Escaping the Blame for the Oil Spill

There's plenty of blame to go around for the continuing catastrophe of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill: BP corp., Transocean, Halliburton, and the U.S. Interior Department agency known as "MMS," foremost among the guilty parties.

Last night, Rachel Maddow showed where some of the blame should be placed. She also gives us a glimpse at how the executive teams for these miscreants can gin up special stockholder distribution plans, if they have to, to avoid their own responsibility -- thus beggaring themselves before the bills comes due -- and how several Republican politicians in Washington, including Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) James Inhofe (R-OK), can enable them by misusing the dysfunctional rules of the U.S. Senate.

minor edit 5-19

Sen. Bill Nelson Releases New BP Oil Leak Video

UPDATED BELOW

Senators Bill Nelson (D-FL) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA) a day or two ago demanded that BP release to them all videos of the Deepwater Horizon oil leak. The senators doubtless did so for at least two reasons.

First, they want to aid scientists in calculating the leak rate. The more videos, the more exact scientists can be in determining the total volume of oil pouring into the Gulf.

Second, the senators also must be skeptical about the corporation's recent boasts that the leak has been diminished by "20 percent" or even "40 percent." That's a claim that we've noticed too many journalists are eager to swallow whole, despite the fact not much that BP claims about Deepwater has proved true.

Today, BP agreed to turn over more videos rather than be served with a Senatorial subpoena. Senator Nelson promptly posted one of the first new videos received on his official web site. Now, it's on Youtube and it looks to be about to go viral.

The video codes indicate it was filmed yesterday, May 17, at 1:05 am (Past videos establish BP uses military time and codes the dates in the European style, day-month-year.)

Below is the latest video. Does it relieve your concerns? Didn't think so.

UPDATE
Wed., May 19 6 am

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) narrates the above film clip:

Florida Oil Loop Image

"The oil pollution 'could endanger Florida’s shoreline mangroves, seagrass beds and the third-longest barrier reef in the world, the 221-mile-long Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.'"

-- Jeff Hoffmeyer, Univ. of Southern Mississippi Center
for Fisheries Research and Development
(quoted by Think Progress.org)

The composite image below comes via ThinkProgress.org. Brad Johnson laid a MODIS satellite image of BP's massive oil spill over a National Weather Service HYCOM model of Gulf water currents. For a detailed view, click the image or these words.

Tarball Tuesday May 18 BP Oil Spill Update

1. Pensacola Beach.

Things remain much the same for the moment on Pensacola Beach. Air quality and ozone levels are "moderate." As friend William at North Escambia.com reports, "No direct surface oil impacts are expected on Escambia County shores within the next 72 hours."

2. Emergency Plans.

So far as is known at this writing, the Escambia County Emergency Oil Spill Plan, has not yet been approved by the Unified Command. Nor is there yet any agreement on a plan for Perdido Pass, which sits on the border between Florida and Alabama.

In nearby Ft. Walton Beach, however, Rick's blog reports that Okaloosa County's emergency oil disaster plan has won approval.

That plan, according to the Daily News, was developed by a "harrowing process" that involved "public meetings, creating a task force, soliciting citizen input... working long days to create the action plan, and ... then [a] fight [with] the state EOC to keep the document intact."

Public meetings? What are those? Never seen 'em in Pensacola. The Oklaoosa Plan calls for:

• Barges, skimming boats, and workboats "to contain and remove the approaching oil," working "within 1 to 5 miles offshore."
• Booms will be deployed in "nearshore operations... in depths less than 30 feet" and to safeguard East Pass by deflecting oil to collection sites. Booms with hanging plastic curtains below the surface will be used at near-shore collection sites to protect the beach and shoreline.
• For bays, bayous, coves, marinas, and similar boating areas "an open chevron boom" system will be used to allow continued boat traffic while deflecting any invasive oil to collection areas.
  
• "A harbor skimmer, equivalent to a Heavy Duty SeaVac Delta Skimmer System will be used to recover" any oil entering East Pass.
  
• Mini-barges and workboats will try to deflect, or skim and recover, oil "approaching an identified environmentally sensitive area" as needed.
  
