'10 Deepwater Horizon oil spill

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill (also referred to as the BP oil spill) is an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico which flowed unabated for three months in 2010, and continues to seep. It is the largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry. The spill stemmed from a sea-floor oil gusher that resulted from the 20 April 2010, explosion of Deepwater Horizon, which drilled on the BP-operated Macondo Prospect. The explosion killed 11 men working on the platform and injured 17 others. On 15 July 2010, the gushing wellhead was capped, after it had released about 4.9 million barrels of crude oil. An estimated 53,000 barrels per day escaped from the well just before it was capped. On 19 September 2010, the relief well process was successfully completed, and the federal government declared the well "effectively dead". In August 2011, oil and oil sheen covering several square miles of water were reported surfacing not far from BP’s Macondo well. Scientific analysis confirmed the oil is a chemical match for Macondo 252.The Coast Guard said the oil was too dispersed to recover. In March 2012, a "persistent oil seep" near the Macondo 252 well was reported.




LINK: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/bp-oil-spill

SOURCE:  "2010 Gulf of Mexico Oil SpillLatest News, Photos, Videos from the BP Deepwater Horizon Drilling Disaster." Oil Spill Gulf of Mexico 2010. Web. 09 May 2012. http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/.