BS: Russians board Greenpeace

Subject: RE: BS: Russians board Greenpeace
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 20 Sep 13 - 09:55 AM

France sunk one, killing crew members.

Subject: RE: BS: Russians board Greenpeace
From: Greg F.
Date: 20 Sep 13 - 09:02 AM

So now Russia joins the club of all the other nations that have boarded & will continue to board Greenpeace vessels.

Big deal.

Subject: RE: BS: Russians board Greenpeace
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Sep 13 - 08:20 AM

Clearly,you dont mess with Putin.

Subject: RE: BS: Russians board Greenpeace
From: gnu
Date: 20 Sep 13 - 07:55 AM

4.9M bbls

Edmonton Journal (19 hours ago)

NEW ORLEANS - A former Halliburton manager was charged Thursday with destroying evidence following BP's 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a case that coincides with a guilty plea to a related charge by the Houston-based oilfield services company.

Anthony Badalamenti, who had been the cementing technology director for Halliburton Energy Services Inc., was charged in federal court with instructing two other employees to delete data during a post-spill review of the cement job on BP's blown-out well.

Halliburton was BP PLC's cement contractor on the drilling rig that exploded in the Gulf in April 2010, killing 11 workers and triggering the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

Badalamenti, 61, of Katy, Texas, is charged in a bill of information, which typically signals that a defendant is co-operating with prosecutors. His attorney, Tai H. Park, declined to comment. Badalamenti is scheduled to be arraigned on Sept. 30.

Also on Thursday, a federal judge accepted a plea agreement that calls for Halliburton to pay a $200,000 fine for a misdemeanour stemming from Badalamenti's alleged conduct.

U.S. District Judge Jane Triche Milazzo said she believes the plea agreement is reasonable and agreed with prosecutors and the company that it "adequately reflects the seriousness of the offence."

Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement that Halliburton's guilty plea and the charge against Badalamenti "mark the latest steps forward in the Justice Department's efforts to achieve justice on behalf of all those affected by the Deepwater Horizon explosion, oil spill, and environmental disaster."

The plea deal has its critics, however. Allison Fisher, an outreach director for the Public Citizen non-profit advocacy group, called it a "travesty."

"Rather than rubber stamp the plea agreement," she said in a statement, "the court should have rejected the bargain-basement deal because it fails to hold the corporation accountable for its criminal acts and will not deter future corporate crime."

Unlike BP and rig owner Transocean Ltd., Halliburton was not charged with a crime related to the causes of the disaster. The fine Halliburton agreed to pay is the statutory maximum for the misdemeanour charge of unauthorized destruction of evidence.

The deal announced in July also calls for Halliburton to be on probation for three years and to make a $55 million contribution to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, but that payment was not a condition of the deal.

The company said in a statement that closing the case was a good move for the company and that prosecutors have described its co-operation in the case as "exceptional," as well as "forthright, extensive and ongoing since the outset of the investigation."

Marc Mukasey, a lawyer who represented Halliburton at Thursday's hearing, said the company wouldn't comment on the charge against Badalamenti.

Although Halliburton's plea deal resolves the criminal case, the company still faces hefty civil penalties for its role in the disaster.

A federal judge is presiding over a trial designed to identify the causes of BP's well blowout and assign percentages of fault to BP and its contractors. The second phase of the trial — focusing on BP's efforts to plug the well and determining how much oil spilled into the Gulf — is scheduled to start on Sept. 30.

BP resolved a Justice Department criminal probe of its role in the Deepwater Horizon disaster when it pleaded guilty in January to manslaughter charges for the deaths of the rig workers and agreed to pay a record $4 billion in penalties. Transocean pleaded guilty in February to a misdemeanour charge of violating the Clean Water Act and agreed to pay $400 million in criminal penalties.

Prosecutors said that in May 2010, Badalamenti directed a senior program manager to run computer simulations on centralizers, which are used to keep the casing centred in the wellbore. The results indicated there was little difference between using six or 21 centralizers. The data could have supported BP's decision to use the lower number.

Badalamenti is accused of instructing the program manager to delete the results. The program manager "felt uncomfortable" about the instruction but complied, according to prosecutors.

A different Halliburton employee also deleted data from a separate round of simulations at the direction of Badalamenti, who was acting without the authorization of the company, prosecutors said.

Halliburton notified investigators from a Justice Department task force about the deletion of data. Efforts to recover the data weren't successful.

Badalamenti isn't the first individual charged with a crime stemming from the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

BP well site leaders Robert Kaluza and Donald Vidrine await a trial next year on manslaughter charges stemming from the rig workers' deaths. Prosecutors claim they botched a key safety test and disregarded abnormally high pressure readings that were glaring signs of trouble before the well blowout.

