Currently viewing the tag: “permit”
The U.S. Dept. of Transportation gave notice this week that it has begun considering whether to grant the Canadian company Bruce Power permission to move 16 radioactively contaminated steam generators through the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway.
In a notice in the March 30 Federal Register DOT’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration wrote that on Feb. 24 Bruce Power asked for special arrangements so that it could transport the large generators for recycling and volume reduction in Sweden.
The initial leg of transport would be by road and entirely within Canada. The steam generators would then be loaded on a vessel in Owen Sound, Ontario for transport to Sweden via Lake Huron, Lake Erie, and Lake Ontario and interconnecting waterways as well as the St. Lawrence River. At various times the vessel would necessarily enter U.S. waters. Therefore, under IAEA special arrangement provisions, the U.S. would need to revalidate the Canadian certificate in order to permit transport.
PHMSA is recognized as the IAEA Competent Authority for the U.S. and is responsible for competent authority approval in these cases.PHMSA intends to conduct a fully independent review of the proposed transport including safety, environmental, and fitness assessments, in consultation with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and U.S. Coast Guard. PHMSA must approve, deny, or institute additional controls regarding
the transport in the request for competent authority approval.
A group of over 70 mayors from U.S. and Canadian towns along the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway have warned that this shipment could endanger public water supplies.
The Michigan Court of Appeals has rejected a Michigan Farm Bureau attempt to limit the Dept. of Environmental Quality’s authority to require pollution discharge permits from concentrated animal feeding operations or CAFOs.
The Muskegon Chronicle reports that a three judge panel has upheld a 2009 ruling by Newaygo County Circuit Judge Anthony Monton.
The DEQ in 2003 began requiring all CAFOs to obtain discharge permits. The rule was aimed at keeping manure that operations spread on farm fields from draining into surface waters.
Farm groups argued the state could only require discharge permits after a CAFO actually had a discharge of manure that caused water pollution.
Monton sided with the DEQ, the farm groups appealed, and the appeals court affirmed Monton’s decision.
“We conclude that the DEQ was fully authorized to require CAFOs to either (1) seek and obtain an NPDES permit (irrespective of whether they actually discharge pollutants), or (2) satisfactorily demonstrate that they have no potential to discharge,” the judges wrote in a 23-page opinion.
The Farm Bureau has not yet released a response to the ruling.
Run-off from CAFOs is a leading cause of surface water pollution in Michigan.
Monday, President Obama was gushing with praise for Chile’s reforms, which are exactly the things he blocks from happening in the US
American Thinker Blog
An “explosive impact” occurred Tuesday morning at the No. 2 reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in northeastern Japan, a day after a hydrogen explosion rocked another reactor, the plant’s owner said….
Yukio Edano, Japan’s chief Cabinet secretary, said he could not rule out the possibility of a meltdown at all three troubled reactors.…
The situation in Japan is unprecedented, as the CNN story from 7:32 pm EDT makes clear. I don’t believe there’s ever been more than one reactor with a malfunctioning cooling system seriously facing a possible meltdown at one time. Yesterday 2 were and now 3 are simultaneously.
The spent fuel in nearby storage pools also poses a great risk that isn’t receiving sufficient media attention (see below).
As long as events keep unfolding at a rapid pace, I’ll try to keep the news up to date with these overnight posts where readers can posts comments and updates.
The NY Times has updated a story as of 8:03 pm EDT that lays out the situation and the risks, “New Blast Reported at Nuclear Plant as Japan Struggles to Cool Reactor”:
An explosion early Tuesday morning may have damaged the inner steel containment vessel of the No. 2 reactor at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, leading to the wide release of radioactive materials there and forcing the evacuation of some emergency workers, the plant’s operator said.The blast appeared to be different — and more severe — than those that at two other troubled reactor at the same nuclear complex because this one, reported to have occurred at 6:14 a.m., happened in the “pressure suppression room” in the cooling area of the reactor, raising the possibility to damage to the reactor’s containment vessel.
Any damage to the steel containment vessel of a nuclear reactor is considered critical because it raises the prospect of an uncontrolled release of radioactive material and full meltdown of the nuclear fuel inside. To date, even during the four-day crisis in Japan that amounts to the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, workers had managed to avoid a breach of a containment vessel and had limited releases of radioactive steam to relatively low levels.
The underlying situation is also grave:
The new blast came after emergency operations to pump seawater into the same reactor failed, leaving the nuclear fuel in that reactor dangerously exposed late Monday into early Tuesday morning.Tokyo Electric Power said late Monday that a malfunctioning valve made it impossible to release pressure in the reactor, which in turn thwarted efforts to inject seawater into it to cool the fuel. The water levels inside the reactor’s containment vessel fell and left its fuel rods exposed — perhaps completely exposed — for some hours.
