Climate groups sue US government over approval of new BP project in Gulf of Mexico

Advocates expressed alarm as new project drills deeper into ocean bed, pointing to company’s failures at Deepwater Horizon spill Sign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inbox Environmental groups have sued the Trump administration over its approval of BP’s huge new ultra-deep oil drilling project in the Gulf of Mexico, 16 years to the day since the company’s Deepwater Horizon disaster caused the worst oil spill in US history. In March, the administration approved a plan by BP to drill for oil at even greater depths than the Deepwater Horizon project, which resulted in an explosion that killed 11 people and gushed more than 3m barrels of oil into the ocean, a leak that took 87 days to stem. The oil coated shorelines across five states and caused severe damage to wildlife such as fish, whales and sea turtles, as well as coastline ecosystems and fishing communities. The British company’s new $5bn project, known as Kaskida, will be located around 250 miles off the coast of Louisiana and will plunge drilling equipment 6,000ft deep into the Gulf’s water. Drills will then extend much further down into the seabed itself, in all reaching down about 6 miles –