Category Archives: Gulf of Mexico

BP Begins Static Kill of Well: Stage Two

I have occasionally offered links to a BP site but not really given them the primary spot on anything as long as their oil was continuing to spew ever more death into the Gulf of Mexico. However, they now claim that they have initiated static kill and are also trying to remain engaged in clean-up and recovery. So I thought this was the time after many other posts to allow them the principal and premiere position to describe their situation and operations. Here is that link:  http://bp.concerts.com/gom/houma_command_center_update_073110.htm

In addition to all that we have to address from this spill and ongoing challenges we have to face the fact the human and political challenges are ongoing and very serious as well. There is no limit to the  amount of confusion and conflict which can bedevil our efforts to find the right way forward.  Already we see the Senate shying away from the onerous aspects of the process we must undergo to find resolution: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0810/40597.html

I am regarding all these more than one hundred days of activity as the first phase. Today we enter the second phase. It will be interesting to see how ell we can handle it in this world of flawed and busy people working in flawed and busy systems. But for now we can hope for the best.

Looking at the BP Macondo Oil Leak Today

Here is a list of observations and factoids related to the BP oil leak as of right now. This is kind of quick and slap dash but here they are for your consideration:

1. Depending how you measure the same coastline can be measure as 1,000 miles long or 500,ooo miles long. However, at least 500 miles of Gulf of Mexico coastline have been at least partly oiled.

2. At least 3,500 wild animals have been documented as killed by the oil leak.

3. Eleven men lost their lives in the initial explosion and at least two others have died in related post explosion events.

4. Rescued animals have still been lost to local areas in order to save their lives.

5. Many thousands of fishermen, shrimpers, oyster farmers, crabbers and sports guides have lost work.

6. Many seaside hotels and resorts have lost business.

7. Seafood processors, brokers, shippers and restaurants have lost business.

8. Suppliers of sport fishing and hospitality and travel industries have lost business.

9.  The oil and gas industry in the Gulf of Mexico has lost money due to the moratorium and have caused workers to lose paychecks.

10. Pollution assessment and clean-up are still not completely designed and defined for completion.

11. There are some good effects of all this tough questioning and thinking going on that are hard to assess just yet.

12. My blog is back to normal almost.

The Lower House of the Direct Imperial Government Legislature

Under the model of Government outlined in this blog the United States will continue to have a (reformed)Senate representing the States of the union. It will also have a (reformed) House of Representatives representing the people of the Union which would be the Federal American Empire of the United States. All of the States we all know Louisiana, Hawaii, Georgia, Alabama, California and New York as well as their more than forty sisters will remain States with their own legislatures. However, there would be a number of changes including ceding some lands and rights to a Direct Imperial Government.

I.The Seats in the Lower House (or Chamber) of the Direct Imperial Government

A. Compact Seats

1.There would be two delegates elected from the Lower Chamber of each Compact Legislature of the Thirteen Compacts of Jurisdictions making up the empire.

2.The Empress would also appoint four outstanding female delegates from throughout all of the Lower Chambers of all the Compacts. 

B.  Zone and Fiefdom Seats

 1. The lower chamber of every Compact Zone in a State would send two delegates to the DIG Legislature on years ending in 0,1,2, 6,7, & 8.

2. The lower chamber of every Compact Zone in a Territory or Possession would send two delegates in years ending in 0,1,3,4, & 9. They would send one delegate in years ending in 2 & 5. 

3.  The Advisory Council to the Seigneur in each Fiefdom would elect two delegates each three-year term to this chamber. The highest ranking Mistress certified by the Mistress of Ceremonies to a Peer Elector or(if there is none such) to an Heir to the Peer-Elector who is Seigneur of each Fiefdom who is not an aristocrat will be seated in this chamber perpetually. 

4. All other zones would elect one delegate for a three-year term and the delegate would always be seated.

C. The District of Columbia Seats

The District of Columbia would seat forty delegates according to its own constitution.

D. Crown Colonies and other Colonies

Based on a set of criteria in the DIG Supreme Charter shall seat either one, two, five or seven delegates. There would be no colonies above one seat in the beginning of the DIG. 

E. Imperial Services Seats.

Every Imperial Service shall elect two members from it Employees Association. Every Imperial Service will also have one member appointed as a delegate by the Imperial Civil Service  and one member appointed by the GRIHHA. Military and Civilian services shall be equal in this regard and members of the Nobility of any kind may not serve in these seats.

F. Guilds

Every Guild that conforms to the Supreme Charter and has a Guildhouse on DIG land will be represented in this chamber. 

