Category Archives: BP

The Gulf Bird Toll: How Low Can You Go?

By | Published: July 29, 2010

Brown pelicans on Queen Bess Island near Grand Isle, La. Photo by dredwardhaight: http://www.flickr.com/photos/birdflew/

By Stacy Small, Ph.D.   

Like crude oil, scientific comparisons can be slippery. When Americans first hear that "only" 2,900 dead birds have been collected and tallied in the Gulf of Mexico following the BP oil disaster, they can be forgiven for initially thinking that the Exxon Valdez spill was worse for wildlife. By the time the full story unfolds, this media myth may prove to be untrue.    

For several reasons, the official daily casualty report is an incomplete account of wildlife damages in the Gulf of Mexico, especially for birds, and shouldn't be the only metric used to describe the wildlife impact.     

  • The daily casualty report represents only the number of collected and captured animals, which may only be a fraction of the birds left to die in the wild. 
  • Oil and chemical-exposed birds may die and be scavenged or sink in Gulf waters, uncounted, and a dynamic environment of winds and currents decreases the likelihood that carcasses will wash ashore. 
  • Open waters and coastal wetlands can be particularly challenging environments to access and survey, compared to rocky shorelines. 
  • Finally, assessing wildlife damages goes beyond counting individual animals; ecosystem impacts like habitat damage and persistent toxins may only reveal themselves through long-term studies of population and food web dynamics.

It is very encouraging that the U.S. Department of Agriculture, state and federal wildlife agencies, and non-governmental organizations are working pro-actively with farmers in the region to create emergency habitat for shorebirds and waterfowl as fall migration season approaches. To evaluate the success of these programs, trained wildlife biologists should be employed to observe and report on how these and other alternate habitats are being used, compared to the oiled coastal areas.    

To openly assess the full damage to fish and wildlife, we need independent, long-term, and widespread surveys that systematically monitor and publicly report:   

  • Habitat use in damaged, restored, and alternate emergency habitats;
  • Short- and long-term effects of the disaster on  animal populations and the entire food web; and
  • The fate and transport of oil  and chemical dispersants from the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.

This view was reinforced by Dr. Robert Spies of Applied Marine Sciences, Dr. Erik Rifkin of the National Aquarium, and Stanley Senner of the Ocean Conservancy in their testimony on July 28 before the Subcommittee on Water and Wildlife of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. They all stressed the need for ecosystem studies in the Gulf that are long-term, independent, and peer-reviewed, and they emphasizing the importance of scientific rigor and transparency in the Gulf Natural Resource Damage Assessment.   

Dr. Stacy Small is an EDF wildlife ecologist who specializes in bird populations.

Also posted in BP Oil Disaster, Oil Spill, Wildlife | 1 Response

For Response Workers, Health Problems Could Persist Long After Spill is Contained

By | Published: July 23, 2010

Workers struggle to maintain oil barriers while risking heatstroke and toxic chemical exposure. With limited safety training and uneven protocol on protective gear, some workers have complained of health problems associated with the spill cleanup (Source: www.galileowasright.com)

In our coverage of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, we’ve emphasized the need for thoughtful planning and well-informed restoration of the Gulf Coast. From our perspective, this means a process grounded in sound science and transparent in its communication of health hazards to those closest to the spill zone. Ideally, a well-executed clean-up effort would work wonders for coastal Louisiana, jump-starting a troubled economy with green jobs and ensuring the viability of one of America’s most valuable and resilient natural ecosystems. However, with sub-par safety regulations and slipshod cleanup techniques characterizing the response to this tragedy, the BP oil spill could end up posing a threat to more than just the Gulf Coast’s livelihood—it could actually threaten the lives of its residents.

In an open letter to Coast Guard oil cleanup coordinator Adm. Thad Allen earlier this summer, Representative Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) pushed for transparency in medical monitoring and safety regulation for spill recovery workers. She compared the sickened boat skippers of the Gulf Coast to the wheezing and coughing response crews plagued by respiratory illness in New York after the 9/11 attacks. Maloney urged authorities to trust the reports of pollutants instead of relying on “air quality measures and outdated standards” when accessing the risk pollutants pose to workers.

