BP to Gulf Residents: Here's a Bonus ... Now Don't Sue Us!

Well was fraught with problems going back to June 2009

(NEWSER) - Most of us just woke up one April day to the news that an oil rig had exploded in the Gulf, but BP knew of safety concerns at least 10 months before that, according to documents obtained by the New York Times. The highlights:

• In June 2009, BP engineers worried that the casing the company wanted, for which it had to obtain special permission, might collapse under high pressure in "a worst-case scenario."

One person injured; no oil leaks seen

(AP) - An offshore oil platform exploded in the Gulf of Mexico about 100 miles off the Louisiana coast today, but this one appears headed toward a better ending than BP's explosion. All 13 people aboard have been rescued—though one is reportedly injured. Earlier reports that the platform was inactive have proved to be inaccurate, but workers may have been able to shut down active wells after the explosion. More»

Workers recount fateful night Deepwater Horizon blew

(NEWSER) - It was a pristine day on the Gulf of Mexico, and the crew of the Deepwater Horizon had much to celebrate—they were nearing completion of a difficult oil well ahead of schedule, and a crew of BP execs had landed that morning to laud their safety record. Then at 10pm, a methane bubble charged up the pipes, found a spark, and the entire ship blew. “We all were sure we were going to die,” one superviser tells the New York Times . More»

Crews won't know until today if they're able to stop the leak

(NEWSER) - The oil spilling from a sunken rig in the Gulf of Mexico has grown to more than 1,800 square miles—an area larger than Rhode Island—but crews using a robot sub have yet to be able to stop the two leaks, which sit 5,000 feet below the surface. If they can't do so quickly, they might need to drill another well to redirect the oil. That process could take about two months—but the oil could reach the white-sand beaches of Florida's Panhandle and the swamps of Louisiana in as little as three days, reports the AP . More»

But overall in Louisiana, numbers were about the same

(NEWSER) - The seafood stats are in for the Gulf's 2011 harvest, and though the finger-pointing (at BP and the oil spill, of course) has begun, the numbers paint a complicated picture. Last year was the first full year of fishing since the spill, and some areas definitely saw a depressed catch: In the Barataria estuary, one of the areas hardest hit by oil, the fall season was off by around 7 million pounds of shrimp and about 2.7 million pounds of blue crab. And many fishermen say BP is to blame. "I'm afraid that oil spill has ruined us," one shrimp dock owner tells the AP. More»