Kabul: Britain stands ready to help BP with its clean-up efforts following the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, Prime Minister David Cameron said on Thursday as he came under intense pressure at home to stand up for the oil giant.

ANNA DRIVER and JOANNE ALLEN
United States Presi June 9: United States President Barack Obama said he wanted to know

George Monbiot

The energy industry has long dumped its damage and, like the banks, made scant provision against disaster. Time to pay up.

Henry Fountain

As engineers made headway on Thursday in containing the oil leak at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, crews on two floating rigs flanking the spot where the Deepwater Horizon exploded and sank were doing what rig crews normally do: drilling wells.

ON April 20, a drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded. The rig was called Deepwater Horizon, well named for British Petroleum's (B.P.) remarkable effort to draw oil from a deep-sea rig that has to go through 22,000 to 25,000 feet (6,600-7,500 metres) of water before it strikes the seabed.

Eleven oil workers are presumed dead although their bodies have not been found.

Louisiana: US government and BP officials are warning that the blown-out oil well causing an environmental disaster on the Gulf Coast may not be stopped until August as the company begins preparations on a new attempt to capture the leaking crude.

BP moves to a new containment plan called the Lower Marine Riser Package Cap to siphon off the leaking oil to the surface, carried by remotely operated robots on the ocean floor
: The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is probably "the biggest environmental disaster" that the United States has ever experienced, senior White House official Carol Browner said on Sunday.

Narayan Lakshman

Washington: After 37 days of failing to halt a torrent of oil spilling from its damaged offshore rig into the Gulf of Mexico, engineers from rig owner British Petroleum and other agencies reportedly stemmed the flow using a

BP Plc told congressional investigators on Tuesday that pressure tests on a drill pipe showed a fundamental mistake hours before the deadly explosion that caused the Gulf of Mexico oil leak, a memo released by two congressmen showed.

Narayan Lakshman

Washington: In a pitched battle to shut off the MC252 well that has been spewing vast amounts of oil into the Gulf of Mexico for over a month, British Petroleum announced plans to use a new technical manoeuvre called a