From The New York Times | Halliburton and BP knew weeks before the blast on a rig in the Gulf of Mexico that the cement mixture they planned to use to seal the well was unstable, a commission found.
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Shell CEO criticizes Gulf spill
The head of Royal Dutch Shell says that his company would never have made the mistakes that led to BP’s devastating Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Get the full story »
BP says costs of oil spill rise to $11.2 billion
BP named the Gulf of Mexico assets that it will use to help finance the $20 billion fund for victims of its oil spill and said the cost of dealing with the disaster had risen to $11.2 billion. Get the full story »
BP to create new safety unit
BP says it will create a new safety division in the aftermath of this summer’s oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The “powerful“ new unit “will have authority to intervene in all aspects of BP’s technical activities,“ the company said in a statement Wednesday. Get the full story »
Blown-out BP well is declared dead
With an an injection of cement 18,000 feet below the ocean’s surface, the BP well in the Gulf of Mexico was declared dead after nearly five months of heartache, misery and worry.
The news was “real good,” said Canty, a 31-year-old shrimper, but it wasn’t likely to change his life immediately. His shrimp boat is still contracted out indefinitely to BP, he said, and for the time being, he expects to remain among the 25,200 people hired to finish cleaning up the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history. Get the full story »
BP booted from ethical investment index
BP Plc will be evicted from the FTSE4Good ethical investment index after its Gulf of Mexico oil spill, index compiler FTSE said Friday, as BP said it would delay its third-quarter results due to the challenges of accounting for spill costs.
FTSE said BP would be dropped from FTSE4Good, which many managers of ethical funds use to screen companies before including them in their portfolios, Sept. 18, citing a FTSE policy committee. Get the full story »
BP: Multiple companies to blame for oil spill
Shares in BP PLC tracked slightly higher after the release of an internal report on the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that deflects much of the blame onto rig owner Transocean Ltd. and contractor Halliburton Co. The stock bounced as high as $6.44 after the report was made public Wednesday, before retreating a little to trade up 1.8 percent in early afternoon trading London time.
BP took some of the blame for April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig that killed 11 workers and started the worst oil spill in U.S. history. It acknowledged in the report that its own employees misinterpreted a safety test that should have raised a red flag about a potential blowout of the Macondo well. Get the full story »
Offshore oil rig in Gulf of Mexico explodes
An offshore oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday, west of the site of the April blast that caused the massive oil spill.
BP makes $3B initial deposit to spill fund
BP said Monday it has made an initial deposit of $3 billion into a $20 billion fund to pay for its Gulf of Mexico oil spill after the oil company finalized negotiations with the U.S. Department of Justice. Get the full story »
BP may still drill in Gulf reservoir that blew
BP said Friday it might someday drill again into the same lucrative undersea pocket of oil that spilled millions of gallons of crude, wrecked livelihoods and fouled beaches along the Gulf of Mexico. “There’s lots of oil and gas here,” Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said at a news briefing. “We’re going to have to think about what to do with that at some point.”
BP stock gains ground, but major resistance looms
Shares in BP rose 1.2 percent in London on Friday, taking their bounce since the near 14-year low in June to 45 percent, lifted by the group’s latest progress in plugging the ruptured oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. Get the full story »
BP’s Tony Hayward defends decisions
From The Wall Street Journal | In his first interview after agreeing to step down from the top spot at oil giant BP this week, Tony Hayward defended his choices during the oil spill crisis, saying he ” became a villain for doing the right thing.” Get the full story »
U.S. launches criminal probe into Gulf oil spill
Several U.S. agencies are preparing a criminal probe of at least three companies involved in the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, though it could take more than a year before any charges are filed, the Washington Post reported Wednesday.
BP Plc, Transocean Ltd. and Halliburton Co. are the initial targets of the wide-ranging probe, which aims “to examine whether their cozy relations with federal regulators contributed to the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico,” the newspaper said, citing law enforcement and other sources. Get the full story »
BP replaces CEO Hayward, reports record loss
BP’s embattled Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward will be replaced by American Robert Dudley on Oct. 1, the company said Tuesday, as it reported a record quarterly loss and set aside $32.2 billion to cover the costs of the devastating Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
BP said the decision to replace Hayward, 53, with the company’s first ever non-British CEO was made by mutual agreement. In a mark of faith in its outgoing leader, BP said it planned to recommend him for a non-executive position at its Russian joint venture and will pay him 1.045 million pounds ($1.6 million), a year’s salary, instead of the year’s notice he was entitled to.
“The BP board is deeply saddened to lose a CEO whose success over some three years in driving the performance of the company was so widely and deservedly admired,” BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg said in a statement accompanying the quarterly earnings update. Get the full story »
BP set to put first American in charge
BP Plc is expected to announce in the next 24 hours that Chief Executive Tony Hayward will step down and be replaced by Bob Dudley, a soft-spoken American unlikely to repeat the gaffes that have come to define Hayward in many Americans’ minds.
Dudley heads BP’s oil spill response effort. Just over a week ago, BP installed a temporary cap on the Macondo well, which had been spewing up to 60,000 barrels per day of oil into the Gulf of Mexico since April. Get the full story »