Disasters

Will Feds Shut Down Independent Research on Gulf Spill Impacts?

USFWS officers and DHS agents are not allowing independent academic researchers to study damage from the BP oil spill to natural resources from public lands and waters, saying they are justified by the "Natural Resource Damage Assessment" process under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 and "national security," respectively.

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How Oil Regulator's Partnership With Industry Led To Failure

"Two weeks after BP's Macondo well blew out in the Gulf of Mexico, the federal government's Minerals Management Service finalized a regulation intended to control the undersea pressures that threaten deepwater drilling operations. MMS did not write the rule. As it had dozens of times before, the agency adopted language provided by the oil industry's trade group, the American Petroleum Institute, and incorporated it into the Federal Register."

Source: Wash Post, 08/25/2010

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