Feds Sue BP and Eight Others for Macondo Blowout

Finally someone got off the dime in DC and started filing a civil lawsuit against the corporate monsters who ruined the ecosystem in the Gulf of Mexico this past April.

From Fuel Fix:

“The civil lawsuit asks that the eight companies be held liable without limitation for all removal costs and damages caused by the oil spill, including damages to natural resources. They include BP, Anadarko, Transocean, Moex (a division of Mitsui) and two related entities and QBE underwriting (a division of Lloyd’s of London that insures Transocean).”

Halliburton, the company that cemented the casing, is so far not on the civil suit list. Halliburton is the company that did the cement job on the well. A cement job that ran awry when there was a failure to test the integrity of the cement job – a textbook procedure that anyone with 2 weeks experience on a drilling rig knows that you do this.

“The suit alleges the companies failed to take the necessary precautions to secure BP’s Macondo well before it blew out, failed to use the safest technology to monitor conditions and failed to use all available equipment to ensure the environment and workers were protected.”

Said Attorney General Eric Holder:

“These violations caused or contributed to the massive oil spill and the defendants therefore are responsible  . . .  for government removal costs (and) economic penalties.”

You know, I can see where they are going to go with this. Now that the beaches are open and evidence of further pollution is no more, the companies are going to say “Huh? What damage?”

So it is timely that we hear of recent deep sea submersible investigations in the deepwater of the Gulf Coast. There are now reports of large accumulations of oily sludge at the bottom of the Gulf. A mass that is turning a normally ecologically diverse deep sea floor with luxuriant deep sea biota into a sea floor resembling a barren lunar landscape.

From WBEZ:

“We see this brown stuff on coral fans, hit like pine trees along a dusty dirt road. More slimy brown stuff hangs over some of the odd formations of frozen natural gas here half a mile below the surface. Crabs here normally pick at worms that actually live in this methane ice.”

What do you call BP executives and those of 8 other oil service companies buried up to their necks in deepwater sediments soaked with Macondo oil?

A good start.