Wander the halls of OTC, and you quickly gain a feel for how insular the oil industry can be. It tends to view outside critiques, and especially criticism, with disdain. That may be why a breakfast discussion Tuesday started with introductions that included a note that the speakers had engineering degrees, which should “satisfy the room.”  More »

The energy industry isn’t good at introspection. When it takes a hard look at itself, it tends to find fault with others.  More »

Translating safety from panel discussions to practice  More »

Here’s some of the things I’ll be looking for at this years annual gala of oilfield geek chic.  More »

A group of Gulf Coast shrimp processors asked a federal judge Monday to hold off on giving his preliminary approval to portions of BP’s proposed class-action settlement of economic damage claims spawned by the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  More »

Workplace safety regulations don’t kill jobs; they keep jobs from killing workers.  More »

The extent of the ecological damage to the Gulf may not match the worst fears of some people.  More »

The European Commission is set to delay voting on whether to label oil from oil sands as worse for climate change than other forms of crude, delivering a victory to Canada.  More »

Last week, I wrote about the documents that have finally been made public in a court case over BP’s Atlantis platform in the Gulf of Mexico: Thousands of pages of internal documents and emails, recently released in a long-running lawsuit, reveal ongoing safety issues, deficient design documents and a pattern of problems that are disturbingly [...]  More »

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies have begun a new round of water sampling in the area of a Wyoming gas field where the EPA says hydraulic fracturing may have caused groundwater pollution.  More »

Two years after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank in the Gulf of Mexico, touching off the worst offshore spill in U.S. history, research into the disaster’s environmental effects is turning up ailing fish that bear hallmarks of diseases tied to petroleum and other pollutants.  More »

Two years after the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill, scientists say they’re finding trouble with sick fish that dwell along offshore reefs and in the deep waters — especially in places where the oil spill hit the hardest.  More »