BP Wants Sweetheart Oil Spill Settlement

I spent weeks covering the Gulf oil disaster for the National Wildlife Federation, so to hear that BP thinks it can bully the Justice Department into giving it a sweetheart settlement deal? What's the word I'm looking for?

Malarkey.

I recently moved from the DC area to New Bedford, MA, whose waters have been fouled by not one but two major oil spills in the last 40 years - the Florida barge spill in 1969 and the Bouchard No. 120 spill in 2003. You may not have heard much about either of those spills because New Bedford ain't exactly Miami Beach, but fishermen and wildlife lovers can still tell you plenty about the reduced catches and silent marshes.

Gulf Coast residents can stop me if this sounds familiar: The companies responsible wrote their checks, the government cleaned up what it could & moved on, but the oil from both spills isn't hard to find.

Tell U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to hold BP fully accountable.

Dept. of Irony: Team USA, Sponsored by BP

The U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Teams receive no federal funding. I understand they need to raise money and can't be too choosy about the sources.

But ... the 2012 and 2016 U.S. teams are sponsored by BP? Really?

BP is already deploying team members to the Gulf Coast on public relations trips.

As Karen Dalton Beninato tweeted, "Hence this year's 50 Yard Oil Slide."

And Robert Loerzel tweeted, "New event: The Junk Shot."

BP Oil Spill 2-Year Mark: Talking to Thom Hartmann

Could a Cuban Oil Disaster Spill Oil on Virginia's Coast?

With Cuba set to begin oil drilling, Anya Landau French blogs for the Christian Science Monitor that a Cuban oil spill could deliver disaster far beyond the Gulf of Mexico:

Now, after several delays, with a Chinese-built Italian oil rig, the Scarabeo 9, on its way to Cuba, drilling of the first of five exploratory wells in Cuban deep water is set to commence this December.

A spill from this first, easternmost exploratory well to be drilled by the Repsol consortium could be particularly damaging due to its location where the Gulf Stream exits the Gulf of Mexico for the Atlantic. Whereas the BP disaster was somewhat "contained" in the northern Gulf, Piñón tells me to "imagine a fan-shaped spill with the well as the axis." If something were to go wrong on Scarabeo 9, we could see and feel the effects of a major oil spill in Cuban deep water not just in Florida, but far up the Atlantic coast.

And as Fareed Zakaria writes, "the nearest and best experts on safety procedures and dealing with oil spills are all American, but we are forbidden by our laws from being involved in any way with Cuba." What could go wrong?

"They Say That Oil And Water Don't Mix. But Dammit If We're Not Trying!"

Hey, maybe we just haven't been looking on the bright side of oil disasters. The ocean gains new traits ... like being able to light it on fire! And maybe new species will evolve, like birds that ... uh ... enjoy being sticky!

From IFC's The Whitest Kids U' Know:

Who're You Gonna Believe, The American Petroleum Institute Or The Green Miles?

From today's story on the presidential oil disaster commission's final report in E&E News (subscription required):

[American Petroleum Institute] president and CEO, Jack Gerard said earlier this week at an event in Washington that "the general public today believes [the Gulf oil disaster] was an isolated incident."

"When you look at the experience of the industry, we've been in the Gulf for over 65 years and have drilled over 42,000 wells. This clearly was a rare incident," Gerard said.

Environmentalists offered a different take.

"Reality shows us that oil disasters are tragically common," Miles Grant, a spokesman for the National Wildlife Federation, wrote in an e-mail to reporters this morning. "The Deepwater Horizon wasn't even the only oil rig explosion in the Gulf last year -- another blast in September injured a worker and sent a plume of thick black smoke into the sky."

Read much more on the commission's report (free!) from Brad Johnson of the Center for American Progress.

Remembering BP's Many Smokescreens

I usually try to keep The Green Miles (my personal blog) separate from my work at the National Wildlife Federation. But I thought I'd share the link to a post I wrote at NWF's blog on the top 10 heroes of the Gulf oil disaster.

