Featured Blog Poststest
- NOW Does a Moratorium Make Sense?
- 90% of Miss. Oysters Are Dead
- BP Paid Nearly $100 Million...For Ads
- 9/11 Fund Was Slow Process
- DMR Testing Oysters...But For What?
- BP Contaminates Bank Property
- New Website: Gulf Research for All
- WSJ B.S.: Claims Process Is Easy
- Dispersant in Mississippi Sound (Video)
- Allen Looks Bad, Really Bad
NOW Does a Moratorium Make Sense?
Okay, what the hell is it going to take? Any argument that the U.S. moratorium on offshore drilling “went too far” blew up late this morning (Sept. 2) about 80 miles offshore, south of Vermilion Bay. Early reports are that all 13 workers are accounted for, but one is injured. It’s an ongoing story this afternoon, but the timing is breathtaking.
The explosion at the site being identified as Vermilion Oil Rig 380, owned by Houston-based Mariner Energy, is a warning shot across our collective bow. We have to get a handle on this technology and rework whatever regulatory processes allowed us to get into this mess. “Full speed ahead” makes no sense when oil rigs (now plural) are exploding in the Gulf.
Details, no doubt, will emerge from this new explosion and hopefully the optimistic reports about the workers hold steady. But surely, this will put an end to those moronic “drill baby drill” chants.
© Smith Stag, LLC 2010 – All Rights Reserved
90% of Miss. Oysters Are Dead
Bad news for the seafood industry continues unabated. That annual tour of the upcoming oyster season off Pass Christian, Miss., we reported on yesterday (Sept. 1) couldn’t have turned out much worse: 90 percent of the oysters were dead.
The state’s Department of Marine Resources hosted the event, complete with reporters. And “an abundance” of empty oyster shells was the result. “We’ve lost this season,” one oysterman told the Sun Herald newspaper.
But, as we’ve seen before, the “official” stance is kind to British Petroleum. Scott Gordon, director of the Mississippi shellfish bureau, cautioned that there could be other reasons for the extremely high mortality level, like the hot summer. Mr. Gordon, apparently blessed with the gift of understatement, told the Sun Herald that: “I’m not as encouraged about this season as I’d like to be.”
Look, I’ve sued oil companies for decades…so I know it’s a long, long way from dead oysters off the coast of Mississippi to proving BP’s oil spill destroyed the seafood industry. That’s why my colleagues and I are funding independent researchers in hopes of gathering our own evidence – but it’s still hard to see government officials at all levels tip-toe around BP’s responsibility. Why not say “well, the spill is the first suspect” instead of the weather?
This attitude is likely to come back to haunt us. And BTW, most of the people in the Sun Herald’s story had claims filed for economic damages, and almost none of them had been paid. That’s troubling for several reasons, but especially because they would be among those claims that we were told would be the easiest to pay.
See the story here: http://www.sunherald.com/2010/09/01/2446838/dmr-gulf-sample-shows-abundance.html
© Smith Stag, LLC 2010 – All Rights Reserved
BP Paid Nearly $100 Million…For Ads
Of course it’s an outrage that BP spent $93 million on advertising while dragging its feet on paying even small, clear-cut claims from victims of its spill. And we should be livid, but what’s interesting is any element of surprise people still have over BP’s strategy here.
Look, the BP idea is that this will largely blow over. Sure, people in the Gulf will continue to be engaged, but the company knows the global media spotlight will eventually move on. And here’s the thing about those ads: They are only the most visible tip of a public relations iceberg. The ads mostly tried to put a human face on Big Oil and the spill, putting local workers between the company and its responsibility.
BP and its partners know that time is on their side – delay claims, and people get frustrated, families fall apart under the financial strain, workers move on – so every single day saves them millions of dollars. And so far, the “new” claims process is also delaying the vast majority of claims, adding to the stress.
As for the advertising, what did we expect? The campaign is structured to hide a ruthless company behind workers who can hardly say what they really think; and next it will hide behind jobs as though it cared about working families. Then it will hide behind its “real people” shareholders, just like it does in London where you’d think its purpose was to support pension funds, not make obscene profits.
The take-away from the advertising campaign should be outrage, but it should also remind us that this company is in no way humbled by its role in the worst peacetime oil spill in history.
