Boyd Richie: The Texas Tribune Interview

Boyd Richie: The Texas Tribune Interview
The Texas Tribune
by Reeve Hamilton
June 14, 2010

Boyd Richie was elected Chairman of the Texas Democratic Party in April 2006

It’s true that of the 29 statewide offices available, the Texas Democratic Party doesn’t hold a single one. The party's chairman, Boyd Richie, says it’s legitimate to criticize the Democrats for that — but not to blame him for it. “That’s been going on for 15 years,” he said in his Austin office on Friday. “I’ve been chairman for four.”

A lawyer by trade, Richie is — like his wife Betty — a Democratic stalwart. He was elected chairman of the party in 2006 and intends to stay for a while. But this year, he is fending off a challenge from Michael Barnes, a political novice and Edcouch schoolteacher who's looking to shake up the party.

“He seems to be a very energetic, intelligent young man,” Richie says. “He’s interested in the party, and I’m tickled to see that. Anytime we have young people engaged in the process, I’m happy to see it.”

Richie is less tickled by Barnes’ suggestion that he needs to get out and about in the state more. He points to a plaque in his office commemorating his 2007 Texas Town Hall Tour, which covered 18 cities and 9,762 miles. “We travel so much that Betty and I can’t have a dog,” he says, “and if we did, it wouldn’t recognize us when we came home."

Regarding the party’s statewide success — or lack thereof — Barnes recently posed the question, “Since when is zero-for-29 a winning record?"

To that, Richie responds, “For starters, zero for 29, in a political arena, is not like a baseball manager's record.” Additionally, Richie says, the first time he was able to weigh in on candidate recruitment was in the current 2010 cycle:


Statewide candidates aside, Richie maintains, the party has experienced “major electoral gains” under his leadership. In 2008, House Democrats came within two seats of regaining the majority, which they lost in 2003. “We were able to do work and put money and resources into 17 statehouse races and won 16 of them,” Richie says. “I think that’s a record of which I’m pretty proud.”

Does Richie think the Democrats' first statewide victory in 16 years will come from among this year’s crop of candidates? “Absolutely I do,” he says:


The 2010 November election is especially crucial to the future of Texas electoral politics because it will determine the political makeup of the Legislative Redistricting Board, which will tackle the upcoming redistricting process. This fact is not lost on the chairman of the minority party, which currently has no representation on the board:


One statewide office with a slot on the board that the Democrats certainly won’t win is comptroller. They didn't even run a candidate in the race. Richie says it wasn’t for lack of trying. “That was a seat that we took very seriously,” he says, “and I’m very disappointed that we weren’t able to recruit somebody.” He says there were people considering a run who decided they didn’t have the financial wherewithal — and that the party, with it’s limited resources, couldn’t provide the requested level of support.

In fact, much of the Democrats’ electoral effort in the last five years was bankrolled by the Texas Democratic Trust, which launched in 2005 with a five-year focus on “holding a majority in the statehouse and capturing one or more statewide offices during the 2010 elections.” Many have insinuated that Matt Angle, who leads the trust, has been acting as the man behind the party’s curtain:


With the Texas Democratic Trust's commitment to the party approaching its end, Richie says the party will be, and is preparing to be, funded by small donors — something he says his opponent might not be aware of:


Another source of pride for Richie is the self-described aggressiveness with which he has gone after the opposition. Currently, the party is engaged in a legal battle in an effort to stop what Richie believes is a GOP-fueled effort to drain “D” votes by getting the Green Party on the ballot:


“I wouldn’t have a problem with the Green Party being on the ballot if it was the Green Party,” Richie says. “If their activists had been the ones out voluntarily gathering these petitions, and they got enough to get on the ballot, then more power to ‘em. That’s what elections are about.”

Instead, Richie is echoing Matt Angle’s call for long-time Perry advisor Dave Carney, who they believe is tied to the Green Party petition drive, to resign. (On Saturday, Carney told the Tribune's Ross Ramsey that he had nothing to do with the Greens.) This comes shortly after Gov. Rick Perry’s campaign called for Democratic gubernatorial nominee Bill White to drop out of the race, alleging unethical business practices — a charge Richie calls “absurd.”

“We ought to have choices in elections,” Richie says. “Rick Perry doesn’t want anyone to have a choice except him.”

Discussing the matter in his office, Richie's tone reaches levels White rarely even musters on the stump. Richie recognizes that some might desire more personality from their gubernatorial hopeful, but that’s just not White’s style — and he says that’s okay:


White isn't the only Democratic politician accused of playing it too cool under fire. President Obama has endured similar criticism since oil began spilling into the Gulf of Mexico, which hasn't helped his polling in Texas. Despite winning in a landslide nationwide, Obama wasn’t very popular in Texas when he got elected, and has become even less so as time has worn on — even with some Democrats, as Richie is well aware:


In the next presidential election, Richie says, Texas has the potential to become “a battleground configuration.” Democrats, he says, have the opportunity to “turn this thing around.” The first step will be introducing the statewide candidates and getting everyone “fired up” at the upcoming state convention, where they will also decide if Richie will be steering the party on its future course — or if he'll have to hand the helm over to Barnes.

If 2010 doesn’t go as he plans, Richie only asks one thing:

WEAK TEA: Tea Party Looses Steam

WaPo: Last Tuesday's primary results provided fresh evidence of the amorphous network's struggle to convert activist anger and energy into winning results.

Frustrated and lacking agreement on what to, self-identified tea party leaders say the movement may be in danger of breaking apart before it ever really comes together.

Disapproval of the tea party movement is at an all-time high, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Another nationwide Gallup Poll just 28 percent of Americans say they are a “supporter” of the tea party movement.

The Coffee Party, as just one example of support for the progressive movement, has gained 199,993 Facebook fans since 26 January 2010 (over 65,000 per month, counting all of January) while its alternative the Tea Party has 165,111 since March 2009 (about 12,000 per month). That suggests that the Coffee Party, as measured by real Facebook numbers rather than the impressions of Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck, is around 500 percent more popular than the Tea Party.

Ronald Reagan, in his first inaugural address, famously declared that "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." Echoing President Coolidge, Reagan believed that “the business of America is business,” and the government should get out of the way. Industry self-regulation and “free market” economics became the substitute for government regulation. Conservative Republicans argue that they have worked hard for 30 years to "free capitalism and individual liberty" by deregulating and dismantling government oversight of business.

Conservative political thinkers continue to argue that it is impossible for government to protect the the interests of the public and the nation. For decades they have held that all government is bad and less is always better. As a result we had decades of indifferent and incompetent leadership in the regulatory agencies. In recent years they have frequently been staffed with people hostile to their basic purpose. After decades of planned neglect, mismanagement and ideological attack, the American government, across the board, has gotten out of the way of corporate America – and the country is paying a heavy price.

Reagan's conservative "small government" argument, now carried by the Tea Party movement, is that government can not and must not play any roll to protect the general welfare of the American people by ensuring that business operate on a honest, fair and level field of play. And, that government can not and must not play any roll to protect the interests of American citizens and the environment in which we live and earn a livelihood.

"Deregulation" is wonderful until we discover what happens when government regulations aren't issued or enforced. The conservative philosophy of governance has disemboweled government and handed vast responsibilities over to a private sector that will never see protecting the public interest as its primary task.

Indeed if it does anything, the disaster in the Gulf demonstrates the folly of this conservative approach to government. Internal BP documents released by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is investigating the explosion and its aftermath, show that "time after time, BP made decisions that increased the risk of a blowout to save the company time or expense." BP took measures to cut costs in the weeks before the catastrophic blowout in the Gulf of Mexico as warning signs mounted, prompting a BP engineer to describe the doomed rig as a "nightmare well," in an e-mail April 14, six days before the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion.

