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Click here to visit the new home of Politics Daily!MIAMI -- After being hammered for a year over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, BP is going on the offensive with multibillion-dollar lawsuits seeking to shift at least part of the blame to those who owned the ill-fated rig or designed a failed safety device or supplied cement that didn't hold. Those companies - Transocean, Cameron International and Halliburton - each filed lawsuits of their own, and it will now be up to the courts to divvy up fault. BP, which has rebounded remarkably in the year since the April 20, 2010, disaster, will face an uphill battle in trying to shed the albatross of ...
NEW ORLEANS -- BP on Wednesday sued the maker of the device that failed to stop last year's calamitous Gulf oil spill and the owner of the rig that exploded, alleging that negligence by both helped cause the disaster. The British company said in papers filed in federal court in New Orleans that it is suing rig owner Transocean for at least $40 billion in damages, accusing it of causing last year's deadly blowout in the Gulf of Mexico that led to the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history. BP says every single safety system and device and well control procedure on the Deepwater Horizon rig ...
Oil is still in a few places in the Gulf, but for the most part it looks pristine. Anecdotal evidence indicates a rapidly recovering area -- escaped crude oil itself is scarce, and regular tests by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries have yet to reveal any tainted seafood. But the Gulf of Mexico and its coastal wetlands are vastly complicated ecosystems. Scientists had incomplete information on them before the BP oil spill a year ago today, and it will be years before they can start to draw conclusions about the impact of the millions of barrels of oil that spewed into the ...
NEW ORLEANS -- It's hard to tell that just a year ago BP was reeling from financial havoc and an American public out for blood. The oil giant at the center of one of the world's biggest environmental crises is making strong profits again, its stock has largely rebounded, and it is paying dividends to shareholders once more. It is also pursuing new ventures from the Arctic to India. It is even angling to explore again in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, where it holds more leases than any competitor. "BP has a critical role to play in meeting the world's ever-growing need for energy," ...
BAY JIMMY, La. -- Scientists judge the overall health of the Gulf of Mexico as nearly back to normal one year after the BP oil spill, but with glaring blemishes that restrain their optimism about nature's resiliency, an Associated Press survey of researchers shows. More than three dozen scientists grade the Gulf's big picture health a 68 on average, using a 1-to-100 scale. What's remarkable is that that's just a few points below the 71 the same researchers gave last summer when asked what grade they would give the ecosystem before the spill. And it's an improvement from the 65 given back in ...
ALONG THE GULF COAST -- In the small brick church just across the road from the chocolate waters of Bayou Lafourche, the Rev. Joseph Anthony Pereira unbuttons his collar as the last parishioners pull out of the lot. Tonight, nearly a year after the BP oil spill began, he's asked his congregation of shrimpers and oil industry workers to think about lessons learned when survival is in jeopardy. But Pereira doubts that many from the 5 p.m. Mass are ready to take his Lenten message to heart. "You speak about this to them because they forget what they went through," says Pereira, who pastors at ...
BELLE CHASSE, La. -- Nearly one year after an explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig killed 11 workers and led to the nation's worst offshore oil spill, the Coast Guard honored a supply vessel's crew who helped rescue 115 survivors. Patrick Semansky, AP Billy Marsh, a crew member of the offshore supply vessel Damon B. Bankston, receives a distinguished public service award from U.S. Coast Guard Vice Adm. Sally Brice-O'Hara during a ceremony Friday in Belle Chasse, La., honoring members of the vessel and Coast Guard helicopter crews who helped rescue 115 survivors of ...
Researchers have traced oil found on dead dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico to the BP Deepwater Horizon spill but say it's not yet clear whether the oil caused their deaths. Hundreds of bottlenose dolphins have washed up dead in the Gulf in the past year, an unexplained rise in deaths that has scientists concerned. Oil on six of the dolphins has been directly linked to BP's blown-out well, but researchers say it's too soon to conclude whether or not the oil was responsible or if their demise was caused by something entirely unrelated, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said. ...
A Bloomberg News report that the U.S. Justice Department is considering manslaughter charges in its investigation of BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico played prominently enough Tuesday to drive BP's share price down. But if criminal charges are filed against individuals involved in the disaster, it would be a rare event. An analysis of industrial disasters by University of Maryland law professor Jane Barrett shows that company managers are almost never charged in industrial accidents -- even in disasters that have killed more people than the 11 men who died in last year's explosion on the ...
WASHINGTON -- The economy may be anemic and federal spending slashed, but inside the Beltway, the word these days for all things in the era of austerity seems to be robust. Call it subliminal messaging, but the word that everyone would like to attach to the phrase "economic recovery" is instead hitched to everything but. It describes the Treasury Department's effort to repair its image, the Pentagon's investigation of WikiLeaks. Never mind that politicians use robust when the reality is the opposite. The space shuttle is being mothballed, but Florida Sen. Bill Nelson talks about the robust ...
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