Oil Spill: Commission Finds That Companies Knew of Cement Flaws in the Macondo Well
by ilene - October 28th, 2010 8:16 pm
Oil Spill: Commission Finds That Companies Knew of Cement Flaws in the Macondo Well [UPDATE]
By BRYAN WALSH, courtesy of TIME
[Update: Looking again over the letter from the commission's investigator, Fred Bartlit, it's not obvious how clear Halliburton's one warning to BP on the cement test were. From the letter:
Halliburton provided data from one of the two February tests to BP in an email dated March 8, 2010. The data appeared in a technical report along with other information. There is no indication that Halliburton highlighted to BP the significance of the foam stability data or that BP personnel raised any questions about it. There is no indication that Halliburton provided the data from the other February test to BP.
If Halliburton really failed to highlight the problems with the cement test to BP, and simply buried the data in a vast technical report, that would seem to shift more of the blame to Halliburton—although at the end of the day, it is still BP's well. And as Bartlit notes at the end of his letter, since there's always a risk that cement jobs can be faulty, there are tests that can be done to doublecheck the quality—and BP and Transocean, the company actually operating the Deepwater Horizon, did not seem to perform these tests. More info will be forthcoming as the companies respond, but right now it's not looking good for Halliburton—the company's share prices are already down by 8%.]
Original post: In the first official finding of responsibility for the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe—the worst oil spill in U.S. history—the presidential commission investigating the accident found that both Halliburton and BP knew before the explosion on April 20 that the cement mixture that was meant to seal the Macondo well was unstable. Despite that fact, they still went ahead with the work, setting the stage for the accident. The staff found that Halliburton—in charge of cementing the Macondo well—had conducted four laboratory tests that indicated the cement mixture standards wasn’t up to industry standards. The results of at least one of those tests was given to BP on March 8, yet BP failed to act on it. Another Halliburton cement test was carried out about a week before the Deepwater Horizon blowout—and the test also found the cement was unstable—yet the results were never sent to BP.
All of this new information comes…
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DiggOptions Feeding Frenzy Ensues on Halliburton Co.
by Option Review - October 28th, 2010 4:44 pm
Today’s tickers: HAL, BP, USU, S, POT, VALE & SKX
HAL - Halliburton Co. – Investors are piling into put options on the oil services provider this afternoon following reports that suggest Halliburton shares culpability with BP for failing to act on warning signs that may have prevented the disastrous Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. At around 1:30 pm this afternoon, HAL’s shares descended into freefall, declining as much as 16.15% to an intraday low of $28.86 in the span of about 30 minutes. Shares gained some composure later in the session, but are still down 10.15% to stand at $30.93 as of 2:45 pm in New York. According to articles on the subject today, HAL submitted documents to the National Commission investigating the BP spill that showed that three out of the four tests of the foam cement conducted by Halliburton before the April 20 blowout indicated the mixture would be unstable. Although Halliburton shared the results of one of two tests conducted in February, neither BP nor Halliburton acted on the information from the foam-stability tests. Uncertainty regarding the impact this new information may have on HAL going forward sent options traders into overdrive and fueled a more than 89.7% increase in the stock’s overall reading of options implied volatility to an intraday high of 62.38%. Investors have driven options volume on Halliburton up to 225,000 contracts as of 3:05 pm. Volume is heaviest in the November contract with the $30 strike put options receiving the most attention. More than 19,000 puts have changed hands at that strike. But, traders are purchasing more bearish contracts as well in case HAL’s shares continue to suffer in the weeks ahead. Pessimists purchased puts at the November $25 strike, where more than 3,400 lots changed hands, at an average premium of $0.39 each. Near-term call options are quite active, as well. The majority of volume in November contract calls appears to be the work of sellers throwing in the towel on the HAL following today’s news story. Longer-term bearishness appeared in the April 2011 contract where one trader initiated a ratio put spread. It looks like the investor purchased 1,250 puts at the April 2011…
TLP: But Wait, What About the Christine O’Donnell Witch Outfit?
by ilene - September 29th, 2010 2:28 am
TLP: But Wait, What About the Christine O’Donnell Witch Outfit?
Courtesy of Jr. Deputy Accountant
With Halloween a month away, it just makes sense that the hip and topical costumes are coming out. And of course, it’s so lame to look dated.
