A massive trial over the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill heads for a New Orleans federal courtroom on Monday, to determine how much BP Plc and others should cough up for the worst U.S. offshore oil spill.

The case is perhaps the most complex environmental lawsuit in history, and could leave companies on the hook for tens of billions of dollars in fines and payments to the U.S. government, Gulf Coast states, and tens of thousands of workers and businesses claiming economic damages from the spill.

The BP Oil Spill that occurred in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010 has affected an incredible number of human lives, in various ways, but we must also consider the negative impacts of the BP Oil Spill on Animals as well. When animals are affected, human beings become affected as well. We are all a part of the same ecosystem.

Despite the fact that the federal government  issued citations against BP that said  it failed to protect safety and the environment in regards to the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill disaster (trial date February 2012), they are allowing the company to bid for new oil drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico.  Michael Bromwich, the head of the new Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, told reporters that the administration felt it was not appropriate to “administer the death penalty” based on one incident.

The Press-Register of Mobile, Alabama discovered new BP oil seeping just a mile from the site of last summer’s debacle.  BP wasted no time at all in claiming that the oil wasn’t theirs… but the facts prove otherwise.  The fingerprint is clear, as is the location of the oil — exactly where one would expect it to be as it rose up from a mile deep.  Then there’s the use of Corexit itself, a solvent which has been banned in the UK, and proves far more dangerous than the oil itself.  Corexit is clearly implicated in the deaths of well over 100 dolphins this spring — an that’s only those who made it to the beach to be counted.   Think back on the way that BP tried to cover up the damage and dodge responsibility at every opportunity.  It’s clearly time to change the way that oil companies are monitored, and the way that their messes are cleaned up.

New findings about the BP Oil Spill.

The chemical sprayed in the Gulf to break up the BP oil spill may not have been effective and could be damaging the ecosystem more than the oil alone, according to preliminary findings by University of West Florida researchers. When mixed with oil, Corexit, the chemical dispersant used by BP, is toxic to phytoplankton and bacteria — crucial elements in the Gulf of Mexico's fragile food chain, said Wade Jeffrey, a UWF biologist with the Center for Environmental Diagnostics and Bioremediation. "That (effect) may cascade itself up through other larger organisms as you go up the food web," he said Tuesday. "It's one of those small pieces of a big puzzle of effects. We can't say if we've seen big shifts yet. I don't know that answer yet." Jeffrey was one of several scientists who presented preliminary research findings last week at a Florida Institute of Oceanography conference at the University of Central Florida.

There are few people who can claim direct knowledge of the ocean floor, at least before the invention of the spill-cam, last year's strangely compulsive live feed of the oil billowing out of BP's blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico. But for Samantha Joye it was familiar terrain. The intersection of oil, gas and marine life in the Mississippi Canyon has preoccupied the University of Georgia scientist for years. So one year after an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig, about 40 miles off the coast of Louisiana, killed 11 men and disgorged more than 4m barrels of crude, Joye could be forgiven for denying the official version of the BP oil disaster that life is returning to normal in the Gulf.

The view from her submarine is different, and her attachment is almost personal. On her descent to a location 10 miles from BP's well in December, Joye landed on an ocean floor coated with dark brown muck about 4cm deep. Thick ropes of slime draped across coral like cobwebs in a haunted house. The few creatures that remained alive, such as the crabs, were too listless to flee. "Most of the time when you go at them with a submarine, they just run," she says. "They weren't running, they were just sitting there, dazed and stupefied. They certainly weren't behaving as normal." Her conclusion? "I think it is not beyond the imagination that 50% of the oil is still floating around out there."

Federal regulators on Friday gave Statoil permission to drill a deep-water well - the 10th project approved since such work was halted after last year's Gulf spill.

Under the permit, Statoil will be allowed to drill a new well in 7,813 feet of water in its Logan prospect, 219 miles off the Louisiana shoreline, south of Houma. The Norwegian oil company is slated to drill the well with the Discoverer Americas, a Transocean drillship that is en route back to the Gulf of Mexico from Egyptian waters.
It is the second post-spill deep-water project Statoil has gotten approved. The company also won approval for a well in its Cobra prospect 216 miles south of Texas City on March 25.
Statoil contracted with the Houston-based Helix Well Containment Group to meet requirements that it show how it will respond to any blowout at the Cobra project. It has contracted the competing Marine Well Containment Co. for the new Logan prospect well - becoming the first operator to contract with both containment companies on separate Gulf drilling projects.

Take Action for the Earth and our Communities April 20.

1 year anniversary of the BP Oil Spill

The BP oil spill was unfortunately just one of an endless string of disasters born of an economic system that must endlessly consume the Earth’s  resources.

Extraction is the act of taking without giving anything back. Extraction takes workers lives so  corporations can make a few more bucks. Extraction takes clean water and air and gives us blackened oceans and a climate in chaos. Extraction takes the natural wealth of communities and ecosystems and leaves behind poverty and ecological wastelands.

For a stable climate, clean air and water, we must stop the extraction of fossil fuels and other “resources.”  From the tar sands of Alberta to the Gulf Coast, people are fighting back against the extractiveindustries  that have declared war on our planet. Rising Tide is calling for a day of direct action against extraction on the 1 year anniversary of the BP oil spill.

On April 20th take it to the point of production.  Shut down a well site, occupy a mine, take over an office, blockade a bank. Nobody’s community should be a sacrifice  zone.

For climate justice and a livable planet,

Rising Tide North America

www.risingtidenorthamerica.org/extraction

It now looks like BP’s blown well in the Gulf of Mexico won’t be completely killed until September. BP engineers are conducting a series of tests in preparation for a procedure called a bottom kill to ensure the well can withstand the pressure from the operation.

No oil has leaked from the well since it was capped with a static kill procedure last month. But the bottom kill is needed to make sure the well stays sealed. Before the well was capped on July 15, 4.9 barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf. The worst oil spill in US history was set off by an explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon oil rig on April 20.