It was two years ago today that the Deepwater Horizon—a top-of-the-line offshore drilling rig owned by BP and run by …
Deepwater Horizon
Nearly Two Years On, Did the BP Oil Spill Have to Happen to BP?
The Deepwater Horizon oil spill seems to divide people into two categories: those who can’t forget, and those who refuse to remember. In the first camp are Gulf Coast residents and environmentalists who say the region still …
Oil Spill: Why the BP Settlement Is Just the Beginning of the End
Lawyers representing the oil giant BP on one side, and more than 100,000 Gulf Coast residents on the other, were set to show up at the court of U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier on Monday morning. There they would have begun …
Petrol Politics: How Much Should an Oil Spill Cost?
How serious should the penalties for an oil spill be? In early November, Chevron and its drilling partner Transocean accidentally spilled some 3,000 barrels of oil into the ocean off the coast of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. As oil …
Debunking a Few Myths About Oil and Gas Prices
After rising and rising in recent months, oil prices have taken a sudden fall over the past couple of days, sliding beneath $100 a barrel. What happened? Representative Michael Burgess, a Republican from Texas, has an idea:
“What happened yesterday? Oh, the House passed a bill,” Burgess said.
“Here we are in the Senate
…
On Earth Day, Contemplating the Human Cost of Energy
April 20, the one-year anniversary of the beginning of the Gulf oil spill, has no shortage of news events. Environmentalists and fishermen along the Gulf coast offered tours of the shoreline, to show the spots where the oil still remained. BP—with its impeccable sense of timing—lodged a $40 billion lawsuit against Transocean, the …
A Year After the Oil Spill, the Gulf is Recovering—But Doubts Remain
I have a Going Green piece up on the mainpage that examines the ecological impact of the BP oil spill on the Gulf and its coast, a year after the Deepwater Horizon sunk. The verdict: so far the environmental damage seems much less than many scientists feared initially, thanks to an aggressive response, hungry bacteria and a lot of good …
A New Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico—and Insight into the Causes of the Old Spill
While the world’s attention has been fixed on the nuclear crisis in Japan, we’re fast coming upon the one-year anniversary of another major environmental disaster: the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Though opinions are still divided on just how much damage the spill has caused—and may continue to cause—the Gulf community is …
BP Doesn’t Want to Pay Full Price for Oil Spill Damages
You may remember, back when the oil was still gushing into the Gulf of Mexico in June, that then BP-CEO Tony Hayward apologized for the oil spill and promised that the company would “make this right.” Actually, you don’t have to remember—they made a TV ad about it:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4PGBSptYCI]
Wait, sorry, …
British Lawmakers: No Need To Ban Offshore Drilling
A report by a British parliamentary committee looking into the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster warned on Tuesday that Britain is not ready to handle a spill of the kind suffered by BP in the Gulf of Mexico, but found that a moratorium on drilling around British coasts was unnecessary because British safety standards are “superior to …