Gulf oil spill

BP has big problems, and not just because of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and the $20 billion compensation fund it set up to pay the victims. The petro-giant has been missing Wall Street's profit targets lately, thanks to sloppy operations and a general trend toward lower gasoline consumption.

The U.S. has approved the first permit to resume deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico since the BP oil spill a year ago. The Noble Energy project, 70 miles southeast of Venice, La., is slated to be deeper than the blown out BP well.

Oil industry practices and government rules must be subjected to substantial reform to prevent future accidents similar to BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico last April, said a report released Tuesday by the presidential panel probing the incident.

Facing widespread calls for boycotts, owners responded by hammering home the message that the U.K. oil company doesn't own most of the retail locations that bear its name. Now as anger fades, business is coming back, and few owners ditched the brand.

One would think that BP's massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill this year would have given pause to the global oil industry, but that doesn't appear to be the case. Companies in the sector are planning to spend a record $490 billion in 2011, including a large amount for deep-water development.

The Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico may have unleashed a chain of events that could extend economically far beyond the region, threatening one of the world's most lucrative fishing species -- the bluefin tuna. The main culprit: the dispersants used to dissolve the oil.

Stephen Baldwin has sued fellow actor Kevin Costner over the sale of technology used to help clean the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Baldwin says Costner owes him a share of an $18 million deposit that BP made as part of a larger purchase.

BP is apparently considering the $1 billion sale of some of its assets in the North Sea as it tries to cover cleanup costs from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The company's Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico exploded in April, leading to the most massive oil spill in U.S. history.

The Obama administration will temporarily ban the sale of new offshore oil drilling leases in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and off the Atlantic coast, Interior Department Secretary Ken Salazar said Wednesday, a policy change made in response to lessons learned from BP's horrific Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

In an announcement sure to please environmentalists but anger oil companies, White House officials are expected today to ban offshore oil drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico.