MEC&F Expert Engineers : 12/08/14

Monday, December 8, 2014

U.S. SUPREME COURT TELLS BP TO PAY UP FOR 2010 GULF DEADLY EXPLOSION AND SUBSEQUENT MASSIVE OIL SPILL, REJECTS APPEAL OF SPILL SETTLEMENT






U.S. supreme court tells BP to pay up for 2010 Gulf DEADLY EXPLOSION AND SUBSEQUENT MASSIVE oil spill, rejects appeal of spill settlement



12/08/2014 12:16:22
NEW ORLEANS -- The Supreme Court is leaving in place BP's multibillion-dollar settlement with lawyers for businesses and residents over the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The justices did not comment Monday in rejecting the London-based oil giant's arguments that lower courts misinterpreted settlement terms and put BP on the hook to pay inflated and bogus claims by businesses. 

The court's decision makes the economic and property damage settlement final, starting a six-month deadline for filing claims, said plaintiffs' attorney Joe Rice of Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. 

BP PLC wanted the court to consider whether people and businesses seeking payments under the settlement included some who haven't actually suffered any injury related to the spill. 

A district court and an appeals court ruled that, under the settlement BP agreed to, businesses do not have to prove they were directly harmed by the spill to collect money -- only that they made less money in the three to eight months after the spill than in a comparable pre-spill period. 

BP's Macondo well blew up on April 20, 2010, killing 11 men. An estimated 103 million to 176 million gallons of oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico before the mile-deep well was capped July 15, 2010. Lawyers for BP and the government agree that 34 million gallons was captured before it could pollute coastal marshes and fishing grounds. 

"Today's ruling is a huge victory for the Gulf, and should finally put to rest BP's two-year attack on its own settlement," lead plaintiffs' attorneys Stephen J. Herman and James P. Roy said in an emailed statement. 


The settlement doesn't have a cap, but BP initially estimated that it would pay roughly $7.8 billion to resolve the claims. The company said it can no longer give a reliable estimate for total cost. The company, which made separate settlements for medical claims and seafood-related business claims, has paid more than $13 billion in claims by individuals, businesses and government entities and another $14 billion-plus on response and cleanup, according to its oil spill website. 

BP remains concerned "that the program has made awards to claimants that suffered no injury from the spill -- and that the lawyers for these claimants have unjustly profited as a result," BP spokesman Goeff Morrell said in an emailed statement.
He added, "We will therefore continue to advocate for the investigation of suspicious or implausible claims and to fight fraud where it is uncovered." 

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did get the method for calculating losses changed after BP argued that claims administrator Patrick Juneau wasn't correctly matching business's revenues and expenses. The company has been trying to oust Juneau. U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier rejected its claims but BP went to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. 

A third-party audit of the settlement program, made public in November, found that it correctly processed 99.5 percent of claims. Chicago-based McGladrey LLP described the program as "well-designed and appropriate." 

The deadline for medical claims is Feb. 12, 2015, according to the federal district court claims website. That for seafood-related businesses is past. 


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Supreme Court tells BP to pay up, rejects appeal of spill settlement
The US Supreme Court on Monday rejected BP’s challenge to a settlement agreement over the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, which the oil giant said allowed certain businesses to get payouts despite being unable to trace their losses to the disaster.

The court’s refusal to hear BP’s appeal means the London-based company will have to make the payments as it continues to deal with the aftermath of the 20 April 2010 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and rupture of BP’s Macondo oil well.
BP signed a settlement agreement in 2012 to compensate spill claimants, but has since argued that the agreement has been interpreted improperly, forcing it to pay businesses that could not show damages.

The court’s unsigned order is the latest setback to BP, which is trying to limit payments over the disaster, which killed 11 people and triggered the largest US offshore oil spill.
So far, BP has paid $2.3bn in so-called business economic loss claims out of $4.25bn in total compensation to individuals and businesses, according to statistics maintained by Patrick Juneau, the administrator appointed by the courts to handle claims. 

BP has estimated it will pay $9.7bn to plaintiffs represented by the so-called plaintiffs’ steering committee, but said last month that this sum could grow significantly. 

The settlement process is separate from other court proceedings relating to the spill, including environmental and criminal penalties. BP has put aside $43bn to resolve all claims. 


