Taylor Energy wells still leaking in Gulf after 8 years

Published: Saturday, February 11, 2012

Ben Raines, Press-Register

A cluster of leaking wells in the Gulf may have released as much as 1.2 million gallons of oil since 2004, when they were damaged during Hurricane Ivan, according to a report from the Skytruth environmental group.

The group’s estimate is 100 times higher than a U.S. Coast Guard estimate of 12,720 gallons provided by the agency on Thursday.

Coast Guard officials said their calculation was based on “daily reports” filed by the wells’ owner, Taylor Energy Co. LLC.

Though the well has been leaking for 2,662 days, there are only 714 reports in the federal record, said Paul Woods, with Skytruth. For instance, he said, the company apparently filed just three daily reports for the month of July 2011.

Taylor Energy officials did not return calls seeking comment.

Woods said that his organization’s estimates were made by compiling the periodic spill reports filed by Taylor Energy and examining satellite images showing a persistent slick on the surface of the Gulf since 2004.

Skytruth filled in the gaps left by the missing reports by looking at satellite images of the slick and calculating an average daily flow rate for each of the eight years the well has been leaking.

Using those flow rate calculations, Skytruth came up with a range for the amount of oil leaked somewhere between 250,000 and 1.2 million gallons of oil.

Coast Guard officials said the agency had access to data from additional overflights made by Taylor Energy that are not available to the public. When asked, they were unsure how many overflights had been made by the company since the spill began. But officials said they believe flights have been made nearly every day since 2008.

On many days, officials said, Taylor reported “no observable oil.”

When calculating how many gallons of oil had been spilled since 2004, Coast Guard officials said the agency entered a zero for those days rather than an estimate of the average ongoing leak.

In general, Skytruth contends, sheens are only visible when the Gulf is calm. Waves above about 3 feet — a common occurrence in the Gulf — break up the oil before sheens can form.

“We think this points to a systematic underreporting by the Coast Guard of small and medium spills. It also shows the problem with allowing the polluter to report how much they’ve spilled,” Woods said. “Just because the sea is too rough for a sheen to form doesn’t mean the well quit leaking that day. How can the public gauge the risk of drilling if a spill reported as 12,000 gallons is actually many times larger?”

The hundreds of incident reports on the Taylor spill filed with the National Response Center — the federal agency tasked with documenting oil spills — also contain widely divergent estimates of the amount of oil present on the Gulf’s surface from day to day.

For instance, a report from 2004, shortly after the leak began, describes a sheen 4 miles long and a half-mile wide. Federal officials estimated that sheen contained about a quarter of a gallon of oil. Meanwhile, a report from July of 2008 described a sheen of identical size, but here the federal estimate was 336 gallons of oil.

Federal officials said estimates of the amount of oil contained in a sheen are imprecise due to factors including the thickness of the sheen, the size of waves, and the natural weathering of oil exposed to the air.

During the BP oil spill, high-resolution satellite images showed a sheen associated with the Taylor spill that was about 10 miles long. Using a standard method of estimating how much oil is present in a sheen based on work by scientists at the University of Florida, Skytruth reported the slick contained a minimum of 3,157 gallons of oil.

At the time, Coast Guard officials estimated the Taylor wells were collectively leaking 14 gallons a day. At that rate, according to Skytruth, it would have taken about seven months for 3,157 gallons to collect on the Gulf’s surface, an impossibility given that oil sheens typically dissipate in a matter of hours or days due to waves and evaporation.

On Thursday, the Coast Guard estimated that the Taylor wells were now leaking about 3 gallons a day. The agency reports the average sheen at the site now is about 7,000 feet long and 500 feet wide.

The wells were damaged when a mudslide during Hurricane Ivan destroyed the platform they were connected to. The Coast Guard said Taylor has stemmed the flow somewhat by using three containment domes. Oil collects inside the domes and is sucked out by a ship on the surface every few days. In addition, the company has sealed some of the wells by drilling relief wells and killing them with cement.

Woods said the amount of oil coming from the nine broken wells was tiny compared to the BP spill. But, he said the public should take note that Taylor has been unable to stop the leaks seven years after they started.

The national Waterkeeper Alliance filed a federal Clean Water Act suit against Taylor Energy earlier this month.

“This is in shallow water, 11 miles off the coast, and it has taken this long to clean up. Imagine if this happened in deep water. We saw how long it took to shut in the one BP well,” Woods said. “Now imagine if we had a similar problem with a deepwater platform with 28 wells attached to it. We don’t think anyone is planning for that kind of problem.”

Discolored water at Mississippi River pass could be oil

Coast Guard checks on discolored water near La.
AP News - Oct 23, 2010

The Coast Guard said Saturday that an area of discolored water near a Mississippi River pass south of New Orleans appears to be an algae bloom, but another spot 10 miles away could be oil.

