March 14, 2013
The raging fire that broke out after a tug and barge hit a pipeline near Bayou Perot 30 miles south of New Orleans Wednesday has been reduced by about 30 percent in size, the U.S. Coast Guard said in its latest update.
"There are no reports of oil in the water. Visual imagery initially indicated potential pockets of crude oil, however, those areas have been determined to be particulate ash from the liquefied natural gas burn off," the Coast Guard said.
About 2,200 barrels of crude oil remain on board the barge and has not been compromised, it said.
March 8, 2013
Implementing corporate environmental sustainability strategies is increasingly becoming standard practice. For example, more than 300 of the S&P 500 report their greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories each year to the Carbon Disclosure Project, and companies from the Fortune 100 and S&P Global 100 are investing billions of dollars to reach renewable energy procurement targets. Some companies are going further and taking steps to reduce the environmental impact of their products, services, and supply chains.
Despite this encouraging progress, a confluence of global environmental challenges is putting more pressure on corporate environmental sustainability strategies to get to scale quickly. Not enough global businesses have integrated environmental sustainability into their long-term decision making. And, as it stands today, existing practices are not enough to protect the natural resources that society and businesses depend on.
February 28, 2013
The Environmental Protection Agency has unveiled a new phone app to help people report incidents of environmental pollution.
The EPA's - See it? Say it! - app allows users take a photograph of a suspected pollution incident, input the GPS location co-ordinates and add brief description details.
The report will then be relayed to the relevant local authority, making it easier for those investigating to locate the problem.
February 28, 2013
Royal Dutch Shell has said that it will suspend its offshore drilling programme in the Arctic for the rest of 2013 in order to give time to ensure safety.
The decision to pause drilling for oil in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas off Alaska was widely expected, following a catalogue of problems last year.
The US Department of Justice is looking into safety failures at one rig.
The move "will give us time to ensure the readiness of all our equipment and people", said Marvin Odum of Shell Oil.
February 20, 2013
Culminating a three-year effort, Marine Pollution Control, in conjunction with the Coast Guard’s Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (RDT&E) program, will participate in an Oil-in-Ice Exercise in St. Ignace, MI, the week of February 18.
The exercise is designed to demonstrate the use of a variety of technologies—from skimmers to fire boom to sonar—and techniques like ice “herding” to help clean up oil in arctic conditions. Additional participants and observers will include personnel from a number of Coast Guard jurisdictions (including the arctic region), other government agencies, and the spill response industry.