Oil Spill

Like city boosters competing to host the Olympics, hundreds of lawyers representing gulf oil spill victims converged on this mountain town Thursday, promoting their Southern cities as the best equipped and the most convenient venue to handle about 300 lawsuits tied to the disaster. Their arguments before seven federal judges — who will make the decision on where the lawsuits will be heard and who will preside over them — is the critical first step in what is expected to be a long and complicated legal battle over damages caused by the nation's worst oil spill.

U.S. officials are allowing BP to once again bid on government contracts, lifting a ban imposed on the energy giant after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill. BP reached a deal with the Environmental Protection Agency that opens the door for the London-based company to win federal contracts, including new leases in the Gulf of Mexico, BP said Thursday. "After a lengthy negotiation, BP is pleased to have reached this resolution, which we believe to be fair and reasonable," John Minge, chairman and president of BP America, said in a statement.  PHOTOS: World's most expensive cities The EPA imposed the ban in 2012 after concluding that the company did not sufficiently fix issues that led to the well blowout in 2010, which killed 11 workers and leaked millions of gallons of oil. The worst offshore spill in U.S. history also devastated wide stretches of beach in states such as Louisiana and Florida.

A train that derailed and exploded in rural Alabama was hauling 2.7 million gallons of crude oil, according to officials. The 90-car train was crossing a timber trestle above a wetland near Aliceville late Thursday night when approximately 25 rail cars and two locomotives derailed, spilling crude oil into the surrounding wetlands and igniting a fire that was still burning Saturday. Each of the 90 cars was carrying 30,000 gallons of oil, said Bill Jasper, president of the rail company Genesee & Wyoming at a press briefing Friday night.

WASHINGTON - The Environmental Protection Agency and BP announced Thursday an agreement that would allow the energy giant to bid once again on deep-water offshore drilling leases, reversing a government decision two years ago to bar the company from federal contracts following its massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. In what became the country's worst offshore environmental disaster, BP's Macondo well blew out in April 2010, killing 11 workers and spewing more than 4 million barrels of oil into the gulf.

Horrific though the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has been, its output is still short of what occurred a century ago in scrubby brush about 110 miles north of Los Angeles — site of the Lakeview gusher. While some experts believe the well off Louisiana has spewed upwards of 60 million gallons of oil into the gulf, the Lakeview well rained about 378 million gallons over an area between the towns of Taft and Maricopa. The spill following the April 20 oil rig explosion in the gulf is, of course, a much bigger environmental and economic disaster.

After spending around half a billion dollars, scientists paid by the government to study the Exxon Valdez oil spill over the last two decades still cannot answer some of the most important questions about the damage it caused or about whether Prince William Sound will fully recover. We're in danger of ending up just as ignorant after the BP oil blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, as once again, our legal, political and economic systems hobble scientists and pervert the search for answers.

Each news update from the BP oil blowout in the Gulf of Mexico tightens a hard knot in my stomach. Alaskans who lived through the Exxon Valdez oil spill feel dark memories resurfacing. We talk about our sadness for the people in the way, people who don't know what's about to hit them. "They still seem to think they'll be able to contain this and stop it, and they just can't," said Rick Steiner, a former University of Alaska fisheries extension agent whose life was irrevocably upset by the Exxon Valdez, which spilled at least 11 million gallons of oil in Prince William Sound 21 years ago. "Not much oil is going to be recovered; they're not going to save much wildlife; they're not going to be able to restore damaged ecosystems."

With all the hand-wringing regarding Exxon and Valdez, hold on to these facts: Oil is biodegradable, and "this, too, shall pass!" LUCILLE GLASSMAN Westminster

A federal judge in New Orleans accepted an agreement for BP to plead guilty to manslaughter and other charges and pay a record fine in connection with the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which ranks as one of the nation's worst environmental disasters. The agreement , announced in November, allowed a unit of the London-based oil giant to plead guilty Tuesday to 11 counts of seaman's manslaughter in connection with the explosion and fire on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the gulf.

The federal damage assessment of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill should take into account the broader economic and social impacts of the 2010 blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, according to a report released Wednesday by the National Research Council. The group recommended that the federal Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration program consider "ecosystem services" when it calculates the impact of the BP spill, a difficult-to-measure analysis of the services performed by an ecosystem.