Workers had been having difficulty injecting seawater into the reactor because its vents — necessary to release pressure in the containment vessel by allowing radioactive steam to escape — had stopped working properly, they said.
In the predawn hours of Tuesday Tokyo Electric announced that workers had finally succeeded in opening a malfunctioning valve controlling the vents, reducing pressure in the container vessel. It then resumed flooding the reactor with water.
But the company said water levels were not immediately rising to the desired level, possibly because of a leak in the containment vessel…..
“They’re basically in a full-scale panic” among Japanese power industry managers, said a senior nuclear industry executive. The executive is not involved in managing the response to the reactors’ difficulties but has many contacts in Japan. “They’re in total disarray, they don’t know what to do.”
It still seems unlike there will be massive amounts of radioactivity released from a meltdown. That said, I listened to a press call today, which included one of my former DOE colleagues, Bob Alvarez, which spelled out a problem potentially equally as large but not receiving much attention.
Sharon Begley, the science columnist and science editor of Newsweek, has a good write-up of the call, “The Japan Nuke Problem No One’s Talking About,” which I’ll excerpt:
To the growing list of worries at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear-power plant … add this: could the spent nuclear fuel sitting in a nearby storage pool pose an even bigger threat to people and the environment? The spent fuel produced by reactors has been a challenge since the dawn of the nuclear industry, with most reactor operators opting to store it in pools of cooling water on site. At the 40-year-old Fukushima plant, which was built by General Electric, the fuel rods are stored at a pool about three stories up, next to the reactor (a schematic is here). Satellite photos raise concerns that the roof of the building housing the pool has been blown off, says Robert Alvarez, a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and a senior policy adviser to the secretary of energy and deputy assistant secretary for national security and the environment from 1993 to 1999. He and other experts are now warning that any release of radioactivity from the spent-fuel pool could make the releases from the reactors themselves pale in comparison.
The spent-fuel pools are rectangular basins about 40 feet deep, made of four- to five-foot-thick reinforced concrete lined with stainless steel. That was thought to be sufficient to prevent a breach. But the disastrous combination of an earthquake (which knocked out power form the electricity grid) and a tsunami (which swamped the diesel generators serving as backup power) forced the power-plant operators to turn to batteries for core cooling.When battery-powered cooling failed, hydrogen in two of the units exploded, damaging the reactor buildings—and, apparently, the spent-fuel area as well. Satellite photos appear to show that two cranes used to move spent fuel into the pool “are both gone,” Alvarez told a press conference organized by Friends of the Earth, a nonprofit environmental group that opposes nuclear power. “There has definitely been damage to the pool area.”
The pools “contain very large concentrations of radioactivity, can catch fire, and are in much more vulnerable buildings,” he warns. If the pools lose their inflow of circulating cooling water, the water in the pools will evaporate. If the level of water drops to five or six feet above the spent fuel, Alvarez calculates, the release of radioactivity “could be life-threatening near the reactor building.” Since the total amount of long-lived radioactivity in the pool is at least five times that in the reactor core, a catastrophic release would mean “all bets are off,” he says.
Of particular concern: cesium-137 in the pool, at levels Alvarez estimates at 20 million to 50 million curies. The 1986 Chernobyl accident released about 40 percent of the reactor core’s 6 million curies. In a 1997 report for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory estimated that a severe pool fire—made possible by the loss of cooling water—could leave about 188 square miles uninhabitable and cause up to 28,000 cancer deaths.
Once again, warnings from scientists were ignored that could have dramatically reduced the risk here:
The new concern at Fukushima Daiichi highlights an ongoing controversy about the way spent fuel gets stored: what if Tokyo Electric Power had heeded the growing scientific consensus and moved the spent fuel out of the storage pool and into dry, hardened casks for storage? Germany did this 25 years ago. The NRC has rejected this recommendation, but a 2006 analysis by the National Academy of Sciences warned that “breaches in spent fuel pools could be much harder to plug [than those in dry casks], especially if high radiation fields or the collapse of the overlying building prevented workers from reaching the pool. Complete cleanup from a zirconium cladding fire would be extraordinarily expensive, and even after cleanup was completed large areas downwind of the site might remain contaminated to levels that prevented reoccupation.”The NAS report … concluded that “recovery from an attack on a dry cask would be much easier than the recovery from an attack on a spent fuel pool. Breaches in dry casks could be temporarily plugged with radiation-absorbing materials until permanent fixes or replacements could be made … It is the potential for zirconium cladding fires in spent fuel pools that gives dry cask storage most of its comparative safety and security advantages.”
