Here We Go Again …
Posted: March 20, 2011 Filed under: Breaking News, Gulf Oil Spill | Tags: Cocodrie LA, deepwater rigs, Matterhorn SeaStar, oil spill in Gulf 19 Comments
Mississippi delta saltwater marshes that can be found near Cocodrie, LA and Lake Barre
It appears that there’s an oil sheen just 20 miles north of the Macondo Well that blew up and doused the entire eastern Gulf of Mexico with oil last year. I’ve been getting some tweets from my local contacts and this is what I can put together so far. It’s possibly a different well that’s owned by a different company.
Multiple callers have reported that they have seen a huge sheen of oil not far from a deepwater rig. According to Judson Parker at Examiner.com, the potentially leaky rig is the Matterhorn SeaStar owned by W&T offshore.
New oil has been spotted in Jefferson Parish. It’s also impacting the beleaguered community of Grand Isle, Louisiana. This is from WDSU. It’s a local New Orleans TV station.
Oil in various forms was reportedly coming ashore on the west side of Grand Isle on Sunday, a Jefferson Parish councilman said.Grand Isle Volunteer Fire Department personnel initially reported the incident, councilman Chris Roberts wrote in a news release.
The New Orleans newspaper–The Times Picayune–is reporting that both BP and the US Coast Guard are investigating.
The U.S. Coast Guard is investigating reports of a potentially massive oil sheen about 20 miles north of the site of last April’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion.
A helicopter crew and pollution investigators have been dispatched to Main Pass Block 41 in response to two calls to the National Response Center, the federal point of contact for reporting oil and chemical spills, said Paul Barnard, an operations controller for Coast Guard Sector New Orleans.
The first caller, around 11 a.m., described a sheen of about a half-mile long and a half-mile wide, he said.
About two hours later, another caller reported a much larger sheen — about 100 miles long — originating in the same area and spreading west to Cocodrie on Terrebonne Bay, Barnard said.
“We haven’t been able to verify that, and it would be very unlikely for an individual to be able to observe a 100-mile long sheen,” he said, adding inspection teams were en route around 3 p.m. to the site.
The Daily Mail reports that the slick is five miles wide and that the U.S. Coast Guard has taken samples from the sheen.
Casey Ranel, a spokesman for the Coast Guard said the agency sent out a cutter this morning to collect samples of the substance.
An airplane is also expected to fly over the area to give officials a better idea of what’s in the water.
Pollution investigators and a helicopter crew are following up on two calls to the National Response Center – the federal point of contact for reporting oil and chemical spills – Paul Barnard, an operations controller for Coast Guard Sector, New Orleans, told the Times-Picayune.
Barnard said a pilot flying over the area reported seeing a sheen of around half a mile long by half a mile wide.
So far, we’ve had coal mines implode and kill miners, nuclear reactor meltdowns, and at least one majof Gulf Oil spill ruining the ecosystem down here. Can we get some safe energy sources now please? At the very least, can we please have some effective and well-funded regulation of what we’re using now? It seems like we’re still paying for the Energy industry Presidency of George Bush. This isn’t change we can believe in. This is no change that’s ruining my corner of the planet.
peej
Carissa
ecocatwoman
grayslady
mablue2
NW Luna
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
So sorry Dak for what’s happening in your corner of the world.
One good thing this last week following the nuclear events in Japan, is that finally there has been a week of serious debate around nuclear issues over here.
Towards the end of the 70s early 80s the building of new nuclear plants was banned in Italy following a left sponsored referendum.
Over the past two years Berlusconi has launched a new drive towards nuclear power plants claiming the old ban to have been an error on the part of the left wing, particularly since Italy buys so much of its electricity from France, where it is produced by nuclear reactors anyway.
This week however public and journalistic opinion has swung strongly in favor of renewable energy resources (solar-wind).
Exactly what I was thinking. Maybe this is cliche, but it is like Nature is trying to tell us something with all these energy industry disasters.
If this doesn’t stop we will have to change the name of this erstwhile beautiful body of water from the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of Oil.
Damn, this really sucks ass! What I find interesting is your links above…you got local news and media and a UK paper. (Daily Mail) My point being no MSM.
I hope it is nothing serious, but in light of the catastrophes we have seen lately, I just shudder to think.
Has a group of American journalists ever been so bad? I really shudder to think of what would have happened if this cabal was around during WWII. Would they have praised Hitler as a uniter and attempted to discredit Roosevelt as an uber-liberal collaborator with the Nazis? I’ll bet you my next 5 checks that the president doesn’t even know (let alone care) that this new spill has shown up off the gulf coastline. It’s important to take a break. Presidentin’ is really really hard….
