And how will this be stopped?
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1986323,00.htmlIt may be time to stop referring to the Deepwater Horizon rig accident in the Gulf of Mexico as an oil spill. A spill sounds like something temporary, a glass of milk overturned, which empties and then can be cleaned up. But what is unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico, not far from the sensitive shorelines of Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida, isn't a spill. It's an unchecked gush of crude oil from beneath the bottom of the ocean into the water — and no one can say for sure when it will finally stop.
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Clearly something has to change, because nearly everything BP has tried to do to stanch the flow of oil has fallen short. Efforts to use underwater robots to activate a blowout preventer on the ocean floor that would seal the well have failed repeatedly, while work to conduct an in situ burning of the oil on the water surface — somewhat successful yesterday — had to be curtailed because of bad weather. The company is set to begin using chemical dispersants on the oil underwater, which has never been tried before, and is about to begin drilling a relief well that could eventually plug the gushing well. (See pictures of oil fires.)
But nothing is likely to fix the situation within weeks. It took responders 10 weeks to stop a similar broken well off the western coast of Australia in 2009.