A portion of the lower Mississippi River reopened Monday after a weekend oil spill, but another stretch remained closed, leaving 29 ships stuck, according to U.S. Coast Guard officials. Officials had closed a 65-mile stretch of the river and the port of New Orleans after 31,500 gallons of light crude oil spilled from a barge that ran into a towboat Saturday about 50 miles west of New Orleans. On Monday, officials reopened a portion of the river east of the spill to vessels with Coast Guard approval.

The Mississippi River reopened to water traffic with restrictions Monday afternoon after a weekend oil spill forced its closure, the U.S. Coast Guard said. Officials had closed a 65-mile stretch of the river and the Port of New Orleans after 31,500 gallons of light crude oil spilled from a barge that ran into a towboat Saturday about 50 miles west over land from New Orleans. Earlier Monday, officials reopened part of the river east of the spill to vessels with Coast Guard approval.

It would be perfectly proper for BP, the giant British oil company, to feel a sense of corporate remorse. After all, the firm was responsible for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion and well blowout that took 11 lives and created "immense environmental damage" in and around the gulf. (Those words were uttered by a Department of Justice official just over a year ago, when BP pleaded guilty to a dozen felony charges and agreed to pay $4 billion in penalties and fines.)

Scientists have cracked a cellular biology mystery underlying a harmful effect oil spills have on fish: irregular heartbeats that can lead to cardiac arrest. In studying the effects of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill on bluefin tuna spawning in the Gulf of Mexico, the research team discovered that polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, block “signaling pathways” that allow potassium and calcium ions to flow in and out of cardiac cell membranes and sustain normal heart rates.

About 400,000 gallons of crude oil spilled from 18 rail cars after after a Dec. 30 derailment near Casselton, N.D., the National Transportation Safety Board said in a preliminary investigation report Monday. An ensuing explosion sent a massive mushroom cloud of fire above the prairie and forced the evacuation of 1,400 residents. Damage was estimated at $6.1 million, the NTSB said. The accident occurred when a BNSF Railway grain train derailed on the  westbound tracks, obstructing the eastbound tracks less than a minute before the 106-car oil train arrived.

A former engineer for BP was convicted of obstructing an investigation of the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico after the first criminal trial to come from the environmental disaster. Kurt Mix, a drilling engineer who formerly worked for the oil giant, was convicted on Wednesday of obstructing the investigation into the massive spill but acquitted of a second count of obstruction of justice, Justice Department officials announced. Mix, 52, of Katy, Texas, faces up to 20 years in prison when he is sentenced on March 26. Mix is one of four current or former BP employees charged with crimes related to the spill, one of the largest environmental disasters in U.S. history.

SEATTLE--The vessel designated to act as a crucial oil spill containment system in Arctic waters has obtained Coast Guard  approval to meet less rigorous weather standards than originally proposed. But, less than two weeks before drilling off Alaska's northern coast is due to begin, a series of troubling construction delays have left the Arctic Challenger without federal certification . The certification issue is the most serious Shell must confront if it is to successfully launch a exploratory drilling program, the first in Arctic waters in two decades, in which it already has invested $4 billion.

HOUSTON - Two people were killed and at least 22 more were injured when gunfire erupted at a large house party outside the city late Saturday. Sheriff's investigators were seeking two suspects early Sunday in connection with the shooting. Harris County Sheriff's officials said they planned to release additional information at the scene in the 7300 block of Enchanted Creek Drive in Cypress, about 30 miles northwest of Houston. More than 100 people, mostly young adults, were at the party when the shooting began, officials said.

A train that derailed and exploded in rural Alabama was hauling 2.7 million gallons of crude oil, according to officials. The 90-car train was crossing a timber trestle above a wetland near Aliceville late Thursday night when approximately 25 rail cars and two locomotives derailed, spilling crude oil into the surrounding wetlands and igniting a fire that was still burning Saturday. Each of the 90 cars was carrying 30,000 gallons of oil, said Bill Jasper, president of the rail company Genesee & Wyoming at a press briefing Friday night.