Inspector General's Inquiry Faults Actions of
Federal Drilling Regulators
BYLINE: By IAN URBINA
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 16
LENGTH: 1296 words
WASHINGTON -- Federal regulators responsible for oversight of drilling in the
Gulf of Mexico allowed industry officials several years ago to fill in their own
inspection reports in pencil -- and then turned them over to the regulators, who
traced over them in pen before submitting the reports to the agency, according
to an inspector general's report to be released this week. The report said that
investigators ''could not discern if any fraudulent alterations were present on
these forms.''
The report, which describes inappropriate behavior by the staff at the Minerals
Management Service from 2005 to 2007, also found that inspectors had
accepted meals, tickets to sporting events and gifts from at least one oil
company while they were overseeing the industry.
Although there is no evidence that those events played a role in the Deepwater
Horizon oil spill, the report offers further evidence of what many critics of the
Minerals Management Service have described as a culture of lax oversight
and cozy ties to industry.
The report includes other examples of troubling behavior discovered by
investigators.
In mid-2008, a minerals agency employee conducted four inspections on
drilling platforms when he was also negotiating a job with the drilling company,
a cover letter to the report said.
And an inspector from the Lake Charles office admitted to investigators that he
had used crystal methamphetamine, an illegal drug. Investigators said they
believe the inspector may have been under the influence of the drug during an
inspection.
The report was provided to The New York Times by a person familiar with the
investigation who is not authorized to speak to reporters. Previous inspector
general investigations of the minerals agency have focused on inappropriate
behavior by the royalty-collection staff in the agency's Denver office.
The new report describes similar activities and improper relationships with
industry representatives in the leasing and inspections staff in an agency gulf
region office in Louisiana.
The report found that employees from the Lake Charles office had repeatedly
accepted gifts, including hunting and fishing trips from the Island Operating
Company, an oil and gas company working on oil platforms regulated by the
Interior Department.
1
Taking such gifts ''appears to have been a generally accepted practice,'' said the
report, written by department's acting inspector general, Mary L. Kendall.
The investigation also found that at least two employees from the Lake Charles
office of the minerals agency had admitted to using illegal drugs during their
employment.
The report said the findings of the investigation had been presented to the
United States Attorney's Office for the Western District of Louisiana, which
declined prosecution.
At least seven inspectors cited in the report as having been involved in
inappropriate or illegal activities were still employed by the agency when the
report was completed in March. Interior officials said the employees cited in the
report would be placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of a
personnel review.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said that he found the report ''deeply disturbing,''
and that the actions it found were why, ''during the first 10 days of becoming
secretary of the interior, I directed a strong ethics reform agenda to clean house
of these ethical lapses at M.M.S.''
Mr. Salazar added that he had asked the inspector general to expand her inquiry
to determine if any of the inappropriate behavior had persisted after he put the
new ethics rules in place in 2009.
The inquiry began after investigators at the Office of the Inspector General
received an anonymous letter, dated Oct. 28, 2008, addressed to the United
States Attorney's Office in New Orleans, alleging that a number of unnamed
minerals agency employees had accepted gifts from oil and gas production
company representatives, the report said.
On April 12, Elizabeth Birnbaum, director of the minerals agency, received the
report for review. The findings were to be released this summer.
But after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, the Office of Inspector General
sought to speed up the report's release because it was too relevant to wait, a
minerals agency official said.
This month, the Obama administration reorganized the agency in an effort to
address conflicts of interest in its structure.
Shown the report, Representative Nick J. Rahall II, Democrat of West Virginia
and the chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, said the agency was
clearly dysfunctional. ''These newly revealed ethical lapses among agency
personnel puts M.M.S. in the penalty box indefinitely,'' Mr. Rahall said.
The report said the inspector general had developed confidential sources ''who
provided additional information pertaining to M.M.S. employees at the Lake
Charles District Office, including acceptance of a trip to the 2005 Peach Bowl
game that was paid for by an oil and gas company; illicit drug use; misuse of
government computers; and inspection report falsification.''
2
One of the confidential sources described regulators allowing company officials
to fill out inspection forms in pencil after which inspectors would ''write on top of
the pencil in ink and turn in the completed form.''
Industry watchdogs say that much of the inappropriate behavior found by the
Office of Inspector General had stopped with the new administration. But some
repercussions continue.
Some industry experts have speculated that the Deepwater spill and the report's
findings could explain the sudden resignation this month of Chris C. Oynes, who
led the Gulf of Mexico region for the Minerals Management Service for about
12 years until he was promoted to a senior position in Washington in 2007.
Mr. Oynes is not mentioned in the inspector general's report, and Interior
Department officials have declined to answer questions about his resignation.
In a cover letter to Mr. Salazar, Ms. Kendall, the acting inspector general, said
she wanted to emphasize that all the conduct highlighted predated Mr. Salazar's
tenure and his January 2009 revamping of the ethics code.
She added, ''Of greatest concern to me is the environment in which the
inspectors operate -- particularly the ease with which they move between
industry and government.''
Some in Congress had been trying to get rid of Mr. Oynes for a while. In 2007,
Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, Democrat of New York, voiced outrage that
Mr. Oynes was, at the time, being promoted to gulf regional director at the
minerals agency.
''It is completely ridiculous that M.M.S. would take the person most likely
responsible for the royalty rip-off and put him in charge of the whole show,'' she
said, describing Mr. Oynes as the person who signed 700 of the 1,100 1998-99
oil and gas leases with missing price thresholds that limit royalty relief, to the
agency's associate director of the Offshore Minerals Management Program.
Agency lagged in inspecting BP rig;
Nearly a third of the required checks over the last
28 months weren't completed.
BYLINE: Bettina Boxall, Jim Tankersley
SECTION: LATEXTRA; National Desk; Part AA; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1167 words
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES AND WASHINGTON
Federal inspectors failed to conduct nearly a third of required inspections on the
Deepwater Horizon rig in the 28 months before it exploded and sank in the Gulf
of Mexico, according to government records.
3
The inspections that were carried out by the Minerals Management Service
found no sign of trouble on BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, according to
documents posted Friday on the Interior Department's website.
