Each year, tons of oil can be spilled into the ocean. Whether it comes from an oil tank spill, a leak that occurs during offshore drilling, or even natural seeps that occur within the ocean, oil spills can cause grave environmental and economic damage to marine and coastal ecosystems.
Deepwater Horizon
Fire is burning on a gas rig in the Gulf of Mexico, 55 miles off the Louisiana coast, in the same general area as the infamous Deepwater Horizon disaster.
44 workers have been evacuated from the platform. The rig is in the Gulf of Mexico which is where the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in 2010, leaking
The tragic 2010 blowout at the BP Deepwater Horizon oil platform left the United States and world in shock, as massive quantities of crude oil streamed unabated from the undersea well. Everyone looked on as scientific experts helplessly tried for three months to plug a hole one-half mile below the water surface. The blowout was finally ceased when a new well was drilled
Two years ago, an explosion on BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling platform killed 11 workers and marked the beginning of a prolonged environmental disaster now acknowledged as the worst in American history. Before the Macondo well was finally capped, more than two hundred million gallons of crude oil had gushed into the Gulf of Mexico, killing untold
Some recent stories in the press have attempted to paint a picture that an agreement on energy issues signed during the President’s trip to Brazil shows a lack of commitment to domestic oil and gas production. Let’s be clear – this administration is committed to developing a broad range of energy sources, and we
Investigators working to piece together the data that workers on the Deepwater Horizon saw in the rig’s final hours have run into a roadblock, according to a letter sent Monday to the presidential panel’s commissioners.
A company called National Oilwell Varco, an offshore drilling company, provided the
In the aftermath of Deepwater Horizon, BP’s stocks have rallied, Halliburton has been named to the Dow Jones Sustainability Index and many people are wondering if the world has slipped into a self-induced amnesia.
But not Mark Mills, founding partner of Digital Power Capital, a private equity firm that invests in energy-oriented technologies. To Mills, a
(Reuters) – The U.S. government confirmed on Sunday that BP Plc has succeeded in permanently plugged its runaway Macondo well, closing the first chapter in the worst oil spill in U.S. history.
Here are some questions and answers on how things might play out for BP, the U.S. offshore industry and the Gulf’s fragile ecosystem.
Today, a panel of government scientists released a report which said that the vast majority of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill has either evaporated or been burned, skimmed, recovered from the wellhead or dispersed much of which is in the process of being degraded. A significant amount of this is the direct result of the federal government’s aggressive
The same day BP finally threw a cap over their spewing oil well in the Gulf of Mexico (which is expected to be as effective as celebrity rehab) the non-profit Artists & Athletes Alliance held a private discussion with Philippe Cousteau about the epic Gulf disaster. Event attendees, like Jorga Fox, Alyssa Milano, Stephen Baldwin and Jason Mraz, were treated to Cousteau’s inside information about the spill and it’s consequences, and got a rare glimpse of his feisty Irish side when discussing BP, the government, and our dependence on fossil fuels.
Frustrated with the media’s B-level response to the BP oil spill, Cousteau decided it was time for
The companies now threatening to sue BP have only themselves to blame.
Call me a hard-hearted bastard, but I’m finding it difficult to summon up the sympathy demanded by the institutional investors now threatening to sue BP. They claim that the company inflated its share price by misrepresenting its safety record. I don’t know whether this is true, but I do know that the investors did all they could not to find out. They have just been presented with the bill for the years they spent shouting down anyone who questioned the company.
They might not have been warned by BP, but they were warned repeatedly by environmental groups and ethical investment funds. Every year, at BP’s annual general meetings, they were invited to ask the firm to provide more information about the environmental and social risks it was taking. Every year they voted instead for BP to keep them in the dark. While relying on this company for a disproportionate share of
Rep. Ed Markey has been among BP’s toughest critics in Congress following the Deepwater Horizon blowout, accusing it, among other things, of lowballing its estimates of oil flow.
Markey is at it again. As you may have read, the Boston Democrat released an internal BP document that shows that early company estimates for worst-case oil flow scenarios were far higher than the company has ever acknowledged — up to 100,000 barrels per day if all containment mechanisms were to fail. Take a look at the document for yourself.
The document is not dated, but a statement from Rep. Markey that accompanied its release said
In a series of images taken in and around the Gulf of Mexico in late June, a team of independent photographers have documented the ongoing fallout from the Deepwater Horizon spill. Collected as part of the TEDxOilSpill project, the photos — taken from chartered airplanes, fishing boats, and coastal communities across the region — will be shown at a June 28 conference in Washington, D.C. coordinated by TED Conferences, LLC. “From the source to Gulf Shores [Alabama],” says one of the project participants, “we saw oil ranging from sheen to much heavier all the way
The catastrophe unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico has been portrayed as a one-of-a-kind disaster, a perfect storm of bad equipment, bad planning and bad luck.
But it’s far from the only spill that’s taken place this year – or even the only spill occurring in the Gulf right now.
On June 7, the Mobile Press-Register reported that the Ocean Saratoga rig has been leaking into the Gulf since April 30. Interior Department spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff confirmed the next day that “small amounts of oil” were leaking from the wells beneath the rig, about 10 miles from Louisiana’s southeastern coast.