Gulf oil spill

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Busted Pipe Blocked BP's Blowout Preventer

New report details devastating mechanical troubles

(Newser) - The flow of millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico could have been stopped—but for a single piece of mangled drilling pipe that got in the way, according to contractors who examined BP's raised blowout preventer. As oil began gushing from the Deepwater Horizon rig in...

New York Times' Deepwater Horizon Article to Become Movie

 Coming Soon: 
 Gulf Spill, the Movie 

based on NYT opus
Mar 9, 2011 7:02 AM CST

Coming Soon: Gulf Spill, the Movie

Summit, Participant grab film rights to 'New York Times' article

(Newser) - It’s not every day that a Hollywood studio buys the rights to a New York Times article, but that’s what Summit Entertainment—the studio best known for the Twilight films—has just done. Summit, along with Participant Media and Imagenation Abu Dhabi, has just picked up the rights...

Could Dr. Seuss Goop Have Plugged BP's Oil Well?

Professor thinks cornstarch, water would have done the trick

(Newser) - From a month-old copy of Physical Review Letters, NPR stumbled on an article bearing the somewhat impenetrable title, " Viscoelastic Suppression of Gravity-Driven Counterflow Instability ." Behind the mouthful was an interesting premise: That the calamitous BP well could have been plugged using oobleck. The combination of two parts cornstarch...

Baby Dolphin Die-Off in Gulf Grows

Officials say it's too soon to blame the oil spill

(Newser) - More and more young bottlenose dolphins are turning up dead in the Gulf, and scientists aren’t entirely sure why. The number of dead dolphins has swelled to 80, according to National Geographic , with about half of them being calves. Speculation is running rampant that the deaths are connected to...

BP Official Quit Over Safety Months Before Spill

Kevin Lacy didn't think company was committed to safety: lawsuit

(Newser) - An engineer who had been recruited to join BP in 2007 to improve its drilling policies and protocols resigned over safety disagreements a few months before the Deepwater Horizon exploded, according to a lawsuit related to the spill. Kevin Lacy, BP's senior vice president for drilling operations in the Gulf...

Judge: BP Spill Claims Czar Not Independent

Ken Feinberg must start disclosing that he works on behalf of BP

(Newser) - When Ken Feinberg doled out compensation to victims of the BP oil spill, he argued they should trust his decisions because he’s an independent party—but considering he’s getting paid by BP, that’s not entirely true, a judge ruled yesterday. Feinberg, who administrates the $20 billion compensation...

BP Issues Final Payment to Just One of 91K Spill Victims

$10M final settlement payment went to undisclosed firm

(Newser) - BP's compensation fund for Gulf oil spill victims has issued a final settlement payment—to just one of the roughly 91,000 people and businesses waiting for checks, records show. And that $10 million payout went to a company after the oil giant intervened on its behalf. BP won't identify...

Bacteria Ate Methane in Gulf at Near-Impossible Rate

Gas from spill consumed in less than 4 months, according to study

(Newser) - Bacteria appears to have broken down all the methane that spilled out of the Deepwater Horizon well in less than four months—even though the process should have taken years, according to one team of scientists studying the spill. “This was a surprise to us,” says the chemical...

Gulf Disaster 'Might Well Recur,' Commission Finds

'Absent significant reform,' welcome to Macondo II

(Newser) - The management blunders that led to the Deepwater Horizon explosion aren’t particularly uncommon in the oil industry, a presidential commission investigating the spill has concluded, meaning there’s every chance it could happen again. The commission blamed all three companies involved in the well—BP, TransOcean, and Halliburton—saying...

Transocean Disses Feds' Subpoenas
Transocean Disses
Feds' Subpoenas
Dec 30, 2010 6:00 AM CST

Transocean Disses Feds' Subpoenas

Deepwater Horizon owner claims safety board has no jurisdiction

(Newser) - The Deepwater Horizon's owner is refusing to honor subpoenas from a federal board that has challenged the company's involvement in monitoring the testing of the blowout preventer, which failed to stop the oil spill disaster. Transocean says the US Chemical Safety Board does not have jurisdiction in the probe, so...

