Reply #26: History will not be kind to this administration

[Catherina]

So Atlantis is going ahead full steam ahead?

Shut BP Atlantis Oil Rig, Consumer Group Asks Court

By Frank James

A consumer advocacy group asked a federal court to order the shutdown of a BP offshore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico because of reported irregularities in the engineering documents the company is required to maintain for the rig.

The rig, the BP Atlantis, is about 150 miles south of New Orleans and it is operating in even deeper water -- 7,070 feet --- than the Deepwater Horizon, which was working in about 5,000 feet of water.

Food and Water Watch is suing Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and the Mineral Management Service's regional director Michael Saucier.

Incidentally, FWW has a useful interactive BP Atlantis timeline.

One alarming excerpt from the embedded timeline which I can't repost here:

Aug 15, 2008 Internal BP email reveals: “…urrently there are hundreds if not thousands of Subsea documents that have never been finalized…” for Atlantis and this could “cause a catastrophic Operator error.”

The group that filed the lawsuit, Food and Water Watch, said a blowout like that which occurred on the destroyed Deepwater Horizon, could cause an even greater oil spill than the current one.

An excerpt from the Food and Water Watch press release:

The agency, along with a former BP document controls subcontractor, maintains the Department of the Interior has allowed BP Atlantis to operate without documented, approved final engineering drawings considered critical to safe operation.

The organization also kicked off a related advertising campaign today to put public pressure on the Obama Administration to shut down BP Atlantis until proven safe. The television ad is featured at www.SpilltheTruth.org.

Oil gushing from Horizon has already surpassed the 10.8 million gallon Exxon Valdez spill, according to news reports. A worst-case scenario oil spill from Atlantis would be many times larger than the spill from the Horizon explosion and exceed the Exxon Valdez spill within just two days, according to Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch.

"BP Atlantis is a ticking time bomb," Hauter said. "As clean-up continues in the Gulf, we need to act to prevent a larger disaster looming. Given that we have repeatedly asked regulators to act to solve the Atlantis safety crisis, it's outrageous that nothing has been done yet."

...

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/05/shut_bp_atlantis_oil_rig_consu.html