MMS reports, including one dated three weeks before the deadly April 20
explosion, indicate that the rig's blowout preventer was functioning properly,
and they make no mention of any persistent problems with surges of natural
gas, or "kicks," flowing up through the well and disrupting drilling.
Although the cause of the disaster remains under investigation, experts have
blamed the explosion on a natural gas surge. A prominent outside investigator,
UC Berkeley engineering professor Robert Bea, said last month that rig workers
told him the Deepwater Horizon had battled repeated kicks in the weeks before
its sinking. MMS inspectors noted the presence of a kick in October 2008, but
none later.
"It appears that the Deepwater Horizon experienced dangerous gas 'kicks'
before the April 20 disaster," said David Pettit, a senior attorney and drilling
expert for the Natural Resources Defense Council, who reviewed the inspection
reports Friday. "It is hard to understand why MMS did not learn about this
potentially deadly problem" before the explosion.
Despite federal regulations mandating that inspections be done monthly, the rig
operation was only inspected three times over the first four months of this year;
nine times in 2009 and six times in 2008. Officials at the Interior Department,
which houses MMS, say rigs can miss inspections because they're on the move
or because of weather conditions.
Interior officials declined to answer questions about the documents and released
a statement saying that several investigations underway "have been charged
with looking at all the questions related to the Deepwater Horizon explosion and
BP oil spill. These questions will be best addressed in the context of those
investigations."
The documents indicate that the last time the Horizon was flagged for a safety
violation was in 2007, when an inspector found that a pressure washer was not
properly grounded on the rig floor. Correspondence posted along with the
reports show that BP unsuccessfully fought that citation.
A summary of the safety reports, also posted online, states that the Horizon was
flagged three times for safety in 2002 and once in 2003 for an unspecified
"pollution event."
Minerals Management has for years been criticized for lax oversight of the oil
and gas industry. Several inspector general reports have cited ethical lapses on
the part of agency employees, including taking gifts and negotiating jobs with
the companies they regulated.
President Obama, who is planning his fourth visit to the gulf, on Friday spread
some of the blame.
"I think it's fair to say, if six months ago, before this spill had happened, I had
gone up to Congress and I had said, 'We need to crack down a lot harder on oil
companies and we need to spend more money on technology to respond in case
4
of a catastrophic spill,' there are folks up there, who will not be named, who
would have said, 'This is classic, big-government overregulation and wasteful
spending,' " Obama said in an interview with Politico.
In the wake of Thursday's release of new estimates of the leak's size, the
government's spill commander said Friday that BP won't be able capture most of
the flow for several more weeks.
A containment cap is now funneling a little more than 15,000 barrels a day of oil
from the damaged well on the gulf floor to the processing ship Enterprise, less
than half the amount that may be spurting from the wellhead, according to the
new figures.
More ships and equipment are on their way to the spill site off the Louisiana
coast. But Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said it won't be until late this month or
early July that BP will have the ability to collect all the crude gushing from the
deep-sea well.
The updated flow figures doubled earlier estimates, underscoring the spill's
potential for harming the gulf environment and its 3,000-mile coastline.
"We may be talking about more beaches and more wetlands [affected] and more
of an oil legacy in our ocean," said Jacqueline Savitz, senior campaign director
for Oceana, an international conservation organization. "Toxicity depends on the
dose. The more there is equates to a greater amount of exposure to marine
life."
George Crozier, executive director of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, said he is
particularly concerned about the amount of carbon -- a major component of oil - the spill is dumping into gulf waters. The more carbon, the more oil-consuming
microbes in the sea will deplete oxygen. Extremely low oxygen levels can create
dead zones devoid of marine life.
Recent samples from an offshore area his lab has monitored for five years are
showing the lowest levels of oxygen he has seen there, Crozier said. While he
can't definitively link the oxygen plunge to the massive slick drifting in the gulf,
Crozier said there was "presumptive evidence" that it was due to the BP spill.
This week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirmed that
light clouds of dispersed oil from the mile-deep leak are floating beneath the
surface. University research ships have detected below-normal oxygen levels in
and near the plumes.
Since the earliest leak estimates of 1,000 and then 5,000 barrels were made
soon after the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion, some scientists have said the
flow was likely much higher. In late May, a government-appointed scientific
team asked to analyze video feeds of the leak pegged the flow at 12,000 to
19,000 barrels. After more study, the team this week raised those figures to a
range of 20,000 to 40,000 barrels, or 840,000 to 1.7 million gallons, a day.
The higher figure far exceeds the combined capacity of the Enterprise and a
platform vessel that is scheduled to join the ship next week. Together the two
should be able to process and burn off about 28,000 barrels daily, Allen said.
5
In the meantime, BP is planning over the next few weeks to replace the
containment cap that is capturing some of the well flow with a tighter device
that may be able to collect virtually all of the oil gusher. The new apparatus,
connected to a flexible pipe system designed to withstand storms, would funnel
the oil to ships now headed for the spill.
They include the Loch Rannoch, a large shuttle tanker on its way from the North
Sea, where it's used to transport oil from offshore rigs to northern Scotland.
Friday, a supply vessel in the BP operation damaged a natural gas pipe as it was
mooring at a gas platform near Cocodrie, La. The accident caused a gas leak,
which was quickly shut off by a platform worker, according to the Coast Guard.
-The New York Times
May 30, 2010 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
Documents Show Earlier Fears About Safety of
Offshore Well
BYLINE: By IAN URBINA; Robbie Brown contributed reporting from Kenner, La.,
and Andy Lehren from New York.
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1437 words
WASHINGTON -- Internal documents from BP show that there were serious
problems and safety concerns with the Deepwater Horizon rig far earlier than
those the company described to Congress last week.
The problems involved the well casing and the blowout preventer, which are
considered critical pieces in the chain of events that led to the disaster on the
rig.
The documents show that in March, after several weeks of problems on the rig,
BP was struggling with a loss of ''well control.'' And as far back as 11 months
ago, it was concerned about the well casing and the blowout preventer.
On June 22, for example, BP engineers expressed concerns that the metal
casing the company wanted to use might collapse under high pressure.