NYT:
Lady Gaga is likely to become this Halloween’s hottest celebrity — Madonna with meat, as one costume salesman described it — but when it comes to message-minded get-ups, political ghouls like Barackula are out and corporate horror is in.
[...]
Scott Morris, whose family has spent 48 years selling dress-up — as the owners of Morris Costumes, the world’s largest costume wholesaler — said he had already sent out hundreds of the BP outfits to stores and Web sites (wrench and dead fish are not included). He said he expected it to become this year’s favorite adult costume, which BP seems determined to ignore. Calls to the company for comment were not returned.
Of course, the BP jumpsuit does have a lot of competition. Its simplicity and cost ($40) may keep it from ultimately outselling Super Sperm, which typically rushes up the sales charts just days before the holiday, Mr. Morris said. But he added, early sales suggest that it will fare far better than Rogue Zombie Sarah Palin or Barackula, the Dracula/Barack Obama hybrid that was popular last year.
“It’s a great way into the anger in the public eye,” Mr. Morris said of the BP costume. “It’s an opportunity to turn that around and have a little fun with it.”
Full article here.
Choose wisely and don’t get ahead of yourself. Anything could happen in the next few weeks.
Turning $10K into $50K by Jan 21st – Week 12 Update (Members Only)
by Phil - September 4th, 2010 9:24 am
What an exciting 10 weeks these trades have had!
The most important thing to take away from these hedged play reviews is how important it is NOT TO TOUCH THEM. We orginated this group on June 11th and the Dow was at 10,200 and it ran up to 10,600 and down to 9,600, back to 10,700, down to 9,800 again and is now back to 10,400. We could have made some good adjustments and we could have made some bad adjustments but the best move is to do nothing with long-term, hedged positions while the market gyrates UNLESS something fundamentally changes in your range outlook.
Rather than panic out of positions like these examples, a simple disaster hedge was used in the July 26th update to ride out the dip, while letting time (theta) decay contine to do it’s work on the premiums we sold…
The VIX was at 30 back on June 11th and that, in part, determines the nature of the trade ideas we decide to use. The higher the VIX, the more we want to sell premium as we simply profit from the declining VIX (now 23.5). The idea of these picks was to find $10,000 worth of small plays that we thought could gain 500% by Jan 21st as part of a larger virtual portfolio. If you can do this with just 10% of a $100K virtual portfolio or 5% of a $200K virtual portfolio, that’s plenty of risk for these uncertain times and it’s a nice 25-50% bonus on the entire virtual portfolio if it works out. Risk can be a component of a conservative virtual portfolio if we wall it off safely.
Our first play was a fundamentals play on YRCW, assuming they wouldn’t go bankrupt. 10,000 shares at .21 was the original entry ($2,100) and I called an audible on this one on 7/7 to add 2x at .11 rather than stop out. That brought the net down to 0.143 on 30,000 or $4,290 so a bit more than a DD overall and we took 1/2 off the table this week at .29 ($5,850), turning this one into a free play ($1,560 profits in pocket) with 15,000 shares to ride out but we lost our nerve at .41 because we couldn’t get .10 for the Jan $1s so we gave up (and rightly so it turns out) and cashed out for another $6,150 in profits for a total profit of…
BP’s Crude Oil May Be Radioactive
by ilene - August 31st, 2010 5:10 pm
BP’s Crude Oil May Be Radioactive
Courtesy of Washington’s Blog
New Orleans attorney Stuart Smith knows something about radiation from oil drilling:
Smith is well known for his role as lead counsel in an oilfield radiation case that resulted in a verdict of $1.056 billion against ExxonMobil for contaminating land it leased from the Grefer family in Harvey, Louisiana –– and attempting to cover it up.
***
The court stated that from June 1986 to March 1987, “Exxon officials intentionally withheld information,” and that the company “knew the [radioactive] scale posed a direct danger to the physical health of those workers.” Oilfield waste, or TERM, is primarily composed of radium, a highly radioactive chemical element. Exposure to radium is known to cause a variety of devastating illnesses, including cancer. Radium’s impact on the human body is particularly acute because it is similar chemically to calcium –– and as such is frequently absorbed into bones after entering the body.
But at least there’s no radiation being released from BP’s oil spill in the Gulf, right?
