Washington (AFP) – With BP’s broken well in the Gulf of Mexico finally capped, the focus shifts to the surface clean-up and the question on everyone’s lips is: where is all the oil?
Some oil has evaporated, some cleaned. The rest is still out there: matted on beaches in Grand Isle and Grand Terre, floating in tar balls “from South Pass to Southwest Pass”, staining Louisiana wetlands brown, clearly entering Lake Pontchartrain, and forming nearly 12,000 square miles of sheen on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. Beyond that, most of the remaining oil is congregated in vast “plumes” under the surface, detected up to 50 miles from the Macondo wellhead.
And don’t forget about the oil in the food chain, which has been mixed with a dollop of toxic dispersant, for flavor.
This has been another edition of “Simple Answers to Simple Questions.”
