TheNextReport

The key executives of the companies responsible for the titanic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico were raked over the coals by members of Congress Tuesday and managed to skillfully dance away and blame each other when the grilling got too hot. Called to account before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee chaired by Senator Barbara Boxer (D) of California were BP America President Lamar McKay; Steven Newman, CEO of well driller Transocean limited; and Halliburton chief health, safety and environmental officer Tim Probert. In their testimony, all three men appeared to simultaneously accept responsibility for what happened then shift the blame to the other parties. All relied heavily on the fact that critical details regarding the precise cause of the accident are not yet available. Indeed, when asked by several senators about whether certain industry standards for building ocean-based oil rigs were followed, the witnesses indicated several times that they didn’t know the answe

It Came From Beneath the Sea In France it is known as “la Marée Noir”, the Black Tide. The waves of oil that are rushing to choke the shorelines of Louisiana are well-known to the residents of the Galician coast of Spain and the shores of southwestern France where I used to live. It was there in 2002 that the giant oil tanker Prestige broke apart in rough seas, a nightmare that would bring death to more than 20,000 birds and other wildlife, a nightmare that would spell destruction to the fishing and tourism industries for years afterward. Living near Bordeaux at the time, I witnessed the results of the disaster first hand. For those concerned about the effects of the spill in the Gulf of Mexico, past tanker calamities such as the Prestige and the 1989 wreck of the Exxon Valdez are instructive; they help us understand the magnitude of the damage such accidents can have on a region’s habitat, and the dangerous consequences of insufficient government regulation and political wrangling. Wh