But Maloney’s not the only one concerned. Nearly a month later, Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) criticized EPA head Lisa Jackson for skirting questions about the safety of COREXIT, the dispersant being poured en masse into the Gulf of Mexico, stating, “I don’t want dispersants to be the Agent Orange of this oil spill.” Mikulski, Maloney, and others have been pressing BP and the EPA for more information on the use of dispersants and their potential side effects on spill workers. While recent studies released by the EPA have classified COREXIT as "non-toxic", EDF scientist Richard Denison has warned repeatedly that dispersants may still have adverse effects for humans and marine life. In addition, workers laboring in the summer heat run the risk of heat stroke, while mere exposure to the oil (regardless of dispersant presence) can cause eye, brain, and skin damage, not to mention problems for the lungs, kidneys, and liver.

But dangerous working conditions are indicative of a more systemic problem. The Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) Act hasn’t been updated since the 1970s, begging the question, just how much do BP and federal officials care about the protection and health of spill response workers?

Well, with the hazy details surrounding COREXIT’s side effects, and the shocking revelation that people responsible for clean up were working without access to respirators, the takeaway is troubling. If disasters like the Exxon Valdez oil spill are any indication of the long-term effects of spill-related toxins on cleanup workers, Louisiana could be feeling the public health ramifications of Deepwater Horizon long after all the oil is cleared from the Gulf.

Also posted in BP Oil Disaster, Chemicals, Congress, Deepwater Horizon, Health, Oil Spill, Targeted Jobs | 1 Response

Breaking News from BP: No Oil Leaking Into Gulf from Deepwater Horizon Well

By | Bio | Published: July 15, 2010

Source: Flickr (Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com)

For the first time since April, the Deepwater Horizon well has been capped.

Kent Wells, a vice president at BP Plc, said at an afternoon news briefing that no crude was escaping from a 75-ton cap that had been lowered over the past few days. This is an interim solution, as more permanent relief wells will be drilled over the next few weeks to tap the subsea reservoir of oil and natural gas that had been gushing into the Gulf since April 20.

Drilling had stopped on relief wells for two days while the new cap was fitted. Engineers will be monitoring the cap over the next 48 hours to check pressure underneath. If a solid cap is placed above the well, and pressure falls, this might suggest that the oil is simply moving to another part of the underground reservoir, where it could burst forth in a new leak. If the well has a certain amount of integrity, then the well pressure will remain high under the cap, suggesting that the Gulf oil spill might finally be over.

Now comes the hard part: tabulating the damage.

Also posted in BP Oil Disaster, Deepwater Horizon, Oil Spill | 2 Responses

Let The River Run Through It: Harnessing the Mississippi to Save Louisiana's Wetlands from the Oil Spill

By | Published: July 14, 2010

As shown in this satellite photo of the Wax Lake Delta, the Mississippi River and its distributaries discharge massive amounts of water and sediment into the Gulf. Could they also clear wetlands covered in oil? Some scientists say yes (Source: EurekAlert.org)

In case you lost track, we're now just days away from the three-month anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. As we near the 90-day mark, engineers are still scrambling to cap the well that has pumped millions of barrels of oil into the waters off southern Louisiana. With crude continuing to float into coastal marshes, area residents have been left wondering how oil will be prevented from destroying the wetlands that they call home.

Engineers, energy companies, and the government have proposed a veritable suite of mitigation techniques, from booms to berms to rock dikes, but none has yet emerged as an effective, sustainable, and economically sound solution. Indeed, unfinished artificial islands constructed to shield the coast from the oil spill have already begun crumbling into the Gulf of Mexico.

As a complement to the previously-mentioned proposals, why not use the natural flow of the mighty Mississippi to protect the coastal region? After all, the river’s been flowing into the Gulf and sustaining the delta for thousands of years. Like a massive water hose, the Mississippi could potentially flush oil out of the wetlands and accelerate sediment deposition in degraded parts of delta, making the area more resilient to future disasters.

Several prominent coastal scientists have advocated harnessing the Mississippi River for this purpose. In a memo sent earlier this summer to the EPA Tech Team, Dr. Paul Kemp, a scientist at the National Audubon Society, outlined this method of preventing oil encroachment in Louisiana’s coastal region. Kemp suggested that, at least temporarily, active management of existing US Army Corp of Engineers structures at Old River could allow the flow of the Mississippi to force oil away from the Pelican State’s wetlands.

In its current state, the Mississippi is a complex man-made water management system that prevents flooding in cities like New Orleans that line its banks. However, experts like Kemp believe that a shift in tributary streams would allow a more "robust" flow. This would keep the oil at bay and buy time for cleanup crews struggling to contain the mess. At the same time, flooding could still be prevented in low-lying communities if levees and pumping stations are managed correctly by river engineers.

