US Fish and Wildlife — even if on higher order — stabs dunes sagebrush lizard in the back

Anymore, NOTHING in the way of actions by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, especially Endangered Species Act listings, surprises me. 

In fact, over the lesser prairie chicken last year, I accused the agency of deliberately tanking ESA listings.

And now, meet the dunes sagebrush lizard. It's how I met online Fish and Wildlife "dissidents" Chris Nagano and Lyle Lewis, who gave me the backstory of how shamefully FWS was acting decades ago.

 

I have blogged more than once about former Texas Comptroller Susan Combs' voluntary, landowner-based plan for habitat conservation, or rather, "conservation," for the dunes sagebrush lizard, most of whose habitat happens to be in the oil-rich Permian Basin of West Texas and southeastern New Mexico, and whose voluntary habitat conservators, or "conservators," happen to be oilmen.

I first noted that is was the conservative half of a neoliberal idea that rancher/oil lover/Interior Secretary Kenny Boy Salazar loved, and agreed that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in charge of Endangered Species Act issues, should accept. Shock me.

As part of that, I noted that Combs was being sued by two of the more activist, non-Gang Green environmental agencies, with Center for Biological Diversity in the lead, because the people and groups overseeing her voluntary "conservation" were about as transparent as most things involving Texas government.

Unfortunately, as I noted next, Combs got a federal judge to agree with her that the oversight agency, officially a private entity and therefore exempt from the state's Public Information Act, should stay that way and remain non-transparent.

And then, CBD and Defenders of Wildlife, a few months ago, lost in federal district court their attempt to reverse the Fish and Wildlife + Combs + oilmen agreement, discussed here with links.

Well, there's a backstory to this.

At about the time CBD and Defenders were losing their case in district court, Fish and Wildlife, documented here, was entering into a legal settlement with the former top official in Texas, who sued after being pushed out of his job.

And, why was he pushed out of his job?

Because he was fighting Kenny Boy Salazar and Susan Combs on the dunes sagebrush lizard, and saying everything about lack of enforcement and lack of transparency that I and the environmental groups were saying.

One person, however, did lose his job: Fish and Wildlife's top official in Texas, Gary Mowad, who ran afoul of his bosses after raising concerns about the decision to place the long-term survival of the lizard in the hands of those who opposed the listing. 

Mowad had told internal investigators that the federally approved plan to conserve habitat for the reptile through voluntary pacts between the state and landowners was not legal, verifiable or enforceable under the Endangered Species Act.

Oh, but wait, it gets better. 

He has civil service protection, so he couldn't be fired. Instead, like a surplus Japanese salaryman, he got the risutora treatment:

Within three months, Mowad was removed from his job in Austin and transferred to regional offices in New Mexico, where he had no significant work to do, according to testimony by him and colleagues before a judge in a whistleblower case. The power play, he said, forced him to retire prematurely. 

Fish and Wildlife has denied the allegations, but the agency decided to settle with Mowad last October for an undisclosed amount in spite of historically long odds against federal employees winning such cases. ... 

(N)o phone, no computer and no housing awaited Mowad when he arrived in Albuquerque in October 2012. And there was no significant work. He helped put out cookies and drinks for a meeting and afterward collected comment cards from the attendees. 

With no end date for the assignment, Mowad filed a 19-page request for a federal investigation, alleging reprisal for his claims of scientific misconduct within the service.

Those claims of scientific misconduct? Mowad had gone to FWS' Inspector General after it signed off on the Combs plan. And, why did it do that, only a couple of years after Mowad had been named top biologist in Texas for the agency and hired for his specific skills?

Bigger backstory, involving financial/service favors ... and who knows what else.

First, the backstory to the lizard's needs.

It was first identified for ESA listing in 1982. But, as with many other species, through a mix of understaffing and underfunding on one hand, and FWS foot-dragging on the other, it wasn't actually brought up for consideration until 2010. However, with the Permian Basin started to rebound from its latest, Great Recession-caused bust, that looked problematic.

Our story picks up again:

The Fish and Wildlife Service needed to sign off on the Texas plan, and Mowad was asked to assign someone to review it. But Mowad's first two choices — two of his most experienced biologists — were rejected by the agency's deputy regional director, Joy Nicholopoulos, a scientist who led the Texas office before him. 

The third choice? 

(Mowad) asked if Nicholopoulos wanted a biologist named Allison Arnold to lead the review and was told that she did. 

Here’s the real backstory. 

Mowad said he would not assign her without being ordered. The biologists he offered "would just do the science, let the science take 'em where it takes 'em," he testified. But in addition to having less experience, Arnold was living rent-free in a Driftwood house owned by Nicholopoulos, leading him to question whether she had undue influence over the staffer.

Then, Nicholopoulos’ boss, Bemjamin Tuggle, who had touted Mowad’s hiring for the Texas spot, upped the political ante.

"There was no way we were going to list a lizard in the middle of oil country during an election year," Tuggle said.

That comment, although Tuggle (a Shrub Bush appointee to his position) later claimed he was joking, is what led Mowad to talk to Fish and Wildlife’s inspector general.

