Twenty-two years ago today, the Exxon Valdez oil tanker ran aground the Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, and spilled nearly 11 million gallons of heavy crude oil, which eventually covered approximately 1,100 miles of sensitive coastline. 

The environmental toll was devastating.  Hundreds of thousands of seabirds, thousands of sea...

As the one-year anniversary of the BP Gulf oil disaster fast approaches, I wanted to write a series of blogs that focus on some of the National Oil Spill Commission’s key recommendations, and where things stand when it comes to implementing these recommendations. For my first blog in this series,...

The bipartisan, independent Oil Spill Commission yesterday issued a clarion call to action.  The conclusions laid out in the final Commission report could not be more stark:  without fundamental reforms that hold the industry to higher safety standards and strengthen the government’s authority to enforce more rigorous protections,...

As the Gulf oil disaster has faded from the TV screens of the American public, it is staggering how quickly the oil industry has abandoned its earnest self-reflection and returned to the familiar song and dance to expand offshore drilling, even before new safety reforms are fully implemented.

Indeed, the...

Wednesday marks the six-month “anniversary” of the world’s largest peacetime oil spill, the result of the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico that tragically claimed the lives of 11 men on...

Yesterday we travelled by boat to Breton Island, one of several barrier islands in the Breton National Wildlife Refuge.  Oil booms surround this tiny island, in hopes of keeping the looming oil spill at bay.  And for good reason.

Breton Island provides...

Today as I sat in a boat in the Gulf, surrounded on all sides by oil-tainted seas, its hard to say what hit me the hardest.  Was it the graceful and enigmatic dolphins surfacing through the slick?  Or Captain O’Neill...