The NRC counts almost 100 spent-fuel pools in the United States.
The NYT has just published a story on this, “In Stricken Fuel-Cooling Pools, a Danger for the Longer Term.”
Both Germany and Switzerland suspended their nuclear plans. The Wall Street Journal reports, “Germany Rethinks Atomic Power”:
Fears of a nuclear disaster in Japan have revived Germans’ angst about atomic energy two weeks ahead of important regional elections, prompting Chancellor Angela Merkel to suspend her contested plan to extend the life of Germany’s nuclear reactors.Ms. Merkel said Monday her government would hold a three-month safety review of Germany’s 17 nuclear reactors while weighing options for drawing more energy from alternative sources.
The AP reports, “Swiss suspend plans for new nuclear plants”:
The Swiss government has suspended plans to replace and build new nuclear plants pending a review of two hydrogen explosions at Japanese plants.
The head of the Swiss federal energy department, Doris Leuthard, said Monday’s suspension affects three requests for “blanket authorization for nuclear replacement until safety standards have been carefully reviewed and if necessary adapted.”
Seriously!
You know …
I think I’m beginning to really miss The Big Me: Former President Bill Clinton said Friday that delays in offshore oil and gas drilling permits are “ridiculous” at a time when the economy is still rebuilding, according to attendees at the IHS CERAWeek conference. Clinton spoke on a panel with former President George W. Bush that was […]
Many years ago I saw Dick Morris on the O’Reilly Factor explain that liberals are slaves to tokenism, as in symbolism. The example he cited on the show was Jimmy Carter’s 1980 Iranian embassy hostage rescue mission-he sent eight helicopters.
As for Carter’s spiritual successor, President Obama, his tokenism is to slowly hand out Gulf of Mexico deepwater drilling permits. As far as I’m concerned, the “permatorium” continues. As for those permits, would you believe that the first one issued has gone to a well co-owned by BP? It was the blowout of BP’s Macondo that caused the largest oil spill in American history-and of course the permatorium.
Speed up the issuing of new permits. Drill here, drill now, pay less.
Technorati tags: 
politics Democrats news bp green environment economy
No politics but lots of irony.
And here I though BP was the problem. So the company who had the dysfunctional equipment that was the cause of the Deepwater Horizon blowout is an almost half owner in the Santiago well? Yes, according to AP : BP Plc, whose Macondo well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico caused the worst offshore oil […]
A bill before the legislature’s public safety committee would allow people to carry an electronic defense weapon, or stun gun, with them for personal protection, provided they first secure a permit.
Current law allows citizens to possess the weapons inside their homes and places of business but nowhere else.
Peter T. Holran, an executive with Taser International, said the change would allow people to carry the devices with them in their vehicles, when out for a jog or in other situations where they feel vulnerable. Taser International, based in Scottsdale, Ariz., is a leading manufacturer of stun guns.
Holran told the committee during a hearing this afternoon that the process of securing a permit would provide a level of accountability to ensure Tasers are not used by criminals.
The job-killing Obama White House has finally issued the first deepwater drilling permit since the BP Horizon oil spill in the Gulf last spring.
But as the folks at Louisiana-based blog The Hayride put it: Hoo-freaking-rah.
It’s gesture politics, as always:
There is much rejoicing in the oil patch today over the news that the Obama administration’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) approved the first deepwater drilling permit since the Deepwater Horizon explosion.
The permit went to Noble Energy for a well at the Santiago project, approximately 70 miles southeast of Venice, La., not far from the Macondo well that the Deepwater Horizon was working on.
Here’s the thing, though – this isn’t a permit for a new project. The permit issued to Noble was for a bypass of an obstruction in a well they’d already drilled before the Deepwater Horizon accident. It took 314 days to get that well back online with this administration.
From Noble Energy’s press release on the subject…
Located in 6,500 feet of water, the Santiago exploration well had previously drilled to a depth of 13,585 feet at the time of the moratorium. Drilling operations are anticipated to resume in late March 2011, targeting total drilling depth of approximately 19,000 feet. Results are expected by the end of May 2011. The Ensco 8501 rig, which performed completion operations on the Santa Cruz and Isabela discoveries at the Galapagos project during the second half of 2010, will perform the drilling at Santiago.“This permit was issued for one simple reason: the operator successfully demonstrated that it can drill its deep-water well safely and that it is capable of containing a sub-sea blowout if it were to occur,” BOEMRE head Michael Bromwich said. “We expect further deep-water permits to be approved in coming weeks and months based on the same process that led to the approval of this permit.”
