BP
-
![]()
![]()
Disaster contingency plans are ‘fantasy documents’ when it comes to big oil spills
Lee Clarke.Am I the only one mystified — and, OK, horrified — by British Petroleum’s apparent failure to have a contingency plan in place for just the kind of worst-case scenario that happened in the Gulf on April 20? Thankfully not. “Fantasy documents” is how author and sociologist Lee Clarke describes most corporate contingency plans […]
-
![]()
![]()
A three-way blame game at oil-spill hearing
Here’s your 30-second wrap of the first congressional hearing on the BP Gulf oil disaster: The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hauled in executives from BP America, which leased the Deepwater Horizon rig; Transocean, which owned the rig; and America’s favorite, Halliburton, which laid cement for the rig. Executives from the three companies — […]
-
Political fallout from the Gulf oil spill: Hill hearings, climate-bill questions, MMS reorg
Now it’s really starting to get ugly. Not in the Gulf of Mexico — that’s already borderline hideous — but in Washington. The top execs of the three partners in the toppled, leaking oil rig — BP, Transocean, and Halliburton — made their first public appearances before Congress today, and while they haven’t reached screaming-cats-in-a-bag […]
-
![]()
![]()
An oil spill looks a lot bigger in your (yes, your!) backyard
The Gulf of Mexico oil spill is big. Twenty-five hundred square miles big. But that oily mess is out in distant ocean waters, not your backyard, making it difficult to relate to the scale of this petro-tastrophe. Helpfully, Google Earther Paul Rademacher makes it easy to imagine what the oil spill would look like in […]
-
![]()
![]()
Oil spill update: The ‘junk shot’ solution, BP’s poor safety record, right-wingers discredited
“Eww.” A toxic-smelling trail of “dispersed” oil in the Gulf.Photo: National Wildlife FederationDown $350 million so far and its much-hyped containment dome done in by clumps of icy slush, BP is mulling other options to shut off the gushing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It might try again with a smaller dome. Or […]
-
![]()
![]()
Obama’s failure on climate change
Last week, Josh Green had an op-ed in The Boston Globe called “Even an oil spill won’t move Washington,” which points out the bizarre fact that the BP Gulf oil disaster seems only to have entrenched politicians in their pre-existing positions. They asked me to write a short response for their website. I did, and […]
-
![]()
![]()
Accident expert weighs in on Gulf oil spill
Charles PerrowRegulation, regulation, regulation. Until the U.S. can make the switch to renewables, insists professor and author Charles Perrow, regulation is the best way to prevent disasters like the Gulf oil spill. Perrow is an organizational theorist, emeritus professor at Yale University, and author of Normal Accidents: Living with High Risk Technologies. He studies accidents. […]
-
![]()
![]()
Can the Gulf oil spill be environmentalists’ Arizona moment?
A May Day protest against Arizona’s immigration law.Photo courtesy th.omas via FlickrWithin a week of Arizona’s new racial-profiling bill becoming law, the “1 MILLION Strong AGAINST the Arizona Immigration Law SB1070” group on Facebook climbed to nearly 1.3 million people. Via Facebook and emails and phone calls, I’ve been asked to attend vigils and marches, […]
-
![]()
![]()
Betting site sets odds on BP containment dome
From our sports department a press release, we learn that at least one online gambling site is taking bets on whether BP’s underwater mega-dome will be successful. BP is attempting an unprecedented engineering feat to deal with the Gulf oil spill: a 100-ton, 40-foot-tall, steel pollution-containment chamber. If all goes well, the dome will be […]