Jeff Hall, spokesman for the Unified Area Command, said tests could determine if the suspected oil is from the BP spill.

The Coast Guard sent two flights over the West Bay area near Venice on Saturday. Two boats also went out to check the waters.

Hall told The Associated Press that tests will be done Monday on water samples from an area where a marine investigator believes there's an algae bloom near Venice. The area of discolored water there was about 2.5 miles long and 300 yards wide, Hall said.

About 10 miles away, Hall said a crew spotted what appears "some kind of silvery, weathered oil." The crew in that area didn't have a sampling kit but investigators could go back out and take samples that could be tested to determine whether it's oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill, he said.

Six months after the spill started, the federal government maintains much of the oil is now gone from the Gulf. But independent researchers say they are discovering significant amounts of crude below the sea's surface, including on the ocean floor. They fear the oil that remains could harm species lower down the food chain.

The Times-Picayune reported in its Saturday editions that fishermen on Friday spotted what appeared to be miles-long strings of weathered oil, and a photojournalist with the newspaper captured the images in a flight over the water.

Hall said the material discovered Saturday that appears to be weathered oil is "away from where those photographs were taken."

The Deepwater Horizon rig exploded April 20, killing 11 people. About 172 million gallons of oil spilled into the Gulf before the well was initially plugged July 15. It was permanently sealed Sept. 19.

Robert Barham, secretary of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, told the Times-Picayune that if oil is confirmed by his agency, the area will be closed again to fishing.

The Mississippi River delta is a primary wintering ground for hundreds of thousands of ducks and geese, some of which already have begun arriving. The West Bay area leads into several shallower interior bays that attract ducks, geese and myriad species of shore and wading birds each winter.

Marine biologist claims US Coast Guard involved in Corexit spraying

By Stephen C. Webster | Monday, July 5th, 2010 

A marine biologist working with a group of environmentalists to save sea turtles claims the U.S. Coast Guard is involved in spraying a toxic chemical dispersant over the Gulf of Mexico; and he says it has already traveled inland.

"Do I think there's dispersants coming in and mixing with our everyday lives?" Dr. Chris Pincetich asked, speaking with a group of activists.

"Absolutely," he pronounced.

Pincetich, a marine biologist and toxicologist who works with the Sea Turtle Restoration Project, was speaking to a group of activists who call themselves Project Gulf Impact.

Video of the interview quickly made its way to the Internet, where it has sparked renewed concern about the oil dispersant substance Corexit, being sprayed over the Gulf of Mexico in the wake of the worst environmental accident in human history. Up until last week that dubious distinction was held by the Ixtoc underwater well disaster in 1979.

BP, the oil company responsible for a broken deep-water well that has been gushing oil and gas unabated since April 22, has been dumping massive amounts of the chemical stock ever since the disaster began as a way of keeping the oil off the water's surface. Thinned by dispersant, the oil mixes with the water column and forms underwater plumes that are less likely to wash ashore or be measured by satellite photography.

After initially approving Corexit, the U.S Environmental Protection Agency retracted its allowance and ordered BP to stop dumping the chemical substance by Sunday, May 23. BP ignored the order, as it had purchased more than a third of the world's supply of Corexit. Nalco Co., formed in-part by a longtime member of BP's board of directors, is in process of mass producing more in Sugarland, Texas.

The EPA followed up on May 26 by ordering BP to reduce the volume of Corexit output by 75 percent. Again, BP did not comply, according to CNN.

"Before May 26, BP used 25,689 gallons a day of the chemical dispersant Corexit," the network reported on July 2. "Since then, CNN's analysis shows, the daily average of dispersant use has dropped to 23,250 gallons a day, a 9 percent decline."

The EPA's Web site claims the agency and the Coast Guard are tightly monitoring BP's use of Corexit; it does not say that the Coast Guard is actively participating in the deployment thereof.

"The Federal Government reserves the right to discontinue the use of this dispersant method if negative impacts on the environment outweigh the benefits, and the Coast Guard’s Federal On-Scene Coordinator has the authority to make daily decisions regarding any request by BP to adjust the use of dispersant," the agency declared, even after its own orders were so obviously ignored.

"The exact makeup of [Corexit] is kept secret under competitive trade laws, but a worker safety sheet for one product, called Corexit, says it includes 2-butoxyethanol, a compound associated with headaches, vomiting and reproductive problems at high doses," Pro Publica noted.

However, Fast Company magazine added: "in a statement to the Gulf Oil Disaster Recovery Group, toxicology expert Dr. William Sawyer elaborated on the risks associated with Corexit. According to Sawyer, Corexit is also known as deodorized kerosene--a substance with health risks to humans as well as sea turtles, dolphins, breathing reptiles, birds, and any species that need to surface for air exchanges."

