And on the 99th day of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, Tony Hayward finally became the subject of his company's press releases. News that the BP CEO is getting bounced in favor of American Robert Dudley more rightly belongs on the oil corporation's Gulf of Mexico Response page, along with those amazing Reports from the Gulf.

Stepping aside, Hayward made a final bid to look like a hero, taking blame for the environmental calamity that he suggests might not be his fault. "The Gulf of Mexico explosion was a terrible tragedy for which -- as the man in charge of BP when it happened -- I will always feel a deep responsibility, regardless of where blame is ultimately found to lie," Hayward said in the release.

But it was very much Hayward who reshaped BP as a leaner company -- just not a safer one. After the Deepwater Horizon spill, BP posted a second quarter loss of $17 billion, compared to the $4.4 billion BP reporting earning this time last year. And ever how much oil you spill into the Gulf of Mexico, if you're the CEO, your real undoing will be red ink.

So it's off to a BP Russian oil venture for Hayward, with not so many fond wishes over here. @pspsup writes:

Dear Tony Hayward, your wish is granted, your life is back. Any other dumb wishes?

We can certainly think of some, like that BP had seen the value of investing in safety and cleanup technology while it still had the chance.

Click to enlarge.

Enough with the BP Photoshop fakes. Our own Will Femia shows you what's really going on at BP's HIVE in Houston.

Drew Wheelan finds oil deep in a marsh in Barataria Bay yesterday. Where's the cleanup? Full caption after the jump.

Hey, here's something productive from BP's Deepwater Horizon disaster: Big oil companies are setting up an emergency response plan for deepwater drilling gone wrong. ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Chevron and Shell are first in. From the New York Times:

The four companies said their initiative would seek to include all the companies involved in offshore drilling in the gulf, including BP. Their initial financing of $250 million each will be used to build a set of containment equipment, like underwater systems and pipelines, that will be able to deal with a variety of deepwater problems and can be deployed rapidly in the event of a spill.

They say they'll need six months to build the response system, which would be capable of responding at depths of 10,000 feet and handling a flow of 100,000 barrels of oil a day -- and more if needed.

[NYT]

Drew Wheelan, a birder and conservationist in Louisiana, writes:

[J]ust yesterday on a boat tour of Barataria Bay we discovered a huge swath of fresh surface oil, in a ribbon over a mile long that had penetrated over ten miles deep into the Bay. We also saw the most heavily oiled marsh and beaches that I have seen to date. There were no clean up efforts underway in either of these localities, on day 92 of BP's disaster in the Gulf, and my throat is still burning from the exposure. I will absolutely never travel anywhere without my respirator again. Despite the well meaning efforts of many, it remains hard to have hope and be optimistic for our most fragile fowl here in the Gulf.

Two bits on the Deepwater Horizon hearings today in New Orleans, from the Houston Chronicle's energy blog:

BP should have suspended drilling operations at the Deepwater Horizon rig after discovering leaks on the blowout preventer weeks before the April 20 at the Macondo well, according to federal regulations.

Crews on the Deepwater Horizon knew of leaks on one of two control pods on the BOP in mid-March, Ronald Sepulvado, a BP well site leader on the rig, testified today at investigative hearings by a joint panel of the Coast Guard and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, the former Minerals Management Service.

And this:

A Halliburton official on board the Deepwater Horizon rig told a colleague in an e-mail the day of the April 20 well blowout that he was satisfied with the well's cement job, a BP attorney said today in a public hearing.

"We have completed the job and it went well," Nathaniel Chaisson wrote Jesse Gagliano, according to the email, read aloud at the hearing by BP lawyer Hariklia Karis.

[Houston Chronicle's ongoing coverage]
[LA Times: Halliburton reported gas leak]

Rep. Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts) wants BP to reopen the Deepwater Horizon well, now that it's got a mostly leak-proof cap on it. Markey's idea is that we now capture almost all the oil on tanker ships -- instead of only some it, as had been the case -- and thus we can know how much oil BP sent gushing into the Gulf of Mexico every day for nearly three months. BP will have to pay fines of up to $4,300 per barrel, so we are talking billions here.

