R.I.P. Gulf Oil Well

Posted on Sep 19, 2010

NASA

A view of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico from the International Space Station.

It looks like the ruptured oil well in the Gulf of Mexico is officially dead. The procedure to seal the well—or in oil industry terms, to “kill” it—has been pronounced a success, providing an unceremonious end to the spilling of millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf.

But they’re not dancing on the decks of the shrimp boats just yet. The environmental disaster inflicted by the massive spill will haunt the fragile Gulf ecosystem for years to come. —JCL

The BBC:

The ruptured well that has spewed millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico has finally been sealed, US officials say.

A pressure test showed a cement plug put in place by BP to permanently “kill” the well was holding.

President Obama hailed the news, vowing to continue to help those affected.

The worst offshore oil spill in US history began after the Deepwater Horizon rig blew up on 20 April, killing 11 workers and later sinking.

Read more

More Below the Ad

New and Improved Comments

We are launching a major overhaul of our comments section.

In addition to more robust spam filtering and moderation, new features include the ability to rate other comments, sort how they are displayed and respond directly via e-mail or in a thread.

Unfortunately, commenters will lose their existing Truthdig identities. It's a pain, we know, but on the plus side you will now be able to log in with a plethora of options, including Google, Twitter, Facebook and Disqus accounts.

Before launching this system we spent months in discussion with our top commenters. We listened to the feedback and we hope you like what we've come up with.

Please direct any problems or concerns to us via our contact page.