1. Senior Invited Guilds will have four delegates each. These shall include and mostly consist of the following groups if they form guilds: California Vineyard Guild, Old American Sugar Guild, Louisiana Oyster Guild, Louisiana Crawfish Guild, Texas-Oklahoma Cattle Guild, Seaboard Tobacco Guild,  American Brewers Guild, New England Shipwrights Guild, Chesapeake Shipwrights Guild, Gulf of Mexico Shipwrights Guild, Louisiana and South Carolina Rice Farmers Guild, California Fruit Guild, Great Lakes States Apple Guild, Florida Citrus Guild, Idaho Potato Guild, Wisconsin Dairy Guild, Old Southern Cotton Guild, Silicon Valley Electronics and Information Products Guild, Wall Street Financial Services Guild, The Guild Named for the Johnsons that Joins American Family Manufacturers of Consumer Products , the Kentucky Distillery Guild and the Old Steel Guild.

2. Every other Guild will elect two delegates.

G.  The GRIHHA Appointed Family Seats;

The GRIHHA will appoint a whole set of seats to four-year terms by general vote of their assembly.

1. The GRIHHA will appoint ten grandmothers.

2. The GRIHHA will appoint twenty mothers.

3. The GRIHHA will appoint fifteen Family  Associations who will chose their own delegates.

4. The GRIHHA  will appoint five first wives or high wives of men with harems or licensed mistresses.

H. The Imperial Chaplain’s Seats.

The Imperial Chaplain will appoint ten Catholic, three Orthodox and three other member of religious and clerical classes of low rank to the chamber.  

Obviously, the lower Chamber will be large and therefore somewhat unwieldy.  However, it is meant to be large and there is nothing unnecessary about its size.  The Supreme Charter and the Constitution would only assign limited powers to this Legislature. However, the work it would do would be essential and vital to the whole regime.

Today and tomorrow…

Well, it looks like tropical storm  Bonnie may have pushed some oil ashore before breaking up and that is more pronounced because all fragile barriers had to be removed because of what Bonnie would have don to the barriers (especially boom lines) if they had been hit by a real tropical storm.  However, it is also significant that it caused the floating worksite over Macondo to be shut down for several days. Nonetheless it is possible for us to say that the impact of this storm has been very minimal.

This weekend I have been attending the Catholic Charismatic Conference in Lafayette, Louisiana. That is a hard experience to relate to if one is not involved in the renewal movement. I have attending many of these Lafayette conferences over the past thirty odd years. Always there have been elements of both blessing and concern. However, while I fancy that I remember better days, the conference is better tha many of those in the recent past in several memorable ways. I have also run into a number of old acquaintances I seldom or never see outside of these annual conferences or similar events. For  me that means mostly these conferences for a variety of reasons.

The Charismatic renewal fostered ministries around the world, created dialog among varied Christians, produced huge amounts of music, led to countless marriages, saved some collapsing institutions of various kinds and did manifest signs of God’s gracious spirit. Tomorrow, I will return to writing about some odd speculative political agenda for a bit — God Willing. But whatever I am and think about people relating to one another has been formed in some way by the years of varied levels of involvement in the Charismatic Renewal.  I may find time to blog more about that on some future occasion.

Why I Matter to Myself & Other Matters… in the News Cycle

I am aware that this blog is a tiny little piece of the world of formal electronic information. I am even more aware that the biggest outlet only doing what I do here would only meet a small part of the complete needs of people for information.

1. This evening Venezuela and Colombia broke off relations, that is as close as on could hope to get to being warned that we may be facing a real and full-fledged shooting war in our own hemisphere. I think that war between Venezuela and Colombia would have a great deal of geopolitical and regional significance. I think that we need to face the fact that we have sense of distance from affairs of state in our own hemisphere that never existed  in the same way in the past. We have so many level of reasons to be concerned about this matter. I do not feel this news has been broken to the US public very well.

2. There is a storm passing through the Gulf over the spill area. This tropical storm Bonnie raises a huge number of questions. I think that the US public is at least aware that this is true. However, this does not mean that they are prepared to understand all the questions…

3. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Chelsea were given an image of themselves made of chips of precious stones. This is an ancient art from in Asia. The image is to valuable for them to be likely to be eligible to keep it under US ethics rules. In a country known for waste, consumption and greed how can these rules do anything but destroy what good will we do find in a large and dangerous world.

I am not going to do a good job analyzing and reporting these stories. However, life being what it is I am able to make sure my readers know that these things are happening. I want to move beyond the hell-hole of my real life for a moment and focus on how much we need a variety of perspectives in this society and I am going to rejoice that I am in this mix of needed voices.

