Author: Business Insider

By STEVEN R. HURST, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama returns to the Gulf of Mexico coast Friday, insisting he’s in charge of efforts to shut down what is now estimated as the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

Still Obama has admitted the U.S. government doesn’t have the technology or expertise and must rely on oil giant BP. It could be late Friday or over the weekend before BP knows if its latest experimental effort has succeeded in stopping the undersea gusher of oil.

Obama was to attend a briefing Friday at the U.S. Coast Guard Station in Grand Isle, La., by Adm. Thad Allen, who is overseeing the response to the spill. It would be his second visit to the region since the disaster began with an April 20 explosion at the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon that killed 11 workers.

Obama seized ownership Thursday of what he called a “tremendous catastrophe,” after weeks of loveallowing Cabinet members take the public lead as the crippled BP PLC well spewed millions of gallons (liters) of crude oil into the Gulf from nearly a mile (1,500 meters) below the surface.

“I take responsibility. It is my job to make sure that everything is done to shut this down,” Obama declared at a White House news conference dominated by the spill.

For everyone, the stakes grew even higher Thursday as government scientists said the oil has been flowing at a rate 2 1/2 to five times higher than what BP and the U.S. Coast Guard initially estimated.

Two teams of scientists calculated the well has been spewing between 504,000 gallons (1.9 million liters) and more than 1 million gallons (3.8 million liters) a day. Even using the most conservative estimate, that means about 18 million gallons (68 million liters) have spilled so far. In the worst-case scenario, 39 million gallons (148 million liters) have leaked.

Even at the lowest estimate, the Gulf spill has far surpassed the size of the previous largest U.S. oil spill, the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, in which a tanker ran aground in Alaska, spilling nearly 11 million gallons (42 million liters).

BP PLC insisted its “top kill” attempt to plug the gusher was progressing as planned, though the company acknowledged drilling mud was escaping from the broken pipe along with the leaking crude.

“The fact that we had a bunch of mud going up the riser isn’t ideal but it’s not necessarily indicative of a problem,” spokesman Tom Mueller said.

Early Thursday, officials said the process was going well, but later in the day they announced pumping had been suspended 16 hours earlier. BP did not characterize the suspension as a setback, and Eric Smith, associate director of the Tulane Energy Institute, said the move did not indicate the top kill had failed.

“The good news is that they pumped in up to 65 barrels a minute and the thing didn’t blow apart,” Smith said. “It’s taken the most pressure it needs to see and it’s held together.”

A top kill has never been attempted before so deep underwater. If the procedure works, BP will inject cement into the well to seal it permanently. If it doesn’t, the company has a number of backup plans. Either way, crews will continue to drill two relief wells, considered the only surefire way to stop the leak.

In another troubling discovery, marine scientists said they have spotted a huge new plume of what they believe to be oil deep beneath the Gulf, stretching 22 miles (35 kilometers) from the leaking well head northeast toward Mobile Bay, Alabama. They fear it could have resulted from using chemicals a mile below the surface to break up the oil.

Obama, meanwhile, has been under mounting criticism — even from members of his own Democratic Party — for seeming aloof to what could be the biggest environmental tragedy in U.S. history.

Asked about inevitable comparisons between his administration’s handling of the disaster with his predecessor’s response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which flooded New Orleans and other areas, Obama said: “I’ll leave it to you guys to make those comparisons. … What I’m thinking about is how do you solve the problem?”

Comparisons to former President George W. Bush’s paltry response to the devastating storm have come mainly from opposition Republicans.

“I’m confident people are going to look back and say this administration was on top of what was an unprecedented crisis,” he said. “We’ve got to get it right.”

Obama is struggling for high ground in the political wars raging in the months before the November congressional elections, where his Democratic majorities in both House and Senate are in danger.

He has passed through bruising legislative sessions and took a notable battering from Republicans as he pushed through health care overhaul. Now he’s struggling to keep congressional Democrats focused on financial regulatory reform while trying to smooth the Senate confirmation of his second Supreme Court nominee.

The president, who campaigned on a promise to change the way Washington does business, blasted a “scandalously close relationship” he said has persisted between Big Oil and government regulators.

Conceding that “people are going to be frustrated” until the well is capped, Obama said he would use the full force of the federal government to extract damages from BP.

“We will demand they pay every dime they owe for the damage they’ve done and the painful losses they’ve caused,” Obama said.

