Jindal to US: We're Not Waiting for You

Engineers, at least one supervisor under the gun

(NEWSER) - US authorities are on the verge of bringing their first criminal charges related to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, with several Houston-based engineers and at least one BP supervisor likely facing felonies, sources tell the Wall Street Journal . The men are suspected of providing false information to regulators regarding the risks at the Macondo well, the sources said, though they added that the Justice Department may ultimately let them off the hook, instead using the threat of charges to pressure them into aiding the investigation. More»

And computer modeling data 'inexplicably missing'

(NEWSER) - Halliburton has both intentionally destroyed and conveniently lost evidence relating to the Deepwater Horizon disaster , according to court documents filed by BP. “Halliburton has steadfastly refused to provide these critical testing and modeling results in discovery,” BP’s court filing says, according to CNN . “BP has now learned the reason for Halliburton's intransigence … Halliburton intentionally destroyed evidence related to its nonprivileged cement testing, in part because it wanted to eliminate any risk that this evidence would be used against it at trial.” More»

It's the largest per-barrel assessment ever imposed for a spill

(NEWSER) - Another blow to BP's coffers—and reputation: The oil company has been fined $25 million for two Alaska pipeline spills in 2006 . The civil fines will settle charges arising from both the spills and BP's non-compliance with court orders to properly maintain the pipelines, the New York Times reports. It's the largest per-barrel assessment ever imposed for a spill, and could be a sign that fines and penalties of more than $20 billion will be levied against the company when the investigation into its much larger Gulf of Mexico spill is completed. More»

Many in Gulf Coast got rich in unsupervised spending frenzy: Pro Publica

(NEWSER) - A Pro Publica investigation introduces a new word in the Gulf Coast lexicon: spillionaire. As in, the nickname given to someone—usually someone politically connected—who raked in a lot of money from BP's unregulated $16 billion cleanup fund for localities. It puts a particular focus on St. Bernard Parish in New Orleans—along with its vocal president, Craig Taffaro—with tidbits like these:

• A subcontractor there charged BP $15,400 a month to rent a generator, about 10 times higher than usual.
• A company partly owned by the sheriff charged BP more than $1 million a month for land that had been renting closer to the $1,700-a-month range.

They cost $220 million and caught a 'minuscule' amount of oil

(NEWSER) - Louisiana spent $220 million of BP's money to build sand berms along its coast to catch oil from the big spill—and they didn't catch very much at all, says a scathing government report. It found the berms collected maybe 1,000 barrels of the estimated 5 million spilled. By contrast, other damage-control efforts—including burning and skimming—collected somewhere between 890,000 and 1.85 million barrels, concludes the report from the National Oil Spill Commission. It calls the amount captured "minuscule" compared to the "overwhelmingly expensive" cost. More»