Rep. Markey chairs the House Energy and Environment Subcommittee, and sent a letter last week outlining his concerns to Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen. "If the well remains fully shut in until the relief well is completed, we may never have a fully accurate determination of the flow rate from this well. If so, BP -- which has consistently underestimated the flow rate -- might evade billions of dollars of fines," he wrote.

Today in the New York Times, law professor David Uhlmann, former head of the environmental crimes section at the Justice Department, said Markey makes no sense. As Uhlmann explains it, BP could face felony charges of obstruction of justice if the company tried to skip out on a full accounting. From the Times:

"Congressman Markey's concern is understandable, and his skepticism is understandable," the professor said, "but it's not in BP's interest to proceed as he's been suggesting."

In the end, Uhlmann predicts, the federal government and BP will negotiate a fine, and it won't account for every drop.

The crew of the Coast Guard Cutter Resolute learn last week from TV that the Deepwater Horizon has been capped. Coast Guard photo.

Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen gave BP another 24 hours, starting Sunday evening, to keep testing its cap on the Deepwater Horizon. Admiral Allen is worried about signs that the seabed around the well is leaking -- "undetermined anomalies," as he wrote BP (letter linked here). At the far end of the spectrum of fears, officials worry that capping the well may create enough pressure to cause the sea floor around it to break up.

Which could seriously be bad. If the Coast Guard doesn't like what it sees, it will ask BP to open up the valves on the cap and let the oil flow again. "At any moment, we have the ability to return to the safe containment of the oil on the surface until the time the relief well is completed and the well is permanently killed," Allen said.

How big a deal is this? The folks at the Oil Drum spent the weekend talking newbies off the ledge. @Rovman advised: not making too much of any given video image.

All I'm trying to say is that throughout this event I've said to myself 'Oh, some disturbed silt again' a hundred times but never once have I said to myself 'Uh-oh that looks nasty!' Remember also that if there is a leak worth worrying about down there, there will be an ROV stationed next to it 24/7 with a camera trained on it. That's what you should be looking out for.

BP exec Doug Suttles (right) with Kevin Costner. BP America photo

This might be a candidate for our lead story of the day. It certainly fits in the category of "You're Kidding Me." From the New York Times:

The oil giant BP faced new furor on Thursday as it confirmed that it had lobbied the British government to conclude a prisoner-transfer agreement that the Libyan government wanted to secure the release of the only person ever convicted for the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing over Scotland, which killed 270 people, most of them Americans.

BP was trying to secure its $900 million deal to explore for oil and gas in the Mediterranean off Libya. Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi was convicted in 2001 and released by Scotland in 2009 when doctors said he had three months to live. He bounced back and is now reportedly living well in Libya.

If BP will stoop to advocating for a mass murderer in order to protect its profits, it's a lot harder to believe company execs who say they'll spare no expense to make things right with the Deepwater Horizon.

UPDATE here, including BP and British government denials.

Remember this guy and his blues for the Gulf of Mexico? "Dirty Cajun" Drew Landry took his song to the Presidential Oil Spill Commission hearings this week. "I never thought I'd be the hippie that brought his guitar to the meeting," Landry said, before launching in.

Landry warned the commission about the coming hurricane season and what it means for his culture. "This could be the next expulsion of the Cajun people, the people that love this place," he said.

The commission listened, and seemed a little stunned by his message. "I think you've made your point," co-chair William Reilly told him. "Thank you for your presentation, too. Everybody's with you."

Maybe that's true in spirit, but those commissioners can't possibly be in Drew Landry's muddy shoes, not with everything he and his fellow south Louisianans have to lose.

(H/T @Debbie in PHX

[Dirty Cajuns]

The Deepwater Horizon well, July 12

"Concern around the integrity of the oil well shouldn't play into effect of the relief wells. -Kent Wells"

That's from @BP_America on Tuesday, keeping the conversation going as the oil disaster company tested the new cap for the Deepwater Horizon. All that stopped, for reasons that aren't yet clear. From the Times-Picayune:

A series of methodical, preliminary steps were completed before progress stalled. Engineers spent hours on a seismic survey, creating a map of the rock under the sea floor to spot potential dangers, such as gas pockets. It also provides a baseline to compare with later surveys during and after the test to see whether the pressure on the well is causing underground problems.

