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While the world was focused on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a BP refinery here released huge amounts of toxic chemicals into the air that went unnoticed by residents until many saw their children come down with respiratory problems.


For 40 days after a piece of equipment critical to the refinery’s operation broke down, a total of 538,000 pounds of toxic chemicals, including the carcinogen benzene, poured out of the refinery.

Rather than taking the costly step of shutting down the refinery to make repairs, the engineers at the plant diverted gases to a smokestack and tried to burn them off, but hundreds of thousands of pounds still escaped into the air, according to state environmental officials.

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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

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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This timeline is a wake-up call to the CSR community. It tells the story of how, despite a consistent record of environmental destruction, BP achieved an impeccably glossy reputation as one of the world’s most responsible companies. The first timeline contrasts a decade of irresponsible behavior with a mountain of rewards that would make Serena Williams turn green with envy. The second contrasts the past two months of BP's defense tactics with inexcusably shallow responses from CSR professionals.
It's about BP - but it's really about the future of corporate responsibility. We need to change the way CSR works--and we need to start now. We hope you enjoy exploring this timeline in a quiet and tranquil place, with plenty of Kleenex and a couple of aspirin.

bp csr propoganda cr corporate responsibility

Why hasn't the Deepwater Horizon spill, one of the worst ecological disasters in US history, led to a storming of the Bastille of Big Oil? Why aren't the most urgent problems of our time – environmental crises and climate change – being confronted with the same energy, idealism and optimism as past tragedies of poverty, tyranny and war? The current state of the oil industry is reminiscent of the ancien regime on the eve of the revolution.

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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.

bp oilspill Gulf of Mexico jpurnalists media coverage fines felony charges

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.

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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

On June 15th, as BP's catastrophic spill in the Gulf neared its third month, President Obama addressed the nation from the Oval Office. He had put an indefinite hold on plans to open up new coastal areas, including Florida and Virginia, to offshore exploration. And he had frozen all new permits to drill in deep waters for six months, to give a blue-ribbon commission time to study the disaster. "We need better regulations, better safety standards and better enforcement," the president insisted.

But Obama's tough-guy act offers no guarantee that oil giants like BP won't be permitted to repeat the same mistakes that led to the nightmare in the Gulf. Indeed, top environmentalists warn, the suspension of drilling appears to be little more than a stalling tactic designed to let public anger over BP's spill subside before giving Big Oil the go-ahead to drill in an area that has long been off-limits: the Arctic Ocean.

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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

Staying up-to-date on the oil spill sucks a little bit less thanks to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert (and Grist!).

Here are the latest offerings from Day 62 of "The Strife Aquatic." Worth watching!

Jon Stewart bp Stephen Colbert oilspill comedy video

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.

bp tony hayward oilspill Gulf of Mexico deepwater horizon deeply sorry