Halliburton pleads guilty to destroying Gulf spill evidence

Halliburton knew (Photo credit: Marcellus Protest)

Halliburton Co has agreed to plead guilty to destroying evidence related to the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the U.S. Department of Justice said on Thursday.

The government said the guilty plea is the third by a company over the spill, and requires the world's second-largest oilfield services company to pay a maximum $200,000 statutory fine. Halliburton also made a separate, voluntary $55 million payment to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the Justice Department said.

Halliburton also agreed to three years of probation, and to continue cooperating with the criminal probe into the April 20, 2010 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.

Court approval of the settlement is required. A Halliburton spokeswoman did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The disaster caused 11 deaths and triggered the largest U.S. offshore oil spill following the rupture of the Macondo oil well, which was 65 percent owned by BP Plc. Halliburton had earlier provided cementing services to help seal the well. Read more >>

Study: BP Dispersants killed plankton and disrupted food chain

A study on possible effects of the 2010 BP oil spill indicates dispersants may have killed plankton - some of the ocean's tiniest plants and creatures - and disrupted the food chain in the Gulf of Mexico, one of the nation's richest seafood grounds.

Scientists who read the study said it points toward major future effects of the spill. One called its findings scary. For the study, Alabama researchers pumped water from Mobile Bay into 53-gallon drums, then added oil, dispersant or both in proportions found during the oil spill to simulate the spill's effects on microscopic water-life in the bay.

Over more than 12 weeks in 2010, BP's well spewed nearly 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The company used more than 1.8 million gallons of dispersants - more than 770,000 gallons of it at the oil's source on the ocean floor - to break up the oil into tiny droplets.

The researchers found that, within days, the numbers of plant-like phytoplankton and ciliates - plankton that use hairlike cilia to move - increased under an oil slick. But they dropped significantly in the drums with dispersant or dispersed oil, while the numbers of bacteria increased. The study was published Tuesday in PLoS ONE, one of the peer-reviewed journals in the online Public Library of Science. Read more >>

Deepwater Spill Causing Gulf Damage 2 Years Later, Scientists Find

Platform supply vessels battle the blazing remnants of the off shore oil rig Deepwater Horizon.  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Biologists are finding signs of lingering — and perhaps growing — damage throughout the gulf, from the bottom of the food chain to the top:

Scientists have confirmed that tiny creatures called zooplankton accumulated toxic compounds from coming in contact with the Deepwater Horizon oil. Because small fish and crustaceans eat the zooplankton and are then eaten by larger fish, that means those compounds could now be working their way up the food chain, they said.

Three months after BP shut off the flow of oil, scientists searching the floor of the gulf found a colony of deep sea corals that were covered in what they described as “frothy gunk.” They were in the area where undersea plumes of oil had been spotted. Nearly half were dead. Extensive tests resulted in a finding, released just last month, that the culprit was in fact oil from Deepwater Horizon. More...

Panel challenges Gulf seafood safety all-clear

Image via Wikipedia'It is unethical to experiment with the health of the U.S. population or military members,' toxicologist says

A New Orleans law firm is challenging government assurances that Gulf Coast seafood is safe to eat in the wake of the BP oil spill, saying it poses “a significant danger to public health.”

It’s a high-stakes tug-of-war that will almost certainly end up in the courts, with two armies of scientists arguing over technical findings that could have real-world impact for seafood consumers and producers.

Citing what the law firm calls a state-of-the-art laboratory analysis, toxicologists, chemists and marine biologists retained by the firm of environmental attorney Stuart Smith contend that the government seafood testing program, which has focused on ensuring the seafood was free of the cancer-causing components of crude oil, has overlooked other harmful elements. And they say that their own testing — examining fewer samples but more comprehensively — shows high levels of hydrocarbons from the BP spill that are associated with liver damage. More.http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40494122/ns/us_news-environment