Write your senator and make your voice heard..Unless your senator is Lindsay Graham

Its a well known fact to anyone that watches the daily show that SC politics is a joke. But since I was taught that your senator is in office to represent their constituents, and the fact that my senator (Lindsay Graham) appears to be huge dickhead, I decided to exercise my voice and write him a couple of letters.

I did get a reply to both letters but they seemed to be totally off topic. In fact so far off topic that I began to get a bit suspicious on whether they were even read. So, being a good little sciency geek I decided to conduct a little experiment. I sent my esteemed senator the wikipedia entry for Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" with a additional sentence telling him that this was just and experiment to see if they actually read their letters and filed it under "unemployment benefits". The reply says it all......

USCG...The newest weapon in PR

Ok, let me start by saying I have nothing against the United States Coast Guard (USCG). Every day they put their lives on the line to save people in dire need. I have utmost respect for the guys in the choppers and the swimmers in the water. This post is not about them, nor is it my intent to disrespect them in any way.

I do, however, question the apparently cozy relationship their higher up's have with BP's PR agency - O'brien's Response Management. But I am getting ahead of myself, let me give you a little background.

BP, like all good corporate behemoths, is not actually cleaning up the gulf. They have have delegated that mission to a company called O'Brien's Response Management (O'BrienRM). O'Brien's is handling all the messy stuff by farming out the waste management contractors, bird nest stomping contractors, and lets not forget the "cover the oil on the beach with a layer of sand" contractors as well.

But wait! O'Brien's does much more than that. You see, O'Brien's definition of response management is more than just cleaning up after a catastrophe..It's about saving a company's reputation after said catastrophe. To quote their own website....

”O'Brien's Response Management (O'Brien'sRM) is the leading provider of crisis and emergency response services. Founded in the early 1980s, O'Brien's has grown organically and through acquisition so that it now offers the most complete suite of products and services in the emergency management field. Our focus is resilience. We understand resilience as the ultimate measure of an organization and community's strength. It's ability to endure the worst, to recover and resume normal life and activities is the most important attribute of a strong company, agency, organization or community. "

If that's not enough to convince you of where O'Brien's heart (if they had one) is ...then how about this one out of O'Brien's own internal newsletter..

“Media coverage and public interest is in a way like a giant eye or radar sweeping the overall landscape. When it lights on something of high interest such as this spill, anything related to the topic of the day becomes of additional interest for a time. That means any spill, any accident or incident involving tanker cargos or quantities of vessel fuel, will be incorporated into an overall theme of environmental risk from the use of oil. While we are aware that our clients for the most part place an extraordinary emphasis on safe and responsible operations, this heightened sensitivity represents a higher than normal risk of reputation damage. "

Ok, so they are about PR...nothing new here..Lots of companies do this. Where's the USCG tie in?..Well since you asked...

"The history of the O'Brien's name started back in the early 80's when founder Jim O'Brien retired as an officer with the United States Coast Guard. Jim formed his own company, O'Brien Oil Pollution Service, otherwise known as "OOPS", in Slidell, Louisiana."

(You gotta love the name OOPS..I mean really)

Well Jim didn't stop there. Seems quite a few officers of O'Brien's Response Management are either ex-Coast Guard or ex-Navy (primarily media relations specialists). In fact they just recently hired yet another former coast guarder Rear Admiral Steve Branham (former Coast Guard's Chief of Media Relations) as their Executive Vice President of Government Services.

Just to be fair, O'Brien's does not just have BP as a client. Other clients include:

Marathon
ExxonMobil
Anadarko
Kinder Morgan
ConocoPhillips
Chevron
BHP Billiton
Repsol
Transocean ... Ya, the rig guys

If that's still not enough to raise your eyebrow then maybe this will. O'Brien's has another division called PIERS systems. PIERS systems is a software company. They produce an incident management system that, well, I will let them tell you in their own words...

"The PIER System is an all-in-one, web-based solution for crisis communications management, mass notification, public and media relations, employee communications, business continuity and more."

Deepwaterhorizonresponse.com the original "official" gulf catastrophe website is PIERS based. Not only the national response site, but all the little ones as well also run on PIERS. In fact they are kinda proud of it!..

“PIER Systems has worked closely with the US Coast Guard for over nine years. All Coast Guard public affairs operations use PIER for routine daily communication as well as for major events such as Hurricane Katrina and the Gulf Spill. Similarly, PIER has also worked with BP for over 8 years providing multiple PIER sites for crisis and public communication purposes in many locations throughout the world “ . The others response sites are also run on PIERS (alabamagulfresponse.com, louisianagulfresponse.com, mississippigulfresponse.com and floridagulfresponse.com )"

And one last bit of info for all you conspiracy theorists out there....The primary share holder of SEACOR (O'Brien's parent company) is Black Rock Holdings. The same guys who own most of BP's stock....But that, I will save for another post.