• A Shoreline Cleanup Assessment Team (SCAT) will make daily inspections of "oiled" areas and those in danger of being invaded by oil, to determine "the best cleanup strategy" for each location.
• "Snares and pom poms" (see illustration, above left) "will be attached to ropes, anchored just seaward of the dry beach or just seaward of the surf zone."
  
• Tarballs "will be manually removed using rakes and shovels."
• "All recovered oil, oil in water emulsions, and oil contaminated materials will be handled, treated or disposed of according to state and federal regulations. Disposal of recovered waste and oily waste will only occur after all options for treatment and recycling have been exhausted."
  

3. Tarballs on Key West.

Florida Keys newspapers are reporting today ["Oil Tarballs Found in the Keys"] that twenty tarballs "ranging in size from approximately three to eight inches in diameter" have been found on at least two beachs at Key West. The find was reported by Florida state park officials at Fort Zachery Taylor State Park.

Park rangers conducted a shoreline survey of Fort Zachary Taylor State Park and the adjacent Navy beach at Truman Annex and recovered the tar balls at a rate of nearly three tar balls an hour throughout the day, with the heaviest concentration found at high tide, around 12:30 p.m.

The tarballs have been taken by the Coast Guard for laboratory confirmation. The St. Petersburg Times quotes several marine scientists as saying "they would be shocked" if the tarballs came from the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster.

If BP's oil spill is affirmed as the source, the discovery would confirm that the river of oil has reached the "Florida Loop Current" and is on its way to the Gulf Stream, just like that notable "Message in a Bottle" from Pensacola Beach. As our blogger buddy, Bryan, acidly puts it: "This spill is large enough that it can destroy the state’s barrier reef, with plenty available to destroy Louisiana’s wet lands." And, he says, it's time for South Carolina "to cancel those ads talking about Myrtle Beach being 'oil free'... ."

4. Briefings Briefers Wished They'd Never Briefed.

About the same time tarballs were being picked off Key West beaches by park officials, U. S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary E. Landry was briefing the Senate Committee on Homeland Security. She told them, as reported by the New York Times, "We know that the oil has not entered the loop current at this time." Landry was appearing with Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano.

Other Coast Guard officials announced that along with NOAA scientists they "will conduct shoreline surveys" in the Keys beginning Tuesday morning, including aerial surveys.

The Weather Channel has a dramatic satellite photo showing the "oil streak" that's visibly heading south. (Click the photo for a closeup. For other views of the loop current, click here.)

5. Unsafe at Any Deepwater Depth.

The Wall Street Journal's news side, as yet unaffected by Rupert Murdoch's rock-stupid editorial board, explores the scary record of failures for deepwater drilling platforms. Reporters Ben Casselman and Guy Chazan write:

The brief, roughly two-decade history of deepwater drilling has seen serious problems: fires, equipment failures, wells that collapsed, platforms that nearly sank. Since last July, one brand-new deepwater rig—among the 40 or so operating in at least 1,000 feet of water in the Gulf—was swept by fire. Another lost power and started to drift, threatening to detach from the wellhead. Poor maintenance at a third deepwater well led to a serious gas leak, according to regulatory records.
* * *
[D]rilling for oil at depths no human could survive presents special risks when something does go wrong. The water pressure is crushing, the seabed temperature is almost freezing, the underground conditions explosive.

Although oil industry spokesmen and executives repeatedly claim deepwater drilling is "like outer space in terms of the complexity of the operating environment," what's not like space travel is that the oil companies continue to short-cut safety and go where they have no proven, redundant safeguards against accidents. They use antiquated technologies to prevent well blowouts and employ 'guesstimate' engineering technologies which have never been tested in a deep-water environment:

"While drilling as a whole may be advancing to keep up with these environments, some parts lag behind," Texas A&M professors Samuel Noynaert and Jerome Schubert wrote in a 2005 paper published in an industry journal. "An area that has seen this stagnation and resulting call for change has been blowout control in deep and ultra-deep waters."

6. Sister Rig Sued.

With that kind of background, it's no wonder that a BP whistle-blower and the environmental organization Food and Water Watch have filed suit to shut down "Atlantis," the 'sister' oil drilling platform to BP's now-destroyed Deepwater Horizon:

The allegations about BP's Atlantis platform were first made last year, but they were laid out in fresh detail in the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Houston against Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and the Minerals and Management Service, the agency responsible for regulating offshore drilling in the Gulf.

