By NATHANIEL RICH 2 October 2014 (The New York Times) – In Louisiana, the most common way to visualize the state’s existential crisis is through the metaphor of football fields. The formulation, repeated in nearly every local newspaper article about the subject, goes like this: Each hour, Louisiana loses about a football field’s worth of […]
By Terry Wade; Editing by Clarence Fernandez2 Oct 2014 HOUSTON (Reuters) – BP Plc (BP.L) on Thursday asked a U.S. court to reconsider a September ruling that found the company “grossly negligent” for the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a finding that boosted its potential liabilities by about $18 billion. The motion […]
By Drew Sterwald September 2014 (Pinnacle) – Trees and creek banks stained black with petroleum. Lakes too polluted to fish. Villagers suffering skin and organ ailments associated with contaminated water. This was just part of the evidence Shauna Stoeger (’14, M.S., Forensic Studies) uncovered when she spent four months in remote Amazonian villages to investigate […]
By Joby Warrick and Steven Mufson 21 September 2014 (Washington Post) – For 140 years, the Rockefellers were the oil industry’s first family, scions of a business empire that spawned companies called Exxon, Mobil, Amoco, and Chevron. So it was no trivial matter when a group of Rockefeller heirs decided recently to begin severing financial […]
By Bob Marshall 28 August 2014 (Scientific American) – In just 80 years, some 2,000 square miles of its coastal landscape have turned to open water, wiping places off maps, bringing the Gulf of Mexico to the back door of New Orleans and posing a lethal threat to an energy and shipping corridor vital to […]
By Jonathan Fahey, AP Energy Writer 4 September 2014 (Associated Press) – BP shares slumped 5 percent after a judge ruled that the oil giant’s reckless conduct led to the worst U.S. offshore oil spill, a decision that could cost BP an additional $17.6 billion. BP shares fell $2.72, or 5.7 percent, to $44.99 around […]
By Laura McClure 15 August 2014 (TED) – Scientist Sylvia Earle (TED Talk: My wish: Protect our oceans) has spent the past five decades exploring the seas. During that time, she’s witnessed a steep decline in ocean wildlife numbers — and a sharp incline in the number of ocean deadzones and oil drilling sites. An […]
By Abrahm Lustgarten18 July 2014 (ProPublica) – California officials have ordered an emergency shut-down of 11 oil and gas waste injection sites and a review more than 100 others in the state’s drought-wracked Central Valley out of fear that companies may have been pumping fracking fluids and other toxic waste into drinking water aquifers […]
By Dan Haefner, First Mate, RV Odyssey6 July 2014 (Sea Shepherd) – On the 20th of June, Pensacola was the recipient of yet another “present” from the oil-filled Gulf of Mexico – a 1000-pound tar mat washed up in Ft. Pickens Park. Tar balls wash up almost every day along the coast between Pensacola Beach […]
By Brian Brown6 July 2014 VEGA, Texas (NBC News) – While a high-pitched wind rattles the windows, and assaults a flapping, fraying American flag in the front yard, Lucas Spinhirne knows he’s staring into an abyss that many in Texas—and across the world—may be forced to contemplate. The once bounteous quantities of water that flowed […]