You know your in trouble when the fishermen wont eat their own catch

Smell test? Ya I'm sure after 16 hours of smelling fish guts and diesel the human nose can detect oil...

Even the fishermen aint buying it.

Is LA oil spill research a "rigged game"?

It occured to me the other day that we have been drilling for oil in the gulf for over 70 years. In 1937, Pure Oil (now Chevron) and its partner Superior Oil (now ExxonMobil) used a fixed platform to develop a field 1 mile offshore of Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana in 14 feet of water. 73 years later we are routinely drilling in over 5000 feet of water. The technical and monetary challenges that had to be overcome to engage in this activity are staggering.

Yet, as we have all been witness to, the technology to effectively clean up spills (or in the case of the deepwater horizon.... uncontrolled oil geysers) consists of 1970's technology combined with unstudied chemicals intended to sweep the oil out of sight, and therefore out of mind. How is it possible that technology for cleanup has lagged so far behind the technology for drilling? The answer lies in who is doing the research into oil response.

In the state of Louisiana oil spill response research is conducted by LOSCO (Louisiana's Oil Spill Coordinator's Office). LOSCO's mission and history, according to their website ...

"The state legislature created the Louisiana Oil Spill Coordinator’s Office (LOSCO) in 1991. LOSCO was made part of the Governor’s Office so that it could serve as the single point of contact for all programs related to oil spills in Louisiana. Our mission is to respond to oil spill events, restore natural resources, protect economic infrastructure, and safeguard public health. LOSCO is funded by a two-cent per barrel tax on all oil transported to or from vessels at Louisiana marine terminals. "

Part of this two cent a barrel tax funds LOSCO's research arm. The Louisiana Oil Spill Research & Development Program (OSRADP). The program is run out of Louisiana state university and provides funding for research programs related to ...well lets just use their own words from their website....

"The chief function of the Louisiana Applied and Educational Oil Spill Research and Development Program (OSRADP) is to provide oil spill planners and response personnel with practical, scientifically-sound and cost effective spill prevention, management and mitigation tools. Annually, OSRADP underwrites 10 to 15 research projects to accomplish this mission. "

Since its inception in 1994 to 2007 (latest data available on their site) OSRADP has distributed over 6.4 million in oil spill research funding. So why is the technology for cleanup so woefully behind drilling technology? The devil is in the details.

A little research reveals that OSRADP consists of 2 controlling committees, an advisory board and a proposal review board. These are the ones tasked with determining what research will be funded and what actually will be researched. In other words, they control the purse strings and therefore the scientific data produced.

This is where things get interesting as it appears that "big oil" is heavily involved with both the advisory committee and the proposal review board. The current advisory board members are...

Dan Allen, ChevronTexaco
Kent Satterlee III, Shell Exploration & Production Co. (SEPCo)
Dr. William Campbell, Graduate Studies & Research/Applied & Natural Science, Louisiana Tech University
Harold “Rusty” Wright, Minerals Management Service (MMS)
Chris Piehler, Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality
Jim Hanifen, Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries
Richard F. Stanek, Louisiana Department of Natural Resources, Coastal Management Division
Rob Yarbrough, Emergency Response Coordinator, ConocoPhilips
Barry Joffrion, Placid Refining Company LLC
Roland Guidry, (chairman) Louisiana Oil Spill Coordinators Office/Office of the Governor

Proposal review board...

Derald Chriss, Department of Chemistry, Southern University
David Fritz, British Petroleum
Mark Davis, Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana
J. E. Myers, ChevronTexaco
Dr. Maud Walsh, Department of Agronomy, LSU AgCenter
Dr. Anita George-Ares, Exxon Mobil Biomedical Science
Dr. Albert Venosa, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Roland Guidry, (chairman) Louisiana Oil Spill Coordinators Office/Office of the Governor

The argument can be made that oil companies have the most experience in oil spillage and therefore should be included.

However a more compelling argument is that by limiting the science produced, big oil can effectively limit research on the harmful effects of spills while giving their lawyers enough "wiggle room" to base future lawsuits on. Nothing makes a defense lawyer drool more the uncertainty. Just asked Exxon, as they were able to drop the damages from the Exxon Valdez from 5 billion to just over 500 million.