"The U.S. Coast Guard captain overseeing cleanup of oil spilled from a pipeline rupture that closed two California state beaches and fouled offshore waters near Santa Barbara said on Thursday it may take months to restore the area to its natural condition."
"Transocean Ltd. has agreed to a nearly $212 million settlement with Gulf Coast individuals and business owners over the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, plaintiff's lawyers said Wednesday (May 20)."
"Lung and adrenal lesions found in dead bottlenose dolphins stranded along the Gulf of Mexico between June 2010 and December 2012 are consistent with the types of damage that marine mammals sustain from exposure to petroleum products after an oil spill, according to a new study published on Wednesday by researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration."
"Cleanup crews fanned out across an oil-fouled California beach on Wednesday to scoop up gobs of petroleum spewed from a burst pipeline in what may be the biggest oil spill to hit the pristine but energy-rich Santa Barbara coastline in 46 years."
The watchdog group Center for Effective Government offers data tools that partly offset government failures to protect people from dangerous materials that poison or injure people, burn, or explode. They are also tools for journalists trying to inform their communities.
"When Mount St. Helens erupted on May 18, 1980, the landscape changed in an instant—the geologic version of an instant, anyway. It was the deadliest eruption the United States had ever seen, leveling everything for miles north of the mountain and blanketing ash as far as Montana. On the 35th anniversary of the event, the scars still shape the Cascade Mountains of Washington state."
"Conrad Ely drove from Olympia with three friends, a double kayak and a canoe."
"Royal Dutch Shell can drill oil exploration wells this summer in the Chukchi Sea, if Shell shows it can prevent and clean up a potential spill. Environmentalists are skeptical; Shell says it's ready."
"Oil tycoon Harold Hamm told a University of Oklahoma dean last year that he wanted certain scientists there dismissed who were studying links between oil and gas activity and the state's nearly 400-fold increase in earthquakes, according to the dean's e-mail recounting the conversation.
"Commodity investors are in a twist about the weather. Warmer ocean temperatures last spring indicated an El Niño event was on the horizon, signaling buys, sells, and hedging positions in securities linked to products impacted by storms and droughts. Everything from sugar prices to coffee futures were retooled."
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