Monday, May 17, 2010

Heads will Roll?


I'm hearing from multiple sources that a criminal investigation has been ongoing from the moment the accident occurred. "Evidence" was reportedly seized by the Department of the Interior and there may be a third corporation (aside from TransOcean and Halliburton) who can testify to the chain of events which led to the Horizon disaster.

While this report states that legislators are calling for the DOJ to start an investigation, I think the investigation may have already begun. I contacted the FBI last week to find out if they were involved in any investigation, they replied and told me it would not fall under their jurisdiction and that all matters were being handled by the Dept. of the Interior. I haven't been able to make contact with the Dept. of the Interior, but it appears there is indeed a criminal investigation under way.

From what I've been told the primary target is a BP executive who made the decision to pump the mud out of the well before the 2nd plug was in place. He reportedly broke standard safety protocol in doing so.

If this is true, the Exec. should be facing 11 counts of negligent homicide. While I'm not sure, I think that BP executive may be Donald Vidrine, listed in this WSJ article.

In the meantime I'm hearing that there may be a plan in place to sever the riser and install a 2nd BOP. I'm being told this is a very risky maneuver.

I'm really concerned about the long leash BP is operating on. We already know they are using a chemical dispersant which could be harmful to the environment as opposed to using readily available bio-degradable dispersants.

Colby said...

There are many companies, even one in Gulfport, that produce biodegradable dispersants. Gulfport’s Sludge Solutions International has been providing their dispersants for oil-based spills in the Caribbean for years. But BP will not touch them.

Corexit is manufactured by Nalco of Naperville, Illinois, and its board is packed with several retired BP and Exxon executives. With that in mind, there simply isn’t enough money to be made off of biodegradable solvents that actually devour the oil, a source close to Nalco told Bellona Web. Corexit creates sludge, and hence sweetheart trucking deals to haul it off.


15 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm glad they are investigating.

The comment about BP being given too much scope is right on.

What Colby wrote about the availability of biodegradable dispersants and why BP isn't using them made me sick to my stomach.

Anonymous said...

thanks Zombie!

when will Cheney be called to testify?
it would be a great opportunity for him to defend the unappreciated noble and selfless deeds he fathered that we clearly do not understand. the mike's on, brother.

Colby said...

The comments from the post are from....not mine

http://www.bellona.org/articles/articles_2010/ship_island_two

Great article from a great website

Anonymous said...

AZ,

Do you have any information implicating Vidrine other than the WSJ article you linked to? Because I don't see anything in that article that implicates him at all.

In particular:
"Harrell was discussing the plans for the next few hours' work, including taking out the drilling mud and running a test to make sure gas wasn't seeping into the well...Vidrine disagreed and said 'that was not the correct procedure.'"

This seems to imply that Vidrine was trying to STOP them from taking the mud out, does it not? Taking out the drilling mud was indeed "not the correct procedure."

At the least there is a lot of ambiguity in this article. Are you working from another source in addition to this?

Jason Brad Berry said...

Yes ...I am working from multiple sources.

Sam said...

WDSU last week or the week before, did a piece on a biodegradable product that is often used in lakes, ponds, and private koi ponds. (Anyone who's ever kept koi, knows how sensitive they are.) It was made of a sugarcane fiber I believe, the fiber attracts and holds the oil. The fiber product has added microbes who literally are like little oil pacmen. They eat the oil from the sugar cane byproduct and turn the oil to dirt, similar to what earthworms do for us. So the oil would then be DIRT. No gathering it up, no containing it, actually good for the marsh.

The guy who demonstrated it put water in a wading pool, then poured in a bottle of motor oil followed by some of this stuff. Hours later they could show that the oil had indeed turned to dirt. Good old earth. He said that he'd contacted BP and several other agencies but hadn't heard anything from them.

I wrote WDSU looking for the video, the name of the product. Got no response. Guess I'll try again. I, for one, would be willing to stand on barges full of this stuff with a shovel rather than have the chemical dispersant used.

