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 …
oil spill
OIl Spill: Have You Filed a Claim With BP?
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Oil Spill: Cementing the End
More good news on the oil spill front: around 9 A.M. today, BP began pouring cement into the well in the final phase of its static kill procedure. BP had earlier pumped 2,300 barrels of heavy drilling mud into the well—enough to equalize pressure in the reservoir and achieve a static situation, preventing any additional oil from …
Oil Spill: The Static Kill Is a Success
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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Oil Spill: Static Kill on the Well—and Just Static in the Senate
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, …
Oil Spill: The 4.9 Million Barrel Toll
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 …
Oil Spill: Time to Roll Up the Cleanup?
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 …
Oil Spill: How Bad is the Damage?
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 …
The Energy Bill Gets Oiled
Want a laugh? Think back to the end of March, back when people probably thought “Deepwater Horizon” was the title of James Cameron’s next film. President Obama roiled the environmental community by announcing his support for expanded offshore drilling, as part of a broader, more comprehensive energy strategy. Here’s a relevant passage …
Oil Spill: Fixing a Hole
As expected, BP announced this morning that human whipping boy Tony Hayward will be stepping down as CEO, to be replaced in October by the American Bob Dudley. Hayward will be nominated as a nonexecutive director of TNK-BP, the company’s Russian oil and gas venture—meaning that Hayward is literally being exiled to Siberia. (Though …