Diversion of the Mississippi would have other benefits as well. Land loss is a problem that's been plaguing Louisiana since long before the Deepwater Horizon Spill. Since 1930, over 2,000 square miles of land have been lost, equivalent to 70% of the original ecosystem. Redirecting the natural flow of the Mississippi could not only prevent further disaster in the wake of the BP spill, but could also segue nicely into coastal restoration, as the river deposits much needed sediment back into the Mississippi River Delta. As an added lagniappe, accelerated construction of river diversions could create thousands of near-term jobs for contractors, engineers, and others seeking work.

There are, of course, uncertainties that come coupled with an ambitious river diversion project. For example, freshwater from the diversions could alter the salinity in nearly estuaries and bays, affecting sensitive organisms like oysters that are vital to Louisiana’s fishing interests. It’s also difficult to predict just how effective diversions would be for coastal restoration, but models in place have already been successful in restoring parts of the Atchafalaya and building the Wax Lake Delta.

Still, when weighed against the alternatives, using the river in oil spill response seems like a idea worth pursuing. John Day, a professor emeritus at LSU and an eminent coastal scientist in his own right, captured the potential promise of the river to power remediation of the Gulf Coast, noting

“As the great Mississippi River Delta disappears, so do the ecosystems, economies and people that it holds. The Mississippi River is the solution. It has the water, sediment and energy to rebuild land, defend against hurricanes and again provide habitat, safety, livelihood, and prosperity. We must look to the natural functioning of the delta to guide us in restoration.”

Let's hope someone's listening.

Also posted in BP Oil Disaster, Deepwater Horizon, Flood Protection, Oil Spill | 1 Response

Postcard from the Spill Zone: Jackie Orr's Journey Down Highway 1

By | Bio | Published: July 8, 2010

by Jackie Orr

Remember how we asked you to send us pictures of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? Along with the photos that landed in our mailbag, we received messages from people who had traveled down to coastal Louisiana and seen the devastation firsthand. After reading through their compelling stories, we decided to share some here on the blog.  

In this post, Jackie Orr, a professor and published author based in New York, tells us her recollections of a journey she took through southern Louisiana several weeks after the Deepwater Horizon explosion.  

Murals like these, photographed by the author in a small town in southern Louisiana, capture some of the raw emotions felt by Gulf Coast residents reeling from the spill (Source: Jackie Orr)

The drive from New Orleans to Grand Isle, Louisiana is only 110 miles, but it takes me five hours in the rental car. I am on a trip to see the invisible, to try to get an all-too-quick flash of cultural and political insight into the disaster unfolding along the Gulf Coast.

My desire to visit the island is both selfish and sociological. I’ve just turned 50, and despite my reservations about oil fumes and the content of spill news coverage, I want to spend this milestone close to a stretch of water and land that I can’t stop thinking about. I’m in the business of observation and commentary, and as the two-month anniversary of this branded disaster (the “BP spill”) approaches, I want to understand some of the social complexity absent from national media accounts of the catastrophe.

Fueled with gas from a local Tobacco Plus station, our rental car zips down the highway. We’re now within an hour of Grand Isle. As I get nearer to the gulf, I am engrossed by the surface images. All around, my eyes capture terribly visible evidence of the intimate entanglement of rural poverty and oil industry power in this lush semi-tropical landscape.

Here, in the southern Louisiana bayous, the signs of economic struggle and uneven infrastructural maintenance are everywhere. The abandoned Exxon Mobil station with a big U.S. flag draped across an empty office window. The sagging sheds with spray painted signs of local business scrawled on the side (“Sheila’s Notary”, “Shrimp & Crabs”).  And then there’s the beautiful, angry mural art. In the parking lot of a tattoo shop, I see “BP, You Killed Our Gulf, Our Way of Life,” next to a sculpture of a man in a gas mask and a small girl with fists raised, cradling a sign reading “God Help Us All!” That is when the drive slows down, interrupted every half mile to jump out of the car and photograph another startled image of southern Louisiana’s face, lush and abandoned, ravaged and industrialized.

