Before Atlantis Sinks Below the Waves

This piece travels in circles, beginning with lawsuits filed over the GOP Gulf Geyser, from Diane’s link.

Environmentalists seeking to curb oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico on Monday filed federal lawsuits to shut down a major BP platform and close a government loophole for new oil and gas exploration.

The lawsuits, filed in Alabama and Texas, target the federal Minerals Management Service, the much-criticized agency that oversees offshore energy leases.

Since a blowout on BP’s Deepwater Horizon platform last month killed 11 workers and triggered a massive spill, the agency has approved at least nine deep-water exploratory wells in the Gulf with minimal environmental reviews.

The Alabama lawsuit seeks to end the practice. It would also force the agency to revoke the permits recently issued to Shell Offshore Inc., Kerr-McGee Oil & Gas Corp., Anadarko E&P and other companies.

The deepest of those projects would operate at water depths of more than 9,000 feet.

That’s almost twice the depth of Deepwater Horizon, which has released millions gallons of oil into the Gulf since it exploded and burned. The depth has complicated efforts to contain the leak a mile below the surface. An attorney for the plaintiffs said the spill makes it "abundantly clear" the government needs to review deep water projects more closely.

"They need to be analyzed fully before given a blanket rubber stamp exclusion," said Catherine Wannamaker with the Southern Environmental Law Center.

The Texas suit seeks to shut down BP’s Atlantis platform, which has operated with incomplete and inaccurate engineering documents.

Atlantis is stationed in 7,070 feet of water more than 150 miles south of New Orleans. It can produce 8.4 million gallons of oil and 180 million cubic feet of natural gas daily.

In 2009, an independent firm hired by BP found that the giant petroleum company was violating its own policies by not having completed engineering documents on board the Atlantis when it began operating in 2007.

BP responded Monday by saying it had made "procedural changes" related to Atlantis in response to the outside investigation. But the company said safety was never an issue… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Bay Herald Ledger>

Safety was never an issue.

Bears never crap in the woods.

Republicans never lie.

Safety on Atlantis is the same issue that it was on Deepwater Horizon, but not to BP, as this illustrates.

Last [Sunday] night 60 Minutes broadcast a stunning report on the Deepwater Horizon disaster featuring an eyewitness account from crewmember Mike Williams and analysis from Dr. Bob Bea, a UC Berkeley engineering professor asked by the White House to help figure out what went wrong.

According to Williams, several weeks before the explosion, the blowout preventer was damaged but despite the damage, BP ordered the rig operator to ignore critical a safety measure when sealing the well. BP wanted the rig operator to seal the well without using drilling mud, a heavy liquid used to keep oil and gas from burbling up as cementers completed the seal.

According to Professor Bea, the accident would not have occurred had the drilling mud been used. Instead, BP cut corners in an attempt to save money, and now we’re left with this enormous economic and ecological disaster…

…It gets worse: 60 Minutes reports a BP insider says he is concerned about another risky rig, the Atlantis platform. According to the insider — whose account is confirmed by internal BP e-mails — nearly 90% of the safety documents needed to run the platform safely hadn’t been reviewed by BP. At best, BP is flying blind on the Atlantis, so this could all happen again… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Daily Kos>

So we have Transocean continuing to work with a blowout preventer which they knew was faulty BP cutting corners in spite of that knowledge, and Halliburton performing up to their normal defective standards.

Rachel Maddow provides even more detail and ties it up in a neat package.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

And so we return to Atlantis.  One disaster is enough, already yet!  This leaves two undeniable conclusions.

1. Before Atlantis slips below the waves it must be shut down, along with all deepwater drilling in the Gulf.

2. Corporations are NOT people! Money is NOT speech!