Chevron Says Pelican Incident Accidental

In a follow up to our article yesterday about Chevron USA and the 35 dead brown pelicans, The Advocate today is reporting that Chevron claims the birds deaths were accidental and were caused by the hurricanes of 2005. They said as a result of the storms, they had to divert resources to other areas instead of completing the well. So consequently they hadn't visited the area in the 17 months between June '05 and November '06, which is when the birds were expected to have nested in a caisson. The company says it plans to initiate better plans to prevent such accidents in the future, like covering caissons.

Image of caisson from Wikipedia