Hovercraft Suna-X at King Cove Alaska - USCG Arctic Service?

 

On Aug. 8, a Canadian Coast Guard hovercraft rescued two American fishermen when their vessel became stuck on the mud flats of Washington State's Boundary Bay. On the same day, a little over 100 miles to the south, another hovercraft was being loaded onto a barge for delivery from the builders to the owners in Alaska.

As with the Canadian Coast Guard craft, the new vessel will soon be working in a very specific set of circumstances that could only be met by a vessel with the unique capabilities of a hovercraft. The people in the village of King Cove, at 55° north latitude in the Aleutians East Borough on the Pacific side of the Alaskan Peninsula, need a way to reach the airport at Cold Bay, 18 miles away by road and water.

While the population is less than 1,000 people and the distances involved are relatively short, the land to be crossed is environmentally sensitive and experiences significant climatic variables. Shallows and ice conditions preclude a conventional boat for the short crossing of Cold Bay. After years of planning and examinations of alternatives, a hovercraft was found to be the most suitable for the water crossing section of the route.

The craft demonstrates its ability to perform as a landing craft that can come right up on shore.

Working with the British firm Hoverwork Ltd., borough officials selected Seattle's Kvichak to build a vessel that would meet the required specifications. The Hoverwork firm has 38 years experience in building hovercraft (www.hoverwork.com). Kvichak was a natural choice for builder, as the firm has worked with numerous American, Australian and European designers to build one-off aluminum vessels including catamarans, pilot and patrol boats, and a smaller hovercraft for Crowley Maritime.

Kvichak's latest hovercraft, designated BHT130 by the designer but named Suna-X, has some impressive statistics. As with one of the Canadian Coast Guard craft (See PM #91), the new boat will have a forward well deck. This vessel also has an 11.15-foot-wide landing-craft-style ramp that can be lowered to allow a vehicle to be rolled aboard.

One of the five-bladed propellers that turns in a 14-foot-9-inch nozzle. The vessel's top speed it 60 knots.

The hovercraft is designed to carry a payload of 49 passengers, a Super Duty F-550 truck laden to a gross weight of 17,600 pounds and 14,100 pounds of unspecified freight.

The 49 passengers can be seated in a heated enclosed cabin space just aft of and entered from a door off the open well deck or cargo space. This area is surrounded with Garibaldi Glass windows of a type most often seen in yachts but useful here as their frameless, glue-on design eliminates leaks and rattles while providing temperature and sound insulation (www.garibaldiglass.com/marine.html). The sound insulation is important for passenger comfort inside as well as for environmental considerations that were a major factor in the design.

Particular consideration was given to noise and disturbance of the surface over which the craft may operate. The use of large-diameter, slow-speed propellers will ensure low noise levels while the low cushion pressure of approximately 50 pounds per square foot will allow the craft to operate over low load bearing surfaces such as mud flats, marshland in tidal areas and near a wildlife refuge. Extensive work has been done to reduce the sound over earlier versions of the hovercraft, such as the Canadian Coast Guard vessel, which is recognizable by its sound before it is even in sight.

A pair of 12-cylinder MTU 2000 engines provides lift for the boat, turning horizontal propellers to force air under the hull where it is contained by a rubberized skirt that encircles the craft. The skirt, which is 5 feet deep at the stern and increases to almost 7 feet at the bow, provides good seakeeping characteristics over rough water. Transverse and longitudinal cushion dividers allow air pressure to be varied fore and aft. These cushion dividers provide the required pitch and roll stability when the craft is hovering. A pair of thrusters project up through the side decks from the skirted area. These are topped with large 90° elbows that can be rotated 360° from the pilothouse to provide reverse and sideways thrust for maneuvering.

Propulsive thrust is provided by a pair of 16-cylinder MTU diesels each turning an 11.5-foot, five-blade aircraft-type propeller in a 14.75-foot duct or nozzle. Mounted high on the craft near the stern these props are capable of driving the hovercraft at 45 knots in flat sea conditions. The hovercraft is designed to operate in inshore waters with sea states having significant wave heights up to 6.5 feet.

The controls are different from those of a conventional boat. The rudders, for example, are moved by pedals.

The designer's notes explain that: "The speed achievable in rough water depends on both the wave height and the nature of the sea state with particular reference to wave length."

In a passenger vessel, comfort is of particular importance, and this boat certainly delivers in that area. In the passenger area it is possible to carry on a conversation in a normal voice as the hovercraft speeds across a flat sea at over 40 knots. While seat belts are provided, they are not required. However, passengers are not allowed on deck when the boat is moving, but this is primarily to protect people from the spray that comes over the skirts in some turning maneuvers.

And these maneuvers are quite remarkable; the boat can turn and travel at an angle with seemingly no more effort than tracking straight ahead. On trials with the builder in Puget Sound, the boat rode on its skirt up the gentle slope of a sandy beach. Passengers loaded over the bow ramp. After filling the skirts, the thrusters gently pushed the boat back down the beach and out over the water. Turning, the captain moved the boat at speed along the shallow waters of the foreshore while children standing in ankle deep water looked on in awe. For the passenger, there was no difference in the feel of the vessel moving over land, shallows or deeper waters.



The craft can carry 49 passengers in a heated cabin. To ensure their comfort, the windows provide both sound and temperature insulation.


Salmon fishermen in small boats looked bemused as the big craft swept past them leaving virtually no wake to disturb their relaxation. With a noise level of less than 65 decibels at 1,000 feet, the fishermen had no need to adjust the volume of the ball game on their portable radios.

From the pilothouse the captain has good visibility forward and can see aft to the big air propellers. A pair of seats similar to aircraft seats are set well forward in the smallish area. With the port side seat primarily equipped for a navigator, the starboard seat is surrounded by an impressive array of digital monitors, with screens for each of the four engines flanking a radar screen.

Steering with the rudders that are mounted aft of the two propulsion propellers is managed with foot petals. The operation of a hovercraft is not something that a skipper accustomed to a conventional vessel can move to directly, as the control surfaces are working against air rather than water.

With the foot petals controlling the rudders behind the controllable pitch props, the captain can, when maneuvering or holding position while hovering, turn a small knob between his knees to rotate the bow thrusters. Once an operator has developed a "feel" for the hovercraft, the amount of control available is equal to most displacement-hulled craft.

The hovercraft is expensive technology to build and to operate. The boat's four engines will burn 185 gallons per hour operating at their maximum continuous power rating. In-operation consumption is expected to be between approximately 130 to 170 gallons per craft "engines running" hour.

However, a great deal of thought went into the decision that, in the case of King Cove, this is the best available technology. To meet these particular needs it seems that Suna-X will serve the community well.

http://professionalmariner.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=420C4D38DC9C4E3A903315CDDC65AD72&nm=Archives&type=Publishing&mod=Publications%3A%3AArticle&mid=8F3A7027421841978F18BE895F87F791&tier=4&id=61D4E9E55EC24EBDA8D25F393FE9FA0F

http://www.izembekenhancement.org/documents/hovercraftproforma0508.pdf

FisherPoets Gathering Held in Oregon - This Alaskan Life: The Things You Need

National gathering of FisherPoets held in Oregon

Alaska Dispatch - http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/national-gathering-fisherpoets-held-oregon
The Daily Astorian has a lovely recap of highlights from the 15th annual nationwide FisherPoets Gathering, held in Astoria, Ore., last weekend.

FisherPoets, simply enough, are people who write and perform songs and poems about commercial fishing. Common themes include hard work, longing for home and family, enduring the elements, and loss. Alaska is a common setting.

"Well here we go again, 15 years,” said Dave Densmore, a fisherman from Alaska who now lives in Astoria, at the Friday opening. “You wouldn’t think that fishermen would have that many lies to tell. But we keep making up new ones.”

Many fishing ports around the country hold their own song and poetry gatherings (Kodiak is home to one of Alaska's most active groups), and the Astoria gathering has been a chance for fisher poets from all over the continent to get together and see old friends, as well as attend workshops to hone their writing craft.

Seven venues in Astoria hosted fisher poets and songwriters last weekend, including more than a few Alaskans. Toby Sullivan, of Kodiak, and John Palmes, of Juneau, were mentioned in the Daily Astorian's report, which also includes excerpts of Sullivan's prose poem, "The Things You Need," a haunting list of essential Bering Sea gear, for mind and body.