''This would certainly be a worst-case scenario,'' Mark E. Hafle, a senior drilling
engineer at BP, warned in an internal report. ''However, I have seen it happen
so know it can occur.''
The company went ahead with the casing, but only after getting special
permission from BP colleagues because it violated the company's safety policies
and design standards. The internal reports do not explain why the company
allowed for an exception. BP documents released last week to The Times
revealed that company officials knew the casing was the riskier of two options.
6
Though his report indicates that the company was aware of certain risks and
that it made the exception, Mr. Hafle, testifying before a panel on Friday in
Louisiana about the cause of the rig disaster, rejected the notion that the
company had taken risks.
''Nobody believed there was going to be a safety issue,'' Mr. Hafle told a sixmember panel of Coast Guard and Minerals Management Service officials.
''All the risks had been addressed, all the concerns had been addressed, and we
had a model that suggested if executed properly we would have a successful
job,'' he said.
Mr. Hafle, asked for comment by a reporter after his testimony Friday about the
internal report, declined to answer questions.
BP's concerns about the casing did not go away after Mr. Hafle's 2009 report.
In April of this year, BP engineers concluded that the casing was ''unlikely to be
a successful cement job,'' according to a document, referring to how the casing
would be sealed to prevent gases from escaping up the well.
The document also says that the plan for casing the well is ''unable to fulfill
M.M.S. regulations,'' referring to the Minerals Management Service.
A second version of the same document says ''It is possible to obtain a
successful cement job'' and ''It is possible to fulfill M.M.S. regulations.''
Andrew Gowers, a BP spokesman, said the second document was produced after
further testing had been done.
On Tuesday Congress released a memorandum with preliminary findings from
BP's internal investigation, which indicated that there were warning signs
immediately before the explosion on April 20, including equipment readings
suggesting that gas was bubbling into the well, a potential sign of an impending
blowout.
A parade of witnesses at hearings last week told about bad decisions and cut
corners in the days and hours before the explosion of the rig, but BP's internal
documents provide a clearer picture of when company and federal officials saw
problems emerging.
In addition to focusing on the casing, investigators are also focusing on the
blowout preventer, a fail-safe device that was supposed to slice through a drill
pipe in a last-ditch effort to close off the well when the disaster struck. The
blowout preventer did not work, which is one of the reasons oil has continued to
spill into the gulf, though the reason it failed remains unclear.
Federal drilling records and well reports obtained through the Freedom of
Information Act and BP's internal documents, including more than 50,000 pages
of company e-mail messages, inspection reports, engineering studies and other
company records obtained by The Times from Congressional investigators, shed
new light on the extent and timing of problems with the blowout preventer and
the casing long before the explosion.
7
Kendra Barkoff, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department, declined to answer
questions about the casings, the blowout preventer and regulators' oversight of
the rig because those matters are part of a continuing investigation.
The documents show that in March, after problems on the rig that included
drilling mud falling into the formation, sudden gas releases known as ''kicks''
and a pipe falling into the well, BP officials informed federal regulators that they
were struggling with a loss of ''well control.''
On at least three occasions, BP records indicate, the blowout preventer was
leaking fluid, which the manufacturer of the device has said limits its ability to
operate properly.
''The most important thing at a time like this is to stop everything and get the
operation under control,'' said Greg McCormack, director of the Petroleum
Extension Service at the University of Texas, Austin, offering his assessment
about the documents.
He added that he was surprised that regulators and company officials did not
commence a review of whether drilling should continue after the well was
brought under control.
After informing regulators of their struggles, company officials asked for
permission to delay their federally mandated test of the blowout preventer,
which is supposed to occur every two weeks, until the problems were resolved,
BP documents say.
At first, the minerals agency declined.
''Sorry, we cannot grant a departure on the B.O.P. test further than when you
get the well under control,'' wrote Frank Patton, a minerals agency official. But
BP officials pressed harder, citing ''major concerns'' about doing the test the
next day. And by 10:58 p.m., David Trocquet, another M.M.S. official,
acquiesced.
''After further consideration,'' Mr. Trocquet wrote, ''an extension is approved to
delay the B.O.P. test until the lower cement plug is set.''
When the blowout preventer was eventually tested again, it was tested at a
lower pressure -- 6,500 pounds per square inch -- than the 10,000-pounds-persquare-inch tests used on the device before the delay. It tested at this lower
pressure until the explosion.
A review of Minerals Management Service's data of all B.O.P. tests done in
deep water in the Gulf of Mexico for five years shows B.O.P. tests rarely dropped
so sharply, and, in general, either continued at the same threshold or were done
at increasing levels.
The manufacturer of the blowout preventer, Cameron, declined to say what the
appropriate testing pressure was for the device.
In an e-mail message, Mr. Gowers of BP wrote that until their investigation was
complete, it was premature to answer questions about the casings or the
blowout preventer.
8
Even though the documents asking regulators about testing the blowout
preventer are from BP, Mr. Gowers said that any questions regarding the device
should be directed to Transocean, which owns the rig and, he said, was
responsible for maintenance and testing of the device. Transocean officials
declined to comment.
Bob Sherrill, an expert on blowout preventers and the owner of Blackwater
Subsea, an engineering consulting firm, said the conditions on the rig in
February and March and the language used by the operator referring to a loss of
well control ''sounds like they were facing a blowout scenario.''
Mr. Sherrill said federal regulators made the right call in delaying the blowout
test, because doing a test before the well is stable risks gas kicks. But once the
well was stable, he added, it would have made sense for regulators to
investigate the problems further.
In April, the month the rig exploded, workers encountered obstructions in the
well. Most of the problems were conveyed to federal regulators, according to
federal records. Many of the incidents required that BP get a permit for a new
tactic for dealing with the problem.
One of the final indications of such problems was an April 15 request for a
permit to revise its plan to deal with a blockage, according to federal documents
obtained from Congress by the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental
advocacy group.
In the documents, company officials apologized to federal regulators for not
having mentioned the type of casing they were using earlier, adding that they
had ''inadvertently'' failed to include it. In the permit request, they did not
disclose BP's own internal concerns about the design of the casing.
