BP had ultimate authority over drilling decisions, the Deepwater Horizon’s chief mechanic, Doug Brown said in sworn testimony Wednesday.

The BP company man at a meeting stood up and said, “This is how it’s going to be.”

The BP official, a “company man” in industry parlance, would have been the top decision-maker on the rig, although his role may have been complicated by having a number of higher-ranking BP officials on hand to celebrate the Deepwater Horizon’s safety record.

A BP employee named Donald Vidrine, who’s been identified as one of the company men, was on the original witness list for the multi-day hearings, but is no longer scheduled to testify due to an undisclosed medical condition.

The other BP employee on the witness list is Robert Kaluza, who did appear but pleaded the Fifth.

BP refused to identify what role Kaluza and Vidrine had on the Deepwater Horizon.

Michael Williams, a Transocean employee who was chief electronics technician on the rig, said there was “confusion” between those high-ranking officials in an 11 a.m. meeting on the day of the rig blast, according to a sworn statement.

According to Mr. Williams’s account, Transocean’s rig manager, Jimmy Wayne Harrell, was discussing the plans for the next few hours’ work, including taking out the drilling mud and running a test to make sure gas wasn’t seeping into the well. Mr. Harrell explained in the meeting that he had received the plans from BP.

Then, according to Mr. Williams’s statement, the top-ranked BP employee assigned to the rig, Donald Vidrine, disagreed and said “that was not the correct procedure.”

When I read this article about BP defending its response to the Gulf Oil spill, for some reason my mind went to the scene in “A Few Good Men” when Colonel Jessep (played by Jack Nicholson), gives his famous “You can’t handle the truth” speech:

BP, for all of their pompous arrogance, is just like Colonel Jessep.  Replace a few words in that speech with words like Oil, and it might as well be BP’s position right now.

There are over 5,000 offshore oil rigs.  Forget the “accidents”…what happens when Terrorists, or North Korea or…worse… starts torpedoing them?

Think Progress » BP Runs Full-Page Ads In Major Newspapers Defending Its Oil Spill Response: ‘We Have Taken Full Responsibility’.

In the meantime, the company plans this “Top Kill”. Who better to explain it, than Bill Nye the Science Guy?

My uncle Gerry recorded this song.  He suggested that I get it out quick.

When he’s not producing, directing, writing and starring in movies about Wolves, and when he’s not dating Elle MacPherson, not singing in his rock/country band, or  running his casino Kevin Costner is an avid environmentalist, fisherman, and greentech entrepreneur.

While making Waterworld in 1995, Costner was troubled by oil spills like the Exxon Valdez and started developing a system to cruise the surface of the sea and clean oily water. His business partner, John Houghtaling, says:

“The machines are essentially like big vacuum cleaners, which sit on barges and suck up oily water and spin it around at high speed,” Houghtaling said. “On one side, it spits out pure oil, which can be recovered. The other side spits out 99% pure water” [Los Angeles Times].

BP and the U.S. Coast Guard plan to test six of the massive devices next week.

Oil Spill Update: BP to Switch Disperants; Will Kevin Costner Save Us All? | 80beats | Discover Magazine.

BP now reports they are siphoning 210,000 gallons of oil per day. But that’s not ALL the oil coming out of the leak. Last week they were estimating the leak was spewing 210,000 gallons a day…no it looks like twice that.

Using the following widget, let’s say BP is harvesting half of the oil using the siphon tube. That would mean there was at least 420,000 gallons per day is leaking from the pipe — 12.5 million gallons total so far. We’re beyond the Exxon Valdez at this point.

According to this document released by THE TIMES-PICAYUNE, it appears that the cement that Haliburton had finished pouring just 20 hours earlier failed.   I guess it was only a matter of time before Dick Cheney‘s name came up in this somewhere. Click on the image below to open the full PDF version.

Deepwater_Horizon.pdf (application /pdf Object).

The Oil Pollution Act (OPA) was signed into law in August 1990, largely in response to rising public concern following the Exxon Valdez incident.

The OPA created the national Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, which is available to provide up to one billion dollars per spill incident.

Under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, the owner or operator of a facility from which oil is discharged (also known as the responsible Party) is liable for the costs associated with the containment or cleanup of the spill and any damages resulting from the spill. The EPA’s first priority is to ensure that responsible parties pay to clean up their own oil releases. However, when the responsible party is unknown or refuses to pay, funds from the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund can be used to cover removal costs or damages resulting from discharges of oil.

The primary source of revenue for the fund is a five-cents per barrel fee on imported and domestic oil.

In addition, the OPA provided new requirements for contingency planning both by government and industry. The National Oil and Hazardous Substances Pollution Contingency Plan (NCP) has been expanded in a three-tiered approach: the Federal government is required to direct all public and private response efforts for certain types of spill events; Area Committees — composed of federal, state, and local government officials — must develop detailed, location-specific Area Contingency Plans; and owners or operators of vessels and certain facilities that pose a serious threat to the environment must prepare their own Facility Response Plans.

Oil Pollution Act Overview | Emergency Management | US EPA.