The whistleblower is Kenneth Abbott, a former project control supervisor contracted by BP who also gave an interview to "60 Minutes" on Sunday night.

In a conversation last week with ProPublica, Abbott alleged that BP failed to review thousands of final design documents for systems and equipment on the Atlantis platform -- meaning BP management never confirmed the systems were built as they were intended – and didn't properly file the documentation that functions as an instruction manual for rig workers to shut down operations in the case of a blowout or other emergency.
* * *
The Atlantis rig is even larger than the Deepwater Horizon rig that sank in April. It began producing oil in 2007 and can produce 8.4 million gallons of oil a day.

According to plaintiffs, if BP's Atlantis platform were to fail or the wellhead blow, the consequent oil spill "could be many times larger than the current oil spill from the BP Deepwater Horizon."

7. False Analogies.

That "outer space" stuff mentioned above is a favorite with BP executives. A little over a week ago, BP's chief executive officer, Tony Hayward, invoked the same analogy in an NPR interview. "The space program was not cancelled because of the issues around Apollo 13," he whined.

What Hayward and his BP colleagues don't say, of course, is that the two have no important parallels other than they both were nail-biters.

• No one died on Apollo 13. Eleven died in the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon platform.
• No one on earth was put in danger by the electrical failure on Apollo 13. Hundreds of thousands of residents along the Gulf coast from Texas to the Florida Keys are threatened with serious respiratory disease, chemical contamination, and other serious health hazards.
• The human environment on Earth was not put at risk by Apollo 13's failure. From the moment BP's oil platform blew up, it began poisoning the waters of the Gulf, threatening nearby coastal wetlands and estuaries, and destroying what could amount to at least forty percent of the nation's seafood supply.
• Most importantly, as the subsequent Final Report of the independent investigative board for the Apollo 13 disaster shows, NASA had in place effective, redundant, safety measures to protect the lives of the public at large as well as the astronauts on board. BP, it is now becoming clear, had none.

For the British BP firm to analogize the oil catastrophe in the Gulf, which it created by its own gross negligence and greed, to Apollo 13 is a slur on NASA.

Hot Oil League Trade

Independent News publisher Rick Outzen, just back from an interview and photo trip to Louisiana, wants to trade Northwest Florida's congressman Jeff Miller (R-Oil Spill) for Massachusetts congressman Edward Markey (D-Medford), who represents the suburbs along the north side of Boston.

We know the north Boston suburbs, Rick. They're no Northwest Florida. They'll never fall for your scheme.

Misdirection Monday: May 17 Oil Spill Update

"I make the weather! All of this moisture coming up out of the Gulf is gonna push off to the east and hit Altoona."

-- Phil Connors (Bill Murray), Groundhog Day

1. Weekly Oil Spill Forecast.

For much of the past month since the April 20 BP oil platform explosion, Northwest Florida has been protected from direct damage by the river of oil in the Gulf of Mexico predominantly by Southeast-to-Northwest winds and water currents. The web site Windmapper, however, is forecasting a change for the first few days of this week.

Monday through Wednesday, it suggests, we are likely to experience a slowly strengthening trend of Southwest- to- Northeast winds. This is the worst kind for our beach.

One of the TV weathermen at local station WEAR-TV is saying, however, that the drift toward the northeast won't be strong enough to push BP oil onto Pensacola Beach. (click photo up and to the left). We'll see how well he imitates Bill Murray's Goundhog Day character in 'making the weather.'

To view Windmapper's daily forecast animation click here. For an hour-by-hour overview of each day of the week, click here.

2. Pipe Smoke Gets In Your Eyes.

Of course, one big news item yesterday was that on the third try, as McClatchy News puts it, the "BP Oil giant succeeded Sunday in connecting a mile-long pipe to help capture what it hoped will be a majority of the oil flowing from a damaged well into the Gulf of Mexico."

But confusion reigns. British Petroleum wasn't saying on Sunday how much oil it really was collecting on board the oil tanker tethered a mile above the wellhead pipe. All we could be sure about is that the pipe insertion didn't completely plug the "massive oil leak." According to Shaila Dewan of the New York Times, BP vice president Kent Wells "could not say how much oil had been captured or what percentage of the oil ... was now flowing into ... the insertion tube."

