BP engineer arrested for destroying Gulf leak evidence
Authorities arrested Kurt Mix for destroying evidence related to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster that killed 11 people. Mix tried to destroy hundreds of text messages that related to the incident. The messages, which have been partially recovered, showed BP knew for weeks that the incident was three times larger than official company estimates and that its “Top Kill” effort to plug it was failing.
News International to run this ad in all UK national newspapers this weekend.
Reminds me quite a bit of Tony Hayward.
Health and nutrition are important
Exact quote that started off the meeting. Good to know.
May have to work holidays and weekends and snow days. Preferably not Christmas, but maybe the Sunday immediately after.
I asked a coworker, ‘What if I celebrate Boxing Day?’ She asked, ‘Are you Canadian?’ Sullenly, I responded, ‘I wish.’
Funnelling phone calls about the meeting needs to be better organized; should structure it like BP did during the oil spill response.
We care. We will fix this.
Oil spill panel points finger at Halliburton
Halliburton knowingly poured unstable cement into the Macondo well, potentially contributing to April’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the commission investigating the spill said Thursday.
According to internal company documents, Halliburton and BP had lab results in March showing the cement mixture similar to the one that ultimately failed in the Macondo well would be unstable, according to the report from Fred Bartlit, chief council to the Obama administration’s Oil Spill Commission.
Halliburton ran four different tests on the sturdiness of various slurry designs before it poured the final cement job just days before the well gave in, but only one of the four tests showed the cement would hold. Halliburton may not have had those results before the explosion at the well on April, suggesting the Houston-based company didn’t have any evidence its work would be stable despite statements since the blowout to the contrary.
The Oil Spill Commission earlier this summer asked Chevron, which has some of the industry’s most respected cement experts and a state of the art testing facility in Houston, to duplicate the same safety tests as Halliburton. Bartlit released Chevron’s findings on Thursday, showing the company couldn’t generate stable cement using materials provided by Halliburton.
“Although laboratory foam stability tests cannot replicate field conditions perfectly, these data strongly suggest that the foam cement used at Macondo was unstable,” Bartlit wrote. “This may have contributed to the blowout.”
Bartlit’s report explained that the oil well blowout “does not turn solely on the quality of the Macondo cement job.”
By Alastair Jamieson
Published: 10:00AM BST 23 Aug 2009Saif Gaddafi said Megrahi’s case was “on the table” when commercial, oil and gas agreements were discussed. Was this true, and if so, which agreements?
Why did Colonel Gaddafi thank the British government for Megrahi’s release despite insistence by Westminster that there was a ‘strategy of silence’ between London and Edinburgh?
Why has Gordon Brown, alone among international leaders whose countries are directly affected by al-Megrahi’s release, remained silent on the matter?
Does Jack Straw, Britain’s Justice Secretary, agree with the decision of Scottish Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill, and the arrangements for al-Megrahi’s release?
Was Lord Mandelson invited to Saif Gaddafi’s birthday party in Montenegro attended by marina investors including Oleg Deripaska?
Did Lord Mandelson encourage Megrahi’s release after his meetings with Saif Gaddafi?
Did the Duke of York encourage Megrahi’s release, as Colonel Gaddafi has suggested?
Why did Megrahi drop his appeal against conviction even though it was not a legal precondition for his release on ground of compassion under Scots law?
Did the Scottish justice department fear the appeal, based on six separate grounds identified by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, would reveal embarrassing information about the handling of the trial?
Does Megrahi really have evidence of his innocence and, if so, who are the real bombers?
WTF
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BP spokesman Scott Dean in an e-mail to the Washington Post
I’d like to nominate the entirety of BP for the Biggest Douches in the Universe Award
Berekely prof: ‘Mystery plumber’ may have designed the new BP containment cap
Now that BP’s newest spill containment strategy in the Gulf is yielding such encouraging initial results, many are asking why the oil giant didn’t hit on this solution earlier in the crisis.
The short answer is that the model of well cap now in place didn’t exist in the earlier stages of the spill saga. But what’s more noteworthy than the timing issue is the likelihood that the device owes its origin to the same authority that any homeowner turns to in order to get a leak plugged: a professional plumber.
