BP today

http://www.youtube.com/bp?x=us_gulf_627_30





LINK: http://www.bp.com/extendedgenericarticle.do?categoryId=2012968&contentId=7074445

BP oil spill facts

The Size of the Spill
127,000 barrels: Amount of oil BP's containment cap has collected since its installation on June 5. (Source: Press Association)
60,000 barrels: The amount of oil believed to be gushing from the spill. That's twelve times more than the original estimate of 5,000 barrels a day. In all, 60,000 barrels a day means an estimated 2.5 million gallons a day is leaking into the Gulf. (Source: Business Week)
11,300 miles: The distance around the world the current amount of leaked oil would stretch if it was placed in milk jugs lined up side by side. To quantify, that's farther than New York to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and back. (Source: New York Times)
102: The number of school gymnasiums that could theoretically be filled floor-to-ceiling with oil from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. (Source: New York Times)
130 miles long and 70 miles wide: Size of the oil slick as of May 17. The slick continues to grow and move. (Source: New Orleans Times Picayune)
11: Number of workers missing and presumed dead following the BP rig explosion. (Source: Huffington Post)
Less than 4: The number of hours the millions of barrels of oil that have spilled into the Gulf of Mexico would have powered the U.S. Economy. (Source: NPR)

The Cost
12,000: Number of Louisiana residents who have filed for unemployment since the spill, most of which have come from the southern part of the state most closely impacted by the spill. (Source: Daily Finance)
$1.6 billion: The confirmed cost of the Gulf oil spill to BP, as of June 14, 2010. (Source: Press Association)
5-42 million: Range of BP's estimated fines, per day. On the low end, is the cost based on BP's conservative estimate of 1,000 barrels a day being lost. On the high end, an estimate of 14,000 barrels a day, which is generally considered a more accurate estimate of the leak. As of May 26, this means that BP could be fined anywhere between $37 million to $1.5 billion. (Source: House of Representatives)
$75 million: The government-mandated cap on oil company liability. Some representatives are calling for the cap to be lifted and a new $10 billion dollar cap be put in place. (Source: Los Angeles Times)
$1.5 billion: Amount in insurance claims experts believe the BP spill will cost insurers. (Source: Business Week)
$62 million: Amount paid out in claims to 26,500 Gulf residents, as of June 14, 2010. (Source: Press Association)


Background on the Gulf Oil Spill
27: Number of offshore gulf drilling operations approved since the BP spill. Two of those were awarded to BP. (Source: Center for Biological Diversity)
30 percent: Percent of the nation's oil production derived from the Gulf of Mexico. (Source: E2 Wire)
1 billion: Number of gallons of oil spilled into the oceans each year, Gulf of Mexico spill notwithstanding. (Source: Union of Concerned Scientists)
137.8 billion gallons: Amount of gasoline Americans consumed in 2008, down 3% from 2007. (Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration)
19.5 million barrels: Amount of oil consumed in the United States per day. (Source: CIA Country Handbook 2008)
2,300 square miles: Number of miles of historic Louisiana coastal marsh and cypress forest (out of 7,000) that have been compromised due to oil drilling. (Source: Environmental Defense Fund)




LINK: http://www.dosomething.org/tipsandtools/11-facts-about-bp-oil-spill


SOURCE: "The Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill by the Numbers." The Daily Green. Web. 10 May 2012. http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/gulf-of-mexico-oil-spill-facts.

What is Obama doing? Nothing.

Coordinating the cleanup is equally imperative so that our ecosystems, wildlife, economy and industries can experience as little disruption as possible. The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 authorizes the president to oversee the cleanup efforts of the responsible parties, and offshore this duty falls to the U.S. Coast Guard. Yet, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal had to lobby the White House for weeks to get engaged on this front. It’s time for President Obama to exert leadership. If this is his top priority, he must prove it with actions, not rhetoric. President Obama instinctively leans toward an activist government except when every so often he hesitates. Ironically, it is these moments that tend to be the precise times when the federal government’s role is most justified, whether that be border security, the war on terror, ceding sovereignty to multilateral organizations, or now in the Gulf. The federal government has a role in the Gulf, and it’s time for the president to articulate it to the American people.

The federal government hired a New Orleans man for $18,000 to appraise whether news stories about its actions in the Gulf oil spill were positive or negative for the Obama administration.The contracts the government has disclosed so far include at least $5.8 million for helicopter services, $3.1 million for lodging, $1.4 million for boat charters, $225,000 for water-testing devices, including some used aboard ships, $457,570 for cellular and satellite phone services, $25,087 for toilets, $23,217 for laundry services and $109,735 for refrigerators and freezers.









LINK: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39154156/ns/us_news-environment/t/was-federal-spending-wasteful-gulf-oil-spill/

SOURCE: "Morning Bell: Obama and the Oil Spill." The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation. Web. 10 May 2012. http://blog.heritage.org/2010/06/03/morning-bell-obama-and-the-oil-spill/.