"Could not?" More likely, would not. The more BP talks, the less they seem to tell us. As a result, reporters can't even agree on the dimensions of the tube that BP inserted:

• WaPo's Steven Mufson and Joel Achenbach report the tube is "a four inch pipe."
• The UK Telegraph (London) yesterday claimed it was a "6-inch tube" that was inserted.
• Ms. Dewan of the New York Times reports it is a "4-inch-wide tube."
• The Los Angeles Times votes that it is a "6-inch suction tube."
• Bloomberg's Business Week says (with metric meretriciousness) that it's a "6 5/8 inch (17 centimeter) tube."
• CBS dodges the question by saying it's "narrow."
• AP voes for 6 inches.
• The Times Picayune casts its ballot for "a 4-inch-wide tube."
• Next door neighbor, NewOrleans.com, dissents; it is "a six inch hose," they say.
  
• The oil industry organ Marine Log bets on "a four-inch diameter."
  
• NPR this morning cautiously remained mum about just how wide they think the tube is.
  

We could go on. Near-endless examples exist. The real lesson to remember is that none of these reporters have a clue what they're writing about. Every one of them is dependent on BP, itself, for the numbers.

Apparently, the ancient adage 'You're entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts' is no longer operative in the Gulf of Mexico. BP drowned it.

3. BP's PR.

There also is a yawning chasm between what BP seems to be saying and what, in fact, it is saying. Only lawyers and those journalists accustomed to dealing with slippery oil corporations have noticed that BP is playing a very "cagey" game -- to borrow the admiring word from the Jakarta Globe, a newspaper published in a country that has a long and sad history of being shamelessly exploited by underwater oil drillers.

For just one example, an early report Sunday afternoon by Shaila Dewan of the New York Times at 1:58 pm CDT clashed with another by Jeffrey Collins and Jason Dearen of the Associated Press which was originally published within minutes that same afternoon. Dewan reported that BP would not disclose "how much oil and gas were taken aboard the... drill ship... as it is siphoned off" by the 4- (or is it 6-?) inch pipe. Contrariwise, Collins and Dearen claimed that "BP said a mile-long tube was siphoning most of the crude from a blown well to a tanker... ." [emphasis added]

At mid-day Monday, BP owned up to the reality. As CBS News, France's wire service, and other sources are now reporting, only "about 20 percent of the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico is being swallowed up by its insertion tube system." That "20 percent," moreover, is based on now-discredited estimates that the leak consists of 5,000 barrels a day.

In fact, yesterday's insertion of the "mile-long pipe" enables BP to capture only 1,000 barrels a day. This means the "success" yesterday is far less consequential than either the Times or the Associated Press were saying yesterday.

As multiple news outlets are reporting today, the actual leak rate is now believed by scientists to "be between 25,000 and 80,000 barrels per day." Accordingly, a thousand barrels a day means the 4- or 6-inch pipe is capturing as little as one-and-one-quarter percent of the oil gushing into the Gulf every day.

Are we better off than we were on Friday? Reality has not appreciably changed. But insofar as public knowledge is concerned, in the space of just three days we've gone from 5,000 barrels of oil a day freely pouring into the Gulf to as much as 80,000 barrels a day, minus a measly one thousand barrels captured by the 4-inch -- or is it 6-inch? -- pipe plug.

4. Oil Lakes Beneath the Sea.

There are other, even more momentous issues, where it's useful to bear in mind all the misdirection going on. For example, independent researchers, like oceanography professor Vernon Asper of Southern Mississippi University, have found huge pools of oil "at substantial depths down to at least 1,300 meters, which is very close to the depth of the well."

We’re thinking that this oil is probably some fraction of the oil that’s not reaching the surface but instead is sort of spreading out and then the currents are taking it wherever the currents are going.

The pools of underwater oil are said to be just "too big" for the usual bottom-dwelling organisms that metabolize oil to "gobble" them up. (You can read the interview with Prof. Asper last Friday here; or, listen to the podcast here.)

