Category Archives: Environment

BP: House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairmen Send Damning Letter to Hayward

The House Energy and Commerce Committee chairmen, Henry Waxman and Bart Stupak published the text of a 14 page letter sent today to Tony Hayward, BP’s CEO. The House website not only contains the text of the letter, but also 23 additional documents from BP, Halliburton, Schlumberger, and Transocean. The letter itself provides a damning […]

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BP Given 48 Hours to Step Up Recovery Efforts

We’ve admittedly gone a bit heavy on the BP coverage in the last day or so, but since we aren’t having a financial crisis weekend, this is one of the few major stories that is having meaningful developments. Bloomberg reports that the Coast Guard has ordered the oil producer to increase its recovery efforts. The […]

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BP Shows Belly, Says Willing to Cut Dividend, So What Will Obama Do?

BP has clearly decided that it needs to do what it takes to get the Administration to de-escalate its campaign against the oil producer, and is signaling that it is willing to cut its dividend, something it has fiercely resisted, as a peace offering. BP’s chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg has been summoned to meet with Obama […]

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“Green Consumerism” Largely a Myth

An important little post by Amanda Reed at WorldChanging reveals how conventional measures of carbon emissions give consumers a free pass and ignore the greenhouse gas production resulting from global sourcing of consumer goods. John Barnett of the Stockholm Environment Institute gave a presentation based on his work in the UK and 40 local governments […]

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WTF Alert: BP CEO is a Mere PR Problem?

What term do you use to describe spin about spin? Spin squared? Meta spin? Whatever you chose to call it, a classic example is in full view in a New York Times article, “Another Torrent BP Works to Stem: Its C.E.O.” If you were to believe the New York Times, which all too often appears […]

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Models Show Gulf Oil May Reach US East Coast This Summer

This cheery news from the SunHerald (hat tip reader Dwight Baker): The National Center for Atmospheric Research models showed Thursday that oil could enter the Gulf’s loop current, go around the tip of Florida and as far north as Cape Hatteras, N.C. According to researchers, oil could threaten East Coast beaches by early July, but […]

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BP Admits to Being “Not Prepared” (“Low Odds” Fallacy Edition)

A sudden bout of semi-candor from BP suggests the top brass of the miscreant oil company recognized that it is in such deep doo-doo that the normal corporate PR playbook is no longer operative. Companies and governments often refuse to admit error or blame it on circumstances out of their control as a way to […]

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It’s Official: Gulf “Top Kill” Fails

From the Washington Post, as foretold earlier by George Washington: BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said the company determined the “top kill” method had failed after studying it for three days. The method involved pumping heavy drilling mud into a crippled well 5,000 feet underwater. “We have not been able to stop the flow,” […]

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First Person Observation of Oil Leak Impact

From an employee of a New Orleans community clinic, via reader Doug: I wanted to write to tell you how appreciative (though not surprised, of course) I was to see that your boss made a trip down to the Gulf to see the complete disaster that has unfolded here. We, and especially our partners in […]

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BP and Executive Arrogance

The geyser of oil and less than cheery news on the Gulf oil spill continues unabated. The news updates of the day include: Reports from a Congressional briefing that suggest, as many have speculated, that the mud was removed despite heavy gas output, a warning sign, with BP admitting its workers may have made a […]

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Lookin’ Ugly at the Deepwater Horizon Live Cam?

This is just a snippet (and this message is per the request of Lambert Strether, who has a post of his own up and trying to get further information from other Deepwater Horizon live cam bloggers or watchers): Major changes happening at BP Disaster site: http://monkeyfister.blogspot.com/2010/05… There have been several major eruptions of the seabed […]

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Why is the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill an Information Dead Zone?

It isn’t hard to see that the lack of decent information about how serious the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is is almost certainly due to obfuscation on the part of BP. The puzzling part is how BP can fantasize that it ultimately gains from this conduct, and why the Obama Administration tolerates it. The frustration […]

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Even Fewer Deepwater Horizon Inspections Than MMS Claimed Earlier

Ooh, this gets uglier and uglier the harder one looks at this. From the Associated Press via ABC (hat tip reader Glenn Stehle): The federal agency responsible for ensuring that an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico was operating safely before it exploded last month fell well short of its own policy that inspections […]

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