Supreme Court tells BP to pay up, despite appeal
June 9, 2014
BP asserts that some businesses are claiming payments unrelated to the oil spill.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday that BP BP -2.78% , the British oil giant responsible for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, must make payments from a fund established after the disaster, despite a pending appeal.
The justices left in place a lower court’s refusal to stop payments while BP appeals a decision by a lower court that businesses don’t have to prove they were directly impacted by the oil spill to claim compensation.
The order, which was just one sentence long, said, “The application to recall and stay the mandate of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit presented to Justice Scalia and by him referred to the Court is denied.” The case, meanwhile, is called Exploration v. Lake Eugenie Land, 13A1177.
BP, however, asserts that some businesses are claiming payments unrelated to the oil spill.
According to Geoff Morrell, a BP spokesman, “BP looks forward to pursuing review by the US Supreme Court of the Fifth Circuit’s decisions relating to the compensation of claims with no apparent connection to the spill.” He added: “The company continues to believe that the lifting of the injunction suspending the payment of business economic loss claims will allow hundreds of millions of dollars to be irretrievably scattered to claimants whose losses were not plausibly caused by the Deepwater Horizon accident.”
The head lawyers for the spill victims said in a statement to Bloomberg: “We’re pleased that this denial of BP’s request for a stay will allow businesses to continue to receive the compensation they’re rightly entitled to according to the objective, transparent formulas agreed to by BP.”
The Supreme Court will decide later in 2014 when to take up BP’s appeal over the disputed payments.
In 2012, the initial cost of payments was expected to be about $7.8 billion. BP says that a claims administrator’s misinterpretation is responsible for bumping the price to the current $9.2 billion figure.



END-LOADER KILLS OIL & GAS WORKER - West Virgina-OSHA investigating Tyler County, WV gas-well death

END-LOADER KILLS OIL & GAS WORKER:  West Virgina-OSHA investigating Tyler gas-well death

 

December 4th, 2014
Federal officials are continuing to investigate the death last week of a contract employee at an Antero Resources natural gas operation in Tyler County.

U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigators were still on-site this week at the operation, where contract employee Ryan Dunn was killed on Nov. 29, said OSHA spokeswoman Leni Uddyback-Fortson. Uddyback-Fortson said that Dunn was killed when he was struck by an end-loader at the drilling site.

Kelley Gillenwater, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Environmental Protection, said that the incident occurred at the Antero Resources well pad at Braden Hill. Gillenwater said that OSHA is handling the investigation, but that DEP was notified of the incident.

Al Schoop, a spokesman for Antero, said that the worker who was killed was employed by a contract firm, Precision Drilling. A Precision spokesman did not return a phone call Wednesday. Schoop said the incident occurred at Antero’s Coastal 1 Pad, located just across the Tyler County line from the Doddridge County community of Shirley.

The fatality is the latest in an increase in worker deaths to occur over the last several years as natural gas production booms in West Virginia’s Marcellus Shale region.
Last year, seven oil and gas industry workers died on the job in West Virginia, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Between 2009 and 2013, as the industry has boomed, 15 workers have died on the job in West Virginia, according to federal data. During the previous five-year period, from 2004-2008, three workers died in West Virginia’s oil and gas industry, according to the data. Uddyback-Fortson said that the Antero incident is the first oil and gas industry fatality that OSHA has investigated in West Virginia in 2014.


In July 2013, two workers were killed in a series of explosions at an Antero well site in Doddridge County.

“Worker safety in the oil and gas industry is a growing concern,” Tommy Bowles-Raines, a Charleston lawyer who represents workers and their families, told an interim legislative committee during a meeting last month.

Corky DeMarco, lobbyist for the West Virginia Oil and Gas Association, told that same legislative committee, “We’ve had some accidents and unfortunately there have been some people hurt and a number have lost their lives. But we’re trying to come up with best management practices to not have these accidents.

“We’re changing and we’re learning as we go,” DeMarco told lawmakers. “It’s a process that has evolved and will continue to evolve.”
A one-paragraph report from DEP inspector Michael Goff said that last week’s death at the Antero site occurred as contract employees were cleaning up a drilling mud spill from a line on a centrifuge unit onto a containment liner.

Gillenwater said OSHA would be the agency that would investigate safety protocols at the site.
Under the state’s new drilling law, operators are required to submit to DEP plans “to address proper safety measures to be employed for the protection of persons on the site as well as the general public.”

But James Martin, chief of the DEP Office of Oil and Gas, told lawmakers last month that his office leaves worker safety issues mostly up to OSHA.

