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Saturday, May 1, 2010

Gulf oil spill swiftly balloons, could move east


VENICE, La. – A sense of doom settled over the American coastline from Louisiana to Florida on Saturday as a massive oil slick spewing from a ruptured well kept growing, and experts warned that an uncontrolled gusher could create a nightmare scenario if the Gulf Stream carries it toward the Atlantic.
President Barack Obama planned to visit the region Sunday to assess the situation amid growing criticism that the government and oil company BP PLC should have done more to stave off the disaster. Meanwhile, efforts to stem the flow and remove oil from the surface by skimming it, burning it or spiking it with chemicals to disperse it continued with little success.
"These people, we've been beaten down, disaster after disaster," said Matt O'Brien of Venice, whose fledgling wholesale shrimp dock business is under threat from the spill.
"They've all got a long stare in their eye," he said. "They come asking me what I think's going to happen. I ain't got no answers for them. I ain't got no answers for my investors. I ain't got no answers."
He wasn't alone. As the spill surged toward disastrous proportions, critical questions lingered: Who created the conditions that caused the gusher? Did BP and the government react robustly enough in its early days? And, most important, how can it be stopped before the damage gets worse?
The Coast Guard conceded Saturday that it's nearly impossible to know how much oil has gushed since the April 20 rig explosion, after saying earlier it was at least 1.6 million gallons — equivalent to about 2 1/2 Olympic-sized swimming pools. The blast killed 11 workers and threatened beaches, fragile marshes and marine mammals, along with fishing grounds that are among the world's most productive.
Even at that rate, the spill should eclipse the 1989 Exxon Valdez incident as the worst U.S. oil disaster in history in a matter of weeks. But a growing number of experts warned that the situation may already be much worse.

