Oil Spill, Bp | featured news

The gooey oil washing into the maze of marshes along the Gulf Coast could prove impossible to remove, leaving a toxic stew lethal to fish and wildlife, government officials and independent scientists said. Officials are considering some ...

Oil giant BP conceded Thursday that the Gulf of Mexico oil leak is larger than it originally estimated, adding more worry as portions of the ...

Federal officials said Sunday that engineers have succeeded in vacuuming up some of the oil that has been leaking from the Deepwater Horizon's drilling well, the first progress in containing the BP spill since the Horizon exploded and sank last month.

After a setback Saturday in its tube strategy to slow the flow of oil in the Gulf, BP is giving it another shot on Sunday.

Company says its costs for fighting spill in the gulf have risen by $100 million in three days.

BP PLC told Congress Tuesday its massive Gulf oil spill was caused by the failure of a key safety device made by another company. In turn, that company says BP was in charge, and that a third company that poured concrete to plug the exploratory well didn't do it right. The third company, which was plugging the well in anticipation of future production, says it was only following BP's plan.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar will announce Tuesday afternoon that he is splitting the embattled Minerals Management Service into two parts, according to an Interior Department official who asked not to be identified.

The effort to place a massive containment dome over a gushing underwater wellhead in the Gulf of Mexico was dealt a setback when a large volume of hydrates -- icelike crystals that form when gas combines with water -- accumulated inside the vessel, a BP official said Saturday.

A fix by engineers was not expected to immediately reduce the release of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

MMS' fines against BP have been the equivalent of a rounding error. From 1998 through 2007 "when MMS issued its last fine against the company" BP has paid less than $580,000 in penalties for its 12 safety violations. Environmental groups say this simply isn't enough.