This morning there are three new developments in the ongoing story of the leaking deepwater oil well off Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico. First, The Associated Press (via Canada's Globe and Mail) reports that the U.S. Coast Guard has suggested lighting portions of the spill afire. The Coast Guard says that such controlled burns would give crews a leg up in the fight to keep the slick from making landfall. A professor emeritus of environmental sciences from Louisiana State University told The AP that controlled burns will be difficult to conduct, first because the slick isn't in sheltered waters, and second because a large portion of the main plume is a tarry sort of crude that sits slightly beneath the ocean surface. However, the professor says that because other methods don't seem to be working very well, the technique should be tried. The story is quite lengthy, but near the end it contains a tiny, important reference to the location of one of the leaks: "more than 1,500 meters (4,921 feet) underground." BP has said that it will begin working to drill a relief well by Thursday to take up the pressure driving the release of oil. Read much more, here.

Second, Agence France-Presse (via the Calgary Herald) reports on the first details of a wrongful death lawsuit filed against the well's operators and owners. Natalie Roshto, the widow of a rig worker presumed to have died in the incident, has filed a suit against Transocean Ltd., BP and Halliburton, alleging several varieties of negligence. The suit seeks an unspecified amount of monetary damages. Read more, here.

Finally we turn to Alaska. APRN reports that the Northwest village of Point Hope is intensifying its push to halt Royal Dutch Shell's planned exploratory drilling in the Chukchi Sea this summer. The village's attorney and some of its residents have traveled to Washington D.C. to make their concerns known to the Obama administration in person. Chief among those concerns are the amount of spill response capability, the higher likelihood of a well blowout during an exploratory drilling phase, and the impact a spill would have on the Arctic environment and communities that depend on it. Shell explained that the drilling situation in the Gulf of Mexico incident is different than the one it will encounter the Chukchi, most notably in regard to water pressure, and that it feels well prepared to deal with an Arctic spill. Listen to much more, here. And be sure to read Alaska Dispatch's own report, the first in a series, on the Gulf spill's impact on the prospects of offshore drilling in Alaska. Read part one, here.