And the lesson that conservative approach to government is a failure is reinforced by the cries for help from the conservative political leadership of the Gulf Coast states – who in the past led the charge for smaller and less intrusive government. Beyond all question it demonstrates the need for competent regulation that is not controlled by the interests it is supposed to regulate. It destroys the simplistic notion that the interests of business coincide with those of the broader community.

The modern conservative movement began at conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation that Reagan brought together with the religious right and ultra-rich elites in an unholy alliance that after 30 years has culminated in disastrous energy policy, the Iraq war, skyrocketing health insurance costs, unprecedented levels of national debt, near economic collapse, record mortgage foreclosures, an exploding gap between the rich and poor, a military industrial complex spending tax payer money like drunken sailors, the freedom for multinational corporations to move American jobs off-shore and now a ruined coastal environment that will take decades to recover.

Conservative governance has given Americans the worst decade for the U.S. economy in modern times by a wide range of data, with zero net job growth and the slowest rise in economic output since the 1930s. On balance, American families are also worse off than any time since the 1930s

The Tea Party movement has generated a lot of media talk about “populism,” which gets defined by the media as the battle between Big Government and the Common Folk. What gets ignored is that the only feasible check on unlimited corporate power is a democratized and energized "we the people" federal government.

Corporate lobbyists — led by Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks and Tim Phillips’ Americans for Prosperity organizations — have been organizing the phony astroturf activism of "tea parties" as a "coordinated campaign" marketing action for the Republican Party and the corporate interests that fund the Republican Party.

By agitating against government, not corporatism, the Tea Party promoters serve as “faux populist” front-men for corporate interests like British Petroleum who want to make sure government doesn't force them to "waste" money on equipment and procedures that safeguard their employees, the general public interest and the environment. "

Thirty years after Reagan's inaugural pronouncement that big business, not a government elected by the people, should be responsible for the public's interest, in the midst of the worst environmental crisis in the nation's history and as the nation struggles to recover from near financial collapse at the end of President Bush's 8 years in office in 2008, Reagan's conservative anti-government philosophy, now personified in the Tea Party movement, must be critically assessed an utter failure at securing the general welfare of American citizens and the environment in which Americans live and earn their livelihood.

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time. The Tea Party's 15 minutes of fame created by funding from corporate lobbyists and billionaire ultra-conservatives is about done!

Gulf Oil Spill Could Devastate U.S. Eastern Seaboard

AP photographer Charles Riedel filed some of the most disturbing images yet of the effect the oil spill is having on Gulf Coast birds.

Pictures now coming out of the gulf coast show the fate waiting estuaries, fisheries, wildlife, and the economy of the entire eastern seaboard of the U.S.

Scientists predict that the Gulf Loop Current will carry the slick around the tip of Florida, through the keys, up the Florida east coast, into the Gulf Stream and then up the eastern seaboard of the U.S.

The oil will first devastate the breaches, estuaries, fisheries, wildlife, harbors, coastal waterways and economies of Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida.

Next to be devastated are south Florida's beaches, coastal sea grass, mangroves of the everglades, estuaries, harbors and coastal waterways and coral reef habitats.

Then, the oil slick will be carried by the Gulf Stream up the eastern seaboard of the U.S. to devastate beaches, fisheries, harbors and coastal waterways all the way to Cape Hatteras, NC and beyond.

Note: In little noticed comments to McClatchy Newspapers, Ira Leifer, University of California researcher and member of the Obama Administration's Flow Rate Technical Group, said on Monday June 7, 2010 that even BP itself estimated the worst-case flow of an oil leak in the Gulf could reach 100,000 barrels of oil a day. "In the data I've seen, there's nothing inconsistent with BP's worst case scenario," Leifer was quoted as saying.

Miami Herald — May 04, 2010 Computer model of oil spill moving up the east coast May 17, 2010 NASA satellite image of oil slick wwfus — The Exxon Valdez Disaster 20 Years Later

Huffington Post:

21 years after the Exxon Valdez disaster it is estimated that 21,000 gallons of oil still remain just below the surface of Alaska's Prince William Sound, and the long term environmental effects on the area have far exceeded scientists' original predictions. It can be hard to gauge the extent of the current disaster in the Gulf, as the oil continues to flow relentlessly into the water, and the sandy beaches and coastal marshes will certainly react differently to the pollution than Alaska's rocky terrain.

Regardless, it is clear that the damage will be dire. Many species are currently nesting and reproducing in the area, and an entire generation of hundreds of species could be lost as a result. Countless marine birds could also be affected, as the area is a primary flyway for many species, currently in its peak migratory period. Though the cause is still unknown, the numerous dead sea turtles and other creatures that have washed ashore is perhaps an early ominous sign of the marine crisis the oil is causing in the deeper waters offshore. New information also reveals that BP is using 100,000 gallons of dispersant (1/3 of the world's supply) on the oil, further contaminating the ocean with harmful chemicals. Unfortunately, the true environmental ramifications of this catastrophe won't be known for years to come.

The health of countless people are at risk as oil spreads further along the coast, affecting more communities. Oil can turn into a heavy vapor that can then be inhaled by humans in the surrounding areas. The volatile chemicals in oil can cause minor immediate health problems, but have been linked to cancer over longer periods of time. In addition, these chemicals have been associated with miscarriage and can damage airways, so pregnant women and people with respiratory diseases are especially at risk. Oil is also damaging to skin, and the chemicals can be absorbed from this contact, meaning that the numerous local fisherman BP has hired to aid in clean-up efforts are at risk on many levels. In addition, as tragically seen from the Exxon Valdez disaster, local people can suffer long term personal damage from the devastation of their communities, with the escalated stress on families leading to increases in alcoholism, suicide, violence, and divorce.

Federal officials have shut down all fishing between the Mississippi River and Florida Panhandle until early-mid next week at the soonest. Fisheries in Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida are threatened from the effects of this disaster. Louisiana's $2.4 billion sea food industry accounts for approximately 1/3 of the shrimp, oysters, crab and craw fish in America. While the temporary fishing ban only halts 1/4 of Louisiana's seafood production, this could easily change if the oil begins to spread west. But the real impact on the seafood industry will be the long term consequences. The unknown extent of this catastrophe could have an adverse impact on the reproduction of seafood species as well the microscopic creatures that they feed on, potentially devastating the seafood operations in the area for years to come. The spill may even affect bluefin tuna stocks off Atlantic Canada—a species already intensely in decline—as they travel to the Gulf to spawn.

The Gulf Coast has long been home to pristine beaches, admired for their purity and cleanliness. Countless resorts and thriving tourist economies flourish from this natural beauty, with tourism pulling in $100 billion a year in the region. Unfortunately, the oil spill perilously threatens this vital industry with the potential to paint stretches of unspoiled beach black.

Legislation attempting to address the effects of climate change has been a long time coming. The bill, which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 17% lower than 2005 by 2020, also includes provisions to expand domestic production of oil, natural gas, and nuclear power. Obama’s recent announcement to expand offshore drilling was primarily seen by many as a move to gain more support for the bill from those who had opposed it. A lot of environmentalists conceded the compromise as necessary, understanding the greater good it would have getting the legislation through. In the wake of this offshore oil disaster, hope for the bill is looking bleaker than ever, with numerous lawmakers refusing to lend any support if offshore drilling measures are incorporated. The environmental crisis currently on our hands only further emphasizes the need for legislation that will truly protect our environment and lead to a clean energy America.

