Deepwater Horizon ghosts come back to haunt

Louisiana looks for 'smoking gun' to link Isaac tar balls to Gulf oil disaster

Officials report weathered oil in areas struck by the hurricane that also were badly damaged after the Deepwater Horizon spill

the Guardian,

5 September, 2012

Louisiana is investigating whether tar balls deposited on Gulf of Mexico beaches by Hurricane Isaac were relics of the 2010 BP oil disaster.

Government agencies and environmental groups this week reported weathered oil in areas which took the brunt of last week's hurricane – and which were also heavily damaged by the 4.9m barrel gusher from BP's leaking oil well.

"I'd say there is a smoking gun," Garrett Graves, the coastal adviser to Louisiana's governor Bobby Jindal, told news organisations. "It's an area that experienced heavy oiling during the spill."

State officials shut down commercial fishing and all shrimping in a 13-mile stretch from Port Fourchon to Caminada Pass, after observing tar mats and high concentration of tar balls on beaches.

The Gulf Restoration Network, which has been touring the aftermath of Isaac by air and boat this week, said crew had reported 109 dead pelican in the wake of the storm and oil in a number of locations on the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts.

"We saw a fair amount of oil sheen and fresh tar balls at Ship Island, one of the Mississippi barrier islands," said Aaron Viles, a spokesman for the coalition of environmental groups. "The storm really delivered a shock to the ecosystem, and we are seeing BP oil showing up again and we are seeing, unfortunately, real impacts to an ecosystem still struggling to recover."

The Gulf network had repeatedly warned that powerful storms risked dredging up oil that had been purposely sunk to the ocean floor, by the use of chemical dispersants in the wake of the BP oil spill.

"When a storm system comes through it re-exposes oil that has settled to the bottom or was buried under sediment, and that newly re-exposed oil is showing up in places that had a lot of oil during the BP spill," Viles said.

The oil company said the high number of offshore rigs in the Gulf of Mexico made it impossible to tie the tar mats to the runaway BP well without comprehensive testing.

The US coastguard is investigating about 90 reported cases of oil and chemical leaks following Isaac, including suspected leaks from offshore platforms and a vacated storage terminal at Myrtle Grove.

Environmental groups have warned of damage to wetlands and a citrus grove from an oil spill from a Conoco Phillips refinery in Plaquemines Parish, which took a battering in Isaac.

There was also a chemical release in Braithwaite, where two people were killed in flooding.

The coastguard has sent oil samples to it lab in Connecticut for testing, officials said.

BP said in its statement that it would be "premature" to draw any conclusions about the sources of the oil before tests came back.

"It is important to fingerprint the residual oil to determine its origin. If any of it is connected to the Deepwater Horizon accident, BP stands ready to remove it," the oil company said.

US points to 'gross negligence' by BP

Government criticises BP in court filing and admits that pollution from 2010 spill continues to impact Gulf of Mexico

al Jazeera,

5 September, 2012

The US justice department is blaming BP PLC for the massive 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, describing in new court papers examples of what it calls "gross negligence and willful misconduct".

The court filing is the sharpest position yet taken by the US government as it seeks to hold the British oil giant largely responsible for the largest oil spill, as well as the largest environmental disaster, in US history.

Gross negligence

Gross negligence is a central issue to the case, scheduled to go to trial in New Orleans in January 2013. A gross negligence finding could nearly quadruple the civil damages owed by BP under the Clean Water Act to $21bn.

The US government and BP are engaged in talks to settle civil and potential criminal liability, though neither side will comment on the status of negotiations.

Returning to the Gulf two years after the BP oil spill

"The behaviour, words and actions of these BP executives would not be tolerated in a middling size company manufacturing dry goods for sale in a suburban mall," government lawyers wrote in the filing on August 31 in federal court in New Orleans.

The filing comes more than two years after the disaster that struck on April 20, 2010 when a surge of methane gas known to rig hands as a "kick" sparked an explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig as it was drilling the mile-deep Macondo 252 well off Louisiana's coast. The rig sank two days later.

The well gushed at least 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico for 87 straight days, unleashing a torrent of oil that fouled the shorelines of four Gulf Coast states and eclipsed the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska in severity.

Al Jazeera's Dahr Jamail, who has covered the disaster from the beginning, believes the government's statement is an accurate portrayal of BP's actions that led to the disaster, and that it underscores the fact that the impacted areas of the Gulf continue to suffer environmental impacts.

"This filing means that government agencies now stand behind some key allegations made by regional scientists and fishermen," Jamail said, "And that is that BP isn’t telling the truth when it tries to convince the American people, via an ongoing nationwide PR campaign, that everything is back to normal in the Gulf and that BP is a responsible company. The reality is that the fishing industry continues to suffer, there are ongoing seafood malformations and deformities, and large areas where there is still oil."

Specifically, errors made by BP and Swiss-based Transocean Ltd, owner of the Deepwater Horizon platform, in deciphering a key pressure test of the Macondo well are a clear indication of gross negligence, the Justice Department said.

"That such a simple, yet fundamental and safety-critical test could have been so stunningly, blindingly botched in so many ways, by so many people, demonstrates gross negligence," the government said in its 39-page filing.

BP rejection

BP rejects the charge. "BP believes it was not grossly negligent and looks forward to presenting evidence on this issue at trial in January," the company said in a statement. A Transocean spokesman had no immediate comment.

On August 13, BP urged US District Judge Carl Barbier to approve an estimated $7.8bn settlement reached with 125,000 individuals and businesses, asserting its actions "did not constitute gross negligence or willful misconduct".

The government said Barbier should avoid making any finding about BP's potential gross negligence when he rules on the settlement. Barbier will hold a fairness hearing on that settlement on November 8.

Barbier should also disregard claims made by BP that minimise the environmental and economic impacts of the spill, the government said, citing environmental harms like severe ill health of dolphins in Louisiana's Barataria Bay, which saw some of the heaviest oiling from the spill.

Exasperation

The filing does exhibit exasperation on the part of government lawyers. They wrote that they decided to elaborate on BP's alleged gross negligence because they believed BP was trying to escape full responsibility.

The justice department said they feared that "if the United States were to remain silent, BP later may urge that its arguments had assumed the status of agreed facts".