Less than 10 minutes after the request was submitted, federal regulators
approved the permit.
The International Herald Tribune
May 22, 2010 Saturday
Conflict of interest feared in spill tests;
BP is major client of firm hired to gauge damage
to water quality and wildlife
BYLINE: BY CAMPBELL ROBERTSON AND ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 5
LENGTH: 1071 words
DATELINE: GRAND ISLE, LOUISIANA
ABSTRACT
9
Officials in Louisiana are furious that the oil spill has begun showing up on shore
as tar balls, sheens and gooey slicks.
FULL TEXT
Local environmental officials throughout the Gulf Coast are feverishly collecting
water, sediment and marine animal tissue samples that will be used in the
coming months to help track pollution levels resulting from the Deepwater
Horizon oil spill.
Hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake, since those readings will be used by
the federal government and courts to establish liability claims against BP. But
the laboratory that officials have chosen to process virtually all of the samples is
part of an oil and gas services company in Texas that counts oil firms, including
BP, among its biggest clients.
Some people are questioning the independence of the Texas lab. Taylor
Kirschenfeld, an environmental official for Escambia County, Florida, rebuffed
instructions from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to send
water samples to the lab, which is based at TDI-Brooks International in College
Station, Texas. He opted instead to get a waiver so he could send his county's
samples to a local laboratory that is licensed to do the same tests.
Mr. Kirschenfeld said he was also troubled by another rule. Local animal rescue
workers have volunteered to help treat birds affected by the slick and to collect
data that would also be used to help calculate penalties for the spill. But federal
officials have told the volunteers that the work must be done by a company
hired by BP.
"Everywhere you look, if you look, you start seeing these conflicts of interest in
how this disaster is getting handled," Mr. Kirschenfeld said. "I'm not a
conspiracy theorist, but there is just too much overlap between these people."
The deadly explosion at the Deepwater Horizon oil rig last month has drawn
attention to the ties between regulators and the oil and gas industry. Last week,
President Obama said he intended to end their "cozy relationship," partly by
separating the safety function of regulators from their role in permitting drilling
and collecting royalties. "That way, there's no conflict of interest, real or
perceived," he said.
Critics say a "revolving door" between industry and government is another area
of concern. As one example, they point to the deputy assistant secretary for
land and minerals management at the Interior Department, Sylvia V. Baca,
who helps oversee the Minerals Management Service, which regulates
offshore drilling
She came to that post after eight years at BP, in a variety of senior positions,
and also served in the Interior Department in the Clinton administration.
Under Interior Department conflict-of-interest rules, she is prohibited from
playing any role in decisions involving BP, including the response to the crisis in
the gulf. But her position gives her some responsibility for overseeing oil and
gas, mining and renewable energy operations on public and Indian lands.
10
Officials in part of what will remain of the Minerals Management Service will
continue to report to her, even after a major reorganization spurred by the
events in the gulf.
"When you see more examples of this revolving door between industry and
these regulatory agencies, the problem is that it raises questions as to whose
interests are being served," said Mandy Smithberger, an investigator with the
nonprofit watchdog group Project on Government Oversight.
Interior officials declined to make Ms. Baca available for comment. A
spokeswoman said Ms. Baca fully disclosed her BP ties, recused herself from all
matters involving the company and was not currently involved in any offshore
drilling policy decisions.
Dismissing concerns about conflicts of interest at his lab, James M. Brooks, the
president and chief executive of TDI-Brooks International, said his company was
chosen because of its prior work for the federal government.
"It is a nonbiased process," he said. "We give them the results, and they can
have their lawyers argue over what the results mean." He added that federal
officials and BP were working together and sharing the test results.
Federal officials say that they remain in control and that the concerns about any
potential conflicts are overblown.
Douglas Zimmer, a spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said the
agency simply did not have the staff to handle all the animals affected by the oil
spill. BP has more resources to hire workers quickly, he said, and letting local
organizations handle the birds would have been impractical and costly.
"I also just don't believe that BP or their contractor would have any incentive to
skew the data," he said. "Even if they did, there are too many federal, state and
local eyes keeping watch on them."
But Stuart Smith, a lawyer representing gulf fishermen, remained skeptical,
saying that federal and state authorities had not fulfilled their watchdog role.
Last month, for example, various state and federal Web sites included links that
directed out-of-work fishermen to a BP Web site, which offered contracts that
limited their right to file future claims against the company. This month, a
federal judge in New Orleans, Helen G. Berrigan, struck down that binding
language in the contracts.
Collaboration between industry and regulators extends to how information about
the spill is disseminated by a public affairs operation called the Joint Information
Center.
The center, in a Shell-owned training and conference center in Robert,
Louisiana, includes roughly 65 employees, 10 of whom work for BP.
"They have input into it; however, it is a unified effort," said Senior Chief Petty
Officer Steve Carleton. He said such coordination in oil spill responses was
mandated under federal law.
11
In another aspect of the spill that has spurred disputes, The Associate Press
reported that BP had conceded Thursday what some scientists have been saying
for weeks: More oil is flowing from the leak than BP and the Coast Guard had
previously estimated.
The BP executive in charge of fighting the spill, Chief Operating Officer Doug
Suttles, told the CBS ''Early Show'' on Friday that in the worst case scenario, the
gusher could continue until early August, when a new well being drilled to cap
the flow permanently could be finished, The AP reported.
But Suttles said he believes the rich Gulf environment will recover, in part
because it is a large body of water and has withstood other oil spills.
Obama struggling to show he's in control
BYLINE: Karen Tumulty
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 1030 words
A defensive President Obama

sought Thursday to quell doubts about his handling of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill,
insisting that his administration has been "in charge" from the moment it began
and bristling that critics who accuse it of being sluggish to react "don't know the
facts."
But at times during a 63-minute news conference in the East Room of the White
House, the president seemed to undercut his own argument. He enumerated a
litany of fumbles and lapses: that the government lacks resources and "superior
technology" to respond to the disaster; that he personally had assumed oil
companies "had their act together when it came to worst-case scenarios"; that
his administration "fell short" with its acceptance of BP's inaccurate estimate of
the size of the gusher; that reforms of the corruption-plagued government
agency that oversees offshore drilling "weren't happening fast enough."