Canadian Company Buys Allen-based Diebold/Premier Election Solutions

Updated June 2, 2010 @ 11:58 P.M.
The company that markets the old Diebold/Premier electronic voting machines, used by Collin County voters, finally found someone to buy its failed Allen, Tx based Diebold/Premier Election Solutions business unit. Canadian-based Dominion Voting Systems, Inc has acquired the primary assets of Premier Election Solutions, including all intellectual property, software, firmware and hardware for Premier’s current and legacy optical scan, central scan, and touch screen voting systems, and all versions of the GEMS election management system. Dominion also has the right to hire former Premier employees.

Diebold's failed election division (renamed Premier Election Solutions in 2007) was purchased from Diebold for a pittance by Election Systems & Software, Inc. (ES&S) in September 2009 following a long three search for a buyer.

The Department of Justice's Anti-trust division later determined that the purchase of Diebold's Allen, TX based "Premier Election Solutions," by ES&S, resulted in a voting systems monopoly.

Collin County voters have been voting on Diebold Election Solutions DRE AccuVote touch screen voting systems, like the machine pictured left, since the March 4, 2004 primary election.

In 2008 Collin County purchased 410 of a newer version of the AccuVote voting booth machines (pictured right) to use for early voting. The newer AccuVote machine was used for the first time in Collin Co. during early voting for the November 2008 general election. Collin County continues to use the now antiquated "2004" AccuVote voting machines for Election Day voting. Collin Co. currently has a total inventory of about 1400 AccuVote voting booth machines.

On March 8, 2010 the U. S. Department of Justice, along with nine state attorneys general, filed an antitrust lawsuit in U. S. District Court in Washington, D.C. alleging that ES&S’ 2009 acquisition of Premier harmed competition. In settlement of that lawsuit ES&S agreed to look for someone willing to buy the assets of Premier.

In May 2010 Canadian-based Dominion Voting Systems, Inc agreed to acquire the assets of Premier Election Solutions from ES&S. From the Press Release announcing the acquisition:

Dominion Voting Systems, Inc. Acquires Premier
Election Solutions Assets From ES&S

Transaction Approved by the U. S. Department of Justice, Will Significantly Increase Competition in the United States Voting Systems Industry

Dominion’s Engineering and Customer Service Expertise Will Support Premier’s
Voting Products Throughout the U.S.

JAMESTOWN, New York .... Dominion Voting Systems, Inc. today announced that it has acquired from Premier Election Solutions, Inc. (Premier) a wholly owned subsidiary of Election Systems and Software (ES&S), the primary assets of Premier, including all intellectual property, software, firmware and hardware for Premier’s current and legacy optical scan, central scan, and touch screen voting systems, and all versions of the GEMS election management system.

As part of the transaction, Dominion also acquired an irrevocable, perpetual license for the AutoMark voting terminals used by voters with disabilities, a similar license for the VoteRemote absentee vote-by-mail processing solution, and rights to spare parts, supplies and other resources necessary to support and service these installed systems. In addition, Dominion will acquire a percentage of existing Premier inventory.

Under terms of the agreement, which was approved by the U. S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and nine state attorneys general, Dominion has secured the right to hire current and former Premier employees and to enter into agreements with Premier dealers experienced in deploying and supporting these systems. In addition, the transaction requires that current Premier customers be provided with the opportunity to assign their existing contracts to Dominion without penalty. As part of the transaction, Dominion granted license rights back to Premier, subject to certain restrictions. The transaction also provides limitations on the ability of ES&S to continue to sell the Premier equipment going forward. Premier voting systems are currently in use in over 1,400 jurisdictions in 33 states and serve nearly 28 million American voters.

Included in the acquisition are Premier’s legacy products as well as Premier’s new ASSURE 1.2 solution suite which includes hardware, software and firmware with enhanced functionality and strengthened security and auditability features.

Updated March 8, 2010 @ 11:45 A.M.
The Department of Justice's Anti-trust division has determined that the purchase of Diebold's Allen, TX based "Premier Election Solutions", by Election Systems & Software, Inc. (ES&S), has resulted in a voting machine monopoly.

A settlement has been struck, pending approval by a federal judge, between the DOJ, nine states, and ES&S requiring that the private company find a DoJ-approved purchaser of the Diebold/Premier assets. The proposed settlement, signed by the DoJ, ES&S, and representatives of state attorneys general in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Tennessee, and Washington has been posted here [PDF]. Announcement of the DoJ-ordered unwinding of the merger and proposed settlement is also posted here.

Updated March 4, 2010 @ 4:49 A.M.
This story is again in the news with a just released AP news article. The AP story does not report much new news, but since it puts the story in circulation again, we'll pull our old post back up to the top of the list. The AP story includes this quote:

"If you end up with 70 percent of the voting machines and the people rely on them, and if entry into the market is difficult or impossible, it would certainly seem to be a legitimate target for antitrust enforcement," said Charles "Rick" Rule, a longtime Washington attorney who ran the Justice Department's antitrust division from 1986-89 during the merger-friendly Reagan administration.

Updated December 20, 2009 @ 10:22 A.M.
In September 2009 privately owned Omaha, Neb. based Election Systems & Software Inc., the largest voting machine company in the country, bought its biggest competitor, Diebold's Allen, TX based "Premier Election Solutions," without advance public notification.

The New York Post reports today that the U.S. Dept. of Justice and 14 states are actively investigating the already-completed merger of the two biggest makers of voting machines in advance of possible anti-trust legal action to unwind the merger as soon as next month.

The Miami Herald reports that Florida's AG office launched an investigation into the acquisition for possible violations of Florida's anti-trust statutes.

The U.S. Dept. of Justice joins Florida and 13 other states in similar investigations to investigate the merger that put privately held ES&S in control of the voting machines in nearly 70 percent of the nation's election precincts. (Separate from Justice's review, competing voting machine firm Hart InterCivic Inc. has sued ES&S, alleging that the company holds an unfair anti-competitive monopoly on the U.S. voting machine market.)

Given ES&S is a privately held company it issues no financial reports and it was not required by law to give advanced notice to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) or the Dept. of Justice about its acquisition of the Premier Election Solutions unit of Diebold. However, the government does have jurisdiction to take action in such transactions, if they create unfair anti-competitive monopolistic markets.

In a letter sent to Attorney General Eric Holder in September 2009, just after ES&S announced its acquisition of Premere, U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer (D-NY), the Chairman of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee and a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, expressed concerns over the deal and requested that the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division launch an investigation. In the September 2009 letter Schumer writes:

“If this acquisition proceeds, one company could control over three-quarters of the U.S. market for voting systems. Given other factors, including high barriers to entering the market, I am deeply concerned that local governments and taxpayers will not be getting a fair deal because too much market power will be held in too few hands.”

“It is in the public interest to maintain a range of choices in voting systems” -- noting that increased consolidation in the election-machine market could make elections more susceptible to fraud.

Originally Posted on September 3, 2009 @ 9:49 A.M.
After a three year search Diebold has at long last found a buyer for its Allen, TX based "Premier Election Solutions" business unit. The company announced Thursday that Premier Election Solutions, Diebold’s beleaguered voting machine division, had been acquired by Election Systems and Software (ES&S).

Collin County voters have been voting on Diebold Election Solutions DRE AccuVote touch screen voting systems, like the machine pictured left, since the March 4, 2004 primary election.

In 2008 Collin County purchased 410 of a newer version of the AccuVote voting booth machines (pictured right) to use for early voting. The newer AccuVote machine was used for the first time in Collin Co. during early voting for the November 2008 general election. Collin County continues to use the older "2004" AccuVote voting machines for Election Day voting. Collin Co. currently has a total inventory of about 1400 AccuVote voting booth machines.