A bridge for the 21st century, framing a trailer built for the 20th: Constructed to withstand hurricanes and floods, the sleek causeway linking Grand Isle with the mainland stands high above an elevated home resting on supports in the foreground (Source: Jackie Orr)

The most dramatic intersection of environmental decay and multi-billion dollar industry appears as we near Grand Isle. A surreal expanse of causeway rises up out of the scattered wetlands. The sleek, four-lane highway bridge towers over rotting buildings buckling toward the ground in a post-Katrina, post-industrial swoon.  It is like a scene out of science fiction, as the oil industry and local officials develop 21st-century transportation structures to work around a landscape destroyed by 20th-century mismanagement. It's as if the human and the environmental toll can be packed away and forgotten if it is tied up in a ribbon of concrete and asphalt. What kind of trick is this, this attempt to live ‘beyond’ the scale of man and nature? How fitting and how fearful to be delivered to the small stretch of Grand Isle by the sweeping curves of a hyperreal, high-tech causeway, one that seems to float above the ravaged coastal marsh.

I arrive on Grand Isle just as the sun is going down. It’s a short walk from the motel across the road to the Gulf Coast beach. Already two Greenpeace activists staying at the motel have warned that people are being arrested for walking on the beach. So I approach slowly, climb up the small sand dune past the hand-written sign “Beach Closed.” With a weird shock, I see the vista in front of me. Military jeeps line up along the coastline as work spotlights are raised by men and women in military camouflage. Yellow booms are laid across a beach studded with bright blue Porta-Potties spaced every forty yards or so as far as the eye can see. A storm comes in from the southeast with gorgeous layers of purple-grey clouds piling on top of each other. It takes some time, kneeling in the sand, before I start to see the oil rigs, dozens of rigs visible on the horizon. The Gulf of Mexico is a liquid field of oil rigs.

Line in the sand: Stretched all along the beach, a yellow boom rests on the southern shore of Grand Isle. In the distance, an oil rig looms on the horizon (Source: Jackie Orr)

But I don’t see the oil until hours later, after dark, when I return to the beach just before midnight to cross over the yellow boom. On the other side, I start to see the pools of oil, mirroring moonbeams and the light of military flood lamps. Pools the size of rowboats are found up and down the beach. Their consistency is that of a thick sludge, as I find when I run a stick through a shallow one. The wet sand itself feels sticky under my feet as I near the water’s edge. There are no images here, in the dark, just the sound of the ocean coming and going. All at once, I imagine the huge plumes of oil moving beneath the water’s surface, unseen in the murky depths.

In the sunlight the next day, as the national media search for oil-soaked birds continues (“Day 50, and only two oiled pelicans recovered by my count, Tom”), the oil-steeped history of Grand Isle becomes at least partially visible. Driving the short seven miles from one end of Grand Isle to the other, I discover the enormous Exxon Mobil plant that stretches almost a mile along the island’s northern edge. To many here, the presence of the oil industry in southern Louisiana remains an organizing, reassuring force, especially when juxtaposed with the chaotic lockdown of the coast. Offshore and onshore, the transnational energy majors are deeply embedded in local landscapes of labor and profit. Everyone knows someone who works in the plant or works on a platform. This is the realm of King Oil, and even in this landscape of destruction, cleanup crews and public officials seem to tiptoe about like interlopers. I speak with two workers from central Minnesota, brought down by BP to staff their company’s sand sifting equipment. Despite the militarized look and feel of things, they report that “nobody, absolutely nobody knows what’s going on.”

Sitting a lawn chair (made with petroleum-based plastic?), I collect my thoughts. How can we comprehensively address the environmental destruction wrought by BP and others without ignoring the complex ways that places like Grand Isle depend deeply, sometimes desperately, on the oil industry? How can we point fingers and how can I chronicle this oil spill when my journey to tell this story required a jet-fueled plane flight from New York City and a trip in a rental car gassed up in southern Louisiana? Can we possibly ignore the importance of Gulf Coast oil in our domestic energy mix? With this enormous well still spewing oil, how can we fathom that what’s happening in the Gulf and on the shores of Grand Isle is only part of a larger disaster that’s been unfolding for decades?

In visible and invisible ways, the oil industry is part of the everyday infrastructure of our lives, whether we live in New Orleans or New York. By the shores of the Gulf, I see, feel, and know that their coastal spill is our collective disaster.

Jackie Orr is a performance theorist and an associate professor of sociology at Syracuse University. She teaches and writes about cultural politics, contemporary power, and the history of U.S. militarization. Her book, Panic Diaries: A Genealogy of Panic Disorder, examines the cultural effects of individual and collective terror.