Breathing dispersant fumes is what's thought to have sickened and number of spill response workers. Crew members aboard three separate vessels "reported experiencing nausea, dizziness, headaches and chest pains," according to the Coast Guard. Instead of ensuring workers had adequate access to respirators, BP CEO Tony Hayward claimed workers had fallen ill from food poisoning. Fishermen who've since joined the cleanup effort have been discouraged from wearing proper breathing equipment, allegedly because BP wants to stem the tide of "hysteria" over the disaster.

The chairman of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary Advisory Council called Corexit "worse than oil." However, at the end of June the EPA concluded a round of testing on the substance and declared Corexit to be "slightly toxic," but actually not worse than oil.

The New York Times reported:

Lab workers determined what concentration of dispersant was needed to kill half the fish or half the shrimp in the sample, measured in parts per million, and then classified the products in rather broad categories. Corexit, which becomes lethal to half the shrimp or fish at 130 parts per million, was labeled “practically nontoxic,” and dispersants that killed half the shrimp or fish in concentrations between 19 and 55 parts per million were labeled “slightly toxic.” The worst-ranking, Dispersit SPC 1000, killed half the aquatic life at 2.9 parts per million and was classed as “moderately toxic.’’

To the contrary, Yobie Benjamin with the San Francisco Chronicle wrote:

Corexit 9500 is a solvent originally developed by Exxon and now manufactured by the Nalco of Naperville, Illinois (who by the way just hired some expensive lobbyists). Corexit is is four times more toxic than oil (oil is toxic at 11 ppm (parts per million), Corexit 9500 at only 2.61ppm).

In a report written by Anita George-Ares and James R. Clark for Exxon Biomedical Sciences, Inc. titled "Acute Aquatic Toxicity of Three Corexit Products: An Overview"Corexit 9500 was found to be one of the most toxic dispersal agents ever developed.

The substance is thought to become even more toxic when mixed with salty, oily water at high temperatures, such as those found on the Gulf's surface in the middle of summer.

Likewise, Dr. Pincetich argued that his background in toxicology and testing pesticides on marine life gives him a unique perspective on the EPA's measurement process.

"People need to realize that their water, their air, the sand they're walking on, the things they're touching when they wake up in the morning -- are coated with this stuff," he said. "If you see it in a high concentration, it looks like radiator fluid. It is not a pretty sight. The stuff is toxic. The tests say 'no effect'. I can tell you from managing those tests as a professional that you need to know exactly what test gave you what effect that you tested. So, if it was no effect on the survival of seven days of the fish, what happened to that fish at 10 days? That was my doctoral thesis."

He continued: "The pesticides that killed no fish at 96 hours, which is the EPA deadline -- 90 percent of them died two weeks later. These were embryonic salmon. There are a lot of chemical effects that are not being measured by the standard EPA tests."

Pincetich specifically cautioned that no matter how carefully Corexit is sprayed, the chemicals will always drift inland, or simply evaporate and return in condensation.

"[Corexit] basically disrupts the natural ability of oil to bond with itself," he said. "Oil bilipid layers next to each other are the very basis of life. Each of us is made out of cells. Those cells are nothing more than an oil layer surrounding our proteins and RNA and all the other molecules talking to each other. You put in a chemical that disrupts that basic biological structure and you are putting yourself at risk from umpteen effects."

The Coast Guard has banned reporters from getting near oil spill sites: a move that's been called an assault on the First Amendment. If indeed the guard is actively assisting BP in violating the EPA's order to significantly reduce Corexit output -- and if they've begun taking up night-time spraying missions on the company's behalf, as Dr. Pincetich claims -- then their reasons for shutting out the media become much easier to assume.

Dreadful as it sounds, the scenario would seem to lead reasonable observers in wondering why a foreign corporation is directing a branch of America's military.

Salon writer Glenn Greenwald opined similarly in a recent slight to what he called the "BP/Government police state," saying: "The very idea that government officials are acting as agents of BP (of all companies) in what clearly seem to be unconstitutional acts to intimidate and impede the media is infuriating. Obviously, the U.S. Government and BP share the same interest -- preventing the public from knowing the magnitude of the spill and the inadequacy of the clean-up efforts -- but this creepy police state behavior is intolerable."

This video was published to YouTube by Project Gulf Impact on July 4, 2010.

Updated with information on Nalco, Co. and the Ixtoc oil disaster.

Correction: Nalco, Co. released a list of Corexit's chemical components in May, after intense public pressure over its use in the Gulf. The list had been a closely-held corporate secret up until that point. The company still has yet to publicly disclose the concentrations of each ingredient, but has allegedly shared this information with the EPA.

Coast Guard to BP: Speed it up, stop the spill

By JAY REEVES and RAY HENRY, Associated Press Writers

ORANGE BEACH, Ala. – The Coast Guard has demanded that BP step up its efforts to contain the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico by the end of the weekend, telling the British oil giant that its slow pace in stopping the spill is becoming increasingly alarming as the disaster fouled the coastline in ugly new ways Saturday.

