The oil companies' conduct in the Gulf of Mexico are the "equivalent of getting drunk on a fifth of liquor, driving 80 miles an hour through a school zone and killing a child," says Mike Papantonio, Ring of Fire radio host and attorney representing Gulf residents in their lawsuit against BP. But despite such conduct, BP wants to keep drilling, claiming it'll cost jobs if they don't keep pumping out oil.

Papantonio joins us via Skype to give us the latest on the lawsuit, the spill, and the oil--which doesn't just go away, no matter what the companies would have us believe.

In a dramatic illustration of regulatory capture, a new report from an Interior Department review board has found that poorly trained, ill-equipped and overextended federal inspectors who were supposed to be policing the nation's offshore oil and gas drilling facilities were routinely bullied by industry representatives and were often undercut by their managers when they reported safety violations.

The review board was appointed after a BP rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico in April, causing the worst accidental offshore oil spill in history. Its report paints a devastating picture of the Minerals Management Service, the agency now known as the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE).

Rather than take issue with the report's findings, BOEMRE's new reform-oriented director, Michael Bromwich, has responded with an implementation plan aimed at fixing the problems.

John M. Broder writes for the New York Times:

The report recommended hiring dozens of new inspectors and giving additional training to those already on the job. It also urged a more robust system of enforcement, including greater authority to cite violations and impose fines....

"To a substantial degree, we fully concur with the recommendations," Mr. Bromwich said in a telephone briefing for reporters. "Without knowing them in advance, we're moving to implement the bulk of them."

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Wednesday that his department will spend $29 million to increase the number and training of offshore drilling inspectors, upgrade enforcement and take others steps to improve oversight.

He told reporters he hopes to hire hundreds of new inspectors to supplement the 60 or now responsible for about 3,500 drilling rigs and platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. Congress recently authorized the emergency spending.

The lack of management support for inspectors was one of the most striking findings of the report. Here's what it found:

• Most inspectors interviewed stated that industry often exerted pressure on them to minimize reporting violations during inspections. For example, personnel on a facility may make comments such as "there goes my bonus," or "my wife is sick and I'll lose my job." Inspectors also reported that if they issued INCs [Incidents of Noncompliance], operators would sometimes call BOEMRE managers and complain about inspector behavior. For example, one inspector, new to the job, reported that on his first day on a platform he issued several INCs, and the company called to complain about his "rude and unprofessional behavior" before he returned to the office.

• During interviews, inspectors expressed the need for more effective leadership in daily operations and for greater management support when faced with pressure from industry....

• Operators that receive INCs may appeal to the District Manager to have the INC rescinded. A number of inspectors felt they were not sufficiently supported by their management and that in some cases management would give the benefit of the doubt to industry. Inspectors do not always have the tools necessary, such as sufficient training and adequate equipment (e.g., laptops), to effectively support the issuance of INCs.

• Inspectors who issue many INCs reported that they are especially subject to industry pressure, often without sufficient management support. A majority of the inspectors reported receiving ethics training. However, unique circumstances exist in the GOM [Gulf of Mexico], where many people are part of the oil and gas community and inspectors are likely to have worked in industry and to have family members in the business. For example, one inspector reported arriving at a facility to find that his brother, who worked for the operator elsewhere, had been flown to the facility to act as the compliance officer. The inspector informed the company that he could not conduct the inspection with his brother present. Another company representative worked with the inspector during that day.

And while unannounced inspections are a critical element of any serious inspection regime, they were nearly unheard of in the Gulf:

Ninety percent of inspectors responding to the survey identified a critical need for more unannounced inspections. However, unannounced inspections are rarely performed. In the GOM, such inspections are limited by United States Coast Guard (USCG) security restrictions on facilities that are required to maintain a Maritime Security plan (MARSEC facilities). District offices are required to give 24 hours notice prior to conducting an inspection on these facilities. A 2007 GOM directive also states that a 20-minute followed by a 5-minute notification should be given to all other facilities. A 2005 GOM directive required only a 5-minute notification. The definition of what constitutes an unannounced inspection and the conditions under which it could be conducted also varied from office to office. For example, one district office indicated that inspectors could land on some platforms without any notification, while another district office stated that a 20-minute advance notice would be given. Others interviewed stated that the requirements for helicopter pilots to call ahead before landing precluded unannounced inspections. Finally, documents, including the 2007 GOM directive, indicate the existence of special notification arrangements between BOEMRE and certain companies.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

St. Petersburg, Fla. - Through a chemical fingerprinting process, University of South Florida researchers have definitively linked clouds of underwater oil in the northern Gulf of Mexico to BP's runaway Deepwater Horizon well — the first direct scientific link between the subsurface oil clouds commonly known as "plumes" and the BP oil spill, USF officials said Friday.

Until now, scientists had circumstantial evidence, but lacked that definitive scientific link.

The announcement came on the same day that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that its researchers have confirmed the existence of the subsea plumes at depths of 3,300 to 4,300 feet below the surface of the Gulf. NOAA said its detection equipment also implicated the BP well in the plumes' creation.

Together, the two studies confirm what in the early days of the spill was denied by BP and viewed skeptically by NOAA's chief — that much of the crude that gushed from the Deepwater Horizon well stayed beneath the surface of the water.

"What we have learned completely changes the idea of what an oil spill is," said chemical oceanographer David Hollander, one of three USF researchers credited with the matching samples of oil taken from the water with samples from the BP well. "It has gone from a two-dimensional disaster to a three-dimensional catastrophe." More...