At one point, Obama said he did not know whether Elizabeth Birnbaum -- the
director of the Minerals Management Service he blamed for allowing the oil
industry to overrule environmental and safety concerns -- had resigned or been
fired hours before.
The news conference marked a sharp departure in tone from the first days after an oil
rig explosion caused the spill, when the White House seemed determined to fix the
blame and keep the public outrage directed at the oil company involved. "In case you
were wondering who's responsible, I take responsibility," Obama
said Thursday. "It is my job to make sure that everything is done to shut this
down."

This is the familiar Obama: resolute and in charge. But six weeks after the
spill began, those words seemed to highlight the difficulty he has had in
convincing the country that he is on top of the situation. As oil continues to foul
12
the gulf, the conflicting signals coming from the president and his team have
imperiled his reputation for competence and coolness in the face of crisis.

Only three weeks before the explosion, had proposed opening up 167
million acres to offshore oil exploration, as a means of finding more oil and more
votes on Capitol Hill for comprehensive energy and climate legislation. In
defending that plan, he had cited advances in drilling technology that he said
made it significantly safer than it had been in the past.
White House aides say that as oil continued to spew from the floor of the gulf,
the president -- who described himself as "angry and frustrated" -- privately
expressed dismay about the faulty assurances he received from the oil industry
that exploration was safe. "For so long, we didn't have accidents in the gulf, and
we took the oil and gas industry maybe a little too much at their word," said one
official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Obama announced new steps that he said would help "ensure that a
catastrophe like this never happens again." Deep and far-reaching reform will
come, he promised, after a commission he is appointing finishes a six-month
investigation of the causes of the April 20 explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon
rig and measures that might have prevented it.
In the early weeks after the rig sank, polls showed the public saw a clear villain - BP -- and approved of the administration's approach to the situation, which
emphasized ensuring that the oil company would bear the cost of stopping the
spill, cleaning it up and repairing the damage. Some in the White House were so
confident of their ability to stay ahead of the crisis that they welcomed
comparisons with George W. Bush's bungling of the response to Hurricane
Katrina in 2005.
But the latest surveys show that public confidence in Washington's handling of
the spill has dropped sharply. And there has also been a fraying of what had
begun as a relatively smooth working relationship among the government, BP,
and state and local officials in the region. "The president has not been as visible
as he should have been on this," Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) told Politico, "and
he's going to pay a political price for it, unfortunately."
Gulf Coast residents are furious; images of the oil's sheen on the water have
given way to ones of black beaches and dead animals.
news conference, he had to share the screen with a live shot of that painfully
familiar underwater pipe spitting out brown gunk.
Even as the president laid greater claim to the handling of the disaster, he
distanced himself from Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's frequent boast that the
administration has a "boot on the neck" of BP.
"I think Ken Salazar would probably be the first one to admit that he has been
frustrated, angry and occasionally emotional about this issue, like a lot of people
have," Obama said. He added: "I would say that we don't need to use language
like that."
13

Indeed, Obama seemed most sensitive to suggestions -- made with
increasing frequency by such critics as Democratic strategist James Carville -that the oil company is calling the shots.

BP is the "responsible party," with access to resources, technology and
expertise that the government lacks, said. But all its actions, he insisted, are
done "under our supervision, and any major decision that they make has to be
done under the approval of Thad Allen, the national incident coordinator."

Although he acknowledged that the government's performance before and
since the spill began has been far from perfect, Obama insisted that it should
not be faulted for lack of effort. "This has been our highest priority since this
crisis occurred," he said, and later added, "We are relying on every resource and
every idea, every expert and every bit of technology, to work to stop it."
spoke of the toll the crisis has taken on him, an unusual turn for a president who
is sometimes faulted for being too intellectual and aloof.
"This is what I wake up to in the morning, and this is what I go to bed at night
thinking about," he said. He cannot escape questions about the spill, even at
home. As he was shaving Thursday morning, he said, 11-year-old daughter,
Malia, peeked in and asked, "Did you plug the hole yet, Daddy?"
Staff writers Anne E. Kornblut and Scott Wilson contributed to this report.
Oil projects boomed while staffing stalled;
U.S. agency scrutinized over shortage and quality
of inspection manpower
BYLINE: Juliet Eilperin and Steven Mufson
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 1245 words
Over the past quarter-century, oil companies have pushed the frontiers of
offshore drilling, sharply stepping up the number of deep-water rigs in the Gulf
of Mexico.
However, although the number of exploration rigs soared and the number of
deep-water oil-producing projects grew more than tenfold from 1988 to 2008,
the number of federal inspectors working for the Minerals Management
Service has increased only 13 percent since 1985.
That brings the number of inspectors for the federal waters of the entire Gulf of
Mexico to 62 -- only seven more than in 1985. To visit deep-water rigs, they
often make two-hour helicopter rides from shore. The same inspectors also
examine dozens of rigs and thousands of production platforms in shallow water.
14
The shortage -- and quality -- of manpower at the MMS is coming under scrutiny
as Congress looks at the causes of the oil spill that started in the gulf with the
April 20 blowout on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.
One key question is whether the agency could carry out the required minimum
once-a-month inspections or do a thorough job in an increasingly complex area.
Investigators are also looking at whether applications for changes in the well
design received only cursory reviews, including one that was approved seven
minutes after being filed.
"It would seem that we're spreading these inspectors pretty thin, given the
increasing complexity of these rigs and the distances they have to travel," said
House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Nick J. Rahall II (D-W.Va.),
whose panel is examining MMS oversight of offshore drilling. "What's happened
here at Deepwater Horizon is a perfect example of how there is very little room
for error when it comes to the safety of these oil rigs."
On Tuesday the Obama administration ordered companies working in shallower
waters to hire outside inspection firms to do what it thinks its own agency has
failed to do. Drillers already use outside firms to check rigs for seaworthiness,
which is also the subject of Coast Guard inspections. But it is unclear whether
those outside firms will be independent while being paid by the companies they
inspect.
