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Bonnie is a bust. Saturday morning the National Hurricane Center discontinued tropical storm warnings for Bonnie as it crossed the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and made for landfall along the Gulf coast Saturday evening. It remains a tropical depression—one step down from a tropical storm—with winds around 30 mph and sea swells [...]
As tempests go, tropical storm Bonnie would barely be strong enough to cause a Louisianan to look up from his gumbo. As of Friday evening, the National Hurricane Center actually downgraded Bonnie to a tropical depression, with winds only around 35 mph—below the 39 mph minimum needed for to be an official tropical storm. If [...]
With a tropical storm looking more and more likely to hit the site of BP’s blown well in the Gulf of Mexico, retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad W. Allen made a difficult decision on Thursday night. In the end, however, the evacuation order was given. The rigs and ships involved with the relief well and [...]
Time to play good news/bad news on the Gulf spill once again. Good news: retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad W. Allen told reporters today that he was all but ready to authorize BP’s static kill procedure, which would involve pumping mud in through the containment cap, and that it could begin within 48 hours. If [...]
As the oil spill has worsened, reporters have dug into BP’s company policies, demonstrating that the energy company often put profits well before safety throughout many parts of its operations. Exhibit A in that case was always a 2005 fire in BP’s creaking Texas City refinery, which killed 15 people—four more than died in the [...]
At least the worst-case scenario—for once—isn’t happening in the Gulf of Mexico. When forecasters warned last week that a tropical depression was forming in the Carribean, Coast Guard officials cautioned that that they would need to shut down containment operatons over the blown well for as much as two weeks if the storm came to [...]
Bad news good news. The bad news is that the tropical depression that had been forming in the Caribbean has now officially become a tropical storm—named Alex—the first of what’s likely to be many in a rough season. The storm may even strengthen to become a minimal hurricane by the time it makes landfall. The [...]
It doesn’t take much to disrupt the jury-rigged system BP has designed to contain some of the oil spewing into the Gulf. Just a few days ago an underwater remote operated vehicle bumped into a venting system, requiring BP to remove the containment cap for about half a day—during which time oil flowed from the [...]
