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CHICAGO (AFP) – BP agreed to pay a record 50.6 million dollar fine for safety violations at its troubled Texas City refinery, officials said in a settlement which could deepen the energy giant’s legal woes. The company is already liable for billions in fines and compensation payouts in the wake of the massive oil spill

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Briton completes epic, 2 1/2-year expedition to become 1st man to walk entire Amazon river After 859 days, thousands of miles and “50,000 mosquito bites,” Ed Stafford became the first man known to have walked the entire length of the Amazon river when the waves of the Atlantic Ocean lapped at his feet in northern Brazil on Monday. “It’s unbelievable to be here!” Stafford told The Associated Press the moment he entered the sea. “It proves you can do anything — even if people say you cannot. I’ve proved that if you want something enough, you can do anything!” A few hours earlier, Stafford had collapsed at the side of the road, just short of his destination. But upon arrival at the Crispim beach — and his journey’s end — Stafford looked like he had all the energy in the world, as if walking for 2 1/2 years were nothing as he jumped into the ocean and hugged anyone in sight. While he says he is “no eco-warrior,” Stafford told the AP near the end of his journey that he hoped his feat would raise awareness of destruction to the Amazon rain forest — but that at its heart, it was simply a grand expedition of endurance. Story continues below… “The crux of it is, if this wasn’t a selfish, boy’s-own adventure, I don’t think it would have worked,” the 34-year-old former British army captain told the AP as he sat under the Brazilian sun near the jungle city of Belem. “I am simply doing it because no one has done it before.” There are at least six known expeditions along the course of the Amazon river, from its source high in the Peruvian Andes across Colombia and into Brazil before its waters are dumped into the ocean 4,200 miles (6,760 kilometers) away. But those used boats to advance their travel. Stafford and a British friend began the walk on April 2, 2008, on the southern coast of Peru. Within three months, his pal left. Stafford carried on, walking bits of the route with hundreds of locals he met along the way. Eventually, Peruvian forestry worker Gadiel “Cho” Sanchez Rivera, 31, decided to make the journey with Stafford to the Atlantic. Stafford said his journey — which has cost $100,000 and is paid for by sponsoring companies and donations — has deepened his understanding of the Amazon, its role in protecting the globe against climate change and the complex forces that are leading to its destruction. He said he has seen vast swaths of demolished jungle. “It’s the people in power who are benefiting from the extraction of the natural resources here,” Stafford said. “That’s why there are corrupt politicians and laws that aren’t enforced and loads of unconstrained deforestation still going on.” Despite the devastation, Stafford said he hopes things will change for the better. “I think the average Brazilian is a lot more environmentally conscious than the people in power. I’m optimistic, I’m not pessimistic,” he said. He has lived off piranha fish he caught, rice and beans, and store-bought provisions found in local communities along the river. To relax at night, Stafford said he has downloaded podcasts via Internet satellite phone by British comedian Ricky Gervais and episodes of the TV show “The Office”. Stafford and Rivera have encountered every conceivable danger, from 18-foot (5.5-meter) long caiman crocodiles, enormous anaconda snakes, illness, food shortages and the threat of drowning. After they were welcomed in one Indian community in September 2008, the leaders offered to radio ahead to the next village for permission for Stafford and Rivera to walk through their territory. “The response came back crystal clear. If a gringo walks into their community they will kill him,” Stafford wrote on his blog at that time. He decided to plan a route around the village, but he was still captured by Indians from another village and taken to their leaders. After being dressed down and having their possessions thoroughly picked over — only a machete was