Investigators see 'culture of complacency' behind gulf oil spill - Los Angeles Times

Chief counsel Fred Bartlit, standing, questions witnesses as Commission co-chairs William Reilly, left, and Bob Graham, commission members Elena Melchert, Fran Ulmer and Don Boesch listen during a hearing before the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. (Alex Wong / Getty Images)

A stream of evidence shows that "a culture of complacency" rather than a "culture of safety" prevailed at BP, Transocean Ltd. and Halliburton as they worked on the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, according to the chairmen of the presidential commission investigating the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The panel's investigators uncovered "a suite of bad decisions," many still inexplicable, involving tests that were poorly run, alarming results that were ignored, proper equipment that was sidelined and safety barriers that were removed prematurely at the high-pressure well, said William K. Reilly, who is co-chairman of the commission with former Democratic Sen. Bob Graham of Florida.

"Each company is responsible for one or more egregiously bad decisions," said Reilly, who was an administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under President George W. Bush.

Graham agreed. "Leaders did not take serious risks seriously enough and did not identify a risk that proved to be fatal," he said.

Their blunt assessments Tuesday came a day after the panel's chief counsel said he had found no evidence that BP and other workers "made a conscious decision" to cut corners on safety to save money.

"They didn't rule out cost, just said they weren't prepared to attribute mercenary motives to men who cannot speak for themselves because they are not alive," Reilly said of the panel's investigators and the 11 workers who were killed when the drilling rig exploded and sank on April 20. "But the story they told is ghastly: one bad call after another."

He said the story that has unfolded so far indicated the need for "top to bottom" reform of the companies.

Created by President Obama a month after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, the commission is investigating the disaster and developing recommendations for preventing oil spills and cleaning them up. Its final report is due in January and its recommendations could be the basis of new laws or regulations.

During Tuesday's hearing, panel investigators questioned industry experts who have studied decisions made on the Deepwater Horizon.

"I know that there was pressure on this group of people to get done and move on," said Steve Lewis, an advanced drilling technology engineer at Seldovia Marine Services, who said he had often worked with BP. "I have seen internal communication at senior BP management level inquiring whether this well would be done on time."

Testimony at other hearings has detailed the time and financial pressures BP faced while trying to finish at the well, which BP staff members had called a "nightmare." Drilling was six weeks behind schedule, costing BP at least $21 million in leasing fees alone.

When the explosion occurred, BP was temporarily plugging the well to defer oil and gas production and move the rig to another site. During questioning by panel lawyers, industry experts said BP made an "unusual number" of changes to the plan to plug the well in the week before the explosion. They also said that a crucial test to determine pressure in the well was improperly done.

Investigators said Monday that BP and Transocean staff members on the rig ran pressure tests on the well several times on the evening of April 20. A successful test would have shown no upward pressure, but the tests the team ran showed otherwise.

For reasons still not entirely clear, the team declared the test a success at 8 p.m. The rig exploded about two hours later.

nbanerjee@tribune.com

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Toxic Hungarian sludge spill reaches River Danube - Reuters

Locals cross a pontoon bridge next to a broken bridge in the flooded village of Kolontar, 150 km (93 miles) west of Budapest October 7, 2010.

Credit: Reuters/Laszlo Balogh

By Marton Dunai

GYOR, Hungary | Thu Oct 7, 2010 5:30pm EDT

GYOR, Hungary (Reuters) - Toxic red sludge from a Hungarian alumina plant reached the Danube on Thursday and crews struggled to dilute it to protect the river from what the prime minister called an "unprecedented ecological catastrophe."

Experts said damage beyond the borders of Hungary was unlikely to be great but the threat had to be monitored closely.

Tibor Dobson, a spokesman for Hungarian disaster crews, told Reuters there were sporadic fish deaths in the Raba and the Mosoni-Danube rivers. He said all fish had died in the smaller Marcal River, which was hit by the spill first.

Crews were working to reduce the alkalinity of the spill, which poured out of the burst containment reservoir of an alumina plant on Monday and tore through local villages, killing four people and injuring over 150. Three are still missing.

The spill's alkaline content when it reached the Raba, the Mosoni-Danube and the Danube itself, was still around pH 9 -- above the normal, harmless level of between 6 and 8.

Fresh data from the water authority on national news agency MTI showed pH levels peaking at 9.65 in the Mosoni-Danube river at the city of Gyor. They were measured at 8.4 in the Danube.

Crews were pouring hundreds of tonnes of plaster and acetic acid into the rivers to neutralize the alkalinity.

In Gyor, a city in the northwest of Hungary where the Raba flows into the Mosoni-Danube, a Reuters reporter saw white froth on the river and many dead fish washed ashore.

Philip Weller, executive secretary to the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR), a Vienna-based U.N. body, said most damage was local.

"It is clear that the consequences of this are greatest in the local area and that the implications on a trans-boundary level, we understand, will not be significant which doesn't mean they don't exist," he said.

