When the Deepwater disaster occurred in the Gulf of Mexico four months ago, many commentators argued that this was a “game changer” that would change the energy debate forever.
Politicians and the public would realise that the ecological and social cost of offshore drilling was becoming unacceptable, the thinking went.
If you morph the lessons of the [...]

Yesterday the environmental campaign group Greenpeace announced it was launching a three-month expedition to analyse the impact of BP’s oil spill on the Gulf of Mexico.
The Greenpeace ship, the Arctic Sunrise will “host independent scientists who will be researching the impacts of oil and chemical dispersants on Gulf ecosystems and marine life,” said John Hocevar, [...]

Yesterday the reporting on this issue went like this:
BP has successfully plugged the well, and the US government said that 75 per cent of the oil had been cleaned up.
This means the Gulf disaster was exaggerated, Tony Hayward was right after all about a small drop in a large ocean and, hey presto its essentially [...]

So we are 100 days into this disaster and what has changed?
Well we have a new CEO of BP. The straight talking American Bob Dudley argues that the Gulf of Mexico spill has been “wake-up call not only for BP, but the oil and gas industry overall”.
But will this wake-up call change the industry for [...]

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 more than [...]