confiscated — Stafford and Rivera’s repeated explanations of the point of their expedition won over the Indians. They were allowed to walk on the land, but only if they hired guides from the tribe. Stafford said he plans another expedition in September 2011 — something nobody has ever done — but will not provide details for fear someone might beat him to it. Until then, a good, long rest awaits. “This expedition has been our lives. For 2 1/2 years we’ve done nothing but walk and walk and walk. To wake up the morning after and know that we’ve done it will be a big change,” said Stafford. “I think we’ll get used to it though.” ___ Online: Walking the Amazon: http://www.walkingtheamazon.com ___ Associated Press Writer Bradley Brooks in Rio de Janeiro contributed to this report. Source: AP News Mochila insert follows… Powered by Mochila

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BP continued spraying large amounts of a controversial dispersant onto the surface of the Gulf of Mexico even after an EPA order to stop doing so, the Washington Post reports . According to the Post , BP used a loophole in the EPA’s order that allowed the Coast Guard to rubber-stamp “exemptions” to the order. In late May, under pressure from environmental groups, the EPA ordered BP to stop using certain product lines of the dispersant Corexit on the water surface. But it allowed the Coast Guard — which has the final say on oil cleanup operations — to issue exemptions in “rare” circumstances. The Post found that those circumstances weren’t rare at all: Despite the order — and concerns about the environmental effects of the dispersants– the Coast Guard granted requests to use them 74 times over 54 days, and to use them on the surface and deep underwater at the well site. The Coast Guard approved every request submitted by BP or local Coast Guard commanders in Houma, La., although in some cases it reduced the amount of the chemicals they could use, according to an analysis of the documents prepared by the office of Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.). The documents indicate that “these exemptions are in no way a ‘rare’ occurrence, and have allowed surface application of the dispersant to occur virtually every day since the directive was issued,” Markey wrote in a letter dated Aug. 1 to retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad W. Allen, the government’s point man on the spill. Markey chairs the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. Story continues below… In the words of Rep. Markey, the order became “a meaningless paperwork exercise.” Many marine biologists have raised concerns about the potential environmental and health effects of Corexit, which is used to break down oil. A marine toxicologist working in the Gulf found that shrimpers who came into contact with a mixture of oil and Corexit suffered severe symptoms such as muscle spasms, heart palpitations, headaches that last for weeks and bleeding from the rectum. A marine biologist said earlier this month that the Corexit used in the cleanup operation has made its way onto land and is “mixing with our everyday lives.” The Post reports that the use of Corexit to break down the oil may have resulted in an environmental “trade-off.” Now, scientists say, it’s difficult to tell what the added use of dispersants permitted by the Coast Guard meant for the gulf. The chemicals may have helped break up some oil before it reached sensitive marshes along the Louisiana coast. But it also may have poisoned ecosystems offshore, helped deplete underwater oxygen and sent oil swirling through the open-water habitats of fish and coral. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the head of the cleanup operation, defended the use of Corexit to the Post . “There’s a dynamic tension that goes on when you’re managing an incident that has no precedent,” Allen said. “You establish general rules and guidelines, but knowing that the people on scene have the information” means trusting them to make decisions, he said. In the end, Allen said: “You can quibble on the semantics related to ‘rare.’ I like to focus on the effects we achieved” by dispersing the oil. Officials have said that, in the days since the gusher was stopped, thick sheets of oil have nearly disappeared from the gulf’s surface.

