Company executives and top drill hands on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig argued for hours about how to proceed before a BP official made the decision to remove heavy drilling fluid from the well and replace it with lighter weight seawater that was unable to prevent gas from surging to the surface and exploding.

One employee was so mad, the rig’s chief mechanic Doug Brown testified, that he warned they’d be relying on the rig’s blowout preventer if they proceeded the way BP wanted.

“He pretty much grumbled, ‘Well, I guess that’s what we have those pinchers for,’ ” Brown said of Jimmy Harrell, the top Transocean official on the rig. “Pinchers” was likely a reference to the shear rams in the blowout preventers, the final means of stopping an explosion.

Brown said in sworn testimony on Wednesday that the BP official stood up during the meeting and said, “This is how it’s going to be.”

Read it all.

As oil continues to spill into the Gulf of Mexico, churches and religious organizations along the Louisiana coast are providing food, money and support to parishioners whose livelihoods hang in the balance.

More than 7 million gallons of oil have contaminated the Gulf since an oil rig explosion on April 20, pulling the region’s fishing industry to a screeching halt. It’s been particularly hard for churches like St. Patrick Catholic Church in Port Sulphur, La., where many parishioners are fishermen.

The Rev. Gerard Stapleton and his staff at St. Patrick’s have distributed food and $100 vouchers to 300 families in his congregation affected by the oil spill.

“It could very easily … destroy our way of life which generations have enjoyed,” Stapleton said. “This is one of the top 10 areas in the United States for fishing.”

Read the whole article.

Check it out.

Thirty members of the United Pentecostal Church of Gretna, La., made the two-hour drive to Grand Isle to baptize new parishioners on the beach where they usually conduct the ceremony. But sheriff’s officers riding four-wheel-drive dune buggies blocked the entrance.

Pastor Vidal Galvez, 40, and the caravan of the faithful drove a few hundred yards away to the bay-side waters and got on with the service. They strung a tarp between two vans, put a few beach chairs in a circle and set up a card table for the altar. Two Guatemalan guitarists started off the service with baptismal hymns.

After the 30-minute service, Galvez led congregants into the calm backwaters, where Diana Perdomo and Danilo Garcia were baptized with song and prayer.“This contamination is bad for the fishermen, and the animals,” Galvez said in Spanish. “It ruins the environment.”

Go here to read it all and see the wonderful picture.

The effort to stanch the vast oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was mired by setbacks on Monday as state and federal officials feuded with BP over its failure to meet deadlines and its refusal to stop spraying a chemical dispersant.

The oil company had indicated that it could stem the flow of oil on Tuesday by trying a procedure known as a top kill, in which heavy fluid would be pumped into the well. But on Monday morning the company’s chief operating officer said the procedure would be delayed until Wednesday. At the same time, BP was locked in a tense standoff with the Environmental Protection Agency, which had ordered the company to stop using a chemical dispersant called Corexit by Sunday. But BP continued spraying the chemical on Monday despite the E.P.A.’s demand that it use a less toxic dispersant to break up the oil. The company told the agency that no better alternative was available.

At a news conference Monday in Louisiana, state and federal officials continued to hammer BP over its response to the spill.

“BP in my mind no longer stands for British Petroleum ”” it stands for Beyond Patience,” said Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate. “People have been waiting 34 days for British Petroleum to cap this well and stop the damage that’s happening across the Gulf of Mexico.”

Read it all.

As hurricane season looms, forecasters, scientists and residents along the Gulf Coast worry that a major storm could make the oil spill worse.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says a hurricane, or a succession of them, may bring oil up from the depths of the Gulf of Mexico and then push it ashore. Forecasters say a season with multiple storms could send oil farther inland and spread it as far as Cape Hatteras, N.C.

“To think a storm surge could resuscitate a huge sum of oil (from the deep) and deposit it on land is truly catastrophic,” says Joe Jaworski, mayor of Galveston, Texas, a city hit by Hurricane Ike in 2008.

Read it all.

Grilled by skeptical lawmakers, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Tuesday acknowledged his agency had been lax in overseeing offshore drilling activities and that may have contributed to the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

“There will be tremendous lessons to be learned here,” Salazar told a Senate panel in his first appearance before Congress since the April 20 blowout and explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig.

His appearances before two of the three Senate panels holding hearings Tuesday on the giant oil spill came as federal officials kept a wary eye on the expanding dimensions of the problem. The government increased the area of the Gulf where fishing is shut down to 46,000 square miles, or about 19 percent of federal waters. That’s up from about 7 percent before.

Read it all.

An experimental attempt to stop an oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico experienced some limited success over the weekend, BP announced Sunday afternoon.

Engineers successfully inserted a tube into the damaged riser pipe from which some of the oil is spewing, capturing “some amounts of oil and gas” before the tube was dislodged, the announcement said. The tube was inspected and reinserted, BP said.

“While not collecting all of the leaking oil, this tool is an important step in reducing the amount of oil being released into Gulf waters,” the announcement said. It did not say why the tube had come dislodged or how much oil and gas were taken aboard the Discover Enterprise, the drill ship waiting to separate the oil, gas and water as it is siphoned off. The gas that reached the ship was burned using a flare system on board.

Read it all.

Oil companies face an immediate tax rise of 1 cent per barrel to help to pay for the clean-up in the Gulf of Mexico under proposed legislation rushed out by the White House.

The measure, unveiled as BP began a new attempt to contain the ruptured well that has leaked millions of gallons of crude oil into America’s southern coastal waters, would put an extra $500 million (£340 million) over ten years into the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, which covers damage caused by such disasters.

Under a $118 million spending plan outlined in the package, people affected by the spill ”” such as fishermen who have lost their livelihoods because of the contamination ”” will be granted financial assistance, and federal agencies will get additional funds to monitor the slick and assess its impact.

President Obama, said by a spokesman to be “deeply frustrated” that the leak has still not been plugged three weeks after it erupted, intends that BP will pick up most of the cost of his new plan.

Read it all.

Lately, when the Rev. Canon Sally Bingham, president and founder of Interfaith Power and Light, preaches a sermon about the United States’ dependence on fossil fuels and the possible shift toward renewable energy sources she turns to Luke chapter 5 and the metaphor that Jesus used when talking to the frustrated fishermen on the Sea of Galilee.

“When it’s not working, put your nets on the other side of the boat,” Bingham, also an Episcopal priest, said in a telephone interview from Washington, D.C., where Interfaith Power & Light, a national organization with 35 state affiliates aimed at mobilizing a religious response to global warming, is having its annual meeting.

“After a hundred years’ of fossil fuels, it’s time to look to alternatives. Put the nets on the other side of the boat. Wind, sun, geothermal ”¦ just like oil, gas and coal, they are God-given resources. What Jesus was saying was, when something isn’t working, try something else.”

Read the whole article.

The two oil firms at the centre of the huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico will attempt to blame each other for the disaster when they go before a US Senate hearing today.

Lamar McKay, president of BP America Inc, Steven Newman, president of the drilling company Transocean Ltd and Tim Probert, a senior executive at Halliburton Co, will face intense questioning before two Senate committees.

BP is expected to tell the Senate that the spill was due to the failure of Transocean’s safety equipment designed to close off the flow of oil in case of sudden pressure change, according to US media reports.

Read it all.

Nearly 50 miles offshore at the big oil rig floating on a glassy-calm sea, a helicopter landed early on the morning of April 20, carrying four executives from BP, the oil company. The men were visiting the Deepwater Horizon to help honor the crew for its standout safety record.

The rig workers were buzzing for another reason. They were nearly done with the latest job. It had been a little tricky, but it was nothing they could not handle.

As night fell, Micah Joseph Sandell, 40, was in the small cab of his crane, three stories above the bustling deck. Two floors down from the helipad, men in red coveralls waited for dinner in a hall lined with gold safety plaques. Eugene Dewayne Moss, a 37-year-old crane operator, realized he needed to tear himself away from a movie to get ready for his overnight shift.

“I thought, Oh man, I’ve got to go,” Mr. Moss recalled. “I got up, turned my TV off.”

Seconds later, a thundering explosion rocked the rig, the beginning of a terrifying night for the men who would survive one of the most harrowing disasters in the history of the oil business.

All over the ship, men snapped into action. Sleeping workers leapt from their beds. Then came a second explosion, even louder than the first….

Read it all.

The Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast has launched a webpage of job openings, emergency tips and prayers in response to the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The site includes phone numbers for residents to call if they see oil along shorelines, or wildlife affected by oil.

The Rev. Canon Beverly Findley Gibson, subdean of Christ Church Cathedral in Mobile, Ala., composed a prayer addressing the specific crises of this oil spill….

Read the whole thing.

I find these kinds of visuals helpful.

Does God care about baby shrimp? I would argue, yes; God cares for the sparrow that falls to the ground (Matt. 10:29). But, even if you disagree with me on that, consider how God loves those who are “of more value than many sparrows” (Matt. 10:31).

Shrimpers here in Biloxi are mourning the potential loss of not just an industry but a way of life handed down, at least to some, from multiple generations before them. If shrimping collapses, so will tourism, apart from the in and out predation of the casinos dotting the shoreline.

Just as significant, though, is how the balance of ecology affects people in ways we never consider or notice, until it’s threatened. God gave his image-bearing humanity dominion over the natural creation (Gen. 1:28). But this isn’t a pharaoh-like dominion; it’s a Christ-like dominion. Humans aren’t made of ether; we’re made of Spirit-enlivened mud. We come from the earth, and we must receive from nature what we need to survive, in the form of light from the sun, oxygen from plants, and food from the ground.

God knows that we need the natural creation (what we so reductionistically call an “environment”). He exults in it throughout the Psalms and in his speech to Job about his mysterious ways. Jesus continually retreats to the silent places of the mountains and the hills and the deserts, sometimes in the fellowship of only the wild beasts (Mark 1:13). We are built to recognize God in the creation (Rom. 1:18-21), and we need more than just what we can pave over and build in order to flourish.

Read it all.

When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad walks up to the podium today in New York to deliver another blast of venom, the only proper response is for the US to hit Iran’s economy with much tougher sanctions than anyone has yet tried. That means targeting its oil industry, not just its leaders and its banks.

Otherwise, Iran’s President will deliver real injury, not just insult, to this crucial conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). He has taken Iran to the brink of having nuclear weapons, and if it does soon get them (despite protestations that it only wants nuclear power), that will trigger a Middle East arms race.

The only country able to impose tough sanctions quickly is America. It should do so now. The brutal truth is that the time for dissuading Iran has probably passed. But if it hasn’t, the US needs to act now. It’s a tribute to the success of the NPT, in force since 1970 and signed by 189 countries, that these five-yearly reviews are usually dusty talks about the inspection of power stations. Meetings have tried to patch up ”” but not rewrite ”” the lopsided bargain built into the treaty. This says that the original five nuclear weapons states (the US, Russia, China, Britain and France) promise to help others to get nuclear power (but not weapons), while cutting their own stockpiles.

Read it all.

Criticism of BP is mounting in the US over its handling of the huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano urged BP to commit more resources to tackling the catastrophe.

Critics of the British oil giant also include President Barack Obama, who is due to travel to the region on Sunday to assess efforts to contain the spill.

The sprawling oil slick has begun washing up on the Louisiana coast and is threatening three other states.

Up to 5,000 barrels of oil a day are gushing into the sea after the BP-operated Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank last week.

BP’s chief executive Tony Hayward is flying to Louisiana later to personally oversee the emergency mop-up operation.

Read it all.