In 2006, Diebold began attempts to distance itself from its election solutions division because controversies swirling around its computerized voting system line of business tarnished its mainline banking ATM business, plus, the added profits Diebold envisioned when it purchased the elections systems business never fully materialized. Diebold endured numerous lawsuits in addition to its PR problems over its Election Systems product.

Wired Magazine: Diebold, an Ohio-based maker of ATMs and security systems, purchased the elections business from Global Election Systems for $31 million in January 2002, just as Congress was passing the Help America Vote Act, which allocated billions to states to purchase new voting machines.

Instead of reaping the flow of federal HAVA funds the new Diebold Elections Systems division immediately ran headlong into controversy when Diebold Inc. CEO Walden O’Dell, a fundraiser for former President George Bush, wrote in a letter to Republican supporters in 2003 stating that the company was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president” in 2004.

[Diebold's AccuVote computers were widely used throughout Ohio and O’Dell's letter suggested to some that Diebold might install software on the AccuVote machines "rigged" to throw the Ohio vote to Bush.]

The company then became a target of additional bad "PR" after it inadvertently put its AccuVote computer source code on a public internet access FTP computer. This gave computer scientists an opportunity to examine the AccuVote software code. The computer scientists who studied the software code said they discovered numerous security problems with the voting system [that might allow someone to hack and change votes recorded on the voting machines].

Criticism of Diebold Elections Systems' voting equipment remained constant as the voting system experienced numerous problems in election districts around the country, and reports surfaced that company officials had applied untested and uncertified software updates to voting computers. [Did E-Vote Firm Patch Election?]

[Atlanta Progressive News' Matthew Cardinale filed a report reviewing the history and concerns about software patches illegally installed on Georgia's Diebold touch-screen voting systems.]

Wired Magazine: The most recent problem with the company’s system occurred in the 2008 presidential election in Humboldt County, California, when Diebold’s tabulation software randomly deleted nearly 200 votes. An examination of the system revealed that its audit logs failed to record significant events, such as someone deleting votes from the system; it also contained a delete button that allowed anyone with access to the system to erase the audit logs.

Diebold began looking for a buyer for the troubled touch-screen and optical scan voting, and electronic voter registration business in early 2006. Following a year-long failed attempt to find anyone willing to buy the e-voting business, Diebold spun it off as a wholly owned subsidiary business, renamed the subsidiary "Premier Election Solutions" and gave the business unit its own separate management team and board of directors in August 2007.

Diebold continued to actively search for someone to buy for its election system business unit until Election Systems & Software, another company in the election systems industry, finally aggre Diebold has at long last found a buyer and has sold its controversial U.S. election systems business to competitor Election Systems & Software, another company in the election systems industry. The sale closed Wednesday September 2, 2009 and consists primarily of Diebold’s Allen, Texas-based subsidiary, Premier Election Solutions.

Diebold reportedly agreed to sell the business for $5 million in cash, plus payments representing 70 percent of any cash collected on outstanding accounts that were receivable as of Aug. 31. Diebold expects to recognize a pre-tax loss in the range of $45 million to $55 million as a result of the transaction. The pre-tax loss includes the assets and liabilities of the business, certain retained legal liabilities, and other transaction costs.

Read more at:

• BradBlog: Diebold Admits Audit Logs in ALL Versions of Their Software Fail to Record Ballot Deletions
  
• Wired Magazine: Diebold Admits Systemic Audit Log Failure; State Vows Inquiry
• California Secretary of State's report (.pdf) on the audit log problem
• Diebold May Face Criminal Charges

Bill White's Call To Audit The Texas Enterprise Fund

The White campaign has distributed the following email:

Support my call for an independent audit of the Texas Enterprise Fund, so we can have accountability for how Rick Perry is spending public funds. Visit AuditTEF.com Today >>

Rick Perry is using taxpayer dollars from the Texas Enterprise Fund to subsidize companies he selects. He's even drained payroll tax dollars from small businesses and then handed the money to larger competitors.

Texas taxpayers deserve to know whether we have gotten our money's worth from each and every dollar handed out by Rick Perry.

Support the call for an independent audit of the Texas Enterprise Fund -- sign my petition today.

Perry has handed out taxpayer money with questionable results. Some examples:

• A $35 million subsidy for biotech firm Lexicon Genetics, a company whose investors have ties to Perry's political campaigns. Perry said the subsidy would increase employment, but after the firm received the subsidy, they laid off employees.

• A $20 million subsidy for failed sub-prime lender Countrywide Financial, a key player in the global financial meltdown.

Texas taxpayers deserve independent, audited answers to important questions. What was the process for awarding subsidies? Were subsidies necessary for their intended purposes? Did companies live up to their promises? Were lobbyists paid to influence decisions about where the money would go? Did subsidized firms compete with other Texas businesses?

Learn more and support my call for an independent audit of the Texas Enterprise Fund, so we can account for how Rick Perry is spending public funds.

Texans deserve a governor who will put our interests ahead of special interests, a governor who will squeeze the value out of every tax dollar.

Pol. Adv. Bill White Campaign

70,000 Barrels Of Oil Gushing Into Gulf Every Day

'Angry' Obama Talks About Gulf Disaster... SPILL IS 10X WORSE THAN PREVIOUSLY BELIEVED.. 70,000 Barrels Gushing Every Day.. Note: In little noticed comments to McClatchy Newspapers, Ira Leifer, University of California researcher and member of the Obama Administration's Flow Rate Technical Group, said on Monday June 7, 2010 that even BP itself estimated the worst-case flow of an oil leak in the Gulf could reach 100,000 barrels of oil a day. "In the data I've seen, there's nothing inconsistent with BP's worst case scenario," Leifer was quoted as saying. Equivalent Of Exxon Valdez Every Four Days.. Oil spill could go on for years, experts say BP Has 'No Certainty' Of Disaster's Scale.. BP CEO Tony Hayward says: the ongoing gulf spill is "relatively tiny" Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) downplays the spill to the Associated Press Offshore Platform Sinks Off Coast Of Venezuela

PBS Morning Edition Listen to "Gulf Spill Could Be Much Worse Than Believed" BP has said repeatedly that there is no reliable way to measure the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico by looking at the oil gushing out of the pipe. But scientists say there are actually many proven techniques for doing just that. Steven Wereley, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, analyzed videotape of the seafloor gusher using a technique called particle image velocimetry. A computer program simply tracks particles and calculates how fast they are moving. Wereley put the BP video of the gusher into his computer. He made a few simple calculations and came up with an astonishing value for the rate of the oil spill: 70,000 barrels a day — much higher than the official estimate of 5,000 barrels a day. The method is accurate to a degree of plus or minus 20 percent. mp3

The press, for the most part, has been reporting that 5,000 barrels of oil has been spilling into the gulf every day. Until today they have ignored reports from growing numbers of scientists and experts that the flow may be at a rate of at least 24,000 barrels a day.

The press even failed to widely report that on Tuesday, May 4, British Petroleum executives told the Energy and Commerce Committee of the US Congress’ House of Representatives that up to 60,000 barrels of oil per day may be flowing from the well into the Gulf of Mexico.

Analysis of seafloor video, that BP had withheld until two days ago, indicates that approximately 70,000 barrels could be gushing out every day, NPR reports. That figure is at least 10 times the U.S. Coast Guard's original estimate of the flow, and "the equivalent of one Exxon Valdez tanker every four days."

Federal officials are carefully tracking the trajectory of the oil that's made it to the water's surface and, increasingly, on shore. They even put out a daily map.

But there's never been an oil spill this big and this deep before. Nor have authorities ever used chemical dispersant so widely.

As a result, scientists are finding that a lot, if not most, of the oil is lurking below the surface rather than on it, in a gigantic underwater plume the size and trajectory of which remain largely a mystery.

Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick in spots. The discovery is fresh evidence that the leak from the broken undersea well could be substantially worse than estimates that the government and BP have given.

“There’s a shocking amount of oil in the deep water, relative to what you see in the surface water,” said Samantha Joye, a researcher at the University of Georgia who is involved in one of the first scientific missions to gather details about what is happening in the gulf. “There’s a tremendous amount of oil in multiple layers, three or four or five layers deep in the water column.”

The plumes are depleting the oxygen dissolved in the gulf, worrying scientists, who fear that the oxygen level could eventually fall so low as to kill off much of the sea life near the plumes.

Where is this gigantic underwater plume of oil heading? Oceanographers believe the Gulf Oil Spill Could Devastate U.S. Eastern Seaboard To Canada.

Al Gore has said: Starting 40 years ago, when America's domestic oil production peaked, our dependence on foreign oil has steadily grown.

We are now draining our economy of several hundred billion dollars a year in order to purchase foreign oil in a global market dominated by the huge reserves owned by sovereign states in the Persian Gulf. This enormous and increasing transfer of wealth contributes heavily to our trade and current-account deficits, and enriches regimes in the most unstable region of the world, helping to finance both terrorism and Iran’s relentless effort to build a nuclear arsenal...

Here at home, the illusion that we can meaningfully reduce our dependence on foreign oil by taking extraordinary risks to develop deep reserves in the Outer Continental Shelf is illuminated by the illustration below. The addition to oil company profits may be significant, but the benefits to our national security are trivial.

The small yellow wedge on the top of the graph is the amount of oil available from Continental Shelf oil wells.


Update May 18, 2010 @ 4:55pm
Under pressure from congress BP released two new videos of the leaking riser from their Mississippi Canyon Block 252 well showing the leak after activation of the riser insertion tool. BP claims the insertion tool is siphoning 1,000 barrels of the 70,000 barrels per day flowing from the broken riser pipe.

The first video of the insertion in the end of the broken riser:


The second video (click full screen bottom right of the video frame) the bent section of the riser pipe juxg above the blowout preventer. As was reported to me earlier, it looks like it is definitely getting worse. At about 2:30 into the video, is a closeup -- scary stuff:

30% Of Americans Are Unsure If Or Believe Environmentalists Blew Up the Deepwater Horizon Drilling Rig

Ten percent of Americans believe environmentalists intentionally sabotaged the oil rig Deepwater Horizon off the Gulf Coast according to a poll released Tuesday by Public Policy Polling. I'm still hearing some of my conservative friends say liberal environmentalists plotted with Obama's government to blow up the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico to advance their radical environmentalist anti-drilling political agenda!

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh floated the idea on his nationally syndicated talk show. "Think Progress reported on Limbaugh's conspiracy that is intended to shift blame from Big Oil to liberals in general and Obama in particular:

As the scale of the disaster caused by the explosion at an oil rig off the coast of Louisiana became more apparent last week, right-wing radio talker Rush Limbaugh unleashed a conspiracy theory suggesting that someone intentionally blew up the rig in order to “head off more oil drilling” ... "So, since they’re sending SWAT teams down there, folks, since they’re sending SWAT teams to inspect the other rigs, what better way to head off more oil drilling, nuclear plants, than by blowing up a rig? I’m just noting the timing here," said Rush Limbaugh on his radio program

Picking up on Limbaugh’s and oil spill truther's liberal conspiracy theory on fringe websites the Fox News conservative megaphone is also pushing the conspiracy theory that hardcore liberal environmentalist plotted with Obama's government to blow up the rig to advance their environmentalist anti-drilling political agenda. On Fox and Friends, former Bush Press Secretary Dana Perino said she was “not trying to introduce a conspiracy theory, but was this deliberate,” wondered Perino.

Public Policy Polling director Tom Jensen noted that if "undecideds" are included in the polling results, the number of Americans who are unsure about or believe the environmental sabotage theory rises to more than thirty percent." Just 9% of voters say they think environmentalists caused the spill while 22% are unsure and 69% don't believe they had anything to do with it," Jensen writes.

What really caused the blowout? An account given by two workers on the drilling rig and corroborated to some extent by Transocean, owner of the Deepwater drilling platform claims that BP, owner of the well, made key decisions to cut costs by short cutting proper procedures.

The final short cut was to reverse the order of cementing steps used to seal the well. After, cementing the casing, filling in the area between the pipe and the walls of the well, it is standard procedure to pour wet cement down the inside of the drill pipe, which then sinks thousands of feet down through the drilling mud before the cement hardens into a plug. Then the standard procedure is to wait for the cement plug to harden for a period of six hours before the drilling mud is removed. The account given by the two rig workers says that the drilling mud was removed before the cement was poured down the riser pipe.

Weighted drilling mud fills the pipe to hold back the oil and gas formation pressure while the well is being drilled. Properly weighted drilling mud prevents a blowout during drilling. As the heavy drilling mud was displaced by lighter sea water, without the cement plug in place, the reduced pressure inside the well riser pipe allowed the formation pressure to blowout of the pipe.

According to account, BP asked for and receive permission from the federal Minerals Management Service to displace the mud before the final plugging operation had begun. [WSJ Online]

Why didn't the blowout preventer work after the blowout occured?The blowout preventer had a dead battery in its control pod, leaks in its hydraulic system that provides emergency power to the "variable bore ram" device that was supposed to cut and seal the pipe to stop the flow of oil, a ram cutting tool that wasn’t strong enough to shear through pipe joints that made up 10 percent of the drill pipe, all of which really made no difference because the blowout preventer had been modified so that one of its "variable bore ram" drivers could be used for routine testing and was no longer designed to activate in an emergency. That’s the story told in the WashPost coverage on the devastating opening statement in a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Rep. Henry Waxman says that his House Committee's investigation into the Gulf oil spill reveals that the blowout preventer had a leak in a crucial hydraulic system before the blowout. Without hydraulic pressure the blowout preventer's "variable bore ram," intended to close tight around the pipe and seal it, can not activate. And at a hearing in Louisiana on Tuesday, the government engineer who gave oil giant BP the final approval to drill admitted that he never asked for proof that the blowout preventer worked. [Huffington Post]

In the days after the blowout BP engineers tried to activate the blowout preventer, but failed because the device had been greatly modified and the diagrams BP got from the equipment's owner didn't match the device's new configuration, congressional investigators said Wednesday. BP engineers wasted many hours before figuring this out. Who ordered the alterations in the blowout preventer? Transocean, the owner of the blowout preventer and of the sunken Deepwater Horizon rig, said any alterations would have come at BP's instigation; BP, which owns the well and hired Transocean to drill it, said it had never sought the changes.

Testimony given before the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, said alterations to the blowout preventer prevented the massive "variable bore ram" from activating. This ram is intended to cut the pipe and seal it. The alteration had connected a useless test ram - not the variable bore ram - to the socket that was supposed to activate the variable bore ram. [Kansas City Star, a McClatchy Newspaper]

More:

• Huffington Post: Eyewitness accounts of the Deepwater Horizon well blowout
• Gulf Oil Spill Could Devastate U.S. Eastern Seaboard
• Offshore Drilling Outpaced Oil Industry's Safety Knowledge
• Deepwater Horizon Blowout - The True Story
• Oil industry failed to heed blowout warnings - The warnings were there a decade ago.

Offshore Drilling Outpaced Oil Industry's Safety Knowledge

McClatchy News Picture right - The offshore oil rig Deepwater Horizon burns in the Gulf of Mexico shortly before it sank April 22, 2010. More McClatchy News photos. |

Over the past 15 years, oil companies have drilled deeper and farther into the Gulf of Mexico, taking on new risks in the hunt for new deposits of oil.

