GULF COAST OIL SPILL DISASTER

BP’s failed blowout preventer was raised from the Gulf of Mexico over the weekend. The 300-ton piece of equipment is key evidence in the investiation of the massive BP oil spill. Late Friday, the government said another blowout preventer had successfully been placed on the blown-out well.
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BP has been forced to defend its advertising strategy, after a congressional committee investigating the Gulf of Mexico oil spill revealed that the company tripled its advertising budget in the months following the disaster. BP also increased the number of markets where it purchased newspaper advertising from just two states last year to 17 states.
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BP says legislation that would bar the company from getting new offshore drilling permits could prevent it from fully paying for damages from the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill. According to a report in The New York Times, a drilling overhaul bill passed by the House of Representatives last month includes an amendment that would bar any company from receiving permits to drill on the Outer Continental Shelf if more than 10 fatalities had occurred at its offshore or onshore facilities. The April 20 explosion aboard BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig killed 11 men.
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In the wake of the BP oil spill, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is imposing its first-ever ethics policy. The Bureau of Ocean Management was formed over the summer, after the functions of the scandal-plagued Minerals Management Service (MMS) were divided. The Bureau is charged with overseeing offshore drilling operations.
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A prominent social psychologist says feelings of anger, depression, and helplessness are already apparent in many people whose lives were impacted by the BP oil spill. What’s more, Deborah Du Nann Winter, PhD, told the peer-reviewed online journal Ecopsychology that those and other psychological impacts of the spill are expected to be long lasting.
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BP is apparently putting some blame for the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion on its own engineers. According to a Bloomberg News report, the oil company’s internal investigation misread a test of the well’s stability on April 20, the day of the disaster.
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