So, it's clear that FWS higher-ups, however high the chain of higher-ups goes past Tuggle, had the fix in. And, because of this financial/rental arrangement, they knew who to pick to sign off on Combs' plan.

The rest of the story is worth a read in itself. It discusses Mowad’s whistleblower hearing, including noting that federal employees rarely win them, but that FWS had a documented history of retaliation against employees like this.

It's also an illustration of the bad ethics there, vis-a-vis the rental situation. If anybody should have been disciplined by FWS, both Nicholopoulos and Arnold should have been suspended without pay.

 

OK, that's largely from back in 2015, but you need to know just how oily FWS is. 

 

Oily? Yes, literally, as in placed like Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge, whoring themselves out to the oil business. That's part of why I said Fuck the USFWS a year ago.

 

Oily on the management side? Mowad is not the only person to face retaliation from USFWS management. More on that in this piece. 

 

FWS finally gave an Endangered Species Act listing to the lizard in 2024, relatively late in the Biden Administration, and possibly because they knew Trump 2.0 would kill it. 

 

It was a punch-pulling listing, anyway, as I noted at the time. Why? It did not list a critical habitat for the lizard. It's pretty basic that you need to say what habitat of an endangered species is most important to it, right?

 

Well, that's all academic now. Last week, which I didn't notice until this week, Fish and Wildlife officially did another political cave-in, in response to a suit by the oily Ken Paxton, and agreed to delist it again as part of settling the suit. 

 

Here's the official tanking language:

But the service now believes it made a "serious and fundamental" error by improperly assuming that habitat restoration could not occur, and by discounting experimental efforts that "showed promise," the U.S. Department of Justice said in a Wednesday court filing accompanying the settlement. 

That error "led to an incomplete and potentially inaccurate assessment of the potential and ongoing conservation efforts in New Mexico and Texas," the Justice Department said.

What lies. 

 

Above all, how can you assume that habitat restoration could not occur when per your 2024 press release:

The designation of critical habitat was found to be prudent but not determinable at this time. The Service has up to one year from the time of listing to propose critical habitat.

You never determined critical habitat! And, per Center for Biological Diversity and others, you were likely playing a stall game there, too.

 

What liars. 

 

Lewis notes the push from this surely comes from above USFWS' head, as in somewhere inside, near the top, of the Department of the Interior. (Doug Burgum's been as bad a Trump-tard as any other Cabinet member.)

 

That said, somebody at USFWS, even if an Anon Y Mous, holds for public consumption that it made a "serious and fundamental" error. In other words, Interior may be leading the push, but it has flunkies at Fish and Wildlife. It did 15 years ago, when Mowad called bullshit on management. Even if the push for his risotura came from higher up in Interior, somebody still wanted to do that. Look at other FWS people who have faced revenge.

 

Lewis notes that an Undersecretary at Interior reviews critical habitat designations. Here's DOI on that, not on the big picture, but some specific issues. From the Dear Leader era, too, take note. Tis also true, but? In 2024, again, FWS never proposed anything. I presume then Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, from New Mexico, might know what the dunes sagebrush lizard is, even if 350 miles away from Laguna Pueblo.

 

That said, that top management at FWS proposed changes to the ESA cuz oil drilling late last year. 

 

And, not directed at Lyle, but at the general oversight. First, where's the Forest Service fit? Last I checked, it's not part of Interior.

 

A president with cojones would either make all of USFWS an individual stand-alone agency like EPA, or at least its core protective services, or else carve them out of FWS and add them to EPA.

 

Remember the timeline goes back to the 1980s. Democratic presidents since then include Clinton and Obama as well as Biden. It's amazing that Democratic presidents, or agencies under their control, can often wait until the last year of a presidential term to take action. Obama did this on increasing the pay cutoff for wage vs salary, and with an immediate near-doubling without phase-in, in 2016. It's like he figured it would be overturned anyway and he was being a pretendian. 

 

==

 

And, per the various rulemaking changes to the ESA, how semi-toothless is it anyway? I may have to write something just on that.

#Photoshopping fakery from the Department of the Interior

The Washington Post recently (as part of its move, like all newspapers, to click-bait us with pictures and video) put up a set of the "the best" of the Department of Interior's Instagram account pictures.

I like the photos as far as artistry. I do NOT like them as being officially presented by the  when not all are "Natural" and not all are photos, but rather, photo illustrations. Slide 4, at Delicate Arch in Arches National Park, illustrates both problems. The backlighting of the arch is done by artificial light, and the Milky Way and sunset are clearly two, separate,   together night scenes, and, neither one is the night sky from the actual arch scene because the artificial backlighting would blow out the sky around the arch. It's false, and promotes a fake view of the outdoors.

Update, April 29, 2014: Via the International Dark Sky Association, which has a version of this on its website, which I learned by seeing it on a High Country News blog, I learned that both photo versions come from a Jacob W. Frank. It's on the slider on his website homepage. I've emailed him re the apparent photoshopping. I also left a comment, with a link to this post, on the HCN blog post. Stay tuned on both counts.

And, I have a partial answer from Frank so far, but not as to my main question. He says he shot a version with a headlamp (above) and one without (Dark Sky Association/HCN). That was the lesser of my issues. The bigger is about what appears to be two different sky backdrops, the "stars" in left and center and the "sunset" at right.