As Justin Gillis of the New York Times reports:

Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick in spots.
* * *
“There’s a shocking amount of oil in the deep water, relative to what you see in the surface water,” said Samantha Joye, a researcher at the University of Georgia who is involved in one of the first scientific missions to gather details about what is happening in the gulf. “There’s a tremendous amount of oil in multiple layers, three or four or five layers deep in the water column.”

The plumes are depleting the oxygen dissolved in the gulf, worrying scientists, who fear that the oxygen level could eventually fall so low as to kill off much of the sea life near the plumes.

5. Damaging Dispersants.

This is especially worrisome given BP's practice of continuing to release hundreds of tons upon hundreds of tons of "dispersants" a mile below the surface near the wellhead. As USM professor Asper told The World radio program Friday, "we don’t know what affect the dispersants might have." And, as usual, BP isn't talking.

For more on the threat posed by excessive use of dispersants, check out The Truth about Gulf Oil Spill.

6. Swallowing BP's Word for It.

Journalists are one thing. Washington politicians should be even more embarrassed by their unquestioning acceptance of whatever BP says. As Sam Stein suggests over at the Huffington Post, foremost among them is our next-door neighbor, Alabama senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL):

Late this past week, Republicans in the Senate effectively blocked legislation that would have raised the cap on the amount of money oil companies like BP would have to pay for economic damages caused by oil spills.
* * *
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) suggested on Sunday that raising the cap was unnecessary because BP had given him it's word that it would cover the costs of the spill in the Gulf.

Not far behind is the Obama administration. It took them until last Friday to wake up to the legal reality that BP's oral word is meaningless when it comes to paying all "legitimate claims" for damages. As veteran reporter James Ridgeway writes, the company's reputation is "coated in sludge."

So far as we can tell, the oil company's only response to this hour has been to have their PR flack-catchers repeat the same oral assurances:

"What they are requesting in the letter is absolutely consistent with all our public statements on the matter," BP spokesman David Nicholas said.

But will they love us in the morning? We'll wait for an answer in writing, signed, and notarized by BP's chief executive officer and board chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg. Then, BP can kiss us.

Oral assurances that BP will fully pay all "legitimate" damages caused by this disaster are of no use whatsoever when the graven law imposes a $75 million limit on its liability.

Dept. of Amplification
05-17 pm
Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor, has additional thoughts along the same lines ["BP Stands for Bad Petroleum"]:

Saturday the White House warned BP that it expects the oil giant to pay all damages associated with the disastrous oil leak into the Gulf of Mexico, even if the costs exceed the $75 million liability cap under federal law. BP responded Sunday saying its public statements are “absolutely consistent” with the Administration’s request.

When you hear dueling public statements like these, watch your wallets. You can safely assume BP’s lawyers are already at work to ensure that the firm pays not a cent more than $75 million — not to taxpayers bearing cleanup costs, not to consumers whose gas bills will rise, not to businesses along the coasts that will lose a fortune. And BP won’t pay more unless or until there’s a law requiring it to.

BP * * * [is] the poster child for PR masquerading as CSR.

There's a good deal more worth reading ...

Slow Damage: Saturday: May 15 Oil Spill Update

"Dammit, Fernando, why shouldn't it? Why shouldn't a corpse be transmitted by express?"

-- Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano

1. Impatient for Disaster.

Most news journalists are in love with the story. When the story begins, say, with a spectacular explosion followed by a continuing oil leak of historic proportions, they want to know how it all will end. If the story seems be unfolding too slowly for their tastes, they grow querulous and impatient. They want to see the disastrous climax now.

If they can't have it, then some of them turn to writing peevish headlines like the one in today's Pensacola News Journal ["Where's the Oil?"] and captious complaints like Cain Burdeau's lede for the Associated Press: "For a spill now nearly half the size of Exxon Valdez, the oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster is pretty hard to pin down."

To be sure, Burdeau quickly returns to the objective voice of the Impartial Journalist and tells us exactly where the oil can be found, just as shown by the imagery (above) at the Center for Southeast Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing (CSTARS) of the University of Miami:

Satellite images show most of an estimated 4.6 million gallons of oil has pooled in a floating, shape-shifting blob off the Louisiana coast. Some has reached shore as a thin sheen, and gooey bits have washed up as far away as Alabama. But the spill is 23 days old since the Deepwater Horizon exploded April 20 and killed 11 workers, and the thickest stuff hasn't shown up on the coast.

