Here We Go Again …

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.