BP's New Injury Stats: Texas Tarballs and More...

[K Gardner]

Propublica is doing an amazing job with their investigative journalism re: BP. Their blog/facebook pages are MUST reads.

http://www.propublica.org/blog/item/bps-new-illness-and-injury-stats-texas-tarballs-and-more

BP appears to have updated its log of illness and injury data. We've been tracking these healh reports for a while now , and hadn't seen the log updated for a couple weeks. The latest -- from April 22 to July 4 -- extends the previous log by about two and a half weeks, but the numbers are now almost double.

The latest tally: 1337 illnesses and injuries; 552 illnesses, 785 injuries. The previous log -- from April 22 to June 17 -- recorded 731 total; 307 illnesses, 424 injuries.

BP missed opportunities for capturing oil, one company says. That’s according to Houston-based Helix, the company providing a vessel that BP now plans to use to expand its containment capacity once the weather calms down. Helix told Bloomberg that BP could’ve done this weeks ago, before all the bad weather set in and pushed back plans.

In fact, Helix offered BP the vessel in late April and the company declined the offer, only to get in touch almost two months later to say they did want to lease it, after all.

In a press briefing yesterday, retired Adm. Thad Allen, national incident commander, said he hoped the vessel would be hooked up to the well's riser pipe in the next 24 to 48 hours -- pending calmer weather conditions -- but it wouldn't begin production before the end of the week . The vessel, once in operation, is expected to double the amount of oil that BP is currently able to contain, bringing containment capacity to 53,000 barrels a day.

(more at link)