That said, he has followed up and said that the "sunset" is clouds reflecting light pollution from Moab. I've hiked up to Delicate once at night myself. It was pretty much a cloudless night, so I wouldn't have seen the same cloud bounce. Fair enough on the source; it's not a sunset. Nonetheless, I still lean toward the thought that it's a photoshopped image out of two different originals.

Why?

Clouds are about 1 trillion times closer than the Milky Way, to put it mildly and literally. Clouds of any thickness in general, let alone clouds thick enough to bounce light pollution from Moab street lights, would hide stars behind them, I would think. Even high ice-content but thin cirrus clouds wouldn't come off like this, I don't think.

So, great creativity, Mr. Frank. But, I still doubt it's a single image. On the other hand, if it were two different skies as a panorama, why wouldn't he have cloned out the stars on the right? To be fair, I'll try to remember to eyeball some night skies in this area when we get a few clouds. 

That said, I'm not going to ask any more questions. I explained my background as both an amateur nature photographer and as a newspaper editor, regarding my own photo experience.

Anyway, back to the original blog post.

Arguably, other photos also present a fake view of the outdoors, staying with my contention about the Arches photo, but in different ways. the photos tell a selective story. The Yellowstone bison picture has nothing about bison being hazed back into the park, for example.

The Photoshopping fakery, and the untold storylines, as in the Yellowstone picture, are problematic for other reasons, too.

First, the Delicate Arch picture also "blows out" the night sky. It's a LOT darker there than the planetarium-type picture shows, and I know that because I've taken a night hike to Delicate Arch. Unfortunately, my timing was off by a night or two for the perfect picture of shooting a moon, with lingering sunset, either in the arch's keyhole or just above it, and I don't Photoshop stuff like that. And, by not having any of Delicate Arch's background scenery in place, people don't realize that this is a hike of more than a mile, one-way, with a steady climb, almost entirely over slickrock sandstone. The Photoshopping has eliminated that backstory.

As noted, the Yellowstone story doesn't show the reality of bison who try to leave the park boundaries in winter for food being hazed back inside. It doesn't show bison being shot over the myth that they give brucellosis to cattle, when it's actually the elk being given hay at Grand Teton and elsewhere that do this. That, in turn, shows how larger environmental issues are omitted from the picture, like the unnaturalness of elk being fed hay, the unpictured naturalness of wolves hunting both them and bison, the extreme anti-wolf bias just outside the park's boundaries and more. (I've seen a couple of wolves casually wandering at the heels of a small herd of bison.)

Nor does Instagram from Interior show the reality of fracking for natural gas within view of that same Arches National Park that holds Delicate Arch, let alone oil sands extraction not too much further away in Utah.

In a day and age where Richard Louv can write about "nature deficit disorder," providing such false and sterile pictures of nature does no good.

Another neolib sellout on the environment by Obama

Sally Jewell, Obama's nominee to head the Interior Department, has made clear she supports expanded oil and gas drilling on Bureau of Land Management land.

Here's Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski pushing for that and more:

“We need you to affirm that public lands provide not just a playground for recreational enthusiasts,” Ms. Murkowski said, “but also paychecks for countless energy producers, miners, loggers and ranchers.”  

Fine. Let's amend the 1872 Mining Act. Let's charge ranchers fair market rates for grazing leases. Oh, and since the National Park Service generates more than $30 billion a year from tourism and recreation, with Jewell's National Parks Conservation Association, where she is on the board, estimating a 4-1 return on federal dollars, let's see Murkowski match that.

I charge bullshit on a senator who's always helped Alaska, just like her daddy-o, pig out at the federal hog trough.

Unfortunately, Jewell said nothing, however, about increased regulation of such drilling, especially protection of water supplies in the largely semi-arid to arid West. Nor did she say anything about getting more federal dinero from such drilling.

She may be even more "industry-friendly" than Kenny Boy Salazar, in fact.

Here's a tell:

Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, noted that Ms. Jewell’s résumé cites her work as a young woman as a construction worker on the Alaska oil pipeline, as a petroleum engineer in Colorado, as a commercial banker for 19 years and as chief executive of a billion-dollar company. 

“My question is this,” Mr. Alexander said. “How’d you get appointed by this administration? You sound more like a nominee of a Republican administration.” 

Sounds about right.

Wingnut Republicans questioned her background as a member of the board of directors of the NPCA, which they're trying to paint as being as radical as, say, the Center for Biological Diversity.

I'll bet Jewell will push indeed for more drilling. And as a former CEO, for more corporate partnerships with the National Park Service. The NPS' centennial in 2016 will be dripping with capitalism, folks.

Meanwhile, when this happens, will Gang Green enviros like Michael Brune at Sierra Club be as surprised and miss smelling the coffee as much as they have with Keystone XL?

Beyond that, she kind of makes me want to barf by quoting Facebook exec Sheryl Sandberg's half-baked, half-assed "leaning into" four times.

Is Jewell a diamond in the rough for Interior?

If you're a real environmentalist, I doubt that President Obama's nomination of Sandy Jewell, CEO outdoor gear maker/seller REI, as Interior Secretary, is a diamond in the rough.

