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U.S. Investigation Finds BP 'Ultimately Responsible,' Contractors to Blame




A U.S. investigation board blames the worst offshore oil spill in the nation's history on British oil giant BP and also points to BP contractors for contributing to the Gulf of Mexico disaster.

The loss of 11 lives at BP's Macondo oil well in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010, and devastating pollution of the gulf were the result of "poor risk management, last-minute changes to plans, failure to observe and respond to critical indicators, inadequate well control response, and insufficient emergency bridge response training," finds the board's final report.

Response vessels spray water onto the blazing Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, April 21, 2011 (Photo courtesy U.S. Coast Guard)

The final investigative report of the Joint Investigation Team of the U.S. Coast Guard and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, BOEMRE, was released Wednesday.

It concludes that four companies were responsible for the April 20 blowout that killed 11 crewmembers and spilled five million barrels of oil into the gulf over the next 87 days.

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Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2011. All rights reserved.

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Why? Tell Me Why!: Dino Bone Excavation



Montana is rich in dinosaur fossils but paleontologists are picky about what sites they chose to excavate. This week Kasey-Dee Gardner and James Williams find out why.
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US Report Spreads Blame for BP Oil Spill




Content provided by AFP

THE GIST
  • Sub-contractors Halliburton, Transocean, and Cameron are implicated as well as BP for poor management.
  • A top lawmaker said the report should eliminate any "excuses" for passing critical reforms and called for congressional hearings.

A key US government report spreads the blame for the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, citing a bad cement job, poor management by BP and its subcontractors and risky shortcuts.

The findings by the agency that regulates offshore drilling are largely in line with other investigations into the 2010 disaster, but offer the most detailed analysis to date.

The report that came out on Wednesday is expected to influence a criminal investigation being conducted by the US Justice Department and impact fines imposed upon the British energy giant. Regulators said they planned to issue seven new citations based upon the report's conclusions.


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A New Sickle-Clawed Predator from Inner Mongolia





A block containing the partial skeleton of Linhevenator. Abbreviations: ds, dorsal vertebrae; lf, left femur; li, left ischium; lpe, left foot; rh, right humerus; rs, right scapula; sk, skull. From Xu et al., 2011.


What makes Linehvenator particularly unusual are some of the details of its limbs. Compared to other troodontids, Linhevenator had a relatively long shoulder blade, a relatively short and thick humerus, and its second toe was tipped in a specialized, retractable claw like that seen in Troodon but not in some earlier members of the group. This is a curious suite of characteristics. Whereas Linhevenator appears to have had a killing claw similar to that of its dromaeosaurid cousins like Deinonychus, the newly described dinosaur may have had proportionally short and strongly muscled arms. This may hint that Linhevenator was not using its arms to capture prey in the same way as dromaeosaurids or earlier troodontid dinosaurs, even if it did have a specialized killing claw. Instead, Xu and co-authors argue that the dinosaur may have had arms adapted to digging, climbing, or something else entirely, although testing these hypotheses is difficult at present. With any luck, additional discoveries of troodontids will help flesh out what these peculiar dinosaurs were like in life.


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