|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
By Steven Hill
$11.01
By Martha Nussbaum
$15.48
$13
|
|
|
|
Abode of Chaos (CC BY 2.0)
|
BP’s record settlement of $4.5 billion for damages caused by the explosion and spill of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in 2010 is the largest criminal fine in U.S. history, but at a fifth of the company’s 2011 profits, to be paid over a span of five years, it amounts to a “pathetic” slap on the wrist, says Public Citizen’s Tyler Slocum.
Posted on Nov 16, 2012
READ MORE 
|
sharkycharming (CC-BY)
|
Responding to criticism from Republicans for supposedly stonewalling development of the nation’s oil supplies, President Obama has ordered the government to accelerate work on a 485-mile Texas-to-Oklahoma portion of the recently rejected 1,170-mile Keystone XL pipeline.
|
U.S. Navy / MC2 Justin E. Stumberg
|
U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier, who will ultimately put a price tag on the worst oil spill in American history if the many lawsuits against BP go to trial, has given the oil giant and its many, many plaintiffs another week to reach a settlement.
|
AP / Gerald Herbert
|
Halliburton just seems to pop up wherever trouble can be found, such as the Bush White House (through Dick Cheney’s chummy history with the company) and also in the ecopocalypse that was the Gulf of Mexico oil spill in April 2010.
|
Flickr / Herkie (CC-BY-SA)
|
Oil-rig operators in the Gulf of Mexico announced Thursday that they would evacuate workers, and a flash-flood watch was issued for New Orleans ahead of a slow-moving storm system that could develop into a cyclone or even a hurricane. (more)
Posted on Sep 1, 2011
READ MORE
|
Flickr / Robert S. Donovan
|
Scientists fear that farm chemicals carried from fields into the Mississippi River by this spring’s record floods will create the largest “dead zone” the Gulf of Mexico has seen since measurements were first taken in 1985. (more)
|
.jpg)
Flickr / mikebaird
|
President Obama will instruct the Interior Department to expedite the sale of oil drilling leases in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve and the Gulf of Mexico, arguing that additional domestic oil production will lower gasoline prices in the long term. (more)
|
|
“The 2010 Gulf of Mexico blowout brought more than oil to the surface,” writes Carl Safina in his new book investigating the impact of the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout.
|
U.S. Coast Guard
|
Even Wall Street executives have to be smacking their heads over this one. The company that ran the Deepwater Horizon oil rig (before it exploded, killing 11 and filling the Gulf of Mexico with oil) has decided to give its executives bonuses for achieving “the best year in safety performance in our company’s history.” There are no words ...
|
The Pug Father (CC-BY)
|
Scientists at the Institute of Marine Mammal Studies are investigating unusually high numbers of stillborn and aborted dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico region. Seventeen infant dolphins have washed up on shore so far this year, compared to an average of one or two a month, says one scientist. (more)
|
Wikimedia Commons / World Economic Forum
|
The BBC gets the ball rolling in this article about four big companies’ sub-stellar performance in 2010, and it should come as no surprise that BP figures in among that unfortunate set. But, dear readers, this list is focused on the UK and Asia—can you think of more from this side of the globe?
|
U.S. Coast Guard / Petty Officer 2nd Class John Miller
|
Attorney General Eric Holder says the government is going after nine companies involved with the Deepwater Horizon spill “for government removal costs, economic losses and environmental damages without limitation.” ... (more)
|
AP / Charles Dharapak
|
British Petroleum is still sloughing off assets to help cover its $40 billion fiasco in the Gulf of Mexico. The oil giant just sold a majority stake in Pan American Energy for $7 billion, putting its running total of recent asset sales at $21 billion.
