The Midmorning Refill: Despite oil spill, runaway cars, Jersey Shore, 2010 may have not been the absolute worst year ever

Today’s Flickr photo:

Flickr photo from BP America

If you read one thing today…

Dave Barry’s annual year in review is out. How did 2010 measure up? It wasn’t pretty. From the oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico to Toyota’s runaway cars, 2010 was a rough year.

On the BP oil spill:

The perfect symbol for the awfulness of 2010 was the BP oil spill, which oozed up from the depths and spread, totally out of control, like some kind of hideous uncontrollable metaphor. The scariest thing about the spill was, nobody in charge seemed to know what to do about it. Time and again, top political leaders personally flew down to the Gulf of Mexico to look at the situation first-hand and hold press availabilities. And yet somehow, despite these efforts, the oil continued to leak. This forced us to face the disturbing truth that even top policy thinkers with postgraduate degrees from Harvard University — Harvard University! — could not stop it…

…the Deepwater Horizon oil spill officially becomes, according to the news media, the worst thing that has ever happened, with environmental experts reporting that tar balls have been sighted on the surface of the moon. Just when all appears to be lost, BP announces that it has stopped the leak, using a 75-ton cap and what a company spokesperson describes as “a truly heroic manatee named Wendell.” Although oil is no longer leaking, much damage has been done, so this important story remains the focus of the nation’s attention for nearly 45 minutes, after which the nation’s attention shifts to Lindsay Lohan.

If you have a better attention span than that, feel free to check out Public Citizen’s work on the BP oil spill from throughout the year.

At the very least, Barry can make you laugh, shake your head, and then hope that 2011 will bring us some better news. Let’s see what the new Congress and the Obama administration have in store for us this year…

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Department of Justice’s BP Lawsuit Is Good Step, But More Is Needed

The Department of Justice’s filing of a civil lawsuit today against BP for the deaths of 11 workers and the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history is a needed step in holding the corporation accountable.

However, Public Citizen remains concerned that the escrow fund is inadequate to cover BP’s obligations – a concern that has been confirmed over the past few months. It’s clear that the $20 billion set aside won’t begin to cover the cost of damage. More money must be found for the victims of the disaster.

In addition, the civil litigation stemming from the disaster remains focused on BP Exploration and Production, a remote subsidiary of the parent company, thereby enabling BP to avoid responsibility.

And Congress has yet to pass the comprehensive reforms needed to help ensure this kind of disaster can’t happen again. It is astounding that after all that happened – 11 deaths, 4.9 milllion gallons of oil spilled, beaches in five states sullied and closed, fishing in large swaths of the Gulf of Mexico closed, countless livelihoods ruined – Congress couldn’t get its act together and ensure that future oil drilling is safer for workers and the environment.

Tyson Slocum is the director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program.

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Latest moratorium in Gulf is welcome news

With today’s announcement that a large swath of the Gulf of Mexico will be closed to drilling for the foreseeable future, the White House reverses a bad decision it made six months ago to open a huge, environmentally sensitive area – the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic seaboard – to offshore oil drilling and exploration. A mere three weeks later, the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history occurred when BP’s oil rig exploded in the Gulf. 

We applaud the Obama administration for this commonsense decision and its long-awaited recognition of the fact that the BP disaster was indeed a game changer for offshore oil drilling. By maintaining the moratorium on drilling in these areas for at least the next five years, the administration takes its first official step in acknowledging that offshore drilling is too hazardous to be part of the solution to America’s energy challenges.

 The announcement comes just a day before the president-appointed oil spill commission convenes for the final time before releasing its report on Jan. 11. We hope that the commission’s recommendations are consistent with the administration’s reconsideration of U.S. oil drilling policy. Among the recommendations we would like to see is the establishment of Regional Citizens’Advisory Councils – that will give Gulf Coast communities a real voice in the energy industry decisions that affect their lives and homes.

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The dirtiest oil in the world

The BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico this summer tragically demonstrated the costs of our nation’s reliance on fossil fuels.

But despite this ongoing catastrophe, some major corporations—including Safeway and Walmart—are fueling their trucking fleets with tar sands oil, the dirtiest oil in the world.

Join our friends at ForestEthics in calling on Safeway and Walmart to shift to cleaner, not dirtier, energy.

Tar sands oil is even more destructive

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The Midmorning Refill: BP goes on the offense

Today’s Flickr Picture:

Flickr photo by Rebecca_M.

If you read one thing today…

BP is on the offense.

The company is one of more than half a dozen polluters named by Climate Action Network Europe as pouring money into U.S. candidates who oppose climate change legislation. In a new report, CAN Europe says the support “is all the more galling because the same companies argue that additional emissions reductions in Europe cannot be pursued until the United States takes action.”

