Oil-spill cleanup yields treasures

CAMINADA HEADLAND, La. - Cleanup after the BP oil spill has turned up dozens of sites where archaeologists are finding human and animal bones, pottery, and primitive weapons left behind by prehistoric Indian settlements - a trove of new clues about the Gulf Coast's mound dwellers more than 1,300 years ago.

Company seeking permission to build new pipeline underestimates worst case spill

The company that is seeking permission to build a new crude oil pipeline between Canada and the U.S. Gulf Coast has wildly underestimated the damage that could occur in a worst case spill scenario, a University of Nebraska researcher warned this week.

Even a small, undetected leak from an underground rupture of the pipeline in the Nebraska Sandhills could pollute almost 5 billion gallons of groundwater with benzene at concentrations exceeding safe drinking water levels,” University of Nebraska researcher John Stansbury said.

BP Oil Still Washing Ashore One Year After Spill

The pollution consists of “a light sheen and tar balls of all shapes and sizes,” Zink said in an interview yesterday. “For roughly the first year, it was heavy, moderate to light oiling.”

The latest survey in Louisiana by the agency found 5 milesof beaches and 8 miles of marsh heavily oiled, according toresults provided by Zink. The July survey covered almost 4,300miles of shoreline in the four states.

Oil spill aftermath: 'Drill, baby, drill' era may be gone forever

The Gulf oil spill was capped a year ago Friday, but offshore drilling is still far off its pre-spill pace. With a new regulatory agency putting a greater emphasis on safety, the industry might have to adjust to a new normal. The centerpiece of those reforms was abolishing the federal agency that previously oversaw offshore drilling and replacing it with a new one, BOEMRE. And to those in the oil industry, BOEMRE's regulations – seen as too cumbersome and lined with uncertainty – are the problem.

BP Wants to Stop Paying Claims

NEW ORLEANS — BP is arguing that victims of last year’s Gulf oil spill should not be paid any more claims for future losses because the areas affected by the spill have recovered and the economy is improving and claims that at some times it has paid victims more than is allowed under the federal Oil Pollution Act.

“Multiple lines of evidence demonstrate that, to the extent that portions of the Gulf economy were impacted by the spill, recovery had occurred by the end of 2010, and that positive economic performance continues into 2011, with 2011 economic metrics exceeding pre-spill performance,” the BP document said.
The Associated Press July 8, 2011

Spill documentary 'The Big Fix' screens in Cannes

CANNES, France (AP) — A provocative documentary screened Tuesday at the Cannes Film Festival argues that the human and environmental devastation of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has been covered up by authorities eager to return to business as usual.

"The Big Fix," by husband-and-wife American directors Josh and Rebecca Tickell, features interviews with Louisiana fishing families whose livelihoods and health have been hit by the spill, then expands into a sweeping critique of American capitalism.

Big Oil struggles with image problem over Gulf spill and high gas prices

As the global offshore oil and gas industry meets in Houston this week, leaders say they are aware the reputation of their business is still bruised after the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill and that motorists and politicians are fuming over $4 gasoline prices. But they cautioned Washington against overreaching with new regulation and taxes, stressing the enormity of the challenge ahead in meeting the world's surging energy needs.

"We cannot afford to have emotions control business and policy decisions," Zuhair Hussain, vice president of Saudi Aramco's drilling and workover unit, said during a panel discussion Tuesday at the 2011 Offshore Technology Conference.

 

BP Fined $25 million for 2006 Alaska spills

The British oil company at the center of last year's Gulf of Mexico spill will pay a $25 million penalty for the largest oil spill ever on Alaska's North Slope and spend an additional $60 million upgrading its oversight of corroded pipelines in Alaska.

What if the Oil Spill Never happened?

Oil'd from Chris Harmon on Vimeo.

Dead dolphin calves found in Mississippi, Alabama

GULFPORT, Mississippi -- A worrisome number of dead baby dolphins has been discovered on Mississippi and Alabama beaches this month, said scientists who study the species. Solangi said, "In the 20 years of data that I've kept and the 30 years of my history, I have not seen these calves dying in these numbers in these two months of January and February." There are 3,000 to 5,000 dolphins in the waters off Mississippi and Alabama, he said. "They are at the top of the food chain," Solangi said. "They are the biological indicator of the environment. If they are healthy, the environment is healthy."

Dolphins Dying In Oil Soaked Gulf

Baby dolphins are washing up dead along the oil-soaked US Gulf Coast at more than 10 times the normal rate in the first birthing season since the BP disaster, researchers said. Some 17 baby dolphin corpses have been found along the shorelines of Alabama and Mississippi in the past two weeks, The Institute for Marine Mammal Studies said.

Scientist finds Gulf bottom oily, dead

WASHINGTON – Oil from the BP spill remains stuck on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, according to a top scientist's video and slides that she says demonstrate the oil isn't degrading as hoped and has decimated life on parts of the sea floor. That report is at odds with a recent report by the BP spill compensation czar that said nearly all will be well by 2012.

BP oil well "dead" 5 months after spill began

The blown-out well at the heart of the worst oil spill in U.S. history has been cemented shut and is "effectively dead," the federal government's point man for the disaster said Sunday. "Additional regulatory steps will be undertaken but we can now state, definitively, that the Macondo well poses no continuing threat to the Gulf of Mexico," former Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen announced.

Broader dangers of deep water drilling go unscrutinized

Even as regulators investigate the causes of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the broader dangers posed by the industry’s push into deeper waters have gone largely unscrutinized. “Our ability to manage risks hasn’t caught up with our ability to explore and produce in deep water,” said Edward C. Chow, a former industry executive who is now a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The question now is, how are we going to protect against a blowout as well as all of the other associated risks offshore?”
http://www.nytimes.com, Aug 30, 2010

Obama in New Orleans: Man on a wire

"We are going to stand with you until the oil is cleaned up, the environment is restored, polluters are held accountable, communities are made whole and this region is back on its feet," Obama said.

Turtle Today

Behind the Spill, Acrimony and Stress

Interviews with BP engineers and technicians, contractors and Obama administration officials who, with the eyes of the world upon them, worked to stop the flow of oil, suggest that the process was also far more stressful, hair-raising and acrimonious than the public was aware of.
New York Times Aug 27, 2010

Tons of Gulf waste headed for landfills

NEW ORLEANS — The cleanup of history's worst peacetime oil spill is generating thousands of tons of oil-soaked debris that is ending up in local landfills, some of which were already dealing with environmental concerns. The soft, absorbent boom that has played the biggest role in containing the spill alone would measure more than twice the length of California's coastline, or about 2,000 miles. More than 50,000 tons of boom and oily debris have made their way to landfills or incinerators, federal officials told The Associated Press, representing about 7 percent of the daily volume going to nine area landfills.
Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press.
August 25, 2010

A Gulf Science Blackout

Opinion: Linda Hooper-Bui

THE Deepwater Horizon blowout may be capped and the surface oil slick dispersed, but the scientists’ job has just begun: hundreds of us are working in and around the gulf to determine the long-term environmental impact of the drilling disaster. Although we are all doing needed research, we’re not receiving equal money or access to the affected sites. Those working for BP or the federal government’s Natural Resource Damage Assessment program are being given the bulk of the resources, while independent researchers are shoved aside.

New York Times, Aug 25, 2010

Linda Hooper-Bui is a professor of entomology at Louisiana State University.

Media said to have over-reacted to spill

Paul Voosen and Allison Winter, give a clear-headed, unemotional assessment of the situation, with no alarmism. If the rest of the media had taken that tack from the beginning, this oil spill would not rank as the most disgraceful episode of the millennium in the mass media.
When it comes to the Gulf oil spill, the media have done the exact opposite. First the media exaggerated the possible effects of the spill beyond all proportion. Then when those alarmist scenarios failed to materialize and the oil disappeared in record time, no one in the media admitted getting it all wrong. Instead they convinced the boobs that the oil is still lurking out there creating all sorts of potential hazards.