BP Valdez News Roundup

Increasingly the US government is being blamed for failing to conduct proper scientific studies of the disaster and of allowing BP to obscure the spill’s true scope. BP is urging those who are working in response to the spill to forego health concerns even while some are complaining of ...bad headaches, hacking coughs, stuffy sinuses, sore throats, and other symptoms. The outcry promises to get louder as the oil begins to roll into shore and the Louisiana wetlands.


Sticking with BP malfeasance and coverups, McClatchy is reporting today, Steve Wereley, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, who earlier this month made simple calculations from a video BP released on May 12 and came up with a flow of 70,000 barrels a day. Let's hope the investigation into the accident is as thorough as needs be.

The EPA informed BP officials late Wednesday that the company has 24 hours to choose a less-toxic form of chemical dispersants to break up its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. This suggests the EPA are concerned that the unprecedented use of chemical dispersants pose a threat to the Gulf's marine life.

As far as changing the subject and getting people to reconsider the burning of fossil fuels as an energy source or at least begin moving in another direction, the ongoing disaster in the Gulf appears to be having little effect. Canada's tar sands are on track to be the largest supplier of US oil and could be supplying more than a third of all US oil imports by 2030. People do not seem to realize that climate change being influenced by human activities is settled science.

And none of this is having any real effect on slowing down off-shore drilling projects either, in spite of claims to the contrary.