Also posted in BP Oil Disaster, Deepwater Horizon, Guest Post, Oil Spill | 2 Responses

Could the BP Spill Pave the Way for Green Jobs and a Sustainable Economy on the Gulf Coast?

By | Published: June 23, 2010

President Obama addresses local concerns about the effects of the Deepwater Horizon spill on fishing, drilling, and tourism in a meeting last week in Mississippi (Source: Reuters)

As oil continues to leak in the Gulf of Mexico, coastal Louisiana’s economy gets steadily worse by the day. Fishing closures are devastating the Pelican State’s seafood industry, while a controversial moratorium on drilling is taking its own toll on the Louisiana workforce.  Combined with the broader economic slowdown and its chilling effect on the labor market, this environmental disaster could trigger economic depression in the wetland parishes, especially if deficit reduction measures like cutting aid to the unemployed take precedence over sustained recovery investment on the Gulf Coast.

Economists like Paul Krugman have argued that curtailing much needed aid to the jobless will aggravate an already significant economic crisis. That's why we think the Gulf oil spill offers an unprecedented opportunity for President Obama to implement an idea he's been talking about since the campaign trail: an expansive green jobs program. In establishing one for the central Gulf Coast, the federal government could offer a hand-up, rather than simply a hand-out, to communities near the spill zone.

A Benenson Strategy Group poll of Americans confirmed that 63% of those surveyed favored a strong climate bill limiting pollution and fossil fuel emissions. Such legislation could be instrumental in securing new funding for restoration of wetlands and other areas that naturally sequester carbon.  The explosion of Deepwater Horizon and the oil spill that followed are admittedly tragic, but they may also serve as a turning point for the way business is done on the Gulf Coast. This will be especially true if they trigger significant investment in wildlife recovery and wetland rehabilitation in addition to more traditional green-collar sectors like weatherization.

According to estimates from the EPA, the proposed American Power Act could save the economy up to $312 billion dollars while also creating 540,000 new jobs over the next 20 years. If the government uses a portion of the funding in that legislation, along with some of the $20 billion set aside for BP spill relief, to create green, sustainable jobs in places like coastal Louisiana, it could go a long way towards helping the embattled ecosystem and economy of the Gulf Coast.

In some ways, we’re witnessing a repeat of what we saw after Katrina. Then, as now, people across the nation demanded movement towards definitive and responsible action on environmental issues, but after the telethons and public service announcements ended, motivation ebbed and support waned. What matters now is whether the administration can channel public demand for climate legislation and environmental remediation towards delivering a green “New Deal” to people impacted by the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Also posted in BP Oil Disaster, Deepwater Horizon, Green Jobs, Oil Spill, Stimulus, Unemployment | 2 Responses

Events: President Obama Addresses the Nation on the Gulf Oil Spill, June 15

By | Bio | Published: June 15, 2010

Do you have a question for the White House about the Deepwater Horizon disaster? Tonight could be your chance to ask.

At 8 PM Eastern / 7 PM Central, President Obama will address the nation about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the steps that will be taken to restore the Gulf Coast and its battered economy. Shortly after the speech, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs will be answering user-submitted questions about the spill.

Visit the White House’s YouTube channel to send in your queries and view the President's address.

Also posted in BP Oil Disaster, Deepwater Horizon, Events, Interactive Media, Oil Spill | Tagged | 1 Response

Words from Wohlforth: The Hazards of Oil Spill Anger

By | Bio | Published: June 14, 2010

by Charles Wohlforth

What does Louisiana have in common with Alaska? At first glance, the similarities between the Pelican State and the Last Frontier might not be readily apparent. After all, no one would mistake New Orleans for Nome.

However, both states face the everyday challenge of finding the right balance between their extractive, energy-based economies and the preservation of their local environments. As the Mississippi River Delta deals with the Deepwater Horizon disaster, many Alaskans have revisited their memories of the Exxon Valdez spill two decades ago. Some of the state’s residents have even traveled down to the Gulf Coast to offer advice to Louisianans.

In this post, Charles Wohlforth, a former writer for the Anchorage Daily News, discusses some of his views on the current disaster, and how lessons learned in Prince William Sound could influence policy decisions in the Gulf.

The response: Suited against the elements, cleanup workers hose down the rocky shores of Prince William Sound shortly after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 (Source: NOAA)

The public anger and disgust fired by BP’s oil lapping up on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico can drive public policy decisions, as did similar emotions felt twenty-one years ago when Exxon’s oil was landing on the beaches of Prince William Sound. In Alaska, the anger drove the clean-up of the oil to ever more destructive methods. I hope that this time, we can aim for bigger and more positive results.

