Australia oil spill: 'dolphins, emaciated and starving, unable to feed in the toxic waters'

By Channel 4 News , Updated on 23 October 2009 The West Atlas oil rig continues to leak crude oil into the ocean off the coast of Australia following a rupture nine weeks ago. Julian Rush reports. [Video]     It is thought the West Atlas oil platform leak could be a lot worse than […]

NASA Earth Observatory: Oil Slick in the Timor Sea

By Rebecca Lindsey, NASA’s Earth Observatory More than two months after a blowout at a newly dug oil well, crude oil and gas condensate continued to leak into the Timor Sea, between northwest Australia and Indonesia. According to news reports, the company responsible for the leaking well has tried to cap it three times without […]

Hundreds of whales and dolphins, thousands of sea birds feeding amid ‘enormous’ Australia oil spill

By MARIAN WILKINSON ENVIRONMENT EDITOR, October 31, 2009 LARGE numbers of whales, dolphins, turtles and sea birds are feeding in waters polluted by the massive oil spill off the West Australian coast and are likely to be at ”immediate risk”, a new report released by the federal Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, reveals. A leading ecologist, […]

Australia oil spill contaminates Indonesia fisheries

By Phil Mercer, Sydney, 20 October 2009 Australia’s worst oil slick since the mid-1980s is now tainting Indonesian waters. Fishermen in West Timor say contaminated fish are making villagers ill. Oil began leaking two months ago, following an accident on the West Atlas drilling platform, which lies about 200 kilometers off the coast of Western […]

Oil spill off Australia coast poses major threat to marine life

Nine weeks after a ruptured oil rig sprang a leak, the catastrophic consequences are becoming apparent. By Kathy Marks Sea birds are dying and thousands of marine creatures are at risk from a massive oil spill in the Timor Sea, off north-west Australia, warn the first scientists to survey the isolated site. A ruptured drilling […]

Graph of the Day: Population Change of Athabasca River Caribou, 1993-2004

Woodland caribou is one of the species likely to be extirpated from regions subjected to Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) development. Caribou declines across Alberta have been correlated with the level of industrial development within their ranges.43 In the past ten years, the East Side Athabasca River caribou herd, whose range overlaps much of the […]

Environmental impacts of oil sands development in Alberta

Posted by Nate Hagens at The Oil Drum …The liquid tailings, a by product of the oil sands mining process, contain naphthenic acids, unrecovered hydrocarbons and trace metals, making it toxic to aquatic organisms21 and mammals22. Operators are required to store tailings waste on site in large containment dykes because the water is too toxic […]

Timor Sea oil spill may worsen, Australia conservationists say

By Ben Sharples Sept. 18 (Bloomberg) — An oil spill from a leaking well off Western Australia that has polluted the Timor Sea with 1,200 metric tons of oil may worsen and is a “major ecological disaster in the making,” a conservation group says. “This is a disaster that risks blowing out further in terms […]

Heavy oil pollution remains in Amazon, despite company claims

By Jeremy Hance A new report shows that the Corrientes region of the Peruvian Amazon, which suffered decades of toxic contamination by Occidental Petroleum (OXY), is far from being cleaned-up. The survey, conducted by US non-profit E-Tech International, found that heavy metals, volatile organic compounds, and hydrocarbons still exist at levels above the safety limits […]

Exxon Valdez oil spill source of lethal contaminants, not natural coal deposits

Contaminants from natural coal deposits in the Gulf of Alaska are not easily bioavailable, unlike the crude oil from the Exxon Valdez tanker catastrophe, according to a new study. The findings challenge the theory that natural coal deposits were the cause of observed environmental damage. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) pollutants were blamed for the continuing […]

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