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.
Mobile Press-Register reporters went to Alabama’s Dauphin Island Monday looking for tar balls deposited on the beaches by BP’s Gulf oil spill, but they found the most telling signs that all is not right in the Gulf in a number of fish pulled from the surf with “bloody red lesions.”
BP levied some hefty accusations against Halliburton Energy Services in court Monday, claiming the company intentionally destroyed cement samples, test results, and computer models that would have demonstrated the contractor’s culpability in the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
NEW ORLEANS, LA — Oil giant BP is doing everything it can to sew its pockets and recover the billions of dollars it lost in the wake of its disastrous Gulf of Mexico oil spill, but things don’t always go its way. This week, despite BP’s best efforts to steer court opinion in a direction favorable to its future interests and liability, the oil giant lost two major rulings.
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.
Communities and business harmed by BP’s oil spill have recovered and business is booming, according to a myopic BP memo sent to the Gulf Coast Claims Facility (GCCF). The document advises the fund’s manager to stop paying on claims made for future losses because, BP argues, the Gulf of Mexico is healed and anyone harmed by last year’s devastating spill won’t need future assistance from the $20-billion relief fund.
Ever since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and sank in the Gulf of Mexico, BP, its partners, and its contractors have been at odds with one another, ensconced in legal efforts to share liability and mitigate hefty financial losses. This week, the feud escalated between BP and Deepwater Horizon owner Transocean, with both companies trying to gain possession of the failed blowout preventer (BOP) that federal investigators will release back into private hands. Transocean owned and had leased the Deepwater Horizon rig and its blowout preventer to BP for exploratory drilling since 2007.
The oily substance that has been spotted floating off the Louisiana coastline and washing up onto beaches is indeed oil, not silt from a dredging operation at the mouth of the Mississippi River as the U.S. Coast Guard said it likely was. Tests conducted over the weekend confirmed that the substance is actually Louisiana sweet crude.
