Oil Spill in the Gulf

Combating a Multimillion-Gallon Spill with Fancy Paper Towels

June 14, 2010

Mother Jones - You know Isle Grande Terre, Louisiana, from the unbelievable pictures of oiled birds taken there last week.

It's also the island just to the east of Grand Isle, which I've been reporting on since oil made landfall there several weeks ago. I wanted to check up on Grande Terre, and so to get there, and avoid a BP escort, yesterday I got in a kayak with my intrepid former literature professor from the University of New Orleans and paddler extraordinaire, Dr. John Hazlett. On the way, we beached ourselves on an uninhabited spit near Grand Isle State Park. It was completely covered in oil, and there were no cleanup crews in sight.

Nor was there any boom across Barataria Pass, which is a gateway to wetlands.



After a while, a Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries employee trailing half a dozen big and tall men behind her appeared. She flagged us down and told us nobody should be walking on that beach because it was a wildlife reserve. Which, considering the amount of oil (massive) and level of cleanup taking place (none), was pretty alarming. Plus, as a big guy next to her wearing a shirt from ES&H, the main cleanup contractor here, said, "We don't need this on camera." Which is why BP's contractors have their workers on a gag order: because sometimes they say stupid shit like that.

We paddled on and pulled up on Grande Terre, where the oil stretched as far as we could see in deep dark pools. We encountered a cleanup crew supervisor gunning around on his ATV, who said there were all of 30 workers on the whole island, which he said is five miles long.

For the hour we walked around, only three of them were working anyway, while the rest sat in the shade. And the work consisted of somewhat haphazardly laying down paper towels.

Update/clarification: Though the workers referred to them as paper towels, they are indeed slightly thicker, oil-absorbent pads, as several commenters have pointed out. Since that wouldn't be clear to everyone from the pictures, I definitely should have been less cheeky and more specific: These are very fancy towels that a few dudes are dropping along the shore to combat the multimillion-gallon spill.]



Also, we found a dead dolphin.

That was about all we could take, what with a heat index of 105 and the rowing we had to do back to Grand Isle and I was already getting a little woozy. At least I kept my wits enough about me to remember to keep my mouth closed when waves splashed water thick with oil into my face. I suppose the 60 or so dolphins swimming the pass with us don't have that option; things got a little (more) depressing in the kayak when we saw that they were blowing it out through their holes. They'd probably like to take the double scrubbing-down with dishwashing liquid we took when we got home, too.

Judge Blocks Obama's Offshore Drilling Ban in the Gulf

June 22, 2010

Associated Press – A federal judge struck down the Obama administration's six-month ban on deepwater oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday, saying the government rashly concluded that because one rig failed, the others are in immediate danger, too.

The White House promised an immediate appeal. The Interior Department had halted approval of any new permits for deepwater drilling and suspended drilling of 33 exploratory wells in the Gulf.

Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said President Barack Obama believes strongly that drilling at such depths does not make sense and puts the safety of workers "at a danger that the president does not believe we can afford."

Several companies that ferry people and supplies and provide other services to offshore drilling rigs asked U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman in New Orleans to overturn the moratorium.

They argued it was arbitrarily imposed after the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that killed 11 workers and blew out the well 5,000 feet underwater. It has spewed anywhere from 67 million to 127 million gallons of oil into the Gulf.

Feldman sided with the companies.

"What seems clear is that the federal government has been pressed by what happened on the Deepwater Horizon into an otherwise sweeping confirmation that all Gulf deepwater drilling activities put us all in a universal threat of irreparable harm," he wrote.

His ruling prohibits federal officials from enforcing the moratorium until a trial is held. He did not set a date.

The lawsuit was filed by Hornbeck Offshore Services of Covington, La., and company CEO Todd Hornbeck said after the ruling he is looking forward to getting back to work.

"It's the right thing for not only the industry but the country," he said.

Earlier in the day, executives at a major oil conference in London warned the moratorium would cripple world energy supplies. Steven Newman, president and CEO of Transocean Ltd., owner of the rig that exploded, called it an unnecessary overreaction.

"There are things the administration could implement today that would allow the industry to go back to work tomorrow without an arbitrary six-month time limit," Newman told reporters on the sidelines of the conference.

Tony Hayward, CEO of British oil company BP PLC, which was leasing the rig, skipped the event after coming under fire for attending a yacht race in England on Saturday rather than dealing with the spill.

Shares of BP, which owns 65 percent of the blown-out well, dropped 81 cents, or 2.7 percent, to $29.52, near a 14-year-old low for the shares in U.S. trading. Shares of other companies associated with the spill remained low despite Feldman's ruling.

The drilling moratorium was declared May 6 and originally was to last only through the month. Obama announced May 27 that he was extending it for six months.

In Louisiana, Gov. Bobby Jindal and corporate leaders said that would force drilling rigs to leave the Gulf of Mexico for lucrative business in foreign waters.

They said the loss of business would cost the area thousands of lucrative jobs, most paying more than $50,000 a year. The state's other major economic sector, tourism, is a largely low-wage industry.

Feldman agreed, writing:

"An invalid agency decision to suspend drilling of wells in depths over 500 feet simply cannot justify the immeasurable effect on the plaintiffs, the local economy, the Gulf region and the critical present-day aspect of the availability of domestic energy in this country."

Tim Kerner, the mayor of Lafitte, La., cheered the ruling.

"I love it. I think it's great for the jobs here and the people who depend on them," said Kerner, whose constituents make their living primarily from commercial fishing or oil.

In its response to the lawsuit, the Interior Department had argued the moratorium was necessary as attempts to stop the leak and clean the Gulf continue and new safety standards are developed.

"A second deepwater blowout could overwhelm the efforts to respond to the current disaster," the Interior Department said.

The government also challenged contentions the moratorium would cause long-term economic harm. Although 33 deepwater drilling sites were affected, there are still 3,600 oil and natural gas production platforms in the Gulf.

Catherine Wannamaker, a lawyer for environmental groups that intervened in the case and supported the moratorium, called the ruling "a step in the wrong direction."

"We think it overlooks the ongoing harm in the Gulf, the devastation it has had on people's lives," she said. "The harm at issue with the Deepwater Horizon spill is bigger than just the Louisiana economy. It affects all of the Gulf."

Florida Real Estate Prices: Guess Which Direction This Chart Will Go

June 20, 2010

SHTFplan.com - The US real estate market all but fell off a cliff two years ago. Though there has been a very minor recovery, or rather, stabilization, in home prices, we recently pointed out that it makes sense to be gloomy.

For those living anywhere near the Gulf Coast there has been no recovery, or really, any stabilization, as depicted by the follow chart from city-data.com:

In addition to the pre-oil leak trend of job losses, wage decreases and mortgage rate resets, we now have a natural man-made catastrophe on our hands.

With a complete loss in the Gulf Coast tourism industry, we can reasonably expect rental properties to get absolutely hammered. And, if the oil leak is as bad as we hope it’s not then we may very well have hundreds, if not thousands, of miles of destroyed beach front and surrounding properties. The environmental ramifications in terms of dangerous gases and oil covered beaches will lead to even higher delinquency and default rates across the southern United States.

In the event of mass, longer-term evacuations, we could potentially be looking at real estate prices going to Detroit price levels in some areas, which have literally reached $1 on some homes.

For those who think that a real estate collapse on the coast resulting from evacuations and general migration will lead to price increases elsewhere in the country, consider that many of those who will be leaving the coast will be leaving with essentially nothing -- no money, no job, no assets. The likely outcome will not be increased purchases of real estate in other parts of the country. Many of those who will eventually leave the coast may have to turn to the government for help with housing, or they will likely end up living with friends or family.

There are millions of people near the Gulf Coast right now that stand to lose everything as a result of the negligence of BP and the US government regulatory agencies.