An explosion in oil-munching bacteria made fast work of BP oil spill, scientist says

[Ganja Ninja]

67. And here's an article linking Hazen to $500 million in funding by BP while at berkley labs

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MIT’s Science Tracker, in a post published yesterday, noted that the microbe study was conducted by U.C. Berkeley scientists through a grant with the Energy Biosciences Institute, and that the Energy Biosciences Institute is funded by none other than BP, through a $500 million, 10-year grant. (To the researchers' credit, they also mentioned the funding in their press release — you just had to read about three-quarters of the way through.)

That relationship shouldn't have been a total surprise. In July, news reports had noted the U.C. Berkeley-BP connection. Activists had protested the $500 million in funding, worried that the funding source would influence the science. The response from U.C. Berkeley? From the Associated Press, emphasis added:

But UC Berkeley officials say the institute has nothing to do with the Gulf spill, and the university has no plans to end its research partnership with BP.

That was late July — less than a month before Berkeley Lab scientist Terry Hazen announced that his team’s research found that the deep water plumes “went away fairly rapidly after the well was capped.”

http://www.propublica.org/blog/item/take-it-with-a-grain-of-sea-salt-gulf-microbe-study-was-funded-by-bp