Environment Memo

Here’s a NOAA picture showing the Loop Current: Some are predicting the leaking oil might get entrained there, and then transported onward to the East Coast.

BP had warned that the cofferdam approach had never been tried before. Which leads to the question of how hard were they working on Plans B and C when they were fashioning the cofferdam? It would seem they should have been working on a lot of options simultaneously. Now, according to the Financial Times, they [...]

All the hoopla about  needs for better regulation after the oil spill in the gulf brings to mind that some of the best people to help regulate such an industry are those from that industry, if they could be hired away and put on the regulators’ payrolls. But there are problematic logjams to hiring these [...]

We are told that BP has set up a phone number for people to submit claims for damages. Isn’t this rather premature? Who can know what the damages are at this point? Is this a case of BP being proactive, or its attorneys working just a little bit too hard?

I don’t see where Nalco, the company supplying the dispersant chemicals to help with the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, will come out ahead by following a policy of withholding the exact chemicals they are using. For one thing, it’s bad PR. For another, a lot of people with high powered analytical equipment [...]