Well, as Smith wrote on August 4th:
This is directly from the EPA website discussing oil drilling activity:
“These processes may leave behind waste containing concentrations of naturally-occurring radioactive material (NORM) from the surrounding soils and rocks. Once exposed or concentrated by human activity, this naturally-occurring material becomes Technologically-Enhanced NORM or TENORM. Radioactive materials are not necessarily present in the soils at every well or drilling site. However in some areas of the country, such as the upper Midwest or Gulf Coast states, the soils are more like to contain radioactive material.”
“Radioactive wastes from oil and gas drilling take the form of produced water, drilling mud, sludge, slimes, or evaporation ponds and pits. It can also concentrate in the mineral scales that form in pipes (pipe scale), storage tanks, or other extraction equipment. Radionuclides in these wastes are primarily radium-226, radium-228, and radon gas. The radon is released to the atmosphere, while the produced water and mud containing radium are placed in ponds or pits for evaporation, re-use, or recovery.”
“The people most likely to be exposed to this source of radiation are workers at the site. They may inhale radon gas which is released during drilling and produced by the decay of radium, raising their risk of lung cancer. In addition, they are
…
Good News for a Change? A Newly-Discovered Species of Bacteria May Be Breaking Down Oil in Deepwater Plumes in the Gulf
by ilene - August 24th, 2010 6:20 pm
Good News for a Change? A Newly-Discovered Species of Bacteria May Be Breaking Down Oil in Deepwater Plumes in the Gulf
Courtesy of Washington’s Blog
A team of scientists published a paper today in the journal Science which provides some hopeful news.
Specifically, a team of scientists have discovered a new species of oil-eating microbes which thrive in the deepwater of the Gulf of Mexico:
The biological effects and expected fate of the vast amount of oil in the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon blowout are unknown due to the depth and magnitude of this event. Here, we report that the dispersed hydrocarbon plume stimulated deep-sea indigenous
-proteobacteria that are closely related to known petroleum-degraders. Hydrocarbon-degrading genes coincided with the concentration of various oil contaminants. Changes in hydrocarbon composition with distance from the source and incubation experiments with environmental isolates demonstrate faster-than-expected hydrocarbon biodegradation rates at 5°C.
Even better, the scientists believe that this new species (pronounced "gamma-proteo-bacteria") may not suck up as much oxygen as previously-discovered species:
Based on these results, the potential exists for intrinsic bioremediation of the oil plume in the deep-water column without substantial oxygen drawdown.
This discovery is especially important given that a leading expert on oil-eating microbes – Dr. David Valentine – failed to find any of the leading known oil-eating bacteria in the deepwater plumes.
As AP notes:
A newly discovered type of oil-eating microbe is suddenly flourishing in the Gulf of Mexico.
***
Their findings are based on more than 200 samples collected from 17 deepwater sites between May 25 and June 2. They found that the dominant microbe in the oil plume is a new species, closely related to members of Oceanospirillales.
***
[Lead author Dr. Terry Hazen, co-director of the Earth Sciences Division of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories], suggested that the bacteria may have adapted over time due to periodic leaks and natural seeps of oil in the Gulf.
Scientists also had been concerned that oil-eating activity by microbes would consume large amounts of oxygen in the water, creating a "dead zone" dangerous to other life. But the new study found that oxygen saturation outside the oil plume was 67-percent while within the plume it was 59-percent.
Many well-known bacteria – such as Salmonella,…
BP and the Government Are Underplaying the Difficulty of Stopping the Oil Leak
by ilene - August 19th, 2010 3:25 pm
BP and the Government Are Underplaying the Difficulty of Stopping the Oil Leak
Courtesy of Washington’s Blog
While BP and the government say that permanently capping the oil well is no problem, they act like they have no idea what they’re doing.
Indeed, Admiral Thad Allen is now saying "We’re concerned about the vital signs of this well":
He’s also saying that completion of relief well will be delayed until mid-September, at the earliest, and that the government is looking for problematic “material” in the well:
What’s really going on?
Well, initially, if the well had structural integrity, there wouldn’t be concern about the "vital signs" of the well, there wouldn’t have been delay after delay in completing the relief wells, there wouldn’t be never-ending rounds of new tests, there wouldn’t have been an attempt to seal it (or perhaps more accurately, patch it) from the top using cement, there wouldn’t be an attempt to remove "material" from the well.