Environment has a vast impact on this nation 2

In California, for both birds and sea otters, the immediate threat created by a spill is the insidious effect of oil on their natural waterproofing. Normally, inner feathers or hair form an intricate interlocking structure that traps air next to the skin, keeping creatures dry and warm. Oil breaks up that structure. Suddenly, the animals can’t stay warm. They must eat more to rev up their metabolism. Unfortunately, the coating of oil makes it harder to float, fly, swim—or catch food. Then, as the creatures frantically preen and groom, they swallow and inhale oil. That ingestion can lead to pneumonia and organ damage. Death is usually swift and far from help. “The vast majority of animals that come in contact with oil are never even seen,” Estes says. Of the 584 affected birds found in the gulf by the end of May, 506 were already dead.
Overall, the toll to gulf birds, turtles, sperm whales and other wildlife, along with the region’s $4-billion-per-year seafood industry and a whole way of life, is expected to be enormous. “It’s taken 20 years to figure out the effects of oil in Alaska,” Jessup says. “It could take longer with this spill.” One crucial question: How much of the coastal marshes can be protected from the oil?

 “Once the oil is in the water, you are never going to recover even 10 percent of it.”




LINK: http://www.oilspillwildlife.org/?gclid=CLD5nO-A9a8CFWQDQAodUCGOFA

SOURCE: Carey, John. "Can We Rescue Oiled Wildlife?" National Wildlife Federation. Web. 10 May 2012. http://www.nwf.org/News-and-Magazines/National-Wildlife/Animals/Archives/2010/Can-We-Rescue-Oiled-Wildlife.aspx.

Environment has a vast impact on this nation

Giant plumes of crude oil mixed with methane are sweeping the ocean depths with devastating consequences. ‘I’m not too worried about oil on the surface,’ says one scientist. ‘It’s the things we don’t see that worry me the most. An enormous release of crude oil not only onto vulnerable shorelines and fragile marshes but into the largely unexplored depths of the sea. The consequences for the delicate balance of existence in the vulnerable ecosystems of the gulf, and for the vast cycles of nature that sustain life there and beyond, are as incalculable as they are potentially devastating.

“I’m not too worried about oil on the surface,” says chemist Ed Overton of Louisiana State University. “It’s going to cause very substantial and noticeable damage—marsh loss and coastal erosion and impact on fisheries, dead birds, dead turtles—but we’ll know what that is. It’s the things we don’t see that worry me the most. What happens if you wipe out all those jellyfish down there? We don’t know what their role is in the environment. But Mother Nature put them there for a reason,” and many are in the plumes’ paths.



LINK: http://www.treehugger.com/natural-sciences/4500-animals-killed-in-bp-spill-and-counting.html

SOURCE: Begley, Sharon. "What the Spill Will Kill." The Daily Beast. Newsweek/Daily Beast, 05 June 2010. Web. 10 May 2012. http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/06/06/what-the-spill-will-kill.html.

Dept into why the oil spill hurt the economy 2

Like southern Louisiana, Alaskan towns were full of fishermen whose way of life was threatened. Residents saw coastal waters fouled by millions of barrels of oil, and they raged against an incompetent response from government and industry. Previously close-knit communities were divided — those who took well-paying cleanup jobs with Exxon were decried as “spillionaires” profiting from the catastrophe. And the wounds did not heal with time: a recent study found that stress levels among Alaskans involved in the oil-spill litigation were as high in 2009 as they were in 1991. “There are still significant levels of depression and posttraumatic stress,” says J. Steven Picou, a sociologist at the University of South Alabama. “It was a constantly renewing disaster.”
The remaining government claims could add billions more to BP’s bill, depending on how fines under the Clean Water Act and other environmental rules are calculated. (BP has said that it has already spent more than $22 billion on the spill.)



LINK: http://articles.marketwatch.com/2010-05-10/industries/30725373_1_barataria-bay-spill-response-bp-spill


SOURCE: Walsh, Bryan. "Oil Spill: Why the BP Settlement Is Just the Beginning of the End." TIME.com. TIME. Web. 10 May 2012. http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2012/03/03/oil-spill-why-the-bp-settlement-is-just-the-beginning-of-the-end/.

Depth into why the spill hurt the economy

Large amounts of federal and state waters were closed to fishing in the stir of the spill, many areas for more than a year and a half. Once reopened, many were short of the seafood they once supported or unfriendly to the spawning of new life.

In Louisiana and Mississippi, oyster production collapsed, falling by 55 percent in Louisiana and 34 percent in Mississippi from 2009 to 2010. Even lower numbers are expected when the 2011 harvest is tallied. Byron Encalade is president of the Louisiana Oystermen’s Association. Byron operates out of Bay Jimmy, where, he reports; oil continues to come up on land, in the water, and in critical reef habitats. Byron’s biggest fear is production. “We’ve already been out two years. My concern is that there’s no spat [larval oysters] out there, so that means we’re out another two years. What are we supposed to do then?”

 Shrimpers are facing an only slightly less daunting situation, as Clint Guidry, president of the Louisiana Shrimp Association, tells me over breakfast in New Orleans.”Between 2009 and 2010, the shrimp crop declined in Mississippi by 52 percent, in Alabama by 48 percent, and in Louisiana by 14 percent, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Coming into late September 2011 our crop was down by 80 percent,” Clint tells me. “The areas with the least amount, and in some cases, no shrimp are those hardest hit by the oil and dispersant.”From 2009 to 2010, the crab crop declined by 42 percent in Louisiana, 37 percent in Alabama, and 33 percent in Mississippi.




LINK: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703438604575314563269981870.html


SOURCE:Juharz, Antonia. "Oil Spill Still Tars the Gulf." The Progessive. Web. 10 May 2012. http://www.progressive.org/bp_oil_still_tars_the_gulf.html.