Obama's Enron

AP IMPACT: Fed'l inspections on rig not as claimed

LOS ANGELES – The federal agency responsible for ensuring that the Deepwater Horizon was operating safely before it exploded last month fell well short of its own policy that the rig be inspected at least once per month, an Associated Press investigation shows.

In fact, the agency's inspection frequency on the Deepwater Horizon fell dramatically over the past five years, according to federal Minerals Management Service records. The rig blew up April 20, killing 11 people before sinking and triggering a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Since January 2005, inspectors issued just one minor infraction for the rig. That strong track record led the agency last year to herald the Deepwater Horizon as an industry model for safety.

The inspection gaps are the latest in a series of questions raised about the agency's oversight of the oil drilling industry. Members of Congress and President Barack Obama have criticized what they call the cozy relationship between regulators and oil companies and vowed to reform MMS, which both regulates the industry and collects billions in royalties from it.

Earlier AP investigations have shown that the doomed rig was allowed to operate without safety documentation required by MMS regulations for the exact disaster scenario that occurred; that the cutoff valve which failed has repeatedly broken down at other wells in the years since regulators weakened testing requirements; and that regulation is so lax that some key safety aspects on rigs are decided almost entirely by the companies doing the work.

The AP sought to find out how many times government safety inspectors visited the Deepwater Horizon, and what they found. In response, MMS officials offered a changing series of numbers. The MMS has had long-standing issues with its data management.

At first, officials said 83 inspections had been performed since the rig arrived in the Gulf 104 months ago, in September 2001. While being questioned about the once-per-month claim, the officials subsequently revised the total up to 88 inspections. The number of more recent inspections also changed — from 26 to 48 in the 64 months since January 2005.

No explanation was given for the upward revisions. AP granted the officials anonymity because without that condition, communications staff at the Interior Department, which oversees MMS, would not have let them talk.

Based on the last set of numbers provided, the Deepwater Horizon was inspected 40 times during its first 40 months in the Gulf — in line with agency policy for offshore drilling rigs.

Even using the more favorable numbers for the most recent 64 months, 25 percent of monthly inspections were not performed. The first set of data supplied to AP represented a 59 percent shortfall in the number of inspections.

Interior Department spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff would not comment on the inspection numbers. Instead, she offered a general statement: "We are looking at all the questions that are coming out of the Deepwater Horizon incident."

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by AP, the agency has released copies of only three inspection reports — those conducted in January, February and April. According to the documents, inspectors spent two hours or less each time they visited the massive rig. Some information appeared to be "whited out," without explanation.

Since the explosion, the agency has reiterated several times the inspection-once-per-month assertion, which appeared on its website at least as early as 1999.

In an e-mail to AP, an Interior Department official emphasized with italics that the MMS inspects rigs "at least once a month" when drilling is under way. Monthly inspections of offshore drilling rigs are an agency policy, though not required by regulation, said David Dykes, chief of the agency's office of safety management for the Gulf region.

Last week, at a joint Coast Guard-MMS investigatory hearing in Kenner, La., MMS official Jason Mathews asked Michael Saucier, MMS's regional supervisor for field operations in the Gulf, "And how often do we perform drilling inspections in the Gulf of Mexico?"

"We perform them at a minimum once a month, but we can do more if need be," Saucier said.

The job falls to the 55 inspectors in the Gulf who are supposed to visit the 90 drilling rigs once per month and the approximately 3,500 oil production platforms once per year.

The Deepwater Horizon's inspection frequency numbers struck Kenneth Arnold, a veteran offshore drilling consultant and engineer.

"I'd certainly question it," he said. "I'd ask, 'Why aren't you doing it?'"

When the AP did ask, MMS and Interior would not answer directly. Instead providing a set of conditions when a rig would not typically be inspected — including during bad weather, when it is jumping among short-term jobs, when a rig is preparing to drill or is done drilling but hasn't left for another site.

Transocean Ltd., which owned the Deepwater Horizon and leased it to BP PLC, would not provide a detailed accounting of the rig's activity history. According to RigData, a Texas firm that monitors offshore activity in the Gulf, the Deepwater Horizon was working approximately 2,896 days of the 3,131 days since it started its first well — about 93 percent of the time. That number represents the total number of days between when the Deepwater Horizon broke the sea floor during a drilling operation to when it was released to another site.

A summary of the inspection history that the MMS officials provided AP said the Deepwater Horizon received six "incidents of noncompliance" — the agency's term for citations.

The most serious occurred July 16, 2002, when the rig was shut down because required pressure tests had not been conducted on parts of the rig's blowout preventer — the device that was supposed to stop oil from gushing out if drilling operations experienced problems.

That citation was "major," said Arnold, who characterized the overall safety record related by MMS as strong.

A citation on Sept. 19, 2002, also involved the blowout preventer. The inspector issued a warning because "problems or irregularities observed during the testing of BOP system and actions taken to remedy such problems or irregularities are not recorded in the driller's report or referenced documents."

During his Senate testimony last week, Transocean CEO Steven Newman said the blowout preventer was modified in 2005.

According to MMS officials, the four other citations were:

• Two on May 16, 2002, for not conducting well control drills as required and not performing "all operations in a safe and workmanlike manner."

• One on Aug. 6, 2003, for discharging pollutants into the Gulf.

• One on March 20, 2007, which prompted inspectors to shut down some machinery because of improper electrical grounding.

Late last week, several days after providing the detailed accounting, Interior officials told AP that in fact there had been only five citations, that one had been rescinded. The officials said they could not immediately say which of the six had been rescinded.