Sure, REI is an outdoor recreational equipment maker. So is Honda, with its four-wheelers. Beyond that, when I heard on the radio that her previous background included work at subprime mortgage bottom feeder Washington Mutual and eXXXonMobil before that (well, just old Mobil, technically), I was definitely underwhelmed. She may wind up making us appreciate the days of Kenny Boy Salazar for all we know.

And, speaking of, she's already indicated she wants to continue his public-private partnerships for conservation and related issues. Translation: She's OK with more corporate branding in places like national parks,

Plus, Interior's traditionally gone to a Western politician. This probably doesn't sit totally well with Congressional Democrats.

She sounds like she's personally an outdoorswoman, and therefore appreciates conservation needs. And, that she might have some ideas on how to boost involvement, especially (I hope) by minorities.

And, she's got her work cut out in gearing up for the Park Service's centennial.

I hope she does that right, AND ... without too much in the way of private branding. I don't want to see "The National Park Service Centennial Commemoration, Sponsored by REI."

Speaking of, I'd love for just one senator to ask her about her time at WaMu and what she knew about the subprime mess. It's legit, not just for running her over, but for just how sound of a management background she has.

Anyway, yes, the League of Conservation Voters has already given her an air kiss. I'm sure other Gang Green groups will do the same.

I want to see how folks like the Center for Biological Diversity respond.

And, CBD has. Not throwing her under the bus, but Kieran Suckling and gang are ... "guarded":

America’s public lands and endangered species are in dire need of visionary leadership. We hope Sally Jewell brings the same determination and transparency to running the Department of the Interior as she did to REI.  

It’s clear the secretary of the Interior nominee has a passion for national parks, but the challenge is whether she will value our wildlands and wildlife in the face of endless pressure by industry to drill for fossil fuels in areas within Interior’s jurisdiction. If she can stand strong against bad ideas such as Arctic oil drilling and fracking on public lands, then she will likely be a success. Nature needs a true champion at this point in history.

I think that's about where I stand.

And, Suckling et al know that oil and the Bureau of Land Management will be a big issue, continually so.

Update, Feb. 9: Tim Egan at the NYT has a laudatory column about Jewell while noting that Obama can't rest his environmental laurels just on her appointment. The line about environmentalists being a "silent majority" amongst the "wise use" folks, general libertarians and even anti-government conspiracy theorists in the West is a good one.

Non-Gang Green enviros: #CBD at least has down side

While I applaud a group like the Center for Biological Diversity for not sucking up to the Democratic Party, and for playing hardball as needed, some of its tactics do fuel pushes for tort reform, and give environmentalism a black eye.

Losing a $600K suit for defaming a rancher by claiming photos of a dirt parking lot were allegedly his denuded grazing allotment? And, the legal fees CBD gets undercutting Interior Department's funds for endangered species protection?
Amos Eno runs the hugely successful Yarmouth, Maine-based Resources First Foundation, an outfit that, among other things, assists ranchers who want to restore native ecosystems. Earlier, he worked at Interior's Endangered Species Office, crafting amendments to strengthen the law, then went on to direct the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. Eno figures the feds could "recover and delist three dozen species" with the resources they spend responding to the Center for Biological Diversity's litigation.

"The amount of money CBD makes suing is just obscene," he told me. "They're one of the reasons the Endangered Species Act has become so dysfunctional. They deserve the designation of eco-criminals."

A senior Obama official had this to say: "CBD has probably sued Interior more than all other groups combined. They've divested that agency of any control over Endangered Species Act priorities and caused a huge drain on resources. In April, for instance, CBD petitioned to list 404 species, knowing full well that biologists can't make the required findings in 90 days."
Hmm. I might have to rethink clicking on all those CBD email action alerts.

BushCo lies continue even with a new presidnet.

Gale Norton has no shame, it's obvious; Dirk Kempthorne is not a whole lot better:

Norton said the Bush administration focused primarily on onshore drilling and that there "was really not much change as to the outer continental shelf."

Henry Waxman gets it right, including not giving Team Obama a pass:

The Interior Department under both Bush and Obama made serious mistakes, Waxman said.

"The cop on the beat was off duty for nearly a decade," he said. "And this gave rise to a dangerous culture of permissiveness."

Recommendations by Cheney's energy task force and Norton's failure to act on safety warnings about blowout preventers and rejection of proposals to strengthen standards for cementing wells sent a clear message that "the priority was more drilling first, safety second," Waxman said.

Kempthorne oversaw the "deeply flawed assessment" of potential environmental impacts of the lease sale, and MMS's mission became "to serve the oil and gas industry," he added. But Congress "was complicit in this lack of oversight," failing to strengthen regulatory requirements, Waxman said.

"As a Democrat, I hoped the Obama administration would do better and, in some ways, there have been reforms," Waxman said. "But there is little evidence that these reforms changed the laissez-faire approach of MMS in regulating the BP well."

Salazar sux, part deux

Via Frank Rich, I am reminded that in addition to taking down Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Rolling Stone also, in the same issue, has a second installment of all that's rotten in the Department of the Interior.

