John Ryan

Stories

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  Shell’s Beached Kulluk Oil Rig Towed To Safe Harbor

  A shipwrecked oil rig that was bound for Seattle has been floated off the rocks and towed to a safe harbor in the Gulf of Alaska. A fleet of nine ships accompanied Shell Oil’s Kulluk drill rig on the 45-mile tow. Shortly before noon Pacific Time, the rig reached its anchorage in sheltered Kiliuda Bay on Kodiak Island.  The escort fleet for the Kulluk included a Coast Guard cutter and three tugs from Seattle. Crews on the escort boats reported seeing no spilled oil with their infrared devices.Shell had attempted to tow the rig with just one tug from Alaska down to Seattle in December. But one of the Gulf of Alaska’s frequent winter storms caused the rig to break free. The Kulluk ran aground late on New Year’s Eve.Shell and government officials plan to inspect the rig to see if it can still be towed to Washington state. Shell had planned to use the Kulluk to drill for oil in the Arctic this summer after some maintenance work in a Seattle shipyard.The effort to salvage the rig has involved more than 700 people.Last week, 45 Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives' Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition called on the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Coast Guard to conduct a joint investigation into the grounding and into the failure of Shell's Arctic oil-spill containment system during a test in Puget Sound.  An Interior official on board Shell's Arctic Challenger near Anacortes, Wash., during that test reported that a 20-foot spill-containment dome was "crushed like a beer can." 

  Jan 07, 2013 at 4:40 pm
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  Shell's Seattle-Bound Oil Rig Evacuated, Lost, Recovered In Gulf Of Alaska

  UPDATE: The Kulluk ran aground late Monday night, with 150,000 gallons of diesel and oil on board.A floating oil rig that was abandoned on Saturday in heavy seas in the Gulf of Alaska is being towed away from land — a second time.The Kulluk, a Shell Oil drilling rig, was being towed from Alaska to a Seattle shipyard when the engines on its tugboat failed. The two vessels began to drift toward Kodiak Island on Friday.At Shell's request, the Coast Guard sent helicopters on Friday to evacuate the crew of the Kulluk. It’s named after the word for “thunder” in the Inuvialuktun language of Canada’s Northwest Territories. No reports of thunder, but gale-force winds and high waves foiled the first attempt to rescue the Kulluk's crew. All 18 crew members were evacuated to Kodiak on Saturday.On Sunday, the crew-less Kulluk broke free from tugboats attempting to pull it to safety. Early Monday morning, Shell managed to hook up the Kulluk again. As of Monday afternoon, the 266-foot wide drill rig is being towed very slowly — 1 or 2 miles an hour — through a powerful winter storm.“Seas have ranged from 20 to 25 feet and winds up to 70 knots,” said Shell-Alaska spokesman Curtis Smith, “Very severe. Very challenging.”Smith said Shell and the Coast Guard are exploring how to secure the vessel until the storm passes.The Aiviq ("walrus"), the tugboat whose engines failed, was brand new. The Kulluk is 30 years old. Before heading to the Arctic Ocean last summer, it spent nearly a year in a Seattle shipyard. Shell spent $292 million modifying it for Arctic duty.Another vessel in Shell’s Arctic fleet, the Arctic Challenger, is still under construction in Bellingham, Wash. That oil-spill barge’s construction delays and equipment failures stymied Shell's plans to drill for oil off Alaska’s north coast this year.  The Coast Guard originally required the Arctic Challenger to be built to withstand 25-foot waves. Shell then asked to meet a lower standard of handling just 20-foot waves. The Coast Guard said yes.That 20-foot safety standard is the same one applied to mobile drilling units like the Kulluk in the Arctic.If the National Weather Service forecast is correct, the Kulluk will face 30-foot waves and 55-knot winds tonight in the Gulf of Alaska off Kodiak Island.         

  Jan 02, 2013 at 7:58 am
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  Oil Rig Adrift In Alaska

  An oil rig that was on its way to a Seattle shipyard from Alaska went adrift in the Gulf of Alaska on Sunday. John Ryan told Ross Reynolds about it on The Conversation.

  Dec 31, 2012 at 3:13 pm
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  Mayor McGinn Calls On Seattle To Divest From Fossil Fuels

  Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn wants the city to get its money out of fossil fuels. He has called on the city’s two main retirement funds to divest millions of dollars invested in oil and gas companies.Climate change activists have been urging colleges and institutional investors nationwide to abandon the fossil fuel sector. McGinn is the first elected official to heed their call.  On Dec. 21, McGinn ordered the city’s finance director not to invest in any coal, oil or gas companies. As mayor, Mike McGinn has control over $1.4 billion of the city’s cash balances. None of those short-term balances are currently invested in fossil fuel stocks.But the city’s two main retirement funds, worth another $2.6 billion, have major investments in the energy sector. McGinn doesn’t control the retirement funds. But he asked the boards that manage those funds to divest from fossil fuels and to offer city employees climate-friendly investment choices.Burning of fossil fuels is the main driver of global warming.The city hasn’t tallied its investments in the fossil fuel sector yet. But they include at least $17 million in ExxonMobil and Chevron stock, according to McGinn."We should make a statement by the use of our investments about the importance of not continuing to pump global warming pollution into the air,” McGinn said.Tupper Hull with the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA) says oil companies are in the forefront of developing climate-friendly energy sources. “Our association absolutely agrees that climate change is a major issue we need to address," Hull said. WSPA represents oil companies, including ExxonMobil and Chevron, in Washington and five other states.“To think that we can convert an energy economy overnight, or in the short term, is not just not well-informed but frankly is dangerous," Hull said. "Dangerous to the economy, dangerous to a tremendous amount of jobs and economic activity.”Continued growth in fossil fuel use has the world headed toward what climate scientists call “dangerous interference” with the Earth’s climate system.As with almost any choice involving the stock market, it's hard to predict whether divesting from fossil fuel companies would hurt the bottom line of the city or its retirees. So far in 2012, ExxonMobil and Chevron stocks have underperformed both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 by wide margins.Mayor McGinn wants Seattle to gradually back away from its fossil fuel investments over the next five years. He said the city has a long tradition of leadership on climate change and that having a climate-friendly investment portfolio is a natural next step.

  Dec 27, 2012 at 6:36 pm
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  No End In Sight For Sea-Tac Airport’s X-Ray Scanners

  The Transportation Security Administration has been quietly replacing passenger-screening machines at some of the nation’s largest airports. The TSA has been moving them to smaller airports and replacing them with security scanners that don’t use X-rays.Seattle-Tacoma International Airport has been left out of the movement away from the controversial scanners.TSA officials say the agency is replacing the X-ray machines known as backscatter scanners to help reduce the long lines at busy airports. The newer machines, known as millimeter-wave scanners, are smaller. Airports can squeeze more of them in and screen more passengers at once.Sea-Tac Airport has 14 of the big backscatter scanners at its security checkpoints.  TSA says it has no plans to replace those scanners. The new machines have all gone to bigger airports, including those in Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Los Angeles, Orlando and both LaGuardia and JFK in New York City.Seattle Port Commissioner John Creighton is calling on TSA to replace Sea-Tac’s body scanners as well. The commission oversees Sea-Tac Airport. Creighton says he’ll ask his five-member commission and the state’s Congressional delegation to pressure the TSA in January.“If we had technology that had no question about it, that everyone was comfortable with, we could have much more efficient security lines at the airport,” Creighton says.The newer millimeter-wave machines don’t have the same privacy or radiation concerns that the X-ray machines do. They use radio waves, not X-rays, and they only generate a vague, gender-neutral human image, a bit like a gingerbread man. Any indications of possible weapons or explosives are highlighted on the vaguely human image.TSA says the radiation dose a passenger gets inside one of their X-ray scanners is about the same as a passenger gets by flying in an airplane for just two minutes. A TSA video playing on an endless loop tries to assure passengers shuffling through security at Sea-Tac that they don’t need to worry about their privacy or safety.All images are immediately deleted and cannot be printed, stored or transmitted. In addition,  a privacy filter is applied to blur all images to the protect the passenger’s identity. The use of imaging technology presents no health or safety concerns for any passenger, including children and pregnant women.TSA screens nearly 2 million passengers a day nationwide. As ProPublica has reported, some scientists say even tiny doses of X-rays could cause a small number of cancer cases, given such widespread use of the scanners. The European Union prohibited the X-ray scanners last year.TSA announced on Dec. 18 that it is hiring the National Academy of Sciences to conduct an independent study of the health effects of the backscatter X-ray machines.

  Dec 27, 2012 at 11:07 am

• Shell Ready To Try Again With Rebuilt Oil-Spill Dome

  The Arctic Challenger left Puget Sound's Bellingham Bay Wednesday night and arrived at a deep-water anchorage near Anacortes, Wash., Thursday morning. The barge is part of Shell Oil’s fleet of vessels aimed at exploring the Arctic Ocean for oil.

  Dec 14, 2012 at 12:00 am
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  UPDATE: Congressman Seeks Answers In Arctic Oil-Spill Gear's Failure

  A KUOW investigation has led a top congressman to demand answers about Shell Oil's underwater accident this fall in Puget Sound.

  Dec 05, 2012 at 12:00 am
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  Sea Trial Leaves Shell's Arctic Oil-Spill Gear "Crushed Like A Beer Can"

  Shell Oil has been building and testing equipment designed for the Arctic Ocean here in Puget Sound. In September, a key test of underwater oil-spill equipment was a spectacular failure.