"The use of third parties seems to underscore a lack of confidence in the MMS,"
said a senior executive at a leading drilling rig company who asked for
anonymity to protect his relationship with federal authorities. "And who is the
third party? What are the standards of neutrality and independence, and are we
subcontracting independent regulatory review?"
Even the agency, which has been criticized for being too cozy with the oil
industry, has said that it was overwhelmed. By this year, the number of drilling
rigs in deep water had climbed to more than 30 and the number of deep-water
production platforms to 141.
Two-and-a-half months before the Deepwater Horizon explosion, the MMS told
Congress that both the agency and the oil and gas industry faced "significant
engineering, logistical and financial challenges" given the rapid expansion of
deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
"As activities continue to move into deeper waters, MMS will need to ensure that
exploration and development is conducted in a safe and environmentally
responsible manner while regulating cutting edge technology in distant areas
under increasingly difficult conditions," the agency wrote in its Budget
Justifications and Performance Information Fiscal Year 2011, which it submitted
to Congress on Feb. 1.
The Obama administration asked for six additional inspectors as part of its 2011
budget request but has not received the $900,000 it would take to pay for such
an expansion.
The agency has a sign on its Web site: Help wanted. The qualifications: a year
or more of work experience in the field, willingness to work for less than half of
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what private industry would pay, and the ability to bend and stoop and climb tall
ladders.
Some lawmakers say that isn't enough training for the people who stand
between the powerful oil industry and ecological catastrophes such as the one
now afflicting the Gulf of Mexico.
Those applying for MMS inspection jobs, or petroleum engineering technicians,
are only required to have a high school degree and some experience in the oil
and gas industry. Federal mine inspectors undergo standardized training at the
government's Mine Health and Safety Academy, but MMS employees have no
such preparation. As a 1990 National Academy of Sciences report said,
"Generally speaking, specific training in inspection procedures is limited to onthe-job training gained while accompanying a trained technician."
"We have to have a government-wide system and plan in place and not rely on
the industry and allow them to just say, 'We've got it taken care of if something
happens,' " said Rahall, who sent a letter Tuesday to Interior Secretary Ken
Salazar asking him for details on MMS inspectors' training, educational
qualifications and ties to the oil and gas industry. Americans, Rahall said, "want
to see professional, highly trained inspectors that are not just pushing paper."
Some oil industry executives praise MMS inspectors.
"They are required to visit working rigs every 30 days, and they almost always
visit our rigs more frequently than that," said Randall D. Stilley, chief executive
of Seahawk Drilling, the second-largest operator of Gulf of Mexico rigs that stand
on legs in relatively shallow water. "I can't attest to their IQs or educational
background, but they tend to be knowledgeable about rigs and rig equipment."
But the MMS can't compete with salaries in private industry. The agency's job ad
says that inspectors can make $38,790 to $84,139 a year. Seahawk and
Hercules, another shallow-water drilling rig operator, typically pay more than
$100,000 a year.
The Deepwater Horizon disaster has only intensified questions about MMS
inspectors' rigor and judgment.
A review of internal BP documents submitted to the MMS before the explosion
suggest that agency officials gave the company's plans only a cursory review as
it moved to close the Macondo well. On April 15, five days before the blowout,
BP submitted an "Application for Revised Bypass" outlining a well design that
omitted a metal pipe 9.875 inches in diameter that had been in the plans up
until that point; MMS officials approved the change seven minutes later. Later
that day, according to documents obtained by congressional investigators, BP
told the agency that it had "inadvertently removed the 9 7/8 inch" liner from the
well design information. Have reincorporated it."
There were other discrepancies. On April 16, BP submitted its "Temporary
Abandonment Procedure" plan, in which it indicated that the well liner would go
down to 17,157 feet, rather than the 17,500 feet it had indicated in permit
applications earlier in the week. Although this change showed that BP had not
revealed the gap between its lining and cement job -- a gap that could
16
potentially give oil and gas an opening to rush up through the pipe -- the
company did not acknowledge the error, nor did the MMS.
BP spokesman Andrew Gowers said in an e-mail that there were "no significance
to the changes" in the permit applications. "They resulted from a simple clerical
error, and there was no material change in the casing plans."
Interior Department spokesman Kendra Barkoff said she could not comment on
BP's permit applications to the MMS because of "the ongoing investigation" of
the spill.
Staff writer Mary Pat Flaherty contributed to this report.
The Washington Post
May 28, 2010 Friday
Met 2 Edition
Oil-leak gush hits record levels;
U.S. OFFICIAL RESIGNS Obama
Enhanced Coverage Linking
pulls drilling permits for 33 deepwater rigs in gulf
BYLINE: Joel Achenbach and David A. Fahrenthold
SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A01
LENGTH: 1376 words
With mud continuing to battle oil in an attempted "top kill" of the leaking well at
the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, the historic scale of the disaster became
clearer Thursday when scientists said the mile-deep well has been spewing
12,000 to 19,000 barrels of oil a day, far more than previously estimated.
The new figure supports what many observers have assumed from the images of
oil slicking the gulf surface, slathering beaches and spurting from a pipe on the
sea floor: This is the worst oil spill in U.S. history.
President Obama,
Enhanced Coverage Linking
feeling pressure to act in a crisis now in its sixth week, yanked the exploratory
drilling permits for 33 deepwater rigs in the gulf and suspended planned
exploration in two areas off the coast of Alaska. He announced the moves at a
news conference carried on cable TV channels that simultaneously showed the
live video feed of effluent billowing from the cracked riser pipe at the bottom of
the gulf.
Obama
Enhanced Coverage Linking
17
pushed back on suggestions that, as he put it, "BP is off running around doing
whatever it wants and nobody is minding the store." He said that his
administration is doing all it can, but that, when it comes to plugging the leak,
"the federal government does not possess superior technology to BP."
The eventful day included the first prominent administrative casualty of the
crisis. Elizabeth Birnbaum, head of Minerals Management Service, which
issues permits for offshore drilling, resigned.
