Sometimes you have to wonder whether the left hand knows what the right hand is doing. That’s definitely the case with BP and its horrific environmental track record here in the Gulf. On one hand, environmental officials continue to tally the damage from the massive BP oil spill that took place more than three and a half years ago, and today even officials who once downplayed the effects of...
Over the last three years, we’ve all seen the public face of the tens of millions of dollars that BP has spent on cleaning up its image — money that would be better spent on cleaning up the environmental carnage in the Gulf. The result has been those cheery ads that you still see on your TV with surprising regularity, friendly faces that speak of the British oil giant’s...
I don’t usually blog about the contentious political doings in Washington, except when they criss-cross the environmental issues, and the abusive power of Big Oil, that I deal with on a regular basis. You probably know that this weekend Congress and the Obama administration are trying to come to terms with the looming shutdown of the federal government if there’s no budget in place by...
There’s a fascinating piece in this week’s New Yorker magazine about the environmentalists behind the battle over the Keystone XL pipeline that aims to transport oil from the Canadian tar sands across the central U.S. to Gulf ports. I’ve joined many others in calling upon President Obama to reject this plan — tar sands oil is a dirty and difficult-to-extract fuel that will...
I rarely get a chance to say this, but the feds are on a roll when it comes to the matter of BP. Although I’ve been quite critical over the last two-and-a-half years of the government’s response to the Deepwater Horizon spill, there’s little to criticize in its recent aggressive posture toward the oil giant and its wanton recklessness that killed 11 workers and caused massive...
Here’s a promised update on the oil rig explosion off the coast of Louisiana on Friday. First and foremost, our thoughts and prayers go out this Thanksgiving week to the loved ones of the two crew members — one confirmed dead, one still listed as missing — who were lost in the tragedy. This is the latest on that front: Black Elk Energy, the owner of an oil platform caught fire...
