transocean criticizes the findings of the coast guard this in particular was interesting, coming straight out and blaming BP. maybe they should have put up twenty million like BP not that it really matters
60 Minutes ran a segment with an interview from one of the guys on the Rig and a government appointed investigator. They both echoed the same thing: BP's onsite Operations Manager was directing the rig operators to take shortcuts in adding 'mud' to the bit to cap the pressure. The investigator was livid about it and he was supposed to be impartial.
Top Transocean guy on rig won't testify. Seems like this is the guy who should have been making decisions.
2 years later, fish sick near BP oil spill site Email this Story Apr 20, 1:41 AM (ET) By CAIN BURDEAU BARATARIA BAY, La. (AP) - Open sores. Parasitic infections. Chewed-up-looking fins. Gashes. Mysterious black streaks. Two years after the drilling-rig explosion that touched off the biggest offshore oil spill in U.S. history, scientists are beginning to suspect that fish in the Gulf of Mexico are suffering the effects of the petroleum. The evidence is nowhere near conclusive. But if those suspicions prove correct, it could mean that the environmental damage to the Gulf from the BP disaster is still unfolding and the picture isn't as rosy as it might have seemed just a year ago. And the damage may extend well beyond fish. In the past year, research has emerged showing deep-water coral, seaweed beds, dolphins, mangroves and other species of plants and animals are suffering. "There is lots of circumstantial evidence that something is still awry," said Christopher D'Elia, dean of Louisiana State University's School of the Coast and Environment. "On the whole, it is not as much environmental damage as originally projected. Doesn't mean there is none." Reports of strange things with fish began emerging when fishermen returned to the Gulf weeks after BP's gushing oil well was capped during the summer of 2010. They started catching grouper and red snapper with large open sores and strange black streaks, lesions they said they had never seen. They promptly blamed the spill. The illnesses are not believed to pose any health threat to humans. But the problems could be devastating to some prized types of fish and to the people who make their living catching them. There's no saying for sure what's causing the diseases in what is still a relatively small percentage of the fish. The Gulf is assaulted with all kinds of contaminants every day. Moreover, scientists have no baseline data on sick fish in the Gulf from before the spill. The first comprehensive research may be years from publication. Still, it's clear to fishermen and researchers alike that something's amiss. - A recent batch of test results revealed the presence of oil in the bile extracted from fish caught in August 2011, nearly 15 months after the well blew out on April 20, 2010, in a disaster that killed 11 men. "Bile tells you what a fish's last meal was," said Steve Murawski, a marine biologist with the University of South Florida and former chief science adviser for the National Marine Fisheries Service. "There was as late as August of last year an oil source out there that some of those animals were consuming." Bile in red snapper, yellow-edge grouper and a few other species contained on average 125 parts per million of naphthalene, a compound in crude oil, Murawski said. Scientists expect to find almost none of the substance in fish captured in the open ocean. - Last summer, a federally funded team of scientists conducted what experts say is the most extensive study yet of sick fish in shallow and deep Gulf waters. Over seven cruises in July and August, the scientists caught about 4,000 fish, from Florida's Dry Tortugas to Louisiana. About 3 percent of the fish had gashes, ulcers and parasites symptomatic of environmental contamination, according to Murawski, the lead researcher. The number of sick fish rose as scientists moved west away from the relatively clean waters of Florida, and also as they pushed into deeper waters off Alabama, Mississippi and especially Louisiana, near where the Deepwater Horizon rig sank. About 10 percent of mud-dwelling tile fish caught in the DeSoto Canyon, to the northeast of the well, showed signs of sickness. "The closer to the oil rig, the higher the frequency was" of sick fish, Murawski said. Past studies off the Atlantic Seaboard found about 1 percent of fish suffering from diseases, Murawski said. But he said that figure cannot really be used for comparisons with the Gulf, whose warmer waters serve as an incubator for bacteria and parasites that can cause lesions and other illnesses. - Laboratory work over the past winter on the USF samples indicates the immune systems of the fish were impaired by an unknown environmental stress or contamination. Other researchers say they have come to similar conclusions. "Some of the things I've seen over the past year or so I've never seen before," said Will Patterson, a marine biologist at the University of South Alabama and at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab. "Things like fin rot, large open sores on fish, those were some of the more disturbing types of things we saw. Different changes in pigment, red snapper with large black streaks on them." Teasing out what might have been caused by the spill and what is normal will be tricky, and that's the challenge scientists now face. Deformities, diseases and sudden shifts in fish numbers are regular occurrences in nature. For example, scientists are not sure what to make of reports from fishermen of eyeless or otherwise deformed shrimp and crabs. "I've heard everything but shrimp with two heads," said Jerald Horst, a marine biologist retired from LSU AgCenter who writes books about the Gulf. "I listen respectfully. Reports can be useful but are not proof in themselves of cause and effect." Even if oil were pinpointed as the cause, it could be difficult to definitively tie the problem to the BP spill. The Gulf is strewn with wells, pipelines, natural oil leaks from the seafloor, and pollution from passing ships. And muddy, contaminant-laden water flows constantly into the Gulf from the Mississippi River. Still, the more scientists look - thanks to millions of dollars in research money, much of it coming from a fund set up by BP for independent research - the more they're finding that may be off-kilter. For example, last year scientists with the University of Louisiana at Lafayette took cruises in search of crabs, lobsters and seaweed they had been studying in the waters not far from the BP well. They found a surprising lack of diversity. There saw less seaweed and fewer crabs, lobsters and other forms of life. Also, crustaceans they pulled up had lesions, lost appendages and black gunk on their gills, said Darryl Felder, a biologist at ULL. He said the black coating may be associated with the large amounts of drilling mud used to try to plug the leaking well. In Barataria Bay, which was hit hard by the spill, scientists say they found dolphins that were anemic and showing signs of liver and lung disease. Those problems have not been linked to the spill. But in the same bay, scientists say they have linked oil contamination to genetic changes in bait fish known as killifish. Near the BP well, scientists have found a dying community of deep-sea coral. The scientists recently published findings linking its demise to oil that was chemically fingerprinted as having come from the BP well. Last year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration advised fishermen to throw suspicious-looking fish back, and fishermen say they have been doing that. At the same time, the Food and Drug Administration and state agencies say they have tested Gulf seafood extensively and found no problems, and researchers agree there is little cause for concern. "It's not a people issue, and people should not be concerned about fish entering the market," Murawski said. For the second year, fishermen like Wayne Werner, who catches red snapper commercially, are calling in with reports of lesions. He and others said they want to get to the bottom of the problem, which is forcing them to take longer trips to fishing spots outside the spill zone and making them fear for their livelihoods. "Every time we talked about bad fish, everybody kind of went nuts on us. Just like, 'You're hearsaying,' you know? And we're saying, 'Well, they're there,'" the Louisiana boat captain said this week. "They're still there. Now that the water is getting warm again, we're starting to see more and more again."
Takes 5 seconds for a search but here you go. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=150953991
It's an AP story. It's on every site on the internet. bigtexxx it's clear that you don't understand how news reporting works. Go here to see the pictures, everyone else: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap...mbokdA?docId=217fa037cbd546d9a8d6031df008814c
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/04/22/bp-cut-tax-13b-losses-spill/ BP Cut Tax Bill by $13B Due to Losses From Spill By Judson Berger Published April 22, 2011 | FoxNews.com Despite causing an historic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year, BP plans to reduce its tax bill by almost $13 billion by writing off its losses. The move is legal and above board. But with millions of Americans having just settled up with the IRS for 2010, it's causing consternation among activists who say BP shouldn't be offsetting its losses with federal money -- especially when Washington is in a budget crunch. "The U.S. taxpayer shouldn't be ... footing the bill for this. That just seems insane to me," said Aaron Viles, deputy director of the Gulf Restoration Network. BP confirmed to FoxNews.com that it paid no federal income tax to the U.S. government in 2010, though the company said it paid "significant" non-income tax and state income tax in the United States. "However, due to the high costs incurred on the spill, BP America in 2010 had no US domestic income, no taxable income and therefore paid no federal income tax," spokesman Daren Beaudo wrote in an email. The company ended up cutting its total tax bill significantly by claiming nearly $41 billion in losses due to the spill. Before the spill was considered, the company was posting a $36.1 billion profit and paying $11.4 billion in total taxes, according to the report. After the $41 billion Gulf disaster was considered, BP recorded a $4.8 billion net loss. "BP took a charge against the spill of nearly $41 billion and due to that loss of revenue, it amounted to $1.5 billion in fewer taxes paid. We made less money and as such paid fewer taxes," Beaudo wrote. Beaudo stressed that BP will not receive any additional tax refund or credit but Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, who examined the company's annual report, said that's like having extra money in the bank because BP didn't have to fork that amount over to Uncle Sam. Ellis said the annual report shows BP ended up owing nothing after deducting a total of $12.8 billion on its taxes due to its Gulf spill losses. The company is able to do that because the United States allows corporations to claim up to 35 percent of their losses. "This is all on the up and up," Ellis said. "It doesn't mean it makes it any easier for taxpayers to swallow, but it meets the letter of the law." The claim is not a surprise. BP said last summer that it would claim a credit on its losses, though at the time that was projected to be worth under $10 billion as the cost of the spill was projected to be smaller. But considering BP is operating a $20 billion compensation fund, the fact that it's getting a tax benefit worth more than half that doesn't sit right with some. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, when asked about the offset last July, said, "I don't think anybody would prefer that they do that," though he noted the tax laws have been on the books "for quite some time." "It doesn't add up," Nick Nyhart, president of Public Campaign, told FoxNews.com Thursday. "And it sends the wrong signal to the public about preferential treatment." A year after the spill, the Gulf is still struggling to restore its habitat. A new poll released this week showed 83 percent of voters support using BP oil spill fines to restore the Gulf Coast and Mississippi River Delta. The survey, from Lake Research Partners and Bellwether Research and Consulting, was conducted April 12-17 and had a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points. On Thursday, BP announced it had reached an agreement with state and federal agencies to dedicate $1 billion toward restoration projects in the Gulf.
