The most important fact that has come out of the Deepwater rig explosion is that the ecosystem of the United States coastline in and near Louisiana has been changed forever.

The consequences will be that innocent people will be blamed and many hard-working folk will lose their jobs. Any whistleblowers may be already harmed by those who dont want the truth to come out.

The truth will come out, and heads will roll.

Cant we legislate safety better than we do? Mustnt we stop relying on Big Business whose agenda may be to cut corners and save money?

The good part is that MMS is now under new leadership, and new regulations are proposed to stop this from happening ever again.

Betsy Combier

New Documents Show BP Made Little Progress on Alaska Safety Issues From 2001 to 2007

Cheney & Halliburton implicated in Gulf oil spill

Deepwater Horizon Rig Missed 16 Required Inspections Since January 2005

May 28, 2010
BLM Director Bob Abbey to Serve as Acting Director of the Minerals Management Service

Gulf oil spill: The Halliburton connection
Greenpeace, April 30, 2010
LINK

Investigators delving into the possible cause of the massive gulf oil spill are focusing on the role of Houston-based Halliburton Co., the giant energy services company, which was responsible for cementing the drill into place below the water. The company acknowledged Friday that it had completed the final cementing of the oil well and pipe just 20 hours before the blowout last week.

In a letter to to Halliburton Chief Executive David J. Lesar on Friday, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, called on Halliburton officials to provide all documents relating to "the possibility or risk of an explosion or blowout at the Deepwater Horizon rig and the status, adequacy, quality, monitoring, and inspection of the cementing work" by May 7.

In a statement Friday, Halliburton said "it is premature and irresponsible to speculate on any specific causal issues." The company had four employees stationed on the rig at the time of the accident, all of whom were rescued by the Coast Guard. "Halliburton had completed the cementing of the final production casing string in accordance with the well design," it said. "The cement slurry design was consistent with that utilized in other similar applications. In accordance with accepted industry practice ... tests demonstrating the integrity of the production casing string were completed."

More than two dozen class action lawsuits have been filed after the explosion against BP PLC, the British company that leased the Deepwater Horizon rig, against the rig's owner, Transocean Ltd. and against Halliburton. BP is "taking full responsibility" for the spill and will pay for legitimate claims by affected parties, company spokeswoman Sheila Williams said.

Cement is used at two stages of the deep-water drilling process. It is used to fill gaps between the well pipe and the hole drilled into the seabed so as to prevent any seepage of oil and gas. And it is used to temporarily plug an exploration hole before production begins. At the time of the accident, the Halliburton statement said, "well operations had not yet reached the point requiring the placement of the final cement plug which would enable the planned temporary abandonment of the well."

Experts say cementing is a basic part of drilling, exploration and production of oil on the sea floor. Drill ships or rigs plant large pipes called "conductors" on the sea floor, and casings, or nested pipes, are placed inside of them. The pipes are fixed in place by cement, some hanging inside other pipes, and a drill string is run down a casing, and extended to the sea floor to bore holes.

Mud works its way back up the pipes and the “riser,” a pipe that connects the drill site to the ship or rig above. Or oil is brought up. Cement fixes the operations in place. Cement may also be used to plug a well, pumped down the string until it comes up on the sides, and stops the hole.

Cementing a deep-water drilling operation is a process fraught with danger. A 2007 study by the U.S. Minerals Management Service found that cementing was the single most important factor in 18 of 39 well blowouts in the Gulf of Mexico over a 14-year period -- more than equipment malfunction. Halliburton has been accused of a poor cement job in the case of a major blowout in the Timor Sea off Australia last August. An investigation is underway.

According to experts cited in Friday's Wall St. Journal, the timing of last week's cement job in relation to the explosion -- only 20 hours beforehand, and the history of cement problems in other blowouts "point to it as a possible culprit." Robert MacKenzie, managing director of energy and natural resources at FBR Capital Markets and a former cementing engineer, told the Journal, "The initial likely cause of gas coming to the surface had something to do with the cement."

In its statement, the company said, "Halliburton originated oilfield cementing and leads the world in effective, efficient delivery of zonal isolation and engineering for the life of the well, conducting thousands of successful well cementing jobs each year."

The company, which was once headed by former Vice President Dick Cheney, has been in the media spotlight before -- under under fire in recent years for its operations as a private contractor in Iraq.

--Margot Roosevelt and Jill Leovy

Halliburton paid execs retention bonuses for 2002
April 9, 2003

By Erwin Seba

HOUSTON, April 9 (Reuters) - Halliburton Co. paid top executives an undisclosed amount of retention bonuses to stay with the company in 2002 as its stock slumped due to mounting asbestos liabilities, a regulatory filing made on Wednesday said.

The bonuses were paid to unidentified "senior and key" executives of the world's No. 2 oilfield services company who were with Halliburton between Feb. 1, 2002, and Jan. 1, 2003, according to proxy statement filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday.

"Due to a depressed stock price from concerns over the company's asbestos litigation, this was a step to retain personnel in leadership roles," said Halliburton spokeswoman Wendy Hall.

