EcocentricInvasive Species
I’ve written before about fears over the voracious Asian carp, an invasive species that has moved up the Mississippi and now seems to have made its way into the Great Lakes, where it could cause significant havoc. Scientists have been warning for months about the threat the carp—a family of freshwater fish native to China and parts of …
EcocentricEnergy
As I write this, the first Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM) is getting underway in Washington, with opening remarks from Energy Secretary Steven Chu—apparently taking a short break from uncovering problems in BP’s well capping procedures. (You can watch a live webcast of the meeting here.) The two-day meeting—yesterday’s session was …
EcocentricOil
In my last post on the oil spill—and trust me, I’ve long since lost count—I asked whether reports of seepages on the seafloor and anomalies near the wellhead indicated that the integrity tests that BP had been carrying might have damaged the well itself, causing leakages. Turns out I didn’t have to wait long for my answer—at a …
EcocentricPolitics
The Gulf oil spill is a visceral example—a sticky and black one—of how dysfunctional our national policy on oceans and shorelines really is. In granting energy companies leases to drill ever deeper in the Gulf of Mexico, the Department of the Interior seemed to give little thought to how a blown well might impact the region’s …
EcocentricOil
Didn’t get a chance to link to this earlier, but on the way back from New Orleans on Friday I wrote and posted a piece on the mainpage about a trip I took to see the oil spill with military veterans from Operation Free. It’s a new think tank/advocacy group that is making the oil dependency and climate change case on national security …
EcocentricUncategorized
Going into the integrity test being performed on BP’s blown well in the Gulf of Mexico, we were told that the longer the test was carried out, the better it would be for the wellbore—and for the chances of putting an early end to the oil spill. If the test—which began on July 15, after BP managed to stop the flow of oil from its new …
EcocentricOil
Quick update on BP’s well containment efforts while I’m waiting for the weather to clear in Louisiana, where the sky is leaking like a blown well. After shutting the containment cap yesterday afternoon and closing off the flow of oil, BP began pressure testing the integrity of the wellbore. About 18 hours after they began, BP vice …
EcocentricOil
When I heard that BP has successfully close all the valves on its new containment cap Thursday afternoon—effectively stopping the flow of oil for the first time in nearly three months as it began its well integrity tests—I was at a town meeting in Port Sulphur in Louisiana’s Plaquemines parish, ground zero for the oil spill. Kenneth …
EcocentricOil
A quick post before I head back out. Yesterday evening BP had begun closing down the valves on its new containment cap, in preparation to pressure test the integrity of the wellbore—and find out whether the well might be able to be fully capped. Overnight, though, they hit a snag—the kill line, one of three valves on the cap that the …
EcocentricOil
Call it oil spill interruptus. A day after Coast Guard Admiral Thad W. Allen—on the advice of academic and government scientists led by Energy Secretary Steven Chu—abruptly stopped a planned attempt to halt the flow of oil from the new containment cap and measure the integrity of the wellbore, the all-important test is now back on. …
