by Abrahm Lustgarten ProPublica, Oct. 26, 2010, 11:32 a.m.
Jeanne Pascal turned on her TV April 21 to see a towering spindle of black smoke slithering into the sky from an oil platform on the oceanic expanse of the Gulf of Mexico. For hours she sat, transfixed on an overstuffed couch in her Seattle home, her feelings shifting from shock to anger.
Pascal, a career Environmental Protection Agency attorney only seven weeks into her retirement, knew as much as anyone in the federal government about BP, the company that owned the well. She understood in an instant what it would take others months to grasp: In BP’s 15-year quest to compete with the world’s biggest oil companies, its managers had become deaf to risk and systematically gambled with safety at hundreds of facilities and with thousands of employees’ lives.
“God, they just don’t learn,” she remembers thinking.
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Tagged as:
BP,
BP oil spill,
bp safety,
bp texas city refinery
by Marian Wang ProPublica, Oct. 29, 2010, 12:43 p.m.
On October 28, the government’s oil spill panel released a letter alleging that Halliburton knew of potential flaws in its cementprior to the Deepwater Horizon blowout. That same spill commission, in a little-noticed report by the New Orleans Times-Picayune, had earlier this week criticized government inspectors for their lack of knowledge about how to safely cement an offshore well.
“When we asked about cementing and centralizers, they said very freely, ‘We don’t know about that stuff; we have to trust the companies,’” the commission’s co-chairman, William Reilly, told the Times-Picayune. “All they get is on-the-job training. It really is fairly startling, considering how sophisticated the industry has become.”
[click to continue…]
Tagged as:
BP oil spill,
Deepwater Horizon,
Gulf oil spill,
halliburton
Government’s Report on BP Oil Spill Challenged by Scientists and Gulf Residents
On August 4, 2010, the White House released a controversial report titled “BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Budget: What Happened To the Oil?” In answer to the question “what happened to the oil,” government scientists suggest:
- 26% is “residual” oil which is “either on or just below the surface as light sheen and weathered tar balls, has washed ashore or been collected from the shore, or is buried in sand and sediments;”
- 25% has evaporated or dissolved;
- 17% was directly recovered from the wellhead;
- 16% was naturally dispersed;
- 8% was chemically dispersed;
- 5% was burned;
- 3% was skimmed.
[click to continue…]
Tagged as:
BP oil spill,
Deepwater Horizon,
government report,
Gulf oil spill,
oil spill,
oil spill cleanup,
White House
BP Oil Spill: EPA Wants Use of Corexit to Stop
Late Wednesday the EPA gave BP 24 hours to choose a less toxic chemical dispersant to break up the BP oil spill, the Washington Post reported. The decision came hours after Congress heard testimony from company executives and scientists on the high toxicity of Corexit, and the relative ineffectiveness of the chemical against the type of crude leaking into the Gulf. Once the EPA approves the new dispersant, BP will have 72 hours to begin using the new dispersant. [click to continue…]
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BP,
BP oil spill,
carcinogen,
chemical dispersant,
Corexit,
Deepwater Horizon,
oil spill
BP Oil Spill Suggestions Continue to Arrive
We’ve had several more suggestions to fix the oil leak or limit the damage from the BP oil spill. If you want to join in the conversation, the quickest way is to post a comment. You may also send your suggestion to us using the Contact Form on this page.
Laura writes:
Hi – I had a thought while doing the dishes… I had an oil mass in the water of my sink and added the dish soap. Immediatly after, the oil moved away from the soap. I know they are using the boui system to keep the oil from getting to the coastline…. would it be possible to add soap to that containment barrier and it would then deter it from coming in?
Additionally, if there was a way to do this, maybe the boui and soap could be dragged around oil spill area(s) to get the oil more contained and use a water suction process to get the oil up? I’m sure there are alot of ideas coming in… maybe this could work? [click to continue…]
Tagged as:
BP,
BP oil spill,
Crowdsourcing the Oil Spill,
Deepwater Horizon,
Gulf,
Gulf of Mexico,
Gulf oil spill,
oil,
oil spill
The video below shows oil pouring from BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil well. It was uploaded to YouTube May 6, 2010.
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH4I1a5vg3w
Tagged as:
BP,
BP oil spill,
oil spill,
Oil Spill Videos
Beyond Petroleum, or “Greenwashing?”
Beyond Petroleum or Big Polluter? Is British Petroleum just greenwashing? By now we’re all familiar with the latest national environmental crisis. An explosion on the Deepwater Horizon, a BP offshore oil drilling rig, caused the deaths of 11 workers, injured 7 more, and left an oil spill the size of Rhode Island drifting inexorably toward the Gulf Coast. But this isn’t the first time the company has been responsible for an environmental crisis, or the first time that they’ve attempted to change the narrative when accused of environmental malfeasance. BP greenwashing is the company’s current modus operandi.
The initials BP originally stood for “British Petroleum,” but you wouldn’t know it in recent years. In an interesting example of “backronyming,” in 2000 the oil giant began labeling itself “Beyond Petroleum.” The “Beyond Petroleum” slogan, found plastered on ads in national publications and on television, was soon reinforced when the company, according to Multinational Monitor’s The 10 Worst Corporations of 2005 report, announced “that it expects to spend as much as $8 billion in alternative-energy projects, including solar, wind, hydrogen and carbon-abatement technology, over 10 years.” Just how serious is an $8 billion commitment from BP? Given the fact that the corporation reported a profit of more than $6 billion in the first quarter of 2010, it’s merely four months’ profit. In view of BP’s conduct in the ten years since it began its “beyond petroleum” PR campaign, there has been plenty of evidence that it’s just BP greenwashing. [click to continue…]
Tagged as:
Beyond Petroleum,
BP,
British Petroleum,
Greenpeace,
greenwashing,
Greg Haegele,
Louisiana Bucket Brigade,
oil spill,
Public Citizen,
Rep. Joe Barton,
Transocean
