This article titled “BP cost-cutting blamed for ‘avoidable’ Deepwater Horizon oil spill” was written by Suzanne Goldenberg, for The Guardian on Thursday 6th January 2011 01.57 UTC

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was an avoidable disaster caused in part by a series of cost-cutting decisions made by BP and its partners, the White House oil commission has concluded.

In a preview of its final report, due next week, the national oil spill commission said systemic management failure at BP, Transocean, and Halliburton caused the blow-out in the Gulf of Mexico, and warned that such a disaster would likely recur because of industry complacency.

Many of the poor decisions taken on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig before the fatal blow-out on 20 April were taken to save time and money.

“Whether purposeful or not, many of the decisions that BP, Halliburton, and Transocean made that increased the risk of the Macondo blowout clearly saved those companies significant time (and money),” the report said.

In a separate chart, it identified nine decisions that increased risk; seven of these saved the companies time. BP was involved in all nine decisions.

BP, which owned the well, did not enforce the proper controls to manage those increased risks, the report said. “BP did not have adequate controls in place to ensure that key decisions in the months leading up to the blow-out were safe or sound from an engineering perspective.”

It continued on the same theme, concluding: “Most of the mistakes and oversights at Macondo can be traced back to a single overarching failure – a failure of management.”

In earlier pronouncements, the commission’s chairmen have suggested a culture of complacency ruled on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig and in the oil industry.

“This disaster likely would not have happened had the companies involved been guided by an unrelenting commitment to safety first,” commission co-chairman Bob Graham, said in a statement. “And it likely would not have happened if the responsible governmental regulators had the capacity and will to demand world-class safety standards.”

On 11 January, the seven-member commission will publish its full report into the causes of the blow-out, which killed 11 men and spewed 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf. Its findings could prove critical to the civil lawsuit filed last month by the US Justice Department against BP, Transocean and other companies involved in the spill for damages to the environment, as well as the hundreds of lawsuits filed by Gulf residents who have lost their livelihoods because of the spill.

The report warned that BP and the other companies could be liable for billions more in compensation to people who have lost money because of the oil spill, and for damage to natural resources.

The explosion was caused by a sudden kick of gas through the 5,000 ft riser pipe connecting the well to the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that – another investigation found – went undetected for several crucial moments. The report identified a series of mistakes that, it said, eventually made the blow-out “inevitable.”

It paid particular attention to the faulty cementing job, performed by Halliburton, at the bottom of the well. But it blamed BP for failing to exercise proper oversight over the cementing job, and for misreading a pressure test that indicated the well had not been properly sealed.

“Based on evidence currently available, there is nothing to suggest that BP’s engineering team conducted a formal, disciplined analysis of the combined impact of these risk factors on the prospects for a successful cement job,” the report said.

It also criticised BP’s choice of a long string well design. BP crew were also wrong to replace heavy drilling mud in the riser pipe with lighter seawater before the well was properly sealed, the report said.

Transocean also came in for criticism for failing to communicate to its crew the risks of deepwater drilling even after a near-miss only months earlier.

BP said in a statement that it was working with government regulators to ensure that the experience in the Gulf led to improved practices.

Transocean tried to shift the blame to BP and government. “The procedures being conducted in the final hours were crafted and directed by BP engineers and approved in advance by federal regulators,” a company statement said.

Halliburton, which has previously criticised commission lab tests finding a faulty cement seal, said the commission had made use of selective information.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

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Everyone knows China is on of the most polluted places on earth. Many of the rivers in China are so polluted they no longer support life. In some rivers the pollution level is so toxic that merely touching the water can cause skin burns.

The unchecked pollution in Chinese waters however, is now threatening at least one popular Olympic event–sailing. With only six weeks until China hosts the Olympic sailing regatta in the city of Qingdao, officials are working feverishly to clean up a massive algae bloom that is choking off large stretches of coastline.

As many as 20,000 people and more than 1,000 boats are participating in the clean-up effort. Nearly a third of the coastal waters (5,000 sq. miles) designated for the Olympic games is covered by the algae.

Algae blooms occur naturally in the Yellow Sea and elsewhere, however the size of the bloom is believed by everyone except Chinese officials to be caused from the raw sewage that is dumped into the water daily. In addition to that, the rivers and tributaries that flow in to the coastal waters are often polluted with industrial run-off.

WASHINGTON — A flock of small jets took flight from Washington Thursday, each carrying a Democratic presidential candidate to South Carolina for the first debate of the political season.

For Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, Chris Dodd and Joe Biden, it was wheels up shortly after they voted in favor of legislation requiring that U.S. troops begin returning home from Iraq in the fall.

No one jet pooled, no one took commercial flights to save money, fuel or emissions.

All but Biden, who flew on a private jet, chartered their flights — a campaign expense of between $7,500 and $9,000.

Federal Election Commission rules allow candidates to pay only the equivalent of first-class fare to fly on private jets owned by corporations or other special interests. But a Senate ethics bill approved earlier this year would require senators flying on corporate jets to pay full charter rates. The legislation must still be reconciled with a House bill and has yet to become law.

Several senators running for president are abiding by it anyway, either paying charter cost or avoiding corporate jets altogether, as Obama and Republican Sen. John McCain have done. Dodd pays full charter rates when he flies on private planes. The Clinton and Biden campaigns did not immediately explain their policies.

Candidates who follow the more lenient FEC rules have a financial advantage.

Democrat John Edwards, for example, regularly uses a jet owned by Dallas trial lawyer Fred Baron, who is also the finance chairman of his presidential campaign. His campaign pays first-class rate for those flights. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney also flies on corporate jets and pays first-class rates.

Under FEC reimbursement regulations, a candidate flying in a corporate or union jet must pay the first-class rate unless the flight’s destination does not have scheduled commercial service. In that case, the candidate must pay the cost of chartering the plane.

For candidates who are now eschewing corporate jets, the cost difference can be significant.

For example, a one-way first class ticket on United Airlines with four days advance notice is $694 per person. A typical one-way charter flight on a small Lear jet seating six people would cost about $9,000.

Critics of corporate jet flights for politicians say the difference in cost makes a private jet an extraordinary special benefit and can give corporate executives or union leaders unusual access to a candidate.

Thursday’s debate, set on the campus of South Carolina State University in Orangeburg, S.C., made for some whirlwind scheduling. Clinton, for instance, was scheduled to return to Washington Friday morning for an 8 a.m. address to the New York State United Teachers 35th Annual Representative Assembly, then fly back to South Carolina for an 11 a.m. event in Greenville.

[Newsday]