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History of pipeline problems follows Canadian company at center of huge Mich. river oil spill. A Canadian company at the center of a huge oil spill in southern Michigan has a history of pipeline problems, including leaks, an explosion and dozens of regulatory violations. Enbridge Inc. or its affiliates have been cited for 30 enforcement actions since 2002 by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, which is the U.S. Department of Transportation’s regulatory arm. In a warning letter sent Jan. 21, the agency told the company it may have violated safety codes by improperly monitoring corrosion in the pipeline responsible for the massive spill Monday in Talmadge Creek. The creek feeds into the Kalamazoo River, which eventually flows into Lake Michigan. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that more than 1 million gallons may have spilled into the waterway, but Enbrige estimates the spill at closer to 820,000 gallons. Cleanup efforts could take several weeks, possibly two months, officials said. Story continues below… The EPA says the oil had traveled 25 miles downstream, but state officials estimate it has traveled 35 miles. Gov. Jennifer Granholm warned of a “tragedy of historic proportions” should it travel another 80 miles and reach Lake Michigan, but EPA officials don’t expect that to happen. Steve Wuori, an Enbridge executive vice president, said the company was doing maintenance all along the pipeline this year, but the section at the leak site was not scheduled for replacement. Enbridge CEO Patrick D. Daniel again apologized Thursday to the residents “for the mess that we have made.” Hundreds of workers and contractors went to work on the oil Thursday with more than 12,000 feet of containment and absorption boom, 14 skimmers, 43 vacuum trucks and a number of tanker trucks, excavators and other trucks, he said. Health officials went door-to-door, telling Calhoun County residents in about 30 to 50 homes near the spill to evacuate because of air quality concerns. Others were told to use bottled water for drinking and cooking. About 20 injured animals — mostly birds — were being treated Thursday at a wildlife rehabilitation center, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service said. The center refused to admit an Associated Press reporter, saying officials didn’t want to further traumatize the animals by allowing in more people, but planned a media tour for Friday. According to the government agency’s letter sent Jan. 21 to Enbridge, the company was implementing an alternate way of monitoring corrosion in the pipeline, and had detailed to regulators the steps it was taking to track corrosion in the interim. But the agency warned the company that it was violating code by not using a sufficient amount of certain chemicals to protect pipe interiors, not using proper monitoring equipment to determine if those chemicals were working, and not examining its monitoring equipment at least twice a year. Two years ago, Enbridge was cited for committing eight probable violations that may have contributed to an explosion that killed two people working Nov. 28, 2007, on a 34-inch pipeline near Clearbrook, Minn. Among its findings, the regulatory agency said Enbridge failed to follow written procedures for couplings on the pipeline, didn’t make the repairs in a safe manner and didn’t make sure workers had adequate training for that job. Such violations aren’t uncommon for pipeline companies, said Jeff Share, editor of the Pipeline & Gas Journal. An Enbridge affiliate, Houston-based Enbridge Energy Co., spilled almost 19,000 gallons of crude oil onto Wisconsin’s Nemadji River in 2003. Another 189,000 gallons of oil spilled at the company’s terminal two miles from Lake Superior, though most was contained. And in 2007, two spills released about 200,000 gallons of crude in northern Wisconsin as Enbridge was expanding a 320-mile pipeline. The Michigan leak came from a 30-inch pipeline, which was built in 1969 and carries about 8 million gallons of oil daily from Griffith, Ind., to Sarnia, Ontario. Bruce Bullock, director of Maguire Energy Institute at Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business, said Enbridge is similar to many other pipeline companies. Noting the age of Michigan’s pipeline, Bullock said that like the rest of the industry, Calgary, Alberta-based Enbridge is dealing with aging infrastructure. “They don’t have a reputation of being particularly a star player in terms of their profile or anything like that, but they certainly have a good reputation in terms of delivering for their shareholders,” Bullock said. “They certainly don’t have a bad reputation.” But Andy Buchsbaum, director of the National Wildlife Federation’s Great Lakes office, said Enbridge has a history of spills — including two major leaks in the past year. He said those leaks, coupled with the fatal blast in Minnesota, are problematic. “This is a company whose safety record is very definitely suspect and cause for concern,” Buchsbaum said. ___ Runk reported from Detroit. Associated Press writers Corey Williams and Mike Householder in Detroit contributed to this report. Source: AP News Powered by Mochila

