Tony who?

Mrs. Guambat, who pays the most uncanny attention to the most unexpected of things, asked Guambat, "whatever happened to that Tony guy."

"You know, the English guy. The one with the shiny, schoolboy face? He was all over the television."

"Did they kidnap him?"

Dunno.

But another excellent question.

Too Big to Foil

Texas politicians have always stood behind their oil industrialists. So it was only to be expected that US Representative from Texas, Joe Barton, tried to foil the effort President Obama had constructed to escrow $20 Billion of BP funds to secure some of the cost of the Deepwater Doodoo cleanup.

The Houston Chronicle reported, Barton BP 'shakedown' remark draws fire

"I do not want to live in a country where any time a citizen or a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong, (they are) subject to some sort of political pressure that … amounts to a shakedown," Barton told BP CEO Tony Hayward. "So I apologize."

Barton chairs the Republican party’s top seat on the powerful House energy committee. The Jerk's kneejerk defense of Big Oil, however, proved no match, in this election year, to foil the Deepwater Doodoo cleanup plan.

The New York Times noted the immediate cleanup efforts of the Republican party, who understood the Deep Doodoo Barton had plunged into.

Republican, Under Pressure, Backpedals From Apology to BP

“I’m ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday,” Mr. Barton said in his opening statement. “I think it is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown — in this case a $20 billion shakedown.”

[Old Joe knows a good shakedown when he sees one:] Individuals and political action committees in the oil and gas industry have been Mr. Barton’s biggest source of campaign money, the Center for Responsive Politics reported, contributing $1.4 million since the 1990 election cycle.

Of the five Gulf Coast states, Mr. Barton’s Texas is the only one whose beaches, fisheries and tourist haunts are not threatened by oil spewing from BP’s ruined well. Republican lawmakers from Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida quickly disavowed Mr. Barton’s apology to BP, and one was the first to call for stripping Mr. Barton of his committee seat.

Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, and Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the Republican whip, summoned Mr. Barton and he “was told to apologize, immediately, or he would lose his spot, immediately,” a senior aide said.

Mr. Barton, in his [subsequent] statement, apologized “for using the term ‘shakedown’ ” to describe the $20 billion escrow account that BP and the White House announced Wednesday. He also retracted the apology to BP and said the company “should bear the full financial responsibility for the accident on their lease in the Gulf of Mexico” on April 20 and “fully compensate those families and businesses that have been hurt.”

Not to be "misunderestimated", Old Joe used what was almost a fellow Texan's Bushism to say he'd been miscontructed to the opposite effect, as reported in that Houston Chronicle piece above:

"I think BP is responsible for this accident, should be held responsible, and should, in every way, do everything possible to make good on the consequences that have resulted from this accident," Barton said. "And if anything I said this morning has been misconstrued to the opposite effect, I want to apologize for that misconstruction."

Pouring oil in troubled waters

"Pouring oil on troubled waters" is an old saying intended to convey the notion of making an attempt to calm an agitated situation.

As one website reports,

The calming effect of oil was known to the ancient Greeks. In 1762, Benjamin Franklin repeated an experiment first performed by Pliny, which he reported in A Letter from Benjamin Franklin to William Brownrigg, 1773:

"At length being at Clapham, where there is on the common a large pond which I observed one day to be very rough with the wind, I fetched out a cruet of oil and dropped a little of it on the water. I saw it spread itself with surprising swiftness upon the surface; but the effect of smoothing the waves was not produced; for I had applied it first on the leeward side of the pond where the waves were greatest; and the wind drove my oil back upon the shore.

I then went to the windward side where they began to form; and there the oil, though not more than a teaspoonful, produced an instant calm over a space several yards square which spread amazingly and extended itself gradually till it reached the lee side, making all that quarter of the pond, perhaps half an acre, as smooth as a looking glass."

Pouring oil up from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico is having the opposite effect: one of creating more agitation and anxiety. It appears that efforts to stop the gusher have had the effect of creating underwater streams of the oil which then rise elsewhere. It's Mother Nature's way of running the blockade.

USA Today reports, to the East of the big gusher, towards Florida,

A 22-mile plume of oil was nearing an underwater canyon, where it could poison the sealife in waters off Florida's coast, the Associated Press reports.

The discovery by researchers on the University of South Forida College of Marine Science's Weatherbird II vessel is the second plume reported since April 20, the story says.

