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The BP oil spill was a massive "failure" in government oversight and administrations should be forced to consult with experts in the field before making expansive drilling policy, top officials of the White House's oil spill commission said on Wednesday.
Commission Co-chairman Bob Graham, a former U.S. Senator from Florida, said regulators and offshore drillers were aware of the possibility of a major well blowout, such as the one that caused the BP spill, but ignored the risks.

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The U.S. government on Monday said BP's ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico gushed an estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil, making it the largest accidental oil spill of all time.

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The head of the American Association of Professors accused BP Friday of trying to buy the silence of scientists and academics to protect itself after the Gulf oil spill, in a BBC interview.

bp oilspill Gulf of Mexico science scientists American Association of Professors

For those planning to visit beaches along the gulf coast during their summer vacation, NRDC's newest map will be a must-view resource. It shows all the beach closings caused by the Gulf oil spill. Updated on a regular basis, this map is quickly filling up with little tags showing which beaches are off limits if you want to avoid the health impacts caused by oil on our shores.

nrdc oilspill Gulf of Mexico beach map

Scientists are reporting early signs that the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is altering the marine food web by killing or tainting some creatures and spurring the growth of others more suited to a fouled environment.

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A lead congressional committee investigating the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has broadened its inquiry, now checking if tens of thousands of abandoned oil and gas wells are leaking or even being monitored for leaks.

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There's been much discussion over how BP has been obstructing media coverage of the Gulf spill, and rightly so. Thus far, impediments to coverage have involved the Coast Guard cooperating with BP to turn reporters away, and simply barring journalists' access from certain impacted areas. But now, reports are surfacing that journalists are no longer just facing the prospect of being turned away -- a new rule imposed by the US Coast Guard means that they're now facing felony charges and fines of tens of thousands of dollars as well.

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On July 2, photographer Lance Rosenfeld was detained by police and released only after authorities reviewed his images and collected his personal identification information, which they then shared with BP, the company responsible for the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill. 

bp oilspill Gulf of Mexico photographer harassed

Kindra Arnesen is the wife of a Gulf fisherman and she's discovered that BP is claiming is that if fishermen choose not to take part in the oil spill cleanup, BP will consider that as potential income declined and deduct it from their claims.

Kindra has previously talked about the serious health problems manifesting in those who have taken part in the cleanup.

bp oilspill Gulf of Mexico cleanup penalize claims fishermen

BP has been accused by a senior US politician of lying to Congress to reduce its liabilities, after an internal company document showed that the oil giant's own worst-case assessment of the size of the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico was 20 times its public estimate.

bp oilspill congress Gulf of Mexico worst-case assessment

The grilling of the major oil executives at Tuesday's Congressional hearing into America's energy future got off to an early start.

The topic: walruses.

Noting that most oil producers included walruses in their oil spill regional response plans despite the fact that the mammal is not native to the Gulf of Mexico, Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) asked ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson:

"As I'm sure you know, there aren't any walruses in the Gulf of Mexico and there have not been for three million years. How can Exxon Mobil have walruses in their response plan for the Gulf of Mexico?"

exxon bp Gulf of Mexico oilspill Congressional hearing walrus walruses

The Wall Street Journal’s blog The Source reports that Planet BP, an internal publication of British Petroleum, has offered, well, let’s call it an interesting take on the effects of the undersea oil gusher on communities along the Gulf of Mexico: 

[T]he April 20 spill on the Deepwater Horizon is being reinvented in Planet BP as a strike of luck.

“Much of the region’s [nonfishing boat] businesses — particularly the hotels — have been prospering because so many people have come here from BP and other oil emergency response teams,” another report says. Indeed, one tourist official in a local town makes it clear that “BP has always been a very great partner of ours here…We have always valued the business that BP sent us.”

Planet BP bp oilspill Gulf of Mexico

Today, the chief executives of the five big oil companies — including BP’s Tony Hayward — are going to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. According to an e-mail released by that Committee yesterday, a BP drilling engineer warned that the Deepwater Horizon oil rig was a “nightmare well” that had caused the company problems in the past. The e-mail came just six days before the well exploded:

bp oilspill deepwater horizon Macondo well Gulf of Mexico nightmare well greennumbers

Near the end of a 12-day cruise in the Gulf of Mexico to study the habitat of just-hatched Atlantic bluefin tuna, scientist Jim Franks came upon fields of oil sheen as far as he could see.

Mixed with the oil were large amounts of sargassum, the golden brown algae that drifts at the whim of winds and tides and shelters the quarter-inch-long bluefin tuna larvae.

How the young will fare and what will happen to the population of bluefin tuna will affect a wide range of people, including the tuna fishermen of Gloucester, Mass., for whom a single fish can fetch $20,000 or more, and sushi chefs everywhere.

While his research is still incomplete, Franks fears that the gushing BP oil will be trouble for Atlantic bluefin tuna.

Gulf of Mexico Atlantic bluefin tuna tuna bluefin tuna bp sargassum oilspill

The cost of BP's clean-up operation in the Gulf of Mexico has now hit $1.6bn (£1.1bn), but the final cost of the huge oil spill remains unquantifiable.

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Delicate patterns in the sea breaking on Orange Beach, Alabama, more than 90 miles from the BP oil spill, cannot distract from the mess four to six inches deep on parts of the shore

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BP chief executive Tony Hayward will tell US politicians today that he is "deeply sorry" that the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, and admit that the disaster should never have happened.

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BP CEO Tony Hayward is the captain of a foundering ship who just doesn't know anything about ships. \n\nHe was not party to any important decisions. He cannot recall important moments. He managed to get through nearly three decades of working in the oil business without actually learning anything about it. \n\nAnd given the opportunity to prepare for specific questions in advance, what do you think he did? Nothing.

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UK industry expressed alarm on Wednesday at the “inappropriate” and increasingly aggressive rhetoric being deployed against BP by Barack Obama, US president, and warned that the attacks on the oil company could damage transatlantic relations.

The potential cost of the crisis and fresh fears over whether BP will pay its dividend has continued to hit its shares, with the company’s American Depositary Receipts falling nearly 16 per cent on Wednesday. Since the accident in late April, the value of BP’s ADRs has halved

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Spoof video where BP rep points out the up side to the oil leak: the fish are rich!

bp oilspill Gulf of Mexico spoof rich fish