The agency's problems with providing information extends to the data on display on its website. For example, the accounting of accident and incident reports is incomplete, making it very difficult to perform a thorough data analysis of the agency's performance and preventing a full accurate tracking of safety records of the rigs.

Data problems date back at least a decade. According to John Shultz, who as a graduate student in the late 1990s studied MMS' inspection program in depth for his dissertation, the agency's data infrastructure was severely limited.

"The thing I regret most is that, to my knowledge, MMS has not fixed the data management problem they have," said Shultz, who now works in the Department of Energy's nuclear program. "If you have the data you need, the analysis becomes fairly straightforward. Without the data, you're simply stuck with conjectures."

Whatever the correct citation total — five or six — the Deepwater Horizon's record was exemplary, according to MMS officials, who said the rig was never on inspectors' informal "watch list" for problem rigs. In fact, last year MMS awarded the rig an award for its safety history.

More Nonsense from the other Real Flatbush blog

Fortunately, Americans can decide for themselves what they want to read and believe. Unfortunately, the dunce who supplies the posts at the other Real Flatbush blog is unaware of the crime rate in black communities compared with white and asian communities.

The blogger seems oblivous to his/her own internal motivations that include blaming whites for the social pathologies impairing far too many blacks in Brooklyn, NY City, the US and the world.

Bottom line, about 95% of the violent crime committed in NY City is committed by blacks and hispanics. For the past two years almost 100% of the murders in NY City have been committed by blacks and hispanics. Fortunately, murder and violent crime is still the work of a small minority of blacks. But unfortunately, when it comes to education, blacks are the group of public school kids who fill the bottom ranks. Decades of standardized tests have repeated the same conclusions -- whites and asians do well, but blacks and hispanics lag, and they lag by a considerable margin.

Critics, especially black critics, reflexively claim the poor academic showing of blacks is the result of white indifference or contempt. However, these results appear worldwide. There are no nations in Africa successfully educating more than a handful of students.

The Dangers of the Ditmas Park Blog

Racism is Universal. In the middle of a debate over levels of African migration in Australia,the 3 major news channels in Australia all seized on (similar to the practices of Politico and the Ditmas park blog) what they said was evidence that young African migrants weren't fitting in.

Luckily in Australia, they actually have a Media Watch that holds the media accountable for false reporting and sensationalism.

Just this past week, the ditmas park blog is continuing their sensationalist, false and sometimes racist reporting about "certain segments" of the population who are "trouble makers". In their "moderated comments" section they have people complaining about "thugs" (code word for black teens) on the corner lately since the weather has been nicer.

They've got the public all wild up on the basis of a few isolated incidents, that goes on on every neighborhood in the world. They have even offered free self-defense classes because of "the latest strings of incidents."

It's interesting that when a group of black teenage boys are hanging out in front of an establishment for just a few seconds, it's a "problem" that "needs to be dealt with". But a group of white hipsters hanging out in front of a bar or coffee shop, is "great for the scene" and that they are being "scene kids" and comments about "how cool it is to be outside on a warm sunny day."

The latent racism of the Ditmaspark blog can be very dangerous to this community. It is used to not only degrade people, but to dehumanize. If left unchecked or not marginalized can lead to hate crimes, as was the case in Australia. The young teen in the video that had nothing to do with any "mayhem" was subsequently savagely beaten and murdered. We will continue to monitor this situation.

Real Flatbush Blogger -- Disturbed by Reality

The Ditmas Park Blog is promoting hate through their moderated comments. The Ditmas Park Blog is promoting a story petaled by the questionable "news paper" NY Post about a 15-20 year old Hispanic kid mugging someone. They have a mug shot prominently displayed and 2 posts with more to come. Some of the most visceral and hateful comments on the "moderated" blog followed.

One said:
"this is shitty parenting. it was a kid that did something so awful? when they find this waste of human scum, they should put whoever was in charge of raising him in jail too." Followed by their in-house white supremacist NoSlappz who chimes in "I think the kid committed the robbery so he could go to jail and live with his father full time instead of visiting the old man on alternate weekends." The hateful comments continued on with the climax of "keep abortion legal, ’s all i’m sayin’.".

Yet no one could deny that is the suspect was a white kid the comments would not be so visceral or hateful. As a matter of fact if the suspect was a white kid the narrative would have been about how this was a youthful indiscretion or he must have had some "emotional problems." What now has to be done is to call them out on there obvious bias, smear and assault on the minority community.

Ask yourself this... Why is the Ditmas Park jumping on a petty crime such as a mugging by a teen, while a few weeks back and all year long they completely ignored the Police Sodomy case? Fox News' Glenn Beck's advertisers were made to either stand by him or denounce his inflammatory show. Most of the reputable companies has since taken their Ads of the Glenn Beck show.

It is time to hold the people who continue to support the Ditmas Park blog and it's incendiary posts and comments to the same standard as Glenn Beck's Advertisers. I will be in the next week give the advertisers on the Ditmas Park blog the opportunity to respond as to why they continue to advertise on what is essentially a divisive and racially insensitive blog.

As of 3/30/2010

here are the advertisers on the Ditmas Park Blog and the email that I will send to clarify why they will continue their relationship with the Ditmas Park Blog.

"The Ditmas Park blog has been involved in a number of questionable and racially insensitive post on their blog. You are one of their advertisers. As such I would like to get a comment on whether you support the practices of the blog you advertise on. The most recent questionable post on this blog has been a post about a mugging where a number of hateful comments (including a hateful comment that either a pro-choice or pro-life person would find extremely atrocious)on the moderated comments section was allowed."


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