While the rest of us wait to see whether a brewing storm will bring oil spill containment and cleanup on BP’s spill to a halt—just when the endgame had begun—the oil industry is moving on. Yesterday four of the biggest oil companies announced they were committing $1 billion to build a rapid-response system to cleanup deepwater oil …
Energy
Oil Spill: How Will the Weather Play in the Well Endgame?
Time to play good news/bad news on the Gulf spill once again. Good news: retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad W. Allen told reporters today that he was all but ready to authorize BP’s static kill procedure, which would involve pumping mud in through the containment cap, and that it could begin within 48 hours. If it works, the procedure …
European Coal Mines Lose Subsidies
It has long been said of renewable energy sources that they cannot survive without subsides. But the dirty secret of fossil fuels is that they, too, receive tax payer support—even in environmentally friendly Europe.
On Wednesday, the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, announced that state subsidies for …
Oil Spill: Debating the Static Kill
Like recovering alcoholics who’ve just come out of an AA meeting, the joint BP-government team overseeing the well containment efforts is taking it one day at a time. At his afternoon briefing, retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad W. Allen announced that he had authorized BP to keep the containment cap shut and the well integrity tests going …
How Safe is Gulf Seafood?
Bringing Together the World’s Energy Ministers for Clean Power
As I write this, the first Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM) is getting underway in Washington, with opening remarks from Energy Secretary Steven Chu—apparently taking a short break from uncovering problems in BP’s well capping procedures. (You can watch a live webcast of the meeting here.) The two-day meeting—yesterday’s session was …
Oil Spill: The Well Holds—For Now
In my last post on the oil spill—and trust me, I’ve long since lost count—I asked whether reports of seepages on the seafloor and anomalies near the wellhead indicated that the integrity tests that BP had been carrying might have damaged the well itself, causing leakages. Turns out I didn’t have to wait long for my answer—at a …
Military Veterans Against the Oil Spill
Didn’t get a chance to link to this earlier, but on the way back from New Orleans on Friday I wrote and posted a piece on the mainpage about a trip I took to see the oil spill with military veterans from Operation Free. It’s a new think tank/advocacy group that is making the oil dependency and climate change case on national security …
Oil Spill: For Now the Pressure Holds
Quick update on BP’s well containment efforts while I’m waiting for the weather to clear in Louisiana, where the sky is leaking like a blown well. After shutting the containment cap yesterday afternoon and closing off the flow of oil, BP began pressure testing the integrity of the wellbore. About 18 hours after they began, BP vice …
Oil Spill: BP Caps the Leak (For Now)—But the Hard Part is Just Beginning
When I heard that BP has successfully close all the valves on its new containment cap Thursday afternoon—effectively stopping the flow of oil for the first time in nearly three months as it began its well integrity tests—I was at a town meeting in Port Sulphur in Louisiana’s Plaquemines parish, ground zero for the oil spill. Kenneth …