Noble has contracted with Helix Energy Solutions Group to use that firm’s collection system (due to go online by the end of March) in the event the well’s blowout preventer fails. Helix built a system to deal with well control in just such an eventuality, as did the industry consortium Marine Well Control Corporation, which announced a little over a week ago they had completed an interim system to deal with a wild deepwater well.
No new project has been issued a permit by BOEMRE yet. Shell has applied for one, and a decision on it is supposed to be made any day now. But Bromwich touted today’s announcement as a big deal in any event at a press conference this afternoon.
“This is a new well in the sense it is going into a reservoir and therefore was barred under the moratorium,” Bromwich said. ”So we treat an application for a bypass like this much as we do for new wells. I don’t think it’s right to say, ‘Oh it’s just a bypass so its not as significant as a permit for a new well.’”
It’s not a new well. It’s a well Noble had been drilling for four days when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, and it’s a well that would have been online and producing oil but for the 314-day delay in getting a permit from the administration. That Bromwich wants the same credit for issuing this permit as for a new well is very instructive.
Yep, crushing the industry with one hand while the other pats itself on the back for saving it.
Culture of corruption + culture of contempt.
Previous:
Culture of contempt: Interior Department spanked yet again
The Interior Department’s culture of contempt
Obama jobs death toll: Coal, oil, gas workers on the chopping block
Obama jobs death toll: Killing the drilling industry
Omnibus double whammy: The Dems’ lame-duck land grabs
Another Obama stealth land grab: Salazar and the NLCS
Throw Carol Browner under the bus; Update: Senate GOP calls for probe
Confirmed: Obama job-killlers Salazar, Browner lied about drilling ban rationale
Another ass-kicking: Judge rejects Obama drilling ban again
Obama’s Beltway Chainsaw Massacre
The White House War on Jobs
Pushing back: Thousands of Obama’s drilling moratorium victims rally in La.
Why does Ken Salazar hate our economy? Update: Western Energy Alliance calls for reinstating oil leases
Ken Salazar needs another ass-kicking
Another ass-kicking: 5th Circuit rejects White House drilling ban appeal
Ken Salazar gets an ass-kicking. Over to you, Capitol Hill. 6/24 update: Judge refuses White House drilling ban stay request; judge gets death threat
Breaking: Judge rules against Obamatorium on drilling; link to decision added; Interior Secy Salazar roasted
The job-killing Obama White House has finally issued the first deepwater drilling permit since the BP Horizon oil spill in the Gulf last spring.
But as the folks at Louisiana-based blog The Hayride put it: Hoo-freaking-rah.
It’s gesture politics, as always:
There is much rejoicing in the oil patch today over the news that the Obama administration’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) approved the first deepwater drilling permit since the Deepwater Horizon explosion.
The permit went to Noble Energy for a well at the Santiago project, approximately 70 miles southeast of Venice, La., not far from the Macondo well that the Deepwater Horizon was working on.
Here’s the thing, though – this isn’t a permit for a new project. The permit issued to Noble was for a bypass of an obstruction in a well they’d already drilled before the Deepwater Horizon accident. It took 314 days to get that well back online with this administration.
From Noble Energy’s press release on the subject…
Located in 6,500 feet of water, the Santiago exploration well had previously drilled to a depth of 13,585 feet at the time of the moratorium. Drilling operations are anticipated to resume in late March 2011, targeting total drilling depth of approximately 19,000 feet. Results are expected by the end of May 2011. The Ensco 8501 rig, which performed completion operations on the Santa Cruz and Isabela discoveries at the Galapagos project during the second half of 2010, will perform the drilling at Santiago.“This permit was issued for one simple reason: the operator successfully demonstrated that it can drill its deep-water well safely and that it is capable of containing a sub-sea blowout if it were to occur,” BOEMRE head Michael Bromwich said. “We expect further deep-water permits to be approved in coming weeks and months based on the same process that led to the approval of this permit.”
Noble has contracted with Helix Energy Solutions Group to use that firm’s collection system (due to go online by the end of March) in the event the well’s blowout preventer fails. Helix built a system to deal with well control in just such an eventuality, as did the industry consortium Marine Well Control Corporation, which announced a little over a week ago they had completed an interim system to deal with a wild deepwater well.