Read a great deal more about the Astoria gathering, here.
by Toby Sullivan - http://deadliestreports.wordpress.com/2007/05/22/the-things-you-need-as-in-gear-for-crab-fishing/

"The Things You Need," - http://deadliestreports.wordpress.com/2007/05/22/the-things-you-need-as-in-gear-for-crab-fishing/ 

You need Xtra Tuffs boots – two pairs for when the ankles get holes from being folded down to dry. Two sets of orange Grunden’s raingear, jacket and pants. Dutch Harbor brand gear is OK too, they even have pockets now. But the hoods on the Helly Hansen jackets are too small for some guys, and the dark green color is invisible at night in the water if you go over. If anything happens. Nothing from West Marine will last one good day. (Don't even think WM - stopped by for pain thinner - OMG $26.95/quart drove 5 miles to Lowes and bought a gallon for $9.95 - So buyer beware!!!) If it looks like something you’d wear on a sailboat, forget it. Even on the reinforced Grunden’s the knees will go out in a few weeks, climbing into the pots, climbing up on the stack, hefting hundred-pound coils of line into the pot with your knee. The crabs will grab the cuffs. The sleeves will catch on the corners of pots. The picking hook will tear the sleeve to the shoulder, and it will happen a minute after you walk out on deck in a brand new jacket, the smell of orange plastic fresh in the wind, the $70 price tag still flapping on the collar as you tear it off in disgust.

     

You need neoprene wristers, like the sleeves of a diver’s dry suit, at least two pairs so there’s always warm ones in the dryer. A couple dozen cotton glove liners. A case of green neoprene gloves, a hundred dollars a dozen, with the long cuffs that go up under the sleeves of your rainjacket so the water runs down your arm and off your fingers. You need them because the dryer will make them brittle. Because thousands of spiny opie crab shells will scuff the rubber off the fingertips. Because a hundred miles of line will come out of the crab block every day and abrade the notch between your right thumb and index finger like a fast river cutting through soft rock. Because at the end of the trip half the lefts will still be new in the drawer under your bunk and all the rights will be trashed in a box in the entryway, and you will pick through them every morning looking for the ones with the smallest holes.

 

You need a wool stocking hat, though it will get wet and freeze and weigh so much your neck will hurt. A military tank helmet liner, with the little strap that snaps under your chin for your ears in February working up against the ice pack in the Pribilofs. A neoprene face mask for when it gets really cold, when the ice fog starts moving across the water in those spooky little wisps. An insulated Mustang suit for working on top of the crab pot stack in the wind, for chopping ice off the rails, for setting the anchor at two in the morning behind St. Paul when it’s blowing fifty. Make sure it’s the kind with the inflatable collar that has a mouth tube to blow it up, that will keep your head out of the water if anything happens, and a CO2 cartridge that goes off automatically, hopefully, if you are unconscious. If anything happens.

 

You need lots of hats, billed caps with the logos of bars and canneries and equipment companies. Sometimes hats are lucky, but you will not keep them. They will blow off in the wind when you look up at Coast Guard C-130s going over, get ground up in the bait chopper by your friends for a joke, dropped between the dock and the boat while drunk, taken by girlfriends for souvenirs, lost.

 

You need a pair of uptown jeans for the Elbow Room. A set of Carhartts for doing gear work in town. Thick polypropylene socks, all of one pattern so you know whose are whose when they come out of the dryer. Felt boot liners. Those little blue bootie inserts. Sweatpants and hooded sweatshirts, enough to always have a dry set to put on. Lots of cotton T-shirts for changing out of between strings of gear, when you soak them through with your sweat. Underwear.

 

You need a knowledge of cookery. The ability to learn how to change the oil on a Caterpillar 3298. An appreciation for dawn. A respect for night. Books about anything. Money. Your toothbrush. Extra strength Tylenol. Kneepads. A Walkman. Jimi Hendrix for good days and Hank Williams for bad ones. Paper for letters. Stamps to mail them. A calling card for the phone on the dock in Akutan. The numbers of people who will answer that phone late at night, who will listen to you breathe when you forget what you wanted to say, who will know without being told. Pictures of those people. A calendar. The memory of dry land, summer, trees, and the smell of your woman. A piece of her clothing in case you forget. Plans for the future. A plane ticket home.

Nearly 2 weeks later, crews still trying to control Alaska well blowout

DOES SHELL OIL COMPANY OWN BETTER EQUIPMENT, TECHNOLOGY OR EMPLOYEES THAT COULD GAIN CONTROL OF A BLOWOUT DRILLING RIG IN FROZEN ALASKA?

DOUBT IT. NOTHING HAS BEEN DEMONSTRATED.

YET SHELL PLANS TO DRILL OFFSHORE ARCTIC ALASKA IN 2012 WITH LIKE EQUIPMENT, TECHNOLOGY AND EMPLOYEES WHICH UNDOUBTEDLY ARE NOT ANY BETTER TO INSURE THEY COULD REGAIN CONTROL OF A BLOWOUT IN FREEZING CONDITIONS - BECAUSE THE BLOWN OUT DRILLING FLUIDS ARE FROZEN ON/IN THE RIG PREVENTING BASIC OPERATIONS... WHO WOULD THINK YOU NEED TO PLAN FOR FROZEN DRILLING FLUIDS IN ARCTIC ALASKA.... NOT GOVERNMENT REGULATORS?


The south end of the well pad where Repsol's well blowout occurred on Feb. 15, 2012. W. Ghormley, Alaska Dept. of Environmental Conservation

More than 12 days after a well blowout in Alaska's Arctic oil fields, crews are still trying to control the well.

On Feb. 15, a drilling contractor for Repsol, a Madrid-based oil major starting its first winter of exploratory drilling in Alaska, apparently hit a "shallow-gas hazard," or a pocket of high-pressure gas. No oil was spilled, workers were evacuated safely, and the rig was quickly shut down to avoid ignition.

The well ceased flowing the next day, but preparations to bring the well under control "are ongoing," according to the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation.

Crews have removed drilling mud and contaminated snow from areas around the well to improve access for workers to clean up and repair the drilling rig, according to state environmental regulators. The following update was provided Sunday afternoon from the Department of Environmental Conservation:

Response crews continue 24-hour operations to steam thaw and remove drilling mud from the drilling rig in order to access the essential drilling rig components needed for the well-kill operation.

Repsol reports that another 174 barrels (7,308 gallons) of liquids (thawed drilling mud and water) were shipped offsite for disposal in the past day, bringing the total to 1,028 barrels (43,176 gallons) of liquids that have been manifested and shipped offsite. Much of the liquid being collected is condensed water from the steam used to thaw the frozen drilling mud. One hundred and twenty five cubic-yards of solid waste were also manifested and shipped offsite (Saturday).

Bottom line: "Cleanup cannot safely begin until the well is under control," according to state regulators.

http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/nearly-2-weeks-later-crews-still-trying-control-alaska-well-blowout 

Questions Linger from the BP Oil Spill - WHY? WHO? HOW MUCH? AGAIN?

On April 20, 2010, off the coast of Louisiana, BP's Macondo well blew out, the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank in the Gulf of Mexico—and 11 workers died. Over the next 87 days nearly 5 million barrels of oil spewed from the wellhead. The disaster had a profound impact on the economy, environment, oil industry and the regulation thereof. A year later, we look back for answers about the BP oil spill.

Who was to blame for the well failure?

In the immediate aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, BP shouldered much of the blame from the public. Though it tried to pass off some responsibility to its contractors, Transocean (owner of the rig) and Halliburton (well cementer), BP was forced to set up a $20 billion fund to compensate citizens living in the Gulf Region. However, the final government report on the spill, released in January, implicated all three companies: "Better management by BP, Halliburton and Transocean would almost certainly have prevented the blowout by improving the ability of individuals involved to identify the risks they faced, and to properly evaluate, communicate and address them."

In the report, the Oil Spill Commission cited nine instances where the three companies made decisions that increased risk of disaster in an attempt to save time on a project that was already six weeks over schedule and $58 million over budget. For instance, the investigators said, Halliburton didn't wait for final testing to ensure the stability of its cement mixture, BP didn't put changes to the well design through peer-review process and Transocean failed to properly monitor the flow of drilling mud in and out of the bore, which made them unaware of a dangerous pressure buildup. Ultimately, the report concluded that the companies didn't properly communicate the risks among themselves—hence, all of them shoulder the blame.

Did the oil companies follow through with their pledge to create a rapid-response mechanism for future spills?

Back in July, four of the world's largest oil companies—Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron and ConocoPhillips—said they would set aside a total of $1 billion to create technology that could cap a potential deepwater spill in the Gulf in a matter of days, rather than the months it took BP to contain Deepwater Horizon. They created the Marine Well Containment Company, which has grown to 10 companies that account for 70 percent of the deepwater drilling in the Gulf during the last three years—including BP.

