

As stated in yesterday's post, I've had this problem with my neck/upper back for several weeks. The tension had created knots that were hard, deep and did not want to release. So, during my massage yesterday, the therapist suggested that we try "cupping therapy". I didn't know what she was talking about at first but as she began decribing it I rememebered seeing Anthony Bourdain on "No Reservations" having a cupping therapy session. It sounded bizarre but I'd been in so much pain for so long that I decided to give it a try.

The therapist warned me that it would leave circular marks that looked like bruises and she wasn't exagerating. I woke up this morning feeling some soreness in my back but without the stiff neck and headache that I've woken up with for the past month. I cannot tell you what a relief that is. I feel sooooooo much better. However, my back doesn't look like it should feel better. It looks like I should be in excruciating pain...

Brandon thinks that I look like I got into a fight with an octopus!

Ouch

2009-06-19T22:41:00.003-05:00

I have had an "issue" with my upper back/neck and shoulder for more almost 2 months. I went to a chiropractor and the adjustments helped. For a couple of weeks I thought it was over. Then earlier this week I woke up with my neck stiff and a headache. Then the pain moved back into my shoulder again. I was so OVER the whole situation!!!

My sweet husband made me an appointment for a deep tissue massage. I've never had a deep tissue massage and was a little skeptical and a lot nervous. But at this point I was desperate for some relief so I went.

Deep tissue massages hurt but they are oh so worth it. For the first time in weeks I can move my head without pain and I do not have a headache. I left that office feeling like a new woman!

I was warned that I would probably be a little sore and I have a feeling that the warnings will be true. I can feel every spot on my back where she worked out a knot. So I'm a little anxious about what I will feel like tomorrow. But I do know this, if I don't wake up with a stiff neck and a headache, my first experience with deep tissue massage will not be my last.

My Sunday

2009-06-14T21:46:00.001-05:00

Visited a new church this morning. We really enjoyed it. In some ways it was very different than what we were used to. The service was much more people friendly. I liked that. A lot. The music was good. I didn't know the songs but even though I couldn't sing along I felt it. I really liked that. A lot. After the service the pastor hung around and chatted with everyone. He hugged nearly everyone he talked with and smiled continuously. You can tell he really loves people. I really liked that. A lot.
The best part of the service for me was feeling my husband relax as we stood together praising God and then after the service I saw him smile. One of those beautiful smiles of his that light up his eyes. I haven't seen that since Charles died. It was good to see it again.

After church we had lunch with my parents. That is always fun. My dad asked a lot of questions about the new church which was very encouraging. He never wants to talk about church.

When we got home I took a long nap. Very sweet. I love a Sunday afternoon nap.

Just a little while ago we had a family push up challenge. I could only do 7 "guy" push ups but could do 15 "girl" push ups. Trey kicked all our butts!

Think I'm going to go to bed early. I need some snuggle time with my hubby.

~Happy Mama~

The Ant and the Grasshopper

On Memorial Day...

Our Day in Pictures

Strip searched for a hamburger

Arlington cemetery

Tuesday - VA & DC

Last day in Williamsburg

Day 2 -Williamsburg

Day 2

Shew!

Sad

DC trip

Chuckle for the day

Congress and the Budget -- Why Doesn't Congress Understand How Dire Our Fiscal Situation Really Is?

FW: Fwd: What the heck happened!

Love my new phone!!!

Some oil spill events from Monday, July 19, 2010

Results inconclusive as BP well tests continue

No sign of new leak but pressure readings not ideal

No oil leaking during test of BP's new cap

Pensacola, Florida

Some oil spill events from Monday, July 12, 2010

By The Associated Press © 2010 The Associated Press

July 12, 2010, 3:32PM

Oil spill confirmed to be in seabed off Alabama coast

Published: Thursday, July 01, 2010, 8:50 PM

The Associated Press

Whale sharks may be latest Gulf oil spill victims

Fri Jul 2, 2010 11:32pm GMT

BP says relief well meant to stop oil spill getting closer to target

Published: Monday, June 28, 2010, 11:10 AM

The Associated Press

Oil spill makes first landfall on Mississippi mainland, hits Alabama beaches

Published: Monday, June 28, 2010, 5:00 AM

A floating city springs up to contain Gulf spill

Site of the Deepwater Horizon disaster is now a roaring industrial complex

Crude Oil Fact Sheet

Latest blunder feeds frustration in the Gulf

BP Oil Spill Comes Ashore Florida's Pensacola Beach

Thick pools of oil wash up along north Florida coast

PCB Oilspill Update – Light Tarballs Continue to Wash Ashore

Latest Gulf oil spill forecast:

Coastal regions between Ship Island and Panama City are threatened by shoreline contacts

Published: Wednesday, June 23, 2010, 6:18 AM Updated: Wednesday, June 23, 2010, 6:24 AM

More oil gushing into Gulf after problem with cap

Published: Wednesday, June 23, 2010, 11:34 AM Updated: Wednesday, June 23, 2010, 12:08 PM

Tar Balls on Panama City Beach

Panhandle keeping pace with tar ball landings

Costner's 'dream' machines debut

BP CEO Tony Hayward Steps Down From Gulf Oil Spill Oversight

By SAM GUSTIN Posted 2:01 PM 06/18/10 Energy, Company News, Economy, People, BP

$20 billion oil spill payout a drop in the bucket for giant BP, figures show

Published: Thursday, June 17, 2010, 4:28 PM Updated: Thursday, June 17, 2010, 4:30 PM

Gov. Bob Riley disappointed in Barack Obama's oil spill speech

Published: Wednesday, June 16, 2010, 1:23 PM Updated: Wednesday, June 16, 2010, 1:25 PM

Yellow flags fly again in Gulf Shores allowing beachgoers to swim with caution, while Orange Beach continues swimming ban

Published: Thursday, June 17, 2010, 2:25 PM Updated: Thursday, June 17, 2010, 3:09 PM

Estimated BP oil spill size increased again to largest figure since spill began

Published: Tuesday, June 15, 2010, 4:41 PM

Obama says country 'must make commitment to the Gulf Coast'

Published: Tuesday, June 15, 2010, 7:27 PM

BP: Fire shuts down oil recovery operations aboard drillship Discoverer Enterprise

Published: Tuesday, June 15, 2010, 1:41 PM

Gulf vacationers wait last-minute or go elsewhere

Documents reveal BP's missteps before blowout

Alabama summer...

Alabama beaches filled with waves of oil

Published: Saturday, June 12, 2010, 5:21 PM Updated: Saturday, June 12, 2010, 6:27 PM

Suddenly, a vulnerable coast fears it is all but defenseless

By Zac AndersonPublished: Saturday, June 12, 2010 at 1:00 a.m.

Latest Gulf oil spill forecast: Onshore winds push slick toward barrier islands, Panhandle

Updated: Saturday, June 12, 2010, 7:30 AM

As oil comes ashore, Baldwin County beaches start to empty

Updated: Friday, June 11, 2010, 5:00 AM Published: Thursday, June 10, 2010, 6:37 PM

Louisiana leaders want Gulf drilling to resume

Oil spill may be twice as bad as earlier thought

Brits blame Obama as BP-linked pensions plummet

Study: Spill bigger than previously thought

Divers Find Oil Under Surface; BP Continues to Deny

By Zac Anderson
Published: Saturday, June 12, 2010 at 1:00 a.m.