No new project has been issued a permit by BOEMRE yet. Shell has applied for one, and a decision on it is supposed to be made any day now. But Bromwich touted today’s announcement as a big deal in any event at a press conference this afternoon.
“This is a new well in the sense it is going into a reservoir and therefore was barred under the moratorium,” Bromwich said. ”So we treat an application for a bypass like this much as we do for new wells. I don’t think it’s right to say, ‘Oh it’s just a bypass so its not as significant as a permit for a new well.’”
It’s not a new well. It’s a well Noble had been drilling for four days when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, and it’s a well that would have been online and producing oil but for the 314-day delay in getting a permit from the administration. That Bromwich wants the same credit for issuing this permit as for a new well is very instructive.
Yep, crushing the industry with one hand while the other pats itself on the back for saving it.
Culture of corruption + culture of contempt.
Previous:
Culture of contempt: Interior Department spanked yet again
The Interior Department’s culture of contempt
Obama jobs death toll: Coal, oil, gas workers on the chopping block
Obama jobs death toll: Killing the drilling industry
Omnibus double whammy: The Dems’ lame-duck land grabs
Another Obama stealth land grab: Salazar and the NLCS
Throw Carol Browner under the bus; Update: Senate GOP calls for probe
Confirmed: Obama job-killlers Salazar, Browner lied about drilling ban rationale
Another ass-kicking: Judge rejects Obama drilling ban again
Obama’s Beltway Chainsaw Massacre
The White House War on Jobs
Pushing back: Thousands of Obama’s drilling moratorium victims rally in La.
Why does Ken Salazar hate our economy? Update: Western Energy Alliance calls for reinstating oil leases
Ken Salazar needs another ass-kicking
Another ass-kicking: 5th Circuit rejects White House drilling ban appeal
Ken Salazar gets an ass-kicking. Over to you, Capitol Hill. 6/24 update: Judge refuses White House drilling ban stay request; judge gets death threat
Breaking: Judge rules against Obamatorium on drilling; link to decision added; Interior Secy Salazar roasted
The job-killing Obama White House has finally issued the first deepwater drilling permit since the BP Horizon oil spill in the Gulf last spring.
But as the folks at Louisiana-based blog The Hayride put it: Hoo-freaking-rah.
It’s gesture politics, as always:
There is much rejoicing in the oil patch today over the news that the Obama administration’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) approved the first deepwater drilling permit since the Deepwater Horizon explosion.
The permit went to Noble Energy for a well at the Santiago project, approximately 70 miles southeast of Venice, La., not far from the Macondo well that the Deepwater Horizon was working on.
Here’s the thing, though – this isn’t a permit for a new project. The permit issued to Noble was for a bypass of an obstruction in a well they’d already drilled before the Deepwater Horizon accident. It took 314 days to get that well back online with this administration.
From Noble Energy’s press release on the subject…
Located in 6,500 feet of water, the Santiago exploration well had previously drilled to a depth of 13,585 feet at the time of the moratorium. Drilling operations are anticipated to resume in late March 2011, targeting total drilling depth of approximately 19,000 feet. Results are expected by the end of May 2011. The Ensco 8501 rig, which performed completion operations on the Santa Cruz and Isabela discoveries at the Galapagos project during the second half of 2010, will perform the drilling at Santiago.“This permit was issued for one simple reason: the operator successfully demonstrated that it can drill its deep-water well safely and that it is capable of containing a sub-sea blowout if it were to occur,” BOEMRE head Michael Bromwich said. “We expect further deep-water permits to be approved in coming weeks and months based on the same process that led to the approval of this permit.”
Noble has contracted with Helix Energy Solutions Group to use that firm’s collection system (due to go online by the end of March) in the event the well’s blowout preventer fails. Helix built a system to deal with well control in just such an eventuality, as did the industry consortium Marine Well Control Corporation, which announced a little over a week ago they had completed an interim system to deal with a wild deepwater well.
No new project has been issued a permit by BOEMRE yet. Shell has applied for one, and a decision on it is supposed to be made any day now. But Bromwich touted today’s announcement as a big deal in any event at a press conference this afternoon.
“This is a new well in the sense it is going into a reservoir and therefore was barred under the moratorium,” Bromwich said. ”So we treat an application for a bypass like this much as we do for new wells. I don’t think it’s right to say, ‘Oh it’s just a bypass so its not as significant as a permit for a new well.’”
It’s not a new well. It’s a well Noble had been drilling for four days when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, and it’s a well that would have been online and producing oil but for the 314-day delay in getting a permit from the administration. That Bromwich wants the same credit for issuing this permit as for a new well is very instructive.
