http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill
June
- June 1 - United States attorney general Eric Holder said his office was going to investigate possible criminal prosecutions. He specifically said they are investigating Clean Water Act, Oil Pollution Act of 1990, Migratory Bird Treaty Act, Endangered Species Act.[62]
- June 2 - Oil spotted nine miles from Pensacola, Florida beaches. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal sends Obama letter opposing the six month moratorium on new deepwater rigs.[63] White House approves construction of five new sand berms in addition to the one approved the week before sending the $360 million bill to BP. The berms with sand from the Gulf floor will act as barrier islands.[64]
- June 3 - BP begins airing ad which feature Tony Hayward and has the tagline "We will get this done. We will make this right." It was reportedly prepared by Washington, DC-based "Purple Strategies" of political consultants Democrat Steve McMahon and Republican Alex Castellanos. It has an estimated budget of $50 million.[65] Moody’s estimates that the insured loss on the spill will be $1.4 billion and $3.5 billion. Moody’s notes that BP’s insured loss would have been more if it were not insuring with its captive insurer Jupiter Insurance of Guernsey. Jupiter has established loss reserves of $700 million. A.M. Best raises Jupiter’s outlook from negative to stable. Liabilities beyond the insured losses would have to be absorbed by various involved including its three owners (BP: 65%; Anadarko: 25%, Mitsui Oil Exploration Co. (MOECO) subsidiary of Mitsui: 10%).[66]
- June 4 - Tar balls arrive on beaches in Pensacola, Florida.[67] However Escambia County, Florida officials do not close the beaches.[68] Mississippi has not closed its beaches (with the exception of Petit Bois Island and Horn Island). Alabama warns visitors to stay out of the water on all of its ocean beaches.[69] BP says it has paid $84 million reimbursing people for loss of income.[70] BP closing stock price 37.16[18] Louisiana State University say they have discovered an underwater plume 75 miles northwest of the well.[71]
- June 5 - Obama in his third trip to Louisiana since the disaster began visits Grand Isle, Louisiana for the second time in two weeks.[72] Obama critized BP for paying $50 million for television advertising and planning to pay $10.5 billion in quarterly dividends.[70] Obama in his weekly radio address said 20,000 people are involved, he has authorized the deployment of 17,500 National Guard troops, that 1,900 boats were working on the spill and 4.3 million feet of boom had been deployed.[73] Thad W. Allen says that a cap intended to capture oil and pump it to the surface is capturing about 1,000 barrels a day (it is estimated that 12,000 to 19,000 barrels is flowing a day).[70] BP claims the cap captured 6,077 barrels on its first day.[65] The NOAA "No Fish Boundary" extends 78,603 square miles, or about 33% of the federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico covering an area roughly from Dry Tortugas, Florida in the south to Panama City, Florida in the northeast and Morgan City, Louisiana in the northwest.[74] BP confirms it keyword search terms such as "oil spill" from Google, Yahoo and Bing so that the sponsored link at the top of the page goes to a BP page.[75] The tag on the sponsored link for "oil spill" says "Info about the Gulf of Mexico Spill Learn More about How BP is Helping."[76]
- June 6 - Both the Coast Guard and BP say the cap is capturing 10,000 barrels a day.[73] The Daily Mail ran an article "'I was lucky if I made $1,000 a month before the spill. Now BP pay me $1,200 a day': Fishermen make most of Gulf oil disaster" detailing how some locals including fisherman are profiting from the disaster noting that the Gulf fishing industry had been dwindling prior to the spill. The paper also reports that government records indicate there have been 491 dead birds, 227 dead turtles and 31 dead mammals, including dolphins.[77] In contrast The New York Times reports in an article headlined “BP Pays Out Claims, but Satisfaction Is Not Included” that BP has 25 claims offices across the Gulf and has paid $46 million to 17,500 residents. BP said it is still processing another 17,500 claims. BP is paying fishing boat captains $5,000/month and deck hands $2,500.[78] Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour tells "Fox News Sunday" that "we have had virtually no oil" wash up on the Mississippi coast.[79] Hayward tells the British Broadcasting Corporation that he has not spoken directly to Obama since the spill started.[80] Hayward says BP scientists have no “no evidence” of plumes.[71]
