Home/Posts Tagged ‘spill’
Posts Tagged ‘spill’
Animal Rights, Pollution, Mar 13th, 2012,
In preparation for the eventuality of oil spills resulting from drilling in the icy Arctic region, Shell Oil might be enlisting the help of sniffer dogs as an inexpensive contingency plan. Shell plans to start drilling off the northwest coast of Alaska as early as June. Since there are as of yet no methods for detecting oil spills that are covered by ice and snow, the use of dachshunds and border collies could be the best the minds of Shell and other companies have been able to come up with. Personally, I have no idea if this is an effective…
Tags: arctic, dachshund, drilling, Greenpeace, oil, Shell, sniffer dogs, spill
Pollution, Wildlife & Flora, Oct 10th, 2011,
Oil leaking from the stranded container ship off New Zealand’s coast has washed up on local beaches and could continue polluting for weeks, according to authorities. Beautiful Mt Maunganui Beach in Tauranga has been hit with “tar balls”, aka toxic blobs of oil, prompting authorities to issue a public warning to stay away from the stricken beach. So far some 10-50 tons of oil are estimated to have leaked from the Liberian container ship, the Rena, since it hit Astrolabe Reef, near the city of Tauranga on Wednesday, poisoning local wildlife. Weather conditions this week are predicted to hamper rescue…
Tags: beach, leak, Maunganui, New Zealand, oil, ship, spill, tauranga
Pollution, Aug 16th, 2011,
The oil leak in the North Sea, which was discovered by Shell last Monday – but not announced until Friday – has been mostly staunched, according to the UK government. Yet another, albeit much smaller, leak has been found stemming from the same offshore platform and it is spilling some 2 barrels of crude oil per day. The second leak is proving difficult to stop, according to Shell, due to its ‘awkward’ positioning. Last Monday’s oil spill is already being called the worst to occur in UK waters in the last 10 years. From an article in the Independent: An…
Tags: Greenpeace, leak, North Sea, oil, Shell, spill
Politics, Pollution, Apr 15th, 2011,
Documents accessed under the Freedom of Information Act show BP attempting to influence independent research into the effects of the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Environmental activist group Greenpeace got a hold of incriminating emails and passed them on to the Guardian. Those concerns go far beyond academic interest into the impact of the spill. BP faces billions in fines and penalties, and possible criminal charges arising from the disaster. Its total liability will depend in part on a final account produced by scientists on how much oil entered the gulf from its blown-out well, and the…
Tags: BP, Gulf, Mexico, oil, protest, research, spill
Pollution, Feb 15th, 2011,
An Ecuadoran court has found oil giant Chevron guilty of contaminating the South American country’s Amazon basin. A judge in an Ecuadoran court levied a fine of $8bn (€6bn) against Chevron for deaths, illnesses and monetary losses sustained by the local inhabitants of the rainforest from spills of toxic waste and crude oil. The spills are estimated by a Swedish University study to total 30bn gallons (113bn liters). This amount dwarfs the 205m gallons spilt by BP in the Gulf of Mexico. Though the suit is being touted as a hard fought victory for the indigenous people of Ecuador, the…
Tags: amazon, Chevron, court, Ecuador, Ecuadoran, oil, Pollution, rainforest, spill, TOXIC
Pollution, Videos & Documentaries, Aug 22nd, 2010,
Though around half of the oil spilt into the Gulf of Mexico following the Deepwater Horizon explosion in April remains unaccounted for, scientists have mapped out a 22-mile (35 km) underwater plume of petrochemicals. The fact that so much oil has remained underwater instead of floating to the surface is surprising to scientists and also problematic because it makes the oil more difficult to locate. This means that they don’t know what damage may still be occurring in the Gulf and where. Other unknowns include why the oil didn’t disperse as expected and the unpredictable – and undependable – nature…
Tags: BP, debate, Deepwater Horizon, Gulf, Mexico, oil, plume, spill, unknown
Politics, Pollution, Videos & Documentaries, Aug 7th, 2010,
As estimates of the oil spilling from the busted well in the Gulf of Mexico shot up like a post-Perestroika stock market on an almost daily basis, so plummeted the credibility of BP and the US government’s estimates regarding the volume of leaking oil. Accuracy apparently is not their strong suit. Won’t get fooled again. Or will we? What choice do we have without our own personal oil spill experts replete with super submarines? Even James Cameron wasn’t allowed to look – and he made Avatar, Aliens and Terminator. Surely that’s gotta open some doors? None of this means the…
Tags: BP, credibility, estimates, government, Gulf, Maddow, oil, Rachel, spill, spin