The dangers of deep water drilling are acute, where deep ocean currents combine with frigid temperatures and crushing pressures to make dangerous accidents more likely -- and much harder to fix.

Yet, oil industry's understanding of how deep water pressures affect drilling procedures and equipment, such as blowout preventers, have failed to keep pace as oil companies moved to deep water drilling.

TheYoungTurks — April 30, 2010 TheYoungTurks — May 06, 2010

Over the years those concerned about deep water offshore drilling have pointed to a series of warnings, malfunctions and near-misses.

Republicans have responded with ridicule and "drill baby drill" contempt to any suggestion by Democrats that oil companies were rushing unprepared and unregulated to offshore drilling leases.

Democrats are concerned about deep water offshore drilling because federal government and industry studies describe the industry's understanding for stanching a major deep water well blowout as "nonexistent with no guidelines or procedures for deep water blowout containment.

BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles announced in a press briefing announced Saturday that initial efforts to contain the Deepwater Horizon oil gusher with a 100-ton, four-story concrete-and-steel containment dome have failed - due to unforeseen developments.

The containment dome, known as a cofferdam, was lowered onto the leaking wellhead Friday, with the intent of pumping the leaking oil up a pipe to the sea surface a mile above.

After the containment dome was lowered onto the oil gushing wellhead, a slurry of "slush-like" methane hydrate crystals unexpectedly formed on the inside of the dome’s surface. The hydrate gave the dome positive buoyancy and clogged the oil outtake at the dome’s roof. Methane hydrate is natural gas that under the extreme pressure and low temperatures of the 5,000 foot deep ocean floor is compressed into a semi-frozen state. BP had not anticipated that methane hydrates could form within the containment dome at such a rapid rate.

The speed in which the containment chamber filled with hydrate is an indication that the oil flow out of the well could be much higher than the reported 5,000 barrels per day. The volume of oil flowing into the chamber would need be very high for the hydrate to form so quickly. Ian MacDonald, professor of oceanography at Florida State University who specializes in tracking ocean oil seeps from satellite imagery, estimates the daily rate to be 25,000 barrels of oil per day. Another scientist, John Amos, a geologist who has worked as an industry consultant, also says the more realistic number is 20,000 barrels per day.

The containment dome has been moved 200 meters from the disaster site, and is sitting on the sea bed as BP engineers attempt to work out a solution to the rapid methane hydrate formation within the dome.

That same methane hydrate has also been implicated in the oil rig explosion and fire when it "blew out" to the drilling platform surface in its natural gas form. The oil industry does seem to comprehend there are dangerous risks associated with deep water drilling that they do not understand. A publicly available Halliburton PowerPoint presentation from November 2009 contains the statement, "Destabilization of hydrates during cementing and production in deep water environments is a challenge to the safety and economics."

The dangers of deep water drilling have been laid bare by the Deepwater Horizon blowout and growing oil spill. Adm. Thad Allen, the Coast Guard's highest-ranking officer, who was appointed by the Obama administration to take command of the containment effort, acknowledged from the outset that the options were limited by what he called "the tyranny of depth."

Republicans have pushed for years to lift a 1981 ban on offshore drilling, saying it will increase domestic oil supplies. Republicans also want to legalize drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

While advocating offshore and ANWAR drilling conservatives also pushed their agenda of downsizing government by reducing government's oversight role of industry, including the oil industry. Conservatives argue that industry self-regulation is preferable to government having a role in the regulation of business -- That would be socialist government.

We've seen this conservative anti-government agenda manifested in decreasing inspection of agricultural products, which resulted in a surge of food-borne illnesses. We've seen GOP Blind Faith In Unregulated Banks and Wall Street Markets Stoke Economic Crisis, a near-collapse of the U.S. and World economy and a deep recession. And now we that industry self-regulation policy at the root of the growing Deepwater Horizon disaster.

NYTimes:Regulator Deferred to Oil Industry on Offshore Rig Safety

Agency records show that from 2001 to 2007, there were 1,443 serious drilling accidents in offshore operations, leading to 41 deaths, 302 injuries and 356 oil spills. Yet the federal agency continues to allow the oil industry largely to police itself, saying that the best technical experts work for industry, not for the government.
..
Last year, BP, the owner of the well that blew in the gulf, teamed up with other offshore operators to oppose a proposed rule that would have required stricter safety and environmental standards and more frequent inspections. BP said that “extensive, prescriptive” regulations were not needed for offshore drilling, and urged the minerals service to allow it and other operators to define the steps they would take to ensure safety largely on their own.

U.S. Oil Regulator Ceded Safety Oversight to Drillers - WSJ.com - The small U.S. agency that oversees offshore drilling doesn't write or implement most safety regulations, having gradually shifted such responsibilities to the oil industry itself for more than a decade.

Instead, the Minerals Management Service—[for the most part still operating with conservative staff and policies installed during the Bush Administration]—sets broad performance goals for the industry. Oil producers and drilling companies are then free to decide for themselves how to meet those goals, industry executives and former regulators say.

Read more:
mcclatchydc.com
Deepwater Horizon Blowout - The True Story

Happy Mothers Day 2010

Norman Rockwell's
Mother Tucking
Children in Bed
(1921)

Deepwater Horizon Blowout - The True Story

Have you heard your conservative Republican friends and neighbors wonder out loud if liberal environmentalists plotted with Obama's government to blow up the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico to advance their radical environmentalist anti-drilling political agenda? "Think Progress reports on the latest right-wing conspiracy to shift blame from Big Oil to liberals in general and Obama in particular:

As the scale of the disaster caused by the explosion at an oil rig off the coast of Louisiana became more apparent last week, right-wing radio talker Rush Limbaugh unleashed a conspiracy theory suggesting that someone intentionally blew up the rig in order to “head off more oil drilling” ... "So, since they’re sending SWAT teams down there, folks, since they’re sending SWAT teams to inspect the other rigs, what better way to head off more oil drilling, nuclear plants, than by blowing up a rig? I’m just noting the timing here," said Rush Limbaugh on his radio program

Picking up on Limbaugh’s and oil spill truther's liberal conspiracy theory on fringe websites the Fox News conservative megaphone is also pushing the conspiracy theory that hardcore liberal environmentalist plotted with Obama's government to blow up the rig to advance their environmentalist anti-drilling political agenda. On Fox and Friends, former Bush Press Secretary Dana Perino said she was “not trying to introduce a conspiracy theory, but was this deliberate?” ... “If there was sabotage involved,” wondered Perino. Later in the same day's show, host Steve Doocy asked Fox Business’ Eric Bolling to respond to people who have suggested that “there’s a possibility this could be sabotage.” Citing Perino, Bolling engaged in conspiracy speculation:

BOLLING: The question is did they let this thing leak? Did they let it leak a little bit and say, “boy I don’t know.” I mean, the conspiracy theorists would say, maybe they let it leak for a while and then they address the issue.

Another Fox program host Gretchen Carlson called Bolling’s speculation “a humongous accusation.” He agreed, adding, “but if they’re going to try to pull drilling, that may be the way to do it.” Watch video left:

BP America Inc. President Lamar McKay blamed the disaster on [the well blowout preventer on the gulf sea-bed in 5000 feet of water, that he called] “a failed piece of equipment,” in an interview with ABC News yesterday, adding that they “don’t know why it failed yet.” The blowout preventer is a 500,000 pound massive failsafe hydraulic valve intended to cut and seal the well pipe in case of a catastrophic blowout. The disaster occurred as Halliburton was cementing, or sealing, the well bore so that the drilling platform could be moved to a new drilling location.

