Offshore Oil Drilling, Bp Oil Spill | featured news

A new oil sheen was spotted in the Gulf of Mexico, although energy company BP said Thursday the discovery had nothing to do with its operations and was far from the site of its disaster-hit Macondo well.

BP and its chief subcontractors, Halliburton and Transocean, made decisions that increased the chances of a catastrophic blowout, a team of experts said.

The BP oil rig explosion and spill wasn't about anyone purposely trading money for safety, investigators on a special presidential commission said Monday.

Months after the nation’s worst oil disaster, the Obama administration will lift its moratorium on deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, the White House announced Tuesday morning.

BP's blown-out oil well in the Gulf of Mexico has finally been killed once and for all, five months after an explosion sank a drilling rig and led to the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

BP Plc's ruptured Gulf of Mexico well that caused the biggest U.S. offshore oil spill ever could be killed for good within four days, the U.S. official overseeing the spill response said on Wednesday.

Oil giant BP PLC said in an internal report posted on its website Wednesday morning that multiple companies and work teams contributed to the massive Gulf of Mexico spill that fouled waters and shorelines for months.

With the replacement of the failed blowout preventer and a cement plug in place, the well's seal is almost permanent, the federal spill response chief says. The final step will be to plug the well from the bottom.

BP was working to remove the failed blowout preventer from its ruptured well  — a key step towards killing the well and salvaging evidence that could help in the inquiry into the disaster.

A six-month ban on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico would directly put more than 9,000 people out of work and indirectly affect another 14,000 jobs, according to a memo from the nation's top drilling regulator.