Tell It To Al

 Halliburton Co., the comany that brought us the Dick Cheney and the Iraqi war, also brought us the BP oil spill.

Until now, this notorious conglomerate got little buzz for its involvment in BP’s ill-fated Macondo well in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. 

But now investigators say Halliburton knew about flaws in the cement it was planning to pump into BP’s well, and pumped it anyway, maybe even without BP knowing about it.

Click here to read letter from the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling.

Click here to see a slide presentation by Halliburton dated 11/18/2009 that suggests Haliburton knew about problems with standard cement slurry in deep water.

Click here to read more in the Wall Street Journal.

BP’s CEO Bob Dudley wants to crank up the drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico now that the company’s notorious oil spill is a fading headline.

It’s not so much the drilling, but the spilling, that gets people mad. And Dudley says he wants to prove to the world that deep water drilling is safe now that his company has already proven it can be quite unsafe.

“We were certainly not perfect in our response, but we have tried to do the right thing,” he said. ”We are making significant changes to our organization as a result of the accident. … That is the standard by which we expect to be judged as we work to restore trust in BP.”

Click here to read more from the Associated Press. Are you ready to let BP back in the water?

Where did all the oil go? It’s a question that will take at least hundreds of millions of dollars to answer.

Scientists are scrambling to the Gulf of Mexico to get a piece of the research-action pie, the Associated Press reports. But footing the bills are BP and the federal government. And neither will want to share all their findings with the public, given their legal positions.

Explanations for where the oil went vary. The official government explanation is that BP cleaned up most of it and mother nature took care of the rest. Others have said BP merely sunk much of the spill using toxic chemicals, and that it all lies on the sea floor, for now.

Whatever threats the BP spill continues to impose will take years to understand. And once scientists begin to understand what is happening, they may not be able to tell us what they know.

That’s science for you.

BP has put a permanent end to its leaking oil well, putting and end to its disaster but to the story. The amount of damage done by the spewing well is still being calculated. I talk about it on Denver’s NBC affiliate, 9News, along with America’s growing poverty rate and something called “corn sugar.”

Isabelle Cossart says her disaster tourism business in New Orleans is slowing – a sign the city is healing in the aftermath of Hurricance Katrina and the BP oil spill.

Since Katrina hit in 2005, Cossart’s company, Tours by Isabelle, has taken more than 20,000 visitors to see the wreckage left in its wake.

Click here to read my column on Tours by Isabelle. And click here to see my photos from New Orleans.

Dan and Jeri Clark of Denver bought a beach store in Mexico Beach, Fla., at the start of the year, and they have had an usually rough go with a cold winter, a stalled economic recovery and then the oil spill.

But all is not as bad as it sounds in the news. Despite sweeping setbacks that are largely out of the Clark’s control, they say the year may not end up so bad after all. Their white sand beach wasn’t sacked by tar balls and remains as beautiful as ever.

Click here to read my column on the Clarks.

(Photo: Dan and Jeri Clark, left and right, stand outside their store in Mexico Beach with Cheryl Shipman, a long time fixture at the store, who has lived in Mexico Beach for 26 years.)

BP’s payments to fishermen are getting snagged in the bureacracy beneath Kenneth Feinberg, who was appointed by the Obama Administration to manage a $20 billion fund for oil spill victims. Feinberg, a fine orator, has offered a lot of reasons why this is happenening, but fishermen are left saying, “Show me the money.” I talk about it with Fox Business News Anchor David Asman.

Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime. Contaminate the fish, feed a man from a $20 billion compensation fund.

That’s how it’s supposed to go. But charter  fishing boat Capt. Kenny Kreeger can’t seem to collect any more compensation from the fund BP set aside for victims of its oil spill.

Ever since President Obama appointed Kenneth Feinberg to manage the fund, the payments have been snarled in a bureacratic nightmare, said Kreeger, a former deputy sherrif turned fishing boat captain.

Click here to read my column on Kreeger. And watch the video as Kreeger, who appears in the first scene, and other fishermen confront Feinberg at a town hall meeting in Slidell, La.

Click here to read column.

Lorrie Williams and Bud Waltman of Ocean Springs, Miss., haven’t returned to their crabbing business after seeing what’s washing up on their beach. The couple took me on a tour of the beach, a few blocks from their home. Here is a video and some photos I took along the way. Click here to my column on Williams and Waltman. 

I flew into New Orleans last Sunday and have been driving the Gulf, looking for stories about economic disruption and recovery. I talk about it on Denver’s NBC affliliate, 9News, with anchor Eric Kahnert.