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Oil Spill: Why the BP Settlement Is Just the Beginning of the End

Lawyers representing the oil giant BP on one side, and more than 100,000 Gulf Coast residents on the other, were set to show up at the court of U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier on Monday morning. There they would have begun contesting one of the biggest class-action lawsuits in American history, fighting over the responsibility [...]

Oil Spill: Kenneth Feinberg Sees a Quick Recovery for the Gulf—So Get Your Money Now

Back in early June, when the oil was just beginning to wash across the marshlands of southern Louisiana, then-BP CEO Tony Hayward made one of his several unfortunate PR moves. He appeared in a TV ad where he announced, with a background of fishermen and seabirds, that BP will “make this right.” At the time [...]

Oil Spill: The Federal Government Takes BP to Court

I’m finishing up the Energy Innovations 2010 conference in Washington, of which more later today, but I wanted to note the news that the U.S. Justice Department has decided to sue BP and a number of other companies over this summer’s oil spill in the Gulf. From Attorney General Eric Holder’s statement today: We intend [...]

Oil Spill: The Well Is Dead

Looks like Ecocentric may need to find something new to write about. On Sunday morning retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen—who may need to find a new job soon—made it official: BP’s blown Macondo well has now been killed. After the long-awaited relief well successfully intersected the original well a couple of days ago, it [...]

Oil Spill: Some Long Awaited Relief

In what was possibly the most anticipated intersection between two shafts in U.S. history, the government announced late Thursday that BP’s relief well had finally connected with the company’s original blown well. That will allow BP to go ahead and place a final cement seal on the original well—finally, truly, really killing it. “The two [...]

Oil Spill: Is the Claims Process Fair?

Twice over the past month and a half I’ve sat with groups in Louisiana and Florida while Kenneth Feinberg—the booming Boston lawyer who is running the multi-billion dollar oil spill compensation fund—made his pitch. The audiences couldn’t have been more different—worried and wary fisherman in the tiny Louisiana village of Port Fourchon and platinum real [...]

Oil Spill: BP Ponies Up for Mental Health

We’ve sent a lot of criticism BP’s way during the past four months of the oil spill, so it’s only fair to give notice when they do the right thing. After weeks of experts calling attention to the potential problems—and states like Louisiana asking for fund—BP announced that it would provide $52 million for behavioral [...]

Oil Spill: Joint Investigation of BP Claims

BP’s compensation claims process for Gulf residents and businesses affected by the oil spill has had some serious problems. Residents are saying that the company has been slow to pay, that the forms disappear into a bureaucratic void, and that the criteria of who qualifies and who doesn’t is anything but clear. For journalists covering [...]

OIl Spill: Have You Filed a Claim With BP?

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Oil Spill: The Psychological Toll

We’ll be debating the long-term environmental impact of the BP oil spill for years, if not decades. But we can know one thing for sure right now: the spill is exacting psychological harm on the people of the Gulf coast. That’s the conclusion of the first major survey of Gulf coast residents conducted since the [...]