He spoke shortly after the head of the troubled agency that oversees offshore drilling resigned under pressure. The departure of Minerals Management Service Director Elizabeth Birnbaum was announced just before Obama’s news conference began.

While making clear he was leading the response, Obama acknowledged some things could have been better handled.

He said his administration didn’t act with “sufficient urgency” prior to the spill to clean up the Minerals Management Service, accused of corruption and poor regulation of drilling rigs and wells.

While Obama defended calling for an expansion of offshore drilling prior to the spill, he said he “was wrong” to believe that oil companies were prepared to respond to worst-case oil spills.

Obama also said the administration took too long to make its own measurements of the size of the spill, and didn’t push BP hard enough early on to release underwater footage of the gusher.

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See Also:

• PRESS CONFERENCE DISASTER: OBAMA FORCED TO SIDE WITH BP
• The Complete Net Worth Of The American Presidents: From Washington To Obama
• FLASHBACK: The Gulf Oil Spill Is Obama’s Katrina

Iris Mack, a former quant trader and one of the “Ladies of the Financial Crisis,” published a first-person account on HuffPo (via Gawker) that appears designed to destroy both her reputation and former Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin’s.

It reads so absurdly that it really seems like a joke.  Except that both parties are quite real.

Here’s a taste:

I also remember teasingly inquiring as to whether he’d flown in on a Citigroup jet again. (He’d called me from one in December.) “It’s one of the perks,” he replied a bit sheepishly.

Things were much more relaxed by the time I walked him back to the Ritz – which was along the way to my South Beach condo. When we passed a homeless man along the way he made a bit of a show of opening up his fat leather billfold and producing a dollar — “There but for the grace of God…” he remarked melodramatically — and I gave him a lot of heat for that, because who exactly did he think he was kidding? I said give the man a job. Heck, you’re the head of a bank! But when we reached the hotel entrance, the tension returned. He got this funny look on his face, and asked:

“Do you want to go upstairs and…cuddle?”

So that’s what this is about. For a moment I was totally speechless and had to dig into my Harvard trained PhD brain to figure out what the hell he meant by “cuddling”! What can I say; once a teetotaling math geek, always a bit slow to pick up on signals from the menfolk. So the former Treasury Secretary had a “crush” on me! And not long afterward the former Treasury Secretary had his tongue down my throat and hands everywhere sort of like an octopus. But as soon as the thought entered my mind — the former Treasury Secretary has his tongue down my throat?! — I came to my senses a bit and awkwardly went back home before we both got too carried away. This is to say, I said to myself that there would be no other former Treasury Secretary appendages entering any other of my orifices.

Based on the rest of the account, Bob Rubin will be able to follow the example of his friend Bill Clinton and say “I did not have sex with that woman.”  But if any of this is remotely true, life probably won’t be happy in the Rubin household for a while.

(Headline by Felix Salmon)

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This is an inters ting development.

First it was SWAT teams, and now it’s the DOJ. This is not your typical environmental situation.

————–

WASHINGTON, April 30 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Attorney General Eric Holder announced today that he is dispatching a team of attorneys from multiple divisions within the Justice Department to New Orleans to meet with the U.S. Attorney and response teams and to monitor the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

“The British Petroleum oil spill has already cost lives and created a major environmental incident,” said Attorney General Holder. “The Justice Department stands ready to make available every resource at our disposal to vigorously enforce the laws that protect the people who work and reside near the Gulf, the wildlife, the environment and the American taxpayers.”

The team will be led by Ignacia S. Moreno, Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division, and Tony West, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division, and will include relevant United States Attorneys. The combined group from the Department plans to make a site visit and meet with representatives from federal agencies working on the response.

A coordinated response continues with a comprehensive oil well intervention and spill-response plan following the April 22, 2010 sinking of the Transocean Deepwater Horizon drilling rig 130 miles southeast of New Orleans. More than 1,000 personnel from federal, state and local agencies are involved in the response effort both on and offshore, with additional resources being mobilized as needed.