Politics, Pollution, Aug 6th, 2010,
Yesterday and today BP crews are attempting to securely seal the leak on the blown out oil well in the Gulf of Mexico by pumping in cement. Operation ‘static kill’ has so far been successful in halting the flow of oil into the Gulf, which began on April 20th with the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil platform. The latest effort began with BP crews pumping in special mud to stop the leak and will hopefully conclude – after the cement on top has dried – with the drilling of two relief wells. The Obama administration recently announced that around…
Tags: BP, cement, Gulf, marshes, oil, positive, scientists, seal, spill, spin, well
Politics, Pollution, Aug 5th, 2010,
Despite low public opinion on deep sea drilling and an overall global shift away from the practice, including the Obama administration’s moratorium in the US, the UK government – the ‘greenest government eva’ – has decided to go against the grain and allow exploratory drilling in the North Sea. A spokeswoman for the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change was quoted in an article in the Independent: We will not consent to the drilling of any well unless we are convinced that it is designed to the very highest standards, that the equipment used is fully tested and that…
Tags: ban, BP, coalition, deep, Deepwater, drilling, government, Greenpeace, Gulf, Italian, Libya, Mediterranean, Mexico, moratorium, North Sea, oil, sea, spill, UK
Pollution, Wildlife & Flora, Jul 28th, 2010,
Yesterday the United States experienced two more oil spills: One in the Gulf of Mexico, the other in the Kalamazoo River in Michigan. A tug boat, which was pushing a barge, ran into an abandoned well in the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday morning, causing gas and oil to spew 100ft (30m) into the air. The well is located in Barataria Bay, Louisiana, some 65 miles (105km) south of New Orleans. Barataria Bay is an ecologically rich wetlands and fishing area that has been unused since the Deepwater Horizon spill began on April 10th. This is at least the third…
Tags: Barataria, bay, gas, Granholm, Gulf, Kalamazoo, leak, Michigan, oil, pipeline, river, spill, well
Pollution, Videos & Documentaries, Jul 24th, 2010,
Here are two video reports on the oil spill cleanup efforts in China’s Yellow Sea. Two oil pipelines exploded on the 16th of this month in the major port city of Dalian in northern China, resulting in a massive fire and the largest oil spill in Chinese history. The pipelines have now been repaired, but the environmental damage of the spill will be felt for years to come. The oil has polluted an area of 430 sq km. The first video is a report from Al Jazeera English on cleanup efforts in the Yellow sea around Dalian; the other is…
Tags: China, Chinese, cleanup, Dalian, efforts, oil, pipeline, sea, spill, video, Yellow
Pollution, Jul 21st, 2010,
Friday’s oil pipeline explosion in the northern Chinese port of Dalian has resulted in a large oil slick in the Yellow Sea. The oil leaking from the two exploded pipelines has been stopped, but not before oil washed up on the coastline, soiling surrounding beaches and negatively impacting local wildlife and economic activity. Thousands of firefighters, engineers and even a flotilla of 800 fishing boats are involved in cleanup operations which have already reduced the oil slick by a third from its peak of 50 sq km, according to a report in the Guardian. The leak is likely to add…
Tags: China, cleanup, Dalian, firefighter, fishing, Greenpeace, oil, pipeline, slick, spill, Yellow Sea
Pollution, Jul 16th, 2010,
You thought it might never happen, but yesterday evening BP successfully stopped the flow of oil from the broken well in the Gulf of Mexico. The cap is a temporary fix – with the lasting solution being the drilling of a relief well scheduled to take place in a few weeks time. Both US President Barack Obama and BP’s chief expressed cautious optimism at the news that the oil leak in the Gulf was under control for the first time in 87 days. From a report in the Guardian: Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer, said engineers would be checking…
Tags: BP, cap, Gulf, leak, Mexico, oil, spill, well
Pollution, Videos & Documentaries, Jul 12th, 2010,
In 2000 a massive oil leak from an underwater Petrobras pipeline spilled into Guanabara Bay near Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It is considered one of Brazil’s worst environmental disasters ever and was given an estimated recovery time of 10 years. What Al Jazeera English reporter Gabriel Elizondo discovered on a recent trip to Guanabara Bay is that it has anything but recovered during the past 10 years: The mud is thick, black and lifeless. And it stinks. Dead stumps – what used to be thick green mangrove swamps – protrude out from the mud as far as your eyes see….
