Saturday
Jun192010
Protesters Urge D.C. Drivers To Boycott BP
Saturday, June 19, 2010 at 3:49PM
By Linn Grubbstrom - Talk Radio News Service
After protests outside BP's D.C. headquarters and the White House in recent weeks, the organization Code Pink staged a demonstration in front of a D.C. based BP gas station Saturday with the goal of encouraging drivers to support a boycott against the company responsible for the oil spill in the Gulf Coast. Armed with banners and signs, the demonstrators blocked the driveway in to the station.
"One thing we're trying to do is to get people to stop from going in here," said Diane Wilson, a shrimper from Texas who co-found Code Pink. "There was a fellow just trying to turn in a little while ago and ... I was saying boycott BP and he shook his head, yelled ... squirreled around and left."
Added Wilson, "I hope he went to a different gas station."
During the last two weeks, Wilson has been arrested twice, most recently while disrupting BP CEO Tony Hayward's testimony before Congress. This time she and Code Pink hope that the local protest will do more to hurt BP's pocketbook.
"We are hoping to economically impact BP. That is the way these guys ... listen to reason," said Wilson. "You impact them economically and then it kind of registers in their heads."
After protests outside BP's D.C. headquarters and the White House in recent weeks, the organization Code Pink staged a demonstration in front of a D.C. based BP gas station Saturday with the goal of encouraging drivers to support a boycott against the company responsible for the oil spill in the Gulf Coast. Armed with banners and signs, the demonstrators blocked the driveway in to the station.
"One thing we're trying to do is to get people to stop from going in here," said Diane Wilson, a shrimper from Texas who co-found Code Pink. "There was a fellow just trying to turn in a little while ago and ... I was saying boycott BP and he shook his head, yelled ... squirreled around and left."
Added Wilson, "I hope he went to a different gas station."
During the last two weeks, Wilson has been arrested twice, most recently while disrupting BP CEO Tony Hayward's testimony before Congress. This time she and Code Pink hope that the local protest will do more to hurt BP's pocketbook.
"We are hoping to economically impact BP. That is the way these guys ... listen to reason," said Wilson. "You impact them economically and then it kind of registers in their heads."
The Leak Is Over: BP, USCG Declare Macondo Well Permanently Sealed
by Miles Wolf Tamboli - The Talk Radio News Service
After five months, the BP Deepwater Macondo Well has finally been permanently sealed.
“We can now state, definitively, that the Macondo well poses no continuing threat to the Gulf of Mexico,” said National Incident Commander Admiral Thad Allen in a statement released by the Deepwater Horizon Unified Command on Sunday.
Pressure testing was completed early Sunday morning, assuring crews that the well is in fact completely sealed, and that the cement has set.
“This is a significant milestone in the response to the Deepwater Horizon tragedy and is the final step in a complex and unprecedented subsea operation - finally confirming that this well no longer presents a threat to the Gulf of Mexico,” said Tony Hayward, petroleum mogul BP’s group chief executive, in a press release issued Sunday by BP.
The final plugging of the well was enabled by the drilling of a relief well, which the administration has been touting as the only final answer to the months long leak since the beginning, despite having essentially capped the well with a customized stacking cap in mid July. The relief well intercepted the Macondo’s annulus last wednesday, and began pumping a cement mixture into the open space on Friday.
The deepwater Macondo well, owned and operated by an amalgam of international corporations - including Britain’s BP and Halliburton, and the Swiss company Transocean - spewed millions of barrels of Sweet Louisiana Crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico after the rig exploded in a string of mishaps that took the lives of 11 workers aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig, and crippled the Gulf Coast’s economy, which relies heavily upon the triumvirate of fishing, tourism, and oil industries.
As of Friday, 39,885 square miles of Gulf of Mexico federal waters remain closed to fishing in response to public health and safety concerns, and approximately 600 miles of coastline are still experiencing some oil impacts, primarily in Louisiana, according to the Deepwater Horizon Joint Incident Command.
BP America Chairman and President Lamar McKay said Sunday; “BP remains committed to remedying the harm that the spill caused to the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf Coast environment, and to the livelihoods of the people across the region.”