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CANNES, France (AFP) – Peter Fonda launched a four-letter attack on US President Barack Obama at the Cannes film festival on Wednesday, calling him a traitor over the handling of the aftermath of the Gulf oil spill. The star of the 1969 road movie "Easy Rider" was in Cannes for the premiere of "The Big Fix" by Rebecca and Josh Tickell, the only feature documentary in the official selection at the Cannes film festival this year. Fonda -- a keen environmentalist and co-producer of the film which centres on the explosion of the BP oil rig Deepwater Horizon, the ensuing...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Oil giant BP could announce as early as Monday that it plans to buy out the Russian partners in its joint venture TNK-BP Ltd., according to a story posted Sunday night by the Wall Street Journal. The deal would transfer a 50 percent stake from a company called AAR, which is controlled by a group of Russian billionaires, to Russian state oil company OAO Rosneft, the Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter. More importantly, it would clear the way for BP's plans to explore for oil in the Arctic Sea north of Russia, a...

Testing is set to resume next week on the blowout preventer that failed to stop gushing oil at BP's Macondo well, but an independent federal agency that has been probing the disaster will not be permitted to participate. Under a federal judge's ruling, the only witnesses allowed during the examination at a NASA facility in New Orleans will be representatives of the Justice Department, oil spill victims in a broad class-action lawsuit and three companies linked to the disaster. That shuts the door to the Chemical Safety Board… CSB has investigated more than 50 industrial accidents in its two-decade history...

In the next week, how many times will you hear that the April 20 Deepwater Horizon oil spill was the worst environmental catastrophe in American history? This assessment was plausible when first uttered by President Obama almost a year ago, but now it’s clear that the worst never happened. The Deepwater spill has largely disappeared — dispersed, evaporated, and eaten by bacteria. Its impact on sea life appears minimal. Yet politicians, activists, trial lawyers, and environmental journalists persist in perpetuating this myth. Why? Pinning disasters on the environmental lobby’s hobby horse du jour defines the battlespace, increases the power of...

WASHINGTON -- People familiar with the investigation of the Gulf oil spill say manslaughter and perjury are among the possible violations being explored by Justice Department investigators still in the early stages of their probe.

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration failed to set up an "effective" communications system during last year's BP oil spill and threatened its own credibility by "severely restricting" the release of "timely, accurate information," according to a newly released report commissioned by the U.S. Coast Guard. Quietly posted on the Coast Guard's website two weeks ago, the report offers the first major assessment of the federal government's communications efforts during the worst oil spill in U.S. history. "Several layers of review and approval by the White House and (Department of Homeland Security)

PASCAGOULA, Miss. — Documents provided by the administrator of BP's claims fund for Gulf oil spill victims show the oil giant agreed to increase his law firm's monthly compensation from $850,000 to $1.25 million. The documents furnished Friday to The Associated Press include a letter from former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey to claims czar Kenneth Feinberg. Mukasey stated his belief that the extra money was warranted because Feinberg's duties had grown. Mukasey was asked by Feinberg to weigh in on how reasonable his compensation was. The pay hike, detailed in a Tuesday letter from Mukasey to

Two weeks ago, we asked whether Interior Secretary Ken Salazar considered himself above the law by ignoring court orders to resume the permitting process for deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Now we learn that Salazar may have misled Congress and the public on the number of drilling permit applications he is ignoring. Yesterday, Senator David Vitter (R-LA) accused Salazar, along with Michael Bromwich, the director of the new Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Regulation and Enforcement, of using bogus figures. During Congressional testimony on March 2, and on other occasions, Salazar and Bromwich used much lower figures...

The day that LSE sold its soul to Libya: BP chief makes oil deal with Gaddafi... and drags prestigious university into disrepute By Michael Seamark Last updated at 1:33 AM on 5th March 2011 . •BP boss who signed £545m oil pact was lobbying for university too In a desert tent outside Colonel Gaddafi's home town of Sirte four years ago, Tony Blair shook hands with the Libyan dictator in a controversial 'blood money' deal which laid the foundations for the release of the Lockerbie bomber. Also inside the tent was Peter Sutherland, then chairman of BP, who subsequently announced...

Earlier today I accused Interior Secretary Ken Salazar of a "cynical" approach to issuing deepwater drilling permits for the Gulf of Mexico. I did not realize how right I was. According to Kristen Hays of Reuters: BP Plc, whose Macondo well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico caused the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history last year, co-owns the well that was granted the first deepwater drilling permit since the disaster. BP is Noble Energy Inc's partner in the well, holding a 46.5 percent interest, BP said. Noble operates the Santiago well that received a permit from U.S....