The Coast Guard sent a testy letter to BP's chief operating officer that said the company urgently needs to pick up the pace and present a better plan to contain the spill by the time President Barack Obama arrives on Monday for his fourth visit to the beleaguered coast. The letter, released Saturday, follows nearly two months of tense relations between BP and the government and reflects the growing frustration over the company's inability to stop the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history.

The dispute escalated on the same day that ominous new signs of the tragedy emerged on the beaches of Alabama. Waves of unsightly brown surf hit the shores in Orange Beach, leaving stinking, dark piles of oil that dried in the hot sun and extended up to 12 feet from the water's edge for as far as the eye could see.

It was the worst hit yet to Alabama beaches. Tar-like globs have washed up periodically throughout the disaster, but Saturday's pollution was significantly worse.

"This is awful," said Shelley Booker of Shreveport, La., who was staying in a condominium with her teenage daughter and her friends near the deserted beach about 100 miles from the site of the spill.

Scientists have estimated that anywhere between about 40 million gallons to more than 100 million gallons of oil have spewed into the Gulf since a drilling rig exploded April 20, killing 11 workers. The latest cap installed on the blown-out well is capturing about 650,000 gallons of oil a day, but large quantities are still spilling into the sea.

The Coast Guard initially sent a letter to BP on Wednesday asking for more details on its plans to contain the oil. BP responded, saying a new system to trap much more oil should be complete by mid-July. That system's new design is meant to better withstand the force of hurricanes and could capture about 2 million gallons of oil daily when finished, the company said.

But Coast Guard Rear Adm. James A. Watson said in a follow-up letter Friday he was concerned that BP's plans were inadequate, especially in light of revised estimates this week that indicated the size of the spill could be up to twice as large as previously thought.

"BP must identify in the next 48 hours additional leak containment capacity that could be operationalized and expedited to avoid the continued discharge of oil ... Recognizing the complexity of this challenge, every effort must be expended to speed up the process," Watson said in the letter addressed to chief operating officer Doug Suttles.

Suttles said the company will respond to the letter by Sunday night.

"We've got a team of people looking to see, can we accelerate some items that are in that plan and is it possible to do more," Suttles said in a brief interview after speaking to workers at a command center where he thanked BP employees and contractors for their work in cleaning up the spill. "There are some real challenges to do that, including safety."

Suttles also acknowledged that "there's big frustrations out there. They're out there in the community, they're out there in government, they're out there everywhere. And I think they're all rooted in the fact that none of us want this to happen. And none of us want this to occur, and we all want it to get fixed now."

The letter and deadline come just before Obama is set to visit the Gulf Coast on Monday and Tuesday. On Saturday, Obama reassured British Prime Minister David Cameron that his frustration over the oil spill in the Gulf was not an attack on Britain.

The two leaders spoke by phone for 30 minutes Saturday to soothe trans-Atlantic tensions over the spill. Cameron also has been under pressure to get Obama to tone down the criticism, fearing it will hurt the millions of British retirees holding BP stock that has taken a beating in recent weeks.

Cameron's office said the prime minister told Obama of his sadness at the disaster, while Obama said he recognized that BP was a multinational company and that his frustration "had nothing to do with national identity."

BP is hard at work trying to find new ways to capture more oil, but officials say the only way to permanently stop the spill is a relief well that will drill sideways into the broken well and plug it with cement.

Right now, a containment cap sitting over a well pipe is siphoning off around 653,100 gallons of oil to a ship the ocean surface. That oil is then unloaded to tankers and taken ashore.

To boost its capacity, BP also plans to trap oil using lines that earlier shot heavy drilling mud deep into the well during a failed attempt to stop the flow. This time, those lines will work in reverse. Oil and gas from the well will flow up to a semi-submersible drilling rig where it will be burned in a specialized boom that BP estimates can vaporize a maximum 420,000 gallons of oil daily. Another ship should be in place by mid-July to process even more oil.

News that the federal government had given BP until the end of the weekend to speed up the oil containment was met with raised eyebrows and long sighs as locals gathered to barbecue, drink Budweiser and listen to classic rock at a fishing benefit in Pointe a la Hache, La.

"I'll believe it when I see it," said Dominic Bazile, a firefighter.

Meanwhile, Gulf states affected by the disaster are putting the squeeze on BP, seeking to protect their interests amid talk of the possibility that BP may eventually file for bankruptcy.

The attorney general in Florida and the state treasurer in Louisiana want BP to put a total of $7.5 billion in escrow accounts to compensate the states and their residents for damages now and in the future. Alabama doesn't plan to take such action, while Mississippi and Texas haven't said what they will do.

As of the end of March, BP had only $6.8 billion in cash and cash equivalents available.