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NEW ORLEANS — As oil gushed from BP’s ruptured well five years ago and public outrage built by the day, the Obama administration issued a six-month moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. When the well was finally capped after nearly three months, political and industry pressure mounted on the White House to lift the ban, which it did about a month earlier than planned. Since then, oil and gas drilling Gulf has bounced back strongly and the number of deep-water drilling rigs has actually increased from 35 to about 48. Drillers are pushing into even deeper water and...

TEHRAN - Iran has left the development of two oilfields to the energy giant British Petroleum (BP), an informed source told the Tasnim News Agency on the condition of anonymity. The announcement is a follow-up to the September meeting between Iranian Oil Ministry officials and BP top managers, where the Iranian side headed by Amir Hossein Zamani Nia, the deputy oil minister for international affairs and trade, agreed to transfer the development of two oilfields to BP based on the new model of Iranian oil contracts, known as Integrated Petroleum Contract (IPC), which is due to be unveiled soon. ---snip---...

Excerpt - MOSCOW (AFP)--British-Russian oil company TNK-BP chief executive, Robert Dudley, has been summoned to appear before Russian prosecutors on Monday to explain "violations" of labor laws by his company, Interfax news agency reported Saturday. Dudley "temporarily" left Russia this week, the company said Thursday, saying he would run the company from outside the country. ~ snip ~

William Allen Kruse, 55, a charter boat captain recently hired by BP as a vessel of opportunity out of Gulf Shores, Ala., died Wednesday morning before 7:30 a.m. of a gunshot to the head, likely self-inflicted, authorities said. "He had been quite despondent about the oil crisis," said Stan Vinson, coroner for Baldwin County, which includes Gulf Shores. Kruse, who lived with his family in nearby Foley, Ala., reported to work Wednesday morning as usual at the Gulf Shores Marina on Fort Morgan Road in Gulf Shores, Vinson said. He met up with his two deckhands at his boat, The...

Benny Johnson @bennyjohnson 🚨Epic. Secretary Doug Burgum gets a tour of an oil rig in the Gulf of America: "Biden banned the possibility of even developing acres of the Gulf of America. He banned all of that. Trump unbanned that... we're back in business again." From Rapid Response 47 9:31 AM · May 3, 2025

Moments like the one we live in now come along from time to time, providing the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of the past. For instance, key takeaways from the Deepwater Horizon incident of April 2010 and how they apply to today are clear except to those who deny them. On Apr. 20, 2010, an explosion occurred on the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico. The explosion, which killed 11 men, caused the rig to sink into the deep and started a devastating oil leak from the well. Prior to it being capped three months afterward,...

What gives here? Conservative talk show host, Mark Levin, makes an excellent observation as well as ask an excellent question. First the Obaminator: "...and the Department of the Interior has announced that they will be sending Swat teamns to the Gulf to inspect all platforms and rigs." Mark Levin: "Swat teams from the Department of the Interior? When I was Deputy Secretary of the Interior Department (during the Reagan administration), I don't remember any Swat teams. Now you heard hims say that the Department of the Interior was going to send Swat teams, I didn't know that they had Swat...

Contrary to their own scientific intuition, Cornell researchers found that the body size of intertidal oysters didn’t change after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. This offers evidence that either the mollusks recovered rapidly or that the accident lacked the severity to affect growth. After the initial explosion April 20, 2010, which sank the Deepwater Horizon semi-submersible rig, about 3.2 million barrels of oil poured into the northern Gulf of Mexico until the well was capped July 15. The scientists believe that the travel distance of the oil gave it time to degrade, and bacterial...

The Trump administration is proposing to rewrite or kill rules on offshore oil and gas drilling that were imposed after the deadly 2010 rig explosion and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The administration says the rules are an unnecessary burden on industry, and rolling them back will encourage more energy production. An offshore-drilling group is welcoming the rollback, while environmentalists say President Donald Trump is raising the risk of more deadly oil spills. …

In another move to free up domestic energy supplies, President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday aimed at lifting the Obama administration’s offshore drilling restrictions.For decades, bad policies have blocked access to America’s abundance of domestic resources, yet America has still managed to be a global energy leader. Trump’s executive order, “Implementing an America-First Offshore Energy Strategy,” could unleash further success in the energy sector.The economic potential sitting just off America’s coasts is enormous. The Outer Continental Shelf is awash with natural resources, containing an estimated 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.Realizing...

