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Today, Gulf Looks Fine, But Wait Until The Next One Hits

Today, Gulf Looks Fine, But Wait Until The Next One Hits

Five years after the Deepwater Horizon rig blew up, the Chandeleur Islands look alive off the coast of Louisiana.

The beaches are sugary white and unstained by oil. The water is green and full of fish. Birds are everywhere — laughing gulls, willets, terns, skimmers, egrets, oyster catchers, and herons.

A rookery that some feared would be annihilated by the spill is thriving, the mangroves bobbing with hundreds of pelicans, old and young.

It’s glorious to see, yet also deceiving. For 87 straight days in 2010, crude oil gushed nearby from a broken well in the Gulf of Mexico — 172 million gallons, according to the U.S. government, though nobody really knows how much.

And nobody can say how much of it remains in the water. Most of the oil has likely dissolved or evaporated, but panels of scientists assert that millions of gloppy gallons still spatter the sea floor.

The Chandeleurs, a crescent barrier chain that’s part of the Breton National Wildlife Refuge, were among the first to get oiled after the BP blowout. It was also the first place where dying sea birds were found.

A six-foot sand berm was hastily constructed to contain the oil at the northernmost Chandeleurs. Whether it was because of that, the tides or favorable winds, the islands were not hit as brutally as some coastal areas.

Seeing all this life on the water at sunrise, one can’t be blamed for thinking everything’s fine, pretty much back to normal. That’s what you hear from BP, too, but it’s not entirely true.

Since the spill, bottle-nosed dolphins have been dying at about three times the normal rate in the northern Gulf. Deep-water corals have shown lasting damage. Oil traced to the BP blowout has been found in the livers of red snapper and tilefish. Unexplained lesions and tumors have been observed in bottom-dwelling fish.

BP says the seafood taken from the Gulf is safe to eat, and tests much lower for oil residues than is required by the Food and Drug Administration.

The oil giant has spent a fortune cleaning up its image and the mess in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida, including $13.7 billion in claims and settlements. The company says its drilling operations are much safer now.

Because the whole world got to watch the Deepwater Horizon disaster live — literally streaming — politicians who favored more offshore exploration retreated temporarily. They were counting on Americans to have a short memory.

Then, in January, the Obama administration proposed a plan that would open offshore oil leases in the Atlantic Ocean, from Virginia to Georgia. Ten new leases would also be granted in the Gulf of Mexico; one is in the eastern zone near Florida, where opposition to coastal drilling traditionally has been fierce.

Yet, except for criticism from environmental groups, there hasn’t been a loud public outcry over Obama’s plan in Florida, or in any of the states with tourist economies that depend on clean, untarred beaches.

Virginia’s two U.S. senators, both Democrats, praised the president’s drilling program, saying it “should result in the safe, responsible development of energy resources.”

Because big oil companies never screw up, right?

Apparently, five years is the political probation period after a man-made catastrophe. Obama has moved to allow seismic testing for possible offshore oil and gas reserves all the way from Delaware to Cape Canaveral.

The process involves the staccato firing of big compressed air guns deep in the ocean over periods of weeks. Prominent scientists from Duke, Cornell and other institutions say the method poses a “significant threat to marine life.”

In a rare display of attentiveness, Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection last month wrote to the feds, seeking postponement of seismic permits until more is known about how the blasting air guns affect whales, fish and sea turtles. (Negatively would be a good guess).

On a boat in the Chandeleurs, under a sky filled with birds, it’s tempting to marvel at nature’s rebound and push aside the dreadful images from the spring of five years ago.

There are no obvious signs of the BP spill here. Even the protective berm is gone, obliterated by Hurricane Isaac in 2012.

Yet the truth is that terrible damage was done by that 87-day flood of oil into the Gulf, and many communities suffered immensely. Since then, numerous spills have occurred both on land and in water in this country, none of them on the scale of the Deepwater Horizon but still a signal for extreme caution.

Nobody knows when the next big ocean blowout will happen.