Here’s a story with some of the details: http://www.wkrg.com/gulf_oil_spill/article/Bp-Spent-93-Million-On-Ads-As-Claims-Languished/924141/Sep-01-2010_3-06-pm/
© Smith Stag, LLC 2010 – All Rights Reserved
9/11 Fund Was Slow Process
“This is like deja vu all over again.” –Yogi Berra
Traumatized by disaster and promised quick compensation, families grow frustrated by slow payments from a special relief fund. Paperwork delays are blamed for unpaid claims. Initial hope giving way to concerns about credibility of the process…and victims paying the price in failing mental health, broken families and lost homes.
Sound like the BP oil spill 2010? For sure, but also 2002 in the wake of the 9/11 Fund (another compensation pool administered by Ken Feinberg). It’s easy to forget now, since the mainstream media has decided that Mr. Feinberg’s tenure at the fund was nothing short of a slam dunk. But the fact is…the 9/11 process was a LONG, long slog. That’s important to keep in mind as Mr. Feinberg bounces around the Gulf telling people that not only will his process be “generous” – but that it will be QUICK.
In 2002, the New York Times reported about an aviation lawyer whose firm represented 70 9/11 families. The lawyer said he met with Mr. Feinberg to discuss six cases involving high-income families in early June, and believed Mr. Feinberg’s pledge of a concrete response in two weeks. It took months, and that was an attorney who knew Mr. Feinberg “for years.”
“His constant hesitation to make a final decision or put in writing what is said orally is just prolonging the anguish of the families,” said Kenneth P. Nolan, a lawyer representing about 60 families. That comment, and the frustration of details being used for delay, is certainly a concern.
The 2002 report is worth a read: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/13/nyregion/13FUND.html?pagewanted=print
© Smith Stag, LLC 2010 – All Rights Reserved
DMR Testing Oysters…But For What?
The annual oyster reef tour off the Mississippi coast is today (Sept. 1), and we’ll be interested to see what they find. As in years past, this is when the state’s Department of Marine Resources takes oyster tongers, dredgers and dealers out for a “first look” at the reefs. And this time, the tour will include collecting oyster meat samples to be tested in the government’s seafood testing program. They set sail this morning out of Pass Christian, Miss., aboard DMR vessel The Conservationist.
One question leaps to my mind: Tested for what? This is yet another reminder that in an era where we can drill a mile under the sea (and yes, put a man on the moon), we still can’t test for dispersants in our seafood. We’ve been told a test is “being developed,” and it’s a testament to lack of preparation that we still seem to be operating without a government-sanctioned test for dispersants. (Despite the fact that my team of experts has already developed a test and conducted experiments that have detected the presence of dispersant. See above “Featured Video” and blog post “Dispersant in MIssissippi Sound” at http://oilspillaction.com/tests-confirm-dispersant-in-mississippi-sound)
My guess is the DMR will be relying on the “sniff test” and visual examination. Frighteningly unscientific. Stay tuned to see how this “testing” is actually conducted, and what the DMR finds.
See the WLOX video here: http://www.wlox.com/Global/story.asp?S=13076750
© Smith Stag, LLC 2010 – All Rights Reserved
BP Contaminates Bank Property
Think all the really big oil spill issues are on the table? There’s a laundry list – dispersants, economic damage, flooding landfills with hazardous waste to note a few – but another is just now surfacing.
What about private property that became staging areas for all that HazMat activity? What’s a property owner to do about that contamination?
Well, if you’re Alabama’s largest bank, you give British Petroleum a chance to make it right (good luck with that), and then you haul them into court. Regions Bank says BP staged a cleanup operation – without permission – on waterfront property it owns on Perdido Pass worth about $10 million.
The has filed suit in Baldwin County Circuit Court, seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages. Bank spokesmen told reporters that they tried for months to negotiate a settlement – to no avail.
The issue it raises: What about all those other cleanup sites?
See the Press-Register story here: http://blog.al.com/live/2010/09/regions_bank_says_bp_used_its.html
© Smith Stag, LLC 2010 – All Rights Reserved
New Website: Gulf Research for All
For weeks now, researchers Dr. William Sawyer and Marco Kaltofen, P.E., have been collecting powerful evidence that refutes two of the most controversial federal government assertions about the Deepwater Horizon spill. First, that the “vast majority” of the spill is gone, and second, that seafood from oil-impacted waters is not compromised. The research of Sawyer and Kaltofen is impeccable and the methodology sound. And we’d like to share it with everybody – and we’ve come up with a way to do just that.