The political developments continue to be overshadowed by a technological
struggle that has no precedent. Whether the top kill is going to work remains
highly uncertain.
The maneuver is a brute-force, yet delicately calibrated, injection of heavy
drilling mud into the blowout preventer atop the wellhead. As the mud is
pumped from ships at the surface, the hydrocarbons should be forced back down
the well toward their source in a porous reservoir called the Macondo field, about
2 1/2 miles below the floor of the gulf.
It has not been smooth sailing. After pumping mud for about nine hours on
Wednesday, BP put the pumping on hold throughout the day Thursday while it
pondered the initial results. The company resumed Thursday evening.
"Nothing has gone wrong or unanticipated," Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating
officer, told reporters. He said engineers hope to improve on their initial
performance by preceding a mud injection with a blast of rubber balls and other
rough-textured materials -- a "junk shot" -- to clog the blowout preventer and
force more mud down into the hole, rather than shooting it out of the leaks in
the riser.
"We did believe we did pump some mud down the well bore. We obviously
pumped a lot of mud out the riser," Suttles said.
BP Managing Director Bob Dudley likened the top kill to an "arm-wrestling match
with two fairly equal-rated forces. Or taking two fire hoses and driving them
together, trying to overcome the other."
The well won't be considered killed until the mud injection has been followed by
cement to permanently plug it -- at which point the news would be carried by
"the roar coming out of this building," the deadpan Suttles said.
Even if the well is plugged this weekend, the spill already is of epic proportions.
The Flow Rate Technical Group, a task force made up of scientists from
government and academia, has produced preliminary estimates that 12,000 to
19,000 barrels a day have leaked into the gulf, U.S. Geological Survey Director
Marcia McNutt said Thursday.
The scale of the spill has been a matter of furious debate and speculation. The
Coast Guard initially pegged the spill at 1,000 barrels a day. Then the National
Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration used satellite images to make an
estimate of 5,000 barrels a day.
Government officials and BP executives repeated that figure for weeks, even as
independent scientists came up with figures as high as 95,000 barrels a day.
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There are 42 gallons in a barrel. Assuming that the leak began when the
Deepwater Horizon drilling rig sank to the gulf bottom on April 22, and
subtracting the amount of oil that BP said it has siphoned from the leaking pipe
and pumped onto a barge, the new estimate would suggest that 17 million to 27
million gallons of oil have polluted the gulf.
The 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, by comparison, put 11 million gallons of oil along
more than 1,000 miles of Alaska's coastline.
Interior Department spokesman Frank Quimby said scientists used multiple
techniques. One took video of the plume of oil escaping from the pipe and fed it
through computer models. The result was 12,000 to 25,000 barrels a day.
Another technique relied on a NASA plane that could differentiate oil from water
on the gulf surface. That produced an estimate of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a
day. A third method relied on measurements from the insertion tube that
siphoned oil from the end of the riser. That produced an estimate of 12,000
barrels a day.
Also Thursday, scientists from the University of South Florida reported the
discovery in the gulf of a "plume" of dissolved oil that was six miles wide and up
to 20 miles long. The plume extended from the surface down to a depth of 3,200
feet.
The oil is entirely dissolved in the water, which appears clear, USF professor
David Hollander said. That seemed to confirm the fears of some scientists that,
because of the depth of the leak and the heavy use of chemical dispersants, this
spill was behaving differently than others. Instead of floating on top of the
water, it may be moving beneath it.
That could hamper containment efforts and would also be a problem for
ecosystems deep under the gulf. There, scientists say, the oil could be absorbed
by tiny animals and enter a food chain that builds to sportfish such as red
snapper. It might also glom on to deep coral formations.
Oil has now hit 101 miles of Louisiana coastline, state officials said, mainly
lapping up on state's outer ring of uninhabited barrier islands: Whiskey Island,
Raccoon Island, Isle Grand Terre. The beaches and marinas of Grand Isle -- a
rare beach in a region of marshy coast, and a weekend destination for Cajuns
and deepwater fishermen -- are deserted, except for those working on the spill.
"We should have about 4,500, 5,000 people on the beach," said Mayor Dave
Camardelle at a news conference with Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) Thursday. "And it's
a ghost town."
Five of seven workers helping clean up oil in the Gulf of Mexico were released
from the hospital Thursday after complaining of nausea, dizziness, and
headaches the day before, prompting the Coast Guard to order all 125 boats
working in the Breton Sound area to return to port. The incident has highlighted
concerns about possible health risks. So far, air monitoring has not found
alarmingly high levels of toxic chemicals, officials said.
On Thursday, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers gave approval to a plan that
sounded far-fetched in the spill's early days: build more Louisiana.
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The corps approved part of a state plan to build a line of six-foot-high barrier
islands off the Louisiana coast, designed to block oil on the surface and under
the water.
In all, Jindal said, the Corps approved building 40 miles of the 100-mile barrier
that Louisiana had proposed. The first move, he said, would be to build one
smaller section as a prototype. He said BP should be made to pay for the plan,
which has been estimated to cost tens of millions of dollars.

The oil industry did not new moves on offshore drilling. Bill Tanner, a
spokesman for Shell Oil, said, "We respect and understand today's decision in
the context of the tragic spill in the Gulf of Mexico, but we remain confident in
our drilling expertise, which is built upon a foundation of redundant safety
systems and company global standards."
In Lafourche ("la-FOOSH") Parish, a mosaic of bayous, lakes and marshland, oil
has already penetrated some marshes. Charlotte Randolph, the parish president,
said she fears for the future of fishing in the area.
"If this destroys our water, then we can't be who we were before," Randolph
said. "The other industry here is oil and gas. We had a happy marriage before.
And now the husband has really done something awful."
Staff writers Rob Stein, Juliet Eilperin and Steven Mufson contributed to this
report.
The New York Times
June 2, 2010 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
Deep Underwater, Threatened Reefs
BYLINE: By JOHN COLLINS RUDOLF
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 16
LENGTH: 1244 words
Last September, marine scientists studying deep-sea biology in the northern
Gulf of Mexico lowered a submersible robot off the side of a government
research vessel and piloted it 1,300 feet to the ocean floor.