SOURCE U.S. Department of Justice

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Apple’s iPhone business, which didn’t exist three years ago, now represents a whopping 40% of the company’s revenue, and has been the company’s biggest revenue generator for three quarters in a row. More »

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• How Maria Bartiromo Became The Most Famous Business Journalist In The World
• Maria Bartiromo: Here’s Why I Don’t Sucker-Punch My Guests With Brutal Questions
• Lou Dobbs Told Maria Bartiromo That Going To CNBC Would Be The Biggest Mistake Of Her Life

WASHINGTON (AP) — Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner (GYT’-nur) says the economy is growing faster than the Obama administration expected.

He tells NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the country is on the way to sustained job creation. But he acknowledges that unemployment may remain high, close to 10 percent.

Geithner says there’s more confidence in the business world, and he says the private sector is growing. He also says people are spending more.

He said he sees encouraging signs that should make Americans confident the country will emerge stronger.

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• Goldman Has Three Things Going For It In The SEC Fraud Case — And One Big Problem
• WOW — Is This Why The SEC Announced The Goldman Fraud Charges Friday Morning?
• HOLD EVERYTHING: The SEC’s Fraud Case Against Goldman Seems VERY Weak

When Microsoft wants to you hire you, it drops a “love bomb” on you, according to a person we spoke with who Microsoft wooed. More »

By JAY LINDSAY, Associated Press Writer

BOSTON (AP) — The Obama administration decides this month after a nine-year review whether the nation’s first wind farm should be built off Cape Cod. If it says no, the industry faces another question with no easy answer: “What’s next?”

Not one of the country’s half-dozen or so offshore wind proposals has entered the arduous review the Cape Wind project is just finishing. Cape Wind’s developers say the earliest they could begin harnessing the breezes of Nantucket Sound is 2012.

The nation’s onshore wind industry is the world’s largest, but higher upfront costs, tougher technological challenges and environmental concerns have held back the development of offshore wind farms.

Offshore wind is especially important in areas like the Northeast, which lack major land-based winds but are mandated by state rules to use more renewables. Developers promise jobs and a plentiful energy source that emits no greenhouse gas emissions. They say there is enough wind offshore to power the entire country — twice over.

“There’s a vast ocean that can be tapped right now,” says Jeremy Firestone, an ocean policy professor at the University of Delaware. “But, you know, we’ve got to do it.”

Denmark installed the world’s first offshore wind turbine 20 years ago. As the U.S. lags behind Europe, and now China, offshore wind technology and manufacturing jobs get entrenched elsewhere, Firestone says.

General Electric recently announced a $450 million expansion of its European offshore wind turbine business. China plans to begin operating its first commercial offshore wind farm off Shanghai by May 1 and has several other projects planned.

The Department of Energy envisions 54 gigawatts in U.S. offshore wind by 2030, or about 4 percent of the country’s electric generating capacity. The U.S. already produces 35 gigawatts of power from onshore wind. One gigawatt of wind powers about 300,000 homes.

The Cape Wind project, proposed in 2001, aims to provide up to three-quarters of the Cape’s power. But opposition has been relentless.

Critics say it would threaten animal life and mar historic vistas, including the view from the Kennedy family compound in Hyannisport. The late Sen. Edward Kennedy called the project a special interest giveaway and was pressing his opposition until weeks before his death last August.

Two Wampanoag Indian tribes also object to the project, saying it would destroy sacred rituals near Nantucket Sound and destroy long-submerged tribal burial grounds.

This month, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar will make the final call. President Obama has pushed renewables and his recent decision to expand offshore drilling indicates a willingness to tap ocean-based energy sources. But Obama, who was close to Sen. Kennedy, has never spoken publicly about Cape Wind.

Offshore wind has had strong political backing in Northeast states, such as Massachusetts, Delaware and Rhode Island, where governors have pushed utilities to buy the power. In New Jersey, former Gov. John Corzine also set ambitious offshore wind goals.

Steven Kopits, an analyst with Douglas-Westwood energy consultants, says if Salazar kills the industry’s most promising proposal in Cape Wind, crucial political support could wither. “It would gut the industry,” he says.

Peter Mandelstam, president of offshore wind developer NRG Bluewater, a division of utility NRG Energy Inc., says U.S. projects have solid backing from state governments and a successful European model to give investors confidence.

“The industry is much more than Cape Wind now,” Mandelstam says. “It is a series of strong projects, each of which have their own path to success.”

Major U.S. proposals include a project in Texas state waters, off Galveston, which could see faster permitting because it doesn’t need to go through federal review. But most are concentrated above Maryland in the East Coast’s northern half, including Bluewater projects in Delaware and New Jersey.

