Scientific Journals Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Scientific Journals - Term Paper Example BP is British Petroleum (Alexander, 2010). Three months later, the spill oil was blocked and about half of the oil spilled was removed through evaporation, natural dissolution, and human action (Ocean Conservancy, 2010). However, about half of the estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil had already polluted the environment (Ocean Conservancy, 2010). Rather than blaming the BP, a House panel blamed a rig device for failure to cut the oil flow (Doggett, 2010). In May 2010, the BP and the US government jointly estimated that more than 5,000 barrels a day of crude has been leaking into the environment and scientists warned of an environmental damage that could rival the 1989 Exxon spill in Alaska (Ball & Hughes, 2010). Other scientists say, however, that the spill may be more than 10 times the 5,000 barrels-a-day joint estimate of the US government and the BP (Ball & Hughes, 2010). On the month, US scientists estimated that the oil spill â€Å"could cause more of Louisiana’s retreating marshland revert to open water† (Ball and Hughes, 2010, 4th paragraph). U.S. Greenpeace, a leading environmental group, has her own interpretation of the timeline of the BP oil spill disaster (2010). According to the Greenpeace US, as early as 2007, the US Interior Department’s Mineral Management Services (MMS) has acquired data that oil-drilling projects are marked with a history of accidents, fires, and deaths (Greenpeace, 2010). In July 2008, a top agency manager of the MMS was criminally charged for having conflicts of interest with oil companies (Greenpeace, 2010). Yet, however, the MMS was allowed to give BP an exclusion from the US National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requirement to prepare an environmental impact statement for BP’s drilling operations (Greenpeace, 2010). Based on the â€Å"timeline† of the Greenpeace (2010), the BP oil spill can be blamed to the lax application of US environmental policies as well as to the congruence of