Category Archives: Response
The Spanish oil company, Repsol, had an exploratory well blowout Wednesday morning on Alaska’s remote North Slope, spewing natural gas into the frigid Arctic air for several hours and blasting more than 40,000 gallons of toxic drilling mud out through a diverter pipe. The good news is none of the 76 workers were injured. The bad news is it was a well blowout (not to overlook the obvious), and it [...]
Read More »On April 22, 2010, top BP officials knew that the crippled Macondo Well would release roughly 82,000 barrels of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico if the leak was unobstructed. An oil spill expert with impeccable credentials had told them so. Yet, two days later, as the federal government was scrambling to mobilize an effective response to the unfolding disaster, BP announced publicly that the well was leaking [...]
Read More »Warning: You may want to hold off on booking that Gulf Coast vacation – because the beaches aren’t as clean or safe as official reports indicate. According to a whistleblower lawsuit filed in New Orleans, BP cleanup crews intentionally left oil debris on Mississippi beaches while company officials falsely reported that the areas were adequately cleaned. (So much for public safety.) The lawsuit alleges that BP fired August Walter Jr. [...]
Read More »It’s official: The White House engaged in an aggressive campaign to pressure scientists into drastically underestimating the initial size of the BP oil spill – a campaign that impacted the scope, speed and overall effectiveness of the response. There are also legal ramifications, as fines are to be levied against BP based on how much oil is estimated to have been released into the Gulf of Mexico. Here’s how Mother [...]
Read More »There goes the neighborhood. America’s second-largest U.S. oil refiner, ConocoPhillips, is moving onto a beautiful 23,650-acre lot in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPRA) – a pristine area once described as “the largest tract of undisturbed public land in the United States.” It will soon be “undisturbed” no more. Conoco’s move represents the first time the NPRA – home to wolves, grizzly bears, wolverines, migratory birds and half a [...]
Read More »Yes, it’s happened again. In another costly example of the untenable risks tied to deep-water drilling, Shell is reporting a 13,000-gallon spill less than 30 miles from where the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank to the seafloor last year triggering the worst oil spill in our nation’s history. From a Dec. 19 Reuters report: The U.S. Coast Guard was investigating a 13,000-gallon spill from an oil rig leased to [...]
Read More »
