A US federal appeals court has ruled that the rights of victims in BP’s fatal Texas City explosion in March 2005 were violated by US prosecutors who reached a secret plea agreement with the UK oil group late last year before consulting victims.
The victims insist the plea deal is too lenient and they […]

A huge explosion rocked a Texan oil refinery yesterday in a violent blast that shook buildings miles away and injured at least four people.
One employee was hospitalized for burns, while three contractors were treated and released, said Blake Lewis, a spokesman for refinery owner Alon USA.

The former chief executive of British oil giant BP, Lord Browne, can avoid extensive face-to-face grilling from plaintiffs’ lawyers about the deadly March 2005 explosion at the company’s Texas City refinery, the Texas Supreme Court has ruled.
While the ruling directed a judge to enforce an agreement allowing for John Browne to give a […]

A report by US watch-dog, the Government Accountability Office has concluded that the Coast Guard lacks the resources to adequately protect tankers carrying liquefied petroleum or crude oil from a possible terrorist attack.
The report concluded that the Coast Guard is stretched too thin in some cases “to meet its own self-imposed security standards such as […]

Last week we blogged how over half the rigs in the North Sea failed safety checks.
As if to highlight the problem, a major evacuation operation was launched yesterday after a fire broke out on a remote North Sea oil platform. Ninety of the 159 people on board the Thistle Alpha platform, 120 miles north-west […]