- June 7 - A report on June 6 that oiled birds had washed ashore in Texas is called erroneous by various government officials who note the slick is more than 100 miles from Texas.[81] Senator Bill Nelson tells MSNBC he has seen reports that oil is now rising from the sea bed itself rather a broken pipe from above indicating the BP well bore and casing integrity has failed.[82] White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said BP could be fined $4,300/barrel. This is over its other obligations.[83] The White House says it favors raising the $75 million cap on liability damages for drilling rigs.[84] Officials say the cap is working and is approaching handling the maximum of 15,000 barrels (630,000 US gallons; 2,400,000 litres) per day that its gathering drillship the Discoverer Enterprise can handle. The Helix Energy Solutions Group Q4000 is to be configured to handle the excess. The Q4000 is onsite because it was used in the failed Top kill procedure. Part of the reconfiguring involves replacing the current cap on the blowout preventer with a new larger cap.[85][84] Members of the Flow Rate Technical Group, which is a government group appointed to standardize the flow estimates from the leak, say it is impossible to make calculations without high resolution video and the lack of any formal measurement of the flow. One of the members of the group Ira Leifer said that the current operation may have actually increased the leak multifold rather than 20 percent that BP had suggested noting that video feeds show the leak to be the same or worse than it was before.[86] Leifer said the pipe could be spewing 100,000 barrels a day -- the worst case scenario BP had offered.[87]
- June 8 - An Obama interview with Matt Lauer of the Today Show airs with Obama saying he wishes he could fire BP chief Hayward and "I don't sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar. We talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick."[88] British commentators took Obama to task[89] for taking such harsh rhetoric against Britain's biggest company that paid $14.4 billion in British taxes in 2008 (and $7.2 billion in 2009) with Toby Young noting "what's bad for BP is bad for Britain.”[90] BP announced that the company will bring in a floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel that could then be offloaded with a shuttle tanker (Loch Rannoch which normally services the Schiehallion oilfield) as the processing capacity of collected oil by Discoverer Enterprise (18,000 barrels (760,000 US gallons; 2,900,000 litres) of oil per day) is not sufficient. It also announced that it is setting up a new unit to oversee management of the oil spill and its aftermath, which will be headed by former TNK-BP chief executive Robert Dudley.[91] BP releases the requested high resolution images of the leak.[92] NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco confirms that underwater oil plumes have been discovered at 3,300 feet about 40 miles northeast of the wellhead. She said the plumes discovered by the University of South Florida and measured oil at less than 0.5 parts per million.[93]
- June 9 - BP’s chief operating officer Doug Suttles contradicts the underwater plume discussion noting, "It may be down to how you define what a plume is here…The oil that has been found is in very minute quantities." [94] BP announces plans to have the well testing vessel Toisa Pisces replace the Discoverer Enterprise for bringing oil to the surface and retrofitting the Q4000 to burn oil in a plan to increase the gathering capabilities from 18,000 barrels/day to 28,000 barrels/day. The Toisa Pisces will have capabilities of handling 20,000 barrels/day while the Q4000 which currently has 5,000 barrels/day capabilities is to be converted to 10,000 barrels/day. The tanker Loch Rannoch is to be brought in by June to begin offloading the oil.[95] In complying with a request from BP to Twitter parody site BPGlobalPR which has 145,000 follower the site “We are not associated with Beyond Petroleum, the company that has been destroying the Gulf of Mexico for 51 days." The event is covered by the New York Times with the headline, "BP Account on Twitter? Just a Joke; K thx bye." BP's site is bp_america. [96] BP made the request one day after ABC News correspondent Dan Harris interviewed the proprietor.[97]
- The Guardian reports that since April 20, 2010, 27 new offshore drilling projects have been approved by Minerals Management Service, the agency in charge of oversight. All but one project was granted similar exemptions from environmental review as BP. Two were submitted by the UK firm, and made the same claims about oil-rig safety and the implausibility of a spill damaging the environment. According to the Centre for Biological Diversity, even after the catastrophe, the Obama administration did not tighten its oversight of offshore drilling."This oil spill has had absolutely no effect on MMS behaviour at all," said Kieran Suckling, the director of the centre. "It's still business as usual which means rubber stamping oil drilling permits with no environmental review."[98]
- June 10 - Billy Nungesser, president of Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, testified before a Senate Homeland Security Committee, saying “I still don’t know who’s in charge. Is it BP? Is it the Coast Guard? I have spent more time fighting the officials of BP and the Coast Guard than fighting the oil.” [99]
^^ "Interpreting NOAA’s Trajectory Prediction Maps for the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill" (PDF). National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. http://response.restoration.noaa.gov/book_shelf/2056_NOAATrajectoryMaps.pdf. Retrieved 2010-05-24.
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