As I describe in my book, The Fate of Nature, it was clear on the scene of the Exxon spill that the cleanup, as rolled out, wouldn’t work. The most knowledgeable scientists said intensive techniques such as high-pressure hot water were not a good idea. But public outrage was strong, and government officials and Exxon were prepared to do anything to get rid of the stain.

The hot water washing killed everything in its path, moved oil below the surface of the ocean, and re-sorted the beach sediments so they became less suitable for burrowing organisms like clams. Two decades later, clam numbers are still depressed on some treated beaches. An expert on beach morphology told me some of the shorelines closest to the spill might not return to their pre-disaster state for 1,000 years.

The result: Photographer Dave Janka shows the lingering evidence of crude oil on the shoreline of Prince William Sound in this image taken on July 1, 2008, days after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling lowered Exxon's punitive damages for the Valdez spill (Source: The Huffington Post)

The strongest public feelings, naturally, related to the birds and marine mammals that were oiled in Prince William Sound, especially the sea otters. The scenes of massive death are seared into my memory. But I wouldn’t repeat the program of trying to clean the animals. They suffered terribly in treatment, and the only follow-up study that was done showed that most of the otters died anyway after they were released.

When we make a mess, we naturally want to clean it up. Many people feel a share of responsibility for the Gulf blowout because they use petroleum products. But we need the sophistication to realize that cleanup is largely impossible. We must prevent oil from landing, and remove it where that can be done with little harm, but it’s immoral to push onward at the detriment of other living things and the ecosystem to assuage our guilt.

Those emotions should be channeled instead toward more fundamental changes in our relationship with the environment, beginning with alternative energy, but also including a reexamination of our materialistic lifestyles. It’s up to opinion leaders to redirect the anger generated by this spill towards purposeful self-examination, so that we can harness the positive actions that are within the power of each of us.

Charles Wohlforth is a prize-winning author and former Anchorage Daily News lead reporter for their coverage of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. He has written for The New Republic, Outside, and Discover magazines.  His latest book is The Fate of Nature: Rediscovering Our Ability to Rescue the Earth.

Also posted in BP Oil Disaster, Deepwater Horizon, Guest Post, Oil Spill | Tagged | 2 Responses

In the News: Samson Oil and Gas Pres. Terry Barr Addresses BP Oversight, Negligence in Spill

By | Published: June 14, 2010

Failure to contain the oil leaking from the Deepwater Horizon well suggests broader neglect of safety regulations, says Barr. (Source: US House of Representatives Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming)

In a letter to the editor that appeared in Friday’s Wall Street Journal, Samson Oil and Gas President Terry Barr tackled what went wrong during Deepwater Horizon's April 20th explosion. Barr’s letter is definitely worth checking out if you haven’t already seen it — he offers a comprehensive look at how human error, not mechanical failure, aggravated what could’ve been an avoidable accident. From the WSJ:

“[BP CEO Tony Hayward] asks, ‘How could this happen?’ The answer has largely to do with BP's inability to follow its existing well-construction policies and those of the industry generally.”

One thing is certain—if BP is getting flak from other oil companies, it does not bode well for Hayward’s upcoming testimony at Thursday’s House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing.

Also posted in BP Oil Disaster, Congress, Deepwater Horizon, Oil Spill | Tagged | Leave a comment

A Post from Personal Nature: "Why the BP Blowout Won't Be the Last Tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico"

By | Bio | Published: June 13, 2010

What will be done about the wetlands of Louisiana? Even before the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the southernmost reaches of the Pelican State had been facing severe environmental challenges, chief among them land loss.

Dominique Browning discusses some of the issues facing the Mississippi River Delta in her latest blog post on Personal Nature. Echoing points mentioned by Elgie Holstein and Jim Tripp in their piece on the disappearing coast, she also includes the story of Lance Nacio, a fisherman and bayou native who has witnessed four decades of environmental degradation and land loss in southern Louisiana.

Browning writes that “the urgent work of EDF and its allies to replenish and strengthen the wetlands that nourish and protect the Gulf Coast should become America's priority.” We couldn’t agree more.

Also posted in BP Oil Disaster, Deepwater Horizon, Fish, Oil Spill | Tagged | 1 Response