Everything out there looks just fine.

Until one day it isn’t.

(Carl Hiaasen is a columnist for The Miami Herald. Readers may write to him at: 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, FL, 33132.)

Photo: In this April 21, 2010 file image provided by the U.S. Coast Guard, fire boat response crews battle the blazing remnants of the off shore oil rig Deepwater Horizon. (AP Photo/U.S. Coast Guard, File)

BP Trial’s Last Phase Begins, Will Determine Penalty For 2010 Oil Spill

BP Trial’s Last Phase Begins, Will Determine Penalty For 2010 Oil Spill

By Julie Cart, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

The slowly unwinding Deepwater Horizon oil spill trial began its final phase Tuesday as a judge in New Orleans considers the record fine that oil giant BP must pay for the well blowout five years ago that killed 11 men and spawned the worst environmental disaster in American history.

U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier heard arguments from government lawyers and BP, which is liable for fines of up to $13.7 billion for violating the federal Clean Water Act as a result of the April 20, 2010, explosion in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

The accident and BP’s efforts to mitigate its effects transfixed a worldwide audience, starting with fireboats, helicopters and an armada of civilian and military vessels mounting a frenzied effort to save a crippled drilling rig that eventually pumped millions of barrels of crude oil into the gulf.

Tar balls washed up on beaches in an arc from Texas to Florida, and Louisiana’s already fragile wetlands were devastated. Untold wildlife deaths were symbolized by photographs of oil-drenched pelicans. Commercial fishing, tourism and public health suffered — most of those costs have been laid at BP’s door.

The Britain-based energy company has aggressively challenged the federal government and often portrayed itself as being victimized by the legal aftermath, complaining that its deep pockets have been drained by false claims.

In other proceedings, BP reached a $4.5 billion criminal settlement with the Justice Department in 2012. That included $525 million paid to the Securities and Exchange Commission for charges the company lied to investors during the spill.

The trial taking place in an elegant federal courthouse is being tried under maritime law with no jury. The judge has wide latitude to structure the proceedings as he wishes. The hugely complex trial has played out in three phases over two years, with each phase focusing on a central issue.

The first phase determined who was to blame for the blowout. The second, highly technical phase attempted to quantify the amount of oil that billowed up from the well bore.

Edward F. Sherman, a law professor at Tulane University, called the spill trial “the most complex court case in modern history.”

From the start, Barbier has kept a tight rein on a case with dozens of moving parts. “The large number of different claimants, death and personal injury, widespread economic loss to whole industries, injuries to landowners _ there a lot going on,” Sherman said. “He’s had a heavy thumb on the case and he’s done a terrific job.”

Over the course of the next three weeks, Barbier will consider a number of factors that apply to the Clean Water Act, including the severity of the spill, who was to blame, the amount of fines the company has already paid, BP’s safety history, and what mitigation efforts it undertook.

In pretrial filings, BP foreshadowed its approach, emphasizing the immensity of the $14 billion cleanup efforts, which included hiring thousands of boats to skim oil from the gulf and thousands more people to rake tar off beaches.

The company said it reserved $43 billion for spill-related costs, which covers an array of associated lawsuits.

Last week, Barbier ruled that 3.19 million barrels of oil poured out of the Macondo well, an estimate that was substantially lower than the government’s and somewhat more than BP claimed.

The figure is crucial to BP because it sets the formula for the fine, which carries a maximum of $4,300 per barrel.

Barbier had ruled that BP had acted with “gross negligence and willful misconduct” in its actions leading up to the explosion, making it liable for the maximum fine.

Whatever fine Barbier levies, it will be the largest environmental penalty ever, and perhaps the largest of any kind. The previous record was $1 billion paid in 2013 by Transocean Ltd., which owned the Deepwater Horizon.

Even though the court case is winding down, legal observers expect BP to appeal whatever decision emerges, likely tacking five more years to the proceedings.

The company still faces scores of claims from private parties and has yet to settle another federal environmental damage claim, which is still being assessed.