There, in complete darkness and near-freezing temperatures, the robot's lights
revealed a thriving colony of corals, anemones, fish, crustaceans and other sea
life rivaling that of any shallow-water reef in the world. Researchers onboard
were elated.
''We flipped on the lights, and there was one of the largest coral reefs in the Gulf
of Mexico sitting right in front of us,'' said Erik Cordes, a marine biologist at
Temple University and chief scientist on the vessel, the Ronald H. Brown.
Enhanced Coverage Linking
20
Nine months later, the warm thrill of discovery has cooled into dread. The reef
lies just 20 miles northeast of BP's blown-out well, making it one of at least
three extensive deepwater reefs lying directly beneath the oil slick in the gulf.
Yet it is not the slick that troubles scientists. They fear a more insidious threat:
vast plumes of partly dissolved oil apparently spreading in the deep ocean.
The latest research team in the gulf to detect these plumes observed one
extending roughly 22 miles northeast of the well site, in the vicinity of at least
two major deepwater reefs, including the one discovered last fall. Preliminary
images of the plume show layers of it touching the sea floor. Marine scientists
have no firm grasp yet on what the impact on the corals will be, but they are
bracing for catastrophe.
''The worst-case scenario is that there's oil coating some of the corals,'' Dr.
Cordes said. ''It would basically suffocate them.''
The composition and distribution of these plumes remain a mystery, and several
government research vessels are aggressively pursuing them in the gulf.
Scientists believe that the plumes are not pure oil, but most likely a haze of oil
droplets, natural gas and the dispersant chemical Corexit, 210,000 gallons of
which has been mixed into the jet of oil streaming from the seafloor.
This oily haze could prove highly toxic to coral reefs. Both oil and dispersants,
which chemically resemble dishwashing detergent, hamper the ability of corals
to colonize and reproduce. And these effects are amplified when the two are
mixed.
Studies on the effects of oil and chemicals on coral are limited to the shallowwater variety, however. Essentially no research has been conducted on their
slow-growing deepwater cousins. So BP's spill has prompted scientists to
embark on a sudden crash course on the interaction of deep-sea biology with
these toxins.
''Everybody's scrambling,'' said Steve W. Ross, a marine biologist at the
University of North Carolina, Wilmington, and an expert on deepwater corals.
''There's a lot of evaluation that has to be done.''
But some believe that studies on the impact of oil and dispersants should have
been done long ago, given the proliferation of drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.
''Some of these studies were proposed years ago, and the agencies decided not
to fund them,'' Dr. Ross said. ''We're paying the price for it now.''
The BP spill coincides nonetheless with a fertile period of deep-ocean exploration
in the Gulf of Mexico. Over the past decade, the Minerals Management
Service -- the federal agency criticized by lawmakers for its oversight of the
offshore drilling industry -- has financed extensive research into mapping the life
of the deep ocean.
On numerous voyages, researchers have scanned the sea floor for anomalies
and deployed submersible robots to search for life in the icy depths. The result
has been a string of discoveries across the northern gulf, among them prolific
21
deepwater reefs the size of football fields or larger. The identification of new
species has become commonplace.
Yet even as such discoveries have multiplied, little has been done to protect the
sea life. An environmental impact statementprepared by the Minerals
Management Service in 2007 that covered a vast area of the gulf being
opened up to oil and gas drilling, including the lease area where the BP well is
located, concluded that drilling posed no serious risk to deepwater reefs. Deepsea rigs were required to avoid damaging coral sites directly with anchors or
pipelines, but few other restrictions on drilling were deemed necessary.
The nearly 1,000-page document mentions only in passing the potential of oil
released under high pressure to form undersea plumes, despite previous studies
showing the distinct likelihood of such an event.
The study also failed to explore the application of dispersants deep underwater.
This use of the chemicals, approved by federal authorities, is essentially
unprecedented. It appears to have reduced the extent of the slick, limiting its
impact on wetlands, beaches and surface life. But officials know little about its
potential impact on life underwater.
''The long-term effects on aquatic life are still unknown,'' Lisa P. Jackson, the
administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said at a news conference
in May on the use of dispersants.
The application of dispersants is already highly discouraged in areas like the
Florida Keys because of their known toxic effects to coral, said Billy D. Causey,
Southeast regional director for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration's National Marine Sanctuaries program.
''We consider the dispersed oil more harmful than a sheen passing over the
reef,'' said Dr. Causey, who served as superintendent of the Florida Keys
National Marine Sanctuary.
Deepwater reefs have their own distinct biology -- they do not rely on
photosynthesis for energy, for instance, but scavenge food from the water
column -- so their sensitivity to such pollutants is deeply uncertain.
If enveloped by toxic plumes, one consequence for reefs could be a sudden lack
of oxygen, as bacteria that feed on hydrocarbons rapidly multiply. This would kill
off the algae and micro-organisms corals need for food.
''It might be locally catastrophic, particularly if there's an oxygen-depleted mass
that develops,'' said Jeffrey Short, Pacific science director for Oceana, a
conservation group, and a former research chemist with the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration specializing in oil pollution.
At least a hundred deepwater coral sites have been charted between the Texas
and Florida coasts. More remain undiscovered. ''We know 1 percent of what's
out there in deep waters -- perhaps 1 percent,'' Dr. Causey said.
There is reason to hope that deepwater corals far from the blowout will escape
serious harm. Deep-sea currents are slower than surface currents, limiting the
22
ability of the deeper plumes to spread extensively. And oil and chemicals will
disperse as they migrate away from the site of the blowout.
The existence of large natural oil seeps into the Gulf of Mexico -- estimated as
high as one million barrels per year -- also suggests that deepwater corals may
have adapted to the presence of low-level concentrations of oil.
Still, as more and more oil enters the ocean each day, the likelihood that at least
some reefs will be overwhelmed only grows. Anxiety thus runs high among
deepwater biologists.
Dr. Cordes, for one, is itching to return to the gulf to examine the reef he
discovered last year.
''We're in the process of getting down there sooner rather than later,'' he said.
''I hope for the best and fear for the worst.''
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