The New York Times had a page one story today quoting a source downplaying the impacts of the Gulf spill. "The sky is not falling," Quenton R. Dokken told the paper. They list Dokken as "a marine biologist and the executive director of the Gulf of Mexico Foundation, a conservation group in Corpus Christi, Tex."

But the Times failed to mention that the source and his innocuous sounding foundation have numerous ties to the oil industry, including those at fault in the Gulf spill. Mother Jones alum Marian Wang, now at ProPublica, has the scoop:

At least half of the 19 members of the group’s board of directors have direct ties to the offshore drilling industry. One of them is currently an executive at Transocean, the company that owns the Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded last month, causing millions of gallons of oil to spill into the Gulf of Mexico.

Seven other board members are currently employed at oil companies, or at companies that provide products and services “primarily” to the offshore oil and gas industry. Those companies include Shell, Conoco Phillips, LLOG Exploration Company, Devon Energy, Anadarko Petroleum Company and Oceaneering International.

Read the whole post at ProPublica.

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With the remains of the Deepwater Horizon rig still spewing hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico every day, BP and federal response teams are scrambling for solutions. BP has bought up more than a third of the world's supply of dispersants, or chemical substances used to break up and sink oil to prevent it from hitting land. The problem is, we don't know what chemicals are in many of these dispersants or the impacts they may have on marine ecosystems.
Reports ProPublica:

On Thursday BP began using the chemical compounds to dissolve the crude oil, both on the surface and deep below, deploying an estimated 100,000 gallons. Dispersing the oil is considered one of the best ways to protect birds and keep the slick from making landfall. But the dispersants contain harmful toxins of their own and can concentrate leftover oil toxins in the water, where they can kill fish and migrate great distances.

The exact makeup of the dispersants is kept secret under competitive trade laws, but a worker safety sheet for one product, called Corexit, says it includes 2-butoxyethanol, a compound associated with headaches, vomiting and reproductive problems at high doses.

The dispersed oil tends to collect on the seabed, and eventually ends up in the food chain through shellfish and other sea life. And both the dispersants and the oil can kill fish eggs. The ProPublica piece also quotes a 2005 National Academy of Sciences report that notes that there isn't really all that much knowledge about how oil and the dispersants affect local ecosystems:

"One of the most difficult decisions that oil spill responders and natural resource managers face during a spill is evaluating the trade-offs associated with dispersant use," said the Academy report, titled Oil Spill Dispersants, Efficacy and Effects. "There is insufficient understanding of the fate of dispersed oil in aquatic ecosystems."

My friend Tom Philpott summed up the situatuation quite well:

Let me get this straight. A huge oil company is pumping massive amounts of oil directly into public waters, imperiling the health of some of the globe's most productive fisheries -- as well as communities around the coast. To try to minimize the effects of the ongoing spill, the company starts dumping chemicals into that same public water. And not just a little -- a third of the global supply is on hand. And we don't have the right to know what those chemicals are? That's a scandal.

BP is dumping hundreds of thousands of gallons of this stuff into the water every day to try to contain the hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil its rig is currently hemorrhaging. But might we yet another disaster on hand thanks to the "solution"?

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More than 70 state-based and national environmental groups called on the Senate Monday to keep any expansion of offshore oil and gas drilling out of energy and climate legislation. In light of the unfolding environmental catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, the groups write, more drilling "should be off the table":

Expanding exploration and drilling into previously protected and remote areas is unacceptable when it is clear that we are not capable of responding to oil spills in a timely manner. The Senate faces a choice between leading America forward in a new clean energy economy or holding America back by preserving the failed energy policies of the past.

The letter—signed by the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, League of Conservation Voters, Friends of the Earth, and Environment America, among others—marks a shift in the stance of some green groups, which were initially willing to accept limited drilling as part of a broader climate and energy legislation. Language in the bill (a draft of which was supposed to be introduced last week before it got caught up in political wrangling) concerning drilling was a contentious issue even before the scale of the Gulf disaster became clear. But the spill has prompted even more outrage among environmentalits, pushing groups that were orginally open to drilling concessions to outight opposition. 

Notably absent from the letter were several major enviro groups, including the Environmental Defense Fund and the National Wildlife Federation. EDF spokesman Tony Kreindler said the group is focusing on how to handle the immeadiate crisis at hand in the Gulf. The group is calling for "full scale intervention and emergency response, funding to restore wetlands, funding for fisherman and livelihoods, and passage of the clean energy and climate bill so we can start to get ourselves off oil."

Joe Mendelson, director of global warming policy at the National Wildlife Federation, warned not to read to much into the fact that his group didn't sign on in support. "I wouldn't take our absence as a lack of comprehension or sympathy with that position," he said. "We don't know where the bill is at this point," he continued, noting that it's likely that the provisions that deal with offshore drilling and leasing "probably have to change to reflect the situation now."

With the spill still getting worse, the politics of drilling and how they will play into the Senate climate debate will only get more interesting in the coming weeks.

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The probe into what exactly caused the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon and the subsequent environmental catastrophe has expanded to Halliburton, which poured the cement for the drill hole. House investigators want to know what role the energy services giant may have played in the rig explosion.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee has requested that Halliburton president and CEO David J. Lesar "provide the Committee with any documents in your possession or that you have prepared that relate to the causes or potential causes of the Deepwater Horizon rig incident." Lesar has been called to testify at a May 12 hearing on the explosion. Also appearing at the hearing will be Lamar McKay of BP America Inc. and Steve Newman of Transocean Ltd.

"Halliburton continues to assist in efforts to identify the factors that may have lead up to the disaster, but it is premature and irresponsible to speculate on any specific causal issues," the company said in a statement. The company also said that "the cement slurry design was consistent with that utilized in other similar application" and that "tests demonstrating the integrity of the production casing string were completed."

Halliburton also poured the cement for a rig that caused a major spill into the Timor Sea off the coast of western Australia last August. That spill continued for months, and the rig eventually caught fire. Ultimately, 1.2 million gallons of oil seeped into the surrounding sea.

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