Yep, crushing the industry with one hand while the other pats itself on the back for saving it.
Culture of corruption + culture of contempt.
Previous:
Culture of contempt: Interior Department spanked yet again
The Interior Department’s culture of contempt
Obama jobs death toll: Coal, oil, gas workers on the chopping block
Obama jobs death toll: Killing the drilling industry
Omnibus double whammy: The Dems’ lame-duck land grabs
Another Obama stealth land grab: Salazar and the NLCS
Throw Carol Browner under the bus; Update: Senate GOP calls for probe
Confirmed: Obama job-killlers Salazar, Browner lied about drilling ban rationale
Another ass-kicking: Judge rejects Obama drilling ban again
Obama’s Beltway Chainsaw Massacre
The White House War on Jobs
Pushing back: Thousands of Obama’s drilling moratorium victims rally in La.
Why does Ken Salazar hate our economy? Update: Western Energy Alliance calls for reinstating oil leases
Ken Salazar needs another ass-kicking
Another ass-kicking: 5th Circuit rejects White House drilling ban appeal
Ken Salazar gets an ass-kicking. Over to you, Capitol Hill. 6/24 update: Judge refuses White House drilling ban stay request; judge gets death threat
Breaking: Judge rules against Obamatorium on drilling; link to decision added; Interior Secy Salazar roasted
The job-killing Obama White House has finally issued the first deepwater drilling permit since the BP Horizon oil spill in the Gulf last spring.
But as the folks at Louisiana-based blog The Hayride put it: Hoo-freaking-rah.
It’s gesture politics, as always:
There is much rejoicing in the oil patch today over the news that the Obama administration’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) approved the first deepwater drilling permit since the Deepwater Horizon explosion.
The permit went to Noble Energy for a well at the Santiago project, approximately 70 miles southeast of Venice, La., not far from the Macondo well that the Deepwater Horizon was working on.
Here’s the thing, though – this isn’t a permit for a new project. The permit issued to Noble was for a bypass of an obstruction in a well they’d already drilled before the Deepwater Horizon accident. It took 314 days to get that well back online with this administration.
From Noble Energy’s press release on the subject…
Located in 6,500 feet of water, the Santiago exploration well had previously drilled to a depth of 13,585 feet at the time of the moratorium. Drilling operations are anticipated to resume in late March 2011, targeting total drilling depth of approximately 19,000 feet. Results are expected by the end of May 2011. The Ensco 8501 rig, which performed completion operations on the Santa Cruz and Isabela discoveries at the Galapagos project during the second half of 2010, will perform the drilling at Santiago.“This permit was issued for one simple reason: the operator successfully demonstrated that it can drill its deep-water well safely and that it is capable of containing a sub-sea blowout if it were to occur,” BOEMRE head Michael Bromwich said. “We expect further deep-water permits to be approved in coming weeks and months based on the same process that led to the approval of this permit.”
Noble has contracted with Helix Energy Solutions Group to use that firm’s collection system (due to go online by the end of March) in the event the well’s blowout preventer fails. Helix built a system to deal with well control in just such an eventuality, as did the industry consortium Marine Well Control Corporation, which announced a little over a week ago they had completed an interim system to deal with a wild deepwater well.
No new project has been issued a permit by BOEMRE yet. Shell has applied for one, and a decision on it is supposed to be made any day now. But Bromwich touted today’s announcement as a big deal in any event at a press conference this afternoon.
“This is a new well in the sense it is going into a reservoir and therefore was barred under the moratorium,” Bromwich said. ”So we treat an application for a bypass like this much as we do for new wells. I don’t think it’s right to say, ‘Oh it’s just a bypass so its not as significant as a permit for a new well.’”
It’s not a new well. It’s a well Noble had been drilling for four days when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, and it’s a well that would have been online and producing oil but for the 314-day delay in getting a permit from the administration. That Bromwich wants the same credit for issuing this permit as for a new well is very instructive.
Yep, crushing the industry with one hand while the other pats itself on the back for saving it.
Culture of corruption + culture of contempt.
Previous:
Culture of contempt: Interior Department spanked yet again
The Interior Department’s culture of contempt
Obama jobs death toll: Coal, oil, gas workers on the chopping block
Obama jobs death toll: Killing the drilling industry
Omnibus double whammy: The Dems’ lame-duck land grabs
Another Obama stealth land grab: Salazar and the NLCS
Throw Carol Browner under the bus; Update: Senate GOP calls for probe
Confirmed: Obama job-killlers Salazar, Browner lied about drilling ban rationale
Another ass-kicking: Judge rejects Obama drilling ban again
Obama’s Beltway Chainsaw Massacre
The White House War on Jobs
Pushing back: Thousands of Obama’s drilling moratorium victims rally in La.
