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What Could Reduce The Risk Of Another Catastrophic Oil Well Blowout?

A little before 10 o’clock on the night of April 20th, 2010 multiple explosions blew apart the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. Eleven crew members died, 17 more were injured while nearly 100 others narrowly escaped. In the five years since, the drilling industry says it has dramatically changed how it does business to make it […]

Five Years After BP Spill, What’s Killing Gulf Dolphins?

It was five years ago next month that a BP oil drilling rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers. Millions of gallons of crude spilled into the water. Damage was done to aquatic life. But is the spilled oil now to blame for the deaths of hundreds of dolphins? “The magnitude and […]

Deepwater Horizon Oil May Sit On Ocean Floor, But How Did It Get There?

Ever since an explosion at BP’s Deepwater Horizon offshore rig in 2010 released about five million of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, researchers have been trying to figure out where much of the oil ended up. A new study is offering some answers. By tracing chemicals in undersea sediment, scientists have found […]

Texas Got Millions From BP, But Lawmakers Didn’t Know Until Now

If $5 million falls into Texas’ lap in the wake of a massive oil spill, does it make a sound? That question was on the minds of lawmakers at the Capitol this week as they held a hearing to look into how the state will manage funds from the 2010 BP oil spill in the […]

How Budget Cuts and Oil Spills Threaten ‘World’s Most Endangered Sea Turtle’

Around this time every year, female Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles arrive like clockwork on Matagorda Island, on the Texas Gulf Coast. “During the day they’ll craw up, usually closer to the dunes, and they’ll dig out an area and they’ll lay a nest of several eggs,” says Jeremy Edwardson, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife […]

Four Years After BP Spill, Settlement Money Slowly Trickles In

In the aftermath of the 2010 BP oil spill, the worst in US history, the Gulf Coast is still adding up the costs of the disaster on coastal species and the ecosystem as a whole. In the National Wildlife Federation’s updated annual report on the status of the Gulf Coast, the foundation lists several criminal […]

How the Coast Guard is Managing Oil Spill Volunteers

Volunteers Warned Phones with Photos of Oiled Beaches Could Be Confiscated When a barge carrying fuel oil collided with a ship last month off Galveston Island, hundreds of people began signing up to help. For days now, volunteers have been walking the beaches looking for oil slicks, tarballs, and injured wildlife. Their reports are helping […]

Texas Still Learning When It Comes to Oil Spill Response

Two dozen boats and over 500 people are now involved in the response to an oil spill from Saturday that closed the Houston Ship Channel. What spilled was a heavy fuel oil, called bunker fuel, which was carried in a barge that collided with a ship. Up to 168,000 gallons were dumped into the channel. […]

Galveston Bay Spill Will Take Economic, Ecological Toll

From the Texas Tribune: With no end in sight to containing a spill that may have dumped 150,000 gallons of fuel oil into Galveston Bay on Saturday, the hit to Texas’ economy and environment is already huge — and sure to grow. The 50-mile Houston Ship Channel, one of the world’s biggest waterways for the […]

New Film Shows Lives Still Scarred By BP Oil Spill

We’re coming up on four years since the worst accidental oil spill in history: the blowout at the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico.  Over two hundred million gallons of oil spewed into the Gulf. Eleven men were killed in the blast, all from a tight-knit group of rig workers. A film premiering at the SXSW Film Festival this […]

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