In February, the nonprofit consortium made good on the first part of its promise, unveiling a 100-ton, 30-foot-high and 14-foot-wide interim containment system that's similar to the cap used on Macondo to shepherd the leaking oil to tankers on the surface. Its backers claim the system can cap a well up to 8000 feet deep (BP's leak was about 5000 feet deep) and contain 60,000 barrels of oil per day The industry-run group plans to roll out an expanded version next year, which will work at depths up to 10,000 feet and will be able to capture up to 100,000 barrels of oil per day, delivering it to tankers on the surface.

Did regulation of offshore drilling change, and will BP revisit the Macondo well?

The final report by the White House–appointed National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill found that "government failed to provide the oversight necessary to prevent lapses in judgment and management by private industry." The Commission concluded that the federal agency regulating deepwater drilling, the Minerals Management Service, didn't have the trained personnel, funding or mandate to effectively oversee drilling in the Gulf.

The Obama administration overhauled the MMS and renamed it the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, a division of the Department of the Interior. Under the BOEMRE, companies must show they can quickly stop a leak in the event of a blowout before earning a permit. Additionally, the Bureau requires a company's well design, casing and cementing to be certified by an independent engineer before drilling can commence.

The government's moratorium on offshore drilling was lifted last October, and in February the BOEMRE approved the first deepwater drilling permit since the BP spill, with bureau director Michael Bromwich saying the well operators convinced him they could adhere to the new stringent regulations. Since then more permits have been issued and companies are back at work. However, as NPR reports, BP has not begun drilling again, but the company still owns the most leases in the Gulf, including seven more years for the area containing the Macondo well. Soon, the company could be right back to work in nearly the same location.

What happened to the $20 billion compensation fund BP set aside?

As oil still poured into the Gulf last summer, BP executives met with President Obama in June and agreed to create an independently administered $20 billion fund to pay claims by people and businesses who suffered damages and monetary losses from the spill. The Gulf Coast Claims Facility, headed by Kenneth Feinberg—the attorney who also oversaw dispersal of the 9/11 Victim's Compensation Fund—has so far paid $3.8 billion on about 300,000 approved claims.

However, Feinberg and his law firm have been criticized for the pace of the progress, with critics like Republican Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana pointing to the $1.25 million the firm receives each month from BP to administer the fund. Vitter's fellow senator from Louisiana, Mary Landrieu, worries that the slow place of claim processing has pushed more people to take the "quick pay" option, in which individuals receive $5000 and businesses $25,000 within 14 days if they sign away their right to sue BP in the future.

In addition to the $20 billion, BP also created a $100 million fund to help rig workers cover living expenses while unemployed. But neither fund covers the estimated 8000 to12,000 people out of work during the drilling moratorium because their jobs relied upon the drilling industry.

Did dire predictions about the Gulf ecosystem come true?

Jane Lubchenco, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told the AP this week that the Gulf is "much better than people feared, but the jury is out about what the end result will be." Though the Gulf ecosystem avoided a worst-case scenario, she says, NOAA and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have collected 6147 dead birds, 613 dead sea turtles and many other sea creatures since the spill began.

Other environmental indicators look positive: In February, the government's Operation Science Advisory Team's report on the Gulf shorelines and beaches found that they do not pose potential health danger to people; risk of buried oil seeping into groundwater is slim; oil concentrations will decrease to 20 percent of current levels by 2016; and that any efforts to remove that oil would do more harm to surrounding vegetation than letting it disperse naturally.

And this week NOAA reopened the last 1041 square miles of Gulf waters that had been closed to fishing. At the peak of that closure, the government had banned fishing in 88,522 square miles, comprising 37 percent of federal waters in the Gulf. Since the spill, NOAA and the Food and Drug Administration have tested fish, oysters, crabs and shrimp in the area—not just for oil, but also for the dispersants used to break up the slick. Their tests found that 99 percent of samples were contaminant free and that the contaminated samples had levels far too low to cause concern. But despite the low amount of apparent contamination, researchers still don't know the long-term effects of the spill on wildlife.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/coal-oil-gas/5-lingering-questions-from-the-bp-oil-spill

Drilling ANWR is not the answer to US energy challenges

http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/drilling-anwr-not-answer-us-energy-challenges

Just one day after a drilling well explosion on Alaska’s North Slope, the House of Representatives voted to open 1.5 million acres of the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling. Unable to find enough votes to pass drilling measures as part of a comprehensive transportation bill, House leadership has resorted to political gimmicks to further the agenda of Big Oil.

The Refuge is home to the greatest diversity of animals of any protected area in the entire circumpolar region, including polar bears, caribou and birds from every state. For the past 50 years our country has remained committed to protecting this unparalleled area. Its wonders have been recognized for centuries by Alaska Natives like the Gwich’in and Inupiat people who still rely on its wildlife for survival.

Opening this special area to drilling is a huge risk for highly speculative and insufficient revenues. To understand what’s at stake you need only look as far as Prudhoe Bay, where less than 100 miles west of the Arctic Refuge drilling has created one of the world’s largest industrial complexes. Hundreds of spills occur in the area each year polluting waterways, damaging the land and harming wildlife. A similar fate awaits the Refuge if this bill is made into law—all to generate revenue that will come too late to fund this bill and won’t be enough to fill the funding gap.

But the House didn’t stop there. They also voted to offer up millions of acres of protected offshore federal waters in the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic Oceans and Alaska’s Bristol Bay to the oil industry. The fishery in Bristol Bay alone generates billions of dollars annually and communities all along the Arctic coast depend on whales, fish and other ocean bounty for subsistence. A major spill could leave oil in these waters for years. The shifting ice floes, sub-zero temperatures, and months of darkness make an oil spill in Arctic waters impossible to clean up.

I have been fortunate in my life to spend time in America’s Arctic in northern Alaska. This remote region is one of the wildest spots left on the globe. I have experienced first-hand the harshness and fragility of this special place which is unlike any other. I’ve watched walrus gather on ice floes, puffins “fly” through the water, and polar bears prowl the ice edge. While watching more than 100,000 caribou move across the tundra followed by wolves and grizzly bears I experienced an inkling of what Lewis and Clark must have felt as they encountered the large bison herds in the Great Plains. I have traveled with Alaska Native people, who have lived on these lands and waters for hundreds of generations, and listened as they describe their connections to this land and the importance of these animals to their culture and subsistence. Some places are too special to drill and the Arctic Refuge is one of them.

Though the oil industry continues to downplay its abysmal spill record, the most recent well explosion reminds us that drilling is a dangerous and dirty business. New drilling comes with a lot of risk, but little benefit for the transportation bill. We must invest in transportation, but we don’t have to threaten our nation’s wildest areas or rely on unsound financing to do so. Congress should be looking for ways to make our cars cleaner and more efficient and expand our transportation choices, not making us more dependent on Big Oil.

Dan Ritzman is the Alaska program director for the Sierra Club’s Resilient Habitats Campaign.

The preceding commentary was first published in The Hill and is republished here with the author's permission.

The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch. Alaska Dispatch welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, e-mail commentary(at)alaskadispatch.com.

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Oil spills in the past years keep growing... (not up to date)

http://www.marinergroup.com/oil... 

Over 200 spills

http://sero.nmfs.noaa.gov/sf/deepwater_horizon/1890_HistoricalSpillsGulfofMexico.pdf

http://response.restoration.noaa.gov/

http://response.restoration.noaa.gov/maps-and-spatial-data/environmental-response-management-application-erma/arctic-erma.html 

Six major oil spills in the Gulf alone in the past decade.

1979- 1980 Bay of Campeche Mexico - 300 million barrels of oil traveled 800
miles to north along 150 miles of Texas shoreline and unknown in Mexico

Hurricane Katrina 250 oil related pollutions incidents releasing 8 million gallons of oil into water and wetlands. actual amount unknown impacted habitats.

1979 Bormah Agate 2.6 million gallons oil spilled travelled 200 miles

1984 65,500 barrels traveled 100 miles smothering marine life

1990 Megavorg 5.1 millions of gallons in Galveston Texas

1993 Ocean 255 spilled 336,000 gallons on sand beaches, oyster, seabeds.

2001 Galapagos oil spills one of the major ways that killer whales have become endangered.

Oil Spill Solution - three strikes and you go to jail

WHEN WILL AMERICA SAY ENOUGH - THE POLLUTION HAS TO STOP - IF YOU SPILL YOU GO TO JAIL!