As oil edged toward the Louisiana coast and fears continued to grow that the leak from a seabed oil well could spiral out of control, officials in the Obama administration publicly chastised BP America for its handling of the spreading oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico, where Obama is expected to travel this weekend.

Yet a review of the response suggests it may be too simplistic to place all the blame for the unfolding environmental catastrophe on the oil company. The federal government also had opportunities to move more quickly, but did not do so while it waited for a resolution to the spreading spill from BP.

The Department of Homeland Security waited until Thursday to declare that the incident was “a spill of national significance,” and then set up a second command center in Mobile, Ala. The actions came only after the estimate of the size of the spill was increased fivefold to 5,000 barrels a day.

Read it all.

A federal official said this afternoon that the leading edge of the Gulf oil slick could reach the Mississippi River delta sometime tonight, and an executive said BP has asked the Department of Defense for technical help.

In Washington, lawmakers raised the heat on the offshore energy industry, although the Obama administration stopped short today of backing off its commitment to expanded drilling.

The White House dispatched top officials from the Homeland Security Department, Environmental Protection Agency and Interior Department to the Gulf Coast, and President Barack Obama today called the five Gulf Coast state governors to emphasize the federal government’s support and concern about the spill.

Read the whole article.

I appreciate the president’s dilemma. But I don’t think hanging back and letting the Senate take the lead is the right answer. This is a big leadership moment. He needs to confront it head on, because — call me crazy — I think doing the right and hard thing here will actually be good politics, too.

I’d love to see the president come out, guns blazing with this message:

“Yes, if we pass this energy legislation a small price on carbon will likely show up on your gasoline or electricity bill. I’m not going to lie. But it is an investment that will pay off in so many ways. It will spur innovation in energy efficiency that will actually lower the total amount you pay for driving, heating or cooling. It will reduce carbon pollution in the air we breathe and make us healthier as a country. It will reduce the money we are sending to nations that crush democracy and promote intolerance. It will strengthen the dollar. It will make us more energy secure, environmentally secure and strategically secure.

“Sure, our opponents will scream ‘carbon tax!’ Well what do you think you’re paying now to OPEC? The only difference between me and my opponents is that I want to keep any revenue we generate here to build American schools, American highways, American high-speed rail, American research labs and American economic strength. It’s just a little tick I have: I like to see our spending build our country. They don’t care. They are perfectly happy to see all the money you spend to fill your tank or heat your home go overseas, so we end up funding both sides in the war on terrorism — our military and their extremists.”

Read it all.

Two summers ago I traveled from Maine to England to participate in the Lambeth Conference. Held every 10 years at the invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the conference gathers more than 800 Anglican bishops from countries all over the world. In conversation with fellow bishops from many developing countries and places where global warming is effecting rapid and dramatic change in the environment and in the fragile lives of citizens, I saw with new eyes the way we are contributing to the problem.

In my Bible study group was the Convener of the Anglican Communion Environmental Network, the Archbishop of Canberra (Australia). He spoke of the growing and persistent drought in central Australia, drought that was drying up the rivers, killing the cattle industry and expanding the desert.

“For you in the temperate Northern Hemisphere,” he said, “global warming is an interesting scientific concept to be debated. For us, it’s life and death! And you just keep driving your SUVs.”

Read it all.

In South Carolina, the announcement fueled a debate that’s been growing for years, with advocates saying tapping the sea floor could help move the state into a new revenue stream, while opponents say the $18 billion tourism industry could be devastated if even a single environmental catastrophe occurs.

“Opening the South Atlantic Coast to oil and gas drilling will do nothing to address climate change, provide only about six months worth of oil, and put at risk multibillion dollar tourism and fisheries industries,” said Derb Carter, director of the Carolinas office of the Southern Environmental Law Center.

Off South Carolina, most experts say natural gas — not oil — would be the most likely harvest, though accounts differ on whether it would be financially viable. The closest any platforms would be to shore is around 60 miles, some projections indicate.

