According to the state the Mississippi, guess who's stiffing victims of the Gulf oil spill? The state's Attorney General wrote yesterday that thanks to "sweeping deficiencies and violations of law," BP is allegedly "underpaying" legitimate claims. Surprised? [Bloomberg]

Just two weeks after ex-Yukos Oil boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky was sentenced to another six years in Russian prison, BP pulled a share swap, exchanging $7.8 billion of stock in the company holding Yukos' assets for a 9.5 percent stake. Convenient!

A small oil leak has shut down the Trans Alaska Pipeline for the last three days, cutting production there by 98% and prompting price increases. And guess which company is a "major owner" of the pipeline? Poor old BP. [Reuters]

The GOP's rising star, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, was the driving force behind the construction of sand berms to curb the Gulf oil spill. They were considered environmentally unsound, and a presidential commission has found that they didn't even work.

Remember that little "Gulf of Mexico oil spill" story from the summer? The government won't let it slide! The Justice Department has filed a multi-billion dollar lawsuit against BP and others, seeking removal costs and damages. Lots of it.

Poor BP is claiming that U.S. government estimates on the size of the Gulf oil spill are way too high, by 20-50 percent. Of course, the more oil that was spilled means more fines the company must pay. Nice try!

Barack Obama pledged in March to expand offshore oil drilling. Shortly thereafter, BP spilled 172 million gallons of oil into the water. So now drilling on both coasts and the eastern Gulf of Mexico will be re-banned for years. Hooray!

Former BP chief Tony Hayward is back! Speaking for the first time since his resignation, he said that all of those pesky reporters were part of an unjust media "feeding frenzy" and that he'd definitely go sailing mid-spill again, too.

Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration believe they have a "smoking gun" after finding dead coral 4,500 feet below the surface in the Gulf of Mexico, seven miles from the Deepwater Horizon rig site. What a coincidence.

The tab for BP's oil spill is expected to reach nearly $40 billion, the company said as it announced its third quarter financial results today. That's $7 billion more than expected, thanks to pesky legal fees and cleanup operations. [Bloomberg]

A presidential commission yesterday found that BP and Halliburton knew that the cement mixture used to seal the Macondo well before the oil spill had "repeatedly failed lab tests." You should probably grab some Halliburton shares while they're hot.

Have you, too, been itchy to journey miles-deep into the ocean for "black gold" again? Well good news: the Obama administration plans to lift its deep-water drilling moratorium very soon, alongside new safety rules! Mmm, can't wait to ignore those.

A new Gallup survey shows that depression rose 25 percent since the Deepwater Horizon disaster in April. Proof that losing your livelihood + watching your environment be destroyed + utter sense of helplessness = major case of the blues.

The Gulf of Mexico's latest plague is a "sea-snot blizzard," a "huge, slimy event" covering the ocean floor in suffocating layers of goo that could cause a "deadly void." Apparently phytoplankton create huge amounts of snot when stressed. [NatGeo, image]

BP's formerly-leaking oil well in the Gulf of Mexico has been permanently sealed, with cement, 4 million barrels and six months after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, killing 11 workers. (The well hasn't leaked since July.) Remember that?