Everything that was wrong, in advance, with Deepwater Horizon in the way of over-aggressive drilling and lack of advance preparations for serious problems, is wrong in spades with proposed new drilling in the Arctic:

The closest Coast Guard station is on Kodiak Island, some 1,000 miles away. The nearest cache of boom to help contain a spill is in Seattle — a distance of 2,000 miles. ... Relief equipment can realistically be brought to the region only by boat — and then only seasonally. The Arctic is encased in ice for more than half the year, and even icebreakers can't assure access in the dark of winter. "If it's this hard to clean this up in the relatively benign conditions of the Gulf of Mexico," Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse cautioned Salazar at a hearing after the BP spill, "good luck trying to implement this sort of a cleanup in the Arctic."

Shell, in fact, has never conducted an offshore-response drill in the Chukchi Sea. Perhaps that's because there's no proven technology for cleaning up oil in icy water, which can render skimming boats useless — much less to cope with a gusher under the ice. In the worst-case scenario, according to marine scientists, a blowout that takes place in the fall, when the seas are freezing over, could flow unabated until relief wells could be drilled the following summer. In the interim, oil could spread under the sea ice, marring the coastlines of Russia and Canada, and possibly reaching as far as Norway and Greenland. "It could realistically be a circumpolar event," says Steiner.

This is the new frontiers of Arctic drilling for which Secretary of the Interior Kenny Boy Salazar is pushing so hard.

Meanwhile, even as the Rolling Stone piece was being penned, and despite the six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, Minerals Management Service was still accepting new deepwater tract bids.

Hey, Obamiacs: As long as The One stays with Kenny Boy, it's a sign he supports his position. Perhaps, as with Wall Street, "New Democrats" would like more campaign money from Old Big Oil?

Oh, how deepwater oil drilling can go wrong

With the help of the New York Times, let us count the ways it DID go wrong with Deepwater Horizon, and could go wrong again in the future, unless President Obama actually does something during the drilling moratorium. (That said, as you read further down this long, quote-heavy post, and click the story link for more detail, you may not want to hold your breath over too much "does something" happening.

As it turns out, records and interviews show, blind shear rams can be surprisingly vulnerable. There are many ways for them to fail, some unavoidable, some exacerbated by the stunning water depths at which oil companies have begun to explore.

But they also can be rendered powerless by the failure of a single part, a point underscored in a confidential report that scrutinized the reliability of the Deepwater Horizon’s blowout preventer. The report, from 2000, concluded that the greatest vulnerability by far on the entire blowout preventer was one of the small shuttle valves leading to the blind shear ram. If this valve jammed or leaked, the report warned, the ram’s blades would not budge.

This sort of “single-point failure” figures prominently in an emerging theory of what went wrong with the Deepwater Horizon’s blind shear ram, according to interviews and documents. Some evidence suggests that when the crew activated the blind shear ram, its blades tried to cut the drill pipe, but then failed to finish the job because one or more of its shuttle valves leaked hydraulic fluid.

These kinds of weaknesses were understood inside the oil industry, documents and interviews show. And given the critical importance of the blind shear ram, offshore drillers began adding a layer of redundancy by equipping their blowout preventers with two blind shear rams.

So, it appears, again, that some of this is BP's fault, not Big Oil's fault. But, some of it is Big Oil in general:

Last year, Transocean commissioned a “strictly confidential” study of the reliability of blowout preventers used by deepwater rigs.

Using the world’s most authoritative database of oil rig accidents, a Norwegian company, Det Norske Veritas, focused on some 15,000 wells drilled off North America and in the North Sea from 1980 to 2006.

It found 11 cases where crews on deepwater rigs had lost control of their wells and then activated blowout preventers to prevent a spill. In only six of those cases were the wells brought under control, leading the researchers to conclude that in actual practice, blowout preventers used by deepwater rigs had a “failure” rate of 45 percent.

For all their confident pronouncements about blowout preventers (the “ultimate failsafe device,” some called it), oil industry executives had long known they could be vulnerable and temperamental.

Rising five or more floors and weighing hundreds of thousands of pounds, these devices were daunting in their scale and complexity. There were hundreds of ways they could malfunction or be improperly maintained, tested and operated. Not only did they have to withstand extreme environments, they were relied upon to tame the ferocious forces often unleashed when drilling rigs penetrate reservoirs of highly compressed oil and gas.

They were also costly to maintain. An industry study last year estimated the price of stopping operations to pull up a blowout preventer for repairs at $700 per minute.

Those costs could be enough to draw the attention of Wall Street.

Ahh, the old bottom line. That said, some industries accept more regulatory costs, or trade on a safety reputation as part of their bottom-line enhancement. Given that BP's safety record was so crappy under Tony Hayward's predecessor, Lord Browne, one wonders if he ever thought of that idea.

And that's not all:
>>In 1990, a blind shear ram could not snuff out a major blowout on a rig off Texas. It cut the pipe, but investigators found that the sealing mechanism was damaged. And in 1997, a blind shear ram was unable to slice through a thick joint connecting two sections of drill pipe during a blowout of a deep oil and gas well off the Louisiana coast. ...

(And) in two studies, in 2002 and 2004, one of the industry’s premier authorities on blowout preventers, West Engineering Services of Brookshire, Tex., found a more basic problem: even when everything worked right, some blind shear rams still failed to cut pipe.

