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If the government does not take drastic steps, another deepwater oil spill like the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico could devastate the coastal areas of the United States, an oversight commission warned Tuesday in a long-awaited report to the president. More research, funding and oversight are needed to help prevent another disaster, concluded the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. "As drilling pushes into ever deeper and riskier waters where more of America's oil lies, only systemic reforms of both government and industry will prevent a similar, future disaster," said William K....

Federal study confirms microbes have eaten most of the Gulf Oil Spill A study by researchers from Texas A&M and University of California in Santa Barbara have found that all of the methane gas released from the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico have been consumed by tiny microbes. Methane gas amounts 100,000 times higher than normal at the time of their release have completely disappeared after only 120 days. Some scientists had raised concerns that dissolved methane and other oil residue would continue to plague the Gulf for years or even decades. This is turning out not...

Last August, just two days into a research cruise to study methane gas spewed into the Gulf of Mexico by the Deepwater Horizon gusher, Texas A&M University oceanographer John Kessler turned to one of his colleagues and said, "Well, it looks like it might be gone. What do you think?" The huge wallop of methane burped up from deep inside the earth was, in fact, missing. Kessler and his colleagues now report in Science that a huge swarm of gas-gobbling bacteria swelled to consume nearly all of the estimated 200,000 tons of methane dumped into the gulf. ..... Besides providing...

<p>The worst of the explosions gutted the Deepwater Horizon stem to stern.</p> <p>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.</p>

The day after the midterm elections in November, panelists at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy discussed the various factors that had contributed to the Democrats’ losses—most surprisingly, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. One speaker with excellent Democratic connections in Washington noted that top White House staff were consumed by the spill and its political fallout for much of the spring of 2010. As staffers now lamented privately, this had diverted attention from other pressing issues—above all, the sputtering economy. The political fortunes of the Democratic party were not the only collateral damage from the...

"We're seeing one of the lowest mobility rates in a century," says Nathaniel Karp, chief economist for banking firm BBVA Compass. Karp says the recession has forced many people to stay put because they are unable to sell their homes, cannot find jobs or are unwilling to relocate for work if it means sacrificing a partner's stable position. The slowdown makes the question of who's moving and why even more significant than in years past. Using 2010 projections by Moody's Economy.com, Forbes ranked the states in which people are leaving faster than they are arriving. Economists report several overlapping trends...

Mindful not to waste a perfectly good crisis, the Obama White House and influential congressional Democrats have seized the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster to assert a continuing stranglehold control over offshore drilling operations. On Dec. 1 Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's seven-year extended prohibition on new oil and gas development off the Florida and eastern Atlantic coasts is once again adding enormous penalties to our already ailing economy and employment market. Costs include many thousands of lost high-skilled job opportunities, increased energy and product prices, more industry relocations overseas and greater dependence upon foreign oil imports. The Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil &...

By now it might not be news to our readers that New Orleans Hornets minority owner Gary Chouest, whose Galliano-based Edison Chouest Offshore has been largely devastated by the recent collapsing demand for its offshore oilfield services, has opted out of a deal to buy out the team’s principal owner George Shinn. The reason? Barack Hussein Obama. Or more to the point, Obama’s climate-and-energy czar and committed socialist Carol Browner, who demanded and received a six-month moratorium on deepwater offshore drilling in the Gulf as a response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

A mile below the surface in the Gulf of Mexico, there is little sign of life. "It looks like everything's dead," University of Georgia professor Samantha Joye said.

Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, has circulated across the internet an encrypted “poison pill” cache of uncensored documents suspected to include files on BP and Guantanamo Bay.

Republican Florida governor-elect Rick Scott slammed President Obama’s ban on offshore drilling near the coast of Florida. Mr. Scott issued a statement saying Wednesday’s decision is another example of the government regulation impeding economic growth. Mr. Scott said drilling could be conducted safely if proper regulations were implemented. Offshore drilling does not currently occur near the coast of Florida. The Obama administration announced a ban on offshore drilling, shelving plans to open offshore waters near Florida to oil and gas drilling. Officials said the decision was due, in part, to the BP oil disaster earlier this year. The western coast...

Obama administration officials will announce Wednesday afternoon they will not allow offshore oil drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico or off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts as part of the next five-year drilling plan, according to sources briefed on the plan, reversing two key policy changes President Obama announced in late March. During that announcement--less than a month before the BP oil spill--Obama and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said they would open up the eastern Gulf and parts of the Atlantic, including off the coast of Virginia, to offshore oil and gas exploration.

When the BP oil well blew out earlier this year, the 4 million barrels that flowed into the sea didn't simply vanish. There's growing evidence that a good portion of it sunk to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, where some of it remains. To get to the sea floor a few miles from the blown-out Macondo well, we clamber into a titanium-hulled submarine named Alvin and are gently hoisted off the deck of its mother ship, the Atlantis, into a surprisingly blue and inviting Gulf of Mexico. Mike Skowronski is our pilot. As we descend, the water turns...

An early government assessment of the fate of the oil from the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico that was criticized as overly optimistic by some independent scientists was largely accurate, according to a revised report by federal scientists released Tuesday. The preliminary analysis, announced in August, estimated that roughly three-quarters of the oil had been eliminated — captured at the wellhead, skimmed from the surface, chemically dispersed or burned, or evaporating or breaking down through natural processes. About one-quarter of the oil had either washed up on shore or remained in the gulf as sheen, tar balls or...

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. -- Brand new laboratory test results just in Monday morning are showing troubling problems with gulf seafood. WFTV sent shrimp to be tested after scientists disagreed on whether it is safe to eat after the oil spill, and the results are raising a lot of red flags. Inspectors initially tested gulf shrimp after the BP oil spill by smelling it, but local restaurant owners say customers did not trust the smell test and did not trust gulf seafood in general. "People started asking us did we know where it came from, what part of the gulf it...

In an interview this morning on Glenn Beck’s radio show, Bobby Jindal said that at a meeting with the President during the gulf oil spill, that he and the President of Plaquemines Parish were told specifically by Obama not to go on TV and criticize him. Jindal says that it was clear Obama was frustrated with the level of criticism he was getting and goes on to accuse Obama of caring more about perception and politics than actually cutting through the red tape and getting things done. Video is HERE

Three Republican senators demanded Friday that the White House explain last-minute editing changes to an Interior Department report on the BP oil spill that falsely implied that a group of independent experts had endorsed a political decision to temporarily halt all deepwater oil drilling. The senators, members of the Environment and Public Works Committee, called for hearings into the matter, contending that the White House had manipulated science for political ends, a claim Democrats frequently made about the George W. Bush administration. The Interior Department’s inspector general issued a report this week asserting that officials in the office of Carol...

Bobby Jindal says Barack Obama told him to stop going on TV to criticize him during the oil spill. In comments meant to plug his new book, "Leadership and Crisis," Jindal told Sean Hannity that Obama was so insecure about his public image that he actually tried to prevent him from making more TV appearances where he would criticize Obama for his failed response to the BP oil spill. Jindal’s new book went on sale earlier this week, and as other media has noted, he really chides the president in a way that sitting governors normally don’t do, which has...

Governor Sarah Palin’s Record That Gave Her A 90% Approval Rating: Energy Independence, Development, and Environmental Stewardship *Governor Palin’s cornerstone accomplishment is AGIA (Alaska Gasline Inducement Act). During the Palin administration, TransCanada and Exxon formed an alliance to build a natural gas pipeline from Alaska to the Lower 48. Under Governor Palin’s governance, the project was expanded and revised from what previous governors had proposed with an open policy process for the Alaskan people. More progress was made on this effort than in the previous 30 years. This is the largest private sector infrastructure project in North American history and...

See the link. Jinda accuses Obama of staging the lecture on the tarmac for media purposes, and says Obama was more concerned about the White House's image than the oil cleanup. Complained to Jindal about Jindal complaining about Obama.