“Oil spill” on The Daily Caller

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration blocked efforts by government scientists to tell the public just how bad the Gulf oil spill could become and committed other missteps that raised questions about its competence and candor during the crisis, according to a commission appointed by the president to investigate the disaster. (more)

HOUSTON — Five months after the BP oil spill, a federal moratorium still prohibits new deepwater drilling in the American waters of the Gulf of Mexico. And under longstanding federal law, drilling is also banned near the coast of Florida. (more)

Reporting from Washington — (more)

WASHINGTON—More than half of the oil that spilled into the sea from BP PLC’s blown-out well remains in the Gulf of Mexico and is a “highly durable material” that is now buried along the coast and on the sea floor, a Florida State University professor told a spill commission on Monday. (more)

A Gulf Coast Democrat is vowing to block Senate confirmation of President Obama’s budget director until the administration agrees to lift or ease a federal freeze on deepwater oil-and-gas drilling. (more)

BP said payouts to people affected by its Gulf of Mexico oil spill had dramatically increased since it surrendered authority for dispensing funds to an independent administrator. (more)

The “nightmare well” is dead. But the Gulf coast’s bad dream is far from over. (more)

WJLA-TV has fired veteran anchorman Doug McKelway for a verbal confrontation this summer with the station’s news director that came after McKelway broadcast a sharply worded live report about congressional Democrats and President Obama. (more)

ON THE GULF OF MEXICO (AP) — The impending death of BP’s blown-out oil well will bring one piece of the catastrophe that began five months ago to an anticlimactic end — after all, the gusher was capped in July. (more)

BP’s ruptured oil well in the Gulf of Mexico is expected to be permanently sealed by Sunday. (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The federal government hired a New Orleans man for $18,000 to appraise whether news stories about its actions in the Gulf oil spill were positive or negative for the Obama administration, which was keenly sensitive to comparisons between its response and former President George W. Bush’s much-maligned reaction to Hurricane Katrina. (more)

(Reuters) – BP believes compensation claims related to its Gulf of Mexico oil spill will be less than the $20 billion the oil giant has put into an independent claims fund, analysts at Citigroup said, following a meeting with incoming Chief Executive Bob Dudley. (more)

Gulf Coast residents are fuming at oil giant BP’s report, released Wednesday, in which BP says it isn’t fully at fault for the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion and massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. (more)

BP said in an internal report released Wednesday that “a sequence of failures” involving “multiple companies and work teams” caused the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion that killed 11 workers and led to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. (more)

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Engineers removed a temporary cap Thursday that stopped oil from gushing into the Gulf of Mexico from BP’s blown-out well in mid-July. No more oil was expected to leak into the sea, but crews were standing by with collection vessels just in case. (more)

Accurate conclusions about what caused the blowout of BP’s oil well in the Gulf of Mexico and the massive spill that followed will have to wait for a key piece of equipment to be raised from the seafloor and analyzed, a member of a federal investigative panel looking into the disaster said Monday. (more)

The oil spill in the Gulf may be mostly out of the headlines now but Louisiana voters aren’t getting any less mad at Barack Obama about his handling of it. Only 32% give Obama good marks for his actions in the aftermath of the spill, while 61% disapprove. (more)

HOUSTON (AP) — A BP drilling engineer who was a key decision maker at the rig in the Gulf of Mexico that blew up in April has refused to testify before a federal panel investigating the incident. (more)

The Gulf of Mexico oil spill has revealed a previously unknown type of oil-eating bacteria, which is suddenly flourishing. (more)

Spike Lee’s return to New Orleans for the follow-up of his sprawling post- Hurricane Katrina documentary “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts” is just as big and anything but easy. (more)