West’s experts concluded that calculations used by makers of blowout preventers overestimated the cutting ability of blind shear rams, so-called because they close off wells like a window blind. Modern drill pipe is nearly twice as strong as older pipes of the same size. In addition, the intense pressure and frigid temperatures of deep water make it tougher to shear a pipe. These and other “additive pressures,” the researchers found, can demand hundreds of thousands of additional pounds of cutting force.



Yet when the team examined the performance of blind shear rams in blowout preventers on 14 new rigs, it found that seven had never been checked to see if their shear rams would work in deep water. Of the remaining seven, only three “were found able to shear pipe at their maximum rated water depths.”<<


And, the feds are at fault, too:
>>In 2001, just as BP and Transocean were pressing the Deepwater Horizon into service, the Minerals Management Service was being warned against allowing deepwater rigs to operate with only one blind shear ram. The agency had commissioned a study that documented more than 100 failures during testing of blowout preventers.



“All subsea B.O.P. stacks used for deepwater drilling should be equipped with two blind shear rams,” said the report, written by the SINTEF Group, a Scandinavian research organization that advises the oil industry and maintains detailed records on blowouts around the world.



The agency made no such requirement. Indeed, it waited until 2003 to require even one blind shear ram. By then, the industry had already started moving to two blind shear rams — although industry and government records show that roughly two-thirds of the rigs in the gulf today still have only one.<<
And, THAT is scary. Why, during the deepwater drilling moratorium, isn't Minerals MISmanagement Service requiring all deepwater rigs with just one ram to be retrofitted? Salazar, the story, notes has "recommended" such rules, but that's it. Equally scary is no testing requirements for backups like the deadman and autoshear. And, again, why isn't MMS promulgating new regs to this end during the moratorium?



Ultimately, it's a legacy of Reaganism + Newtism, combined with Clinton's natural neoliberalism, shifting Democrats far enough right that Barack Obama can talk about admiring Reagan.


That, in turn, leads to lies like this from Team Obama:

Barely three weeks before the Deepwater Horizon disaster, President Obama announced that he planned to open vast new tracts of ocean for oil exploration, including environmentally sensitive areas that for decades had been declared off limits by presidents from both parties.

Environmental groups were bitterly disappointed, but Mr. Obama said he had arrived at his decision after more than a year of study by his administration, including a careful weighing of environmental risks. Yet the administration’s examination did not question the oil industry’s confident assertions about its drilling technology. The well-known weaknesses of blowout preventers and blind shear rams simply did not make it onto the administration’s radar, interviews and documents show.

Mr. Hayes, the deputy interior secretary, said senior officials were reassured, perhaps wrongly, by “the NASA kind of fervor” over the oil industry’s seemingly “terrific technology.” They took comfort in what appeared to be a comprehensive regime of regulations. Most of all, he said, they were impressed by the rarity of significant oil spills even as more of the nation’s domestic oil supply was being drawn from ultradeep wells.

“The track record was good,” he said. “The results were significant.”

Not even environmental groups bitterly opposed to expanding offshore drilling were raising concerns about the industry’s technology for preventing deepwater spills, he added. “We were not being drawn by anybody to a potential issue with deepwater drilling or blowout preventers.”

Untrue. While not getting into every detail, non-Gang Green enviro groups have long worried about whether Big Oil could deliver.

Rich takes Obama to the BP cleaners

Again, Obamiacs will surely defend "their man." But, more and more mainstream liberal opinionators, like Frank Rich today, are saying that Obama, instead of just pointing fingers at BP, DOES have his share of blame for not really cleaning house at Interior in general and Minerals Management Service in particular.

That said, hiring Kenny Boy Salazar to run Interior made it clear that Obama, despite his climate change rhetoric, really wasn't that much of an environmentalist, wasn't that interested in environmentalism, and didn't really want to clean house.

Sidebar: Not a single Gang Green group has yet to even think about calling for Kenny Boy's head.

BP keeps on lying and failing

The lying? The company had concerns about the Deepwater Horizon well nearly a year ago. But, that's not what officials indicated to Congress. Next question: Will Congress put BP's asshats under oath next time they speak? If not, then Congress is part of the problem, right?

It's getting so bad that, per a great AP enterprise story, BP won't even give a straight answer about why it lied in the past about things such as the rate of gushing.

The failing? BP's "junk shot" (how about shooting in Tony Hayward's "junk"?) doesn't seem to be working. Don't hold your breath on the "top kill," either:
The technician working on the project said Saturday pumping had again been halted and a review of the data so far was under way. “Right now, I would not be optimistic,” the technician (said).
Glenn Greenwald, with whom I agree on a lot of things, is only half right on this issue. It's true that there's not a whole lot Team Obama can do right now, post-blowout. But, so far, he's failed to devote any of his columns/blogs to how bad a choice Kenny Boy Salazar was to head Interior, just how little work Salazar did to truly clean house, not just at Minerals Management Service but across Interior, and more. He's also failed to look at how much or how little of an environmentalist Obama might really be, beyond the "green jobs" angle, which he really hasn't done much for anyway.