Taking a Break From the Wind-Down of Coverage of the BP Leak

I watched the 2010 Louisiana Legends Gala on LPB tonight after going to my nephew’s birthday party.  The Louisiana Legend honorees were  a musician of great accomplishment named Burton and a man of many accomplishments in politics, music and the life of his family and community named Michot. They also included a woman who had reared children as a politician’s wife and been on the one hand a patron and organizer of the arts and an actual artist and designer named Morrison as well as a man who at the college, professional and other levels had distinguished himself as basketball player, coach  and mentor in the world of hoops and hardwood.  It also included former Governor Buddy Roemer.

My sister had just put on a big birthday party for her son and then she had to head off to Mexico. It was also garbage night.  I was looking at all the achievement of these people and thinking about all the fullness of family life. That and other thing sort of pushed the oil leak out of my mind, except that Buddy Roemer was a governor who cut pollution. There was also the fact that Louis Michot alluded to the man-made setbacks. It also played on my mind as I thought about my nephew growing up.

But overall, I am just plain tired, distracted and willing to forget about this leak for a day or so. No real BP oil gusher story for today….

The BP Oil Leak & “Culkathadreil”

Yesterday I finished a draft of a novel on a Facebook account I call “Summers Progress” it is a draft but it is not unreadable or incoherent as it is and there is not likely to be a more complete draft later on. I have written about a dozen novels like this and another half a dozen plays that I have not submitted to anyone for publication. I have submitted a couple of short stories and had them rejected but not recently. However I have had my writing published in real paper publications of the type that pay people and undergo large distribution costs. I have also had my writing published in newsletters, paid compendiums in book form for private release and in various vehicles of my own like this blog. The novel I completed yesterday is called “Culkathadreil” .  I watch television. I buy movie tickets for myself and others. I buy several newspapers and    I surf the web like a madman. In addition I listen to the radio and watch music videos from varied purveyors. The point of my next paragraph is not that I do not like anything in the world and that it is all crap — that is not my opinion.

Nonetheless, it is true that despite Louis Armstrong, Sydney Bechet, Kate Chopin, Ernest Gaines, Stephen Ambrose, Lyle Saxon, Lauren Post, Carl Brasseaux, Zachary Richard, Fats Domino, Michael Doucet and Beausoleil, the Degas paintings of the Cotton Exchange, James Lee Burke, the politics of James Carville, the monuments to Jean Lafitte, the Jazz Festival, the Cajun Music Festival, the Festival Acadiens and the guest list of the last Weeks to rule the Shadows on the Teche –despite all those things  and the Williams with cousin Tennessee and their endowment of the Royal New Orleans Collection I live in a State which is a land of sunken things and deep shadows. I do not publish my novels for many reasons and you and I might not agree on all of them. However, the oil leak is a great symbol of the world I and so many from my state live in. The reckless madness and damaging folly of big oil, big government and even big environmentalism interfere with plans people here had and hopes they would have liked to see made real. I have no doubt that most of these plans are better and could be part of something much better than the status quo.

So after each novel is finished I take a day to feel sorry for myself. I do not usually share those thoughts. However as I sink into the shadows this time I take you with me because it is crowded with sunken people and dreams around here. Despite the New Orleans Saints winning a world championship with many local boys turned men on board and with a neighbor from Texas at the lead on the field, and despite Brittney Spears and Tim McGraw being as big in popular culture as one can really measure people to be — this is a place where much more is washed a way by storms and erosions of the natural and cultural kind thean can be easily measured either. Miles of land are damaged and vulnerable because of bad federal planning and coroporate greed American Indian Tribes have to watch till another kind of Indian from around the world is governor while they struggle for culture, natire and a future in many ways. America if it is anything (and sometimes it is not anything) as an idea has become an “English only” democracy. When it was young here it was sincerely hoped by many here and in other states that it would never be either of those two things. Many thought such a pair of calamities was prohibited by the Constitution.     We have a Preservation Hall but a hundred institutions that created jazz have not been preserved. So things are undertaken but less than is lost so as I sink into the shadows this time I take you with me because it is crowded with sunken people and dreams around here. If you look carefully and think hard about this oil leak you can see why.

Bp did not cause all these evils but this crisis is deeply tied to many other trials.  Britain has the toughest real anti-libel laws in the  world (as opposed to laws never enforceable or murderous thugs or honorable duels combatting libel) and if I ever did make some bucks maybe BP could find a way to sue me for libel for some of the things written here. But the truth is that I and others here are swimming in a see of subtle libels that are harder to prove and still suck the air out of life here. BP is among the libellers and has been for a very long time along with most people their people know. That is no fiction.

Why the Oil Leak in the Gulf has Dominated this Blog

I am not running a specialty blog here. I have a personal and fairly general purpose blog.  Yet there have been so many posts on the BP Oil Leak and none that were not at all related to the oil disaster in the Gulf in quite a while.  I want to use this post to discuss briefly why I have given so much more attention to this situation than I have to anything else since I began this blog. In case anyone reading has any doubt, I had not started this blog when the September 11, 2001 attacks occurred.  If I had this blog in those days I think that I would have posted about it for a similar length of time with relatively comparable intensity. I did in fact bring it up fairly often and fairly early in the newspaper articles that I published when writing as a reporter and as a feature writer in those days.