The oil slick over the water's surface appeared to triple in size over the past two days, which could indicate an increase in the rate that oil is spewing from the well, according to one analysis of images collected from satellites and reviewed by the University of Miami. While it's hard to judge the volume of oil by satellite because of depth, it does show an indication of change in growth, experts said.
"The spill and the spreading is getting so much faster and expanding much quicker than they estimated," said Hans Graber, executive director of the university's Center for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing. "Clearly, in the last couple of days, there was a big change in the size."
Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer for exploration and production, said it was impossible to know just how much oil was gushing from the well, but said the company and federal officials were preparing for the worst-case scenario.
Oil industry experts and officials are reluctant to describe what, exactly, a worst-case scenario would look like — but if the oil gets into the Gulf Stream and carries it to the beaches of Florida, it stands to be an environmental and economic disaster of epic proportions.
The Deepwater Horizon well is at the end of one branch of the Gulf Stream, the famed warm-water current that flows from the Gulf of Mexico to the North Atlantic. Several experts said that if the oil enters the stream, it would flow around the southern tip of Florida and up the eastern seaboard.
"It will be on the East Coast of Florida in almost no time," Graber said. "I don't think we can prevent that. It's more of a question of when rather than if."
At the joint command center run by the government and BP near New Orleans, a Coast Guard spokesman maintained Saturday that the leakage remained around 5,000 barrels, or 200,000 gallons, per day.
But Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, appointed Saturday by Obama to lead the government's oil spill response, said no one could pinpoint how much oil is leaking from the ruptured well because it is about a mile underwater.
"And, in fact, any exact estimation of what's flowing out of those pipes down there is probably impossible at this time due to the depth of the water and our ability to try and assess that from remotely operated vehicles and video," Allen said during a conference call.
The Coast Guard's Allen said Saturday that a test of new technology used to reduce the amount of oil rising to the surface seemed to be successful.
During the test Friday, an underwater robot shot a chemical meant to break down the oil at the site of the leak rather than spraying it on the surface from boats or planes, where the compound can miss the oil slick.
From land, the scope of the crisis was difficult to see. As of Saturday afternoon, only a light sheen of oil had washed ashore in some places.
The real threat lurked offshore in a swelling, churning slick of dense, rust-colored oil the size of Puerto Rico. From the endless salt marshes of Louisiana to the white-sand beaches of Florida, there is uncertainty and frustration over how the crisis got to this point and what will unfold in the coming days, weeks and months.
The concerns are both environmental and economic. The fishing industry is worried that marine life will die — and that no one will want to buy products from contaminated water anyway. Tourism officials are worried that vacationers won't want to visit oil-tainted beaches. And environmentalists are worried about how the oil will affect the countless birds, coral and mammals in and near the Gulf.
"We are just waiting," said Meghan Calhoun, a spokeswoman from the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas in New Orleans. "We know they are out there. Unfortunately the weather has been too bad for the Coast Guard and NOAA to get out there and look for animals for us."
Fishermen and boaters want to help contain the oil. But on Saturday, they were again hampered by high winds and rough waves that splashed over the miles of orange and yellow inflatable booms strung along the coast, rendering them largely ineffective. Some coastal Louisiana residents complained that BP, which owns the rig, was hampering mitigation efforts.
"They're letting an oil company tell a state what to do," said 57-year-old Raymond Schmitt, in Venice preparing his boat to take a French television crew on a tour.
"I don't know what they are waiting on," Schmitt said. He didn't think conditions were dangerous. "No, I'm not happy with the protection, but I'm sure the oil company is saving money."
As bad as the oil spill looks on the surface, it may be only half the problem, said University of California Berkeley engineering professor Robert Bea, who serves on a National Academy of Engineering panel on oil pipeline safety.
"There's an equal amount that could be subsurface too," said Bea. And that oil below the surface "is damn near impossible to track."
Louisiana State University professor Ed Overton, who heads a federal chemical hazard assessment team for oil spills, worries about a total collapse of the pipe inserted into the well. If that happens, there would be no warning and the resulting gusher could be even more devastating because regulating flow would then be impossible.
"When these things go, they go KABOOM," he said. "If this thing does collapse, we've got a big, big blow."
BP has not said how much oil is beneath the Gulf seabed Deepwater Horizon was tapping, but a company official speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the volume of reserves, confirmed reports that it was tens of millions of barrels — a frightening prospect to many.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said that he has asked both BP and the Coast Guard for detailed plans on how to protect the coast.
"We still haven't gotten those plans," said Jindal. "We're going to fully demand that BP pay for the cleanup activities. We're confident that at the end of the day BP will cover those costs."
Obama has halted any new offshore drilling projects unless rigs have new safeguards to prevent another disaster.
As if to cut off mounting criticism, on Saturday White House spokesman Robert Gibbs posted a blog entitled "The Response to the Oil Spill," laying out the administration's day-by-day response since the explosion, using words like "immediately" and "quickly," and emphasizing that Obama "early on" directed responding agencies to devote every resource to the incident and determining its cause.
In Pass Christian, Miss., 61-year-old Jimmy Rowell, a third-generation shrimp and oyster fisherman, worked on his boat at the harbor and stared out at the choppy waters.
"It's over for us. If this oil comes ashore, it's just over for us," Rowell said angrily, rubbing his forehead. "Nobody wants no oily shrimp."
Experts: Oil spill is the ‘bad one’ they feared
Environmental effect compared to Category 5 hurricane
In this August 1979 photo, Mexico's runaway Ixtoc 1 oil well dumps oil into the Gulf of Mexico in what was the worst peacetime oil spill on record.

