Less than two months after BP announced a record settlement over criminal charges for the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the company that owned the rig has announced a civil and criminal settlement for a total of $1.4 billion. While BP leased the Deepwater Horizon rig and owned rights to the Macondo well, a crew [...]
Former University of Texas at Austin Professor Charles “Chip” Groat is ready to move on from a controversy about failing to disclose a conflict of interest while at the University. “I will leave this unpleasant episode behind me,” he wrote us in an email last week. Groat is retiring early from UT and moving to [...]
In the largest criminal penalty in history, BP will pay $4.5 billion to settle a federal case over the April, 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The settlement will resolve numerous criminal claims against BP brought by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). As part of the agreement, BP also agreed [...]
Tar balls and oil from the BP spill in 2010 are washing up again on the shores of Louisiana. Hurricane Issac, which stirred up intense winds and dumped over a foot of rain in some parts of the state, has also disturbed some deposits that hadn’t been cleaned up after spill. More than two years [...]
Nearly all of the oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico have been evacuated because of Hurricane Isaac, according to the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE). Of the 596 manned platforms in the Gulf, all but 93 have been evacuated as of mid-day today. 49 of the 76 rigs in the drilling area [...]
It’s a heavy question: Where is all of our energy going to come from? That puzzle is at the center of a new film and education project, ‘Switch.’
Just after midnight on March 24, 1989 the Exxon Valdez oil tanker struck a reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska. 11 million gallons of oil spilled into the water, which soon made its way to shore. It took three years to clean up. It was the worst oil spill in history. That was until two [...]
Steve Coll has traveled the world reporting on nuclear weapons, the CIA, and terrorists in the Middle East for The New Yorker and Washington Post. But he may have found his biggest reporting challenge yet right here in Texas. In his new book, ‘Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power,’ Coll takes a close look at [...]
Tomorrow, 38 million acres of offshore drilling areas in the Gulf of Mexico will go on sale. Drillers are clamoring for the rights, but lurking in the background is a question: What happens if oil prices keep going down? Just months ago, everyone was trying to figure out why prices were rising so high. But [...]
The sun is setting for drillers wanting a new piece of the Gulf. There’s one more day to bid on leases to drill offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) will hold a sale of nearly 38 million acres of offshore leases Wednesday. Those leases run in [...]
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