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North Korea on Friday threatened the United States and South Korea with a “physical response” to planned weekend naval exercises as tensions with the communist nation rose in the aftermath of the sinking of a South Korean warship blamed on the North. In Vietnam for a Southeast Asian regional security forum, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and a North Korean official traded barbs over the ship incident, the upcoming military drills and the imposition of new U.S. sanctions against the North. The spokesman for the North Korean delegation to the talks, Ri Tong Il, repeated Pyongyang’s denial of responsibility for the March sinking of the ship that killed 46 South Korean sailors and said the upcoming military drills were a violation of its sovereignty that harkened back to the days of 19th-century “gunboat diplomacy.” The exercises will be “another expression of hostile policy against” North Korea. “There will be physical response against the threat imposed by the United States militarily,” Ri told reporters in Hanoi. Clinton responded by saying the U.S. is willing to meet and negotiate with the North, but that this type of threat only heightens tensions. She added that progress in the short term seems unlikely, given the circumstances. Story continues below… “It is distressing when North Korea continues its threats and causes so much anxiety among its neighbors and the larger region,” she told reporters. “But we will demonstrate once again with our military exercises … that the United States stands in firm support of the defense of South Korea and we will continue to do so.” Shortly before Ri spoke, Clinton had lashed out against belligerent acts by the North, warning that it must reverse a “campaign of provocative, dangerous behavior” if it wants improved relations with its neighbors and the United States. She said stability in the region, particularly on the Korean peninsula, depends in large part on convincing an “isolated and belligerent” North Korea to alter course and return to nuclear disarmament talks. Peaceful resolution of the issues on the Korean peninsula will be possible only if North Korea fundamentally changes its behavior, Clinton told the gathering of top officials from the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and countries with major interests in the area like the U.S., China, Japan, North and South Korea and Russia. There was no sign that members of the U.S. and North Korean delegations would meet or even cross paths at the annual security forum, which has in the past been a venue for rare talks between the two sides. On Wednesday, Clinton announced in the South Korean capital that the U.S. would slap new sanctions on the North to stifle its nuclear ambitions and punish it for the sinking of the South Korean ship. The penalties will target the country’s elite by taking aim at illicit activities, such as counterfeiting cigarettes and cash and money laundering. On Friday, Hungarian Foreign Minister Janos Martonyi, representing the European Union, said the bloc will also consider imposing new sanctions on the North. Clinton was in Seoul to show support for South Korea along with U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates. In addition to North Korea’s behavior and its nuclear program, Clinton raised concerns about potential atomic collaboration between the North and Myanmar, also known as Burma, which is restricted by U.N. agreements. Numerous reports in past months have suggested that Myanmar’s military rulers are attempting to develop nuclear weapons with North Korean help. Clinton said “recent events” had called into question Myanmar’s pledges to abide by its international commitments, including U.N. sanctions, the requirements of its nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. She did not elaborate but on Thursday mentioned in passing that a North Korean ship carrying military equipment had recently docked in Myanmar. “It is critical that Burma hear from you, its neighbors, about the need to comply with” those obligation, Clinton told the forum. She also hit out on Myanmar’s human rights record, saying the U.S. is “deeply concerned about the oppression taking place” there against the regime’s political opponents and minority groups. Myanmar has said it will hold elections at an as yet unannounced date later this year but U.S. officials say they don’t believe the vote will be free or fair. “We urge Burma to put in place the necessary conditions for credible elections, including releasing all political prisoners, respecting basic human rights and ceasing attacks against ethnic minorities,” Clinton said. The U.S. has repeatedly called for Myanmar to release detained Nobel Peace laureate and democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi, whose party’s landslide victory in 1990 elections was annulled by the military. Clinton’s comments on Myanmar echoed those of previous U.S. administrations but they come as President Barack Obama has made a push for expanded engagement with Southeast Asia. Clinton is to sign the Association of Southeast Asian Nation’s Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, something the Bush administration had refused to do. In an indication of that increased involvement in the region, Clinton said “the United States has a national interest” in resolving conflicting claims over the Spratly and Paracel island chains in the South China Sea, particularly between China and Vietnam. She said the disputes interfere with maritime commerce, hamper access to international waters in the area and undermine the U.N. law of the sea. Her comments are likely to anger China, which asserts sovereignty over the whole South China Sea, but Clinton said the U.S. did not support any country’s sovereignty over the islands. She said the U.S. is willing to work with the all the parties, including Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, Brunei, and the Philippines, to help negotiate an end to the disputes. ___ Associated Press writers Jim Gomez, Margie Mason and Tran Van Minh in Hanoi contributed to this report. Source: AP News Powered by Mochila