Why does Ken Salazar hate our economy? Update: Western Energy Alliance calls for reinstating oil leases
Ken Salazar needs another ass-kicking
Another ass-kicking: 5th Circuit rejects White House drilling ban appeal
Ken Salazar gets an ass-kicking. Over to you, Capitol Hill. 6/24 update: Judge refuses White House drilling ban stay request; judge gets death threat
Breaking: Judge rules against Obamatorium on drilling; link to decision added; Interior Secy Salazar roasted
The job-killing Obama White House has finally issued the first deepwater drilling permit since the BP Horizon oil spill in the Gulf last spring.
But as the folks at Louisiana-based blog The Hayride put it: Hoo-freaking-rah.
It’s gesture politics, as always:
There is much rejoicing in the oil patch today over the news that the Obama administration’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) approved the first deepwater drilling permit since the Deepwater Horizon explosion.
The permit went to Noble Energy for a well at the Santiago project, approximately 70 miles southeast of Venice, La., not far from the Macondo well that the Deepwater Horizon was working on.
Here’s the thing, though – this isn’t a permit for a new project. The permit issued to Noble was for a bypass of an obstruction in a well they’d already drilled before the Deepwater Horizon accident. It took 314 days to get that well back online with this administration.
From Noble Energy’s press release on the subject…
Located in 6,500 feet of water, the Santiago exploration well had previously drilled to a depth of 13,585 feet at the time of the moratorium. Drilling operations are anticipated to resume in late March 2011, targeting total drilling depth of approximately 19,000 feet. Results are expected by the end of May 2011. The Ensco 8501 rig, which performed completion operations on the Santa Cruz and Isabela discoveries at the Galapagos project during the second half of 2010, will perform the drilling at Santiago.“This permit was issued for one simple reason: the operator successfully demonstrated that it can drill its deep-water well safely and that it is capable of containing a sub-sea blowout if it were to occur,” BOEMRE head Michael Bromwich said. “We expect further deep-water permits to be approved in coming weeks and months based on the same process that led to the approval of this permit.”
Noble has contracted with Helix Energy Solutions Group to use that firm’s collection system (due to go online by the end of March) in the event the well’s blowout preventer fails. Helix built a system to deal with well control in just such an eventuality, as did the industry consortium Marine Well Control Corporation, which announced a little over a week ago they had completed an interim system to deal with a wild deepwater well.
No new project has been issued a permit by BOEMRE yet. Shell has applied for one, and a decision on it is supposed to be made any day now. But Bromwich touted today’s announcement as a big deal in any event at a press conference this afternoon.
“This is a new well in the sense it is going into a reservoir and therefore was barred under the moratorium,” Bromwich said. ”So we treat an application for a bypass like this much as we do for new wells. I don’t think it’s right to say, ‘Oh it’s just a bypass so its not as significant as a permit for a new well.’”
It’s not a new well. It’s a well Noble had been drilling for four days when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, and it’s a well that would have been online and producing oil but for the 314-day delay in getting a permit from the administration. That Bromwich wants the same credit for issuing this permit as for a new well is very instructive.
Yep, crushing the industry with one hand while the other pats itself on the back for saving it.
Culture of corruption + culture of contempt.
Previous:
Culture of contempt: Interior Department spanked yet again
The Interior Department’s culture of contempt
Obama jobs death toll: Coal, oil, gas workers on the chopping block
Obama jobs death toll: Killing the drilling industry
Omnibus double whammy: The Dems’ lame-duck land grabs
Another Obama stealth land grab: Salazar and the NLCS
Throw Carol Browner under the bus; Update: Senate GOP calls for probe
Confirmed: Obama job-killlers Salazar, Browner lied about drilling ban rationale
Another ass-kicking: Judge rejects Obama drilling ban again
Obama’s Beltway Chainsaw Massacre
The White House War on Jobs
Pushing back: Thousands of Obama’s drilling moratorium victims rally in La.