Each state in the Northeast requires utilities to get a rising percentage of power from renewables over the next several years, such as the 15 percent requirement in Massachusetts by 2020. Many are relying on offshore wind to help them do it.

Today’s turbines can’t be built beyond 50 meters depth, which is no problem at various East and Gulf Coast sites, though it shuts out the West Coast and its steeply descending sea floors.

The Northeast’s heavy coastal population also makes offshore wind a good option because costs increase the further electricity travels over transmission lines.

Last year, the federal government released new rules for permitting offshore projects. They’re intended to help companies avoid the twisting route Cape Wind has taken. But officials estimate it will still take 7½ years to get a federal permit. Developers face a web of local considerations along the way, too, including maritime traffic and ecological effects.

“The path is too long,” Mandelstam says.

The high upfront costs of building and maintaining massive turbines at sea help make it significantly more expensive than onshore wind. For instance, the Department of Energy says building an offshore plant where wind power density ranges between 400 and 500 watts per square meter costs about $120 per megawatt hour, compared to about $80 for a land-based wind plant.

Cape Wind officials won’t disclose the project’s price, but Kopits estimates it’s at least $2 billion.

Offshore developers need substantial subsidies, such as tax and production credits, and developers in Europe benefit from far more government help.

The expense puts the power at a premium that not everyone is willing to pay. This month, Rhode Island regulators rejected a deal between a local utility and developer Deepwater Wind, citing a high price per kilowatt hour. Only one other project, Bluewater’s project in Delaware, has a power purchase deal, considered crucial to investors.

With natural gas prices dropping considerably from five years ago, offshore wind prices look even more pricey by comparison.

Advocates say focusing on today’s prices is shortsighted, arguing that free offshore wind is a good long-term bet compared to fossil fuels, with their unstable and inevitably increasing prices.

“Costs will go down,” says Walt Musial, an engineer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. “We may have some slow starts … and we may have some pushback, but eventually I think we’re going to see offshore wind grow.”

See Also: Wine-Sipping Hypocrites Preach Gospel Of Renewable Energy–As Long As It Doesn’t Wreck The View

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See Also:

• CAPE WIND: Wine-Sipping Hypocrites Preach Gospel Of Renewable Energy…As Long As It Doesn’t Wreck The View
• What Is The Goal Of Cape Wind?

A 7.1 magnitude earthquake has stuck in rural northwest China, killing at least 400.

—–

AP: Chinese state television says that the death toll from a strong earthquake in a western province has climbed to 400.

CTTV quoted emergency official Pubucairen as saying Wednesday that the number of injured has risen to more than 10,000 as rescue workers struggle to dig trapped people out in Qinghai province. The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake measured a magnitude of 6.9.

The main quake sent residents fleeing as it toppled houses made of mud and wood, said Karsum Nyima, the Yushu county television station’s deputy head of news, speaking by phone with broadcaster CCTV.

“In a flash, the houses went down. It was a terrible earthquake,” he said. “In a small park, there is a Buddhist tower and the top of the tower fell off. … Everybody is out on the streets, standing in front of their houses, trying to find their family members.”

The quake hit the county of Yushu, a Tibetan area in Qinghai’s south, said the China Earthquake Networks Center, which measured the quake’s magnitude at 7.1. A local government Web site put the county’s population in 2005 at 89,300, a community of mostly herders and farmers.

State broadcaster CCTV said the death toll had risen to about 300, with an additional 8,000 people injured.

The China Earthquake Administration said phone lines were down, hindering rescue efforts, while workers were racing to release water from a reservoir where a crack had formed after the quake.

In Jiegu, a township near the epicenter, more than 85 percent of houses had collapsed, while large cracks have appeared on buildings still standing, the official Xinhua News Agency cited Zhuohuaxia, a local publicity official, as saying.

“The streets in Jiegu are thronged with panic and full of injured people, with many of them bleeding from their injuries,” he said.

There were also students buried under the debris of a collapsed vocational school, Zhuohuaxia said.

State television showed footage of paramilitary police using shovels to dig around a house with a collapsed wooden roof. A local military official, Shi Huajie, told state broadcaster CCTV rescuers were working with limited equipment.

“The difficulty we face is that we don’t have any excavators. Many of the people have been buried and our soldiers are trying to pull them out with human labor,” Shi said. “It is very difficult to save people with our bare hands.”