It’s been suggested to me, frequently, that these sorts of findings be posted online somewhere so people can easily examine results for themselves – the opposite of the non-transparency of the BP “research.” We’ve taken those repeated suggestions to heart. So, now, research compiled by Gulf Oil Disaster Recovery and the Louisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN) is available at a public website maintained by Mr. Kaltofen’s company, Boston Chemical Data. You may especially like the mapping function, which shows where samples are being taken.
Indeed, we are finding that oil is showing up all over the Gulf both underwater in the form of plumes and on our beaches and coastlines. Our research indicates that PAHs (polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons) are present in shrimp from the impacted areas. And the PAHs in the waters off Florida are at levels 43 times the levels of shrimp from inland, low-impact areas sampled in Louisiana. In our estimation, it may take eight months before the toxic soup BP left in the Gulf has had substantial enough biodegradation to announce an ‘all clear’ on seafood.
View the press release on the website launch: http://leanweb.org/news/index.php
To learn more about how safe our waters are, visit the new website: http://bostonchemicaldata.com/LEAN/
© Smith Stag, LLC 2010 – All Rights Reserved
WSJ B.S.: Claims Process Is Easy
Given Kenneth Feinberg’s previous statements about lawsuits and his Gulf Coast Claims Facility, nobody expected the GCCF to exactly embrace the idea that victims need balanced information as they face difficult decisions. But I find it pretty shocking that the GCCF website has posted blatant propaganda from the Wall Street Journal editorial page.
But there it is, up on the GCCF website, in all its glory (BTW I’m not going to link to it, as a public service), a virtual re-write of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce talking points against taking corporate America to court. That lawyers get 40 percent (though most of the contracts I’ve seen are closer to 10 percent), and the tired, virtually childlike argument that “there’s no guarantee that the courts will be more generous than Mr. Feinberg, especially as the damage from the spill recedes and Gulf fisheries and tourism return to normal.” Why would that have anything to do with damages already incurred? And, as we’ve said before, Mr. Feinberg cannot award punitive damages, which, of course, juries can and do.
Not that anyone takes the WSJ editorial page all that seriously, but it’s still nauseating when an established news source implies that claimants can EASILY file for emergency relief. How easy is that turning out to be? The Associated Press reports that of 18,900 individual claims submitted the first week, only 1,200 were paid and most of those for under $25,000. So there’s 17,700 people who might disagree with the WSJ spin.
Even by WSJ editorial page coporate-fawning “standards,” this is pretty low. It’s outrageous that a Claims Facility run by a direct presidential appointee would post such tripe.
But we had to smile as the WSJ foolishness contradicts itself. The paper writes that: “We would have preferred that the Gulf claims follow the regular laws of liability…”
Hey, WSJ: If that were even remotely true, then you’d actually advise people to ignore President Obama’s fund and head straight to the courthouse where those “regular laws of liability” are still very much in effect, now wouldn’t you?
© Smith Stag, LLC 2010 – All Rights Reserved
Dispersant in Mississippi Sound (Video)
Ben Raines of the Press-Register in Alabama today is quoting what I consider to be a very credible source contradicting the government’s claim that dispersant wasn’t used near the coastline. That source happens to be me.
Here’s a quote from today’s Register: “I personally saw C-130s applying dispersants from my hotel room in the Florida Panhandle. They were spraying directly adjacent to the beach right at dusk,” said Smith. “Fishermen I’ve talked to say they’ve been sprayed. This idea they are not using this stuff near the coast is nonsense.”
Look, this is extremely important because we’ve found “degraded” oil in the Mississippi Sound that has tested positive for ingredients in the dispersant Corexit. The really frightening part of this story is that these waters are open for fishing, shrimping and crabbing. Adm. Allen’s Coast Guard has consistently stated that no dispersants were used near the shores, and many fishermen I’ve spoken with have also witnessed substances being sprayed very close to beaches.
What is so damning about our dispersant testing is that we – through court-obtained channels – used the actual oil from the Macondo Well and the actual dispersant, Corexit. The results are undeniable. Watch the video…
The scientists who are going into the field, at some personal risk given the contamination, and finding these materials are really the leading edge of what I believe is fast becoming a national scandal.
Here is a photo (below) that helps visualize what Corexit does to oil in water. The beaker on the left contains water. The beaker in the middle contains crude and water. And the beaker on the right contains water, crude and Corexit. Any questions?
And a note in anticipation of the eventual counter-attack: Granted, our legal team is paying for this research, but I find it offensive that anyone would use that to discount the findings. First, these are professionals with integrity maintained over distinguished careers. And also think about this: We intend to introduce these findings into a court of law as evidence, so any tiny mistake in procedure and the court tosses out some very expensive work. So these scientists are careful, diligent and unfortunately are finding that our fears are justified.
Read the Press-Register story here: http://blog.al.com/live/2010/08/degraded_oil_in_mississippi_so.html
© Smith Stag, LLC 2010 – All Rights Reserved
Allen Looks Bad, Really Bad
We’ve always questioned the leadership of retired Adm. Thad Allen…ever since he backed BP on the now-infamous “5,000 barrel per day” flow rate. He went on to shield BP in a variety ways as this catastrophe unfolded, repeatedly siding with BP over the public good. Allen’s ability to lead independently as National Incident Commander has eroded almost completely as we hit Day 133 of the worst environmental disaster in our country’s history. Allen is either being given bad information or is being less than candid in his determinations. Another example of this emerged yesterday during his press briefing. Watch the video…
© Smith Stag, LLC 2010 – All Rights Reserved
Photos: Oil All Over Barataria Bay
On the ground in Barataria Bay with New Orleans photographer Jerry Moran and our sampling team: Strongbear, Brian Moore from Boston Chemical, charter boat Capt. Al Walker and Tracy Palmisano.
FROM JERRY:
I took all images on Aug. 24 in the area of Latitude 29,26.2183N, Longitude 89,50.1794W.
Our team is back at it, sampling the Gulf Coast. On this particular day, we were taking several types of samples from the Barataria Bay, including bottom and top water samples adjacent to oiled shorelines.
We also took samples of thick orange oil stirred up from the bay bottom and water column samples from different levels in deeper waters near Four Bayou Pass. Here we pulled more samples of sheen and dispersant related foam, and beach samples from an island I have visited several times about 4 miles east of Grand Isle, which to my knowledge has never been cleaned.
Stay tuned…results to follow.
© Smith Stag, LLC 2010 – All Rights Reserved
No Trust For Spill Victims
Reviews continue to roll in after the First Week of the new oil spill claims process – and they’re NOT pretty.
One of the fears is that the “new” process will mirror the old process and seek more and more documentation. That worry ballooned over the weekend as the claims administrator said “most” of the individual claims reviewed in the first week lacked the minimal documentation to be paid.
The Associated Press quotes Kenneth Feinberg as telling those at a Southern Governor’s Convention that: “There are thousands of claims that have been filed with no documentation at all.”
How bad is it? Of 18,900 individual claims submitted in the first week, only 1,200 individuals were paid, the AP reported, citing Mr. Feinberg. And “most” of those paid were for under $25,000. Now we deal with thousands of individuals and businesses who were counting on this new process who are hearing “more documentation.”
Actually, this was a better excuse for BP because it did not have power to make people sign under oath – meaning big trouble if you stretch the truth. Now, these claim forms are more like a tax return, you sign under penalty of perjury.
That means they are, themselves, sworn statement of loss – they should be considered documentation enough, with a review similar to that given tax returns. By asking for more than a signature, Mr. Feinberg is saying, in effect, that the word of residents is not sufficient for BP’s money.
© Smith Stag, LLC 2010 – All Rights Reserved
BP: There’s Oil in Pensacola Bay
If you want hard evidence that local and regional news organizations (this blog included, of course) are continuing to blow big holes in the “oil is gone” narrative, look no further than the ongoing media drama at the Pensacola News Journal, where reporters took the gloves off last week – and NOAA dove into the fray over the weekend.
PNJ reporter Kimberly Blair teed off Saturday, starting her story with: “Despite persistent denials from BP last week, thousands of pounds of weathered oil is being pulled from under the surface of Pensacola Bay every day … During more than a dozen interviews last week, BP officials and spokespeople for a number of government agencies working on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill response denied knowledge of oil in the bay.”
We know Ms. Blair’s reporting is spot on because this blog broke the “oil in Pensacola Bay” story on Aug. 24 when our team pulled crabs traps from the bay and witnessed a 100 percent mortality rate. A deep-water sample was taken alongside the traps, and the sediment brought up by the bailer contained oil. See our breaking story here: http://oilspillaction.com/dead-crabs-in-pensacola
BP officials had repeatedly denied knowing about oil in Pensacola Bay. But, according to Blair: “Even as they spoke, however, Escambia County officials and local fishermen were reporting finding weathered oil, as they’ve been doing for weeks. BP’s own crews were hand-scooping it up, and a submerged-oil team from BP’s Deepwater Horizon Response Incident Command Post in Mobile was investigating.”
Blair finally got “confirmation” from Scott Piggott, who heads the Escambia and Santa Rosa cleanup operation for BP, who admitted that cleanup workers began noticing the submerged oil at Barrancas Beach in July. What? A BP cleanup chief admitting that they began noticing submerged oil in JULY!
By Sunday, you had to admire the NOAA response – not to the oil, but to the bad press. We learn that: “… the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Coast Guard are leading the search [for the oil]. They’re using 75 vessels of opportunity in bays and inland waterways and up to three miles into the Gulf, from Louisiana to Apalachicola. Other teams are working in deeper depths farther out in the Gulf.”
Wow! Does this signal a new, more realistic NOAA approach? Well ….
Chief Petty Officer Mark Boivin told the PNJ: “We need anyone who thinks they’ve seen oil to report it … we want to investigate it and clean it up.” But both Mr. Boivin and Ruth Yender, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientific support coordinator, both told the paper that: “… they did not anticipate the searchers finding much oil. And if they do, it will be tested to make sure its fingerprint matches the BP oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, they said. Judy Silverstein, a Coast Guard spokeswoman at Incident Command in Mobile, said testing is necessary because people are taking advantage of the BP oil spill and dumping their oily bilges. And, she said, some of the oil could be from natural seepage into the Gulf.”
Right. “Thinks” they’ve seen oil. Oily bilges being dumped. Natural seepage. And meanwhile residents continue to find oil all over the Gulf, and NOAA and our Coast Guard cling to the BP line.
Stay tuned…and stay tuned to the PNJ: http://www.pnj.com/article/20100829/NEWS01/8290333/Oil-spill-BP-reverses-admits-there-s-oil-in-local-waters
© Smith Stag, LLC 2010 – All Rights Reserved
Blame For Everybody on Rig
Guess what? Federal investigators in Houston are having some difficulty in figuring out just who was in charge of the Deepwater Horizon rig before it blew up, and BP executives are holding the party line: Safety is everyone’s responsibility. What they really mean, at this point, is “everybody’s liability.”
But a new name has emerged for anyone keeping a “who’s who” of the BP spll: John Guide, identified as a “Houston-based supervisor” identified by some BP employees as an official with “authority” over the design of the well. I’d file him alongside drilling engineers Mark Hafle and Brian Morel – they were reportedly identified as the guys responsible for designing the actual well and later recommending that fewer safety devices than an independent contractor had suggested.
Hafle and Morel of course refused to testify this week, invoking their 5th Amendment right not to incriminate themselves. Imagine that.
The blame game is getting complex. Not only does each company blame others, but the planners are blaming the guys executing the plan…the workers blame the bosses, the bosses (very carefully) say workers may have screwed up, the government officials who looked the other way are blaming the industry, which will soon turn around and say “well, you approved it.”
It’s all designed to duck responsibility, of course, and it’s going to get much, much worse before the courts sort it out. Here’s a good L.A. Times report on the Houston hearings, which resume in October: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-oil-spill-20100828,0,1824748.story
© Smith Stag, LLC 2010 – All Rights Reserved
Video: The Birds Are Dying
If you want to know why I’m so honored to work with the Louisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN) and its friends, just watch this very intense video from the front lines of the BP oil disaster with the Lower Mississippi Waterkeepers. The report got a huge boost when the Huffington Post picked it up on the “Eat The Press” blog, which linked to the mini-documentary with this note: “And in Terrebonne Parish, something is killing all the birds (I’m going to warn you that the video that follows is immensely upsetting to watch).”
Well, they got that right. And, in the same ETM post, there’s a link to another well-done video showing all the talking points about that “vast majority” of oil being gone. That video will prove you can laugh out loud and get pissed off at the same time…but watch it first, because after watching the oil spill impact on the birds, nothing is going to seem funny for a while.
If you’re in any sort of position to make a donation to LEAN’s efforts, please do so. I can tell you that the money will be well spent.
Thank you.
The reports are here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/27/gulf-oil-spill-mission-accomplished_n_697173.html
See LEAN’s “Dead Bird Island” video here: http://leanweb.org/news/latest/dead-bird-island-terrebonne-parish.html
Donations to LEAN’s worthy efforts can be made here: http://www.leanweb.org/
© Smith Stag, LLC 2010 – All Rights Reserved