An offshore blowout is when seawater and drilling mud containing gas from the well spew up from the well pipe onto the drilling rig floor; A blowout preventer (BOP) is a large valve that can seal off the wellhead, when the drilling crew loses control of drilling mud pressure and formation pressure forces oil or gas up to the drilling platform. By closing this valve (usually operated remotely via hydraulic actuators), the drilling crew can prevent a blowout of the well bore.

Oil industry expert talks to Fox News America's Newsroom

Oil wells do blowout and blowout preventers do fail -- absent any liberal conspiracy to blow up off shore rigs. In fact, Deepwater Horizon blowout is the second such deep water blowout in less than a year.

Just eight months ago, the BOP failed on a deep-water well in the Timor Sea, north-west of Australia. After five attempts and 10 weeks a relief well was drilled and the blowout flow, which was much smaller than Deepwater Horizon blowout flow, was stemmed.

An analysis of incidents in the Gulf of Mexico by the Texas A&M researchers showed that offshore blowouts have continued at "a fairly regular rate since 1960 despite the use of BOPs. A 2007 paper from the Minerals Management Service said between 1992 and 2006 there have been 39 actual blowouts.

Drilling for oil at depths greater than 3000 feet of water was rare a decade ago, but the profit to be made from deep water wells has made exploration economically feasible. Such wells are now common off the coasts of Brazil, Angola and Nigeria as well as in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Deepwater Horizon well head is more than a mile under water on the gulf sea-floor. A report by engineering consulting firm URS Corp. in 2002 concluded that "Technologies used in shallow waters are not adequate for water depths over 3000 feet. Engineering requirements and operational certification procedures for equipment used for deep water drilling are not well understood or tested.

Video of a blowout preventer being landed on a sea-floor well head and control cables connected by ROV.

In 2005 petroleum engineering researchers from Texas A&M University suggested that drilling in the "dangerous and unknown" ultra-deep environment required new blowout control measures: "While drilling as a whole may be advancing to keep up with these environments, some parts lag behind. An area that has seen this stagnation and resulting call for change has been blowout control."

A 2003 report co-authored by the then-director of technology development for Transocean, the company that owned the Deepwater Horizon rig that caught fire on April 20 and sank two days later, delivered at an industry conference warned that the industry wasn't taking time to find and fix underlying problems that commonly plagued blowout preventers. "Floating drilling rig downtime due to poor BOP (blowout preventer) reliability is a common and very costly issue confronting all offshore drilling contractors," the report said.

A 2008 report authored by officials of BP America and Transocean and published by the Society of Petroleum Engineers raised new questions about whether the blowout preventers on the deep water wells, like that the Deepwater Horizon was drilling, could face a new problem. http://www.thenewstribune.com/2010/05/06/1175820/cantwell-2003-report-revealed.html

A 1999 report commissioned by the federal agency that oversees offshore drilling suggests failures of underwater blowout preventers designed to stop oil spills like the massive one threatening the Gulf Coast were far from rare. Citing a Minerals Management Service report, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said there were 117 failures of blowout preventers during a two-year period in the late 1990s on the outer continental shelf of the United States. Sen. Maria Cantwell is the chairwoman of the Senate Commerce Committee's oceans, atmosphere, fisheries and Coast Guard subcommittee.

The unclassified version of the 1990 report said the failures involved 83 wells drilled by 26 rigs in depths from 1,300 feet to 6,560 feet. A similar report released by the agency in 1997 found that between 1992 and 1996 there were 138 failures of blowout preventers on underwater wells being drilled off Brazil, Norway, Italy and Albania. No additional studies were commissioned by the Bush administration during his term from January 2001 to January 2009.

The Deepwater Horizon was a large semi-submersible (meaning that it floats on large pontoons that actually float below the surface) and contains drilling, completion, cementing, and production facilities all on one vessel.

Deepwater Horizon was drilling an exploration well in a deep-water area known as Mississippi Canyon off of the coast of Louisiana.

Once a exploration well is drilled and a producing oil field discovery is confirmed it is sealed and multiple production wells are drilled. Initial reports of the accident said that the Deepwater Horizon platform drilling crew had set a cement plug deep in the well, to seal the exploration bore hole, and were displacing the weighted drilling mud in the riser pipe from the ocean floor to the drilling platform with sea water to recover the drilling mud.

Weighted drilling mud fills the pipe to hold back the oil and gas formation pressure while the well is being drilled. Properly weighted drilling mud prevents a blowout. The riser was 5,000 feet of 21" diameter pipe, some buoyant, some negatively buoyant.

As soon as the weighted drilling mud was recovered the platform was to be moved to another location to drill a production well in the newly confirmed oil field.

Initial speculation was that one or all of the cement plugs failed, and as the heavier drilling mud was displaced by lighter sea water, the reduced hydrostatic head pressure allowed the formation pressure to blowout of the well riser pipe.

Initial consensus was that the BOP, 5,000 feet below sea level, was irreparably damaged when the drilling platform and 5,000 feet of riser pipe collapsed to the sea floor. ROVs worked directly on the BOP over several days, doing everything that should have activated it but all efforts failed to stop the flow of oil and gas.

---------------- Updated May 12, 2010 ----------------

What really caused the blowout? An account given by two workers on the drilling rig and corroborated to some extent by Transocean, owner of the Deepwater drilling platform claims that BP, owner of the well, made a key decision to reverse the order of cementing steps used to seal the well. After, cementing the casing, filling in the area between the pipe and the walls of the well, it is standard procedure to pour wet cement down the inside of the drill pipe, which then sinks thousands of feet down through the drilling mud before the cement hardens into a plug. Then the standard procedure is to wait for the cement plug to harden for a period of six hours before the drilling mud is removed. The account given by the two rig workers says that the drilling mud was removed before the cement was poured down the riser pipe.

Weighted drilling mud fills the pipe to hold back the oil and gas formation pressure while the well is being drilled. Properly weighted drilling mud prevents a blowout during drilling. As the heavy drilling mud was displaced by lighter sea water, without the cement plug in place, the reduced pressure inside the well riser pipe allowed the formation pressure to blowout of the pipe.

According to account, BP asked for and receive permission from the federal Minerals Management Service to displace the mud before the final plugging operation had begun. [WSJ Online]

Why didn't the blowout preventer work after the blowout occured? The blowout preventer had a dead battery in its control pod, leaks in its hydraulic system that provides emergency power to the "variable bore ram" device that was supposed to close the flow of oil, a ram cutting tool that wasn’t strong enough to shear through joints that made up 10 percent of the drill pipe, all of which really made no difference because the blowout preventer had been modified so that one of its "variable bore ram" drivers could be used for routine testing and was no longer designed to activate in an emergency. That’s the story told in the WashPost coverage on the devastating opening statement in a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Rep. Henry Waxman says that his House Committee's investigation into the Gulf oil spill reveals that the blowout preventer had a leak in a crucial hydraulic system before the blowout. Without hydraulic pressure the blowout preventer's "variable bore ram," intended to close tight around the pipe and seal it, cam not activate. And at a hearing in Louisiana on Tuesday, the government engineer who gave oil giant BP the final approval to drill admitted that he never asked for proof that the blowout preventer worked. [Huffington Post]

In the days after the blowout BP engineers tried to activate the blowout preventer, but failed because the device had been greatly modified and the diagrams BP got from the equipment's owner didn't match the device's new configuration, congressional investigators said Wednesday. BP engineers wasted many hours before figuring this out. Who ordered the alterations in the blowout preventer? Transocean, the owner of the blowout preventer and of the sunken Deepwater Horizon rig, said any alterations would have come at BP's instigation; BP, which owns the well and hired Transocean to drill it, said it had never sought the changes.