LONDON (AP) -- The former Libyan justice minister has reportedly said that the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing had blackmailed Libyan ruler Moammar Gadhafi into securing his release by threatening to expose his role in the attack. The Sunday Times newspaper quoted Mustafa Abdel-Jalil as saying that Abdel Baset al-Megrahi had warned Gadhafi that he would "reveal everything" about the 1988 bombing of an American flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, if he wasn't rescued from a Scottish prison.

Three Major Firms Pull Out of Climate Change Alliance ConocoPhillips, BP America and Caterpillar pulled out of a leading alliance of businesses and environmental groups pushing for climate change legislation on Tuesday, citing complaints that the bills under consideration are unfair to American industry. The sudden pullout of three corporate giants from a leading alliance of businesses and environmental groups could be the death knell for climate change legislation languishing on Capitol Hill. ConocoPhillips, BP America and Caterpillar's announced Tuesday they will pull out of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, citing complaints that the bills now in Congress are unfair...

The former Labour Government did "all it could" to help Libya secure the release of the Lockerbie bomber, Britain's most senior civil servant said today. David Cameron will this afternoon publish a dossier of 150 pages of letters, memos and minutes related to the case after he promised Barack Obama, the US President, to review all the paperwork and see what could be made public. In an accompanying report, Sir Gus O'Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, concludes: "Policy was ... progressively developed that Her Majesty's Government should do all it could ... to facilitate an appeal by the Libyans to the...

Energy Policy: An administration that has no respect for Congress, the courts or the Constitution has been found in contempt for reissuing a drilling moratorium that a U.S. district judge found overly broad. The Obama administration's trouble with the courts has continued with a judge's ruling last week that the Interior Department's reinstating of a drilling moratorium followed by a de facto moratorium via an overly restrictive permitting process constituted contempt. The administration had issued a drilling moratorium in May in waters deeper than 500 feet after the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig off Louisiana that...

Attorney General Jim Hood wants to hear from whistle-blowers with inside information about how the Gulf Coast Claims Facility is operating. Hood believes GCCF administrator Ken Feinberg “stiff-armed” claimants on emergency and interim claims because they required no release of the right to sue BP and other parties responsible for the April 2010 Gulf oil catastrophe. When claimants grew desperate, Hood believes, GCCF rolled out final payments that do require waiving the right to sue. “They’re not following the law,” Hood said. “They’re just trying to coerce people into signing these releases.” Hood has urged Gulf residents to continue filing...

NEW ORLEANS -- The embattled administrator of the $20 billion compensation fund for Gulf oil-spill victims is not independent from BP and must stop telling potential claimants he is, a federal judge ruled Wednesday, just hours after the fund czar released details on how final payments would be determined.

The federal judge who struck down the Obama administration's moratorium on deepwater drilling after the Gulf oil spill held the Interior Department in contempt Wednesday, and ordered the federal agency to pay attorneys' fees for several offshore oil companies. "Such dismissive conduct, viewed in tandem with the reimposition of a second blanket and substantively identical moratorium and in light of the national importance of this case, provide this court with clear and convincing evidence of the government's contempt of this court's preliminary injunction order," he wrote.

While the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the Obama administration's subsequent six-month moratorium on deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico are common knowledge, the fact that the federal government has turned the tragic accident into an ongoing economic calamity seems to be drawing scant attention. Though the drilling moratorium was officially lifted three months ago, it has been replaced with an ongoing de facto ban.  But the full scope and damaging consequences of the federal government's reactions to the gulf spill go well beyond deep-water drilling. While the moratorium was limited to deep-water rigs, the work stoppage...

The While House oil-spill commission made it official today: The entire oil industry, not BP, is evil and potentially the source of another Deepwater-sized spill. Thus the entire oil industry, which has already been punished by the administration with its drilling moratorium and slowdown in permitting, should be punished further with massive new regulations and fees. Those conclusions were virtually predetermined when the administration appointed a panel heavily stacked with academics and environmentalists. And those findings are wrong. Why? A simple reality check:

Federal study confirms microbes have eaten most of the Gulf Oil Spill A study by researchers from Texas A&M and University of California in Santa Barbara have found that all of the methane gas released from the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico have been consumed by tiny microbes. Methane gas amounts 100,000 times higher than normal at the time of their release have completely disappeared after only 120 days. Some scientists had raised concerns that dissolved methane and other oil residue would continue to plague the Gulf for years or even decades. This is turning out not...