And the Washington Post reports on a messier plume off to the West of the Big Gusher.

La. scientist locates another vast oil plume in the gulf

Cowan said that his crew sent a remotely controlled submarine into the water, and found it full of oily globules, from the size of a thumbnail to the size of a golf ball. Unlike the plume found east of the leak -- in which the oil was so dissolved that contaminated water appeared clear -- Cowan said the oil at this site was so thick that it covered the lights on the submarine.

Cowan said that the submarine traveled about 400 feet down, close to the sea floor, and found oil all the way down. Trying to find the edges of the plume, he said the submarine traveled miles from side to side.

"We really never found either end of it," he said. He said he did not know how wide the plume actually was, or how far it stretched away to the west.

This discovery seems to confirm the fears of some scientists that -- because of the depth of the leak and the heavy use of chemical "dispersants" -- this spill was behaving differently than others. Instead of floating on top of the water, it may be moving beneath it.

That would be troubling because it could mean the oil would slip past coastal defenses such as "containment booms" designed to stop it on the surface. Already, scientists and officials in Louisiana have reported finding thick oil washing ashore despite the presence of floating booms.

This week, Mike Utsler, who helps oversee the spill response off the entire Louisiana coast as BP Houma incident commander, said he's focused only on taking oil off the surface. "We don't know there's oil underwater," he said.

William Hogarth, dean of the USF College of Marine Science, said university researchers have sent samples to federal officials for analysis, but it's clear the oil is new because Stanford scientists had sampled the same area a year ago and found no evidence of oil. The Weatherbird II will conduct another tour next week, he said, with different researchers aboard.

Buy, hey, no need to get all gloomy about the plumey oil. Maybe there's a silver lighting to those slicks.

Oil on troubled waters may stop hurricanes (2005)

As hurricane winds kick up ocean waves, large water droplets become suspended in the air. This cloud of spray can be treated mathematically as a third fluid sandwiched between the air and sea. "Our calculations show that drops in the spray decrease turbulence and reduce friction, allowing for far greater wind speeds - sometimes eight times as much," explains researcher Alexandre Chorin at the University of California at Berkeley, US.

The researchers suggest that, during a tropical storm, aeroplanes could deliver harmless surfactants to the ocean surface - reducing surface tension in water and stopping droplets from forming - perhaps preventing a hurricane developing.

The timing might not have been better.
2010 hurricane season could be one of most active

This year’s hurricane season, which begins in another four days, is shaping up to be one of the most active ones in recent times.

That’s according to the seasonal outlook issued yesterday by NOAA’s Climate Prediction Centre. It said that an “active to extremely active” hurricane season is expected for the Atlantic Basin and underscores the importance of having hurricane preparedness plans in place.

NOAA is projecting a 70 percent probability of 14 to 23 named storms, with top winds of 39 mph or higher; eight to 14 hurricanes with maximum winds of 74 mph or higher; and three to seven major hurricanes - Category 3, 4 or 5 with winds of at least 111 mph.

"If this outlook holds true, this season could be one of the more active on record,” said NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco. “The greater likelihood of storms brings an increased risk of a landfall. In short, we urge everyone to be prepared.”

You think?
//

In Big Oil, it takes one to tango

A week ago, Guambat had a brief post. He extracted the following quote from an article that really didn't have any context for this particular extract:

Mr Tony Hayward, BP's CEO, told the BBC the permit regime in the US was as rigorous as anywhere in the world.

Not terribly impressed with the implications, Guambat asked,

How does THAT make you feel?

Turns out, that was not as rhetorical as Guambat thought when he made that flippant remark:

AP INVESTIGATION: Oil self-regulates around globe

The U.S. government is not alone in ceding responsibility to the oil industry for the design of key safety features on offshore rigs, a trend coming under scrutiny worldwide following the deadly blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.

Across the globe, industry-driven regulation is the norm, not the exception.

An Associated Press investigation shows other nations harvesting oil and gas from offshore fields, including Britain, Norway, Australia and Canada, have moved in the same direction: Governments set the general safety standards that must be met, but leave it to rig operators to work out the details.

The shift away from more heavy-handed regulation started about two decades ago and was based on the notion that oil companies best know the risks of offshore operations - and how to minimize them.

