"President Obama put his weight today behind legislative efforts to lift liability caps for oil spills."
 

"Powerful puffs of natural gas, called kicks, are a normal occurrence in many deep-ocean drilling operations. But one intense kick of natural gas caused the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig to be shut down because of the fear of an explosion just weeks before a similar release succeeded in destroying and sinking the platform and sent millions of gallons of oil on a collision course with Louisiana and the rest of the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico."

At a Senate hearing, executives of the oil-industry firms involved in the Gulf spill all agreed that the disaster was somebody else's fault.

"As the companies involved in the construction, leasing and operation of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig try to pin blame on one another for the explosion and subsequent spill, the litigation resulting from the spill in the Gulf of Mexico also keeps getting messier."

"The sinking of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which triggered the spill spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico, caught the energy world by surprise. The operator, Transocean Ltd., is a giant in the brave new world of drilling for oil in deep waters far offshore. It had been honored by regulators for its safety record. The very day of the blast on the rig, executives were aboard celebrating its seven straight years free of serious accidents."

"The oil industry, not the federal agency that regulates it, plays a crucial role in writing the safety and environmental rules for offshore drilling, a role that critics say reflects cozy ties between an industry and its regulators that need to be snapped."

"When the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and oil started gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, neither the oil companies nor their watchdogs in the Interior Department were ready."

Since the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon, the Obama administration's Minerals Management Service approved 26 new offshore drilling projects in the Gulf with the same environmental exempitons, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.

"Icelike crystals encrusting a 100-ton steel-and-concrete box meant to contain oil gushing from a broken well deep in the Gulf of Mexico forced crews Saturday to back off the long-shot plan, while more than 100 miles away, blobs of tar washed up at an Alabama beach full of swimmers."

"Orange-colored oil from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has washed up on the western side of North Island, the northernmost sliver of the Chandeleur and Breton Island chain, and officials with BP and federal and state agency say they have drafted a strategy to begin cleaning it up."

"Petrochemical giant BP didn't file a plan to specifically handle a major oil spill from an uncontrolled blowout at its Deepwater Horizon project because the federal agency that regulates offshore rigs changed its rules two years ago to exempt certain projects in the central Gulf region, according to an Associated Press review of official records."

"A La Nina weather phenomenon, the lesser-known cousin of the more famous El Nino weather anomaly, will most likely develop in the second half of 2010, the U.S. Climate Prediction Center said Thursday."

Flood victims in some of Nashville's poor neighborhoods are not getting the attention that some country music stars are getting.

Engineers begin today maneuvering into place a huge containment dome in hopes of stopping the spread of the oil slick from the blowout of the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

"The Interior Department exempted BP's calamitous Gulf of Mexico drilling operation from a detailed environmental impact analysis last year, according to government documents, after three reviews of the area concluded that a massive oil spill was unlikely."