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I’ve decided it’s time for us to do our part to ameliorate the coming climate catastrophe — but let’s please stop using the phrase “climate change.” In an effort to offset carbon emissions produced by Raw Story and everyone who visits our site (our energy costs and yours), we will begin purchasing carbon credits through Terrapass.com . Our offsets will include: our servers (energy costs), your computer (energy costs of time you spend reading our site), our work-from-home office utilities, our (rather limited) air travel, and any other associated energy expenses. I’m sure you know why we’re worried about a world where the ocean rises, and hurricanes and typhoons consume entire cities. It’s already begun. It’s actually gotten so bad that “the president of Maldives and his Cabinet wore scuba gear and used hand signals [last October] at an underwater meeting to highlight the threat climate change poses to the archipelago nation.” Countries are going to be underwater. More than 70 percent of the Earth’s population lives on coastal plains , and 11 of the planet’s 15 largest cities are on coastal estuaries. Global climate catastrophe is not a joke. Story continues below… But this article just sent me over the edge : ONE of the worlds largest oil companies broke its pledge to stop funding groups that promote scepticism about man-made climate change, it emerged late Sunday. U.S. fuel giant ExxonMobil gave almost $US1.5 million last year to organisations that campaign against controls on greenhouse gas emissions. Several made outspoken attacks on climate scientists at Britain’s University of East Anglia and argued their leaked e-mails showed the dangers of global warming had been grossly exaggerated. The scientists were exonerated this month by an independent inquiry but groups funded by Exxon continued to attack them. The U.S.-based Media Research Centre, which received $50,000 last year from Exxon, called the inquiry a whitewash and condemned climate alarmists. ExxonMobil isn’t just “one of the world’s largest oil companies.” ExxonMobil is the largest corporation in the world. (For the record — if it were a publicly traded company, the Pentagon would be the largest corporation in the world; the US military is the world’s single largest consumer of oil, much of which it continues to buy from BP.) ExxonMobil is also the company that just had its damages reduced to $507.5 million for the — well — you remember this, right? The Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred in Prince William Sound, Alaska, on March 24, 1989, when the Exxon Valdez, an oil tanker bound for Long Beach, California, struck Prince William Sound’s Bligh Reef and spilled 10.8 to 32 million US gallons (40.9 to 120 million litres, or 260,000 to 750,000 barrels) of crude oil. It is considered to be one of the most devastating human-caused environmental disasters ever to occur in history… In the case of Baker v. Exxon, an Anchorage jury awarded $287 million for actual damages and $5 billion for punitive damages. The punitive damages amount was equal to a single year’s profit by Exxon at that time. To protect itself in case the judgment was affirmed, Exxon obtained a $4.8 billion credit line from J.P. Morgan & Co. This in turn gave J.P. Morgan the opportunity to create the first modern credit default swap in 1994, so that J.P. Morgan would not have to hold so much money in reserve (8% of the loan under Basel I) against the risk of Exxon’s default. Meanwhile, Exxon appealed the ruling, and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the original judge, Russel Holland, to reduce the punitive damages. On December 6, 2002, the judge announced that he had reduced the damages to $4 billion, which he concluded was justified by the facts of the case and was not grossly excessive. Exxon appealed again and the case returned to court to be considered in light of a recent Supreme Court ruling in a similar case, which caused Judge Holland to increase the punitive damages to $4.5 billion, plus interest. After more appeals, and oral arguments heard by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on January 27, 2006, the damages award was cut to $2.5 billion on December 22, 2006. The court cited recent Supreme Court rulings relative to limits on punitive damages. Exxon appealed again. On May 23, 2007, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied ExxonMobil’s request for a third hearing and let stand its ruling that Exxon owes $2.5 billion in punitive damages. Exxon then appealed to the Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case. On February 27, 2008, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for 90 minutes [Emphasis mine]. Justice Samuel Alito, who at the time, owned between $100,000 and $250,000 in Exxon stock, recused himself from the case. In a decision issued June 25, 2008, Justice David Souter issued the judgment of the court, vacating the $2.5 billion award and remanding the case back to a lower court, finding that the damages were excessive with respect to maritime common law. Exxon’s actions were deemed “worse than negligent but less than malicious.” The judgment limits punitive damages to the compensatory damages, which for this case were calculated as $507.5 million. It’s time for a change. And Raw Story is going to do our part. We may not be able to stop driving, or turning on the lights, but we’re sure not going to stop trying to make a difference. -John Publisher & Founder, Raw Story

