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I don't recall a rig like this blowing up, toppling over, sinking and causing anywhere near this sort of disaster.

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wenty years after the Exxon Valdez supertanker spilled nearly 11 million gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound in southern Alaska, everything is pristine and natural again, right? Not exactly. A study in 2004 estimated that perhaps 25,000 gallons of oil remained along the sound's gravel beaches and was degrading very slowly.

Slthough Exxon says it spent more than $2 billion in cleanup, and billions in compensation, the oil company is still battling court-ordered damage payments. They still resist paying the restitution required by the courts. Twenty years later, those local fishing economies still haven’t recovered. The fisheries have not come back. In 2007, 25,000 gallons of oil are still under the surface and on the seabed of the beaches in Prince William Sound. The oil remains toxic in some areas. March 24th remains a day of mourning for a whole ecosystem. There is still evidence of oil as far as 450 miles away from the Sound, and there are still areas of the beach where it’s still as toxic as 20 years ago. Some wildlife has returned, but most fishermen moved away or found other ways to make a living.

Even worse, experts say there is no technology to completely clean up an oil spill. With the prospect of more oil exploration in the region, the environment will continue to be at risk.

Exxon says it has cleaned up the spill and is a good corporate citizen. Nature, wildlife, and even residents of the area are still far from recovery.

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oil and gas prices will go up

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1991 - During the Gulf War, Iraqi forces opened valves and destroyed oil facilities in Kuwait, releasing about 520 million gallons (1.9 billion litres) of oil, creating a slick that covered some 4,000 square miles (10,360 square km) in the biggest spill in history.

1983 - In the gulf off Iran, a tanker struck a drilling platform which collapsed into the sea, releasing some 80 million gallons (303 million litres) before it was repaired.

1983 - The Castillo de Bellver sanks off the South African coast, spilling 79 million gallons (300 million litres) of oil.

1979 - A Greek oil tanker collided with another ship during a tropical storm, spilling 90 million gallons (340 million litres) of crude oil off the coast of Trinidad and Tobago.

1978 - The Ixtoc exploratory well blew out in the Bay of Campeche off Ciudad del Carmen, Mexico. By the time it was brought under control almost a year later, it spilled some 140 million gallons (530 million litres) of oil into the bay.

1978 - The Amoco Cadiz ran aground off the coast of Britanny, France, spilling its entire cargo of 69 million gallons (260 million litres) of oil and polluting 200 miles (322 km) of coastline.

1967 - The Torrey Canyon, one of the first oil supertankers, hit a reef and spilled 31 million gallons (117 million litres) of crude oil in the sea between England and France in the first major oil spill. It contaminated about 180 miles of coast (290 km), and many of the attempted measures to clean up the slick proved more deadly to wildlife than the oil.

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According to Transocean Ltd., the operator of the drilling rig, the blowout resulted just after HALLIBURTON workers had finished pumping cement to fill the space between the pipe and the sides of the hole and had begun temporarily plugging the well with cement.

The oil-drilling procedure called cementing is coming under scrutiny as a possible cause of the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico that has led to one of the biggest oil spills in U.S. history, drilling experts said Thursday.

Regulators have previously identified problems in the cementing process as a leading cause of well blowouts, in which oil and natural gas surge out of a well with explosive force. When cement develops cracks or doesn't set properly, oil and gas can escape, ultimately flowing out of control. The gas is highly combustible and prone to ignite, as it appears to have done aboard the Deepwater Horizon, which was leased by BP PLC, the British oil giant.

The scrutiny on cementing will focus attention on Halliburton Co., the oilfield-services firm that was handling the cementing process on the rig. The timing of the cementing in relation to the blast—and the procedure's history of causing problems—point to it as a possible culprit in the Deepwater Horizon disaster, experts said. Several other drilling experts agreed, though they cautioned that the investigation into what went wrong at the Deepwater Horizon site is still in its preliminary stages.

A 2007 study by three U.S. Minerals Management Service officials found that cementing was a factor in 18 of 39 well blowouts in the Gulf of Mexico over a 14-year period. That was the single largest factor, ahead of equipment failure and pipe failure.

Halliburton also was the cementer on a well that suffered a big blowout last August in the Timor Sea, off Australia. The rig there caught fire and a well leaked tens of thousands of barrels of oil over 10 weeks before it was shut down.

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In 1998, the USGS estimated that between 5.7 and 16.0 billion barrels of technically recoverable crude oil and natural gas liquids are in the coastal plain area of ANWR. (That would be between 239 and 672 billion gallons)

In comparison, the estimated volume of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil in the rest of the United States is about 120 billion barrels (or 5,042 billion gallons).

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A former contractor who worked for British Petroleum (BP) claims the oil conglomerate broke federal laws and violated its own internal procedures by failing to maintain crucial safety and engineering documents related to one of the firms other deepwater production projects in the Gulf of Mexico, according to internal emails and other documents.

The whistleblower first raised concerns about safety issues related to BP Atlantis, the world's largest and deepest semi-submersible oil and natural gas platform, located about 200 miles south of New Orleans, in November 2008.

It was then that the whistleblower discovered that the drilling platform had been operating without a majority of the engineer-approved documents it needed to run safely, leaving the platform vulnerable to a catastrophic disaster that would far surpass the massive oil spill that began last week following a deadly explosion on a BP-operated drilling rig.

BP's own internal communications show that company officials were made aware of the issue and feared that the document shortfalls related to Atlantis "could lead to catastrophic operator error" and must be addressed.

Last May, Mike Sawyer, a Texas-based engineer who works for Apex Safety Consultants, voluntarily agreed to evaluate BP's Atlantis subsea document database and the whistleblower's allegations regarding BP's engineering document shortfall related to Atlantis. Sawyer concluded that of the 2,108 P&IDs BP maintained that dealt specifically with the subsea components of its Atlantis production project, 85 percent did not receive engineer approval.

Even worse, 95 percent of Atlantis' subsea welding records did not receive final approval, calling into question the integrity of thousands of crucial welds on subsea components that, if they were to rupture, could result in an oil spill 30 times worse than the one that occurred after the explosion on Deepwater Horizon last week.

In a report Sawyer prepared after his review, he said BP's "widespread pattern of unapproved design, testing and inspection documentation on the Atlantis subsea project creates a risk of a catastrophic incident threatening the [Gulf of Mexico] deep-water environment and the safety of platform workers." Moreover, "the extent of documentation discrepancies creates a substantial risk that a catastrophic event could occur at any time."

"BP's recklessness in regards to the Atlantis project is a clear example of how the company has a pattern of failing to comply with minimum industry standards for worker and environmental safety," Sawyer said.

BP has consistently put profits ahead of safety.

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Regulators have previously identified problems in the cementing process as a leading cause of well blowouts, in which oil and natural gas surge out of a well with explosive force. When cement develops cracks or doesn't set properly, oil and gas can escape, ultimately flowing out of control. The gas is highly combustible and prone to ignite, as it appears to have done aboard the Deepwater Horizon

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