EcocentricWildlife
Burma is best known to the West as the home of one of the most repressive military regimes in the world, a country where more than 2,100 political prisoners remain behind bars. The U.S. has strict economic sanctions against Burma—a policy President Obama just renewed last week—and the country’s most famous citizen, democratic icon …
EcocentricOil
That’s what BP reported early Wednesday morning, in what the company called a “significant milestone.” BP stopped pumping heavy mud into the blown well around eight hours after beginning on Tuesday afternoon, saying that the procedure had achieved its “desired outcome.” Here’s part of the press release from BP:
The well is now being
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EcocentricOil
The “static kill” is so called because that’s what BP aims to create—a static situation within its blown well, one where the drilling mud the company is currently pumping into the well offsets the pressure in the reservoir itself. If BP’s Houston-based drilling engineers want some advice on how to create a static situation, however, …
EcocentricOil
After the oil spill, BP promised to make the Gulf right—and a big part of that was going to be its claims process. Gulf residents affected by the spill—like fisherman who could no longer fish, or seafood restaurant owners whose business had cratered— could visit one of BP’s 25 claims centers sprinkled throughout the Gulf coast …
EcocentricOil
We’ll be debating the long-term environmental impact of the BP oil spill for years, if not decades. But we can know one thing for sure right now: the spill is exacting psychological harm on the people of the Gulf coast.
That’s the conclusion of the first major survey of Gulf coast residents conducted since the well was capped on July …
EcocentricOil
From the very beginning of the BP oil spill—when reporters were told that there probably was no oil spill at all—the people in charge have consistently underestimated the size of the spill. After that initial mistake, BP told us that oil was flowing at about 1,000 barrels a day from the blown well. (Each barrel contains about 42 …
EcocentricOil
With the coastal cleanup apparently downshifting and BP in the final stages of preparing for a static kill operation to help close the well, we may all soon need something new to obsess/post about. But the battle on the spill is actually just shifting fronts—from the Gulf coast and wetlands that have been the focus of coverage and …
EcocentricUncategorized
The Amazonian rainforest isthe planet’s respiratory system–the more than 1 billion acres of trees help regulate the climate and produce more than 20% of the Earth’s oxygen. And that’s why one of the biggest fears surrounding climate change is the possibility of what’s known as Amazon dieback–the risk that higher temperatures and …
EcocentricOil
With the well capped and surface oil fast disappearing from the Gulf of Mexico, the response to the BP spill seems ready to move to a new phase—and possibly a less intense one. Right now BP is preparing to begin the static kill, a procedure that involves pumping heavy drilling mud down through the cap over the wellhead, followed by …
EcocentricOil
Over on the main page, TIME’s Michael Grunwald has a contrarian take on the Gulf oil spill. Far from being the greatest environmental catastrophe in American history—as everyone from President Obama to, well, me has said—Grunwald reports that the damage seems to have been limited. The number of bird kills is far lower than those …
