Their goal was to show the enormous effort of some 800 people on 37 vessels and platforms, working 12 hours on, 12 hours off, to try to stop the oil spill in the Gulf. See what the cleanup effort looks like from the surface of the Gulf. Â
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Dwaine Scott/ NBC News
A view of the Gulf oil spill clean up.
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Dwaine Scott/ NBC News
Some of the ships trying to stop the oil spill seen at dawn.
Tar balls from the oil spill haven't reached the Florida Keys yet, but South Florida officials are planning for how to do deal with them when and if they do. And one of their thoughts is that maybe the crews deeper in the Gulf are going about it wrong.
John Hunt, program administrator in the Keys for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission's Fish and Wildlife Research Institute, tells NBC station WTVJ of Miami that tar balls aren't toxic and maybe it's better to leave them in place.
"I might not remove them," Hunt says. "I might choose to say the environmental damage of removing them — walking through them, digging up mud — would be worse for the ecosystem than the tar balls themselves."
UPDATE 12 p.m. ET: The judge has rejected the Interior Department's argument. He's denied the Obama administration's request for a stay.
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The Obama administration says it is complying with a judge's ruling overturning a moratorium on new drilling in the Gulf, so a motion to enforce the order by opponents of the moratorium should be denied, The Associated Press reports:
The Justice Department says in court papers that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has instructed all employees to not take any action to enforce the moratorium. It also says the department is sending letters to operators who received notices of suspension that those notices have no legal effect at this time.
The government is seeking a delay in the ruling overturning the moratorium while it appeals the decision. The moratorium had halted approval of any new permits for deep water projects and suspended drilling on 33 exploratory wells.
Scientists say that as bad as things are now, they could get a lot worse: If containment efforts don't work, oil could remain in the Gulf for years.
"One of the worst things that could happen in the next couple of months or even sooner is we could get even a minor tropical storm," said Denise Reed, director of the Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Sciences at the University of New Orleans.
"I am more worried about the oil that we can't see compared to the oil that we can," Reed says.
Mayor Mitch Landrieu heard concerns at an open house last night as the first real storm threat began forming in the Caribbean. The storm could be in the Gulf by weekend, meteorologists said.
"There's a tremendous amount of anxiety and frustration, as people should be," the mayor said. "One of the things I promise is that we're going to give people information, which is what we've done."
UPDATE 12:11 p.m. ET: Cortnee Ferguson, a spokeswoman for the oil spill joint information center, tells AP crews have cleaned up the oil in the sound.
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Boats are in buzzing around the Mississippi Sound after oil from the BP disaster made its way inland yesterday, the Biloxi Sun-Herald reports.
There are two patches in the sound — one a mile long and a couple of hundred yards wide, and another near the Alabama line.
State officials have closed all waters to fishing for about five miles around Horn Island.
Bill Walker, director of the state Department of Marine Resources, says the oil "should be handle-able, but what bothers me is that we didn't know about it while it was still way outside the islands. This is the second or third time we've been surprised by material that got too close."
Even as new offshore drilling projects are on hold because of the Obama administration's moratorium, BP is being allowed to move ahead with a drilling project several miles off the Alaska coast, The New York Times reports in a remarkable front-page story:
BP's project, called Liberty, has been exempted as regulators have granted it status as an "onshore" project even though it is about three miles off the coast in the Beaufort Sea. The reason: it sits on an artificial island — a 31-acre pile of gravel in about 22 feet of water — built by BP. ...
Rather than conducting their own independent analysis, federal regulators, in a break from usual practice, allowed BP in 2007 to write its own environmental review for the project as well as its own consultation documents relating to the Endangered Species Act, according to two scientists from the Alaska office of the federal Mineral Management Service that oversees drilling. ...
The scientists and other critics say they are worried about a replay of the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico because the Liberty project involves a method of drilling called extended reach that experts say is more prone to the types of gas kicks that triggered the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon.
New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu says the same problems coordinating local and federal efforts during the recovery from Hurricane Katrina are hampering the oil spill cleanup.
"Its a constant battle back and forth about keeping the lines of communication open," Landrieu tells NBC News' Chuck Todd that on MSNBC's "Daily Rundown."
The containment cap that was removed yesterday because a robot bumped into it, allowing crude oil to gush uncontrolled into the water for much of the day, is back on and working after engineers reattached it last night, a crew member aboard the Discoverer Enterprise tells The Associated Press.
BP Managing Director Bob Dudley describes the problem as "a disruption" and "a setback."
UPDATE 7:13 p.m. ET: BP says it's preparing to reinstall the oil-siphoning cap on its blown-out well after an earlier disruption unleashed a torrent of oil, Reuters reports.
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BP says an unexplained "discharge of liquids" is responsible for its decision to remove a containment cap. Oil and gas are gushing unconstrained through the lower marine riser package while the
company analyzes the liquid, but the separate choke line in the failed blowout preventer is still operating, it says.
Adm. Thad Allen, the federal official in charge of the recovery effort, says the choke line is capturing about 10,000 barrels a day. So if the government's estimated flow rate of 60,000 barrels a day is accurate, the uncapped flow is gushing at the rate of 50,000 barrels a day.
