BP oil pollution in the USA

This video is called Oil spill in Gulf of Mexico reaches US Gulf coast.

From CNN in the USA:

As Gulf Coast residents wait for a huge oil slick to reach their shores, the spill and the massive response already have begun wreaking havoc on livelihoods in a region where jobs are largely dependent on two ocean intensive industries: seafood and tourism.

Stephen Denmark, a city council member in Dauphin Island, Alabama, said Saturday that local scientists are predicting that the seafood crop could take a decade to recover from the oil slick.

“The last two years have been tough already,” Denmark said, referring to the recession. “This will be catastrophic to the mom-and-pop businesses, which is 90 percent of the business down here on the island.”

From Al Jazeera:

The rig was being operated by BP at the time of the blast and the firm has come under growing pressure from both the US public and the government to do more to contain the spill.

“We cannot rest and we will not rest until BP permanently seals the wellhead and cleans up every drop of oil,” Ken Salazar, the US secretary of the interior, said after visiting the scene of the spill.

“Those responsible will be held accountable,” he said.

BP is already facing a string of multi-million-dollar lawsuits in Louisiana, Alabama and elsewhere accusing it of negligence and failing to take adequate precautions to prevent such a spill occurring.

The plaintiffs include fishermen, shrimpers, seafood distributors, and restaurants, but also tour and fishing boat operators, whose livelihoods are directly threatened by the oil slick.

BP, which has spent millions of dollars in recent years trying to present a cleaner, more environmentally-friendly image of the company, has said it is committed to cleaning up the spill and minimising the damage caused.

Uphill task

Faced with a mounting disaster, the company faces an uphill task trying to defend its public image in line with its corporate tagline as a company that goes “beyond petroleum”.

Nonetheless, public relations experts say BP has done a better job than US rival Exxon in the aftermath of the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker spill in Alaska.

BP may do “a better job” at “slick” PR than ExxonMobil. Of course, that does not mean doing “a better job” at being really green as opposed to greenwashing.

Gulf Coast Bird Observatory: here.

Bird Habitats Threatened by Oil Spill: here.

An environmental group is organizing collection of human hair from salons and barber shops across the country as part of an effort to clean up the massive oil spill triggered by last month’s deadly explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico: here.

Gulf Stream May Send Oil Spill Up East Coast: here.

This 2014 video is called Oil Disaster (Deepwater Horizon): The Rig That Blew Up.