If 2010 qualifies as their ‘best’ year in safety performance, one wonders how low the bar is set. I shudder to think what a bad year looks like.
TRANSOCEAN CITES SAFETY IN BONUSES
by Daniel Gilbert and Tennille Tracy | Wall St Journal | April 2011
Transocean Ltd. had its “best year in safety performance” despite the explosion of its Deepwater Horizon rig that left 11 dead and oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, the world’s largest offshore-rig company said in a securities filing Friday.
Now seems like a good time to revisit this next piece.
DEEPWATER HORIZON’S FINAL HOURS
by David Barstow, David Rohde and Stephanie Saul | New York Times | December 2010
Crew members were cut down by shrapnel, hurled across rooms and buried under smoking wreckage. Some were swallowed by fireballs that raced through the oil rig’s shattered interior. Dazed and battered survivors, half-naked and dripping in highly combustible gas, crawled inch by inch in pitch darkness, willing themselves to the lifeboat deck.
Surely BP aren’t shirking any of their responsibilities? O, wait.
BP DELIBERATELY ‘UNDERPAYING’ CLAIMS, MISSISSIPPI SAYS
by Laurel Brubaker Calkins and Margaret Cronin Fisk | Bloomberg | February 2011
Of the 32,691 requests by individuals for interim damage payments from Feinberg’s fund, “none have been paid” as of Jan. 29, Hood said. Of 9,464 businesses that have filed interim damage claims, “only one has been paid,” he said.
4/18/11 – Update:
AP IMPACT: BP BUYS GULF COAST MILLIONS IN GEAR
by Michael Kunzelman, Mike Schneider, Melinda Deslatte | SF Gate | April 2011
Tasers. Brand-new SUVs. A top-of-the-line iPad. A fully loaded laptop. In the year since the Gulf oil spill, officials along the coast have gone on a spending spree with BP money, dropping tens of millions of dollars on gadgets and other gear — much of which had little to do with the cleanup, an Associated Press investigation shows.
Officially, marine life is returning to normal in the Gulf of Mexico, but dead animals are still washing up on beaches – and one scientist believes the damage runs much deeper.
4/19/2011 – Update 2:
THE GULF OIL DISASTER: ONE YEAR LATER
by Alan Taylor | The Atlantic (In Focus) | April 2011
One year ago, an explosion rocked the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers, sinking the rig, and releasing a massive amount of crude oil into the ocean. Nearly 4.9 million barrels of oil (200 million gallons) are believed to have leaked into the Gulf, fouling shorelines, crushing local economies, and damaging the environment to an extent that’s yet to be fully determined. Studies are ongoing, focused on issues such as dispersant effectiveness and long-term health effects on humans and animals — and litigation is ongoing, with more than 300 related lawsuits recently consolidated for a trial, beginning in February 2012, that will assign fault in terms of percentages to BP and other companies. Now, one year later, discovering the full extent of the disaster remains difficult, hampered by the scale of the affected area, the volume of the oil and differing explanations of what happened to the bulk of it, and criminal and civil litigation. These images give both a look back and a current view of the area affected by the largest accidental oil spill in history.