But the Deepwater Horizon explosion on April 20 and another platform incident in the Timor Sea off Australia last year have raised concerns that Big Oil has been given too much leeway to police itself.

Read on.

For some reason (Guambat makes mental associations that are far from rational), the image of riding a bicycle with no hands on the handles comes to mind. It's a wonderfully free feeling of almost flying -- until it all goes pear shaped.

BP's slippery gusher numbers

Guambat noticed a headline somewhere in the last day or so that said, to the effect, BP had contained 40% of the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. At the time, he figured, hmmm, 60% of the oil is still gushing.

Wrong.

Heavy oil hits Louisiana shore

BP said it is now siphoning about 3,000 barrels (126,000 gallons/477,000 liters) a day of oil, out of what the company estimated was a 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons/795,000 liters) a day gusher.

"This is not rocket science," said Steve Wereley, associate mechanical engineering professor at Purdue University, who pegged the spill's volume at about 70,000 barrels per day. "All outside estimates are considerably higher than BP's."

BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said on Wednesday its 5,000-barrels-a-day estimate was "highly" uncertain.

Meanwhile, Down Under in Wombat's Waffles, the connection of Haliburton to both the Louisiana spill and a major Australian spill last year was noted.

No waffling there, Davo was quite passionate in his disgust. Might have been something he didn't eat.


FOLLOWING UP: Recall the original estimate that the gusher was at the rate of 5,000 barrels a day, then consider this storyline from today (21st Guam time):

BP says it is capturing 5,000 barrels of oil a day from gulf spill

It's still a gusher:

Estimated rate of oil spill no longer holds up

BP doesn't know the meaning of the word audacity

BP chief backs oil drilling in wake of US disaster (current)

Mr Tony Hayward, BP's CEO, told the BBC the permit regime in the US was as rigorous as anywhere in the world.

How does THAT make you feel?

As good as these other stories thrown into the Stew in the last several years?

Greed may be good, but excess is best (2006)

Mr Buffett also had harsh words for speculators who, like Lord Browne of BP, he blamed for driving up the price of everything from housing to oil and metals.

Oh, thank haven (2005)

Caymans 97 [is] a holding company for BP - the world's second largest oil producer. Now, this company holds controlling ownership in Cayman of many of BP's worldwide operations. It serves a variety of useful purposes for BP, the most useful being the pooling together in one place of a massive portion of the income and assets of the entire BP group. The goal is to fill the holding company pool to the brim with revenue and then keep that money in play and wash it back through the company - untaxed - only landing it onshore in the U.S. or UK when tax rates have been engineered through the company's offshore network to be the most advantageous.

Model behaviour (2005)

"The British Petroleum investor relations person presented yesterday at the BankAmerica conference, and during the breakout session she defended the fact that BP uses a $20 per barrel oil price to “test” its spending projects—i.e. to decide whether to go ahead with drilling for oil.When reminded that oil currently sells for about three-times that figure, the BP investor relations person vigorously defended this $20 “test” price, noting that BP sees oil trading in a $20 to $35 a barrel range over the long haul.Since it takes five to seven years to bring a big project on stream, “it is reckless to be investing (based) on (today’s) oil price.”That is true enough, I suppose…but when asked if $20 a barrel was not a little on the low side of recklessness, she noted that at the $20 per barrel “test” price, BP has enough exploration and production projects “to grow production 5% per year.”And since world oil production is growing “at half” that rate—i.e. around 2.5%—then “we are doing more than our fair share.” British So-Called Petroleum is giving back to its shareholders 70% more of the cash flow it makes thanks to $65 oil prices than it is spending to find new sources of oil supply."

Running a presidential campaign at BP (2006)

BP needs a cultural shift because whoever wins the race for the top job will be leading a company built in Lord Browne of Madingley’s image — a highly centralised organisation with a presidential style of office that keeps its senior management on a tight leash and projects its public image from the chief executive’s podium.

Tony Hayward, head of exploration and candidate for the chief executive’s job, recently told an internal audience in Houston that the top of the organisation was not listening.

He said that management was too directive and too fond of making a virtue out of doing more for less. “(BP) has lived too long in the world of making do and patching up this quarter for the next quarter,” he said.

Mr Hayward’s passionate plea for management to listen and reject the penny-pinching approach to resources would sound more persuasive if he had not been an arch exponent of the BP cost mantra in previous years.

Etc., etc.