Testimony given before the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, said alterations to the blowout preventer prevented the massive "variable bore ram" from activating. This ram is intended to cut the pipe and seal it. The alteration had connected a useless test ram - not the variable bore ram - to the socket that was supposed to activate the variable bore ram. [Kansas City Star, a McClatchy Newspaper]

----------------

Witnesses describe Deepwater Horizon rig blowout -- Video of disaster

It was a calm night, so when methane gas hit surface, being heavier than air, it settled around the drilling platform deck. The gas grew so dense on deck that it began to invade compartments as the blowout strengthened.

As the electric generator engines that run the rig began to breath in the dense gas/air mix, the engines ran away uncontrollably and exploded. The generator explosions ignited the dense cloud of well gas on deck, which in turn ignited the blowout flow from the riser pipe.

Similar explosions happened in the mud pump room, destroying inner walls, which, according to the reported accounts, were unfortunately adjacent to the living quarters. In a strange twist of fate, the off-shift crew was reportedly having a party in the living quarters, celebrating 7 years of accident free performance. It is reported there were 7 BP executives on board the the drilling platform visiting on the rig for the celebration at the time of the blowout.

Houston Chronicle:

More on this Story Story | Gulf Coast states brace for nightmare cleanup from oil spill Story | Officials on Mississippi coast press BP to pay for cleanup Story | Obama to visit Gulf Coast as oil spill threatens Louisiana Story | After flyover, congressman downplays threat of oil spill Story | Obama won't halt offshore plans, despite widening spill Story | Cement job at underwater well probed as possible cause Story | What does Gulf oil spill have in common with Katrina? Attorneys Story | Opinions on offshore oil drilling in N.C. unchanged for now Story | Commentary: We must become smarter oil drillers Story | Oil spill's effects on sea life may not be limited to the Gulf Story | Pentagon on alert as Gulf Coast readies for oil's onslaught Story | Sen. Landrieu's Senate speech defending oil drilling Story | Growing Gulf oil spill prompts rethinking on offshore drilling On the Web | Track the spill at NOAA

Before the blowout, the rig's crew had been replacing heavy and valuable drilling mud with lighter salt sea­water in the top section of pipe known as the riser . Minutes before the Deepwater Horizon exploded in fire, workers on the deck heard a thump, then a hissing sound [as the well began to blowout.] Gas alarms sounded and the rig shook.

Seawater and [drilling] mud containing gas from the well spewed up through the crown of the derrick and rained down on the drilling floor; fumes reportedly moved into the “safe zones” where the electric generators are located. The generators raced out of control as they sucked gas into the air intakes.

When the electric power surged, light bulbs exploded, computers, control systems and other electric systems were destroyed, leaving the rig in darkness except for the light from fires and explosions that ripped apart walls, according to accounts derived from interviews with attorneys representing survivors, missing rig workers and their families, as well as experts in the field of offshore drilling operations.

Kevin Eugene, a steward on the rig, said he was in his bunk watching TV about 10 p.m. when a “big old loud boom” and an alarm went off “almost simultaneously.”

The lights went out. The platform began shaking.

“I thought the place was falling in the ocean, that the whole rig was collapsing,” said the father of four from Slidell, La.

Ceiling tiles, dust and debris rained down from overhead. Clad only in his pajama pants and undershirt, he scrambled down a hallway toward an exit to a stairwell that would lead to a lifeboat up on deck. He heard more explosions, but can't remember how many.

When he got onto the deck, he felt a blast of heat and saw flames about 200 yards away.

“I mean it was the hugest, biggest fire I've ever seen,” Eugene said. “It was just a big old ball of fire up there on the derrick. The whole derrick was on fire. The fire was shooting from out the well over there that the derrick was connected to and you could hear the gas gushing out.”

The deck was covered with oily mud.

...

When the alarms go off “you shut it down,” said Daniel Becnel, an attorney from Reserve, La., who has filed lawsuits on behalf of fishermen, oystermen and other Louisiana residents claiming damages from the spill. “They've got panic switches all over the place.”

Those switches are supposed to activate a blowout preventer on the ocean floor, a huge and complex tower of valves and pipe crimpers designed to shut down a well in an emergency. It didn't work.

Although it had been tested beforehand, BP now says robot submarines have discovered at least one problem with the blowout preventer, though it is unclear whether it caused the malfunction.

“We have found that there are some leaks on the hydraulic controls,” said Bob Fryar, senior vice president of BP's exploration and production operations in Angola, in southwestern Africa.

There is much more. The Houston Chronicle story also discusses the issues around the cementing of the well and how that can lead to blowouts sometimes.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that, after review of satellite imagery and calculations made by experts, the BP Mississippi Canyon Block 252 well may actually be flowing at a much higher rate that the unified command is admitting. According the the report, Ian MacDonald, professor of oceanography at Florida State University who specializes in tracking ocean oil seeps from satellite imagery, estimates the daily rate to be 25,000 barrels of oil per day. He says he has shared his data with NOAA scientists, who didn't dispute his findings.

Another scientist, John Amos, a geologist who has worked as an industry consultant tracking oil spills using satellite imagery, is the one who presented data to NOAA last week, which then raised its estimates from 1,000 barrels a day to 5,000. Amos says the 5,000 barrel estimate is at the "extremely low end" of their estimates. He says the more realistic number is 20,000 barrels per day. If these numbers are true, and it does take 90 days to get the relief well drilled, the oil spill will be 8 or 9 times larger than the Exxon Valdez.

The flowing wellhead pressure may be as high as 10,000 PSI and that, even if the BOP could be closed now, could very well be leaking in the locking mechanism below the stack. Leaks always get worse, not better, as anyone knows who's been annoyed by a dripping kitchen faucet. The only problem here is that this faucet is "dripping" at upwards of 25,000 barrels per day. One industry source, who has knowledge of the operations, said, "[the BOP] isn't closed and In my professional opinion, its not going to close..."

The well has now been flowing uncontrolled for 13 days. These units are designed to slam shut, not be flowed through, at least at these high rates and pressures. Erosion of the ram faces and the bore is now likely severe, further reducing its chances of ever actually shutting the well in and sealing.

Preparations are now being made to cut the riser above the BOP in preparation of installing a containment structure to capture the flow of oil. Essentially, it is a large box structure that is lowered over the source of the leak and connected by a riser to the surface. Oil will then flow up the riser to a ship that will process and collect the oil. It is believed that, if successful, this structure could capture up to 85% of the produced oil. This is a technique that has been used successfully in shallow water, but never this deep. It appears that the containment structure is the only chance BP has of slowing the growth of the spill, at least until they get the well killed by a relief well, or if well bore damage slows the flow by itself.

If the flow of oil can not be stopped soon, experts are worried that the Gulf Loop Current could pick up the slick and carry it toward Florida, through the keys, around the Florida panhandle. At that point the slick will be picked up by the enter the Gulf Stream and move up the eastern seaboard.

The Loop Current begins in the Caribbean and travels clockwise up to the Gulf Stream, which runs along the eastern seaboard of the US and into Canada. But if this oil gets picked up by the Loop Current and carried into the Gulf Streem, the scope of the disaster could broaden, affecting the eastern seaboard as far north as Cape Hatteras in North Carolina.

"If oil is swept up into the Loop Current--which moves at about 3.3 to 6.5 feet (one to two meters) a second--there's essentially no way to stop it," Tony Sturges, professor emeritus in oceanography at Florida State University, told National Geographic. "Once [oil] gets into the loop current, you can bet the farm it will go around to the south" of the Florida Peninsula and into the Gulf Stream." Florida should be bracing for the worst, he added. The noxious oil could get pulled into estuaries, harbors and coastal waterways, affecting nurseries for valuable fisheries.


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