Indeed, what does "removing material" even mean? Does that mean removing crumpled casing or drill pipe, or does it mean clearing out caved-in portions of the well and trying to rebuild those portions from scratch?
Moreover, one of the world’s top experts in oil drilling disasters – Dr. Robert Bea – told me yesterday that the geology underneath the seafloor at the leak site is fractured, and includes very loose salt formations. This geology may make it very hard to kill the well, even using relief wells, and he says that we may never be able to kill it. He also said that there are uncorroborated reports of additional leaks other than the main well, but that BP isn’t sharing enough information to be able to assess whether or not that there are additional leaks. (Dr. Bea told me that BP is using a "cloak of silence", and is refusing to even show the government videos of what the seafloor looked like before the April explosion).
So instead of simply trying to cap an existing well, it may be more accurate to think of this as trying to build a new well – or at least trying to duck tape the old one – so that it has enough integrity to be permanently stopped.
Update: Admiral Thad Allen just confirmed in a…
Dead Fish Are Washing Up Everywhere . . . Is It Due to BP Oil Spill and Dispersants?
by ilene - August 13th, 2010 4:14 pm
Dead Fish Are Washing Up Everywhere . . . Is It Due to BP Oil Spill and Dispersants?
Courtesy of Washington’s Blog
Dead fish are washing up everywhere.
For example, numerous dead fish washed ashore in Massachusetts a couple of days ago:
Dead fish had washed up in New Jersey yesterday.
Hundreds of thousands of dead fish washed up today in New Jersey, and even the birds wouldn’t eat them:
(The second report in this video compilation – referring to a ripped fishing net – is actually from Virginia, some 210 miles from the scene of the first report in New Jersey. The size of the Virginia fish incident was much smaller than the one in New Jersey.)
And they have washed up in Mississippi as well.
Scientists attribute the dead fish to low oxygen levels in the Gulf of Mexico.
Indeed, scientists have been warning about this for months. For example, on May 16th, the New York Times wrote:
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.
As I pointed out in June, the high methane content in the BP crude also depletes oxygen:
As CBS notes:
The oil emanating from the seafloor contains about 40 percent methane, compared with about 5 percent found in typical oil deposits, said John Kessler, a Texas A&M University oceanographer who is studying
…
Market Slide has Japanese Tracker Options Active
by Option Review - August 11th, 2010 4:34 pm
Today’s tickers: EWJ, VIX, BP & AMT
EWJ – iShares MSCI Japan Index – Since the middle of May, shares in the Japanese market tracker have lunged between a peak at $10.00 and $9.15 creating a neat trading range. With an overnight confidence in global stocks hitting the fan and a capitulation to a 15-year high for the yen, the EWJ has pretty much fallen from the top to smack bang in the middle of that same range in just three days. One option traders appears to be translating more of the same by selling that same strangle combination expiring in January. It’s one of several strategies emerging today where this expiration contract was used to play out various views. The $9.00/$10.00 strangle appears to have been sold for a premium totaling 60 cents, which gives this investor plenty of wiggle room in the event that boom or bust just happens to prevail. The strategy works nicely if by expiration the share price continues its predictable oscillation allowing the premium seller to hold on in entirety. If, however, shares edge lower the investor has to dig in his pocket assuming a break below $8.40 or beyond $10.60. Option implied volatility on the options jumped by around 25% to 20% on Wednesday.
VIX – CBOE Volatility index – Futures on the underlying VIX index are higher by 10% in the August contract and 6% in September, where the index is currently predicted to rise to 29.15. Further maturities have gained to a lesser degree in price as the entire volatility curve adjusts upwards to what some investors interpret today as an increased fear over the health of the U.S. economy. The November VIX future reflects only one third of the gain of the front month contract and stands at 30.40. The S&P 500 index is at its worst point of the day having tumbled by 2.5%. one investor appears to be moving expectations for market weakness out further into the early winter months through use of an options combination that will benefit if another summer market rout for stocks forces the volatility curve to blows higher still. The investor appears to have sold September call options on the VIX at the 45 strike for 75 cents and gone long of the same strike using the November expiration at $1.20 per contract. Around 10,000 contracts changed hands in the spread. The investor…
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
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