BP

The great state of Alabama has announced it will sue BP, Transocean and Halliburton for the “catastrophic harm” that followed from the Deepwater Horizon oil rig blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.

Alabama’s attorney general said the amount of damages the state is seeking will be in “the amount it will take to make Alabama whole.”

“We are making this claim because we believe that BP has inflicted catastrophic harm on the state,” Attorney General Troy King told Reuters.

"WANTON FAILURE"

The suit accuses BP and the other defendants of "negligent or wanton failure to adhere to recognized industry standards of care."

"The defendants' conduct in operating the Deepwater Horizon and oil well illustrates their scheme to maximize profits and ignore dangerous risks posed to human health and property," it s

Feds say well's not dead yet, more drilling needed

The government's point man on the crisis said Friday that the blown-out well is not securely plugged to his satisfaction and that the drilling of the relief well - long regarded as the only way to ensure that the hole at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico never leaks oil again - must go forward.

Offshore Drilling Head Admits Agency Got Regulations From Industry

The director of the government's newly reorganized offshore drilling agency conceded yesterday that the agency has relied too heavily on the oil and gas industry when creating regulations.

"I think there is the perception and the reality that we have been heavily reliant on the domestic oil and gas industry in setting standards," Michael Bromwich, the director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, said Thursday, the WSJ reports. "We're going to be exploring borrowing from alternative models."

rick wrote:Are Alabama also out to get money for all the new 'fishermen' who have registered since April? In Louisiana, the Dept of fish and game has issued an extra 2,000 plus commercial fishing licences more than normal since April. I wonder why? If the greed becomes too great, BP could still decide to fight every claim.

The Gulf disaster is only unusual for being so near the US. Elsewhere, Big Oil rarely cleans up its mess

The gulf disaster may cost it a few billion dollars, but so what? When annual profits for a company often run to tens of billions, the cost of laying 5,000 miles of booms, or spraying millions of gallons of dispersants and settling 100,000 court cases is not much more than missing a few months' production. It's awkward, but it can easily be passed on.

Big Oil is usually a poor country's most powerful industry, and is generally allowed to act like a parallel government. In many countries it simply pays off the judges, the community leaders, the lawmakers and the ministers, and it expects environmentalists and local people to be powerless. Mostly it gets away with it.

There are more than 2,000 major spillage sites in the Niger delta that have never been cleaned up; there are vast areas of the Colombian, Ecuadorian and Peruvian Amazon that have been devastated by spillages, the dumping of toxic materials and blowouts. Rivers and wells in Venezuela, Angola, Chad, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Uganda and Sudan have been badly polluted. Occidental, BP, Chevron, Shell and most other oil companies together face hundreds of outstanding lawsuits. Ecuador alone is seeking $30bn from Texaco.

“We are making this claim because we believe that BP has inflicted catastrophic harm on the state,” Attorney General Troy King told Reuters.

Cookie wrote:perhaps wishful thinking,

There are more than 2,000 major spillage sites in the Niger delta that have never been cleaned up; there are vast areas of the Colombian, Ecuadorian and Peruvian Amazon that have been devastated by spillages, the dumping of toxic materials and blowouts. Rivers and wells in Venezuela, Angola, Chad, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Uganda and Sudan have been badly polluted. Occidental, BP, Chevron, Shell and most other oil companies together face hundreds of outstanding lawsuits. Ecuador alone is seeking $30bn from Texaco.

Cookie wrote:BP clearly is the villain here