“Our focus is on the environmental side of it, so that’s what we look to,” Martin said. “Obviously, there is overlap. The same issue could result in both safety and environmental concerns. But our focus is on the environment.”
Source: WV Gazette

COMMON DEFICIENCIES IN SPCC PLANS



COMMON DEFICIENCIES IN SPCC PLANS

We looked at recent EPA enforcement actions and identified a number of SPCC Plan deficiencies.  The list below is some of the more general types that may not be applicable to all facilities.  In addition, other types of violations not listed below may also apply to a facility’s specific operations.

1.     Plan not certified by a professional engineer (PE)
2.     No management approval of plan
3.     Plan not maintained on-site or not easily accessible
4.     No evidence of 5-year review of plan by owner/operator
5.     No plan amendment(s) if the facility has had a change in design, construction, operation, or maintenance that affects the facility’s discharge potential
6.     Amendment(s) not certified by a professional engineer
7.     Plan does not follow sequence of the rule and/or cross-reference not provided
8.     Plan does not discuss additional procedures/methods/equipment not yet fully operational
9.     Plan does not discuss alternative environmental protection to SPCC requirements
10. Plan has inadequate or no facility diagram
11. Inadequate or no description of drainage controls
12. Inadequate or no description of countermeasures for discharge discovery, response, and cleanup
13. No contact list and phone numbers for response and reporting discharges
14. Plan has inadequate or no information and procedures for reporting a discharge
15. Plan does not discuss and facility does not implement appropriate containment/diversionary structures/equipment (including truck transfer areas)
16. Impracticability has not been clearly denoted and demonstrated in plan.

EPA TO TIGHTEN CONTROL OF UNMONITORED CHEMICAL RELEASES FROM POTWS



EPA to tighten control of unmonitored chemical releases from POTWs



The U.S.Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is tightening up oversight of chemical releases from publicly owned treatment works (POTWs) in response to an internal investigation that revealed poor regulation, according to a recent news article.
Office of Inspector General Investigation
The investigation, conducted by the EPA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG), showed several regulatory issues.
Chief among them was the EPA’s failure to clear clearly identify and regulate hazardous chemicals discharged from POTWs.
The OIG report also revealed uncertainty among EPA staff about regulating beyond Clean Water Act (CWA) Priority Pollutants—a list of 126 pollutants that has not been updated in 33 years—and poor reporting by industry of Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) hazardous wastes discharged to POTWs, among other issues.
Corrective action by September 2015
To improve oversight, the EPA plans to take corrective action by September of 2015.  They plan to review chemicals reported in the discharge monitoring reports from PTOWs, and to push for states to ensure industry compliance with CWA requirements, among other actions that may impact how these facilities manage chemical releases.


More Action Is Needed to Protect Water Resources From Unmonitored Hazardous Chemicals
What we found
Management controls put in place by the EPA to regulate and control hazardous chemical discharges from sewage treatment plants to water resources have limited effectiveness. The EPA regulates hazardous chemical discharges to and from sewage treatment plants, but these regulations are not effective in controlling the discharge of hundreds of hazardous chemicals to surface waters such as lakes and streams. Sewage treatment plant staff do not monitor for hazardous chemicals discharged by industrial users. This is due to a general regulatory focus on the priority pollutants list that has not been updated since 1981, limited monitoring requirements, limited coordination between EPA offices, a lack of tracking hazardous waste notifications required for submittal by industrial users, or a lack of knowledge of discharges reported by industrial users under the Toxics Release Inventory. Except for EPA Region 9, sewage treatment plant permits generally include very few monitoring requirements or effluent limits, which can limit enforcement actions.
The EPA developed whole effluent toxicity test results as a mechanism to identify toxic chemicals such as hazardous discharges to sewage treatment plants. However, these are not required for all permits, and are not tracked by the EPA to verify that sewage treatment plants are reporting results as required. Moreover, exceedances of chemical limits in permits and toxicity tests do not trigger notification to enforcement programs. Consequently, the EPA may not be aware of chemical discharge or toxicity exceedances that should be addressed to minimize potentially harmful contamination of water resources.
Recommendations and Planned Agency Corrective Actions
We recommend that the EPA develop a format for sharing annual Toxics Release Inventory data, develop a list of chemicals beyond the priority pollutants list for inclusion in permits, confirm compliance with the hazardous waste notification requirement, and track required submittals of toxicity tests and violations. The agency suggested a change to one recommendation, which the OIG accepted.  All recommendations are resolved.
Noteworthy Achievements
The EPA has designed the Discharge Monitoring Report Pollutant Loading Tool to provide access to surface water discharge and other data.