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A pair of University of California, Los Angeles professors tracking subtle socioeconomic responses to detailed consumer information about power consumption have effectively pinpointed something oft’ joked of by so-called “liberals” but never genuinely proven until now: conservatives, by and large, have no taste for conservation. By studying average household electricity consumption after what they called a “nudge” (more specifically, giving the residents a detailed chart of that home’s drain on the electric grid), UCLA professors Dora L. Costa and Matthew E. Kahn pinpointed distinctly different response patterns along political fault lines. Using voter registration information and data about charitable contributions, they picked out homes that bought renewable energy, voted for Democrats or contributed to environmental causes, and compared consumption to addresses given by registered Republicans. People who fell under the prescribed labels of liberal and conservative, as it turned out, seemed to show behaviors quite the opposite. Liberal-leaning households tended to reduce power consumption 3-6 percent after seeing a detailed usage outlay, but on average so-called “conservatives” used 1 percent more. Something is backwards here. While some might scoff at a mere 1 percent increase, it remains statistically significant because the study piggy-backed on a prediction that a 1-2 percent decrease in California’s residential electricity consumption could save up to 110 million kWh per year. Story continues below… The professors, whose backgrounds are in economics, environment and public policy, ultimately determined that the “effectiveness” of their “nudges” hinged “on an individual’s political views.” They elaborate: “Although liberals and environmentalists are more energy efficient than conservatives – thus making it harder for them to reduce consumption further – we find that liberals and environmentalists are more responsive to these nudges than the average person. In contrast, for certain subsets of Republican registered voters, we find that the specific ‘treatment nudge’ that we evaluate has the unintended consequence of increasing electricity consumption.” Their conclusion: a “mixed-messages strategy” is needed to help encourage less frivolous power consumption among Republican-leaning households. Methods of saving electricity are so simple, they’re commonly taught to children . Things like turning off a device when it’s not in use, keeping the thermostat a few degrees higher in the warmer months and keeping windows and doors well-insulated are steps anyone can take within seconds that collectively produce a significant savings on that home’s monthly electricity bill. Replacing older lightbulbs with new energy-saving CFL lights can also have a significant effect on overall costs. Industry standards group Energy Star claims each CFL light saves about $30 over its lifetime when compared to an incandescent bulb . The researchers’ greater goal, of course, was to find power-saving messaging techniques that did not require blunt-force acts of policy like building code updates. On the issue of global warming, the vast majority of Americans are still supportive of government measures to forestall the crisis, although an increasing percentage of conservatives have come to doubt the scientific community’s virtually unanimous consensus on the issue. While a Gallup poll in March emphasized the growth in disbelievers rising 10 percent, from 38-48 percent in six years, that change was mostly along party-lines. Another poll, conducted by the Woods Institute for the Environment, showed a different drop with a differently-worded question, with respondents who said that temperature has been going up the past 100 years shifting from 85-74 percent since 2006. The dramatic change may or may not be at least partially attributed to a dramatic increase in astroturfing efforts by the oil and gas industries, many times vis a vis the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Astroturfing is the practice of creating fake grassroots activism using corporate dollars and a carefully crafted messaging strategy to capture media and public attention. A memo from the American Petroleum Institute, leaked to activist group Greenpeace and published online nearly a year ago , revealed a massive, industry-wide effort was underway to recruit oil and gas industry employees and retirees to attend staged rallies against enhanced emissions regulations. Recent global climate data released by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showed Earth experienced its hottest month on record in June 2010, with the periods of January-June and April-June also obtaining the same alarming status. A plan in the U.S. Senate to limit emissions economy-wide estimates would cause the U.S. gross domestic product from 2013-2035 to drop 0.2 percent, according to an Energy Information Administration analysis released Friday . President Obama has made it a priority to put a price on carbon emissions by the end of 2010.

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