As BP announces a return to profit despite bearing the costs of the Gulf of Mexico disaster, Chief Correspondent Alex Thomson asks whether it signals an end to the oil giant’s rocky year.
Contractor Halliburton used flawed cement on the Gulf of Mexico oil well which may have contributed to the blowout that sparked the biggest offshore spill in US history, a report finds.
American Bob Dudley takes the reins at BP, flagging a return to dividends. Who Knows Who asks if Dudley, once chased from Russia by billionaire oligarchs, could be BP’s all-American hero.
Outgoing BP chief executive Tony Hayward tells MPs safety is the oil giant’s “number one” priority, as he puts the company’s case to be allowed to drill for oil in UK waters, as Tom Clarke reports.
Gary Gibbon
David Cameron has just told PBS radio in Washington that the Megrahi release was “not a BP decision” but “the decision of British ministers” (by which he means Scottish ministers). He has revisited his initial decision to turn down a late request from four US senators to meet up and discuss the Lockerbie bomber’s release…
President Obama’s recent criticisms of “British Petroleum” have created the critical distance between the US administration and the new British government that is necessary to ensure a “realistic, practical and sensible” relationship between the two countries, blogs Jonathan Rugman
Jon Snow
What might otherwise be regarded as an incredible feat of engineering has been achieved a mile under the ocean in the Gulf of Mexico.
Jon Snow
A rare 24 hours. It’s been a rollercoaster news moment. We all know that there are days when very little happens and, as journalists, we have to work overtime to distinguish one day’s events from another. But last night a cascade of happenings toppled into one another. Even at the sporting level, there was the…
Jon Snow
Is Union Carbide’s horrific environmental disaster of 1984 America’s ‘BP’? Yesterday’s minimal sentences passed down on eight former Carbide employees, did not include the then Chief Executive Warren Anderson. No one has ever acted upon the arrest warrant that was issued for his arrest. No one until yesterday was ever brought to book. America and…
Americans watching the ongoing disaster in the Gulf of Mexico are all suffering the unfamiliar sensation that there is nothing they can do to prevent imminent environmental catastrophe.
Alex Thomson blogs on BPs worst case option that they’re facing now.
For a man who freely admits his job is on the line and who does not admit that the oil spill is so serious it could cripple his giant company, BP’s boss Tony Hayward continues to place his well-heeled foot firmly in his mouth. A day or two ago he makes the following pronouncement:…
15 miles out from the Louisiana coast, the oil spill from BP’s Deepwater well begins, blogs Alex Thomson. And as it enters the animal food chain, an ecological disaster looms.
To get to the Beach of South Pass is to get to the last edge of the United States. A wild and deserted sandbank with eight foot reeds blowing in the hot Gulf wind. Patrols of pelicans pass lazily by. But of the oil there is no sign. Out to sea the drilling rigs, grey…
Alex Thomson reports from Venice, Louisiana, where the residents are preparing for the oil spill to come ashore