‘60 Minutes’ whistleblower sues to shut down BP’s ‘Atlantis’ Rig

HOUSTON - A whistleblower who appeared on the May 16 telecast of “CBS 60 Minutes” contending that the BP Atlantis platform in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico is a disaster waiting to happen filed a lawsuit on May 17 aimed at shutting the rig down.
The suit seeks to force the federal government to halt operations at Atlantis, alleging that BP never reviewed critical engineering designs for the operation and is therefore risking another catastrophic accident that could dwarf the company's Deepwater Horizon spill.
The allegations about unsafe conditions on BP's Atlantis platform were first made in 2009, but they were laid out in fresh detail in the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Houston against Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and the Minerals Management Service, the agency responsible for regulating offshore drilling in the Gulf.
The whistleblower is Kenneth Abbott, a former project control supervisor contracted by BP who gave an interview to "60 Minutes.”
In a conversation last week with the ProPublica Web site, Abbott alleged that BP failed to review thousands of final design documents for systems and equipment on the Atlantis platform - meaning BP management never confirmed the systems were built as they were intended– and didn't properly file the documentation that functions as an instruction manual for rig workers to shut down operations in the case of a blowout or other emergency.
Abbott alleges that when he warned BP about the dangers presented by the missing documentation, the company ignored his concerns and instead emphasized saving money.
"There were hundreds, if not thousands, of drawings that hadn't been approved and to send drawings (to the rig) that hadn't been approved could result in catastrophic operator errors," Abbott told ProPublica.

NRDC questions State Dept.’s early release of DEIS for Keystone XL

WASHINGTON - Senior Attorney Susan Casey-Lefkowitz of the Natural Resources Defense Council wrote on her Blog on April 9 “the State Department (on April 9) made available on its webpage its draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) for the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. The DEIS is oddly dated one week from now and it seems as though no Federal Register notice has been published. We can only hope that its premature release is a trial balloon and that initial reaction will be considered before the real publication occurs.”
NRDC contends that State should have waited for completion of a new White House guidance on incorporating greenhouse gas emissions impacts into environmental impact statements. And, State should have been taking a hard look at whether Keystone XL is in the national interest before investing in a draft EIS.
Keystone XL is a target of environmental groups because it will double the amount of tar sands oil currently being piped into the United States – of what will be bitumen, not syncrude. Much of the tar sands oil received in the U.S. is already refined to a synthetic crude, more like common oil. Bringing in the raw bitumen in the new pipeline means that the upgrading and refining has to take place in the United States, resulting in increased emissions of greenhouse gases, heavy metals, and other pollutants, say the environmentalists.

U.S. court allows global warming suit against energy companies to proceed

Residents and owners of land along the Mississippi Gulf Coast were allowed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to bring a class action suit against energy, fossil fuels, and chemical companies for their alleged contributions to global warming, reversing a decision by a lower court.
The suit alleged that the companies created a public nuisance by emitting greenhouse gases, which contributed to global warming and allegedly made Hurricane Katrina more damaging than it would have been otherwise, destroying their private property in addition to causing damage to public property.
The landowners also filed trespass claims asserting that the companies’ greenhouse gas emissions caused saltwater, debris, and various hazardous substances to enter and damage their property.
Finally, negligence claims asserted that the defendants had a duty to conduct their businesses in a way to avoid unreasonably damaging the environment, public health, public and private property, and that the defendants breached this duty.