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Over on the main page, TIME’s Michael Grunwald has a contrarian take on the Gulf oil spill. Far from being the greatest environmental catastrophe in American history—as everyone from President Obama to, well, me has said—Grunwald reports that the damage seems to have been limited. The number of bird kills is far lower than those [...]
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 [...]
Like recovering alcoholics who’ve just come out of an AA meeting, the joint BP-government team overseeing the well containment efforts is taking it one day at a time. At his afternoon briefing, retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad W. Allen announced that he had authorized BP to keep the containment cap shut and the well integrity [...]
In my last post on the oil spill—and trust me, I’ve long since lost count—I asked whether reports of seepages on the seafloor and anomalies near the wellhead indicated that the integrity tests that BP had been carrying might have damaged the well itself, causing leakages. Turns out I didn’t have to wait long for [...]
Going into the integrity test being performed on BP’s blown well in the Gulf of Mexico, we were told that the longer the test was carried out, the better it would be for the wellbore—and for the chances of putting an early end to the oil spill. If the test—which began on July 15, after [...]
Quick update on BP’s well containment efforts while I’m waiting for the weather to clear in Louisiana, where the sky is leaking like a blown well. After shutting the containment cap yesterday afternoon and closing off the flow of oil, BP began pressure testing the integrity of the wellbore. About 18 hours after they began, [...]
A quick post before I head back out. Yesterday evening BP had begun closing down the valves on its new containment cap, in preparation to pressure test the integrity of the wellbore—and find out whether the well might be able to be fully capped. Overnight, though, they hit a snag—the kill line, one of three [...]