Photo: ideum via Flickr

Supreme Court Says No To BP Appeal Of Oil Spill Settlement

Supreme Court Says No To BP Appeal Of Oil Spill Settlement

By Sean Cockerham, McClatchy Washington Bureau (TNS)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear BP’s appeal of the settlement agreement forcing the company to pay billions of dollars to businesses deemed hurt in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Monday’s decision means the British oil giant must continue to make the payments under the agreement it signed after the 2010 spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

BP argued that the claims administrator and the judge overseeing the settlement were misinterpreting the terms of the deal and that the process was riddled with fraud. BP said it was being forced to pay businesses that couldn’t prove their losses were a result of the massive oil spill.

BP took out ads in national newspapers blasting the payouts as unfair and launched a legal fight through the appeals court system. The Supreme Court, in an unsigned order without explanation, declined Monday to review lower court rulings that went against BP.

Most recently, a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had denied BP’s claim 2-1 in March. Federal Judge Leslie Southwick wrote at the time that BP needs to live with the settlement it signed, adding that “there is nothing fundamentally unreasonable about what BP accepted but now wished it had not.”

Attorney Joe Rice, a lead negotiator for the plaintiffs against BP, said Monday that BP’s “cruel antics” in the courts had muddied the process of getting payments out.

“BP has over and over again painted itself the victim, when in fact it harmed thousands of Americans in the largest oil spill this country has seen,” Rice said.

BP spokesman Geoff Morrell said Monday that the company remained “concerned that the program has made awards to claimants that suffered no injury from the spill — and that the lawyers for these claimants have unjustly profited as a result.”

“On behalf of all our stakeholders, we will therefore continue to advocate for the investigation of suspicious or implausible claims and to fight fraud where it is uncovered,” Morrell said in a statement.

The settlement is turning out to be more costly than the company had expected. BP initially set aside $7.8 billion for the payouts, but it now expects they might go “significantly higher” than $9.2 billion.

The Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion killed 11 workers, led to the biggest offshore oil disaster in U.S. history, and did major economic damage to Gulf Coast businesses. But BP argued that some businesses that received payouts as a result of the settlement agreement — among them an adult escort service and a global nuclear consultant — never proved the spill had cost them revenue and shouldn’t have received the money.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs said BP had “buyer’s remorse” and that the settlement didn’t require proof from businesses that the spill directly caused them losses.

The settlement, they said, is based on a formula that takes into account how far the business was from the site of the spill and compares revenue for certain months before and after the accident. Under the formula, if a business met the criteria its loss was presumed to be spill-related.

Plaintiffs attorneys Stephen Herman and James Roy said in a statement Monday that “today’s ruling is a huge victory for the Gulf, and should finally put to rest BP’s two-year attack on its own settlement.”

Photo: ideum via Flickr

Judge Says BP’s ‘Reckless’ Conduct Led To Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

Judge Says BP’s ‘Reckless’ Conduct Led To Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

By Christine Mai-Duc, Los Angeles Times

A federal judge has ruled that BP’s “gross negligence” resulted in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion that killed 11 people and spilled more than 4 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

In a ruling released Thursday, U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier of New Orleans said that BP’s actions leading up to the well blowout were “reckless.”

In particular, Barbier said, the company’s decision to drill the last 100 feet of the well, left it in “extremely fragile condition” and made it vulnerable to blowout.

In the first phase of a trial that will ultimately determine how much companies will be penalized for violations of the Clean Water Act, Barbier assigned the majority of the fault in the incident to the oil giant, determining that oil services company Halliburton and BP’s drilling contractor, Transocean, were negligent but responsible to lesser degrees.

The judge determined that BP should hold 67 percent of the blame, while Transocean and Halliburton are responsible for 30 percent and 3 percent, respectively.

Halliburton announced Tuesday that it had settled most of its civil claims related to the spill for $1.1 billion.

The decision could have a major impact on the second phase of the trial, set to begin in January, which will determine the amount of penalties that BP could pay.

AFP Photo

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