Glenn, this is the DOI, and the Administration, that was so willing to trust such a blatant liar as BP when it first signed off on expanding offshore drilling. What's so hard to get about why Team Obama has been a #fail precisely because it was a pre-blowout #fail? So, there's nothing much it can do now; defending Team Obama on that grounds is like defending it for not being able to shut a barn door after all the horses escaped, when many people knew that was a good possibility before the horses escaped.

C'mon, Glenn, you can do better.

Why doesn't Obama fire Kenny Boy Salazar?

Short answer: He needs a scapegoat.

Coming from an oil-and-gas state, and knowing MMS problems with former Interior Secretary Gale Norton, like him, being from Colorado, it's clear that Salazar knew a housecleaning was needed.

But now, we have a report by MMS's acting inspector general, that she deliberately sped up and made public:

The report began as a routine investigation, the acting inspector general, Mary Kendall, said in a cover letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, whose department includes the agency.

"Unfortunately, given the events of April 20 of this year, this report had become anything but routine, and I feel compelled to release it now," she wrote.

Meanwhile, Kenny Boy pretends to be amazed:

Salazar called the latest report "deeply disturbing" and said it highlights the need for changes he has proposed, including a plan to abolish the minerals agency and replace it with three new entities.
The report "is further evidence of the cozy relationship between some elements of MMS and the oil and gas industry," Salazar said Tuesday. "I appreciate and fully support the inspector general's strong work to root out the bad apples in MMS.

Now, did he have a heads-up? Is Kendall speeding release to CYA for him? Anything and everything is possible.

Meanwhile, the Department of Justice is investigating BP, in what may become a criminal investigation.

How will Kenny Boy handle this? If MMS people are deposed, and it's clear that MMS had the same-old, same-old attitude after Jan. 20, 2009, and after his swearing in?

Ken Salazar still wants loaded guns in national parks

Yes, the government has decided not to appeal District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly’s ruling that a Bush Administration Interior ruling “allowing loaded guns in national parks was illegal because it didn’t include an environmental impact study.

BUT, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is not having his department drop the idea entirely.

Instead, Interior is doing the environmental impact study.

That said, such a study will have to, theoretically, include public safety and the human environment.

Still, it’s just nuts that the Obama Administration is going through with this.

Ken Salazar is the worst Cabinet secretary this side of Tim Geithner.

And, yet, Gang Green groups that lauded his nomination still want money from me, when not asking me to petition Salazar to reverse his ruling on Yellowstone wolves.

Salazar vows to continue drilling for oil

Well, Interior Secretary-designee Ken Salazar didn’t outrightly promise that during the first stage of his conrfirmation hearings, with the Senate Committee on Energy and National Resources.

But, when given the chance to promise NOT to drill in sensitive areas in the west, like his home state Colorado’s Roan Plateau, he took a clearly schwaffeling pass at making such a statement.

And, let us not forget that this is a man who, in private life, threatened to sue U.S. Fish and Wildlife if it gave Endangered Species Act listing to the black-tailed prairie dog.

Two more voices say Ken Salazar will …

Be a sellout as Interior Secretary.

And, they’re two voices I respect.

First, in case you had either forgotten or were unaware, Jeff St. Clair reminds us that rancher Ken Salazar once threatened to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to keep it from listing the black-footed prairie dog as an endangered species. Yet, despite this and his anti-environmentalism whenever the word “energy” is mentioned, Sierra Club, National Audubon Society and other Gang Green members all greenwashed him.

How can you have an Interior Secretary who opposes full use of the Endangered Species Act?

St. Clair goes on to remind us of Salazar’s support for Gale Norton, etc.:

Say this much for Salazar: he’s not a Clinton retread. In fact, he makes Clinton Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt look like Ed Abbey. The only way to redeem Clinton's sory (sic) record on the environment is for Obama to be worse.

Meanwhile, Felice Pace says this is part of larger problems in the “political access as usual” corridors of Gang Green environmental groups.

What can you do?

Cancel your memberships. Do not give another dime to Sierra, Audubon, Nature Conservancy, Environmental Defense, NRDC, WWF, etc.

I'm not the only one thinking Salazar is a sell-out at Interior

While other people are worried about Rick Warren, more and more environmentalists are worried about Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar running the Department of Interior.

Interior, due to the presence and land ownership of the federal government, has traditionally gone to a Westerner, but Obama could have done far better. Yes, as director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, he funded state land conservation efforts. But, in his brief time in the Senate, or his state service before that, you never heard him mentioned as a real environmentalist. And, he certainly doesn't have an A-list record of standing up to Big Oil and Big Gas on BLM land. Yes, he did take on the government on oil shale on the Roan Plateau, but beyond that? He allowed natural gas drilling to go ahead there.

That is why he is drawing not just somewhat, but highly, critical views from many non-Gang Green environmentalists. (Gang Green members, as befitting their willing co-option by the Democratic party, has been silent on Salazar so far.)

“He is a right-of-center Democrat who often favors industry and big agricultural interests in battles over global warming, fuel efficiency and endangered species,” said Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, which tracks endangered species and habitat issues.

Daniel R. Patterson, a former official of the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management and now southwest regional director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, described Mr. Salazar as the most controversial of Mr. Obama’s cabinet appointees.