"The Hungarian authorities took a number of measures to reduce the toxicity, they added substances to neutralize the material, they also constructed some underwater weirs to slow the mud and maintain it and contain it as much as possible in the Hungarian territory of the river system."

It also helps that the Danube is a large river with a very high volume of water, he added.

Gabor Figeczky, Hungarian branch director of the WWF environmental group said:

"Based on our current estimates, it (pollution) will remain contained in Hungary, and we also trust that it will reach Budapest with acceptable pH values."

Downstream from the disaster site, the Danube flows through or skirts Croatian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Romanian, Moldovan and Ukrainian territory en route to the Black Sea.

Production should not be resumed until the company responsible has cleaned up every molecule of this spill. If the go out of business… too bad. Maybe it will be a lesson for other companies. One of the pictures showed people sweeping the mess down a street drain… which probably goes to the river. Wouldn’t it be more reasonable to collect it while it can be containerized.

hebintn Report As Abusive

So, the operators of the plant want to resume production? How fast have they been to try to minimize the damage and clean up the mess already caused? Have they done anything for the families of the people killed in th accident?

I ask these questions because in my country, the U.S., I’m certain any operator in a similar situation would be eager to get the money rolling back in — even while stalling on spending even a single dollar towards recovery, cleanup, restitution, etc.

MekhongKurt Report As Abusive

Water pollution like this is just part of a natural cycle, like AGW. There is no need to get all worried about it. Life is to be enjoyed and people are what really matters, not a bunch of red water. Have another beer.

Sure, Man might be contributing somewhat to water pollution but more research is needed to determine the actual cause. Nature has dealt with things like this for eons and metal does originate in the Earth, you know.

The most important thing is that we must continue to grow the economy forever on this finite planet and accept pollution as mere collateral damage. (Spoken like a good Republican.)

Jack956 Report As Abusive

Reminds me of what British Petroleum did to the Gulf of Mexico. Only question now is…how many Republicans will be getting down on their knees and apologizing to the company that did this to Hungary?

wilder5121 Report As Abusive

Nothing we haven’t already seen in the US. Remember the Tennessee Valley Authority’s dike that broke and released nearly a billion gallons of fly ash contaminated water? It wasn’t red, but a dark grey.

GRRR Report As Abusive

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Gulf oil spill: White House blocked and put spin on scientists' warnings - The Guardian

BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig seen burning in April. A report commissioned by Barack Obama has revealed that the White House office of management and budget blocked scientists seeking permission to show worst case scenario models two weeks after the explosion. Photograph: Gerald Herbert/AP

The White House blocked government scientists from warning the American public of the potential environmental disaster caused by BP's broken well in the Gulf of Mexico, a report released by the national commission investigating the oil spill said yesterday.

The report, produced by a panel appointed by Barack Obama to investigate the spill, said that about two weeks after the BP rig exploded scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) asked the White House for permission to release their models showing their worst case scenarios for the spill.

The White House office of management and budget, which is a traditional clearing house for decisions, turned down the request, the report said, quoting interviews with administration officials.

The report, one of four released today by the commission, provides the most compelling evidence to date of direct attempts by the White House to spin the BP oil spill disaster.

The White House disputed the commission's findings. "Senior government officials were clear with the public what the worst-case flow rate could be," the acting director of the OMB, Jeffrey Zients and the NOAA adminstrator, Jane Lubchenco, said in a statement.

The commission report does not explore why the White House sought to block the worst-case scenarios for the spill.

The report amplifies scathing criticism last week by the commission's co-chairs, Bob Graham and William Reilly, of the Obama administration's handling of the disaster.

It goes on to catalogue other lapses by the administration, including repeated underestimates of the size of the spill, and downplaying the environmental damage after the BP well was capped.

The report found particular fault with the White House energy adviser, Carol Browner, who appeared on television on 4 August and said: "The vast majority of oil was gone."

It said Browner was overstating the findings of a NOAA analysis of the fate of the oil.

"By initially underestimating the amount of oil flow and then, at the end of the summer, appearing to underestimate the amount of oil remaining in the Gulf, the federal government created the impression that it was either not fully competent to handle the spill or not fully candid with the American people about the scope of the problem," the report said.

The documents for the first time put the White House at the centre of the long running dispute between the administration and independent scientists about how much oil was discharged into the Gulf, and how much remains in the water.

At first, BP claimed the well was leaking 1,000 barrels a day. By early May, the administration had revised its estimate upwards to 5,000 barrels a day, but based its assessment on the work of a single NOAA scientist using "overly casual" analysis of satellite images of oil on the surface of the ocean.

The administration clung to that estimate – which turned out to be 12 times lower than the actual spill size – despite known inaccuracies in the scientists' work, the report said.

It went on: "Loss of the public trust during a disaster is not an incidental public relations problem."

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