Still, Mr. Burdeau can't help himself from continuing to carp, "So, where's the oil? Where's it going to end up?"

This chronic impatience well may account for the chronically lousy job journalists do with news stories that don't lend themselves to a quick wrap-up. We're thinking, for example, of global climate change, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Dick Cheney's still-secret meetings with oil industry executives at the outset of the George Bush administration, and the century-long collapse of the Chicago Cubs.

Like children, one suspects the attention span of journalists grows shorter with every new television season. We don't know what's to be done about it. Somehow, the news mavens must find a way to sustain their own interest in slow to develop, long-lasting disasters if the public is to be expected to pay attention.

2. Out of Sight, Out of Life.

Though the whereabouts of the oil spill may be out of sight for most journalists, that doesn't mean it's disappeared or that it's a benign presence. National Geographic points out ["Dead Zone in the Making?"] that --

Even if oil never washes up in the refuge, the region's birds may be silenced if the crude lingers deep in the Gulf of Mexico, experts say.

That's because 5,000 barrels of oil (210,000 gallons, or 794,937 liters) a day are thought to be bleeding from a damaged wellhead at the nearby site of the Deepwater Horizon rig disaster. All that oil is poisoning the less photogenic creatures—plankton, sand crabs, and fish larvae, among others—at the base of the region's food web, Schweiger noted.

If the oil spill can't be contained, the Gulf of Mexico could have another "dead zone in the making," according to Sylvia Earle, a marine biologist and National Geographic explorer-in-residence. (National Geographic News is owned by the National Geographic Society.)

As surely as disaster will follow if we continue ignoring the scientific data on global warming, BP's oil spill will have catastrophic consequences up and down the western hemisphere's food chain if Americans do not learn from it.

3. Complex Currents.

Peter Spotts of the Christian Science Monitor does a good job of describing the whys and whereabouts of the large oil lake that's been infiltrating Gulf waters for nearly a month. It's not your father's Exxon Valdez.

For anyone using the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska's Prince William Sound as a visual reference point, it might look as though the Gulf spill so far is a dodged bullet.

But the differences between the two events are significant, cautions Michelle Wood, a marine biologist who recently became head of the ocean chemistry division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Atlantic and Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory in Miami. Not the least of those differences is the seascape into which the oil is flowing.

The Exxon Valdez spill involved a large, single, intense pulse of oil into Prince William Sound – "a shallow, near-shore environment with a rocky coast," she explains. The heavy crude had lots to cling to as it came ashore. In the Gulf, "spill" is a so-far continuous infusion of a lighter grade oil, which at least initially forms a foamy mousse rather than tarry blobs. And so far, the oil has remained far at sea.
* * *
The system is chaotic enough that given enough time, say 90 days, oil in some form could wind up anywhere from the Mexican Coast to Palm Beach, research suggests.
* * *
Once it reaches the surface, currents and ever-shifting winds can carry the oil just about anywhere, adds Peter Niiler, a researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., who has conducted extensive studies of current patterns in the Gulf.

Results of a 5-year experiment by Peter Niiler of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., give some idea of who along the Gulf Coast most likely will be effected: everyone.

In a five-year experiment in the late 1990s, Dr. Niiler and a colleague dropped between 700 and 800 drifters – devices to help track currents -– into the Gulf at locations where offshore drilling was taking place.

Within 90 days, the drifters could be anywhere in the Gulf, including Mexico or even as far away as Miami Beach, he says.

4. Floating "Vessels."

Speaking of unpredictable drifting, this week hundreds of lawsuits were filed against BP, Transocean, and Halliburton over the mounting losses caused by the continuing oil spill. The oil corporations are responding with legal filings in Houston which allege that oil platform owner Transocean enjoys limited liability under an 1851 act of Congress still on the books and as owner of the oil platform its liability is limited to no more than $27 million.

1851? That's the year Herman Melville published Moby Dick! This is, as the saying goes, an argument only a lawyer could love. Transocean became a foreign company two years ago when it moved its headquarters from the U.S. to Switzerland. It owns the Deepwater Horizon rig that blew up on April 20.

