Quick and fun BP facts

The BP Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Response plan the MMS apparently traced with a pen before rubber stamping doesn't seem to have been thoroughly researched.

There's mounting evidence that federal regulators at the Minerals Management Service were paying zero attention to the oil industry, particularly when it came to authorizing oil spill response plans. Case in point: BP's Oil Spill Response Plan for the Gulf of Mexico lists sea lions, seals, sea otters, walruses in its evaluation of how a spill might affect local wildlife. The problem? None of these critters live in the Gulf.

BP has a less than stellar health and safety record

..the Center for Public Integrity reports, the company was responsible for 97 percent of the worst violations cited by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration between June 2007 and February 2010.

But at least they approach it with a sense of humor.

Now The Daily Beast has obtained a document—displayed below—that goes to the heart of BP procedures, demonstrating that before the company’s previous major disaster—at a moment when the oil giant could choose between cost-savings and greater safety—it selected cost-savings. And BP chose to illustrate that choice, without irony, by invoking the classic Three Little Pigs fairy tale.

The white lines are tracers for facers of the aftermath

The scandals in the Minerals Management Service have been widely documented now for quite a few years. But since this report is directly related to the New Orleans and Lake Charles offices, now is as good a time as ever to revisit these issues.

The investigation also uncovered evidence of illegal drug use by at least two MMS employees in Lake Charles, and the use of federal e-mail accounts by 13 employees in Lake Charles and New Orleans to receive or forward pornographic images and links to Internet sites with pornographic videos.

One inspector even conducted four inspections of Island Operating Company oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico while he was negotiating and later accepting a job offer from the company.

One confidential source told investigators that some inspectors allowed oil and gas company personnel to fill out their own inspection forms, which would then be completed or signed by the inspector and turned in for review.

Actually what they said about the inspection forms the meth-fiending inspectors handed over to company reps was this.

Federal regulators responsible for oversight of drilling in the Gulf of Mexico allowed industry officials several years ago to fill in their own inspection reports in pencil — and then turned them over to the regulators, who traced over them in pen before submitting the reports to the agency, according to an inspector general’s report to be released this week.

So this afternoon when we read that another BP subsidiary (The United States Coast Guard) has approved the "Top Kill" well-plugging scheme we had to wonder what color pen they used to do the tracing.

Also I found this video of one Top Kill operation attempted some years ago on Nickelodeon with unfortunate results.



Whatever happened to Moose, anyway?

We'll go down and smell around

Apparently nothing on the rig worked at all. BOP didn't work, cement didn't work, and it's also possible the rig crew wasn't following the safest procedure at the time of the explosion.

In order to properly cap a well, drillers rely on three lines of defense to protect themselves from an explosive blowout: a column of heavy mud in the well itself and in the drilling riser that runs up to the rig; at least two cement plugs that fit in the well with a column of mud between them; and a blowout preventer that is supposed to seal the well if the mud and plugs all fail.

In the case of the Deepwater Horizon, Scott Bickford, a lawyer for a rig worker who survived the explosions, said the mud was being extracted from the riser before the top cement cap was in place, and a statement by cementing contractor Halliburton confirmed the top cap was not installed

Perhaps the companies responsible for making sure these things worked would have taken the issue more seriously if they had been given the impression that someone was going to hold them accountable when something went wrong. Turns out they weren't even required to file a contingency plan for this sort of emergency.

Petrochemical giant BP didn't file a plan to specifically handle a major oil spill from an uncontrolled blowout at its Deepwater Horizon project because the federal agency that regulates offshore rigs changed its rules two years ago to exempt certain projects in the central Gulf region, according to an Associated Press review of official records.

Now why would Minerals Management Service employees feel at liberty to take such a relaxed attitude toward their mission? Well, yeah, they kind of felt that way about a lot of things.

Government officials in charge of collecting billions of dollars worth of royalties from oil and gas companies accepted gifts, steered contracts to favored clients and engaged in drug use and illicit sex with employees of the energy firms, federal investigators reported yesterday.

That's right. The regulators were actually literally in bed with representatives of the industry they were supposed to police. I just hope those oil lobby-whores were damn good lays because they sure did turn out to cost a lot of shrimp.

Note: Even if you go out and get the biggest toughest condom you can find, it doesn't do anywhere near as much good if you wait until the load is shot before you put it on.

And all of this says nothing about what kind of a deal they managed to swing for Senator Landrieu but we assume it was some good shit because..

Meanwhile there is renewed discussion of the lovely smell wafting over New Orleans from the south tonight. It's difficult to describe exactly. It's kind of a charred chemical sweetness. Somebody, I think it was Pat, described it as melting crayons but that's not quite strong enough. When I was a kid, I had this friend who liked to melt Star Wars action figures with a butane lighter. I think it smells like somebody barbecued a pile of Boba Fetts outside tonight. Maybe that goes well with iced tea but I haven't seen any yet.