I did  and do think that World Trade Center and Pentagon wrecking crisis was a life changing kind of crisis.  I also think that this wetlands crisis is a life changing kind of crisis.  I think that this crisis makes us aware of the vitality, importance and threatened state of Louisiana and Gulf Coast wetlands. I think that this crisis can make us aware of certain strengths and weaknesses of our global , national and regional economies that are not well enough known nor carefully enough considered. We need to also understand how little planning, responsibility and mitigation exists in huge areas of our economic life. We need to understand how often we punish those behaving responsibly and excuse those pillaging the planet. I have pointed out repeatedly that BP is a British corporation. In balance I would like to encourage you to hear this address from Prince Charles of Wales, Duke of Cornwall  to the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change before all of this began. I think his words show that there are many tie to be formed and bridges to be built to secure a decent future. British Petroleum’ s disaster is in contrast to these words of a British Prince:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyLpo3rHHQ4&playnext_from=TL&videos=hu-_iGvuMXU

I have given this disaster so much emphasis because it is an incident about which I have a great deal of background knowledge. I am positioned to understand a great deal about all of this and explain some of it my blog’s readership. I have fished and boated these waters. I have done research and paralegal tasks for lawyers involved in spill and oil industry law suits. My life has involved a great deal of study about the peoples and history of Louisiana and the Gulf Coast. These frames of reference and sets of facts have given me an understanding of how this tragedy has been playing out across this region.

Now I am not going to blog about this oil mess forever. If I do not die first of something beyond my control I expect to write on other subjects again soon enough. In fact it will be a relief to reassert the independence of this blog from any one subject.

But for now this is my subject. For now it is what I need to be thinking and blogging about more than most other things.  I hope that you will keep reading for now.

BP Oil Leak and the Technology We do not Have

It occurs to me that as hurricane season approaches there are a variety of technologies we do not have. I do blame BP primarily for not having them. I do blame the Oil and Gas industry significantly but not solely. I know not every one would agree that we should have all these things and I cannot argue that we must have every single one but here are a few things that I wish we had around.

1.  We do not have ultra speedy drill ships that could be assigned for emergencies to start drilling relief wells in the least dangerous phase and then be replaced by more substantial ships later. If we did have these the relief wells would be farther along in this case.

2. There are floating oil bladders used in conjunction with skimming operations. But we do not have neutral buoyancy production rigs for emergency siphons, caps and risers which could transfer oil to sub surface reservoirs for short (3-5) day periods when sites must be evacuated for storms.

3. There are no aerator buoys which could channel bubbles into the water column in areas where adding oxygen could make a real difference over weeks and days.

4. We do not have the barrier island bases and sound coastal policies I and others have suggested.  https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2009/10/02/ideal-wetlands-policy-on-the-louisiana-coast/

5. We do not have flocculents in mass marketable scale. Floculents are a theoretical set of tiny clusters of microbial cultures, inert clays and solvents which could be used in areas where dispersants are not appropriate.

6.We do not have sophisticated instrument remotely operated submarines owned  by states are the US Coast Guard to measure flows and document damage independently.

7. We do not have an electronic world resources and technologies clearinghouse online.

8. We do not have sophisticated modeling software for predicting the behavior of loose deep water source oil in the Gulf of Mexico.

9. We do not have a National Mental Health Emergency Support Infrastructure.

10. We do have a set of readily deployed products and services for assisting those cleaning marine vessels and small boats unusually affected working to clean or simply passing through oil slicks and other oiled waters.

BP Oil leak and Hurricane Season Darkens the Season

The BP Oil Leak is still going on as we move into hurricane season.For a recent view of the spill from space go to this link: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=44452

Tropical Storm Alex is meandering its way through the region where perhaps the ghost of Ixtoc’s gusher may be said to brood.  My little niece Naomi is suffering from a suspected blood infection and is quite ill although we hope she will soon recover in the hospital.  My uncle is languishing from Hepatitis in another hospital. It seems trivial and inappropriate to mention that the USA was knocked out of the World Cup. But life is full of sad and disappointing realities for me and for everyone living on these coasts. But in addition we are looking ar a hurricane season which has storms popping up which may delay relief wells and work with the spill to create greater havoc. Nobody’s life was perfect before the spill. I just came from mass in a church which was flooded by two hurricanes in the last five years and has just been renovated.  Nobody worshipping there so far has asked me personally if the next flood will be soaked in oil.