BP

“Too often nothing happens,” said John Podesta, Center for American Progress chair and founder, introducing the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pension Majority Committee report released on December 11th that details federal contractors’ repeat and serious occupational safety and wage violations. “Too often the government renews agreements with companies that have a long track record of putting their workers at risk while profiting from taxpayer dollars,” said Podesta in remarks at a Center for American Progress (CAP) event. The report, commissioned by Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), found…
by Elizabeth Grossman When the BP/Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 20, 2010, killing 11 of the 126 workers on board and critically injuring three, the ruptured Macondo well - located nearly a mile beneath the sea surface about 50 miles southeast of Venice, Louisiana - unleashed what has been called the largest accidental release of oil in history. By the time the well was capped on July 15th, an estimated five million barrels of oil had flowed into the Gulf of Mexico, affecting more than 350 miles of Gulf Coast, from Louisiana to Florida. The clean-up response launched has also…
By Elizabeth Grossman It's now almost eleven months since the BP/Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded, killing 11 workers, and almost eight months since the damaged well was capped. While the emergency phase of this disaster is over, the assessment of and response to its long-term impacts are just now getting underway. On February 28th, the Gulf Ecosystem Restoration Task Force held the second of its five planned meetings - this one in New Orleans - and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) launched its long-term study to evaluate health effects of the oil spill…
By Elizabeth Grossman Since release of its Final Report to the President on January 11th, the National Oil Spill Commission has released five additional papers (called "working papers") reviewing aspects of the BP/Deepwater Horizon oil disaster - three on February 3rd and two on February 8th. On February 11th, National Oil Spill Commissioners Don Boesch and Terry Garcia testified before two House subcommittees. The final report, the working papers, and the Commissioners' prepared testimony all take a critical look at the industry's preparation for such a disaster, examine the policies and…
by Elizabeth Grossman The 398-page National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling final Report to the President on the Deepwater Horizon: The Gulf Oil Disaster and the Future of Offshore Drilling, released January 11, offers a scathing critique of the offshore oil-drilling industry's approach to safety and of the U.S. government's systemic failure to ensure that safety. It also includes a valuable history of the industry that helps explain - but does not excuse - the structural complexities and shortcomings of the response to the disaster, deficiencies that…
by Elizabeth Grossman On November 30th, the Louisiana Bucket Brigade (LABB) released a bulletin reporting on the accidental release of sulfur dioxide at the Murphy Oil refinery in Meraux, Louisiana. The Bucket Brigade tracks these releases as part of its work to reduce refinery accidents, and they explain that the November 30th release is "just one of several refinery-related incidents in St. Bernard's Parish" reported around Thanksgiving weekend. On November 24th, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality recorded "spikes" of sulfur dioxide in Chalmette, LA and on the 25th, there was…
Several news outlets have reported that the commission appointed by President Obama to study the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill has issued preliminary reports that are sharply critical of the Obama administration's handling of the disaster. I downloaded the commission's draft working paper "The Amount and Fate of the Oil" to see how they described the federal response. The report doesn't paint a flattering picture of the Obama administration's approach to a scientific question of national importance. The draft report is written by the commission staff, who recommend specific questions and…
by Elizabeth Grossman In mid-June, while reporting from the Gulf Coast, I asked the Deepwater Horizon Incident's Joint Information Center (JIC) who the federal on-scene coordinator had appointed to serve as site safety officer, and for a copy of the Regional Contingency Plan's health and safety plan. Both are requirements under the National Contingency Plan - developed in the wake of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill - that establishes the framework for the emergency response to an oil spill. Neither the first Coast Guard officer I spoke with, nor the officer who handled the follow-up call…
By Elizabeth Grossman On August 17th the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) held the first public discussion of plans for its Gulf Worker Study - also called the Gulf Long Term Follow-up Study - designed to assess short and long-term health effects associated with BP/Deepwater Horizon oil disaster clean-up work. "Since the spill," said NIEHS director Linda Birnbaum opening the meeting, "NIEHS has assisted with safety training for more than 100,000 workers with courses taught in English, Spanish and Vietnamese. But now it's time to turn our attention to the potential…
Before BP's name was linked in everyone's mind to the Gulf oil disaster, the company was infamous for its unsafe Texas City refinery, where a March 2005 explosion killed 15 workers and injured 170. In September 2005, OSHA cited BP for $21 million, and BP paid the fine and entered into an agreement with OSHA under which the company would identify and correct safety problems. But when OSHA conducted a follow-up investigation in 2009, it found that the company "failed to live up to several extremely important terms of that agreement." OSHA issued failure-to-abate citations to the tune of $50.6…