[State Senator Paul] Campbell said that based on today’s technology, the “likelihood of having an accident is almost zero.”

Read it all from the front page of the local paper.

The Obama administration is proposing to open vast expanses of water along the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling, much of it for the first time, officials said Tuesday.

The proposal ”” a compromise that will please oil companies and domestic drilling advocates but anger some residents of affected states and many environmental organizations ”” would end a longstanding moratorium on oil exploration along the East Coast from the northern tip of Delaware to the central coast of Florida, covering 167 million acres of ocean.

Under the plan, the coastline from New Jersey northward would remain closed to all oil and gas activity. So would the Pacific Coast, from Mexico to the Canadian border.

The environmentally sensitive Bristol Bay in southwestern Alaska would be protected and no drilling would be allowed under the plan, officials said. But large tracts in the Chukchi Sea and Beaufort Sea in the Arctic Ocean north of Alaska ”” nearly 130 million acres ”” would be eligible for exploration and drilling after extensive studies.

Read it all.

Government and third sectors will work together over the next five years to tackle key environmental issues such as climate change and sustainable development, according to the vision set out in Shaping our future, a new report published this month.

The report is the work of the joint Ministerial and Third Sector Task Force, set up in April 2009, involving ministers and officials from Defra, the Office of the Third Sector, the Department for Energy and Climate Change, the Department for Communities and Local Government and 16 third sector organisations.

They jointly agreed a vision for 2015, that: ”˜The third sector shapes the future by mobilising and inspiring others to tackle climate change and maximising the social, economic and environmental opportunities of action.”

Read it all.

Thousands of growing churches are preparing to celebrate Cherishing Churchyards Week this June as part of the UN’s International Year of Biodiversity.

The nationwide project is being run by conservation charity Caring for God’s Acre (CfGA) and is supported by the CofE’s national environmental campaign Shrinking the Footprint. There are an estimated 12,000 CofE churchyards. Around half of them already run biodiversity projects, in rural and urban areas, while remaining respectful to their users, particularly family and friends of those buried there.

Read it all.

This is a lovely piece which I caught when it first aired but it well worth the time if you have not seen it–KSH.

I caught this one on yesterday morning’s run–really wonderful stuff.

Update: There is also a penguin slideshow here.

I understand that positioning for the next election, partisan politics and lobbying money are a deadly combination to any possible reform. But its so obvious to me watching these folks push and shove good ideas away that they: 1) are utterly clueless how all of this (credit crisis, recession, housing bust) happened; b) have absolutely no idea how to fix any of it; iii) are primarily concerned with getting re-elected.

—Barry Ritholtz

China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States last year to become the world’s largest maker of wind turbines, and is poised to expand even further this year.

China has also leapfrogged the West in the last two years to emerge as the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels. And the country is pushing equally hard to build nuclear reactors and the most efficient types of coal power plants.

These efforts to dominate the global manufacture of renewable energy technologies raise the prospect that the West may someday trade its dependence on oil from the Mideast for a reliance on solar panels, wind turbines and other gear manufactured in China.

“Most of the energy equipment will carry a brass plate, ”˜Made in China,’ ” said K. K. Chan, the chief executive of Nature Elements Capital, a private equity fund in Beijing that focuses on renewable energy.

Read it all.

When a San Francisco nonprofit was pushing a controversial California bill last year to remove the restrictions on energy that residents can generate from solar and wind systems, the group needed supporters.

So it turned to an ordained minister named Sally Bingham.

“We have very few voices that are embraced by all levels of society as moral arbitrators,” says Adam Browning, executive director of the nonprofit, Vote Solar Initiative. “But Sally speaks with moral authority.”

As the environmental minister at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral, Ms. Bingham is sought after by more than just Vote Solar. Other environmental groups and political leaders are also reaching out to the 67-year-old, who operates a nonprofit interfaith environmental outreach group dubbed the Regeneration Project out of a modest office in the city’s Financial District.

Read it all.