Posted by jamie -
20 April 2012 at 5:54pm -
4 Comments
The stricken Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico
The second anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon disaster is upon us - and looking at the lessons the oil industry got from it, you’d think it never happened. Here are the most important points governments and oil companies didn’t learn.
Daniel Beltra wins Wildlife Photographer of the Year for this photo
Today, I have the honour of congratulating Greenpeace photographer Daniel Beltra on becoming the Veolia Environment Wildlife Photographer of the Year.
Daniel made his winning picture for Greenpeace, of oil-oaked brown
pelicans at a temporary bird-rescue facility in Fort Jackson, Louisiana,
while documenting the environmental impacts caused by the BP Deepwater
Horizon oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
BP are hoping that everyone has forgotten about the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year, and are quietly putting in place plans to drill in the deep waters off of the west of Shetland, risking an even bigger disaster.
The winning entry to our 2010 'Rebrand BP' competition
Another week, another push for reckless oil drilling by a UK company. This time it's BP, which wants to drill its deepest ever well in UK waters - a 1300 metre well - off the coast of North Uist.
On March 31, three weeks before the BP Deepwater Horizon
disaster, President Barack Obama announced plans to open offshore oil
drilling along the east coast of the United
States from Virginia to Florida and the eastern Gulf of Mexico, ending a
decades-long moratorium.
He further announced research to assess the
feasibility of offshore drilling in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas off
the north coast of Alaska.
Scientist Charles Messing in Dry Tortugas National Park, Florida
Thursday marked the one year
anniversary of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster. 11 rig workers were
killed and 16 injured in the initial explosion. And, after nearly 5 million barrels of oil spewed in to the ocean for five months, the long term effects on the Gulf of Mexico are still being uncovered.
It's been 365 days since BP's negligence, and the arrogance of the wider oil industry, led to the worst oil spill in US history: killing 11 rig workers and unleashing five million tonnes of oil, wrecking the Gulf Coast and killing birds and other wildlife.
The causes behind the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe remain unclear - but still oil companies are desperate to carry out similar drilling in UK waters.
Heavy crude oil in the wetland grasses on an island in Bay Batiste
Gulf Coast local Lamar Billups writes a poignant guest blog, via our US office:
First I would like to thank Greenpeace for allowing me the honor of
writing a blog for the one-year anniversary of the BP oil disaster. You
are the best, and, on behalf of the millions of people on the gulf, we
thank you for the research and help you gave after us this spill.
I remember the first time I smelled the oil: I was at my son’s
baseball game. Part way into the game everyone began to smell something
like burning tires.
Posted by jamess -
14 April 2011 at 9:42am -
1 Comment
Today was the first BP Annual General Meeting since the Gulf of Mexico oil spill - where both furious investors and protesters voiced their frustrations at BP's abysmal handling of the disaster. Greenpeace were there - here's our live feed of tweets, news, images and videos from the event at Excel London:
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