Last year, BP and the other polluters CAN Europe studied emitted 130 million tones of greenhouse gases – equivalent to the annual emissions of Belgium. Apparently they don’t want to have to reduce it even a little bit, because making money apparently is more important then saving the planet.

Speaking of BP, the new head honcho, Bob Dudley, told attendees today at a conference that the media and competitors rushed to judgment after the initial explosion of the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf. They were guilty of “scaremongering,” he complained.

Let’s see now. We had the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history. It killed 11 workers, wiped out tourism in coastal areas in five states, coated beaches in five states with oil and did untold damage to marine life in the Gulf.

But in BP’s world, those mean reporters were scaremongering. Unbelievable.

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Holding BP accountable for wildlife deaths

In an effort to hold BP accountable for the damage done to wildlife as a result of the oil disaster in the Gulf, three environmental groups have sued the company.

The three groups, Defenders of Wildlife, Gulf Restoration Network and the Save the Manatee Club, say the spill has caused and will continue to cause the taking of endangered and threatened species,” including whales, manatees, birds and sea turtles that “show no avoidance response to oil slicks.”

While BP has already agreed to pay $ 500 million for restoration efforts, the groups are concerned it’s not enough because the effects of the disaster will continue for a long time.

This is welcome news for anyone still appalled by the ambivalence displayed by Congress’ lack of legislation in response to the spill. A new plan released from the Obama administration would invest billions of dollars of BP fines into recovery efforts in the Gulf.  But that’s mopping up the damage. What about going forward?

Lawmakers have yet to vote on sensible legislation designed to address the core causes of the disaster and the inadequate response to it— issues that apply to the oil industry as a whole. It’s been six months since the Deepwater Horizon explosion, and we still have nothing. Congress needs to act.

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Obama plan to lift moratorium, resume deepwater Gulf drilling is misguided, reckless

The Obama administration’s plan to allow oil companies to resume deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is misguided and reckless.

We still have no way to address a catastrophic blowout in deep water, either by stemming the flow of oil or fixing the broken blowout preventer. Without technology in hand to stop millions of gallons of oil from spewing from the bottom of the ocean, we are simply gambling with our environment. We can’t afford to count on luck to keep the oceans, beaches and tourism industries safe.

It is laudable that the administration has reformed safety rules in the wake of the BP disaster, but accidents and mistakes still happen. The BP disaster claimed 11 lives, dumped millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf – doing untold damage – and soiled beaches in five states. We cannot afford to risk a repeat. We have no way of stopping another BP gusher.

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Add to the list of Gulf of Mexico ailments: Cancer, potentially. Thanks, BP

We knew the aftermath of the oil spill in the Gulf was going to be devastating. We knew the environment was compromised and that plants, animals and other wildlife would be affected by the millions and millions of gallons of oil inundating the area.

Now another ailment to add to the list: potential cancer. As reported by Kate Sheppard with Mother Jones, researchers at Oregon State University are finding elevated concentrations of carcinogenic chemicals in the Gulf in increasing amounts each month.

Sheppard writes:

This is a concern not only for those who are living or working in the region, but for anyone who eats Gulf seafood as well. As a recent piece published in the Journal of the American Medical Association noted, “Although vertebrate marine life can clear PAHs from their system, these chemicals accumulate for years in invertebrates.” This of course raises concerns about the long-term safety of seafood—specifically, shrimp, oysters, crabs, and other invertebrates.

Sheppard puts it well when she states, “Still more evidence that, just because you can’t see the oil in the Gulf, that doesn’t mean it’s not there.”

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Moving Beyond BP means passing laws to make sure another oil disaster never happens again

Five months after the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico and a little more than a week after the well was officially “killed,” the work is not over. As the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling meets in Washington, D.C., this week, Public Citizen energy organizer Allison Fisher will urge the commission to clarify the government’s role and authority during an oil spill, investigate why BP was allowed to control information around the spill and its cleanup operations, and recommend passage of legislation that specifically responds to the oil spill disaster.

To tell the commission what you’re thinking, click here.

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Leaking BP oil well is dead; So how come we don’t feel like celebrating?

After leaking 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf and causing as yet undetermined damage from the spill zone to the coasts of five states, one would assume that we wouldn’t see more oil being tapped from that particular, seemingly cursed reservoir anytime soon.

But on Saturday, The New York Times reported that executives from BP and other oil companies are discussing the possibility of future drilling to obtain oil from that very reservoir. This news is especially alarming because BP’s catastrophic Macondo 252 well was officially pronounced dead only this Sunday.

Tadeusz W. Patzek, chairman of the department of petroleum and geosystems engineering at University of Texas was quoted in the Times saying that, “the bottom line here is that this reservoir still remains a target for further production.”

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