Bipartisan group of senators propose plan for post oil spill recovery along Gulf coast

The bipartisan nature of the group – six senators coming from across the political aisle and across the Gulf - sends a strong signal to congressional leadership that there is broad support for such a measure, which is a rarity in Washington these days but something necessary for any legislation to pass.  The senators’ proposal, spearheaded by Sens. Bill Nelson (D-FL) and Roger Wicker (R-MS), is similar in aim to one offered just yesterday in the House by U.S. Rep. Jeff Miller, a Republican from Chumuckla, Fla.   
           The House plan would offer assistance mainly to property owners, while the senators would target job creation through tax incentives to employers and for tourism. More...

It is disgusting that after 90 days of oil and more than 80,000 million gallons leaking into the Gulf, the Republican House of Representatives would not allow more than 20 minutes of debate on the issue and immediately adjourned. The first casualty in this calamity was our environment. The second was our economy. Now the third casualty is our Democracy.
Today the Republican-led Legislature convened in a special session but refused to act for the people of Florida. They met briefly and chose political partisanship over action. These lawmakers are more interested in “playing politics” than ensuring that the ongoing crisis in the Gulf never happens again. This disaster has unprecedented environmental impacts and has compromised thousands of jobs and our state’s overall economy and yet lawmakers convened in Tallahassee, costing taxpayers $40,000 every day they are here, for little more than political shenanigans.
Joining Florida’s Republican-led Legislature’s choice of inaction is Congressman Adam Putnam, putting the interest of his big money friends from big oil first. He has called today’s session ‘patently political’ and a ‘political sham’. Is it a sham that people are losing their jobs, their homes, the way of life they have had for generations? Our Legislature had many choices for how they could have handled today’s session and chose to do nothing.
Congressman Putnam claims that he wants to be your consumer advocate, but  has a history of advocating against the consumer and protecting the interest of big business.
We cannot allow this inaction to continue. Today I joined with citizens from all over Florida for “Hands at the Capital” to show our frustration over the Deep Horizon Oil Spill, and our outrage and disappointment with the Republican leadership. We will continue to stand up against Big Oil and other special interests for the people of Florida. Join us in our efforts by contacting the Florida House and Senate Leadership and letting them know that you are ashamed of their inaction.
Today’s display of inaction by Republican lawmakers embodies why now is the time for new leadership in Florida.
Thank you.

Scott Maddox

This is on now – The Hearing Started at 9 AM July 20, 2010

A tough new memo from a House committee probing the Gulf oil spill exposes the Interior Department under Presidents Bush and Obama for its failure to properly oversee offshore oil drilling operations. The three most recent Interior Secretaries -- Gale Norton (2002-2006), Dirk Kempthorne (2006-2009), and Ken Salazar (2009-present) -- all come in for withering criticism and are due to testify at congressional hearing on Tuesday, where they are sure to be asked tough questions about their tenure.

The memorandum from the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Democratic majority staff takes perhaps the toughest stance on Norton's controversial tenure (she was recently the subject of a Justice Department probe into whether she acted improperly by granting Royal Dutch Shell several valuable oil shale leases on federal land shortly before she took a job with the oil giant -- DOJ has reportedly closed its probe as of last week).

Just two weeks after Bush was sworn into office in 2001, he asked Vice President Dick Cheney to head a task force to develop energy policy. The much-criticized task force met privately with oil and gas executives and Cheney repeatedly refused to disclose their identities. In May 2001, the group issued its report, which stated that "exploration and production from the OCS [Outer Continental Shelf] has an impressive environmental record." It also stated that existing environmental permitting laws and regulations, at the federal and state level, were creating "delays and uncertainties [that] can hinder proper energy exploration and production projects."

As the federal official responsible for implementing much of the administration's new energy policy, Norton encouraged offshore drilling with incentives for oil companies but she "imposed few new safety standards on offshore drilling operations," according to the memo.

"On multiple occasions, reports prepared for the Minerals Management Service (MMS) warned that the blowout preventers (BOPs) used on offshore wells were unreliable. The Department never acted on these warnings. The Department also rejected efforts begun in the Clinton Administration to strengthen federal regulation of offshore well cementing practices."

Kempthorne didn't perform much better -- after the sale of a lease for the Macondo well, the site of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, to BP for $34 million in 2008, he crowed that the agency had "won the championship." In addition, the memo describes the extent to which the agency underestimated the extent of any spill: "The environmental assessments prepared by the Department for the lease area found that the most likely size of a large spill would be just 4,600 barrels, less than 1% of the amount of oil that has been spilled from the Macondo well since April 20, 2010."

Under Kempthorne, the agency was also embroiled in an embarrassing scandal in 2008, in which it was revealed that government employees accepted gifts, used drugs with and had sex with oil industry officials.

Though the memo notes that Salazar has instituted some reforms and some needed regulations for the agency's Minerals Management Service, which oversees offshore oil and gas drilling, it takes the agency to task for its decisions regarding the Deepwater Horizon. Specifically, MMS granted BP a "categorical exclusion" from the need to conduct a thorough site-specific environmental review. The agency also allowed BP to make several key revisions to the drilling site, changes which have been shown to have potentially played a major role in the rig's disastrous explosion on April 20, 2010.

DOI Track Record _ Oil Spill Hearing Memo