Deepwater Crew Swallowed by Fire When All Safeties Failed

Deepwater Horizon should have been able to contain blowout, says NYT report

(Newser) - Workers on the exploding Deepwater Horizon were cut down by shrapnel, slammed into walls, and swallowed by fireballs, according to a hellish account of the last minutes of the doomed oil rig in the New York Times today. "Dazed and battered survivors, half-naked and dripping in highly combustible gas,...

Oil Spill Booms Resurrected as Chevy Volt Parts

Plastic resin, mixed with tires, equals engine component

(Newser) - If life gives you lemons, make lemonade—and if life gives you 100 miles' worth of oil-soaked plastic booms, make ... Chevy Volts? That's what GM is doing. The company is breathing new life into a heck of a lot of plastic that was used to help contain the Gulf spill,...

What the World Watched as 2010 Unfolded

Snooki to Spillcam, here's what we gawked at

(Newser) - We stared in horror as oil gushed unchecked from BP's ruptured well for months, we might have raised a beer as Steven Slater took his epic slide down a JetBlue ramp, and we feverishly refreshed Facebook as Mark Zuckerberg took Time's Person of the Year Honors. but mostly, writes Ted...

Gulf's Real Threat: Aging Oil Platforms

Old pipes, platforms raise the risk of failure, experts say

(Newser) - The massive Gulf oil spill raised the alarm about huge, state-of-the-art deep-water drilling rigs. But greater danger may actually come from the region's aging oil infrastructure, say experts. Older structures face increased risk of accidents, particularly fires—more than 50% of the 3,000 oil platforms in the Gulf are...

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

Feinberg offering $5K to individuals who agree not to sue

(Newser) - The administrator of BP's $20 billion compensation fund is offering Gulf residents cash bonuses to speed up the process, reports the New York Times. But there's a catch: Anyone who takes the money ($5,000 for individuals, $25,000 for businesses) has to agree not to sue BP or any...

BP's Hayward: If Only I Had an Acting Degree

And so what if I went sailing, he harrumphs in first in-depth interview

(Newser) - Tony Hayward's lips are flapping again, which usually doesn't bode well for Tony Hayward. In his first in-depth interview since his departure from the company's helm, BP's vilified ex-CEO is unrepentant about wanting his life back and going sailing as the Macondo well gushed, and generally feels like he "...

Investigators: BP Didn't Cut Corners After All

No one consciously chose money over safety, Bartlit says

(Newser) - The presidential panel investigating the Deepwater Horizon oil spill has come to a startling conclusion: BP didn’t cut corners on safety to save money. “We have not seen a single instance where a human being made a conscious decision to favor dollars over safety,” Fred Bartlit, the...

New BP Boss Decries 'Rush to Judgment'

But Bob Dudley says he doesn't plan on 'quitting America'

(Newser) - Newly minted BP CEO Bob Dudley spoke out in defense of his company’s handling of the Gulf oil spill today, saying there had been “a great rush to judgment” on the part of the media and rival oil companies. “I watched graphic projections of oil swirling around...

BP's Gulf Fund Confusing Everyone

Including the Journal and the Post

(Newser) - All is not well with BP’s inscrutable Gulf compensation fund, but the exact problems seem to be a matter of debate. The Wall Street Journal today runs a piece complaining that payments have been too slow and weirdly erratic. The Justice Department has called the pace of payments “...

Panel: White House Blocked Worst-Case Gulf Spill Figures

Findings slam government's handling of Deepwater Horizon disaster

(Newser) - The White House's response to the Gulf oil spill was sluggish and flawed by "a sense of over-optimism," according to a presidential panel investigating the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The panel discovered that the White House budget office rejected a request from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists for...

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