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...
There’s nothing like an impending trial to prompt defendants to cut their losses and settle out of court. We’re seeing the front-end of that legal phenomenon today with Cameron International – the maker of the (poorly named) “blowout preventer” that failed to stop last year’s 200-million-gallon Gulf oil spill – agreeing to settle with BP for $250 million. With the...
Thanks to courageous regulators in Colorado, the American public will get its first real look behind the curtain at the closely held “chemical recipe” used by natural gas drillers in the highly controversial extraction process known as fracking. The increasingly widespread practice – involving the high-pressure injection of water, sand and a secret mix of toxic chemicals deep into the...
It’s a hauntingly familiar sight: Airplanes buzzing over the Gulf of Mexico spraying toxic dispersant in a flight path from Breton Sound bearing southeast to the Macondo Prospect, the epicenter of last year’s monster oil spill. Yet despite these regular Corexit sprayings, the oil slicks and sheen persist – visible from the air – in the waters surrounding the Deepwater Horizon site...
So who is ultimately responsible for the worst oil spill in U.S. history? BP, the owner of the oil itself, assigns blame to Halliburton, the company that did the cement work on the doomed Macondo Well. And not unexpectedly, Halliburton points the finger back at BP. As the blame game gets set to go to trial in New Orleans early next year, a bombshell legal motion filed Monday by BP in U.S...
Against a backdrop of damaged fisheries and a looming oil spill trial, BP is doubling “final settlement” offers to commercial crabbers and shrimpers who have had their livelihoods destroyed by the Gulf oil spill. It seems BP has joined the rest of the world in realizing the once-thriving Gulf seafood industry is in tatters, and will remain that way for years. Although on its face the...
Eight months after the crippled Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant belched enormous plumes of radiation over the Japanese countryside, a new study reveals severely stunted growth in children living in the fallout zone. Those findings coupled with another alarming piece of news from the Tokyo Times – “Radiation affects 8 percent of Japan’s territory” – indicate that tens of thousands of...
The long-term viability of the Gulf’s bottlenose dolphin population is in jeopardy. Two more dead dolphins – juveniles, under a year in age – washed up on the beach in Gulfport, Mississippi, over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. That pushed the body count to five in just the last week on Mississippi and Alabama beaches hit hard by last year’s colossal oil spill. From Margaret...
Finally, some answers. After months of trying to make the fresh oil surfacing at the Deepwater Horizon site a “nonissue,” BP has finally copped to what’s really happening at ground zero of last year’s massive oil spill – where just last week, flyover surveillance footage captured a small fleet of large “oil-related” vessels working the waters. It’s hard...
There are many tragic layers to BP’s 200-million-gallon Gulf oil spill, but perhaps the most haunting is that we should have seen it coming, and we should have done more to prevent it. A procession of egregious BP management and safety violations leading up to the spring of 2010 – with laughable slap-on-the-wrist consequences – made a disaster in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico almost...
