EcocentricOil
We’ve learned so many wonderful new terms during the more than four-month old BP oil spill: top kill, static kill, bottom kill, Corexit, junk shot. It’s time to add one more: Oceanospirillales. That’s that name of an order of proteobacteria that are currently chowing down on the plumes of underwater oil created by the spill—and …
EcocentricOil
Twice over the past month and a half I’ve sat with groups in Louisiana and Florida while Kenneth Feinberg—the booming Boston lawyer who is running the multi-billion dollar oil spill compensation fund—made his pitch. The audiences couldn’t have been more different—worried and wary fisherman in the tiny Louisiana village of Port …
EcocentricOil
For all the attention over undersea oil plumes and seafood toxicity and depressed Gulf residents, it’s easy to forget that this well technically still hasn’t been killed. And now it looks like the final end of BP’s cursed Macondo well won’t be happening any time soon.
After days of struggling over how to deal with concrete that had …
EcocentricOil
Sorry for the light posting—between travel and the constant stream of studies coming out on the oil spill, much of my work is going straight to the mainpage at Time.com. Like this one—a piece on a new study out in today’s Science#mce_temp_url# that has conclusive evidence of underwater oil plumes. And more worrying, the oil there is …
EcocentricOil
We’ve sent a lot of criticism BP’s way during the past four months of the oil spill, so it’s only fair to give notice when they do the right thing. After weeks of experts calling attention to the potential problems—and states like Louisiana asking for fund—BP announced that it would provide $52 million for behavioral health programs …
EcocentricOil
The White House announced today that all new deepwater drilling will require environmental reviews. What’s that you say? You assume an activity as transparently fraught with danger and risk as deepwater oil and natural gas drilling, one where human or mechanical errors can lead to major environmental damage, that an activity like that …
EcocentricOil
How sealed does a well have to be before it’s considered sealed? That seems to be the question BP and its accompanying team of government scientists are grappling with as the active phase of the Gulf oil spill appears to enter its final days. Yesterday retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen announced that BP was holding off on finishing …
EcocentricOil
For weeks now, retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen has been very clear: BP’s blown well would be considered fully fixed when the relief well was finally completed. “This well will not be killed until we do the bottom kill,” Allen said last week.
But it turns out that might not be true. As we reported yesterday, the final phase of …
EcocentricOil
You know, I’m going to miss these almost daily updates of well-capping procedures performed by robots 5,000 ft. under the surface of the Gulf of Mex…
No, I’m not. If I never hear another piece of vaguely violent drilling jargon—top kill, bottom kill, static kill—it will be too soon. It’s gotten to the point where I’m hearing …
EcocentricOil
BP’s compensation claims process for Gulf residents and businesses affected by the oil spill has had some serious problems. Residents are saying that the company has been slow to pay, that the forms disappear into a bureaucratic void, and that the criteria of who qualifies and who doesn’t is anything but clear. For journalists covering …
