NEWS ALERT: Most Federal Spill-Response Contracts Have Gone to Companies Based in Ken Feinberg’s Home State of Massachusetts
http://oilspillaction.com/news-alert-most-federal-spill-response-contracts-have-gone-to-companies-based-in-ken-feinbergs-home-state-of-massachusetts
By Stuart H. Smith - an attorney based in New Orleans
November 17, 2010 11:11 am
Bloomberg is out with a blockbuster story today: Massachusetts-based companies received twice as much money in federal contracts stemming from the BP oil spill as all five Gulf states combined. The source is data compiled by Bloomberg Rankings from the Federal Procurement Data System.
Of the five states where businesses received the most money, only Louisiana borders the Gulf. The Pelican State’s contracts totaled at least $10.9 million. That amount combined with federal response money paid to companies in Mississippi, Alabama, Texas and Florida, the Gulf states received a grand total of $25.3 million. As it turns out, a single Massachusetts-based firm by the name of Industrial Economics Inc., reported receiving nearly twice as much as all five Gulf states combined – a whopping $47.52 million. And the runner-up firm was based in Colorado, which ranked third for contracts, where Stratus Consulting raked in $22.73 million, Bloomberg reports.
Ah, you know this sort of things leads to our friends at NOAA. Bloomberg quotes a government spokesman as saying the situation happened because of contracts that “… [the] National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has with damage-assessment consultants based outside of the region.” The spokesperson adds: “The contracts are set up in advance to provide support capabilities in response to emergency pollution events. Their expertise is not simply transferable to another firm in the Gulf region nor are the contract mechanisms in place.”
Folks, I can tell you that this is not going to play well in the Gulf – and the story is already going viral.
Beyond the idea that somehow the folks from the Boston area know better how to deal with the Gulf – that “expertise is not simply transferable” nonsense – this will dramatically increase tensions surrounding the BP claims process. While Kenneth Feinberg works from Washington, D.C., he is a Boston native and is famous for having worked with the late Sen. Ted Kennedy. Fair or not, this revelation will add fuel to the fire that out-of-area companies are making millions – and yet the cleanup continues to stumble along.
It’s also another controversy for NOAA, but compared to backing BP on its low-ball spill estimates, announcing “Mission Accomplished” with oil still washing ashore and spinning health concerns to benefit political goals, it’s actually small potatoes.
The Bloomberg initial report is here: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-17/massachusetts-companies-get-lion-s-share-of-oil-spill-contracts.html
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Folks, I can tell you that this is not going to play well in the Gulf – and the story is already going viral.
Beyond the idea that somehow the folks from the Boston area know better how to deal with the Gulf – that “expertise is not simply transferable” nonsense – this will dramatically increase tensions surrounding the BP claims process
Kenneth R. Feinberg - Why He Matters
http://www.whorunsgov.com/Profiles/Kenneth_R._Feinberg
In June 2010, President Obama placed him in charge of the $20 billion escrow account for damage claims from the massive BP oil spill. BP will pay $5 billion into the fund for four years, starting in 2010.
3 posted on Wednesday, November 17, 2010 11:46:25 PM by Islander7 (If you want to anger conservatives, lie to them. If you want to anger liberals, tell them the truth.)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2629047/posts?page=3#3
Noooo kidding? BTTT (This was known clear back in July of 2010 - see my posts below this article for proof):
01/09/2011:
Methane from BP oil spill has vanished – presumed digested by microbes
A new paper online in Science:
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1199697 A Persistent Oxygen Anomaly Reveals the Fate of Spilled Methane in the Deep Gulf of Mexico, by John D. Kessler, David L. Valentine, Molly C. Redmond, Mengran Du, Eric W. Chan, Stephanie D. Mendes, Erik W. Quiroz, Christie J. Villanueva, Stephani S. Shusta, Lindsay M. Werra, Shari A. Yvon-Lewis and Thomas C. Weber
It adds to the growing body of evidence that the oceans with the help of microbes are much more resilient than they have been assumed to be.
http://ktwop.wordpress.com/2010/09/12/microbes-ate-the-bp-oil-plume/
http://ktwop.wordpress.com/2010/10/20/microbes-consume-methane-10-to-100-times-faster-than-thought/
As Science News puts it:
Methane, the predominant hydrocarbon produced by the BP blowout last year, has all but vanished from Gulf of Mexico waters, a new study reports presumably eaten up by marine bacteria. That hadn’t been expected to happen for years.