by Elizabeth Grossman "After three long months of oil geysering continuously from the depths of the Gulf, a temporary cap has stemmed the flow and it appears that the well is on its way to being killed. But we are by no means through this disaster," said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) in his opening remarks at the August 4th Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on the use of oil dispersants in the BP/Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Gulf Coast fishermen and others whose livelihoods depend on the Gulf of Mexico's sea life know this all too well. While the scientists testifying…
BP's well in the Gulf of Mexico has been capped and may soon be "killed" for good, but fixing the widespread damage from the disaster will take years. The National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health has has released a report (supported by the Children's Health Fund) based on a survey of 1,200 residents of coastal Louisiana and Mississippi. Their findings give a sense of how widespread the spill's impacts are on physical, mental, and financial health: Over one-third of parents reported that their children had experienced either physical…
Quark Soup has a post comparing the spill to Niagara; and notes that the spill would be a cube ~93m on a side. Checkling the share price (still hovering around 4.10, so neither good news nor bad) I see BP are starting to ask others to pay up for their shares. It will be interesting to see how that goes - through the courts, or quiet settlements? Misc people complained at me when I previously said Incidentally, misc people have called this spill "unprecendented". That seems dubious (except in the traditional sense that 11 dead in Cumbria is headline news for days; 11 misc folks dead in road…
by Eileen Senn, MS Response workers know a great deal about how they have been potentially exposed to chemicals in the Gulf of Mexico since the BP Horizon Deepwater oil spill began on April 20, 2010. Valuable exposure information resides in workers' knowledge of their daily experiences cleaning up the oil, drilling relief wells, transporting supplies, applying dispersant, burning oil, cleaning boom, operating vessels, and more. I suggest that workers write or otherwise permanently record their experiences while they are fresh in their memories. Workers should keep copies of their pay stubs…
New Solutions: The Drawing Board is a monthly feature produced by the journal New Solutions. Read more about it here. By Alice Shabecoff As the massive oil slicks from the BP disaster continue to advance upon shores and communities, worries over the effects on wildlife and the natural environment abound, and rightfully so: hailed as the biggest oil spill in our nation's history, much of the damage is irreparable, with more inevitably to come. Yet policy makers, community members and advocates are strangely silent about another unavoidable danger: substantial harm to the children of the coast…
As much as I abhor war, the way that the military handles soldier deaths is (usually) quite admirable (although the same might not hold for its handling of post-service medical problems). When a soldier is killed in service, the family gets a personal visit and often one or more personal phone calls from higher officers, congressmen, or even the President. Earlier today I heard an interview on our local NPR interview show with the father of an engineer who was killed in the Deepwater Horizon explosion. He said that BP had not spoken to him nor contacted him or his family in any way since…
By Elizabeth Grossman In mid-June most of the seafood shacks along the bayou roads between New Orleans and Grand Isle were closed. A seafood market that I stopped by on the western edge of New Orleans was virtually devoid of customers despite bins brimming with bright blue crab and tawny shrimp. Business was so slim that two women who should have been tending to customers were playing Yahtzee. "We've never done this on a workday before," they told me. Another woman unloading sacks of shrimp frowned at my notepad and said, "I blame the media. We've got plenty of shrimp and it's safe." She…
by Elizabeth Grossman "I want this seafood to be safe. But I want those workers to be as safe as those shrimp and I'm not just going for funny one-liner," said Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) at the conclusion of the July 15th Senate Appropriations Committee's Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies subcommittee hearing on the use of chemical oil dispersants in the Gulf. "One might say, 'Well, what's Commerce-Justice doing with public health?'" Mikulski asked rhetorically. "Well, we think [about] water quality, the impact on marine life and seafood and what these dispersants mean to…
Kyle Hopkins of McClatchy follows up on the question of how we learned from the Exxon Valdez disaster about long-term health effects experienced by cleanup workers. In short, we have no peer-reviewed studies on this important topic, even though occupational health experts called for long-term monitoring of workers. Hopkins writes: Exxon has consistently maintained that there's no evidence spill workers experienced any adverse health effects as a result of the cleanup. Spokeswoman Cynthia Bergman said she isn't aware of any long-term study the company conducted on its own. "The challenge is…
tags: The Oil Spill's Unseen Culprits, Victims, health, environment, ecology, pollution, oilspill, BP, acidification, Gulf of Mexico, dispersants, Carl Safina, TEDTalks, TED Talks, streaming video The Gulf oil spill dwarfs comprehension, but we know this much: it's bad. Carl Safina scrapes out the facts in this blood-boiling cross-examination, arguing that the consequences will stretch far beyond the Gulf -- and many so-called solutions are making the situation worse. TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading…