Just days before BP was set to go to trial with a group of more than 100,000 plaintiffs, the company announced over the weekend that it would agree to a settlement of $7.8 billion dollars.

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BP is putting a lot of money behind a TV commercial that opens with “This was the Gulf’s best tourism season in years.” In the sixty-second spot, businesses in Gulf cities like New Orleans and Panama City Florida invite tourists to come back. The ad is gorgeously filmed. Sparkling blue water. Giant flocks of birds. Sumptuous dishes of local fish. It’s the second wave of a campaign to restore tourism hurt by the BP oil spill and just one of BP’s efforts at restitution for regional businesses.

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Royal Dutch Shell announced on December 21, 2011 that about 40,000 barrels of crude oil leaked into the Atlantic Ocean from the Bonga Deep Offshore Oil Fields. Shell operates the oil field, located about 120 kilometers southwest of the Niger Delta, on behalf of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation under a production sharing contract. The [...]

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Petroleum is probably one of the most precious commodities we have. It powers every aspect of human life, not just in terms of energy for transportation and heating but petrochemicals have spawned industries without which modern human life may well be impossible. One of the biggest risks with the extraction of crude is the risk [...]

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Apple Skin Skies examines the idea that our atmosphere is thin relative to the size of the planet and the number of humans on its surface. A connection is drawn between the thickness of an apple skin relative to its diameter and how with this simple mental exercise it becomes more clear how human activity could bring about global warming.

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You would think that after the BP Deepwater Horizon Spill last year, oil companies would have learned to deal with similar catastrophes better. An oil spill is something that may be unavoidable but dealing with it in a prompt manner that encourages stakeholder awareness is more than clever PR. North Sea Spill Worst in UK [...]

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The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences has just kicked off what is believed to be the largest study ever conducted on the impact of oil spills on human health. Individuals who helped with the clean up of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year will be monitored for the [...]

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On my way into work this morning, I was listening to an NPR interview with Retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen. He was speaking with NPR’s Steve Inskeep about the lessons he’s taken from overseeing the government’s response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Allen was also involved in Hurricane’s Katrina and [...]

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The following is a post by Paul Hannam of Bright Green Leadership (a 3p sponsor) – offering internet marketing strategies for responsible businesses. This tips and observations in this series are aimed at green entrepreneurs looking to understand how internet technology can benefit them more. For the last few weeks I have been writing about [...]

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Now that BP’s spurting oil well in the Gulf of Mexico officially known as MC252 has apparently been shut in, and the relief well that will eventually reduce the pressure in the area, is almost done, it would be nice to think that the worst is over and all that remains now is the long, [...]

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By Jacquie Ottman Long marketed by Procter & Gamble as an “effective yet gentle” way to keep dishes free from even the greasiest of grease, Dawn dishwashing liquid was widely publicized  during the Exxon-Valdez oil spill in 1989 as an ideal way to remove residue from afflicted bird and mammal species. Fast forward to mid-April [...]

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by Richard Telofski The current oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is, of course, a first degree public relations nightmare for beleaguered British multinational BP. Many pundits and financial analysts have debated whether or not the company will be able to survive this environmental disaster. Certainly their financial survival will depend on how many [...]

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The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is an unrelenting, gushing reminder of our unsustainable production and consumption of fossil fuels. It has jolted the nation as images tell the story of jobless residents, tarnished beaches and struggling creatures. The constant news coverage has prompted a nation-wide “gut check,” giving us time to ponder [...]

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By Ambrose Desmond Trying to find a silver lining in the Gulf catastrophe is not an easy thing to do. However, some faint ones can be spotted. First is the real possibility of a shift toward much more conservative drilling policy and more momentum for the alternative energy movement. Second is the possibility that BP, [...]

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Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Last week President Obama spoke strongly against BP CEO Tony Hayward. “He wouldn’t be working for me after any of those statements,” Obama said on NBC”s Today Show. The statements he referred to include Hayward’s much maligned remark Hayward that he wants his [...]

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Do me a favor before you read the rest of this post. Type in the search terms “oil spill” in either Google, Yahoo or Bing. Did you notice the highlighted website which comes up on top of the search page? In case you did not, what comes up on top is BP’s website devoted to [...]

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The oil spill is Bad News with a capital “B” for enviros, even those of us who lean toward the critically optimistic approach to environmentalism. With oil still leaking in the Gulf after nearly two months, the increasingly cumbersome remediation strategies coupled with increasingly  ridiculous names (I’ve got my money on Death Squad Burst as [...]

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Last week I wrote about the fake BP Twitter account, @BPGlobalPR which contains posts such as, “ANNOUNCEMENT: No one is allowed to look at our oil. All Gulf residents are required to close their eyes until this is over.” This week the man behind @BPGlobalPR stepped forward to identify himself through a blog post, although [...]

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Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced the resignation of Minerals Management Service (MMS) Director Elizabeth Birnbaum on Thursday  at the congressional hearing where she was scheduled to testify. Birnbaum did not show up to the hearing. Birnbaum served as the MMS director since July 2009. Neither Salazar’s remarks or Birnbaum’s indicate she was fired. “Elizabeth Birnbaum [...]

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Last week, Obama criticized the executives of BP America, Transocean and Halliburton for blaming each other doing a congressional hearing. “I did not appreciate what I considered to be a ridiculous spectacle during the congressional hearings into this matter,” Obama said. “You had executives of BP and Transocean and Halliburton falling over each other to [...]

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Two men from Florida, with a strong desire to protect the coastline they love, have come up with a common-sense solution to clean-up the Gulf oil spill. Their idea is all natural, puts displaced shrimp boats back to work, adds revenue to farmers, and the waste can be used to create energy. It’s an all around win-win solution that BP and the U.S. Coast Guard have yet to adopt.

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By Ali Chase for the NRDC As the country watches the oil slick licking the Gulf’s shores in horror, residents are looking at something else – their shrinking budgets. The economic impacts of the Deepwater Horizon spill are beginning to emerge, and the worst may be on the way. Fishermen cut off from their fishing [...]

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“This is the largest, most comprehensive spill response mounted in the history of the United States and the oil and gas industry,” BP chief executive Tony Hayward said. Is it the correct response? BP is using chemicals, known as dispersants, to thin out the oil. These agents break up and “disperse” the oil. Sounds like [...]

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BP recently announced that the energy giant would pay all necessary and appropriate clean-up costs from the Gulf oil spill. Not sure if that was a reaction to the “stern warning” from the White House, or simply something some unlucky PR schlub had to pump out to the media in an attempt to try and [...]

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Give BP some credit:  its marketing campaign for the past decade has been so effective that you would think that those initials really did stand for “Beyond Petroleum.”  But as the last two weeks have shown us, BP is now known as the Big Polluter, its reputation so stained that it may want to run [...]

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Louisiana fishermen who saw their fishing grounds slowly being covered over with crude oil this week had at least one consolation: they might find work cleaning the mess up. But when BP, who must pay for the clean up under federal law, did offer them work, it came with a number of stipulations, including indemnification [...]

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