Hall declined to reveal the identities of the executives or the amounts paid to them, but said fewer than 50 employees received retention bonuses.

The bonuses were given even as the Houston-based company declined to raise the base salary of Chairman and Chief Executive Dave Lesar and other top executives because of the bad business environment and uncertainty over energy prices.

But the company did give out the retention bonuses plus, equity grants and dividend-style payments on the outstanding stock options of its top executives as part of its plan to keep key executives.

Since the retention bonuses were given this year, the amounts do not have to be revealed until the executive compensation for 2003 is disclosed in the 2004 proxy, Hall said.

Until December, when Halliburton announced a $4 billion settlement of more than 300,000 asbestos injury claims against it, the company saw its stock price and credit ratings tumble as asbestos lawsuits and jury awards mounted.

The injury claims are from workers who said they developed a form of cancer linked to asbestos exposure. Halliburton subsidiary Dresser Industries operated Harbison-Walker Refractories, which made an industrial furnace cement containing asbestos.

Halliburton purchased Dresser when U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney was chief executive of the company. Cheney left Halliburton in 2000 to join President George W. Bush's Republican presidential ticket.

ON THE RISE?

Since the global asbestos settlement, Halliburton has seen its fortunes shift for the better. On March 24, its engineering subsidiary KBR was awarded a Defense Department contract to rebuild Iraq's oil infrastructure.

However, some Democratic members of Congress are seeking an investigation into how Halliburton got the contract without going through a competitive bidding process.

In the proxy, Halliburton said Lesar's base salary was unchanged in 2002 at $1.1 million. He received a bonus of $1.7 million in 2002, compared with $2.2 million in 2001.

Lesar also received 308,810 restricted shares worth $4.482 million in 2002 compared with 154,407 shares in 2001 worth $3.381 million. The shares are vested over 10 years.

In the proxy, Halliburton is recommending shareholders vote against a proposal by shareholder Amalgamated Bank LongView Collective Investment Fund to limit future executive severance packages to two times base salary unless shareholders approve a higher amount.

Currently, the company would have to pay Lesar five times his base salary and the value of restricted shares outstanding if he is fired, according to the proxy. If Lesar and the four other top Halliburton executives left, it would cost the company over $10 million, according to Amalgamated Bank's proposal.

Adoption of the proposal would undermine the company's ability to attract and retain senior executives, Hall said.

(Reporting by Erwin Seba; editing by Eric Walsh;
Reuters Messaging: erwin.seba.reuters.com@reuters.net;
+1 713 210 8508; erwin.seba@reuters.com)

Senate Bill S.3 Shields Drug Companies From Liability For Public Health Emergency Vaccines

But wait! There is someone who defends BP:

BP Oil Disaster
Mike Bloomberg Backs BP: Our Mayor Defended Tony Hayward?
LINK

?Granted, New Yorkers are nowhere near the Gulf Shore, and the oil has yet to make its way up to the Hudson, and even if it did, we wouldn't notice, because the Hudson's gross anyway (not that this should stop you from saving it). But we're affected in plenty of different ways by the BP Oil Spill Disaster, and New Yorkers have done their best to show how sensitive and passionate they are towards this issue. Which is why it's utterly absurd that our mayor's speaking out for them.

See -- via the New York Times -- when our mayor noted the following on Friday:

"The guy that runs BP didn't exactly go down there and blow up the well," Mr. Bloomberg said during his weekly radio talk with John Gambling on WOR-AM. On Friday, Mr. Bloomberg said BP should be left alone until the recovery operation is complete. "If you want him to fix it and they're the only ones with the expertise, I think I might wait to assign blame till we get it fixed," the mayor said.

He's not entirely wrong, at least not in intent. Part of the reason things don't get fixed in America is because people are quick to source blame out to easy targets, because that makes the public/media discussion of a problem that much simpler to produce and digest. And as the New York Times noted, he said the same thing about the banking crisis:

In April, as President Obama stepped up his attack on financial firms and sought to end risky trading practices, the mayor warned that "the bashing of Wall Street is something that should worry everybody."

And about ConEd:

And in 2006, Mr. Bloomberg drew criticism after he publicly praised the performance of Consolidated Edison in the midst of a nine-day blackout in Queens.

But the problem isn't whether Bloomberg's correct or incorrect about the nature of opinion. It's that he's supposed to be an advocate for the citizenry, for New Yorkers, and not serve the interests of corporate entities like the monolithic business news corporation he owns, which is what he does every time he says something like this.

Which is besides the point that, yes, BP is to blame, very much so, in every regard possible.

Furthermore, our mayor could've used this to advocate for the people who are receiving the short end of the public's anger -- like independent BP station owners who're having to incur expenses from protests and defacing, who are the furthest removed from BP's corporate mistakes -- and instead, now predictably, backed the guy on top.

The worst part is that there's really not much New Yorkers can do about it, because we elected him to a third term. So, everyone just kind of gets to sit back and enjoy this. There's not much more to it.

fkamer@villagevoice.com