St. Petersburg, Fla. - Through a chemical fingerprinting process, University of South Florida researchers have definitively linked clouds of underwater oil in the northern Gulf of Mexico to BP's runaway Deepwater Horizon well — the first direct scientific link between the subsurface oil clouds commonly known as "plumes" and the BP oil spill, USF officials said Friday.

Until now, scientists had circumstantial evidence, but lacked that definitive scientific link.

The announcement came on the same day that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that its researchers have confirmed the existence of the subsea plumes at depths of 3,300 to 4,300 feet below the surface of the Gulf. NOAA said its detection equipment also implicated the BP well in the plumes' creation.

Together, the two studies confirm what in the early days of the spill was denied by BP and viewed skeptically by NOAA's chief — that much of the crude that gushed from the Deepwater Horizon well stayed beneath the surface of the water.

"What we have learned completely changes the idea of what an oil spill is," said chemical oceanographer David Hollander, one of three USF researchers credited with the matching samples of oil taken from the water with samples from the BP well. "It has gone from a two-dimensional disaster to a three-dimensional catastrophe." More...

Bipartisan group of senators propose plan for post oil spill recovery along Gulf coast

The bipartisan nature of the group – six senators coming from across the political aisle and across the Gulf - sends a strong signal to congressional leadership that there is broad support for such a measure, which is a rarity in Washington these days but something necessary for any legislation to pass.  The senators’ proposal, spearheaded by Sens. Bill Nelson (D-FL) and Roger Wicker (R-MS), is similar in aim to one offered just yesterday in the House by U.S. Rep. Jeff Miller, a Republican from Chumuckla, Fla.   
           The House plan would offer assistance mainly to property owners, while the senators would target job creation through tax incentives to employers and for tourism. More...

It is disgusting that after 90 days of oil and more than 80,000 million gallons leaking into the Gulf, the Republican House of Representatives would not allow more than 20 minutes of debate on the issue and immediately adjourned. The first casualty in this calamity was our environment. The second was our economy. Now the third casualty is our Democracy.
Today the Republican-led Legislature convened in a special session but refused to act for the people of Florida. They met briefly and chose political partisanship over action. These lawmakers are more interested in “playing politics” than ensuring that the ongoing crisis in the Gulf never happens again. This disaster has unprecedented environmental impacts and has compromised thousands of jobs and our state’s overall economy and yet lawmakers convened in Tallahassee, costing taxpayers $40,000 every day they are here, for little more than political shenanigans.
Joining Florida’s Republican-led Legislature’s choice of inaction is Congressman Adam Putnam, putting the interest of his big money friends from big oil first. He has called today’s session ‘patently political’ and a ‘political sham’. Is it a sham that people are losing their jobs, their homes, the way of life they have had for generations? Our Legislature had many choices for how they could have handled today’s session and chose to do nothing.
Congressman Putnam claims that he wants to be your consumer advocate, but  has a history of advocating against the consumer and protecting the interest of big business.
We cannot allow this inaction to continue. Today I joined with citizens from all over Florida for “Hands at the Capital” to show our frustration over the Deep Horizon Oil Spill, and our outrage and disappointment with the Republican leadership. We will continue to stand up against Big Oil and other special interests for the people of Florida. Join us in our efforts by contacting the Florida House and Senate Leadership and letting them know that you are ashamed of their inaction.
Today’s display of inaction by Republican lawmakers embodies why now is the time for new leadership in Florida.
Thank you.

Scott Maddox

This is on now – The Hearing Started at 9 AM July 20, 2010

A tough new memo from a House committee probing the Gulf oil spill exposes the Interior Department under Presidents Bush and Obama for its failure to properly oversee offshore oil drilling operations. The three most recent Interior Secretaries -- Gale Norton (2002-2006), Dirk Kempthorne (2006-2009), and Ken Salazar (2009-present) -- all come in for withering criticism and are due to testify at congressional hearing on Tuesday, where they are sure to be asked tough questions about their tenure.

The memorandum from the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Democratic majority staff takes perhaps the toughest stance on Norton's controversial tenure (she was recently the subject of a Justice Department probe into whether she acted improperly by granting Royal Dutch Shell several valuable oil shale leases on federal land shortly before she took a job with the oil giant -- DOJ has reportedly closed its probe as of last week).

Just two weeks after Bush was sworn into office in 2001, he asked Vice President Dick Cheney to head a task force to develop energy policy. The much-criticized task force met privately with oil and gas executives and Cheney repeatedly refused to disclose their identities. In May 2001, the group issued its report, which stated that "exploration and production from the OCS [Outer Continental Shelf] has an impressive environmental record." It also stated that existing environmental permitting laws and regulations, at the federal and state level, were creating "delays and uncertainties [that] can hinder proper energy exploration and production projects."

As the federal official responsible for implementing much of the administration's new energy policy, Norton encouraged offshore drilling with incentives for oil companies but she "imposed few new safety standards on offshore drilling operations," according to the memo.

"On multiple occasions, reports prepared for the Minerals Management Service (MMS) warned that the blowout preventers (BOPs) used on offshore wells were unreliable. The Department never acted on these warnings. The Department also rejected efforts begun in the Clinton Administration to strengthen federal regulation of offshore well cementing practices."

Kempthorne didn't perform much better -- after the sale of a lease for the Macondo well, the site of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, to BP for $34 million in 2008, he crowed that the agency had "won the championship." In addition, the memo describes the extent to which the agency underestimated the extent of any spill: "The environmental assessments prepared by the Department for the lease area found that the most likely size of a large spill would be just 4,600 barrels, less than 1% of the amount of oil that has been spilled from the Macondo well since April 20, 2010."

Under Kempthorne, the agency was also embroiled in an embarrassing scandal in 2008, in which it was revealed that government employees accepted gifts, used drugs with and had sex with oil industry officials.

Though the memo notes that Salazar has instituted some reforms and some needed regulations for the agency's Minerals Management Service, which oversees offshore oil and gas drilling, it takes the agency to task for its decisions regarding the Deepwater Horizon. Specifically, MMS granted BP a "categorical exclusion" from the need to conduct a thorough site-specific environmental review. The agency also allowed BP to make several key revisions to the drilling site, changes which have been shown to have potentially played a major role in the rig's disastrous explosion on April 20, 2010.

DOI Track Record _ Oil Spill Hearing Memo

Call your Congressmen, Senators and the Whitehouse –

Tell Them the Bottom Line is this - The People have a Right and a Need to Know.

From Huffington Post …

NOAA Hoarding Key Data ON Oil Spill Damage -  Dan Froomkin

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is hoarding vast amounts of raw data that independent marine researchers say could help both the public and scientists better understand the extent of the damage being caused by the massive BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

In most cases, NOAA insists on putting the data through a ponderous, many-weeks-long vetting process before making it public.

In other cases, NOAA actually intended to keep the data secret indefinitely. But officials told the Huffington Post on Tuesday that they have now decided to release it -- though when remains unclear.

BP, incidentally, gets to see all this data right away. More...