Another Major Oil Spill at Paulsboro Refinery
1 day ago by WolfeNotes 0 | 99 views



refinery in the back yard of High School

Do Sweeney and Burzichelli Still Hate DEP Regulations and Red Tape?

Late yesterday, DEP issued a press release that just hit my in basket announcing a major oil spill at the Paulsboro refinery.

As is typical, DEP is downplaying risks – the press release reads as if it were written by the oil company. There is no mention of the school just feet away.


12/P16) TRENTON — A large spill from an oil tank at the Paulsboro Refining Company facility in Gloucester County is not expected to impact the Delaware River or local water supplies. Air monitoring also indicatesthere should be no health effects from odors caused by the spill.

… As of 4:30 p.m., 157,000 barrels — or about 6.6 million gallons — of oil had leaked into the emergency containment area. The tank holds 286,000 barrels of oil, or about 12 million gallons. The emergency containment area, essentially a large berm surrounding the tank, is designed to hold 377,000 barrels in the event of an emergency.

We called the “Community Information Line” and all we got was a tape message by the Paulsboro Refining Company – almost like (Read more...)


Link to original article / Continue Reading...

WolfeNotes will focus on important stories that are being ignored or misrepresented by the media. I’ll do traditional muckraking to hold the bad guys accountable; expose the lies and self serving spin of government officials and politicians; and explore how the failures of government, media, AND well meaning environmental organizations contribute to the problems we face.

http://sheilaaliens.net/?p=296

6.3M Gallons of Crude Oil Spills in NJ – Toxicity Report Included – Feb. 24, 2012

VIDEO -   http://www.disclose.tv/action/viewvideo/89842/6_3M_Gallons_Of_Crude_Oil_Spills_in_New_Jersey/

“PAULSBORO, N.J. – February 24, 2012 — A massive oil spill at the closed Paulsboro Refinery in South Jersey is sending sickening fumes over the region. One of the hardest hit areas is in Delaware County, where school children are inhaling the smell.

The spill happened around 1:00 p.m. Thursday 2/23/2012 at PBF Energy’s Paulsboro refinery at 800 Billingsport Road.

At several schools in the Chichester School District, children were reporting feeling ill from breathing the fumes. The school district says no one has been sent home sick because of the fumes, but they have kept the children indoors as a precaution and an early dismal was called for some schools.”

Resources:
http://toxtown.nlm.nih.gov/text_version/chemicals.php?id=73
http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/search/r?dbs+hsdb:@term+@na+crude+oil
http://disaster.nlm.nih.gov/dimrc/oilspills.html#a2
http://emergency.cdc.gov/gulfoilspill2010/light_crude_health_professionals.asp

For poisoning emergencies or questions about possible poisons, contact your local poison control center at 1-800-222-1222.

- - - SNIP - - -

Fumes from a crude oil spill in Gloucester County drifted over four states Friday, prompting dozens of calls to police complaining of the odor, authorities said.

Officials at the Paulsboro Refining Company continued to clean up more than six million gallons of oil that leaked from a tank on Thursday but was contained by berms on the site.

Emergency workers applied foam to the oil to reduce vapors after the spill, but rain overnight Thursday and into Friday broke apart the foam.

Officials in New Castle County, Del., said Friday its 911 center had been inundated with calls from people complaining about the odor. Residents of New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland also complained. The oil began leaking from the 12-million gallon tank Thursday afternoon and an estimated 150,000 barrels of heavy crude were spilled.

“That probably contributed to the releasing of odors during (Thursday) night and Friday,” said Lawrence Hajna, a spokesman for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.

“Plus the cloud ceiling was very low (Friday), creating conditions that would keep the odors close to the ground.”

The spilled oil was contained within a bermed-in area that surrounds the tank. By Friday afternoon, refinery workers had completed removing the remaining oil from the tank and were focusing on removing the oil from the containment area.

The oil had not leaked into the Delaware River or into drinking water supplies, officials said.

There were no reports of anyone being hospitalized due to the oil fumes. Health officials said the vapors could possibly cause minor irritation to the eyes, nose and throat. “But we have had no indication that the fumes pose a serious health risk,” said Hajna.

DEP Commissioner Bob Martin and New Jersey Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno toured the refinery site Friday. “(The refinery) has done all of the proper protocols and is following all the proper precautions,” said Guadagno.

“They have everybody on site from the federal government to the state government to the county and the locals, and they’re handling it.”

Workers will continue working over the weekend to clean up the spilled oil, and air monitoring will also take place for the next few days, according to the DEP.

The cause of the leak is under investigation.

The refinery is owned by PBF Energy, which purchased the company from Valero Energy Co. in December of 2010.

Thursday’s spill was the second this year in Gloucester County. The first involved an estimated 26,000 gallons of diesel fuel that spilled Jan. 12 after a fuel pump gasket malfunctioned at a NJ Transit bus garage at Route 42 and the Black Horse Pike.

One Response to 6.3M Gallons of Crude Oil Spills in NJ – Toxicity Report Included – Feb. 24, 2012

David says:
February 25, 2012 at 1:32 am

It really bugs the hell out of me when I see the devastation wrought by purveyors of destruction reduced and minimized to mere footnotes, and at the same time telling us that we are addicted to oil and “we” are basically the parasitic scum of the earth. Who is “we” I wonder. Rather than buy into the diatribe that is leveed at humanity, or Americans, more specifically, we have to be patient I suppose and not give into the hatred and frustration that they foment among us. Anyways, I just have to wonder what your story is. You’re a person after my own heart to be sure. With knowledge comes the possibility of isolation and alienation, but sure beats what they pass off as American mainstream culture. It will be interesting to see what happens in the near future as the battle for our very existence ensues.

LEGAL: The Admiralty case of the century - MDL 2179

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/8bf50a04-5dc1-11e1-869d-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz1nPMJHFuK

The Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010 caused the world’s largest offshore oil spill. It has also led to a mammoth legal action, as tens of thousands of plaintiffs – and the US government – fight for compensation

In New Orleans people know how to let their hair down, even when the stakes are high. The federal court that has been hearing the massive case to decide civil penalties and damages for the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is in an austere modernist building, dating from the 1960s, but it is only a short walk from the historic tourist trap of the French Quarter. The distinctive atmosphere of the Big Easy, as much Caribbean as it is American, permeates even here.

At pre-trial hearings, the mood among the attorneys is convivial, even jokey at times. Some of them have been meeting at the court for a year and a half, and they know each other pretty well. At one session, the magistrate judge opens by thanking the lawyers for the plaintiffs and for BP, who are on opposing sides of the case, for throwing such a good party the previous night. Social events have been a regular feature of the months leading up to the trial.

At another hearing, plaintiffs’ attorneys interrupt proceedings to put on black-and-white houndstooth hats with red feathers, the trademark of the University of Alabama’s American football team, in a rueful salute for its victory over their team, Louisiana State University, in the national college championships. In a revealing aside, one of the plaintiffs’ Louisiana-based lawyers suggested that a year from now he hoped the hats would be in LSU’s purple and gold. The implication was that the attorneys would all still be there, still arguing the case.

At the time this magazine went to press, all sides involved were still heading for a trial, scheduled to start at 8am on Monday, February 27. Negotiations were also still on over a possible settlement to resolve some or all of the claims, but BP had made it clear that it was ready to fight the case out in court. As Bob Dudley, its chief executive and the successor to Tony Hayward, put it earlier this month: “We are prepared to settle if we can do so on fair and reasonable terms. But equally, if this is not possible, we are preparing vigorously for trial.” Even if BP does strike a deal just before or just after the trial starts – one person who knows the company said a deal could be done “on the courthouse steps” – there are likely to be people who will want to fight on.

The case, MDL 2179, “In Re: Oil Spill by the Oil Rig ‘Deepwater Horizon’ in the Gulf of Mexico, on April 20, 2010”, has become the greatest legal show on earth: the largest and most complex lawsuit for more than a decade in the world’s most litigious country. Heard by Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans – following a failed attempt by BP to take it to Houston, the oil capital of the US – it is intended to decide civil claims both for damages sought by businesses and individuals that lost money as a result of the spill, and for penalties and damages sought by the US federal government and five states along the coast from Texas to Florida. With tens of billions of dollars at stake – observers have suggested the total bill could reach $25bn or more – the outcome will decide the future of BP, Britain’s largest industrial company at the time of the spill, and tens of thousands of lives in the gulf coast region.