Tags: 10 years, Al Jazeera, bay, Brazil, ecosystem, Guanabara, Gulf, oil, Pollution, Rio de Janeiro, spill
Politics, Pollution, Videos & Documentaries, Jul 4th, 2010,
Last month an oil spill was discovered in Egypt’s Red Sea by Egyptian authorities. The spill polluted a stretch of coastline dotted with popular tourist resorts. According to a Reuters Africa report, the Egyptian oil minister has claimed that none of the 188 oil platforms in the Gulf of Suez are responsible for the spill and that the oil may have come from water used to clean out a tanker. Local environmental groups are skeptical of the Egyptian government’s claims and are accusing the government of a cover-up. Watch this video report from Al Jazeera English for more on the…
Tags: cover-up, Egypt, Egyptian, Gulf, oil, platform, spill, Suez
Climate Change, Politics, Pollution, Jul 2nd, 2010,
Is there is just too much revenue in big oil to stop dangerous deep sea drilling? The oil industry, like the massive investment banks behind the financial crisis of 2008, is considered by some to be ‘too big to fail’. Yet also like financial crashes, disasters are calculated by those in charge as risks worth taking. Sure, a tragedy on the scale of the Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico wasn’t expected, but the industry and the government – and everybody – knew that spills happen. Also like the banks, the oil industry is largely self-regulating, so they…
Tags: blowout, BP, Brazil, British, dangerous, deep, Deepwater, disaster, government, Gulf, Horizon, industry, Mexico, north, oil, P-52, platform, rig, risk, risky, sea, spill, too big to fail, UK
Politics, Videos & Documentaries, Weird Stuff, Jun 29th, 2010,
In a bold statement against arts institutions co-operating with unethical companies, a group of activists poured molasses and threw feathers onto the steps to the entrance of the Tate Britain art gallery in London on Monday. The activist-artists, calling themselves ‘The Good Crude Britannia’ appeared during a protest outside the BP-sponsored Tate Britain summer party, which commemorated 20 years of BP’s support for the Tate. They were clad in black and carrying buckets of molasses emblazoned with the BP logo, which they emptied over the stone entrance to the Tate, stunning partygoers and causing cameras to flash. The act was…
Tags: activists, BP, Britain, entrance, molasses, oil, party, protest, spill, Tate
Politics, Pollution, Jun 28th, 2010,
The long dark and gooey shadow of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is shining a gruesome light on offshore drilling, its toll on the environment and the true cost of oil. Yet the Gulf spill is also getting all the attention, while other environmental issues or injustices suffer from neglect or overshadowing. Bhopal activists have juxtaposed the attention being given to the spill against their unfortunate plight, for instance. Ironically, new remote – and potentially catastrophic – frontiers are being explored for oil at this very moment, yet this is receiving little attention from the mainstream…
Tags: arctic, Cairn, Canada, coast, Deepwater Horizon, drilling, energy, greenland, Gulf, ice, oil, spill
Pollution, Videos & Documentaries, Wildlife & Flora, Jun 24th, 2010,
Oil-covered dolphins have been spotted swimming in the Gulf of Mexico exhibiting both unusually agitated and ‘sluggish’ behavior. Both journalists and professional dolphin spotters have noticed dolphins ‘acting drunk’, some with their dorsal fins encrusted in reddish crude. When we realized what we had discovered, we called Daryl Carpenter, owner of Reelscreamers, and asked him if anyone else had noticed the oiled dolphins or reported it. Carpenter said that news crews had taken video footage, but he did not know if any of the images had been broadcast. So far none of the images have surfaced, and wildlife officials, if…
Tags: BP, dolphins, drunk, Gulf, Louisiana, oil, spill, TOXIC
Climate Change, Politics, Pollution, Videos & Documentaries, Jun 19th, 2010,
Writer and activist Naomi Klein describes in a piece for the Guardian how an overconfident BP recklessly endangered the environment and human culture of the Gulf of Mexico, believing there to be ‘little risk’ of disaster. Even if a spill will to occur, BP believed, it would be minor and easily manageable. Now that a real – and plainly unmanageable – disaster has actually happened, promises from BP boss Tony Hayward and US President Barack Obama that the Gulf will fully recover are unrealistic and being met with skepticism by Gulf residents. It all sounded great. But for people whose…
Tags: BP, disaster, Fault Lines, Guardian, Gulf, Klein, Naomi, oil, spill
