Cambodian-Americans in Alabama try to make end meet in the post BP oil-spill

Gallup poll finds depression up 25 percent after oil


Tuesday, September 28, 2010
By JAY REEVES
Associated Press Writer

ORANGE BEACH, Ala. — Before the BP oil spill, the Gulf Coast was a place of abundant shrimping, tourist-filled beaches and a happy if humble lifestyle. Now, it’s home to depression, worry and sadness for many.

A Gallup survey released Tuesday of almost 2,600 coastal residents showed that depression cases are up more than 25 percent since an explosion killed 11 people and unleashed a three-month gusher of crude into the Gulf in April that ruined many livelihoods. The conclusions were consistent with trends seen in smaller studies and witnessed by mental health workers.

People just aren’t as happy as they used to be despite palm trees and warm weather. A “well-being index” included in the Gallup study said many coastal residents are stressed out, worried and sad more often than people living inland, an indication that the spill’s emotional toll lingers even if most of the oil has vanished from view.

Margaret Carruth is among those fighting to hang on.

Her hairstyling business dried up after tourists stopped coming to the beach and locals cut back on nonessentials like haircuts. All but broke and unable to afford rent, Carruth packed her belongings into her truck and a storage shed and now depends on friends for shelter.

“I’m a strong person and always have been, but I’m almost to the breaking point,” says Carruth.

The Gallup survey was conducted in 25 Gulf-front counties from Texas east to Florida over eight months before and after the spill, ending Aug. 6.

The survey found that 19.6 percent of people reported receiving a clinical diagnosis of depression after the spill compared with 15.6 percent before, an increase of 25.6 percent. The study didn’t conclude the additional cases were tied directly to the oil, however.

The survey said people along the Gulf reported feeling sad, worried and stressed after the spill, while people living inland reported less over the same period. Another survey found that more than 40 percent of people in coastal Mississippi reported feeling stress after the BP geyser blew, a 15 percent increase from before.

The survey is part of an ongoing health index survey sponsored by Healthways, a wellness and alternative health care company based in Nashville, Tenn. Respondents were randomly selected and interviewed by telephone, and the survey of coastal residents has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

Steve Barrileaux, a psychologist at the Gulfport center, said some of the problems leading to mental health issues are obvious, like the loss of work by a person who rented chairs on the beach. Others are more subtle.

Many people are deeply worried about the environment, for instance, or lament the lost moments they would have spent fishing recreationally with loved ones.

Others are still afraid to eat seafood, even on the coast where livelihoods depend on it.

“What’s scary is the long-term damage that can be done, and we just don’t know about that,” Barrileaux said.

Chanthy Prak frets constantly about how to make ends meet in the post-spill world.

Prak worked in crab houses around Bayou La Batre, Ala., before the oil hit. She and her husband, another seafood worker displaced by the spill, have received only $5,000 in claims payments since May to support them and their seven children.

“I worry. There’s money going out but no money coming in,” said the Cambodia native.

In some areas, higher rates of mental problems appear to have little to do with the oil.

At Lakeview Center, which provides mental health services in Pensacola calls have increased to a crisis intervention line compared to 2009, but relatively few people have mentioned the oil spill as the reason they need help, said spokeswoman Karen Smith.

Psychologists believe the uptick is most likely linked to the recession, she said.

BP says oil has stopped leaking in Gulf of Mexico

The Deepwater Horizon oil leak has been stopped, according to BP. Photo: EPA

Oil stopped flowing into the Gulf of Mexico last night for the first time since the BP oil rig disaster in April.

15 Jul 2010
By Robert Winnett in Washington
Telegraph (UK)

BP announced that it had capped the well which has leaked millions of gallons of oil, blighting the southern United States since the Deepwater Horizon disaster earlier this year. A live video feed of the well shows no oil flowing.

Barack Obama welcomed the "positive sign", although he stressed that the new cap was still in the "testing phase".

Deepwater Horizon oil spill stopped, say BPThe US President said he would make a further statement on the situation on Friday, once more extensive tests had been carried out.

Although the well has been temporarily capped, it is not yet clear that the crisis is over and the next few days will be crucial.

BP engineers are closely monitoring the pressure building up beneath the cap in the well. There is concern that the well may rupture elsewhere. Oil may be released from the well again in the coming days to test the pressure build-up.

Next month, BP hopes to establish a separate relief well which will tap the underwater oil reservoir and should provide a permanent solution to the crisis.

BP shares rose by more than seven per cent when the news was announced minutes before the New York stock exchange closed.

However, BP is now under intense pressure in America over its potential involvement in another scandal - the release of Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber.

BP issued a statement on Thursday in which the oil giant admitted that it had lobbied the British government to introduce a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya. BP is about to start drilling for oil in the north African country.

Politiktoons No. 104: The Global Soccer Player

Cartoon by Sacrava (on the web at http://politiktoons.blogspot.com
and also at http://sacrava.blogspot.com)

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Cartoon by Sacrava (on the web at http://politiktoons.blogspot.com
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Gulf oil spill: Cambodian cleanup workers speak out

June 8, 2010
Los Angeles Times (California, USA)

Sachi Cunningham, a Los Angeles Times videographer, has shot a remarkable nine-minute video on the lives of Cambodian fishermen hired to clean up BP’s massive oil spill. This vivid tale unfolded over the course of a week at sea in the Gulf of Mexico and at port in Louisiana (see above).