In the view of some lawyers, though, it need never have been brought at all. Within two months of the spill, under intense pressure from Barack Obama, BP put up $20bn for a compensation fund; an unprecedented move for a corporation involved in this type of disaster. Ken Feinberg, a Washington lawyer who earned universal acclaim for his careful handling of a similar fund for the victims of the 9/11 attacks, was put in charge of the process. “We will make this right,” BP said, promising long-term support for economic and environmental restoration. Its fund, the Gulf Coast Claims Facility (GCCF), is at the heart of that promise, intended to offer victims of the spill a way to make good their losses without going to court. It has not quite worked out that way.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs say 116,000 clients have joined their action, from fishermen and clean-up workers to hotel owners and property companies, although no one seems to know exactly how many there are. Alongside them, their “big brother” in the case is the US Department of Justice, which is seeking damages and penalties under the Oil Pollution Act and the Clean Water Act. The five coastal states are also suing over the damage to their environment and economies. (The US government has also been looking at whether to bring any criminal charges against BP, the other companies involved, and any of their employees, although if those ever come to court it would be in a separate trial.)

Some of BP’s defence team in New Orleans, from left: Andrew Langan, of Kirkland & Ellis; Ryan Babiuch of Kirkland & Ellis; Don Haycraft of Liskow & Lewis

Facing them have been not only BP, but more than a dozen other companies that worked on the project to drill the ill-fated Macondo well and the subsequent clean-up, including Transocean, the owner and operator of the Deepwater Horizon rig, and Halliburton, which supplied the cement intended to seal the well. For all the superficial bonhomie, the case is fiercely contested. Already the court has heard allegations that evidence had been destroyed, battles over which witnesses can be called, and claims that Tony Hayward, BP’s former chief executive, lied about the existence of a personal email account when he gave a videotaped deposition for the trial.

Some of the most intense exchanges have been between defendants trying to pin the blame on each other. Early sparring over decisions on responsibility essentially ended in a draw; Judge Barbier said BP would have to bear any compensatory damages for people who suffered losses as a result of the spill, but Transocean and Halliburton were still on the hook for possible punitive damages and penalties.

Inside BP, spirits have been rising after a bruising 2011, marred by the collapse of a planned alliance with Rosneft of Russia. Profits for the fourth quarter were excellent, coming in at $7.6bn, and the company raised its dividend by 14 per cent. Dudley talked about being “on the right path”, and said BP planned to push back even further the frontiers of deep-water oil exploration. Everyone at the company knows, though, that its ability to invest in future growth and develop its US business depends on securing the best possible result from the Deepwater Horizon case.

The rough timetable set out by Judge Barbier divided the trial into three phases, lasting about three months each: phase one, intended to resolve who was to blame for the explosion and leak from the well; phase two, to determine how much oil was spilled and how well BP tackled the leak; and phase three, to identify where the oil went and what damage it did. The judge has earned widespread praise for the pace at which he has moved; the case has reached its critical moment just 22 months after the accident, compared with more than five years for the trial resulting from the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill. Steve Herman, one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, says: “Judge Barbier has held the process tightly under control. He has kept the pedal to the metal, and made sure everyone filed the exhibits, deposed the witnesses and did everything they needed to get ready for trial.”

A plaintiff lawyer enters the courthouse

With its array of plaintiffs and defendants, the Deepwater Horizon case has been uniquely difficult. As of January, more than 7,700 pieces of evidence had been filed as exhibits, and more than 300 witnesses had given videotaped depositions. Documents in the case run to more than 72 million pages. If you printed them out and stacked them up, the pile would be four-and-a-half miles high, topping the tallest mountains in the Americas.

For tort lawyers, who contest civil wrongs, it is the biggest of big game, and the case has drawn top legal guns from across the country. BP has a team of lawyers from several firms, led by Andrew Langan, a tall man whose manner can shift from genial to icy in the blink of an eye. Langan is a partner at Kirkland & Ellis in Chicago, a firm that describes itself as one that “tries, and wins, bet-the-company cases”. The other defendants have also brought in high-powered lawyers from out of state to lead their teams: Steve Roberts from Sutherland in Houston for Transocean, and Donald Godwin from Godwin Ronquillo in Dallas for Halliburton.

Carl Barbier: Praised for the pace at which the case has moved

The US government, likewise, assigned the case to two of its brightest stars: softly spoken, bearded Steve O’Rourke from the Washington office, and Mike Underhill, drafted in from San Francisco because of his experience with the Cosco Busan spill in 2007. In that case, fewer than 1,300 barrels of oil leaked from the ship – compared with an estimated four million barrels from BP’s Macondo well – but the DoJ extracted a settlement worth $44m, plus a fine of $10m, and the ship’s pilot was sentenced to 10 months in prison. If any government lawyer was guaranteed to make the defendants think hard about whether they should make a deal, it is him.

The private sector plaintiffs, by contrast, are led by two locals, Louisiana born and bred. The two co-chairmen of the plaintiff’s steering committee, selected to run their side of the case, are Jim Roy, a seasoned campaigner in maritime personal injury cases, and Herman, the scion of one of New Orleans’ most eminent legal dynasties. They are just the public faces, though, for the 19-member committee representing a legal army of about 90 firms and some 340 lawyers. The group has taken over the entire eighth floor of an office building near the back of the courthouse in Carondelet Street, a 15,500 sq ft space with offices, conferences and war rooms, and 70 computers in use every day. Back in November, the plaintiffs’ lawyers estimated that they had already committed more than 230,000 hours to the case.

For the defendants’ lawyers, the case is a well-fed cash cow. BP has estimated that its legal fees and associated costs for the spill have already reached $1.73bn. For the plaintiffs’ team, it could be even higher. The lawyers’ fees vary from client to client, but in this type of action are typically 30-40 per cent of the damages, although for larger claims they could be 25 or even 15 per cent. The plaintiffs’ lawyers could between them make several billion dollars.

The influx of lawyers has proved something of a mini-stimulus for the hotels and restaurants of New Orleans. Places such as Le Foret and Herbsaint, both close to the courthouse, are regular hangouts for attorneys, and when they are pressed for time there is Mother’s, just across the street, where the speciality is “debris”: meat scraps swimming in gravy. Sometimes the lawyers want to get together, and sometimes it is hard for them to get away from each other. One party of BP’s lawyers realised that they were sharing the restaurant with their adversaries from the plaintiffs’ steering committee, and had to button their lips.

In the restaurants and bars of New Orleans’ central business district and French Quarter, it is easy to forget the troubles that have blighted this region. Leave the city on Highway 39, heading towards the fishing community of St Bernard Parish, and the evidence confronts you very quickly. Natural disaster, political neglect, economic decline and corporate incompetence have all left scars on southern Louisiana. In the Ninth Ward of New Orleans, devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, there are still vacant lots, marked out by foundation stones, where homes were swept away when the concrete barrier holding back the Industrial Canal was breached. Many of the remaining single-storey houses are dilapidated, and many have been abandoned. Where the houses run out, there are stands of trees, all dead, killed by salt-water flooding.

A little further down the highway, the middle-class community where George Barisich, a 56-year-old third-generation fisherman, stores his gear is more comfortable; the houses are well-kept, and many are on stilts to protect against the next flood. But Barisich and tens of thousands of fishermen like him have also been battered by the hurricane, by competition from cheap imported shellfish, and by the BP spill. Now, in the legal action in New Orleans, they have a chance to hit back. “This was a man-made disaster that was preventable, and they’re trying to sneak out of what they owe us to put us back in business,” Barisich says. “It’s criminal what they’ve done.”

Energetic and still wiry in spite of a spreading paunch, he has helped round up hundreds of other fishermen in the area to join the lawsuit. As he works on one of his boats out on the bayou, the inlet where nearby vessels have names such as Cajun Viagra and Rebel Cruiser, Barisich explains why he is fighting. He applied for compensation to the GCCF, and was offered $25,000 for loss of earnings while fishing grounds were closed because of the spill. His true losses, and the investment needed to restore his ruined oyster beds, he estimates to be at least $2m. “You can’t offer working-class people with businesses chump change,” he says. “Because if you’re going to offer me chump change, I’m going to give it to the attorneys and throw the dice.”

Daniel Becnel, attorney

In the view of Daniel Becnel, a prominent Louisiana tort attorney, people such as Barisich are probably helping their lawyers more than they are helping themselves. “This is a lawyer feeding frenzy,” he says. “Any time you have these disasters, lawyers become awfully wealthy really quick.” It is not that he is opposed to litigation on principle: his sprawling home, half an hour west of New Orleans, with its fruit trees, “eight or nine” border collies and a guest house with full-time cook, is testament to four decades of successful lawsuits over tobacco, cars, drugs, and dozens of other allegedly faulty or dangerous products. However, he argues, the fact that BP accepted its responsibilities so quickly, putting up the $20bn soon after the accident, changes the whole complexion of the case.

A trial might have been needed for BP, Transocean and Halliburton to thrash out between them how the blame for the disaster was shared, and perhaps for the US government to make its penalties stick, he says. It should never have been needed for those 116,000 claimants. He has represented about 5,000 people pursuing claims with the GCCF, usually on a more modest fee of just 10 per cent, and although the process is not perfect, he believes it has been working. If you cannot get money out of the GCCF, he says, you are unlikely to do any better by going to court.

“Most of the people that are doing the complaining really don’t have tax returns, they operated with cash. Or they think they’ll hit the lottery, and they want three times or 10 times more than their case is really worth,” Becnel says. “A lot of people who don’t have legitimate claims are going to be very disappointed. If you have a legitimate claim, you could get your case settled tomorrow.”

His specific bone of contention is a wrangle over fees with the plaintiffs’ lawyers, who have sought a cut of the more recent compensation payments made by the GCCF, even for people – some of Becnel’s clients among them – who were not represented by their group. His general point is that justice deferred is justice denied; and the Deepwater Horizon case could drag on for a very long time.

Bob Dudley, BP chief executive, speaking earlier this month: 'We are prepared to settle if we can do so on fair and reasonable terms. But equally, if this is not possible, we are preparing vigorously for trial'

The example of the Exxon Valdez spill, he says, should make the fishermen of the gulf wary about trying to take BP on in court. Alaskan fishermen and others who sought punitive damages against Exxon had to fight for almost two decades, until in 2008 the US supreme court awarded them only about $500m, cut from an original award from the lower court of $5bn. “Think of the Exxon Valdez: 20 years those people hadn’t been paid. And why? Because lawyers took it to court,” Becnel says. “In the end, what did they get? They got an average of $15,000 per person. Well Exxon was willing to offer them $50,000 per person right at the get-go ... a third of the plaintiffs had already died. So it didn’t make a lot of sense.”

Gerry Nolting of Faegre Baker Daniels in Minneapolis knows that story as well as anyone. He was one of the lawyers who led the long and ultimately frustrating campaign against Exxon. Yet he joined the Deepwater Horizon case, with about 1,100 clients. “The comparison is night and day,” he says. “Judge Carl Barbier understands that the way you get the case resolved is by keeping it moving. You don’t allow BP to do what Exxon did over the Exxon Valdez.”

Hundreds of his clients are in the same position as Barisich, he says: offered derisory settlements by the GCCF. Not one of them has accepted and signed the agreement needed to receive a final payment, in which they must agree to waive their right to sue. “The settlement offers from Ken Feinberg are generally ridiculous,” Nolting says. “Ken Feinberg’s fund is not a serious option at all.”

Feinberg is used to this kind of attack; he cites “a stiff backbone” as an essential qualification for his job. Speaking in his Washington offices at 1455 Pennsylvania Avenue, a block from the White House, with a “glory wall” showing his press cuttings and meetings with presidents and other members of America’s political elite, he responds with all the confidence of his establishment credentials. “By all accounts, despite criticism and well-intentioned recommendations for change, and all of that, the Gulf Coast Claims Facility has done exactly what the president, the administration and BP expected it to do,” he says.

One objective of setting up the fund was to take the political heat out of the spill, which dominated the news agenda and scorched Obama’s popularity in the spring and summer of 2010. In that, it has unquestionably succeeded.

The remaining unhappiness about his compensation awards, Feinberg says, is explained by the “emotion” stirred up by the disaster. “Everybody believes that every ill they ever suffered – financial, personal, social – is the fault of the spill. And it is rare indeed that somebody acknowledges that maybe it isn’t the fault of the spill. And that makes the job more difficult. Perfectly understandable, the emotion associated with the spill. And you have to deal with that emotion.”

Former CEO, Tony Hayward, became a focal point for public anger during the crisis. He appeared before Congress in June 2010, and resigned the following month. Currently CEO of oil producer Genel Energy, he has given videotaped evidence for the trial.

In New Orleans, there are plenty of people who have come to terms with their anger over the spill, and moved on. In one of the tacky tourist shops of Bourbon Street, there is a big pile of T-shirts with the slogan “FUBP”, and a design of the company’s green and yellow “Helios” logo smeared in brown. The assistant says he cannot remember selling a single one. “After they got their money, most people just forgot about it,” he says.

The numbers from the GCCF suggest that most of the spill’s victims do indeed feel that way. As of February 17, the fund had issued final payments to 193,760 businesses and individuals, having handled a total of 572,365 claimants. Most of the amounts paid have been small: about 182,000 individuals and 17,000 businesses were paid $5,000 or less, including interim sums intended to tide people over until their full claims were dealt with. Some, however, are very large: 42 individuals and 262 businesses have each been paid over $500,000. On February 17, there were only 12,277 claims under review; and even some of the people who were still wrangling with the fund were hopeful that they would get what they wanted in the end.

Galatoire’s restaurant, founded in 1905, is one of them. Its brightly lit dining room is an oasis of old-fashioned New Orleans sophistication amidst the strip clubs and T-shirt shops of Bourbon Street, but it was hit hard by the disappearance of local seafood from its menu in the summer of 2010, according to Bill Kearney, its owner. He has not agreed a compensation payment from the GCCF, but he still sees dealing with the fund as a better route than fighting in court. “The system has been overwhelmed; there wasn’t any standing organisation to handle so many claims ,” he says. “But BP has done a great job of facing up to its responsibilities and trying to make good the damage, and I am sure it will finally work out favourably for us.” He has even appeared in a widely shown TV commercial, paid for by BP, extending “a cordial invitation to visit the gulf” to US holiday makers.


George Barisich, plaintiff

Not everyone has so much faith. As you approach the city of Biloxi, Mississippi, about 80 miles east of New Orleans along the gulf coast, the IP Casino towers over the surrounding landscape like a medieval cathedral, a monument to the city’s devotion to the gambling industry to boost the local economy. At the time of the spill, Shelly Dennis worked there as a nail tech, giving manicures in the spa attached to the casino and hotel complex. Tips were an important part of her income, and she estimates she lost between $16,000 and $17,000, as visits to the casino slumped. The beach, now pristine white sand again, was covered in workers in protective clothing scraping up the oil that washed ashore.

Dennis spent a long, hot day that summer lining up outside the GCCF’s Biloxi office with hundreds of others to file her claim, but she was turned down. “They said I didn’t have enough proof that my losses were due to the direct effect of the spill,” she says. “I followed all the rules, and turned in all my paperwork, but they just denied my claim.” What infuriates her is how arbitrary the decisions seemed to be. Her cousin, a waitress also reliant on tips, got $33,000. She knows many people who received $5,000. “It blows my mind that they can deny my claim, and not theirs,” she says. She is relying for legal advice on the Mississippi Center for Justice, a non-profit group, part-funded by BP, which provides pro bono support for people throughout the gulf region. If she had been able to afford a lawyer, she would have joined the case in New Orleans. “I’d love to go to court and fight it out,” she says. “But I don’t know what else to do.”

One of the ironies of this saga is that, with most of his claims processed, Feinberg has paid out only about $6.7bn of BP’s $20bn. If there is money left over once his work is done, it will go back to BP, to help cover its clean-up costs, now estimated at $14bn, or to pay further damages claims. If Feinberg had been less rigorous in his demands for proof of losses, and the money had flowed more freely, he might have bought off many of the people who decided to take BP on in court.

From the moment the case began, BP knew it would have to pay something. Its priority was to avoid a cost that would leave the company structurally weakened. If the damages and penalties it was forced to pay were too great, it could be pushed into selling more assets, on top of the $38bn already planned, that could constrain the company’s long-term growth.

Living on the gulf coast, people have become used to the idea that their lives can be changed in an instant by acts of God, or chance. The spill was the result of a series of careless decisions that no one outside the oil industry would have understood, and the long-term damage caused by the oil is similarly unpredictable. The creation of the GCCF was supposed to bring order and coherence to the recovery, but it too has seemed obscure and arbitrary to many of the people who have dealt with it. Even once MDL 2179 is resolved, there will be further battles over how the money is divided up.

On his boat, fixing a winch so he can get back to work, Barisich reaches for another gambling metaphor. “It’s a big game of poker,” he says. “Draw poker with my life on the table, in the pot.”

Ed Crooks is the FT’s US industry and energy editor. Additional reporting by Christopher Booker.