Because underwater drilling rigs can be floated from one well to the next, the argument goes, it is a "vessel" at sea. Accordingly, Transocean is arguing that it is protected by "Limitation of Liability Act of 1851" and owes the entire universe of claimants no more than a grand total of $26 million and change.

Never mind that Transocean already has collected a "partial" payment of $ 401 million in insurance benefits. As the Wall Street Journal explains it:

Under the LLA of 1851, a vessel owner is liable only for the post-accident value of the vessel and cargo, so long as the owner can show he or she had no knowledge of negligence in the accident, maritime lawyers say. Since “the remains of the. . . Deepwater Horizon now lay sunken” about a mile deep in the federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the value of the rig and its cargo comes to no more than $26,764,083, Transocean claims in the filing. Before the accident, the rig was worth around $650 million.

Federal court procedural rules make special provision for admiralty lawsuits. Under Supplemental Rule F (9) --

The complaint shall be filed in any [Federal court] district in which the vessel has been attached or arrested to answer for any claim with respect to which the plaintiff seeks to limit liability; or, if the vessel has not been attached or arrested, then in any district in which the owner has been sued with respect to any such claim. When the vessel has not been attached or arrested to answer the matters aforesaid, and suit has not been commenced against the owner, the proceedings may be had in the district in which the vessel may be, [1] but if the vessel is not within any district and no suit has been commenced in any district, then the complaint may be filed in any district. For the convenience of parties and witnesses, [2] in the interest of justice, the court may transfer the action to any district; if venue is wrongly laid the court shall dismiss or, if it be in the interest of justice, transfer the action to any district in which it could have been brought. If the vessel shall have been sold, the proceeds shall represent the vessel for the purposes of these rules. [numerals added]

You can see where this likely is headed. One obvious point-counterpoint is [1] because "the vessel is not within any district" Transocean (and BP, following it) are seeking the oil-friendly venue of Houston, Texas. But [2] lawyers representing hundreds of individual claimants and perhaps tens upon tens of thousands of potential class members likely will be claiming "the interests of justice" require all their cases be returned to a Multi-District court panel in Louisiana.

And that is just one coupling of the arguments. There will be many more -- whether an oil rig fixed to the ocean floor is a "vessel;" if so whether it was within a federal court "district" other than Southern Texas; whether on balance "the interests of justice" of injured claimants outweigh those of needy oil companies; whether the insurance proceeds to be paid fix a minimum value for the rig; etc., etc., etc. And each of those seemingly dry procedural arguments are, in theory, subject to appeal in higher courts.

The WSJ sums up --

[I]n actuality, the Act very rarely helps companies limit liability. It can, however, allow a defendant to gain some control over the legal process, since a judge could place a stay on all pending litigation, which would then have to be refiled in the federal court where the limitation of liability was sought. Vessel owners routinely seek protection under the act following accidents at sea, lawyers said.

Pensacola Beach residents who've had experience with property insurance claims law after the hurricanes of 2004 and 2005 will recognize what's really going on here. The oil companies are sending a message: 'If you think the environmental effects of the BP oil spill are destined to last a lifetime, wait until your great-grandchildren live long enough to see the end of your lawsuit.'

Standing on the White House lawn, Barack Obama can throw all the "angry" fits he wants over the "ridiculous spectacle" of oil companies publicly blaming each other during congressional hearings. Obama is a lawyer. He knows what's really going on in the courtroom clinches. The oil companies are a tag-team, united in one purpose: to beat down all the fishermen, unemployed service workers, tourist-dependent businesses, beach front property owners, and other claimants.

They'll need a lot more from the president than angry rhetoric.

Dramatic Views of the Gulf Oil Slick

The "amateur video" below was uploaded to Youtube in the last twenty-four hours by Alabama resident John Wathen. Although it was taken a full week ago, on May 7, it shows some of the most dramatic footage of BP's spreading river of oil.

Imagine how much larger this "red mass of floating goo" has grown in the seven days since the video was taken:

BP's Deepwater Oil Gusher Video

Yesterday, British petroleum released the first video which gives a good look of the oil leak that threatens all life in the Gulf of Mexico. Rachel Maddow narrates and adds context, including news about yesterday's congressional hearings and commentary:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

McCain: Filming a Political Ad

Jim Paul's Arrest: The Complete Video

Last week we called the video of Escambia County school superintendent Jim Paul's arrest "instructional." Now there actually is an instructional video (14 min.) of sorts, complete with chapters illustrating the major stages of a DUI arrest.

It's just like a training film (see below) without annoying commercials or the all-important breathalyzer test, which may have been administered off-camera.

Ah, but training for whom? New traffic police or chronic drunk drivers looking to prepare in advance for the field sobriety tests when they're pulled over?

No doubt the video is the kind of 'ugliness' the Pensacola News Journal editorialized about last week:

At a time when the School District faces growing challenges, the last thing we needed was a race for superintendent whose chief issue would be the superintendent's personal actions, not education.

It's too bad, but that is the reality of it. Paul made himself into a target — one hard to defend.

Those most in need of some training are the voters. They need to realize, as the PNJ says, that it makes no sense to have the Escambia County school board and its superintendent enjoying "independent power bases due to the political structure of the system."

As the newspaper points out, "Few, if any, elected superintendents enter office having managed anything as large and complicated as a school district." Furthermore, having an elected superintendent as well as an elected education board doesn't blur the "line of command." It erases that line.

What's worse, the political sirens of electoral politics inevitably seduce elected superintendents, sooner or later, into making decisions that are calculated to have voter appeal but do not help to improve the quality of our schools or the education of our children.

By referendum, local voters have had opportunities in the past to restructure the governance system of Escambia schools. Every time, a bare majority has blown the chance.

If Mr. Paul's troubles do nothing more than inspire the voters, at last, to rationalize the system and abolish the election requirement for superintendent then this tawdry business will have served a worthy end. And Jim Paul, by no design of his own, will have left a lasting legacy we can all be thankful for.

School Super's Instructional Video

UPDATED BELOW

Pensacola TV station WEAR-TV last night aired a video of the January drunk driving arrest of Escambia County school superintendent Jim Paul. The edited version was taken from a longer 38-minute video of the entire episode released yesterday by the Pinellas County sheriff's office.

The longer video would make a great instructional film for the classroom. It shows all the stages of a drunk driving arrest, from the moment two deputies spot Jim Paul's car weaving side-to-side in one lane of traffic along a straight highway, through the field sobriety tests which he flunked, to the frisking of the suspect and his ultimate handcuffing.

One positive thing may be said about all who were involved: both both the deputies and Mr. Paul were exceedingly polite throughout.

WEAR's edited broadcast tape can be seen here. The full 38-minute Pinellas County video is here.

Two brief moments in the longer video caught our attention. In one, the arrest video suddenly is interrupted by a clip of some football game. Somebody, somewhere, needs to buy some new blank videotapes.

In the other, before Jim Paul takes - and flunks -- the field sobriety tests, he's asked when he last had any sleep and how much he got. Check what he told the deputy -- and then compare it to the story Mr. Paul has been peddling back here at home:

Escambia County School Superintendent Jim Paul says he was trying to sleep off two glasses of wine in the parking lot of a Tampa casino before his arrest at 3:30 a.m. Thursday on a DUI charge.

Paul said he was dozing in his rental car in the Seminole Hard Rock Casino parking lot when a drunk knocked on his window, prompting the superintendent to drive away.

Well, okay. Maybe he misspoke to the deputy about when he last had any sleep. That's understandable. After all, he was probably drunk.

UPDATE
2-25 am

A more or less "complete" video of the arrest is now available for watching here.

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The Surge Continues

Via Intel Dump, Iraqi Army Training:

Blue Angels Update: Schedule, Memorial, Video

The airshow schedule for the Blue Angels' 2006 season is on hold, owing to the death of Lt. Comdr. Kevin Davis. For the moment, only next week's planned show in Vidalia, Georgia, has been canceled.

WEAR-TV is reporting that a memorial service for Davis will be held beginning at 7 pm Thursday at the Church of the Holy Spirit, 10650 Gulf Beach Highway, Pensacola. The public is invited.

Meanwhile, CNN News somehow has acquired an amateur video that shows from a distance Lt. Cmdr. Davis' plane lagging behind and then plunging into the trees: