Oil Spill

Exxon has taken out newspaper ads to apologize to the American people for the Prince William Sound oil spill. This is ridiculous. The American people should apologize to the world, for we can take the blame for Exxon's accident and inability to cleanup the mess. The oil spill aftereffects are the result of a decade of the American vote for profit--above all, the "me" vote, the greed vote. We can blame those among us who do not vote, for copping out. We can blame those among us who vote for politicians promising less government interference in private industry.

Even before Hussein became an environmental terrorist, I had wondered what environmental impact our sortie explosions have on the atmosphere. Our initial air attack included more than 1,000 sorties. With our existence dependent on a stressed ecosystem, I have a feeling that Earth will suffer in the long-run from this war. I hope President Bush and the military will assess human casualties on all sides, then acknowledge the probability that we are also harming the environment by waging war. Hussein was responsible for the oil spill, but aren't we Americans responsible for environmental damage also?

The plan by energy giant BP to suspend dividends, sell assets and build a $20-billion fund for oil spill victims highlights the delicate balance of post-disaster economics: How to clean up the mess in the Gulf of Mexico without killing the goose that laid the black-gold egg. BP faces mounting — and as yet unknowable — costs of containing the oil-spewing well a mile under gulf waters, removing oil from beaches and reimbursing victims....

WASHINGTON -- BP has accepted criminal responsibility for the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a move that it said has put the criminal part of one of the nation's worst environmental disasters in the rear-view mirror. Even if that is true, and the government has insisted that its criminal probe is ongoing, BP's troubles are far from over. On the horizon is a civil case that could cost the company billions of dollars more, as well as continuing concerns by lawmakers about how to safeguard the nation's environment and regulate a key industry.

WASHINGTON -- Transocean, the offshore oil and gas drilling company, has agreed to a $1.4-billion settlement with the Justice Department to resolve civil and criminal claims against the company for its role in the April 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Transocean was the owner of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig leased by BP that exploded and sank after the Macondo well blew out in the Gulf, killing 11 workers and spewing nearly 5 million barrels of oil into the sea. In a statement, Transocean said that as part of the settlement, a "subsidiary has agreed to plead guilty to one misdemeanor violation of the Clean Water Act (CWA)

A stream of evidence shows that "a culture of complacency" rather than a "culture of safety" prevailed at BP, Transocean Ltd. and Halliburton as they worked on the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, according to the chairmen of the presidential commission investigating the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The panel's investigators uncovered "a suite of bad decisions," many still inexplicable, involving tests that were poorly run, alarming results that were ignored, proper equipment that was sidelined and safety barriers that were removed prematurely at the high-pressure well, said William K. Reilly, who is co-chairman of the commission with former Democratic Sen. Bob Graham of Florida.

WASHINGTON - As a dramatic, 24-7 webcast showed oil gushing from BP's blown-out well during the spring and summer of 2010, Rep. Edward J. Markey suspected the oil giant was underestimating the amount of the spill. On Thursday, after BP agreed to pay a record $4.5 billion in penalties and fees and plead guilty to criminal misconduct, including lying to Congress to make the spill "appear less catastrophic than it was," the Massachusetts Democrat had this to say: "BP lied to me. And they lied to all Americans.

GRAND ISLE, LA. -- Ordinarily this time of year, Adam Trahan would be out on the Gulf of Mexico on a shrimp boat, trawling from South Pass to the Chandeleur Islands. Instead, last week he was trawling between the bar at Cisco's Hideaway on Oak Lane and Artie's out on the highway, fishing for Bud Light. "I look out there and I see my life ruined," Trahan, 53, said in his long Cajun drawl from the ocean-side deck at Artie's. "There ain't no shrimping, there ain't no crabbing, there ain't no oystering.

The presidential panel investigating the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico wants more funding for oversight, allocation of penalty payments to gulf restoration, and a lifting of the $75-million liability cap on oil firms. The presidential commission investigating the Gulf of Mexico oil spill called on Congress, the Obama administration and the oil and gas sector Tuesday to make sweeping changes based on practices in other industries and petroleum-producing countries to avert a repeat of the deadly Deepwater Horizon offshore disaster.

-- More than a week into their quest to stop the oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico from a damaged BP well, several dozen of the brightest minds in the engineering world gathered to watch a 100-ton failure unfold in slow motion. The engineers packed into a repurposed research center dubbed the Hive, which houses a dozen video screens and, most days, about as many scientists. Beside a bustling freeway, in a drab Houston office park bedecked with nearly every name in Big Oil, BP had launched a 21st century version of "Apollo 13."