BUSINESS
April 5, 2012 | Bloomberg News
Chevron Corp. and Transocean Ltd. are being sued for $22 billion in environmental damages in Brazil, double the initial claims, after a federal prosecutor filed a lawsuit over a second oil spill off the nation's coast. Chevron committed "a series of errors" that led to the March spill at the Frade project, the federal prosecutors' office said. Prosecutor Eduardo Santos de Oliveira is also seeking to halt operations at the project and block the San Ramon, Calif., oil giant from transferring profits from Brazil.
NATIONAL
March 28, 2012 | By Kim Murphy
Federal authorities have approved an oil spill response plan that could allow drilling to commence this summer in the Beaufort Sea, the first major offshore drilling in the Arctic since the early 1990s. Though Shell Alaska still needs several final permits, the oil spill plan has been the most debated aspect of the upcoming drilling program , with fears that cleaning up an offshore blowout in the turbulent, often icy seas of the Arctic could be a formidable challenge.
NATIONAL
March 4, 2012 | Kim Murphy
Amid the tangle of towering steel, heavy cranes and overcast skies of Seattle's busy commercial shipyards, Shell Oil's massive Kulluk drilling rig is preparing to push off for the Arctic Ocean. When it does, America's balance between energy needs and environmental fears will enter a new era. Barring unexpected court or regulatory action, by July the Kulluk will begin drilling exploratory oil wells in the frigid waters off Alaska's northern coast. After one of the biggest environmental fights in the U.S. in decades, there is a palpable sense of all-systems-go on the dock.
NATIONAL
February 26, 2012 | By Richard Fausset
The massive civil lawsuit stemming from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, originally scheduled to go to trial Monday in New Orleans, has been postponed for one week to give oil giant BP and lawyers for more than 120,000 plaintiffs time to continue settlement talks. The postponement of the start of the trial to March 5 was announced in a joint statement Sunday from BP, which was in charge of the drilling project, and the group of plaintiffs' attorneys known as the Plaintiffs' Steering Committee, or PSC. "BP and the PSC are working to reach agreement to fairly compensate people and businesses affected by the Deepwater Horizon accident and oil spill," the statement read.
NATIONAL
February 22, 2012 | By Richard Fausset, Los Angeles Times
Spill 4.9 million barrels of oil into the ocean, and this is what you get: the lollapalooza, labyrinthine, mega-mother of all lawsuits. It encompasses 72 million pages of documents, 20,000 exhibits and 303 depositions — the collective effort of hundreds of lawyers and legal workers. It involves the Justice Department and about 120,000 plaintiffs: angry fishermen, restaurateurs, state governments and condo owners who say their beach-side property is not worth what it once was. The trial phase, set to begin Feb. 27 in a New Orleans federal courtroom, could go on for nine months.
NATIONAL
February 17, 2012 | By Richard Fausset
An undetermined amount of oil spilled into the Mississippi River early Friday morning near New Orleans after an oil barge collided with another vessel, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. Many of the details of the accident were not available early Friday morning. Coast Guard Petty Officer Elizabeth Bordelon said that a five-mile stretch of the Mississippi about 50 miles upriver from New Orleans had been closed to river traffic as pollution investigators and other officials responded.