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The first lawsuits linked to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill go to court Thursday, as BP prepared -- after months of trying -- to permanently seal its ruptured well.

As the Gulf of Mexico disaster this week reached the 100-day mark with hopes high that the endgame may be underway, families of those killed in the rig explosion that sparked the disaster, and fishermen who lost their livelihoods because of it, were to face BP in court for the first time.

Thursday's proceedings in the northwestern US state of Idaho were to examine whether complaints submitted by around 200 plaintiffs can be consolidated, following the three-month crisis that marked the worst environmental disaster in US history.

The court case could augur years of legal wrangling ahead amid myriad questions about the long-term effects of the massive oil spill on wildlife, the environment and the lives of Gulf residents.

Thursday's hearing will bring together a wide array of people and players linked to the disaster triggered by an April 20 explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig which killed 11 and led to the platform sinking two days later.

Joining BP are Transocean, which leased the rig to the British oil giant, and Cameron International, which manufactured the blow-out preventer that should have shut down the well but failed to work properly.

A decision is expected around two weeks after the hearing, but the session will give trial lawyers a test run for the arguments they will make during what could be years-long legal proceedings and the potential trial of the century.

US officials meanwhile were anxious to avoid being too optimistic ahead of next week's crucial operations to seal the well, and cautioned that a mountain of work lay ahead to clean up oiled shorelines and pick up some 20 million feet (3,800 miles) of boom.

"I would characterize this as the first 100 days. There's a lot of work in front of us," said Rear Admiral Paul Zukunft, the on-scene coordinator. "We are not out of the woods yet, we still need a permanent kill."

BP aims to start the "static kill" on Monday, pumping heavy drilling mud and cement down through the cap at the top of the well that has sealed it for the past two weeks.

Five days later a relief well should intercept the damaged well, allowing engineers to check the success of the "static kill" and cement in the area between the drill pipe and the well bore.

This so-called "bottom kill" should finally plug the reservoir once and for all, but it will not answer how the catastrophe was allowed to occur and who is responsible.

While the last surface patches of toxic crude biodegrade rapidly in the warm waters of the Gulf, the long-term impact of what is thought to be the biggest accidental oil spill ever may not be realized for decades.

As the focus shifts to the clean-up in the marshes and beaches of the Gulf coast, so it does to the US Justice Department investigation and state probes in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

The Washington Post reported Wednesday that a team has been established to examine whether the notoriously close ties between BP and federal regulators contributed to the April 20 disaster.

The "BP squad" will also probe rig operator Transocean and Halliburton, the oil services company which had finished cementing the well only 20 hours before the rig exploded, the Post reported.

And capping off a difficult week, BP on Tuesday it would replace gaffe-prone British chief executive Tony Hayward with Bob Dudley, an American, in a bid to repair its tattered US reputation.

It also posted a quarterly loss of 16.9 billion dollars and set aside 32.2 billion dollars to pay spill costs, including a 20 billion dollar fund to pay compensation to the battered fishing, oil, and tourism industries.

Meanwhile, US officials announced that a new oil spill is sullying waters in the northern state of Michigan after a pipeline leak sent more than a million gallons of crude into a river tributary.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said the spill began Monday when a 30-inch (76-centimeter) pipe in Marshall, Michigan burst, spewing the crude into Talmadge Creek, a waterway which feeds into the Kalamazoo River.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said the leak in the pipeline belonging to the Canadian company Enbridge Inc., which now has been contained, "has the potential to damage a vital waterway and threatens public health."

Story from AFP
AFP 07/29/2010

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