It was interesting to think about the first days of the disaster in light of what we know now. Can you believe BP claimed the gusher was only 200,000 gallons a day when it was closer to 200,000 gallons every few hours? Or that BP had live cameras of the gusher that it didn't make public for weeks? Or that the federal government didn't object in either case until conservation groups & members of Congress protested?

Here's a link to all my NWF posts.

Tony Hayward: What Should I Do?

South Park recently ran a series satirizing the BP oil disaster. Here they show former BP CEO Tony Hayward, joined by South Park characters Captain Hindsight (a media parody), Mysterion (Kenny) & The Coon (Cartman), doing his own version of the LeBron non-apology Nike ad:

Mysterion Rises
Tags: SOUTH
PARKEric Cartman,Mysterion,more...

Ryan Reynolds: The True Cost of a Gallon of Gas

Via Ecorazzi, here's a new video from NRDC. It's a powerful ad, although I have to ask ... why not have him do something silly? Isn't that what Ryan Reynolds is good at, making us laugh? I kind of want to see him arguing with a sock puppet.

America's Daily Oil Disaster

Captured perfectly by The Onion.

Grounds Crew Tries BP Technique for Readying Baseball Diamond

BP has gotten lots of positive press from burning oil on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. Hey, look, less surface oil! Well, y'know, except for those pesky questions about health issues & burning endangered sea turtles.

Now we learn a local grounds crew has put BP ingenuity to work in Edmonton, attempting to speed-dry a wet baseball diamond. From CBC News via Deadspin:

"What usually takes a day, day and a half for Mother Nature to take care of, we did in half an hour," Gerry Peterson said after his crew spread diesel fuel on the field and ignited it last week.

After being told what had happened, officials in the Edmonton suburb dispatched a crew to dig up the field and test the dirt. When the test results showed the pitcher's mound had been contaminated with fuel, the field was shut down as an environmental risk. [...]

The local baseball association is on the hook for cleanup costs.

So like BP, the local baseball association will have to pay for the cleanup. But I wonder if it's also protected by an industry-friendly liability cap?

Why Tony Hayward's Step Down Doesn't Matter

Tony Hayward is stepping down as BP's CEO to move to another role within the company, getting an $18 million golden parachute as he goes. BP is hoping Gulf coast residents will view his replacement, Bob Dudley, more favorably because he's an American who lived in Mississippi for a time.

Yet the very next day, BP is continuing to use Hayward's rhetoric. A researcher on BP's payroll predicts the BP oil disaster's impact will be "quite small." Hayward himself once infamously predicted the impact would be "relatively tiny."

Last night I was at happy hour at Gordon Biersch in DC talking with friends about the disaster. "This is what BP doesn't get: We don't hate Tony Hayward because he's British," one of my friends said. "We hate him because he fucked the Gulf Coast."

BP dumping its CEO but continuing its lies changes nothing.

"My Oyster Distribution Business Is Done"

How is the BP oil disaster hurting Virginia's economy? A Virginia waterman explains:

John Boehner Contradicts John Boehner on BP Oil Disaster

John Boehner is a formidable opponent. For John Boehner.

You see, John Boehner thinks President Obama is doing too little to respond to the BP oil disaster. But John Boehner, on the other hand, thinks President Obama is doing too much.

It depends on which John Boehner you're talking to. Is it the John Boehner trying to pander to voters? Or the John Boehner trying to suck up to Big Oil?

Pandering John Boehner appeared on Hugh Hewitt's show on May 27th to complain President Obama was doing too little:

It’s becoming increasingly clear that the Administration is not fulfilling their responsibility to the people of the Gulf Coast area or the people of the United States.

But Friend of Big Oil John Boehner told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review today that President Obama is doing too much:

Boehner said Obama overreacted to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The spill might warrant a "pause" in deepwater drilling, but Obama's blanket ban on drilling in the gulf -- which a judge overturned last week -- could devastate the region's economy, he said. Louisiana State University scientists estimate the ban could have affected more than 10,000 jobs.

