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Posts in May 2010

• BP: Biggest Polluter

  Andy Rowell

  May28

  So now it is official. What everyone has suspected for the last month, we now know to be true. The Deepwater Horizon spill is now the largest in US history. Yesterday President Obama attacked BP over America’s ‘worst oil disaster’, after new estimates put the amount of oil spilt at anything from 30 to 39…
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• Deja Vu as Oil Spill Workers Get Sick

  Andy Rowell

  May27

  One of the ongoing tragedies of the Exxon Valdez oil spill is that thousands of people who worked on the cleanup are sick, have gotten sick, and continue to die from inhaling the lethal cocktail of oil and dispersant. The tragedy is that, like the oil spill itself, the illnesses and deaths were preventable. Move…
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• Its Top Kill or a $70 Billion Bill

  Andy Rowell

  May26

  Today, its Top Kill or bust. Never have the stakes for BP been higher. Latest estimates are that the company could face up to $70 billion in penalties and pay-outs for the Gulf oil spill if today’s attempts to stem the flow of oil fail. Today BP will attempt a “Top Kill” – pumping heavy…
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• Dispersant Row Intensifies

  Andy Rowell

  May25

  This is now becoming a comedy of tragic proportions. Last week the EPA ordered BP to find another dispersant after repeated warnings from scientists that its dispersant Corexit was untested on the sea-bed and too toxic. But BP is just ignoring the government and continuing to use the chemical. So far the company has poured…
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• “Into the abyss of death”

  Andy Rowell

  May24

  Out of sight and out of mind. That is what dispersants do to oil. Repeatedly on this blog for the last month, we have warned about the dangers of using dispersants, especially at depths where the technique was essentially untested. Finally we are finding out what the use of disperants has done beneath the surface.

• BP forced to come clean over spill size: Ordered to stop using toxic dispersant

  Andy Rowell

  May21

  For a month now people have been demanding that BP comes clean over the amount of oil being spilt in the Gulf of Mexico.  For a month BP has resisted. For a month now, people have been saying that the dispersants being used on the spill are highly toxic and could be causing more harm…
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• Don’t Worry – Be Happy

  Andy Rowell

  May20

  “Don’t Worry” – be happy – that is Tony Hayward’s birthday message to his staff. Hayward has returned home to London to chair a crisis board meeting, trying to give his staff an upbeat message. Hayward has emailed staff saying that “I know that many of you have questions about how this incident will impact…
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• Financial Times Pulls Anti-Shell Advert

  Andy Rowell

  May19

  Years ago, when the environmental organisation Greenpeace was running a campaign against Ford in the UK, the liberal Guardian newspaper refused to run one of Greenpeace’s anti-Ford adverts. At the time, Ford was one of the largest advertisers in the Guardian and it threatened to pull all its adverts if the Guardian ran the Greenpeace…
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• Investors Warned Tar Sands are a “Slow Motion” Oil Spill

  Andy Rowell

  May18

  Earlier this month, I blogged how the tar sands lobby was trying to exploit BP’s Gulf of Mexico spill. Well the pro-tar sands argument has once again been blown out of the water by a report from the social investment network, Ceres. It argues that the environmental and financial risks of producing oil in Canada’s…
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• Could the Spill Sink BP?

  Andy Rowell

  May17

  First it was a question, said more like a whisper.  Surely BP will survive the spill? The concept that such a corporate giant could be felled by one outrageous irresponsible act would have been unthinkable even a few weeks ago. But more and more people are asking could the spill sink BP? Already the future…
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