When he spoke at a briefing yesterday morning, Coast Guard Admiral Thad W. Allen told reporters that it would be a “very consequential 24 hours.” At the time BP had just connected the new, tighter cap over the blown well and was ready to begin pressure tests that—if successful—would have been one of the last steps to finally stopping …
Oil
Is the Deepwater Drilling Moratorium Worse Than the Oil Spill?
I’ve already asked whether President Obama’s deepwater drilling moratorium is a smart policy, given the fact that it won’t do much unless we attack oil demand at the source. But I still thought that a temporary timeout for certain sorts of deepwater drilling made sense. The Deepwater Horizon accident proved not just that well blowouts …
Oil Spill: The Cap Is On—Now the Test Begins
A brief update on BP’s containment procedures while I wait for the presidential oil spill commission to begin its second day of hearings here in New Orleans. (By the way, you can watch the hearing, which begins at 9 AM Central, here.) Yesterday evening BP managed to successfully connect the new containment cap—the 3 ram stacking …
Obama Issues New Offshore Drilling Moratorium
Frustrated twice by the federal courts—which had overturned his original temporary moratorium on deepwater drilling—President Obama Monday evening decided to do what most of us have probably wanted to do when denied by someone in a position of authority: he went ahead anyway. (Sometimes it’s good to be President.) Interior Secretary …
Oil Spill Containment Update: The Pressure’s On
Greetings from New Orleans, where I’m about 1200 miles closer to BP’s complex containment procedures above the site of the Deepwater Hozion sinking—yet I’m pretty much still dependent on subsea camera web feeds like the rest of you. I’m here to check out how the spill—and the cleanup—are progressing, and how the community is …
Could BP Cap the Well Early?
Of course, when we say “early,” it is important to remember that we’ve now passed Day 80 of the oil spill, and up to 150 million gallons of crude have already leaked into the Gulf of Mexico, if not more. But BP may be close to finally ending the leak. On Saturday, the company began a complex multi-day operation that involves removing the …
Cleaning Up on the Oil Spill
We keep hearing about the economic devastation that the oil spill will cause—and for Gulf fishermen and BP shareholders, that’s certainly true. But there are some companies specializing in oil spill cleanup that will be making a mint off the biggest environmental disaster in U.S. history. In this week’s TIME paper edition—oh, and …
Is a Deepwater Drilling Moratorium Smart?
Government lawyers will be in a federal appeals court in New Orleans today, fighting to reinstate a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling. The temporary ban—put in place by President Obama after the BP spill to give a presidential commission time to reevaluate the safety of deepwater drilling—was overturned last month by a …
The Oil Spill and the Perils of Losing Trust
Last week the Coast Guard sent out an announcement to the media: from now on there would be a 20-meter safety zone established around all protective shoreline boom, booming operations and general oil spill response operations taking place in southeast Louisiana. Any ship that comes with 20-meters of the boom could be liable for up to …
BP’s Safety Problems Began Long Before the Oil Spill
As the oil spill has worsened, reporters have dug into BP’s company policies, demonstrating that the energy company often put profits well before safety throughout many parts of its operations. Exhibit A in that case was always a 2005 fire in BP’s creaking Texas City refinery, which killed 15 people—four more than died in the Deepwater …