Five thousand tents and 100,000 thick, cotton coats and heavy blankets were being sent to help survivors cope with strong winds and near-freezing temperatures of around 43 degrees Fahrenheit (6 degrees C), the Qinghai provincial government said in a statement.

Wu Yong, a local military chief, said medical workers also were urgently needed but that roads leading to the airport had been badly damaged by the quake, creating difficulties for people and supplies to be flown in. He said rescue efforts were hindered by frequent aftershocks and strong winds.

The epicenter of the first quake was located 235 miles (380 kilometers) south-southeast of Golmud, a large city in Qinghai, at a depth of six miles (10 kilometers), the USGS said.

Ten minutes later, the area was hit by a magnitude 5.3 quake, which was followed after two minutes by a temblor measuring 5.2, according to the U.S. agency. Both the subsequent earthquakes were measured at a depth of 6 miles (10 kilometers). Another quake, measuring 5.8, was recorded at 9:25 a.m.

Xinhua cited officials at the China Earthquake Networks Center as saying at least 18 aftershocks have been reported and that more temblors exceeding magnitude 6 were likely to occur in the coming days.

In 2008, a magnitude-7.9 quake in Sichuan province left almost 90,000 people dead or missing.

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See Also:

• Unemployment Insurance Continuous Weekly Claims: Week Ending March 20 2010
• Number of Discouraged Workers: March 2010
• Unemployment Insurance Initial Weekly Claims: Week Ending March 27, 2010

NEW YORK (AP) — Shares of US Airways and the parent of United Airlines rose in after-hours trading after The New York Times reported that the carriers are in merger talks.

The newspaper’s DealBook blog cites people briefed on the discussions. Those people said no transaction is expected to be announced for at least several weeks, and that talks could still collapse.

Spokespersons for both airlines say they don’t comment on rumors.

Shares of United parent UAL Corp. rose $1.57, or 8.3 percent, to $20.52 in late trading. US Airways Group Inc. rose $1.78, or 26.1 percent, to $8.60.

The CEOs of both airlines have been outspoken about their willingness to be involved in some type of merger.

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How much more until this acts as a brake on the economy?  And if it’s at $86 now, where will it trade when the economy is going full blast again?

By ALEX KENNEDY, Associated Press Writer

SINGAPORE (AP) — Oil prices jumped to near $86 a barrel Monday in Asia, extending gains from last week as investors bet an improving U.S. job market will herald growing crude demand.

Benchmark crude for May delivery was up 80 cents to $85.67 a barrel at midday Singapore time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract climbed up $1.11 to settle at $84.87 on Thursday following a gain of $1.39 on Wednesday.

Global oil trading was closed for the Good Friday holiday.

Crude has jumped from $69 a barrel in early February on expectations a growing U.S. economy will eventually spark higher oil consumption.

On Friday, the U.S. Labor Department said employers added 162,000 jobs in March, the largest job gain in three years. The unemployment rate stayed at 9.7 percent for the third straight month.

“The market was positive before but now it’s been confirmed,” said Clarence Chu, a trader with market maker Hudson Capital Energy in Singapore. “If the job growth can be sustained for several months, we’ll definitely see crude demand pick up.”

In other Nymex trading in May contracts, heating oil rose 2.09 cents to $2.2376 a gallon, and gasoline gained 2.10 cent to $2.3442 a gallon. Natural gas jumped 1.5 cents to $4.101 per 1,000 cubic feet.

In London, Brent crude was up 71 cents at $84.72 on the ICE futures exchange.

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See Also:

• InterOil (IOC): "Major Momentum" Or Just A Castle In The Air? (A New Investigation)
• Don’t Look Now, But Oil Is On Fire (And That’s Going To Suck This Summer When You’re Road-Tripping)

The number of unemployment insurance continuous weekly claims increased from 4.5 million in the week ending February 20 2010 to 4.66 million in the week ending March 20 2010.

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The number of unemployment insurance initial weekly claims decreased from 469,000 in the week ending February 27 2010 to 439,000 in the week ending March 27 2010.

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The total nonfarm job gains increased from a loss of 14,000 in February 2010 to a gain of 162,000 in March 2010.

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The average weekly earnings of production workers increased from $626.58 in February 2010 to $629.37 in March 2010.

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