Posted on Nov 28, 2010
READ MORE
|
AP / Gerald Herbert
|
A government commission looking into last spring’s eco-pocalypse in the Gulf of Mexico has detected a certain “culture of complacency” afoot at the trio of big companies implicated in the spill. Sounds about right.
|
AP
|
A team of scientists “on a research cruise” (what?) have discovered severe damage to coral reefs near the location of the Deepwater Horizon’s blown-out wellhead. Coral, which is a barometer of the health of an ocean’s ecosystem, was found to be “sloughing off tissues and producing mucus.” Gross.
|
U.S. Coast Guard
|
Three of four tests showed that the cement mixture used by Halliburton in the construction of BP’s ill-fated oil well in the Gulf was unstable, but the mixture was used anyway, a presidential commission investigating the disaster has found. The only successful test, which BP did not know about, has since come under suspicion.
|
Flickr / dsearis
|
After clamping down and imposing a ban on offshore drilling in the wake of last spring’s disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced Tuesday that the moratorium is over and, as he put it, “We are open for business.”
|
|
Those nerds at MIT have come up with something really amazing (not the first time). It’s a swarm of autonomous robots that talk to each other as they make their way around a spill, gobbling up the oil. Why didn’t we think of that?
|
NASA
|
It looks like the ruptured oil well in the Gulf of Mexico is officially dead. The procedure to seal the well—or in oil industry terms, to “kill” it—has been pronounced a success, providing an unceremonious end to the spilling of millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf.
|
bbc.co.uk
|
His tenure as BP’s chief executive is almost up, and outgoing CEO Tony Hayward has changed his tune about the effect that last spring’s cataclysmic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico had on him personally, making public statements on Wednesday that sounded ... (continued)
|
AP / Charles Dharapak
|
That whole Gulf of Mexico oil spill thing? It wasn’t just BP’s fault—or so says BP. The oily megacorp released an internal report Wednesday that pointed to “multiple companies and work teams” that also, in BP’s humble estimation, shoulder some of the blame for the disaster.
|
Richard Ellis
|
With all of the hullabaloo surrounding the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the government’s lackluster performance in responding to that crisis, U.S. regulatory agencies have waved the yellow flag in allowing new offshore drilling in the Arctic.
|
AP / Gerald Herbert
|
New estimates of the cost of the BP oil blowout in the Gulf of Mexico have jumped to a staggering $8 billion, up $2 billion in August alone as the company announced it had already paid out almost $400 million in claims to individuals affected by the spill.
|
Wikimedia Commons
|
Just when we all had heard quite enough about man-made problems in the Gulf of Mexico, here comes another: On Thursday, an explosion occurred on an offshore platform called the Vermilion 380, but this time natural gas is the rig’s target resource.
|
Wikimedia Commons / David Shankbone
|
It’s hardly a surprise that Spike Lee would have something provocative to say about a newsy controversy, but Lee doesn’t spare President Obama his criticism over Obama’s handling of the BP oil spill catastrophe ... (continued)
|
Wikimedia Commons
|
Previously undisclosed documents have measured the economic impact of the U.S. federal moratorium on deep-water oil drilling at 23,000 jobs lost and billions of dollars in frozen investment. Federal officials went ahead with the ban, now tied up in court, because they distrusted industry safety equipment and standards.
|
U.S. Coast Guard / Ensign Michael P. McGrew
|
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is raining on Uncle Sam and BP’s well-capping parade. Researchers at the institute say a 22-mile-long, 1.2-mile-wide oil plume deep under the Gulf’s surface is degrading much slower than the government’s more optimistic claims.
|
Flickr / Bryan Brenner (CC-BY)
|
Americans get half of their shrimp from the Gulf of Mexico, but that was before it was contaminated by 190 million gallons of oil and 2 million gallons of chemical dispersant. Shrimp season officially started Monday, but it will be some time before we know whether the ravaged Gulf waters—and American appetites—are up to it.
|
AP / Gerald Herbert
|
The great state of Alabama has announced it will sue BP, Transocean and Halliburton for the “catastrophic harm” that followed from the Deepwater Horizon oil rig blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.
|
AP / Charles Dharapak
|
By this point, many American news consumers are way more up on the intricacies of oil well technology, and the emergency repair strategies associated with same, than they ever thought they’d be—and the fun isn’t over yet.