“Salazar has a disturbingly weak conservation record, particularly on energy development, global warming, endangered wildlife and protecting scientific integrity,” said Mr. Patterson, who was elected last month to the Arizona House of Representatives from Tucson and supported Mr. Grijalva for the Interior Department job. “It’s no surprise oil and gas, mining, agribusiness and other polluting industries that have dominated Interior are supporting rancher Salazar — he’s their friend.”

Earlier this week, I gave Salazar a B-minus on environmental issues, but that's not all that great. I said then that, given that, after violations of international law and civil rights, anti-environmentalism is one of Bush's biggest legacies, we need more than a B-minus leading Interior.

Now, I am not even sure if he deserves that grade; when I made it, I thought I might be grading on a mental curve after hammering Obama for most the rest of his cabinet choices.

NO to more mountain biking in national parks

Boy, the Interior Department is just trying to piss me off. There’s plenty of national forests for mountain bikers to do their stuff; I do NOT want to cross trails with them in new spots in Canyonlands, Yosemite or wherever.

Amen to this comment:

“Seventy-five million Americans hike, and they want solitude and a slow-paced connection with nature,” said Gregory Miller, the president of the American Hiking Society, an umbrella group of 275 local organizations. “We see this as potentially undermining and diminishing that experience.”

And, contra mountain-bikers’ lobbying groups, you DO diminish that experience. Besides the abundant national forest and BLM sites you have, you are allowed some places in national parks.

As for the excuse that camping and hiking declines prove more people want mountain-bikiing type experiences in the national parks, it proves nothing of the kind.

Rather, it proves that too many people are stuck too often In front of TV shows, DVDs, and gaming sagas.

Salazar to Interior? Another sell-out

That's the report about one of Obama's last Cabinet spots to fill, that Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar has the Interior job.

Interior, due to the presence and land ownership of the federal government, has traditionally gone to a Westerner, but Obama could have done far better. Yes, as director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources, he funded state land conservation efforts. But, in his brief time in the Senate, or his state service before that, you never heard him mentioned as a real environmentalist. And, he certainly doesn't have an A-list record of standing up to Big Oil and Big Gas on BLM land. Yes, he did take on the government on oil shale on the Roan Plateau, but beyond that?

Overall, I'd give Salazar a B-minus on environmental issues, but that's not all that great. Given that, after violations of international law and civil rights, anti-environmentalism is one of Bush's biggest legacies, we need more than a B-minus leading Interior.

Especially on things such as getting new wilderness bills past Congress, getting BLM and the Forest Service to work with the National Park Service on things like large-scale ecosystem preservation, etc., Salazar has NOT shown any "vision."

Bush environmental hatred goes beyond executive orders

Bush’s environmental hatred is so bad, and so deep, he’s going beyond using last-miuute executive orders, like Clinton’s roadless rule, and trying to convert political jobs in the Department of the Interior into civil service positions. That includes Robert D. Comer and Matthew McKeown.

Comer, who was was regional solicitor for the Rocky Mountain area, was named to the civil service post of associate solicitor for mineral resources. Clean Water Act and other violations by mining companies would fall under his purview; how tough will he be on them or not?

McKeown got Comer’s old Rocky Mountains job, now mad civil service. Getting BLM to get oil companies to do cleanup, getting Fish and Wildlife to prosecute Endangered Species Act violations in this area, etc., will all be difficult with a partisan like McKeown in place.

The two can be reassigned, and even beyond their current commuting area, within 60 days. However, they would keep their civil service rank, pay, etc.

U.S. protection for polar bears not enough

After all, two-thirds of them live in Canada, and Canada needs to do its part, as DeSmog Blog notes.

That said, the ruling does do something. Despite Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne’s denial that the Endangered Species Act can be a tool to tackle global warming, despite his attempts to loophole around that, we now have something in writing.

And, while the “threatened” status of the ESA doesn’t have a lot of teeth, should this, as is likely, not have enough force and polar bears soon become “endangered,” there’s a lot more legal teeth there.

Follow the links at the top story webpage for all the details about Interior Department loopholes in polar bear protection, too.

Interior does SORTA right by polar bears — finally

The Department of the Interior has listed polar bears as a threatened species. Of course, the official listing was full of denialism:

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne cited dramatic declines in sea ice over the last three decades and projections of continued losses, meaning, he said, that the polar bear is a species likely to be in danger of extinction in the near future.

But Kempthorne said it would be “wholly inappropriate” to use the protection of the bear to reduce greenhouse gases, or to broadly address climate change.

So, Arctic sea ice is melting of its own free will, then?

At the same time, Kempthorne was not able to totally deny global warming:

“This listing will not stop global climate change or prevent any sea ice from melting,” said Kempthorne. He said he had consulted with the White House on the decision, but “at no time was there ever a suggestion that this was not my decision.”

And, Big Oil still lurks in the background.

Kempthorne’s listing has semi-sized loopholes, too, to keep Arctic oil drilling going, and to “protect” power plants.

That’s why he said it would be “wholly inappropriate” to use this to tackle global warming. It also shows just how much he “consulted” with the White House.

And Kempthorne didn’t address why Interior had to be legally prodded into the decision, and the delays it did.