Former BP executive David Rainey is charged with concealing information from Congress about the amount of oil that was spewing from the blown-out well in 2010. Former BP engineer Kurt Mix is charged with deleting text messages and voicemails about the company's response to the spill.

Subject: RE: BS: Russians board Greenpeace
From: gnu
Date: 20 Sep 13 - 07:53 AM

"Ever since BP spilled 4 million barrels of crude into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010..." I thought it was considerably more?

I just can't see that using plantform drilling way up north in pack ice zones is acceptable. Offshore drilling is bad enough as it is anywhere.

Subject: RE: BS: Russians board Greenpeace
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 20 Sep 13 - 05:46 AM

Any company attempting to turn the most hostile drilling environment on Earth into an oil patch instantly puts in peril everything that makes the Arctic so unique. An oil spill could devastate endangered species like polar bears and bowhead whales, destroy habitat for millions of migratory birds, and jeopardize the subsistence-based Inupiat culture.

Ever since BP spilled 4 million barrels of crude into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, it has struggled to mop up the environmental and economic disaster that ensued. With year-round warm water, relatively calm weather, abundant daylight, and close proximity to one of the world's densest concentrations of oil industry infrastructure, the Gulf affords luxuries that don't exist in the Arctic.

It's another world up there. Arctic weather is even nastier than the weather at the site of the Kulluk's grounding. Gales howl across the Arctic Ocean. Total darkness envelops it half the year. Ice floes lock in the entire region six months a year, making navigation almost impossible. (The USCG has only a few icebreaker-class vessels in its entire fleet.)

And this unforgiving ocean wilderness is located more than 1,000 miles from the nearest Coast Guard base.

In the event of a spill – which, given the oil industry's 100-year track record, is practically certain – the Arctic's extreme environment would render containment measures useless.

According to a study commissioned by Canada's National Energy Board and based on 20 years of Beaufort Sea data, three of the most widely-used oil spill containment methods – burning spilled oil in-situ, deploying booms and skimmers, and aerial application of dispersants – would be impossible due to bad weather or sea ice 20-84 percent of the brief, June-to-November open-water season.

Subject: RE: BS: Russians board Greenpeace
From: GUEST,iain
Date: 20 Sep 13 - 04:30 AM

I am curious to know what makes the exploitation of oil in the Arctic become any more reckless than exploiting oil reserves anywhere else.
Greenpeace seem quite happy to burn up gallons of the stuff chasing around in their boat increasing the demand for it.

Subject: RE: BS: Russians board Greenpeace
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 20 Sep 13 - 04:14 AM

Hmmm, maybe I'm getting my information from a biased source, but what I've been told is that the vessel was circling WITHIN the Safety Exclusion Zone around the platform and ignored requests to move outsize said Safety Zone.

Russian Federation Law gives Russia jurisdiction over the "Northern Route" seas OUTSIDE the normal national waters limit and into international waters from the viewpoint of pollution and environmental protection.

The Arctic Sunrise is a SINGLE engine vessel and was NOT sailing in company of a Guard Boat or Safety Vessel which could take it under tow if its engine failed, in order to pull it away from the platform.

Therefore, from the Russian point of view, the movements of the vessel posed an environmental threat falling within the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation which justified its boarding.

Subject: RE: BS: Russians board Greenpeace
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 20 Sep 13 - 02:53 AM

E mail sent to members.



Hi Keith,

At least 15 armed Russian Coast Guards have just illegally boarded and taken over our ship the Arctic Sunrise.

They immediately seized every crew member except three people who locked themselves inside the radio room as the guards tried to break in. We had a satellite phone link to them and they were speaking to international media, trying to stay there for as long as they could.

As far as we know, everyone else is being held under armed guard.

Please send an urgent email to the Russian Ambassador in London and demand the Russian Coast Guard release our crew immediately.

The ship had been part of a peaceful protest against energy giant Gazprom which is poised to drill for the first oil to come out of the icy waters of the Arctic.Yesterday there were guns pointed at the protesters, shots fired and two other crew members were arrested as they protested Gazprom's Arctic drilling.

The Arctic Sunrise was circling Gazprom's Prirazlomnaya platform inside international waters and outside the jurisdiction of Russian authorities, making the boarding of the ship unlawful.

Subject: BS: Russians board Greenpeace
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 20 Sep 13 - 02:48 AM

Greenpeace are protesting the reckless exploitation of oil under Arctic Ocean.
Armed Russian commandos boarded their vessel and are holding the crew prisoner.
They seem to be taking the ship to Murmansk.
Knowing how angry some Mudcatters get about such "piracy" I thought I should start a thread.