MARITIME LAWYER NEWS

GULF OF MEXICO – Another oil rig explosion has occurred and caught fire in the Gulf of Mexico early Thursday morning, September, 2, 2010. The offshore explosion happened about 80 miles south of Grand Isle, La. and about 90 miles south of Vermilion Bay.

Photo Credit: 2010 WLOX.

Rescue choppers from New Orleans and Houston are responding along with The Coast Guard. Seven helicopters, two airplanes and four boats are en route to the site.

... Read Full Story

HARRIS COUNTY, TEXAS  –  Gordon, Elias & Seely, LLP, Houston maritime lawyers, represent a 24 year old woman from Houston, Texas, who was working as a seaman onboard the M/V The American Tern at the time of the incident. The Plaintiff was mopping in a passage way in keeping with her responsibilities as a steward assistant when suddenly another seaman came through the steel door she was mopping in front of. The steel door struck Plaintiff in the back causing her to sustain serious and disabling injuries. The incident occurred on July 31, 2009.

... Read Full Story

On the last day of the fourth week of the Deepwater Horizon Joint Investigation Task Force hearings, Mr. Brett Cocales, a BP Operations Drilling Engineer that was in the line of authority on the Macondo well, revealed that Sperry sends real-time data from all of BP’s Gulf of Mexico projects to the BP home office Operations Center in Houston, Texas. However, there is a problem…no one monitors it.

BP drilling engineeraAttorney Philip Hilder (L) covers the microphone to consult with his client BP drilling engineer Brett Cocales (R) during the Deepwater Horizon hearings being conducted by the U.S. Coast Guard and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEM) in Houston August 27, 2010. REUTERS/Pat Sullivan/Pool (UNITED STATES)

... Read Full Story

HOUSTON, TX – At the United States Coast Guard Hearing, USCG, in Houston, Texas, on Wednesday, August 25, 2010, the flag state Marshall Islands for the Deepwater Horizon stunned the Deepwater Horizon Joint Investigation Task Force when it admitted that the there had been a “clerical error” in 2004 when it issued the Minimum Safe Manning Certificate [MSMC] for a self propelled mobile offshore drilling unit instead of a mobile offshore drilling unit that is also a dynamically positioned vessel [MODU-DPV]. Steve Gordon has always maintained that the vessel should have been classified as a DPV and that it was, in fact, misclassified. ... Read Full Story

HOUSTON, TX – An article in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) website on August 23, 2010 describes some of the topics under discussion at the hearings in Houston, Texas on the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

On Monday, August 23, 2010, the fourth round of hearings into by the joint panel of the U.S. Coast Guard and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management was held and the co-chair of the Deepwater Horizon Joint Investigation, U.S. Coast Guard Captain Hung Nguyen.

Nguyen gave his criticism about the management structure commonly used throughout the oil industry where there is a separation of decision making on navigation and drilling aboard floating drilling rigs. ... Read Full Story

HOUSTON, TX – Federal investigators will again try to question witnesses on the Gulf Oil Spill in the fourth of a continuing series of hearings by the joint panel of the U.S. Coast Guard and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (formerly the MMS – Minerals Management Service) in Houston, Texas on August 23, 2010.

Capt. Hung Nguyen speaks during the Deepwater Horizon joint investigation hearings. Photo credit: Brett Duke / The Times-Picayune

The hearings are being carried out in an effort to get to the bottom of the worst oil spill in U.S. history and the events that occurred prior to the disaster on the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig owned by Transocean and leased to British Petroleum at the time.

... Read Full Story

HOUSTON, TX – The U.S. Coast Guard hearings into the Deepwater Horizon disaster is scheduled to resume on Monday, August 23, 2010 in Houston, Texas. The timing of these hearings is not good for Transocean, the owner of the ill fated rig that exploded and sank in the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.

Attempting to put out the fire on the ill-fated oil rig before sinking into the Gulf of Mexico.

On August 18, 2010, Moody’s Investors Service downgraded Transocean’s credit rating because Transocean faces laibility for the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. This information was published in an article in Bloomberg Businessweek. We believe that this is due in no small part to the recent facts coming to light about an incident that occurred in the North Sea in December 2009 where a Transocean drilling rig experienced an oil well blowout under eerily similar circumstances. ... Read Full Story

HOUSTON, TX — Dead and injured victims of the Deepwater Horizon disaster that occurred April 20, 2010, have been denied the right to collect monies from the BP $20 billion dollar compensation fund.

While the fund protocol says that all workers injured or killed as a result of the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon or the spill are eligible to file claims, a letter sent by BP’s lawyers to Houston maritime lawyer, Steve Gordon,  representing several of the victims of the Deepwater Horizon, states otherwise. ... Read Full Story

UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA (UGA) – A group of scientists working from the University of Georgia has done a study that contradicts the recent National Incident Command (NIC) findings on the amount of oil still remaining from the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Oil plume spewing from uncapped well head in the Gulf of Mexico.

The scientists believe that nearly 3/4ths of the oil is still there, while the NIC report states that there is only about 25% remaining. The UGA group attributes this difference to the way in which the data has been interpreted. ... Read Full Story

Confidential internal documents from Transocean reveal that on December 23, 2009 there was a blowout on one of their drilling rigs in the North Sea at 5:10 pm that was eerily similar to the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Drilling mud was being replaced by seawater when the blowout occurred. Fortunately, in that incident, the Blowout Preventer (BOP) worked when it was activated, the rig was spared and the crew was safely evacuated.

The incident occurred at the Sedco 711 location in the North Sea. At that well, Transocean made a decision to displace the mud with seawater and had a blowout. This was the same thing that happened on the Deepwater Horizon prior to the explosion that destroyed it along with 11 lives ... Read Full Story