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/8bf50a04-5dc1-11e1-869d-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1nPIwYXUw

BP’s Trial Fate Rests With Judge Who Represented Sailors

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-24/bp-s-fate-in-oil-spill-case-rests-with-judge-who-sued-on-behalf-of-sailors.html 

 

U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier

How much BP Plc (BP) will pay for the 2010 explosion of a Gulf of Mexico oil rig that killed 11 people and caused the largest offshore spill in U.S. history may rest with a former maritime lawyer who began his career representing sailors in personal-injury cases.

U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier of New Orleans can draw on that experience as he oversees the first phase of the case against London-based BP (BP) and other companies over the blast on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and subsequent oil spill. The trial is to begin Feb. 27 amid continuing settlement talks between BP and the U.S., a person familiar with the talks said.

“He knows maritime law backward and forwards, and that’s one of the reasons he got this case,” said Val Exnicios, a New Orleans lawyer representing a group of commercial fishermen suing BP, Transocean Ltd. (RIG) and other firms involved in operations at the rig. “You want a judge who knows this area of the law cold, given the complexities.”

A judicial panel assigned Barbier, 67, all federal litigation over the BP spill in August 2010. The judge, who declined requests for an interview, is slated to preside over a three-month, nonjury trial that will apportion blame and determine exposure to punitive damages for the blast.

The April 2010 Macondo well blowout sent almost 5 million barrels of oil spewing into the gulf, according to a U.S. government report issued in September.
Hundreds of Lawsuits

The accident spawned hundreds of lawsuits against BP and its partners, including Transocean, the Vernier, Switzerland- based owner and operator of the drilling rig, and Houston-based Halliburton Co. (HAL), which provided cementing services on the facility.

The lawsuits include pollution claims by federal and state governments and consolidated cases brought by thousands of commercial fishermen, seafood processors, property owners and tourism-related businesses harmed by the spill.

Barbier grew up in the West Bank, a cluster of suburbs, small cities and unincorporated towns straddling the border of the Orleans and Jefferson parishes, across the Mississippi River from the city of New Orleans. He went to high school in Harvey, a residential neighborhood of single-family homes that sprung up around the oilfield services industry and the Harvey Industrial Canal.

Barbier won a football scholarship to Southeastern Louisiana University, where he played on the offensive and defensive lines.
Mississippi River

His father, Walter Louis Barbier, worked as a marine diesel engineer for Mississippi RiverBridge Authority and the Louisiana Department of Transportation & Development, according to state officials.

After earning a business degree in 1966, Barbier worked as a high school teacher and accountant, including stints at Boeing Co. and Shell Oil Co. (RDSA), while attending law school, according to testimony to the U.S. Senate in 1998 after he was nominated to the bench by President Bill Clinton.

After finishing law school at Loyola University in 1970, Barbier clerked for state and federal judges before entering private practice, representing seamen and other plaintiffs suing under federal maritime statutes. He went on to start his own law firm.

Recoveries for his clients include a $325,000 settlement for a welder injured when a Greek tanker slammed into a fleet of barges moored on the Mississippi River in 1992, according to his Senate filing.
Fallen Driller

He also represented a driller who fell through an unsecured grating on an oil platform, winning him $300,000 in a case that was later cited by the Louisiana Supreme Court in another matter, according to the Senate questionnaire.

“He has an understanding of the fellow who has been hurt as a seaman,” Blake Jones, a New Orleans-based plaintiffs’ lawyer who handles maritime suits. Jones is representing a business owner in the spill case who contends BP’s oil damaged 18,000-acres of his oyster beds.

Barbier has planned two subsequent nonjury trials focusing on the size of the 2010 spill and efforts to contain it. Test jury trials on damages are to follow.

“The judge has already done a good job of whittling down the case to make it more manageable,” said Edward Sherman, a Tulane University Law School professor in New Orleans who teaches classes on complex litigation and mass-tort law. “Many times, judges are reluctant to make tough pretrial rulings that narrow the focus of an environmental disaster or mass-tort case.”
Maritime Law

The case is being tried under U.S. maritime law, which covers shipping and navigation activities in inland and coastal waters. Judges can choose to hear maritime disputes without juries. Maritime law requires owners and operators of drilling platforms to conduct safe operations that don’t damage the environment, plaintiffs suing BP and other defendants contend in court filings.

Barbier initially set the first phase of the trial as a limitation-of-liability action. The trial was to consider Transocean’s effort to cap its financial exposure over the spill under an 1851 law designed to protect ship owners. He later expanded that to include claims of fault for the disaster against all defendants.

BP and some defendants also are facing claims from the U.S. government under both the Oil Pollution Act and the Clean Water Act as part of the liability trial.
Exxon Valdez

The Oil Pollution Act was passed after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, when a grounded tanker dumped 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound.

Under the law, a well owner is considered the responsible party and is liable for damages and cleanup costs. BP already has acknowledged that it’s among those responsible under the act. Barbier must decide who else may be liable for the spill.

The Clean Water Act governs pollution discharges into bodies of water and allows regulators to seek fines of as much as $1,100 a barrel for oil spilled through simple negligence and as much as $4,300 a barrel against parties found to have been grossly negligent.

On Feb. 22, Barbier held BP and Anadarko strictly liable under the Clean Water Act, allowing the U.S. to seek as much as $1,100 from them for every barrel spilled. Transocean’s liability is to be determined at trial.

The trial also will determine whether the companies were grossly negligent, which could boost the possible maximum fines under the Clean Water Act to the $4,300-a-barrel limit. Barbier would set the fines after a later trial.
Punitive Damages

If Barbier finds BP and other defendants’ handling of drilling operations and the spill grossly negligent, he can also award punitive damages to businesses and property owners under maritime law, said Tulane’s Sherman.

“The trial will address all allocation-of-fault issues that may properly be tried to the bench without a jury,” Barbier has said. That includes “the negligence, gross negligence, or other bases of liability of, and the proportion of liability allocable to the various defendants, third parties, and non-parties,” he has said.

Before his elevation to the federal bench, Barbier served as the head of the Louisiana Trial Lawyers Association, a group made up primarily of plaintiffs’ attorneys.

As head of the group, Barbier successfully lobbied against Louisiana Governor Mike Foster’s bid to have lawmakers create a no-fault car-insurance system for the state, which would have restricted motorists’ right to sue over accidents, according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper.
Sold Bonds

Barbier said in 2010 that he sold Transocean and Halliburton bonds he held in his investment portfolio “so there is no perception of a conflict in these cases.” The judge’s work as a trial lawyer prompted some critics to question his impartiality in BP spill decisions.

Melissa Landry, executive director of Louisiana Lawsuit Abuse Watch, a nonprofit watchdog group, criticized his December ruling ordering 6 percent of settlements set aside as potential fees for plaintiffs’ lawyers overseeing consolidated claims in the spill cases.

The fee set-aside is “ludicrous and absolutely unjust,” Landry said in a January interview. “It certainly calls into question his impartiality and it certainly reminds one of his previous life.”

Exnicios, the plaintiffs’ lawyer, said Barbier has issued rulings that have displeased both sides in the case.

As part of the trial, Barbier will be called on to sift through hundreds of thousands of pages of reports, depositions and exhibits to decide what companies are liable for spill damage and who can recover.

He “understands who his boss is, which is a relatively conservative Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals,” Jones said. “I don’t think he will stray too far off the leash.”

The case is In re Oil Spill by the Oil Rig Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010, MDL-2179, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Louisiana (New Orleans).

To contact the reporters on this story: Jef Feeley in Wilmington, Delaware, atjfeeley@bloomberg.net; Allen Johnson Jr. in New Orleans at allenmct@gmail.com

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net


BTW - http://www.pnj.com/article/20120224/NEWS10/120224007/First-BP-oil-spill-trial-begin-Monday-New-Orleans?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CFRONTPAGE
A federal trial set to begin in New Orleans on Monday will help determine the future of litigation related to the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Prominent in that proceeding will be Pensacola attorney Brian Barr, a partner at the civil litigation megafirm Levin Papantonio. Barr is one of four attorneys selected by U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier to lead the Plaintiffs Steering Committee.

Barr recently agreed to explain the proceedings in New Orleans, a bench trial presided over by Barbier. Barbier expects this first phase of litigation to be complete by May 31.

“This trial will decide why this tragedy occurred, and the extent to which each defendant is responsible,” Barr said. “Additionally, if the judge finds that any or all of the defendants were grossly negligent, punitive damages will apply. A finding of gross negligence will also increase the potential Clean Water Act penalties.”

The BP spill released about 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf, polluting hundreds of miles of coastline from Texas to Northwest Florida. The April 22, 2010, explosion that caused the spill killed 11 workers and seriously injured 16. The spill shut down Gulf fishing for weeks and crippled Gulf Coast tourism.

For more on what Barr has to say about the trial, see Monday's Pensacola News Journal.

Ampol Completes Oil Recovery Equipment Testing

Oil Stop Division of American Pollution Control Corp. (AMPOL) completed phase two of its contract with the US Coast Guard Research and Development Center for the testing of Submerged Oil Recovery Equipment. The contract was completed in November after successfully executing a variety of tests at the OHMSETT facility in Leonardo, New Jersey. The OHMSETT facility allows industry professionals to work with real oil in simulated environments.
As a result of testing, adaptations were made to AMPOL’s Oil Stop Bottom Oil Recovery System (OSBORS). The OSBORS submerged oil recovery system is a specialized package of equipment designed to remove oil that has settled on the sea floor. The heart of the system is the Tornado Motion Technologies (TMT) SUBDREDGE. The SUBDREDGE is a remote controlled, track driven vehicle that is equipped with TMT’s EDDY Pump.
OHMSETT tests included placing an array of trays on the bottom of the OHMSETT tank, 11 feet beneath the surface. Each tray was loaded with sand, obstacles including cinder blocks and stacks of flagstone; and varying quantities and viscosities of one of four grades of heavy oils ranging in centipoises from 25,000 to 437,000. The oils were deposited into the trays in various and non-uniform patterns to simulate real conditions.
On one of the trays containing approximately 200 gallons of oil, at least 90% of the oil was removed within six minutes. Other test parameters included displaying the ability to remove any free floating oil and “polish” the recovered water to an extent that it could be discharged on-site.
During the oil recovery operations, background samples were taken in to a work area to measure for re-dispersal of oil in the water and for turbidity from the operations. Analysis of these samples showed near zero turbidity and only a minute trace of oil in the surrounding water.
OSBORS’ ability to effectively remove sunken oil in the OHMSETT tests proved the system as a viable method for sunken oil recovery.

http://www.marinelink.com/news/completes-equipment342679.aspx

How freeze-dried Alaska salmon may feed the military

 

http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/fishwatch/species/pink_salmon.htm 

Use of wild Alaska pink salmon in freeze-dried, shelf stable form for military meals ready to eat and myriad other possibilities, including high-energy snacks, is showing much promise, thanks to efforts of Kodiak researchers led by Alexandra Oliveira.

“We are still working on developing recipes and conducting shelf life studies using NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Agency) standards,” said Oliveira, in an interview following her presentation on Feb. 14 to the 63rd annual meeting of the Pacific Fisheries Technologists in Anchorage.

“I believe it has potential for use in MRTEs (military Meals Ready-to-Eat) and combat situations, and other stressful situations,” she said. “Omega-3 fatty acids are very beneficial to people under stress.”

Such a product would also be excellent for people engaged in extreme sports and for the general population, she said.

Oliveira, an associate professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Kodiak campus, has been engaged in the research with Duy Nguyen, Lale Gurer, Quentin Fong, Peter Bechtel, Brian Himelbloom and Charles Crapo.

In her presentation to the technologists, she gave details on the study to develop freeze-dry flavored products using Alaska salmon. Researchers so far have used fresh deep-skinned and boneless pink salmon fillets that were frozen in blocks, diced into small cubes and vacuum packaged for short-term stores at minus 30 degrees centigrade.

Five test batches of salmon cubes were flavored using a two-step process of blanching at various temperatures, then glazed. Solutions used for blanching and glazing contained varied ratios of water, salt, sugar, fish sauce and onion, garlic and chili power. After glazing, the fish cubes were freeze dried to produce four test products, and the chemical composition and microbial load of the products was determined using standard laboratory methods.


Researchers then conducted a consumer acceptability test, with 114 participants, to compare preference among products.

They concluded it is possible to produce flavored freeze-dry salmon products at varying water activity levels that show potential for inclusion in MREs.

The studies began in 2008, funded through the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In 2010, the researchers produced an article on their work that appeared in the Journal of Food Science. Then in July 2011, they received research funds from the Alaska space program based at Kodiak to run the project for about another 18 months.

While freeze-dried salmon has great potential for MREs used by the military and in snack packs and other forms for athletes, the cost of producing makes it too expensive to use in world hunger relief programs, Oliveira said.

“It will be expensive to produce,” she said. Organizations working to combat hunger in third-world countries will find a more economic source of the same protein and omega-3 fatty acids in canned salmon, she said.

“What’s still missing (in the research) is to make a real cost assessment,” she said. “We need to make a pragmatic cost assessment to determine how much it costs to produce a kilogram of the product.”

Peter Bechtel, an affiliate professor of seafood technology on the Kodiak campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks School of Fisheries and Ocean Scientists, was among several other Kodiak fisheries researchers giving presentations at the gathering.

Bechtel spoke at length about utilizing fish byproducts in a myriad of products.

Bechtel noted that Alaska has produced fish meal and fish oil for more than 100 years, but that such production was discontinued in the late 1950s due to poor economics and other factors.

The reestablishment of fish meal operations in Alaska was the result of favorable meal prices and a series of important government regulations, he noted. Of recent importance in shaping meal and oil production and markets has been the large increase in world aquaculture production, because aquaculture uses large amounts of meal and oil as feed ingredients, he said. More marine oils, high in omega-3 fatty acids, are also being incorporated into food products, he said.

The value of fish processing byproducts has increased over the past decade due to price increases of fish meal and oils. Bechtel said there is currently much interest in extracting more of the oil from byproducts such as salmon heads and white fish livers, both good sources of oils rich in long chain omega-3 fatty acids and other components.

Bechtel said there is also a need to increase utilization and value of protein from byproduct. Technologies being investigated include low-cost drying and stabilization systems, use of membrane systems in protein concentration and fractionation and others.

A variety of products are being made and markets are being developed for the heads, livers, stomachs and other tissues of fish, as well as the further processing of byproduct parts to make new and improved food and feed ingredients, he said.

Increasing demand for seafood, coupled with decreasing natural supplies, increasing demand for fish meal and oils, and the understanding that biological waste must be properly handled to avoid environmental damage all support utilization of fish byproducts, he said.

This situation has put a new light on byproducts formerly regarded as a disposal expense, because they now have a defined value, Bechtel said.

This article first appeared in The Cordova Times. You can reach Margaret Bauman with comments and suggestions at mbauman@thecordovatimes.com

http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/how-freeze-dried-alaska-salmon-may-feed-military?page=full

US Coast Guard proposes safety zones around Shell's Alaska drill ships

The US Coast Guard is proposing a 500-meter safety zone around each of the two drill ships that Shell would use if its plans to spud exploratory wells in Alaska's Chukchi and Beaufort Seas this summer are approved.

Shell requested the zones to reduce the chance of collisions with vessels operating outside of the normal shipping channels, the Coast Guard said in a proposal to be published in Thursday's Federal Register.

A 500-meter safety zone would be established around the mobile offshore drilling unit Noble Discoverer, which Shell has said it would use to drill exploratory wells in the Chukchi Sea. The proposed zone would be established from July 1 through October 31.

"Placing a safety zone around the MODU will significantly reduce the threat of collisions that could result in oil spills and releases of natural gas and thereby protect the safety of life, property and the environment," the Coast Guard proposal stated. "Lawful demonstrations may be conducted outside the safety zone," it added.

The proposal said the request for the safety zone was made by Shell "due to safety concerns for both the personnel aboard the Noble Discoverer and the environment."

Incursions into the safety zone by unauthorized vessels could hurt Shell's efforts to monitor and mitigate threats to the drill ship, including ice-related hazards, the proposal stated.

A similar 500-meter safety zone is being proposed for the Kulluk, an MODU Shell has proposed using to drill exploratory wells in the Beaufort Sea.

The federal Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement has approved an oil spill response plan for Shell in the Chukchi. Approval of a spill response plan for the Beaufort is still being weighed by BSEE.

The company must still be granted individual permits to drill specific wells.

Comments on the safety-zone proposal are being accepted for the next 30 days.

--Gary Gentile, gary_gentile@platts.com

http://www.platts.com/RSSFeedDetailedNews/RSSFeed/Oil/6981174


http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2010/2010-8207.htm

https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2012/02/23/2012-4025/safety-zone-kulluk-outer-continental-shelf-mobile-offshore-drilling-unit-modu-beaufort-sea-ak