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<p>BP BP.LN -5.99% PLC was grossly negligent in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion and oil spill, a federal judge ruled Thursday.</p> <p>The decision by U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans means BP faces as much as $18 billion in civil penalties under the U.S. Clean Water Act for pollution in the Gulf of Mexico, far more than if the judge had found the company simply negligent.</p>

NEW ORLEANS--(AP)--Jury selection began Monday for the Justice Department's case against a former BP drilling engineer charged with deleting text messages and voicemails about the company's response to its massive 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Dozens of potential jurors filled a New Orleans courtroom for the start of Kurt Mix's federal trial, which is expected to last up to three weeks. Attorneys could give their opening statements as early as Tuesday. One by one, U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval Jr. questioned members of the jury pool privately for several hours. He dismissed some of them and ordered...

For microscopic animals living in the Gulf, even worse than the toxic oil released during the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster may be the very oil dispersants used to clean it up, a new study finds. More than 2 million gallons (7.5 million liters) of oil dispersants called Corexit 9527A and 9500A were dumped into the Gulf of Mexico in an effort to prevent oil from reaching shore and to help it degrade more quickly. However, when oil and Corexit are combined, the mixture becomes up to 52 times more toxic than oil alone, according to a study published online this...

A trio of senators have won their request for an investigation into Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s inspector general regarding a potential cover-up of documents that led to the drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico following the BP oil spill. Sens. David Vitter (R-La.), Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) asked the Integrity Committee of the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency in a May 24 letter to investigate the Interior Department’s Acting Inspector General Mary Kendall, whom they say “failed to ensure an independent, impartial and complete investigation into the Administration’s offshore drilling moratorium and...

(Reuters) - BP Plc (BP.L) has accused the U.S. government of withholding evidence that may show the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill was smaller than federal officials claimed, a key issue in determining the oil company's liability. A reduction in the size of the spill would lower the maximum civil fine BP could be forced to pay under the U.S. Clean Water Act, a sum now estimated as high as $17.6 billion. The government is one of many plaintiffs suing BP over the April 20, 2010 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which killed 11 workers and triggered...

U.S. prosecutors are preparing what would be the first criminal charges against BP PLC employees stemming from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon accident, which killed 11 workers and caused the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, said people familiar with the matter. Prosecutors are focused on several Houston-based engineers and at least one of their supervisors at the British oil company, though the breadth of the investigation isn't known.

NEW ORLEANS -- The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says federal scientists catching fish to test for possible damage from last year's Gulf of Mexico oil spill accidentally drowned three dolphins. Spokeswoman Connie Barclay says the pantropical spotted dolphins were caught Wednesday from a trawl off the research ship Pisces, which works out of Pascagoula, Miss. She said Friday that NOAA will investigate whether all proper procedures were followed.

Brian Williams just reported MORE oil is "appearing" in the Gulf around Louisiana. IMHO, This is REALLY REALLY "timely" with gas approaching $4.00 a gallon and NO DRILLING yet by Obama!!!!

The U.S. Coast Guard is currently investigating reports of a potentially massive oil sheen about 20 miles away from the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion last April.

An inquiry was completed in August 2010, but the report has only now been released along with the Government's response. This post provides a summary of the incident and findings, primarily based on the Inquiry's Report. Despite the fact that the Halliburton cementing report clearly showed that the casing shoe could not be regarded as having barrier integrity, the report was ‘signed off’ by Mr Treasure (PTTEPAA’s senior on‐rig representative) later in the evening on 7 March 2009, with a handwritten annotation ‘good job well done’. The extraordinariness of this state of affairs need not be laboured. It suffices to...

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...

Gulf Coast residents have plenty of reasons to be furious at the Obama administration's ham-handed, job-killing responses to last spring's BP oil spill. A new report by the Interior Department's inspector general further roils the waters. Interior IG Mary L. Kendall reported last week that the staff of White House energy czar Carol M. Browner improperly edited a report on how to improve safety in deep-sea drilling. The effect was to indicate falsely that there was scientific support for President Obama's decision to impose a six-month moratorium on such energy production. The truth was that seven scientists and industry experts...

WASHINGTON -- An inspector general says the White House edited a report about the administration's moratorium on offshore oil drilling to make it appear that scientists and experts supported the idea of a six-month ban on new drilling.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The oil spill that damaged the Gulf of Mexico's reefs and wetlands is also threatening to stain the Obama administration's reputation for relying on science to guide policy. --snip-- Meanwhile, the owner of the rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, Transocean Ltd., is renewing its argument that federal investigators are in danger of allowing the blowout preventer, a key piece of evidence, to corrode as it awaits forensic analysis. Testing had not begun as of last week, the company says, some two months after it was raised from the seafloor. --snip-- "There are really only...

WASHINGTON – The White House blocked efforts by federal scientists to tell the public just how bad the Gulf oil spill could have been, according to a panel appointed by President Barack Obama to investigate the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history. In documents released Wednesday, the national oil spill commission's staff reveals that in late April or early May the White House budget office denied a request from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to make public the worst-case discharge from the blown-out well. The Unified Command — the government team in charge of the spill response —...

BP's incoming chief executive, Bob Dudley, has reassured the City that the company will probably end up paying out less than the committed $20bn in compensation for those affected by the Gulf oil spill. The White House ordered the company to pay $20bn into a compensation fund over three and a half years, making it clear that further payments may be required. Although BP still does not know how much it will have to contribute, Dudley's comments that the $20bn already pledged should cover these claims reflect BP's growing confidence that it can emerge from April's Deepwater Horizon disaster in...

I don't believe in coincidences, and this latest event is really just too much. Back on May 1st, I wrote an article detailing my suspicion that the Deepwater Horizon explosion was no ordinary accident and possibly was even a deliberate attack by forces unknown. Of course I was drilled over it (no pun) and called every name under the sun for stating my thoughts. We still don't know the cause of that explosion, and we may never know the actual truth, but at least the oil flowing into the Gulf has been stopped. Now this. Last Wednesday, a federal judge...

ScienceDaily (Aug. 24, 2010) — In the aftermath of the explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico, a dispersed oil plume was formed at a depth between 3,600 and 4,000 feet and extending some 10 miles out from the wellhead. An intensive study by scientists with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) found that microbial activity, spearheaded by a new and unclassified species, degrades oil much faster than anticipated. This degradation appears to take place without a significant level of oxygen depletion. "Our findings show that the influx of oil profoundly altered the...

WASHINGTON: Nearly 80 per cent of the oil spilled from a BP well in the Gulf of Mexico is still in the gulf, US scientists have estimated, challenging a more optimistic assessment by the US government earlier in the month. In its August 4 report, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration found that half the 4.9 million barrels of oil spilled by the April 20 blowout had been evaporated, burned, skimmed or dispersed. A team of five scientists from the University of Georgia did their own analysis of the government data and came to a different conclusion. "We just reanalysed...

President Obama welcomed the New Orleans Saints to the White House on Monday to celebrate the team's Super Bowl victory. It's arguably the most attention he's given Louisiana since visiting the state in early June. Obama made three trips to Louisiana during the course of the oil spill. The last came on June 4, six weeks before the well was capped. Despite the fact the Deepwater Horizon explosion resulted in the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history -- just 50 miles off the Louisiana coast -- his administration is instead showering attention on the political battleground of Florida. Louisiana residents...