As the deepening crisis of the catastrophic Gulf oil disaster continues to unfold, several oil spill stories of major importance have been virtually ignored. Even the conservative media have refused by and large to cover these stories. Conservative Examiner was among the first to break these stories, yet to this day not a single major media outlet has been willing to report them, not even Fox News or conservative talk radio. These stories are explosive, conclusive, factually verified, and of utmost importance to understanding what is truly happening in the Gulf and the scenario that led to it. First, on...

BP expects to take an after-tax non-operating charge of around $2.5 billion in its 2Q 2016 results, a total charge to the disaster of $61.6 billion.

At 6:30 a.m. on April 24, 2012, federal agents, wearing Kevlar vests and with guns drawn, raided my home in Katy, Texas, with a warrant for my arrest. This was as shocking to me as it would be for any normal, law-abiding citizen. I’m not a drug dealer, violent criminal or money launderer. I’m an engineer. In 2010 I helped stop the BP oil spill after an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig left a damaged well spilling crude directly into the Gulf of Mexico. On the morning of the raid I left early for work, so I was...

Saudi Arabia and OPEC may have dropped oil prices to stifle production in the U.S. and other competing nations, but they didn’t drop it enough to stifle the U.S. oil and gas boom from fracking, a senior expert with McKinsey and Company said in Chicago. “If the Saudis think they’re going to put U.S. shale players out of business, they’re probably not, although there will be less drilling,” Joe Quoyeser told about 125 people, mostly graduate students, at Northwestern University’s Kellogg Energy Conference on Wednesday. ”But there are other elements of oil supply that are needed to balance the market...

Natural gas stopped flowing from a runaway well in the Gulf of Mexico after sediment in the well blocked the uncontrolled flow, federal authorities reported Thursday. The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said the well “bridged over,” meaning small pieces of sediment and sand flowed into the well path, restricting the flow and countering the pressure. A fire that had engulfed a portion of the Hercules 265 jack-up rig was put out early Thursday morning, according to a Coast Guard report to Congress. “They are lucky,” said Bud Danenberger, a consultant and former chief of offshore regulatory programs at...

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The Justice Department reached a $1.4 billion settlement Thursday with Transocean Ltd., the owner of the drilling rig that sank after an explosion killed 11 workers and spawned the massive 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The proposed settlement resolves the department's civil and criminal probes of Transocean's role in the Deepwater Horizon rig disaster. It requires the Switzerland-based company to pay $1 billion in civil penalties and $400 million in criminal penalties and plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of violating the Clean Water Act, according to a court filing. . .

WASHINGTON, March 18 (UPI) -- Washington has given Petrobras America Inc. permission to start oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico, a regulator said. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement gave Petrobras approval to use a floating production storage offloading facility at its Cascade-Chinook project in the Gulf of Mexico. The approval marks the first time FPSO technology will be used in U.S. waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The oil and gas project is about 165 miles off the coast of Louisiana in 8,200 feet of water. The FPSO has a production capacity of...

PJM EXCLUSIVE: Louisiana's GOP senator on how the cover-up to trump sound science in favor of political ideology keeps growing with each chapter. Here’s the book-jacket teaser: A major U.S. environmental disaster strikes. As Coast Guard and other heroes struggle to contain the unprecedented damage, a different scene unfolds in a dimly lit conference room in Washington. A small group of high-ranking political hacks and overzealous ideologues see an opportunity to manipulate the situation to advance their agenda. They doctor a key report on the disaster by experts in order to justify shutting down all exploration and new production. They...

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- The Justice Department says the first criminal charges in the Deepwater Horizon disaster have been filed against a former BP engineer who allegedly destroyed evidence. Kurt Mix, of Katy, Texas was arrested on charges of intentionally destroying evidence. He faces two counts of obstruction of justice.

The Obama administration was subpoenaed Tuesday for documents that congressional investigators hope would shed light on how a government report was edited to indicate experts endorsed a moratorium on oil drilling in the Gulf following the Deepwater Horizon tragedy. Interior Department officials have refused to comply with repeated requests from the House Resources Committee to provide documents that lawmakers say would show if political appointees at the agency or White House were involved in the editing decision and whether it was intentional.