Latest oil spill Stories
BP has established contingency plans to fight a massive oil spill twice the size of last year’s Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, BBC News reports. The oil giant submitted its "worst-case scenario" Oil Pollution Emergency Plan to the British government, from which it is seeking approval to begin drilling a new exploratory well 80 miles northwest of the Shetland islands early next year. BP has been exploring those deep waters for some forty years, and has been producing...
PLAYA VISTA, Calif., and NEW YORK, Oct. 11, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- The X PRIZE Foundation, the leading nonprofit organization solving the world's Grand Challenges by creating and managing large-scale, global incentivized competitions, and philanthropist Wendy Schmidt, who personally funded the prize purse, today awarded two winning teams of the $1.4 million Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X CHALLENGE. The first place team, Elastec/American Marine, from Illinois, USA, and the second place team,...
A major concern related to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010 was the impact on people living in coastal areas. News reports provided anecdotal evidence that those living along the coast and reliant on the fishing or oil and gas industries for their livelihoods were very distressed and worried about the impact of the spill on their future. Two decades of social science research has reported that people who are more attached to their communities are better off. They are happier, less...
A new study explains how DNA was used to identify microbes present in the Gulf of Mexico following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill that devastated the region last year -- and the particular microbes responsible for consuming natural gas immediately after the spill. The researchers, from UC Santa Barbara (UCSB), also explained how water temperature played a key role in the way bacteria reacted to the spill. Results of the study were published in this week’s Proceedings of the National...
A research team led by LSU Associate Professors of Biological Sciences Fernando Galvez and Andrew Whitehead has published the results of a combined field and laboratory study showing the effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on fish living in Louisiana marshes. The study, funded in part by the National Science Foundation, or NSF, and the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative is being published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, or PNAS. Their study shows...
Oil spill resulted in dramatic effects on fish species in Louisiana marshes Despite low concentrations of oil constituents in Gulf of Mexico waters from the Deepwater Horizon spill, fish were dramatically affected by toxic components of the oil. So found a team led by scientists Fernando Galvez and Andrew Whitehead of Louisiana State University (LSU). The researchers published their results this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Galvez,...
During the 2010 BP/Deepwater Horizon Gulf oil spill, an estimated one of every 20 barrels of spilled oil was deliberately burned off to reduce the size of surface oil slicks and minimize impacts of oil on sensitive shoreline ecosystems and marine life. In response to the spill, NOAA quickly redirected its WP-3D research aircraft to survey the atmosphere above the spill site in June. During a flight through one of the black plumes, scientists used sophisticated instrumentation on board,...
Several new studies of air and water near the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill conclude that cleanup workers may have escaped harm from one of the most worrisome groups of potentially toxic substances in the oil, according to an article in Chemical & Engineering News (CEN), ACS's weekly news magazine. But it cites concerns that another group of potentially harmful chemicals did escape from the water and could create a health hazard for cleanup workers. The article, by C&EN...
To provide wider geographic coverage and meet an increasing number of environmental spill response calls, Allied Environmental Services, Inc. has added a second emergency spill response command center to its fleet. Lima, Ohio (PRWEB) September 07, 2011 Maintaining its commitment to providing the most responsive environmental spill clean-up service in northwest Ohio, Allied Environmental Services, Inc. (Allied) recently announced the addition of a second mobile spill response command...
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 2, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- A detailed analysis of air quality samples taken in the Gulf of Mexico in the weeks and months following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill last year finds no evidence that off-shore cleanup workers there faced health risks from exposure to certain volatile organic chemicals, including benzene. The independent study, undertaken by ChemRisk, a leading scientific consulting firm, found that exposure to airborne benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and...