By Seth Borenstein
The Associated Press
updated 6:21 p.m. ET, Fri., April 30, 2010
WASHINGTON - What makes an oil spill really bad? Most of the ingredients for it are now blending in the Gulf of Mexico.
Experts tick off the essentials: A relentless flow of oil from under the sea; a type of crude that mixes easily with water; a resultant gooey mixture that is hard to burn and even harder to clean; water that's home to vulnerable spawning grounds for new life; and a coastline with difficult-to-scrub marshlands.
Gulf Coast experts have always talked about "the potential for a bad one," said Wes Tunnell, coastal ecology and oil spill expert at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. "And this is the bad one. This is just a biggie that finally happened."
Recipe for devastation
It hasn't quite become a total disaster yet. But it's hard to imagine it not being devastating, said Ed Overton, who heads a federal chemical hazard assessment team for oil spills. The Louisiana State University professor has been testing samples of the spilled crude.
He compared what's brewing to another all-too-familiar Gulf Coast threat: "This has got all the characteristics of a Category 5 hurricane."
If conditions don't change quickly, devastation of the highest magnitude is headed for somewhere along the coast, said Overton, who works with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
More than 200,000 gallons of oil a day are spewing from the blown-out well at the site of BP's Deepwater Horizon rig, which exploded April 20 and sank two days later. Crews are using at least six remotely operated vehicles to try to shut off an underwater valve, but so far they've been unsuccessful. Meanwhile, high winds and waves are pushing oily water over the booms meant to contain it. Besides BP, a slew of federal and state agencies are scrambling to minimize the onslaught of damage.
'This is relentless'Experts in oil spills have drills every few years to practice their response for spills of "national significance." One of those practice runs took place just last month in Maine. The Gulf of Mexico leak is a "combination of all the bad things happening" and makes it far worse than any disaster imagined in the drills, said Nancy Kinner, director of the Coastal Response Research Center at the University of New Hampshire.
"This is relentless," Kinner said.
Most Americans think of Exxon Valdez when it comes to spills. But the potential and likelihood here "is well beyond that," said University of Rhode Island ocean engineering professor Malcolm Spaulding. Because the Deepwater Horizon well has not been capped and may flow for months more, it should be compared to a bigger more dangerous one from a well explosion in 1979, said Tunnell. That was Ixtoc 1, off the coast of Mexico. It was the worst peacetime oil spill on record.
The current spill "is kind of a worst-case scenario," Tunnell said.
What makes this spill relentless and most similar to Ixtoc 1 is that it's an active well that keeps flowing. The Exxon Valdez was a tanker with a limited supply of oil. The rig 40 miles from the Gulf Coast may leak for months before a relief well can be drilled to stop the flow, Kinner said.
And LSU's Overton said: "I'm not very optimistic that they'll be drilling a relief well in three months."
Type of oil also a problemThe type of oil involved is also a major problem. While most of the oil drilled off Louisiana is a lighter crude, this isn't. It's a heavier blend because it comes from deep under the ocean surface, Overton said.
"If I had to pick a bad oil, I'd put this right up there. The only thing that's not bad about this is that it doesn't have a lot of sulfur in it and the high sulfur really smells bad."
The first analysis of oil spill samples showed it contains asphalt-like substances that make a major sticky mess, he said. This is because the oil is older than most oil in the region and is very dense.
This oil also emulsifies well, Overton said. Emulsification is when oil and water mix thoroughly together, like a shampoo, which is mostly water, said Penn State engineering professor Anil Kulkarni.
It "makes a thick gooey chocolate mousse type of mix," Kulkarni said.
And once it becomes that kind of mix, it no longer evaporates as quickly as regular oil, doesn't rinse off as easily, can't be eaten by oil-munching microbes as easily, and doesn't burn as well, experts said.
That type of mixture essentially removes all the best oil clean-up weapons, Overton and others said.
Under better circumstances, with calmer winds and water, the oil might have a chance of rising without immediately emulsifying, but that's not happening here, Kulkarni said. It's pretty much mixed by the time it gets to the surface.
Winds and wavesThe wind and waves are also pushing the oil directly toward some of the most sensitive coastal areas: the marshlands of Louisiana and surrounding states.
And there are three types of beaches: sandy, rocky and marshy. Sandy beaches, like those in Florida, are the easiest to clean, Overton said. By far the hardest are marshlands and that's where the oil is heading first.
Marshes are so delicate that just trying to clean them causes damage, Kinner said. Once the oily mess penetrates, grasses must be cut. But it also penetrates the soil and that is extremely difficult to get out, she said.
The normal bacteria that eats oil needs oxygen to work, and in the soils of the marsh, there's not enough oxygen for that process, she said.
It's also the time of year in the Gulf of Mexico when fish spawn, plankton bloom and the delicate ecosystem is at a vulnerable stage.
Hurricane season is fast approaching in June and experts are sure the oil will still be flowing by then. Though it might seem counterintuitive, a big storm could help by dispersing and diluting the worst of the oil, Overton said.
"A hurricane is Mother Nature's vacuum cleaner," Overton said. Normally it cleans things up. But that's not a solution with a continuing spill.
Obama shelves new offshore drilling
'Must be done responsibly,' president says after rig disaster


MSN Tracking Image
  MSNBC.com

Obama shelves new drilling as oil hits La.
'Must be done responsibly,' president says after rig disaster
msnbc.com staff and news service reports
updated 12:11 p.m. ET, Fri., April 30, 2010
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama on Friday directed that no new offshore oil drilling leases be issued unless rigs have new safeguards to prevent a repeat of the explosion that unleashed the massive spill threatening the Gulf Coast with major environmental damage.
Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, meanwhile, declared a state of emergency in the state's Panhandle coastal counties because of the threat.
"The oil slick is generally moving in a northerly direction and threatens Florida's coast," Crist said in the order declaring the emergency in Escambia, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa, Walton, Bay, and Gulf counties.
Obama ordered Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to report within 30 days on what new technologies are needed to tighten safeguards against oil spills from deepwater drilling rigs.
"We are making sure any leases going forward have those safeguards," said Obama at a White House Rose Garden event.
Obama's declaration is not expected to have any immediate impact. Under the expanded leasing plan Obama announced a month ago, the first offshore leases would be issued off the Virginia coast in 2012 at the earliest.
It is still unclear what caused the explosion on the BP rig more than 40 miles off the Louisiana coast. About 5,000 barrels of oil a day, 0r 210,000 gallons, are estimated to be spewing from three well leaks on the ocean floor.
Obama said supports domestic drilling for oil and natural gas but that it "must be done responsibly for the safety of our workers and our environment."
Senior adviser David Axelrod earlier defended the administration's response to the April 20 accident, saying "we had the Coast Guard in almost immediately."
He deflected comparisons with the government's slow response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, telling ABC's "Good Morning America" that such speculation "is always the case in Washington whenever something like this happens."
Axelrod said "no additional drilling has been authorized and none will until we find out what has happened here."
Coast Guard Rear Adm. Sally Brice-O'Hara also faced questions on all three network television morning shows Friday about whether the government has done enough to push oil company BP PLC to plug the underwater leak and protect the coast.
Brice-O'Hara said the federal response led by the Coast Guard has been rapid, sustained and has adapted as the threat grew since a drill rig exploded and sank last week, causing the spill.
She said crews would be unable to skim oil from the surface or burn it off for the next couple of days because of the weather.
Billions in damages possibleBP, for its part, said Friday it would compensate all those affected by the leak.
"We are taking full responsibility for the spill and we will clean it up and where people can present legitimate claims for damages we will honor them. We are going to be very, very aggressive in all of that," BP CEO Tony Hayward told Reuters.

The cost to the fishing industry in Louisiana could be $2.5 billion while the impact on tourism along Florida's Paradise coast could be $3 billion, Neil McMahon, analyst at investment firm Bernstein, said in a research note on Friday.

The spill could also hit Obama's plans to open some offshore areas of the U.S. where oil exploration is currently barred, to drilling, Hayward acknowledged.
"There may be an industry issue around what may or may not be opened," he said.
However the CEO hopes an effective response to the spill, including a flotilla of around 80 vessels and several aircraft, would reassure people about the risks from drilling.

"It would be bizarre to say it shouldn't influence the debate. How the debate will come out, I think ultimately will be judged by the success we have in dealing with this incident."

Regulations on drilling safety will also come under scrutiny, Hayward predicted.
"Rightly, there will be a reaction. Whenever you have something of this significance, it's right that regulators should look very hard at what they can do to further ensure that something like this never happens again," he said.

He said possible changes could relate to testing of equipment like the blow-out preventer on the ocean floor which failed to operate correctly and shut off the flow of oil, although he added it would be impossible to say how testing could be improved until the cause of the accident was known.

Failures of blow-out preventers are extremely rare and the equipment is regularly tested.
The scale of the disaster could also lead to changes in the rules on who is allowed to operate licenses in the deeper waters of the Gulf of Mexico, analysts said.

The government could limit operating licenses to larger companies, like BP, which have the deep pockets and operational capability to mount large cleanup operations.
The oil slick could become the nation's worst environmental disaster in decades, threatening to eclipse even the Exxon Valdez in scope. It imperils hundreds of species of fish, birds and other wildlife along the Gulf Coast, one of the world's richest seafood grounds, teeming with shrimp, oysters and other marine life.
The leak from the ocean floor proved to be far bigger than initially reported, contributing to a growing sense among some in Louisiana that the government failed them again, just as it did during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Obama dispatched Cabinet officials Thursday to deal with the crisis.
Members of Congress on Thursday had also issued new calls for Obama to reconsider his plan to open vast stretches of U.S. coastline to oil and gas drilling.
Worries over jobs
Cade Thomas, a fishing guide in Venice, worried that his livelihood will be destroyed. He said he did not know whether to blame the Coast Guard, the government or BP.
"They lied to us. They came out and said it was leaking 1,000 barrels when I think they knew it was more. And they weren't proactive," he said. "As soon as it blew up, they should have started wrapping it with booms."
An emergency shrimping season was opened to allow shrimpers to scoop up their catch before it is fouled by oil.
This murky water and the oysters in it have provided a livelihood for three generations of Frank and Mitch Jurisich's family in Empire, La.
Now, on the open water just beyond the marshes, they can smell the oil that threatens everything they know and love.
"Just smelling it, it puts more of a sense of urgency, a sense of fear," Frank Jurisich said.
The brothers hope to harvest all the oysters they can sell before the oil washes ashore. They filled more than 100 burlap sacks Thursday and stopped to eat some oysters. "This might be our last day," Mitch Jurisich said.
Without the fishing industry, Frank Jurisich said the family "would be lost. This is who we are and what we do."
In Buras, La., where Hurricane Katrina made landfall in 2005, the owner of the Black Velvet Oyster Bar & Grill couldn't keep his eyes off the television. News and weather shows were making projections that oil would soon inundate the coastal wetlands where his family has worked since the 1860s.


Pass-A-Loutre

The oil slick is likely to hit this reserve on Louisiana's southern-most tip near Venice first. The refuge is home to endangered species like the Brown pelican (the Louisiana state bird), the least tern, and piping plover.

Breton National Wildlife Refuge

This is the second oldest federal refuge, established by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1904 after the ardent conservationist learned about the plight of bird species due to human activity. These barrier islands in Louisiana are home to endangered species like the Brown pelican, least tern and piping plover, 23 species of seabirds and shorebirds light here, along with rabbits, raccoons and loggerhead sea turtles. It's home to 34,000 birds, including 2,000 pairs of pelicans, 5,000 pairs of royal terns, 5,000 pairs of caspian terns and 5,000 pairs of feeding, loafing and nesting gulls and other shore birds.

Sandhill Crane National Wildlife Refuge

The Mississippi refuge's namesake is the long-winged crane, which nest here in mating pairs and whose hatchlings are born in April. It was established in 1975 after about 75 percent of birds' natural habitat was destroyed by timbering and farming.

Gulf Islands National Seashore Antional Park

This park's snow-white beaches and coastal marshes in Florida and Mississippi are home to 12 federally listed threatened or endangered species including the Perdido Key Beach Mouse.

Grand Bay National Wildlife Refuge

Established in 1992 the refuge holds one of the nation's biggest expanses of pine savanna. The diverse habitat in Mississippi and Alabama also includes maritime forest, tidal and non-tidal wetlands, salt marshes, salt pannes, bays and bayous.

Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge

French for "safe harbor," the 7,000 acres of wildlife habitat in Alabama are home to migratory birds, nesting sea turtles and the endangered Alabama beach mouse. Its dune-ridden beaches are nesting sites for loggerhead and Kemp's Ridley sea turtles. More than 370 species of birds migrate through the refuge, including ospreys and herons, also home to seven species of hummingbirds and animals like the red fox and coyote.





"A hurricane is like closing your bank account for a few days, but this here has the capacity to destroy our bank accounts," said Byron Marinovitch, 47.
"We're really disgusted," he added. "We don't believe anything coming out of BP's mouth."
Mike Brewer, 40, who lost his oil spill response company in the devastation of Hurricane Katrina nearly five years ago, said the area was accustomed to the occasional minor spill. But he feared the scale of the escaping oil was beyond the capacity of existing resources.
"You're pumping out a massive amount of oil. There is no way to stop it," he said.

This satellite image shows vessels at the source of the leaking oil, at the same location where just a week before the platform Deepwater Horizon sank after burning for two days.

  MSNBC.com
Gulf oil spill balloons, could move east
Rough seas hamper cleanup; Obama to visit Sunday
By ALLEN G. BREED, SETH BORENSTEIN
The Associated Press
updated 7:02 p.m. ET, Sat., May 1, 2010
VENICE, La. - Gloom settled over the American coastline from Louisiana to Florida on Saturday as a massive oil slick spewing from a ruptured underwater well kept growing, and experts warned that an uncontrolled gusher could create a nightmare scenario if the Gulf Stream carries it toward the Atlantic.
President Barack Obama planned to visit the region Sunday to assess the situation amid criticism that the government and oil company BP PLC should have done more to stave off the disaster. Meanwhile, efforts to stem the flow and remove oil from the surface by skimming it, burning it or spiking it with chemicals to disperse it continued with little success.
"These people, we've been beaten down, disaster after disaster," said Matt O'Brien of Venice, whose fledgling wholesale shrimp dock business is under threat from the spill.
"They've all got a long stare in their eye," he said. "They come asking me what I think's going to happen. I ain't got no answers for them. I ain't got no answers for my investors. I ain't got no answers."
He wasn't alone. As the spill surged toward disastrous proportions, critical questions lingered: Who created the conditions that caused the gusher? Did BP and the government react robustly enough in its early days? And, most important, how can it be stopped before the damage gets worse?
Size of spill unknown
The Coast Guard conceded Saturday that it's nearly impossible to know how much oil has gushed since the April 20 rig explosion, after saying earlier it was at least 1.6 million gallons — equivalent to about 2½ Olympic-sized swimming pools. The blast killed 11 workers and threatened beaches, fragile marshes and marine mammals, along with fishing grounds that are among the world's most productive.
Even at that rate, the spill should eclipse the 1989 Exxon Valdez incident as the worst U.S. oil disaster in history within about a week. But a growing number of experts warned that the situation may already be much worse.
The oil slick over the water's surface appeared to triple in size over the past two days, which could indicate an increase in the rate that oil is spewing from the well, according to one analysis of images collected from satellites and reviewed by the University of Miami. While it's hard to judge the volume of oil by satellite because of depth, it does show an indication of change in growth, experts said.
"The spill and the spreading is getting so much faster and expanding much quicker than they estimated," said Hans Graber, executive director of the university's Center for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing. "Clearly, in the last couple of days, there was a big change in the size."
Florida State University oceanography professor Ian R. MacDonald said his examination of Coast Guard charts and satellite images indicated that 8 million to 9 million gallons had already spilled by April 28.
Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer for exploration and production, said it was impossible to know just how much oil was gushing from the well, but said the company and federal officials were preparing for the worst-case scenario.
Environmental disaster possible
Oil industry experts and officials are reluctant to describe what, exactly, a worst-case scenario would look like — but if the oil gets into the Gulf Stream and carries it to the beaches of Florida, it stands to be an environmental and economic disaster of epic proportions.
The Deepwater Horizon well is at the end of one branch of the Gulf Stream, the famed warm-water current that flows from the Gulf of Mexico to the North Atlantic. Several experts said that if the oil enters the stream, it would flow around the southern tip of Florida and up the eastern seaboard.
"It will be on the East Coast of Florida in almost no time," Graber said. "I don't think we can prevent that. It's more of a question of when rather than if."
At the joint command center run by the government and BP near New Orleans, a Coast Guard spokesman maintained Saturday that the leakage remained around 5,000 barrels, or 200,000 gallons, per day.
But Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, appointed Saturday by Obama to lead the government's oil spill response, said no one could pinpoint how much oil is leaking from the ruptured well because of its depth — about a mile underwater.
"Any exact estimation of what's flowing out of those pipes down there is impossible," he told reporters on a conference call.
From land, the scope of the crisis was difficult to see. As of Saturday afternoon, only a light sheen of oil had washed ashore in some places.
The real threat lurked offshore in a swelling, churning slick of dense, rust-colored oil the size of Puerto Rico. From the endless salt marshes of Louisiana to the white-sand beaches of Florida, there is uncertainty and frustration over how the crisis got to this point and what will unfold in the coming days, weeks and months.
The concerns are both environmental and economic. The fishing industry is worried that marine life will die — and that no one will want to buy products from contaminated water anyway. Tourism officials are worried that vacationers won't want to visit oil-tainted beaches. And environmentalists are worried about how the oil will affect the countless birds, coral and mammals in and near the Gulf.
"We are just waiting," said Meghan Calhoun, a spokeswoman from the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas in New Orleans. "We know they are out there. Unfortunately the weather has been too bad for the Coast Guard and NOAA to get out there and look for animals for us."
Fishermen and boaters want to help contain the oil. But on Saturday, they were again hampered by high winds and rough waves that splashed over the miles of orange and yellow inflatable booms strung along the coast, rendering them largely ineffective. Some coastal Louisiana residents complained that BP, which owns the rig, was hampering mitigation efforts.
"They're letting an oil company tell a state what to do," said 57-year-old Raymond Schmitt, in Venice preparing his boat to take a French television crew on a tour.
"I don't know what they are waiting on," Schmitt said. He didn't think conditions were dangerous. "No, I'm not happy with the protection, but I'm sure the oil company is saving money."
'They go KABOOM'As bad as the oil spill looks on the surface, it may be only half the problem, said University of California Berkeley engineering professor Robert Bea, who serves on a National Academy of Engineering panel on oil pipeline safety.
"There's an equal amount that could be subsurface too," said Bea, who worked for Shell Oil Co. in the 1960s when the last big northern Gulf of Mexico oil well blowout occurred. And that oil below the surface "is damn near impossible to track."
Louisiana State University professor Ed Overton, who heads a federal chemical hazard assessment team for oil spills, worries about a total collapse of the pipe inserted into the well. If that happens, there would be no warning and the resulting gusher could be even more devastating because regulating flow would then be impossible.
"When these things go, they go KABOOM," he said. "If this thing does collapse, we've got a big, big blow."
BP has not said how much oil is beneath the Gulf seabed Deepwater Horizon was tapping, but a company official speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the volume of reserves, confirmed reports that it was tens of millions of barrels.
At a church in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson told a gathering of community leaders that the spill has created an "environmental challenge of the highest order."
"Every oil spill is a challenge. But this is quite different because of where it is, because the marshes are so different than the beach and the coastline in Alaska when we had the Valdez," she said. "This one is complicated by the fact that the well head is 5,000 feet below the water."
The Coast Guard's Allen said Saturday that a test of new technology used to reduce the amount of oil rising to the surface seemed to be successful.
During the test Friday, an underwater robot shot a chemical meant to break down the oil at the site of the leak rather than spraying it on the surface from boats or planes, where the compound can miss the oil slick.
In Pass Christian, Miss., 61-year-old Jimmy Rowell, a third-generation shrimp and oyster fisherman, worked on his boat at the harbor and stared out at the choppy waters.
"It's over for us. If this oil comes ashore, it's just over for us," Rowell said angrily, rubbing his forehead. "Nobody wants no oily shrimp."  



Afghanistan Troops Go Gaga With Their Own 'Telephone' Remake

Posted Fri Apr 30, 2010 12:10pm PDT by Lindsay Robertson in Stop The Presses!

A group of U.S. soldiers stationed in Afghanistan used some of their rare free time to put together a reenactment of Lady Gaga and Beyonce's famous "Telephone" video.
Though it was intended to delight just their friends and family back home with some lighthearted entertainment, the video has gone viral on YouTube, getting more than 200,000 views since being posted on April 23...and counting.
It's only just beginning to get major press coverage, so it's fair to predict the video will soon be seen by millions. With its choreographed dance routines, homemade costumes, and improvised gymnastics, the clip is thoroughly enjoyable, even if you're not familiar with the original:
The soldiers who star in the video are already being hounded by the press, but so far have declined to answer questions from journalists. When he posted the video, 24-year-old soldier and amateur video director Aaron Melcher included the following note:

"This is a couple guys located in afghanistan, that re-made the music video by Lady Gaga....Telephone. Prepare yourself for a fantastical journey. Right now this is the temporary version, we have more scenes to cut, and edit, however with guys always on mission it is harder to film than you think."

In the 24 hours since the clip began gaining traction on the Internet, Melcher wrote on his Facebook page (reprinted in The Smoking Gun) that the video was made for "a couple of our friends and family and you can see that it has blown up way more than that...nobody in the video would like any further media coverage."

And, a sign that the "Telephone" clip is already becoming popular with the Web crowd: A segment of it has been made into an animated gif.

The Internet community, always supportive of music-video remakes (and the troops!), holds its breath for more. So far, the only other uploaded video on Melcher's YouTube page is an open-mike-style acoustic performance of an unfamiliar song (an Internet search for its lyrics brought zero results). The clip appears to also have been shot in an Army facility of some kind, and is much less involved than the "Telephone" remake: It features just two men, a guitar, and a bongo drum.
 
US SENATE 

FINANCIAL REFORM
04/29/10





MINE SAFETY
04/27/10

my comments:  Some where their has to be an environment of safety for mine works,  they can't have unions, they go to work knowing that there are safety concerns, and they can't say anything for fear of losing their work, repercussions on their families. These mines have been cited countless times for safety concerns and closing these mines to take care of these situations, but the mine companies are only concerned with PRODUCTION not with the safety of their miners. There has to be more federal action, I know more government intervention, unfortunately sometimes people mean more than production.  I believe all mines should be closed and fixed before we have another disaster waiting to happen.

Senate Committee Health, Education, Labor and Pensions
Witnesses testified about potential improvements to federal mine-safety laws. They talked about a number of issues including current federal regulations, mine safety inspections, and the number of violations found at U.S. mining operations. The hearing was the first of a series of hearings on a deadly mining disaster in West Virginia.


INVESTMENT BANKS AND THE FINANCIAL CRISIS, DIRECTORS

Senate Committee Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs | Investigations
Current and former directors from Goldman Sachs testified about investment and trading activities of Goldman Sachs and other investment banks involving residential mortgage based securities and related products. Committee members asked several pointed questions about business practices at the firm, often referring to a large stack of electronic mail and other documents detailing communications about possible market manipulation and representations about products made to consumers. This hearing was the fourth in a series of subcommittee hearings examining some of the causes and consequences of the recent financial crisis.






GOLDMAN SACHS CHAIRMAN AND CEO

Senate Committee Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs | Investigations
Lloyd Blankfein testified about investment and trading activities of Goldman Sachs and other investment banks involving residential mortgage based securities and related products. In sometimes combative questioning senators asked about electronic mail and other communications by company officers indicating the firm was pushing the sale of risky .. Read More
Lloyd Blankfein testified about investment and trading activities of Goldman Sachs and other investment banks involving residential mortgage based securities and related products. In sometimes combative questioning senators asked about electronic mail and other communications by company officers indicating the firm was pushing the sale of risky derivatives while also betting against the products sold to clients. Mr. Blankfein responded by saying that clients came to the firm for risk, "and that's what they got." This hearing was the fourth in a series of subcommittee hearings examining some of the causes and consequences of the recent financial crisis.
 SENATE IMMIGRATION AGENDA
04/29/10




U.S. Capitol
Senate Democratic leaders announced an outline for immigration reform legislation that included a path forward for granting citizenship to undocumented aliens in the country. They spoke to reporters and answered questions about enhancing border security, placing strict parameters on the path to citizenship, and Arizona's new immigration law.