While every job is needed on the Gulf Coast, it's important to remember that even those 10,000 jobs pale in comparison to the estimated 16,000 jobs lost and $1.15 billion taken from the area’s gross domestic product by the BP oil disaster -- and that's in the best case scenario, according to Moody's.

If there's anything both John Boehners agree on, it's that the GOP won't be trying to make a comeback by delivering fresh ideas & solutions -- they're sticking with bashing President Obama, no matter how incoherent that turns out to be.

The Daily Show: "'You Broke It, You Bought It' Is Not Extortion."

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Day 62 - The Strife Aquatic
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

One Month Later: How Has BP Oil Disaster Changed La.?

The Green Miles just returned to Arlington from a week on the Gulf Coast, traveling from Venice, LA to Pensacola, FL to view impacts of the BP oil disaster. Here's a clip talking about the differences I noticed in the Mississippi River Delta from my visit a month ago to now:

You can also see pictures I took on Flickr & learn more about the Gulf Telethon at CNN.com.

Is This What Gov. McDonnell Wants to Bring to Virginia?

Take a good, long look, Gov. McDonnell:

More horrifying pictures at Examiner.com.

Photo via Flickr's GreenpeaceUSA

BP Has New Plan to Distract Us From How Screwed We Are

As I reluctantly predicted last week, BP's "top kill" effort to stop the oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico didn't work. The inescapable conclusion is that offshore oil drilling technology is far more advanced than offshore oil spill stopping technology.

But wait! BP has a new plan to keep us from seeing this spill as an inevitable overdose of our ongoing addiction to oil! Put down that clean energy & climate legislation and check this out:

[BP Managing Director] Bob Dudley said there was a greater chance of success with this operation than with the "top kill" procedure that was tried last week.

"This is a better chance, definitely better. We're not working with those high pressures and pumping that we weren't sure we were able to even connect up. The guys that are running the robots, this is something that they know how to do. The cutting is probably the critical piece. We may have to try a couple of blades to do it. But from an engineering sense, this is much more straightforward. 

If this plan was really so much better than the "top kill" scheme, wouldn't BP have done this a lot sooner? Of course. Because this plan has one major drawback -- it inherently has to make the gusher a lot worse before it has any chance at all of making it better:

But a potential problem exists if the dome doesn’t work: A clean cut on the riser pipe would mean even more oil coming out than before.

"Well, there will be a little bit more oil, somewhere between zero and 20 percent more," said Dudley.

"Well, 20 percent is not insignificant, if thousands and thousands of barrels of oil are pouring out of there," said [CBS News Anchor Harry] Smith. 

Maybe it's time for our national debate to shift away from the gusher itself, which has very little chance of being stopped until a relief well is drilled months from now. Maybe it's time to talk about ways to ease our need for drilling in the first place -- more efficient cars, plug-in electric vehicles, and smart growth. Because maybe, just maybe, all these plans from BP are no more than parlor tricks to make it look like BP isn't powerless to stop this spill.

Hey, Tony Hayward: Wanna Make a Bet?

BP CEO Tony Hayward predicts today's "top kill" effort to stop the oil spill has a 60% to 70% chance of success.

Look, no one wants to see the gusher stopped more than me. Having seen the spill's devastating effects firsthand, I have trouble even talking about the spill's impacts on communities, people's lives & wildlife without getting choked up.

But this is the same Tony Hayward who predicted the spill's environmental effects would be "very, very modest." That "60% to 70%" prediction translates to 2-to-1 odds. If Tony Hayward offered you a bet that another one of his predictions wouldn't come true at 2-to-1 odds, how much would you bet against him? I'd cash in my 401(k).

I hope I'm proven wrong & this post looks silly in hindsight. If the oil gusher really is stopped, I wouldn't be embarrassed, I'd be psyched. But an endorsement from Tony Hayward doesn't fill me with confidence.

Side note -- for some oil spill comic relief, follow Fake Tony Hayward & BP Global PR on Twitter.

Photo via Flickr's Truthout