|
|
Martin Sutovec, Slovakia —
Posted on Jul 28, 2010
READ MORE 
|
bbc.co.uk
|
Will $32.2 billion be enough to foot the bill for the tremendous mess the BP oil spill has made of the Gulf of Mexico? The higher-ups at the oil company seem to think so—at least for now. (continued)
|
Wikimedia Commons / World Economic Forum
|
It’s kind of amazing that BP’s beleaguered CEO, Tony Hayward, is still in play at this point, but he may not last much longer, as the oil company’s board members were slated to debate his fate Monday evening.
|
|
Today on the list: The places that make the Gulf spill look like a national park, Elizabeth Warren (yay) vs. Timothy Geithner (boo), Syria bans the veil, and the strange things men pay prostitutes to do (as if you don’t already know).
Posted on Jul 19, 2010
READ MORE
|
bbc.co.uk
|
“It is important we don’t get ahead of ourselves,” President Obama said Friday as he weighed in on BP’s latest attempt at containing the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill with a “larger, more sophisticated cap.”
|
|
The financial regulation bill that finally passed has many flaws; chief among them, says Arianna Huffington in this meeting of the “Left, Right & Center” minds, is that it doesn’t prevent the “too big to fail” phenomenon from happening again.
Posted on Jul 15, 2010
READ MORE 
|
AP / Patrick Semansky
|
Let’s not get too excited here, but word on the street—fine, word in several major news outlets on Tuesday—has it that BP was about to try out yet another cap designed to maybe, possibly contain the oil hemorrhaging into the Gulf of Mexico. But this is only a test.
|
AP / Gregory Bull
|
After an earlier attempt at enforcing a moratorium on offshore oil drilling was struck down, the federal government released a revised version Monday. Given, you know, the whole Gulf of Mexico object lesson, finding a way to push this one through might be useful.
|
|
Fake News by Andy Borowitz —
Based on the record ratings for its special featuring LeBron James’ announcement of his new team, ESPN announced that instead of airing NBA games, it would schedule two-hour specials showing the rich guy cashing his ginormous paychecks.
|
NASA
|
By Amy Goodman — “Deep Spill 2” sounds like a sequel to a Hollywood thriller. Unfortunately, it is more of a reality show. “Deep Spill 2” is the name of an ambitious series of proposed scientific experiments that should be happening right now.
|
|
Fake news by Andy Borowitz —
“Assuming that aliens have been monitoring Earth for the past month in preparation for an invasion, they’ve probably figured out it’s no longer worth the trip,” Dr. Hawking said.
|
Flickr / The_Admiralty
|
While it certainly was keen of Sir Paul McCartney to defend President Obama’s handling of the BP oil spill debacle, can someone please call an official moratorium on invoking Holocaust parallels to suit some contemporary sociopolitical crisis?
|
msnbc.msn.com
|
On Wednesday, two people were reportedly killed in accidents while working in the Gulf of Mexico cleanup effort, and the containment cap that had incrementally improved the oil spill situation had to be removed after a run-in with a robot sub.
|
|
By Ruth Marcus — And sometimes, life imitates farce. Thus the spectacle of BP’s Chief Executive Officer Tony “I’d like my life back” Hayward spending the weekend at a yacht race.
|
house.gov
|
You’d think that it might be a no-brainer to take the Obama administration’s suggestion that perhaps, just maybe, deep-water drilling projects ought to be put on hold in light of the Gulf of Mexico mega-disaster and all. (continued)
|
|
That Rep. Joe Barton got himself into quite a jam last week when he apologized to BP for the White House “shakedown” of the megacorp, but, as Stephen Colbert puts it here, a Barton backlash was soon to follow. (continued)
|
View older articles:
1 2 3 >
View the most popular tags overall?
|
|
The Lotto Symbolizes the False Promises of Barracuda Capitalism
Newsletter 
Like Us
Follow Us
Get Our Feed
