Beasley, Allen, Crow, Methvin, Portis & Miles, P.C.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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A landmark new bill that would direct billions of dollars in BP oil spill fine money to Gulf Coast recovery and restoration efforts cleared the Senate today with broad bipartisan support. Senators from Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida — the Gulf states most affected by the BP oil spill – negotiated the long-awaited plan for months before coming to an agreement Thursday. The legislation is being welcomed throughout the country as a refreshing bit of progress made by a hyper-partisan government.

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Weatherford U.S. LP, a Swiss oilfield service company that designed parts of BP’s blown-out Macondo well, has agreed to pay BP $75 million to preclude any future claims between the companies. The agreement also stipulates that BP will cover Weatherford for economic and environmental oil-spill damages should the company be named in lawsuits brought by plaintiffs harmed by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

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If BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill wasn’t enough of an environmental disaster, two new independent scientific studies indicate that the company’s use of chemical oil dispersants to break down the oil may have done more ecological damage than the oil alone.

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People have questioned the safety of Gulf seafood ever since BP flooded the water with crude oil and methane gas a year ago, then sprayed and pumped the spill with unprecedented levels of chemical dispersants. The oil disaster hit just as shrimping season was about to begin, closing once-fertile fishing grounds and drawing attention to the scope of the spill. Were shrimpers and fishermen out of work just for the season, or would the environmental and economic impacts linger for years?

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