Two-thirds of the hydrocarbons released by the BP accident were forms of natural gas: largely methane, ethane and propane. While Gulf microbes quickly began devouring the larger gas molecules, they initially left tiny methane which accounted for an estimated 87.5 percent of the gas initially emitted largely untouched.
Some of the authors of the new paper had reported in the Oct. 8Science finding almost no microbial breakdown of BP methane in June, about a month and a half into the 83-day gusher.
Rates of biodegradation in subsea plumes, where this gas had been accumulating, “indicated methane would persist for many, many years, if not almost a decade,” observes John Kessler, a chemical oceanographer at Texas A&M University in College Station and an author of that earlier report.
To begin quantifying just how slowly that breakdown was proceeding, he and his colleagues returned to the Gulf for three research cruises between August 18 and October 4. Their sampling at more than 200 sites turned up no BP methane. In fact, concentrations of the gas in seawater throughout the spill zone were lower than typical background concentrations for the Gulf, these researchers report online January 6 in Science.
“We were caught off guard,” Kessler says. “But that highlights the beauty of the scientific process. You put together hypotheses based on the information at hand and test them. And whether we’re right or wrong, at the end of the day we’ll have learned something new about the system.”
The new paper’s conclusions “are quite consistent with what we’ve seen,” says microbial ecologist Terry Hazen of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. On August 24, his team was the first to report online in Science that BP oil plumes had disappeared.
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OF COURSE THIS WAS KNOWN A LONG TIME AGO:
08/12/2010
NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE
Lou Dolinar August 12, 2010 4:00 P.M.
OUR REAL GULF DISASTER
299 posted on Friday, August 13, 2010 4:30:07 PM by Matchett-PI (BP was founder of Cap & Trade Lobby and is linked to John Podesta, The Apollo Alliance and Obama)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/2505164/posts?page=299#299
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November 15, 2010 4:00 A.M.
Sea Life Flourishes in the Gulf
The Great Oil Spill Panic of 2010 will go down in history as mass hysteria on par with the Dutch tulip bubble.
The catastrophists were wrong (again) about the Deep Water Horizon oil spill. [snip]
303 posted on Tuesday, November 16, 2010 9:13:43 AM by Matchett-PI (This is a RESTRAINING ORDER not merely an ‘election’ ~ PJ O’Rourke.)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/2505164/posts?page=303#303
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Washington Post
Report: White House altered drilling safety report
By DINA CAPPIELLO The Associated Press
Wednesday, November 10, 2010; 11:11 AM
IG report shows Obama WH rewrote Gulf spill report to support moratorium.
“...The White House rewrote crucial sections of an Interior Department report to suggest an independent group of scientists and engineers supported a six-month ban on offshore oil drilling, the Interior inspector general says in a new report.
In the wee hours of the morning of May 27, a staff member to White House energy adviser Carol Browner sent two edited versions of the department report’s executive summary back to Interior. The language had been changed to insinuate the seven-member panel of outside experts – who reviewed a draft of various safety recommendations – endorsed the moratorium, according to the IG report obtained by POLITICO.
“The White House edit of the original DOI draft executive summary led to the implication that the moratorium recommendation had been peer-reviewed by the experts,” the IG report states, without judgment on whether the change was an intentional attempt to mislead the public. ... Why was the staff of energy “adviser” Carol Browner allowed to edit a report issued by the Department of Interior’s blue-ribbon panel in the first place? ...”
307 posted on Tuesday, November 16, 2010 9:48:25 AM by Matchett-PI (This is a RESTRAINING ORDER not merely an ‘election’ ~ PJ O’Rourke.)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/2505164/posts?page=307#307