That, at any rate, is the theory that the Christian Science Monitor’s Patrik Jonsson has floated—and the recent sequence of events leading to the plugging of the leak make it seem plausible.
Jonsson reports that six weeks ago, University of California-Berkeley engineering professor Robert Bea received a late-night call from an anonymous plumber. According to Bea — who had formerly worked as oil industry executive before his present gig as an academically backed manager of engineering crises — the “mystery plumber” reached out to him because he had an idea for how to plug BP’s busted well in the Gulf. The plumber provided Bea with sketches of a containment cap that upgraded some of the design flaws in the cap the oil company deployed in its last unsuccessful bid to plug the leak several weeks ago.
Bea passed the plumber’s sketches on to a contact at the Coast Guard—and to a panel of experts who were evaluating proposed schemes to repair the leak submitted by the general public. Jonsson writes that when Bea first got a glimpse of the containment cap that has stopped the flow of oil into the Gulf, he noticed striking similarities to the designs dreamed up by the plumber.
“The idea was using the top flange on the blowout preventer as an attachment point and then employing an internal seal against that flange surface,” Bea told Jonsson. “You can kind of see how a plumber thinks this way. That’s how they have to plumb homes for sewage.”
BP spokesman Mark Salt told Jonsson that he presently has “no way of finding out” if the well-capping crew used any of the mystery plumber’s ideas. Salt added that there’s “a good chance that this was already being designed” when Bea handed over the sketches.
Still, there’s one way that BP’s containment officials can be sure if they followed the plumber’s blueprint: When he submits his three-figure-an-hour bill.
Ignoring the horrible misspelling of Berkeley in the headline, that picture should be on every BP related article for the rest of time.
After several U.S. Senators demanded in an investigationinto the circumstances surrounding the release of Pan Am 103 bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, BP has released a statement denying that the company had any specific role in his release, but acknowledging that they lobbied the British government to enter into a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya. A doctor (who now says he was paid by the Libyans) had predicted that Megrahi, who has terminal prostate cancer, would be dead in three months, but he’s reportedly living in luxury in Libya.
In a statement, BP said, “BP told the UK government that we were concerned about the slow progress that was being made in concluding a Prisoner Transfer Agreement with Libya. We were aware that this could have a negative impact on UK commercial interests, including the ratification by the Libyan government of BP’s exploration agreement. The decision to release Mr. al Megrahi in August 2009 was taken by the Scottish Government. It’s not for BP to comment on the decision of the Scottish Government. BP was not involved in any discussions with the U.K. Government or the Scottish Government about the release of Mr. al Megrahi.”
Senators Chuck Schumer, Kirsten Gillibrand and Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) are demanding an investigation, and in a letter to Senator John Kerry, Gillibrand formally requested a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. “We have seen an abundance of circumstantial evidence that the British and Scottish governments may have circumvented justice and organized his release in order to secure a lucrative oil drilling concession for British Petroleum,” wrote Senator Gillibrand. “If true, this would be outrageous and demands immediate scrutiny. One hundred ninety Americans, including many students and families from New York, died in the Lockerbie bombing.”
Bert Ammerman, the former head of the Victims of Pan Am Flight 103 group, tells NBC, “This is ugly. It is immoral. It is unethical. It is illegal. And there’s no question there is a connection between the BP oil agreement with Libya and the release of al Megrahi.” BP stands to earn as much as $20 billion from the deal, which was sealed shortly after Megrahi’s release. Ammerman also wants an investigation into what the Obama administration knew about the alleged deal before it happened.
As if there was any doubt beforehand: BP has now officially become the worst corporation on the planet.
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Did BP Ask For Lockerbie Bomber’s Release? U.S. Senators Seek Probe Of Al-Megrahi Emancipation
I think I am going to throw up.
(via evangotlib) (via maxistentialist)
Think I just did.
I like facts. I share random crap from the interweb. Sometimes it's pop culture related, quite often it's political. Most times I just find it amusing. Oh, and space. I love space.
I source everything I can; it's just rude to not.
If you don't source something that I want to reblog, I will add it for you. You're welcome.
