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David Helvarg: Saved by the Sea

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Deepwater Oil Disaster? 'We'll Find Out When It Happens'

02 min 15 sec

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David Helvarg, founder and president of the Blue Frontier Campaign, discusses offshore drilling practices over the last decade.

Aboard one deepwater BP rig, Helvarg recalls asking a drill boss what would happen in the event of a blowout. The man's response? "I guess we'll find out when it happens."
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54 min 56 sec

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Encyclopædia Britannica Articles

BP PLC: British petrochemical corporation. Formed in 1909 as the Anglo-Persian Oil Co., Ltd., to finance an oil-field concession granted by the Iranian government to William Knox D'Arcy, it became one of the largest oil companies in the world, with oil fields and refineries in Alaska and the North Sea. The British government was for many years BP's largest single stockholder, but by the late 1980s it had turned over the company to private ownership. In 1987 BP consolidated its U.S. interests by acquiring the Standard Oil Co. In 1998 it merged with Amoco (formerly Standard Oil of Indiana) to form BP-Amoco. In addition to oil and natural gas, it produces chemicals, plastics, and synthetic fibres. Its headquarters are in London.; BP PLC on britannica.com
water pollution: State resulting when substances are released into a body of water, where they become dissolved or suspended in the water or deposited on the bottom, accumulating to the extent that they overwhelm its capacity to absorb, break down, or recycle them, and thus interfering with the functioning of aquatic ecosystems. Contributions to water pollution include substances drawn from the air (see acid rain), silt from soil erosion, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, runoff from septic tanks, outflow from livestock feedlots, chemical wastes (some toxic) from industries, and sewage and other urban wastes from cities and towns. A community far upstream in a watershed may thus receive relatively clean water, whereas one farther downstream receives a partly diluted mixture of urban, industrial, and rural wastes. When organic matter exceeds the capacity of microorganisms in the water to break it down and recycle it, the excess of nutrients in such matter encourages algal water blooms. When these algae die, their remains add further to the organic wastes already in the water, and eventually the water becomes deficient in oxygen. Organisms that do not require oxygen then attack the organic wastes, releasing gases such as methane and hydrogen sulfide, which are harmful to the oxygen-requiring forms of life. The result is a foul-smelling, waste-filled body of water. See also eutrophication.; water pollution on britannica.com

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dennisoneill4

Posted: 07.14.10, 05:12 AM

BP spent hundreds of millions on a dishonest, misleading advertising campaign (BP- Beyond Petroleum) that portrayed the company as some kind of environmental innovator rather than an oil and gas company that provided American suburbanites with gasoline for their SUV's so they could live in the middle of environmentally destructive, culturally vacuous suburbs forced to drive everywhere around the middle of nowhere. Their executives created a culture where cutting costs at the expense of human and environmental safety was acceptable. BP should stand for Bribe Politicians. Barack Obama was the top recipient of BP PAC and individual contributions in the past 20 years. His inept response to the BP Gulf disaster, his lack of any coherent energy policy, his complete lack of transparency and his excessive reliance on big money for his campaigns are in part why he has lost so much support. He's another typical Chicago politician.

Fora2

Posted: 07.06.10, 07:27 PM

Wired Magazine, 6/15/10: an e-mail released by House Committee on Energy and Commerce, is one of many documents describing BP's risky, cost-cutting decisions. "This has been a nightmare well which has everyone all over the place," wrote BP engineer Brian Morel to a colleague. Morel wanted the company to use a "liner," or sheath around the well that would keep gas from surging up the pipes and possibly exploding. BP opted against installing the liner, which would have cost $7 to $10 million. In the Gulf oil blowout it's been found BP was definitely overriding normal safety practice and disregarding Transocean's standard practice of packing the well with mud before sealing it. BP also KNEW the "Annular gasket" was broken and wouldn't provide correct pressure readings but disregarded it. Revealed in "60 Minutes" recent expose on the blowout. My bet is BP will hang for this because they deliberately chose to disregard safety precautions