Also last week I met two young men who had been hired to disperse the dispersant. They were scared as they had been told they'd need hazmat certification, which was no big deal, but that they'd have to wear complete hazmat full-body-straight-from-a-sci-fi-movie suits. They asked aloud if this stuff was that toxic should we be using it? They had been essentially told that the dispersant was more dangerous to them than the oil itself.

Lovely.

If any of you out there can find the sugarcane product name and/or video, I'd be grateful to ya.

Editilla~New Orleans Ladder said...

Considering that he handed BP his balls and another 2 weeks lead time upon his visit to Louisiana, I'm getting nervous that Obama plans to lock this investigation up in a Special White House Committee as reported today.
It will get harder to do criminal investigation in the midst of this and other formal committees messing with the evidence. Doubtless BP is aware of, or perhaps even instigating, such a tactic. It worked well for the Challenger Disaster, until they ran into Richard Feynman.

Anonymous said...

i was looking into nalco and noticed that 1 of the 19 bios listed for the board and management mantions BP. i am not trying to defend these scumbags, just trying to keep thing honest. "packed" is stretching it.

Editilla~New Orleans Ladder said...

We got you hangin'5X5 on today's Ladder, right in between 2 different "Seize BP Assets" signs and Herollero Russell Honore' saying we need to get Draconian on their Assets!
HA! Does Editilla sound So Extreme now? Well?
We sure as hell hope so because we think Dracula's Doctrine of Pikes would be way too soft for these Perps.
We say let's get Mid-evil on they Assets!
But until then, there is a Petition: http://www.seizebp.org/

Never play nice with those who would screw you in the Eye.

Anonymous said...

Alex Jones posts a CBS video in which CBS news claims that a coast guard official in a boat told them to leave the beach where they were trying to film oil spill or they would be arrested:

http://www.prisonplanet.com/u-s-coast-guard-threatens-cbs-reporters-with-arrest-for-filming-bp-oil-spill.html


U.S. Coast Guard Threatens CBS Reporters With Arrest For Filming BP Oil Spill


CBS News
Wednesday, May 19, 2010



Kelly Cobiella reports that a CBS News team was threatened with arrest by Coast Guard officials in the Gulf of Mexico who said they were acting under the authority of British Petroleum.


Clearly, you can see the boat registration above the head of the Coast Guard official who says, "these are BP rules, not ours.."

Boat registration is LA 8180 ER.
Watch it yourself.

judyb said...

I'm stunned but not surprised. WTF! I'm absolutely ill right now. Plaquemines Parish is being bombarded with heavy oil waiting on an answer from the US Army Corps of Engineers. Oil is everywhere, killing who knows what and they're using a dispersant that probably will make things worse.

WTF.

judyb said...

To the person who wanted to know what the sugar cane by product was, it's called bagasse.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagasse

Anonymous said...

Do you know who owns the company who provides the dispersant, or disperses it?

Who is overseeing BP 'handle' this crisis, or do they have free rein?

Anonymous said...

Another link on the topic around being arrested for photographing the oil spill.

http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/research-innovations/blogs/coast-guard-and-bp-threaten-journalists-with-arrest-for-docume

Perhaps we should bombard the area with people and cameras and post what's really going on...

sam said...

Thanks to whoever pointed me in the right direction:
Bagasse
"Efforts were made in the late 1998 to use bagasse as a sorbent material to clean up oil spills. Dr. Gary Breitenbeck, a soil microbiology and environmental researcher in the agronomy department of the LSU Ag Center, had used the milled bagasse to soak up spilled oil and had created an environment that sustains the bacteria that digest the goo using ammonia.

Breitenbeck's process puts the bagasse, along with ammonia and air, in a reactor and pumps up the pressure to 1,000 pounds per square inch. The high pressure drives the ammonia into the fibers and produces nitrogen compounds the microbes use to convert the hydrocarbons into humic material. "

You're kidding. LSU Ag Dept? Wouldn't they be folks you'd WANT to talk to about this? They need to start dumping this by the cubic ton, and certainly anywhere near the wetlands.