Lawyers for the federal government are posturing to collect heavy fines from BP and other companies for playing a role in the causing 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The Justice Depratment argued in a hearing in New Orleans Friday that BP, Transocean, and Anadarko should be found liable ahead of February’s trial for violating U.S. pollution laws.
Priding itself on “making things right” in Gulf of Mexico and coastal communities hard-hit the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, BP says it has big plans for expanding its operations in the United States. The announcement wasn’t supposed to comfort residents and businesses still struggling to recover in the BP spill’s oily aftermath, but to reassure investors that it doesn’t intend to hold back on its push to find and extract more oil and gas from U.S. lands and waters, despite the ongoing destruction of Gulf ecosystems and frustration of people who depend on them for a living.
She married into a family of scheming oil barons on the television series Dallas, but in real life Victoria Principal is calling for tougher oil drilling regulations while supporting organizations working to prevent another environmental catastrophe like BP’s Gulf oil spill from occurring again. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Oceana, two groups that oppose an expansion of offshore oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic, recently announced that Ms. Principal made “extremely generous six-figure donations” to their organizations.
BP is a repeat offender of environmental laws on Alaska’s oil-rich North Slope, and its probation from a negligent oil spill in 2007 should not be revoked, federal prosecutors say. The oil giant is currently lobbying for an end to its probation, put in place after a 2006 oil spill that flooded the Alaskan tundra with 200,000 gallons of North Slope crude – the largest spill ever in Alaska’s oil patch.
Louisiana State University Assistant Professor Fernando Galvez presented his findings about the lingering effects of BP’s Gulf oil spill before the House Committee on Natural Resources in Washington D.C. earlier this month. Dr. Galvez and his colleague, Associate Professor Andrew Whitehead, led a study that looked at how the massive oil spill is having a toxic effect on marine life at the cellular level, particularly on killifish, a species of small fish that abounds in Louisiana’s marshes and plays a key role in the base of the food chain.
It’s been little more than a year since BP successfully plugged its blown-out Macondo well, and the effects of that catastrophic oil spill still abound on the Gulf Coast and deep beneath the surface. Years or even decades may pass before scientists finally get a handle on the spill’s impact, but that unfortunate mystery hasn’t stopped BP from acquiring the right to drill another exploratory well in the Gulf much like the Macondo well, only deeper.
BP has settled a legal dispute with another of its Macondo well partners over damages stemming from the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion, which killed 11 workers and set off the 5-million-barrel Gulf of Mexico oil spill last year. Houston-based Anadarko Petroleum, a 25-precent owner in the Macondo venture, has agreed to drop its claims of gross negligence against BP and give the oil giant one cash payment of $4 billion in exchange for indemnification for certain legal claims.
The city of Orange Beach, Alabama, and BP reached an agreement Wednesday over tourism revenues the city lost during and after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The settlement came after a year of negotiating, with BP agreeing to pay $1.27 million to cover lodging and retail taxes and other “small claims” the city has tried to recover since the BP oil spill fouled Alabama’s coastline.
A slew of upbeat public relations and advertising campaigns, together with a healthy dose of political spin, have helped rehabilitate the public’s perception of the Gulf Coast, left battered by the BP oil spill. But while tourists return to the Gulf in record numbers, the results of a new study by a group of scientists from Louisiana State University offer strong evidence that, despite appearances, all is not right in the Gulf.
When Bonny Schumaker flew her small plane over the Gulf of Mexico to conduct a survey of whale sharks, her search instead turned up a massive oil slick that stretched for miles on the surface. The oil appeared to be emanating from the exact site of BP’s blown-out Macondo well, which gushed oil for months and created the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.