Residents and tourists in Pensacola Beach, Fla., awoke today to find the oil they hoped would be kept at bay had washed up on their white sand beaches. NBC's Mark Potter reports.
Justice Department officials say the government now intends — sometime tonight — to seek a stay of yesterday's order by a federal judge in New Orleans temporarily blocking the Interior Department's moratorium on offshore drilling, NBC's Pete Williams reports.
The request will likely be made of the judge himself, asking him to put a hold on his own order while the government pursues an appeal. If he declines, the request would be made to the federal appeals court in New Orleans.
At the same time, the government will seek a new moratorium, doing so in a way that avoids some of the legal problems identified by the judge. For example, he chided the Interior Department for claiming that a panel of outside experts had endorsed the moratorium issued in late May, when, in fact, they favored something less sweeping.
Once the Interior Department issues its new moratorium, the government fully expects another legal challenge and very likely another court order blocking it. But on the second round, with a modified moratorium, the Justice Department believes it would be on firmer ground to seek an appeal.
President Barack Obama picks up a tar ball during a tour of areas affected by the Gulf oil spill last month.
Two months of oil continuing to gush from a well off the Gulf Coast and an unemployment rate still near 10 percent have taken a toll on President Barack Obama's standing with the public, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.
Mark Murray, NBC News' deputy political editor, reports:
For the first time in the survey, more disapprove of his job performance than approve; for the first time in his presidency, more than 60 percent believe the country is on the wrong track; and as he relieves Gen. Stanley McChrystal of his command in Afghanistan, Obama's scores on being able to handle a crisis and on being decisive have plummeted since last year.
This is a president who has been bruised and bloodied by the events of the past few months, although not yet knocked down, say the Democratic and Republican pollsters who conducted the survey.
"There is just no way that an American president is not going to see his job rating affected" after these events, observed GOP pollster Bill McInturff. "The little faint signs [of improvement] we were seeing in April and May have been squished by two months of this story in the Gulf."
Added Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart: "These numbers aren't good. But they are far from awful."
The State of Florida is advising people who want to sue BP for damages from the oil spill to wait if they have a legitimate monetary claim, warning that the company can deny claims from people who have brought court action, NBC station WJHG of Panama City reports.
State officials say claimants should try to work with BP to get their claims paid now, because they'll have three years to decide about a suit even if they're taking the company's money:
[I]f people think they are being treated unfairly and sue BP, then the company can hold back their claims until a judge rules.
And that could take years, according to Bob Butterworth, a former attorney general and member of the state's legal council in charge of keeping BP honest.
"They can pay a lawyer 10, 20, or 30, or 40 percent which could also keep you tied up in court for maybe 10 years, and 20 years later, there's still claims out there."
It's not just fishermen and business owners who are holding off on filing a claim, WJHG reports — so is the state itself. Attorney General Bill McCollum says that he hopes Florida can be reimbursed without a lawsuit but that he's keeping his options open.
Local authorities have issued a health advisory for beaches in Pensacola and Destin, Fla., meaning that while it is still OK to be on the beach, it is no longer safe to swim in the water because of the oil spill, NBC News reports.
The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration opened more than 8,000 square miles of previously closed fishing area in the Gulf of Mexico this afternoon, saying it had not observed oil in the area.
The most significant opening is an area due south of Mississippi which was closed Monday, June 21.
Additionally, some smaller areas were opened off the Louisiana and central Florida coasts.
These areas were initially closed as a precaution because oil was projected to be within those areas over the next few days. However, the review of satellite imagery, radar and aerial data indicated that oil had not moved into these areas.
The federal closed area does not apply to any state waters. Closing fishing in this area is a precautionary measure to ensure that seafood from the Gulf will remain safe for consumers.
CNBC quotes a spokesman for the U.S. Treasury saying Kenneth Feinberg will step down later this summer as special master for executive compensation — the "pay czar" under the economic bailout — to focus on the $20 billion BP claims fund he was appointed to oversee last week.
GPS allows NBC's boat to stay in a fixed position for live satellite transmissions.
By Kerry Sanders NBC News
GULF OF MEXICO — Eighty miles from Venice, La., we're bobbing in 3- to 4-foot seas aboard the 230-foot Skye Falgout. The Coast Guard boarded our vessel a few hours ago.
First question: Who are we, and who gave us permission to come to the 5-mile limit of the Deepwater Horizon site?
I guess our four days of communication with the Coast Guard and the Joint Information Center on land didn't reach the folks out here in the Gulf doing all the work.
As I feared a tongue-lashing, the chief warrant officer caught me by surprise when he said he was "thankful" we are here.
"The world needs to see the hard work going on here," he says.
That, of course, was my goal, so after a few minutes and some marine-band radio chatter, we get the best news a crew could ask for: It's just been approved by those in command — we can park 1.7 miles west of the ongoing operations.
If you are a weekend sailor, you may wonder how you "park" a boat in the current and wind and hold that position for hours.
Once upon a time, you'd use anchors.