Asshats.
Hillary 2012
They’re too busy being excited about Libya. They all go gaga about being war correspondents.
It’s just one damned thing after another.
This is terrible! So I guess the company that is responsible for the leak is either unaware of it or trying to avoid responsibility.
The problem we have in our culture today is a moral one. As a society, we seem to have lost touch with basic values of honesty and responsibility.
Japan’s wind farms save its ass while nuclear plants founder
Here again, you would think that Dr. Chu would see this evidence and try to push the administration into taking another look at T. Boone Pickens plans for wind as an alternative energy source. But that would imply good government, something we haven’t seen here since Jan 19, 2001.
Asshats
Hillary 2012
My energy plan for America is to basically install home solar systems for all homes under a certain price level or homeowners under a certain income. I want to get all the little guys off the grid and out of the pockets of the energy industry. I think we could make every one’s home energy independent for what we pay for the subsidies to all these energy businesses and what we pay to clean up their messes. Why don’t we invest in some social benefits instead of having to pay all these social costs for a change?
That’s what I want – solar and to be off the grid. I just paid A $210 bill for one month of natural gas heating and I am very low on money. My monthly heating bill has been over $200 all winter. I’m really screaming uncle here.
The process would be feasible if the govt. gave either a huge deduction or a substantial subsidy. AMEC International does contracts like that in many foreign countries. In fact, a friend of mine that works there is working on a project to put solar farms in a village in the Congo while they build a bridge there as well. We are trying to get them to do that in Nigeria after our elections are done in August.
Hillary 2012
The trouble is that solar still requires a lot of energy from oil or coal or nuke to produce and there are lots of toxic biproducts. We need more research before it’s really practical large-scale.
According to the industry people, the cost lies in storage. They can generate all the power they need when the sun is out, but when the sun goes down, the storage units make solar costly. If that problem can be overcome, we are looking at nearly limitless power generation……
It will take a million stakes driven deep into the hearts OF ALL THE PRO NUCLEAR fools to prevent them from coming back to life. This incident will be a hurdle, but there is so much money involved from Obama and his cronies, that nothing but a meltdown in their own backyard will temper their enthusiasm for their drug of choice…money, money, money! And it isn’t their money. It will be taxpayer money. If it is so safe, why does the federal government have to be the insurer of last resort? If it will make so much money and so cost efficient, why does the govt have to put up the money. It ain’t efficient, it ain’t safe, it ain’t clean, and in the event of a catastrophe, there is not one logical reason to have ever utilized it at all. Ask Japan what this will mean for their country? Ask the people of the Gulf of Mexico what the BP catastrophe means to the whole area. We can’t afford to destroy the environment this way. How was Tepco able to wriggle its way into building and education the people around the Gulf to build and run 2 nuclear water boiling facilities… to the tune of around 8 billion. Yea, they know so much about how to irradiate their people, why not us now. Payback for Hiroshima? You couldn’t make this stuff up, could you?
good post!
It will take a million stakes driven deep into the hearts OF ALL THE PRO NUCLEAR fools to prevent them from coming back to life
yep
It ain’t efficient, it ain’t safe, it ain’t clean…
yep
I think you’re onto something there…perhaps if any company wants to do some risky energy project, they should have to get fully insured by some company that’s not too big to fail.
That’s why you don’t get any new nuclear plants except when the costs are full socialized. Private companies won’t fund them, insure them fully, or really do much with them. They’re a mess of a cost overruns. It’s also why you don’t see any new refineries. Not profitable. There’s not really a shortage of oil right now. There’s a shortage of refining capacity. It’s why the oil companies are sitting on their oil leases. There’s no point to creating an oil well that produces oil you can’t refine. That also makes all these oil price movements mostly speculative. Because supply is mostly capped any way.
And the Times-Picayune was just a wealth of information on this:
WHAT’S *THE SOURCE*?? 👿
They’re also deploying boom around Grand Isle.
The Coast Guard said “the dark substance (in the Gulf) is believed to be caused by a tremendous amount of sediment being carried down the Mississippi River due to high water, possibly further agitated by dredging operations.”
The Guard said it is deploying boom to protect areas where “an oily substance was washing ashore on Elmer Isle, Fourchon Beach and Grand Isle.”
Thank you. That explains it fully. Move along, move along. Nothing here to see.