You can’t get much more remote than New Zealand—Auckland is over 1,000 miles away from Sydney, which is itself pretty far down there. But doesn’t mean New Zealand is exempt from modern environmental ills. Earlier this month the Liberian-flagged cargo ship Rena ran aground on a reef off New Zealand’s north island, spilling tons of …
oil spill
Government Report Blames BP on Oil Spill. But there’s Plenty of Fault
Federal investigators from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Resource Management and Enforcement (BOERME) finally issued their long-delayed report today on the causes of last year’s Deepwater Horizon blowout and oil spill. The results are not very surprising: BP, and to a lesser extent contractors like Transocean and Halliburton, made …
An Oil Spill Grows in the North Sea. Sound Familiar?
On April 24, 2010, I wrote this about the aftermath of the explosion that took down the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico:
The good news is that this spill looks as though it will be largely contained. The Coast Guard reported Friday morning, April 23, that a remote-controlled camera found that oil was not leaking
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Why Oil Exploration in the Arctic Is Another Sign of the Drive for Extreme Energy
Well, there’s one thing you should take away from the Interior Department’s decision yesterday to conditionally allow the oil company Shell to begin drilling exploratory wells in the Arctic Ocean: the Obama Administration is not anti-energy. Despite constant complaining from the energy industry and Republicans in Congress that the White …
An Oily Mess in the Niger Delta
Nigeria is one of the world’s biggest oil producers, pumping 2.6 million barrels a day—a little less than half what the far larger U.S. produces. But Nigeria is also one of the world’s dirtiest oil producers, a place where spills and sabotage are common, and where the money generated by the lucrative oil business hasn’t really …
Will Exxon’s Yellowstone Oil Leak Doom the Chances for a Tar Sands Pipeline?
ExxonMobil has been under a harsh spotlight over the last few days, facing accusations that the company has deliberately downplayed the severity of the Yellowstone River oil spill with misleading information and vague claims about what actually happened. It’s an object lesson in the political risks of owning a pipeline. So the energy …
Groundhog Day: An Oil Giant Spins a Spill
Credibility is a precious thing. Oil giant ExxonMobil did not have much to begin with, but it went even deeper into its scarce reserves in the past few days when a company pipeline spilled oil into a river that runs past the homes of about 6,500 people. Wednesday brought another blow: it turns out ExxonMobil needed almost an hour to …
Another Oil Spill, as ExxonMobil Fouls Montana
Amid the fireworks, parades, and hot dogs of this past Fourth of July weekend was that sinking feeling of déjà vu when news broke that yet another oil spill was oozing across once-clean waters. This time, it wasn’t the Gulf of Mexico, it was Montana; and it wasn’t BP, it was ExxonMobil. On Friday, 1,000 barrels of crude oil (42,000 …
This Summer’s Hurricane Season Is Looking Nasty. Buckle Up
Perhaps the biggest wild card in the response to last year’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was the threat of a major hurricane. The Gulf is a locus for major tropical storms (remember a little downpour called Katrina?), and any time a large storm even threatened the area of water near the spill—where complex operations to shut …
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
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