Why does Ken Salazar hate our economy? Update: Western Energy Alliance calls for reinstating oil leases
Ken Salazar needs another ass-kicking
Another ass-kicking: 5th Circuit rejects White House drilling ban appeal
Ken Salazar gets an ass-kicking. Over to you, Capitol Hill. 6/24 update: Judge refuses White House drilling ban stay request; judge gets death threat
Breaking: Judge rules against Obamatorium on drilling; link to decision added; Interior Secy Salazar roasted
Freddie DeBoer's much-linked critique of the neoliberal left conflates true liberalism with support for the labor movement. But Ryan Avent doesn't understand why Freddie has such love for unions:
[Y]ounger individuals have had their formative ideological experiences in an era in which labor strength is concentrated in sectors that are either public or dependent on public largesse, and these unions often place themselves squarely in the path of reforms sought by left-leaning writers. I’m sure it was easier to be sympathetic to labor when it was winning limits on truly heinous business practices rather than fighting against merit-based pay for excellent teachers.
And I think that current neoliberals think of themselves as more honestly egalitarian than traditional leftists, based on their international view of developments in human welfare. The past few decades have witnessed an unprecedented reduction in global poverty thanks to liberal reforms in China and India. Countries containing twice the population of the currently developed world are now hurtling toward middle-income status, thanks to trade, thanks to deregulation, and thanks to the introduction of market reforms. The neoliberals I enjoy reading pride themselves on fighting for access to opportunity for the disadvantaged, through reduced barriers to trade with America, increased opportunities for immigration to America, and (in Matt’s case) reduced obstacles to living, working, and starting businesses in America’s most dynamic urban centers. The neoliberal platform strikes me as much easier to understand, from a progressive viewpoint, when considered at an international level.
Mike Konczal focuses on other elements of Freddie's post:
I think it is useful to consider what the strengths of wonks are. Starting a socialist overturn of the capitalist order is not one.
The always provocative Freddie de Boer briefly steps out of bloggy retirement to insist that it does not:
There are many myths within the political blogosphere, but none is so deeply troubling or so highly treasured by mainstream political bloggers than this: that the political blogosphere contains within it the whole range of respectable political opinion, and that once an issue has been thoroughly debated therein, it has had a full and fair hearing. The truth is that almost anything resembling an actual left wing has been systematically written out of the conversation within the political blogosphere, both intentionally and not, while those writing within it congratulate themselves for having answered all left-wing criticism.
That the blogosphere is a flagrantly anti-leftist space should be clear to anyone who has paid a remote amount of attention. Who, exactly, represents the left extreme in the establishment blogosphere? You'd likely hear names like Jane Hamsher or Glenn Greenwald. But these examples are instructive. Is Hamsher a socialist? A revolutionary anti-capitalist? In any historical or international context- in the context of a country that once had a robust socialist left, and in a world where there are straightforwardly socialist parties in almost every other democracy- is Hamsher particularly left-wing? Not at all. It's only because her rhetoric is rather inflamed that she is seen as particularly far to the left. This is what makes this whole discourse/extremism conversation such a failure; there is a meticulous sorting of far right-wing rhetoric from far right-wing politics, but no similar sorting on the left. Hamsher says bad words and is mean in print, so she is a far leftist. That her politics are largely mainstream American liberalism that would have been considered moderate for much of the 20th century is immaterial.
Substantial debate has been generated by his thesis, and while it doesn't yet include Matt Yglesias or Ezra Klein, two bloggers he tweaks, his post has already generated enough attention over a long weekend to suggest that he overestimates how difficult it is for the ideas he champions to get a hearing. That's a good thing. Whatever one thinks of his latest, Freddie is as earnest a blogger as you'll find, a quality that more than makes up for occasions when his zeal ends in unfair attacks on other writers.
Here's Will Wilkinson in the comments section:
I think you're right about the full-bore socialist left having almost no place in the public affairs blogosphere. The question is why is that? In particular, why does the institutional left ignore you? I think it's because most bloggy public affairs types want to be politically relevant, but American public opinion tilts so far to the right that any association with real left-wing opinion simply undermines the persuasive authority party-politics-involved liberals. Libertarianism gets a seat because, first, by aligning with the right to fight socialism at home and communism abroad, it made the reactionaries more sympathetic to libertarianism positions than they would have been, and, second, it has a sufficiently authentic claim to some part of the liberal tradition that many liberals compelled to take it seriously. In contrast, conservatives see no reason to treat socialists as anything other than enemies, and liberals mostly just want them to shut up so their team doesn't blow it with the relatively right-wingy American public.
Also, to tenderly bait you, it just might help your cause if socialists ever made compelling arguments about policy.
The Dish has always tried to remain friendly to outsider voices and distance itself from the Inside the Beltway closed conversation. In that sense, the most glaring lack in Freddie's post is a list of who exactly we ought to be reading and engaging but aren't. Isn't that the obvious solution? If we're missing worthy far-left blogospheric voices, who are they?