Cunningham delved into the subject after attending a meeting of concerned Vietnamese and Cambodian fishermen in Buras, La., a remote bayou community that is home to about 2,000 Southeast Asian immigrants.

Phan Plork, a 42-year-old shrimper who is featured in the video, was in charge of 15 boats that left from Venice, La., 17 days after the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.

After the first night at sea, 11 of the boats returned to Buras to wait out a storm (the others waited at sea). The shrimp boats are built to work in the bay rather than in open water, where the bulk of the spilled oil is located. As a result, Plork and his fleet spent much of their time waiting out bad weather or waiting to get refueled.

Frustrations abounded.

"We spent an entire day at dock in Empire, La., waiting for BP to wire money to a gas station, only to learn at the end of the day that they would instead have to refuel in Venice," Cunningham said.

In Buras, Cunningham met Neng Pum, who lives on a boat with her boyfriend. Neng introduced her to Rithy Om, another a Cambodian refugee, whose son and daughter-in-law had moved to Buras from San Diego with their two young sons in order to shrimp this season. Instead, like their neighbor Phan, they are out in the gulf cleaning up BP's oil.

"I wanted to share all of their stories but focused on Phan since he was a leader in the Cambodian community and was among the first to get out to sea," Cunningham says. "After 11 days of work, the six bags of partially oil-soaked booms that you see in the video are all that Phan and his boat collected."

Later, she caught up with Tommy Berthelot, a longtime shrimper who was part of Phan's fleet and appears in the video during his last break. Berthelot told Cunningham that once their collecting technique improved, they were pulling in two or three times as much oil, but the video illustrated how difficult the task is.

"We don't know anything about cleaning up oil until yesterday," Phan says in the video. Phan would have started the season in May, bringing in enough money to support his wife, five children and granddaughter. Instead, he is getting paid half the amount for an unknown period of time.

But Phan knows this is "a take-it-or-leave-it deal" and will do what he needs to in order to make money while shrimping is prohibited.

Last week, Phan was near Pensacola, Fla., cleaning up the spill. His wife, Tal, did not know when he would be home next but said they were away for weeks at a time.

"Every day I just pray for everybody," says Tal, who worries about the safety of her husband and the other fishermen. No one know what the health effects of the spill will be for workers such as Phan.

Mike Berthelot, Tommy's father, is upset that so many boats were still waiting to get called to work on the cleanup rather than bringing in shrimp.

"It won't recover in my lifetime," Berthelot told Cunningham. "This is the beginning of the end."

-- Margot Roosevelt

They've struck oil, but they're not rich

Video by Sachi Cunningham
Los Angeles Times

Shrimping was Phan Plork's passion, and his livelihood ­until an oil gusher fouled the waters off the Louisiana coast. Now, Plork, 42, a Cambodian refugee, goes out on the Gulf of Mexico to lay boom as part of the cleanup effort. BP pays $1,500 a day for his boat and crew, half what he made before. "I'd rather shrimp," he said. "The sooner the better."

Click the following link to watch the video:

Video: They've struck oil, but they're not rich - latimes.com

Politiktoons No. 99: Oil Spill

Cartoon by Sacrava (on the web at http://politiktoons.blogspot.com
and also at http://sacrava.blogspot.com)

BP halts oil and gas exploration in VN due to territorial dispute between Hanoi and Beijing

BP halts Viet exploration plan

15-Jun-07
Tom Bergin and Chen Aizhu
Reuters
LONDON/BEIJING

Hanoi row with China, Taiwan over group of islands cited

BP PLC has halted plans to conduct exploration work off the southern Vietnamese coast due to a territorial dispute between Hanoi and China, the oil and gas firm said on Wednesday.

"In the circumstances, we felt we had to suspend the planned seismic surveys of Block 5.2 in order to give the governments involved the opportunity to resolve the issue," spokesman David Nicholas told Reuters.

The block is about 370km offshore, between Vietnam and the Spratly Islands, a string of rocky outcrops in the South China Sea, suspected of containing large oil and gas deposits, which are claimed by Vietnam, China and Taiwan.

In April, after Vietnam said it planned to hold local elections on the islands, the Chinese foreign ministry said Vietnam was stirring up trouble by agreeing with BP and its partners to develop the area.

Vietnam replied that the US$2 billion ($3.1 billion) natural gas field and pipeline project was within the bounds of its sovereignty.

Nicholas said BP's gas production, fuel distribution and power operations in Vietnam were unaffected. He said BP had not expected to bring Block 5.2 or neighbouring Block 5.3 onstream for "some years".

US oil major ConocoPhillips and Petrovietnam are partners in the exploration block.

Vietnam has traditionally been wary of its larger Asian neighbour and in 1979 the two countries fought a brief border war after Vietnam occupied Cambodia and overthrew the murderous Khmer Rouge regime backed by Beijing.

Beijing and Hanoi normalised relations in 1991.

In 1988, China and Vietnam fought a brief naval battle near one of the Spratly Island reefs in which more than 70 Vietnamese sailors died. But tensions have eased considerably in recent years as relations improve.

A source said French oilfield service group CGGVeritas had been hired to conduct the 3D seismic survey works, using its vessel Orion.