An unstable area around the wellbore could create bigger problems if the leak continued elsewhere in the well after the cap valves were shut, experts said.

"It's an incredibly big concern," said Don Van Nieuwenhuise, director of Professional Geoscience Programs at the University of Houston. "They need to get a scan of where things are, that way when they do pressure testing, they know to look out for ruptures or changes."

Admiral Thad Allen says that we just need "additional analysis" that could finish up today -- that they're still collecting lots of oil and drilling for the relief wells is getting closer. Two bucks says today's news gets the methane-bubble crowd going, anyhow. And in a sense, I don't fault them. This is a scary story -- just maybe not in that way.

BP photo by way of Times-Picayune

With its hopefully miraculous new cap in place over the Deepwater Horizon well, BP is testing today to see if it will capture all the oil until a relief well can be completed. After nearly three months of tens of thousands of barrels of oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico every day, it's hard to believe that the worst of it might really, actually be over.

For the families directly affected by BP's disaster, the worst has only begun. BP has been touting its claims process for fishermen and others put out of work by the Deepwater Horizon. You can get forms in three different languages! Darryl Willis will tell you all about it! Up to six months of relief on the way!

But in Louisiana nearly 40,000 are seeing their payments from the company reduced because, as workers in a self-employment, cash economy, they can't prove their losses to BP's satisfaction. From the New Orleans Times-Picayune:

BP said it soon will begin adjusting claims downward based on "the seasonal nature of fishing activities, which will also result in a decrease in payments,'' Ms. Nichols wrote. Clearly the company's interest is in minimizing the amount it will have to pay to families left without their livelihoods in the wake of BP's environmental disaster. BP is also refusing to consider business expenses, such as loan payments on fishing boats, she noted.

Meanwhile, the New York Times spills some serious ink on BP's safety record -- maybe "danger record" would be a better way of putting it.

Deepwater Horizon Response photo

Twice now the federal government has defended its six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling, and twice federal courts have rejected the ban.

Undaunted, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar issued a new ban this afternoon. This one's not a blanket moratorioum, but a series of "suspensions."

Secretary Salazar has directed BOEM to direct the suspension of any authorized drilling of wells using subsea or surface BOPs on a floating facility. Secretary Salazar has further directed BOEM to cease the approval of pending and future applications for permits to drill wells using subsea or surface BOPs on a floating facility. These suspensions shall apply in the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific regions through November 30, 2010, subject to modification if the Secretary determines that the significant threats to life, property, and the environment set forth in this memorandum have been sufficiently addressed.

Salazar's old rules used depth to define whether drilling was banned -- anything deeper than 500 feet was out. His new rules apply to rigs that float, like the BP's Deepwater Horizon used to do. At least, they apply unless another court throws them out.

[New Deepwater Drilling Suspensions (pdf)]

Deepwater Horizon Response photo

Next to "other reptiles," marine mammals like dolphins are the least-collected critters in BP's Deepwater Horizon disaster. When responders do find marine mammals, they tend to be dead. Of the 54 gathered so far, only five were alive. Just one has been released, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service reports (pdf).

Today, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released guidelines for what to do if you come across a dead or distressed dolphin. Among the counsel:

• Report any dead, stranded, or distressed dolphins or other marine mammals to the wildlife hotline at 866-557-1401.
• Do not push the animal back out to sea – this delays examination and treatment, and often results in the animal re-stranding itself in worse condition.
• Do not approach, feed, or swim with the animal.
• Stay with the animal until rescuers arrive, but use caution. Keep a safe distance from the head and tail.
• Minimize contact with the animal (use gloves if necessary) and avoid inhaling air the animal has breathed out.
• Keep crowds away and noise levels down to avoid causing further stress to the animal.
• Keep dogs and other pets away from live or dead marine mammals.
• Do not collect any parts from dead marine mammals. This is prohibited under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

(Headline h/t: @makobooks)