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Workers aboard an exploding offshore drilling platform were told to sign statements denying they were hurt or witnessed the blast that rocked the rig, killed 11 and spewed millions of gallons of oil into the ocean, their attorneys said Tuesday.

Swiss-based Transocean Ltd denied the allegations late Tuesday. All decisions aboard the rescue boat, the Damon Bankston, were made solely by the U.S. Coast Guard, Transocean said in a statement.

Efforts to transport crew members from the rig to shore were coordinated by the Coast Guard according to standard maritime procedures, the company said.

Transocean said contrary to certain reports, it did not distribute any incident response forms on behalf of Transocean to the crew members at the time of the accident.

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NEW ORLEANS — The explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig has brought into sharp focus the high stakes trade-off in the energy industry’s push to drill in ever deeper waters in search of huge oil deposits.

Despite the mammoth risks and unique challenges associated with exploration in such a hostile environment, it’s the most promising source of new discoveries to quench the world’s relentless thirst for oil.

The lure of the deep is driven by technological advances that make previously inaccessible oil now reachable, and dwindling supplies at shallower depths due to years of exploration. High energy prices and lucrative government incentives have also made it more financially feasible.

“That’s where the oil is,” said Eric Smith, associate director of Tulane University’s Energy Institute. “You can’t find any oil any cheaper anywhere else.”

Technorati Tags: carries, deeper, drill, risks

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Gas prices are poised to fall as Memorial Day approaches, a welcome change for motorists who have gotten used to seeing increases cut into their summer vacation money.

Experts who had been predicting a national average of more than $3 per gallon by Memorial Day now say prices have likely peaked just beneath that threshold. Rising supplies and concerns about the global economy have helped send wholesale gasoline prices plummeting by 25 cents a gallon since last week.

Technorati Tags: lower, prices, summer

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Company tries to cap what it would pay if it loses lawsuits over rig blast.

NEW YORK — The company that owns the sunken Deepwater Horizon rig said Thursday it will petition a federal court in Houston to cap its overall liability from the incident at less than $27 million.

If successful, Transocean Ltd. would be left with as much as $533 million in insurance money from the failed venture. That’s almost enough to cover the revenue the company was expecting from a three-year contract with BP PLC. However, it has also estimated additional expenses from insurance deductibles, higher insurance premiums and legal fees at about $200 million.

The move comes as lawsuits pile up against Transocean and BP, which leased the rig and is trying to shut off a well that’s spewing 210,000 gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico each day. In addition, hearings by congressional and administration panels this week have raised questions about safety procedures and equipment employed at the drill site.

Technorati Tags: cites, liability, limit, spill, Transocean

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Oil giant, Coast Guard get gusher of cleanup ideas from public.

As BP engineers in the Gulf of Mexico scramble to contain a still-expanding oil slick, many people around the world are doing more than just watching anxiously. It turns out a lot of them have ideas about products, techniques and some novel approaches to cap the spill and clean the mess.

Some 5,000 suggestions have been submitted through an online suggestion box set up by the oil giant and the Coast Guard, and thousands more are circulating through YouTube videos, in Internet chat rooms and in e-mails sent to media organizations.

“It is just unbelievable,” said BP spokesman Mark Proegler. “People are not only offering products, we are getting a lot of calls — even here in the media center — from people with ideas on how to fix it. Anything ranging from crazy ideas to ones that actually sound sensible.”

Given that BP itself has tried or considered chemical dispersants, skimmer ships, boom barriers, a giant containment dome, a smaller “top hat,” a giant pipe to siphon off the oil and a “junk shot” to plug the leak, perhaps suggestions from the public might be welcome to deal with the spill gushing from the seabed since an April 20 explosion sank the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.

Technorati Tags: spilling, suggestion

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