Photo by Dwaine Scott/ NBC News
The satellite that makes broadcasting from the middle of the Gulf of Mexico possible.
Today, the magic of GPS and multiple engines with thrusters holds a ship like ours within a half-foot of its assigned position for more than eight hours.
It's called Dynamic Positioning, and we are thrilled because that maritime technology married with our NBC technology will let us tell viewers what's happening live.
The "Bloom Mobile," named after my good friend, the late NBC correspondent David Bloom, was developed to race across the uneven desert in Iraq as U.S. forces invaded.
Now, the Bloom Mobile is with us at sea, rocking to the motion of the ocean but locked dead onto a satellite 23,000 miles over Earth.
The gyroscopes hold the signal with laser accuracy so we can report live.
There is so much that you can see for yourself in the video, but what is unheralded are the 800 people on 37 vessels and platforms, working 12 hours on, 12 hours off, in some cases for 40 straight days, trying to stop this disaster.
Our goal in the midst of this crisis is to go live from a rig, the Q4000, or the ROV vessel.
I have reported live from the battlefield with U.S. Marines under fire, so as I bob here and recognize this is a crisis, I also know if those in charge will allow it, we can report live as this crisis is being battled.
I am told by the chief warrant officer maybe that will happen — "it just won't be today."
An environmental dispute pitting Louisiana officials against the Obama administration has at least temporarily halted construction of barrier island sand berms intended to keep oil from the BP spill from continuing to foul the state's coastline.
The Interior Department and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ordered the dredging operation east of the mouth of the Mississippi River halted at 6 p.m. Tuesday. A separate dredging operation west of the river is not affected by the dispute.
Tom Strickland, assistant Interior secretary for fish, wildlife and parks, said Wednesday that the federal government acted only after the state failed to comply with restrictions aimed at protecting the Chandeleur Islands, part of the Breton National Wildlife Refuge.
He said that state officials had begun dredging sand on the east side of the Mississippi River on June 13 in an area south of the site specified in a permit filed with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Federal agencies allowed the dredging to proceed for a week to give the contractor time to assemble a pipeline to reach the agreed-upon dredging site at Hewes Point, at the northern tip of the 50-mile island chain, Strickland said, but at the end of that period the state asked for another 10-day extension.
He said a "well-documented and through scientific analysis" done years ago by the U.S. Geological Survey indicates that dredging sand from the current site for another week could cause serious damage to the islands, which are critical habitat for shorebirds and also protect the mainland from hurricanes.
"If the material is taken from there, it will accelerate the erosion of the islands … and accelerate their eventual destruction," he said.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Plaquemines Parish President Bill Nungesser had lobbied the feds hard to grant another extension, warning that "precious time" will be lost laying additional pipe and moving the dredging rig.
"Once again our government resource agencies, which are intended to protect us, are now leaving us vulnerable to the destruction of our coastline and marshes by the impending oil," Nungesser wrote in a letter sent Tuesday to President Barack Obama. "Furthermore, with the threat of hurricanes or tropical storms, we are being put at an increased risk for devastation to our area from the intrusion of oil."
New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli says New York's $132.6 billion pension fund plans to sue BP to recover damages that resulted from the drop in shareholder value after the Gulf oil spill, NBC station WGRZ of Buffalo reports.
"It's my duty to protect the interests of the [Common Retirement] Fund and the retirees and employees who rely on it," DiNapoli said in a statement. "BP misled investors about its safety procedures and its ability to respond to events like the ongoing oil spill and we're going to hold it accountable."
A spokesman for BP America says the company doesn't comment on litigation or potential litigation.
The House Judiciary Committee has unanimously voted to subpoena BP documents on its payment of claims from the Gulf oil spill. The Associated Press reports that the subpoena is designed to make public the payments BP is making and the procedures it is following.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has told lawmakers his department will issue a new, more flexible deepwater oil drilling ban, confirming NBC News' report this morning that the administration wouldn't appeal a judge's ruling blocking the ban.
Testifying before the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies, Salazar suggested that development wells on proven fields might be able to move forward, Reuters reports.
"It might be that there are demarcations that can be made based on reservoirs where we actually do know the pressures and the risks associated with that versus those reservoirs which are exploratory in nature," he says.
According to the new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 50 percent of Americans disapprove of President Obama's handling of the oil spill in the Gulf, vs. 42 percent who approve of his handling. But the public gives him better ratings than it does Congress, the federal government and BP, NBC's Mark Murray reports.
Michael Bromwich, the new head of the Interior Department's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement — known as the Minerals and Mining Service until it changed its name this week to distance itself from its scandal-scarred past — is creating an internal investigations team, saying, "There is not that kind of investigative capability in my organization."
The 1,700-employee agency, which both regulates the oil and gas industry and collects billions in royalties from it, has been criticized for a cozy relationship with oil companies and lax oversight. The agency has just 62 inspectors in charge of overseeing nearly 4,000 production wells in the Gulf of Mexico, Alaska and other areas.
The Associated Press says the investigative team will report directly to Bromwich and will have the authority to investigate problems within the agency itself, as well as the oil and gas companies.
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