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

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?

Read the rest of this entry »

On August 12, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced BP finally agreed to pay a record $50.6-million fine for safety violations that led to the 2005 explosion at its Texas City, Texas, refinery that killed 15 workers and injured 170 others. Now, in the wake of its oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, BP faces federal fines that will make the Texas City penalties look like pocket change.

Read the rest of this entry »

Working with teams of doctors, scientists, and public health experts, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is currently planning and developing a large-scale study of the short-term and long-term physical and psychological tolls the BP oil spill has had upon the cleanup workers and the larger population of the Gulf Coast. The federal agency expects the study to encompass several thousands of people in the five states adversely affected by the massive oil spill: Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.

Read the rest of this entry »

Now that BP has temporarily plugged the oil spill and remains confident that a successful permanent plug is within reach, federal scientists estimate 4.9 million barrels of oil have gushed into the Gulf since April 22. The calculation makes BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill the largest in history, far surpassing Mexico’s 1979 Ixtoc spill, which released 3.3 million barrels into the Gulf.

Read the rest of this entry »

BP and other giant oil corporations have invested billions of dollars to develop means of drilling deeper and farther out to sea, yet they have invested relatively no money in developing effective deep-sea oil cleanup and response methods. Every year, the oil companies continue to push the envelope on offshore drilling in deep, remote regions of the ocean. Yet a devastating problem without a good solution will be created should anything go wrong with these risky operations, as BP’s volcano of oil in the Gulf of Mexico so clearly demonstrates.

Read the rest of this entry »

With all eyes fixated on the oil crisis in the Gulf of Mexico, BP is stealthily moving toward what could easily be this country’s (and the world’s) next environmental catastrophe: Deep-sea drilling in remote reaches of the Arctic. But will the Minerals Management Service (MMS) stop it? According to a report that appeared in Rolling Stones magazine, no.

Read the rest of this entry »

An Alabama charter boat captain, distraught over the oil slick that is causing large-scale destruction of fish and marine wildlife along the Gulf coast, has apparently taken his own life. William Allen Kruse, 55, of Foley, Alabama, was found dead on his boat with a gunshot to his head Wednesday morning around 7:30 a.m.

Read the rest of this entry »

The U.S. government has opened a widely anticipated criminal and civil investigation of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, said U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. The announcement steps up the pressure on the British oil company, which is the fourth largest corporation in the world.

Read the rest of this entry »

BP’s latest efforts to plug the Deepwater Horizon oil well have failed again, and the growing oil slick that CEO Tony Hayward earlier called a “tiny” bit of oil in the “vast ocean” is now by his own admission an “environmental catastrophe.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Ever since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank into the Gulf of Mexico, scientists from both the public and private sectors have offered estimates on how much oil was gushing from BP’s runaway well. New estimates announced by U.S. Geological Survey Dr. Marcia McNutt yesterday place the total amount of oil spilled to date between 17 and 39 million gallons, which means that BP’s original estimates were grossly understated. It also means that the Deepwater Horizon oil spill has dwarfed the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in size to become the worst spill and environmental disaster in U.S. history.

Read the rest of this entry »