  Nov 30, 2012 at 12:00 am

• 2012 Election Breaks Campaign-Finance Records

  Some of the results may not be known for weeks, but the most expensive election ever in Washington state wrapped up Tuesday night.  Fifty-six bucks.  If you're a registered voter in Washington state, that’s what was spent by candidates and their surrogates trying to win your vote in state, local and federal races this year. That could be enough to buy a tank full of gas, a big bag of groceries or a nice dinner for two. Instead, it bought you a bunch of sternly narrated ads, glossy flyers and robo-calls.The hotly contested governor's race racked up the biggest bill, at more than $40 million.Fans of initiatives to legalize gay marriage and charter schools also spent more than $10 million each. Much of those campaigns' war chests arrived in chunks of six or seven figures, either from local billionaires or national political outfits.All told, more than $200 million has flowed into this election in Washington—more than any other in state history. This year's election was also one for the record books at the national level, with $6 billion spent nationwide.  "We saw a lot of evidence of that in our mailboxes and TV commercials," said Lori Anderson with the Public Disclosure Commission. The PDC tracks the money in state and local politics in Washington and during election season, that means tracking political advertising."That's what all that money was spent on," said Anderson. “And I think we're all glad that's coming to an end.”For the past 20 years, state law has limited direct contributions to candidates. But for ballot measures and for groups spending money independently of a given campaign, the sky's the limit."When you limit direct contributions, I think you're always going to see a rise in independent spending," Anderson said. "Money always finds a way."Anderson says the full extent of this year's campaign cash may not be known for a couple of months, since campaigns can keep raising money until January. 

  Nov 07, 2012 at 12:09 am
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  Campaign Cash Maps Show Cracks In Washington's Cascade Curtain

  You may have seen maps of the United States divided into red and blue, based on whether Republicans or Democrats got the most votes in each area. What would it look like to map how campaign contributors vote with their dollars?The first map below does just that for Washington state. It follows the money to show how each ZIP code in the state has voted with its collective pocketbook in this year’s federal elections. Have people in that ZIP code contributed more money to Democratic (blue) or Republican (red) efforts?Zoom in on the map for more detail. Click on any shaded ZIP code to see how much money was spent on this year's federal elections -- and how the money split between Democrats (and their committees, super PACs and other surrogates) and Republicans (and their various surrogates).The political money follows the voting pattern long familiar to the state's political observers: mostly blue west of the Cascades; mostly red to the east. But exceptions abound, with the east side of Lake Washington, rural parts of Snohomish and Whatcom counties and much of southwest Washington leaning red. Much of north-central Washington and scattered pockets throughout eastern Washington lean blue.According to the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington, D.C., 2012 is the most expensive election in the nation’s history. Here in Washington state, residents have poured more than $60 million into this year’s congressional and presidential elections. Overall, Washington state contributions toward federal campaigns have strongly favored Democrats and their surrogate organizations over Republicans and theirs ($33.7 million vs. $18.6 million).A simple blue-versus-red map doesn’t show where the big money has come from. Last week KUOW mapped and zoomed in on the 10 Washington ZIP codes -- all fairly wealthy areas around Seattle -- that have spent at least $1 million to influence this year’s federal elections.This next map shows only those ZIP codes that gave at least $50,000 in this year’s federal elections (again, zoom in or click on a shaded area for more details):Some ZIP codes dropped out of this map because they have much smaller populations than others. It’s also apparent that some ZIP codes have a lot more cash available to throw at political campaigns: wealthy neighborhoods in Seattle and its eastern suburbs, for example. Here’s how the money maps out if we only include ZIP codes that gave at least $250,000:Finally, the last map shows ZIP codes that have spent at least $500,000 on this year's federal elections. Note how the northern and eastern neighborhoods of greater Seattle dominate the state map, while south Seattle and south King County, typically more diverse and less wealthy than areas to their north, have fallen off the map. (Zoom out to see the two ZIP codes in Clark County that also gave more than $500,000.)People can try to exercise or gain political power in any number of ways: voting, volunteering and spending money, to name a few. With rising inequality and fewer restrictions on in the influx of cash into our federal system of elections, it's gotten easier to use cash in pursuit of political power.Even so, few people exercise that power.Washington has 3.85 million registered voters, with some 3 million of them expected to cast votes in this election. That's about 40 times the number of Washingtonians who have made campaign contributions -- of any size -- this election cycle, according to Federal Elections Commission data. At least as far as federal campaign contributions go, it appears that political power in Washington state is concentrated in a small number of hands. And a very small number of ZIP codes.PostscriptYou may have noticed that some areas are unshaded in all the maps. Those areas either made no federal campaign contributions, made none that could be assigned to the two major parties or (in a few instances) were simply missing from the U.S. Census Bureau geographic data we used to generate these maps. All maps were produced by KUOW using Federal Elections Commission campaign-finance numbers as of Oct. 15, 2012.

  Nov 06, 2012 at 9:44 am