Sad Saga Of The Drill, Baby, Drill Crowd

Crude oil sits on the surface of the water that has leaked from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead in the Gulf of Mexico near New Orleans, Louisiana. An estimated leak of 1,000 barrels of oil a day are still leaking into the gulf. (Photo by Chris Graythen/Getty Images)


Gulf oil spill begins to reach land
(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick in spots. The discovery is fresh evidence that the leak from the broken undersea well could be substantially worse than estimates that the government and BP have given.

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The plumes are depleting the oxygen dissolved in the gulf, worrying scientists, who fear that the oxygen level could eventually fall so low as to kill off much of the sea life near the plumes.

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BP has resisted entreaties from scientists that they be allowed to use sophisticated instruments at the ocean floor that would give a far more accurate picture of how much oil is really gushing from the well.

“The answer is no to that,” a BP spokesman, Tom Mueller, said on Saturday. “We’re not going to take any extra efforts now to calculate flow there at this point. It’s not relevant to the response effort, and it might even detract from the response effort.”

That last part made me laugh. Of course, not in the funny, he ha, manner, but in the ironic chuckle, that head tilting sort of acknowledgment, that "duh" they are not going to let anyone near the spill that would reveal the truth of the matter! Read the full article.

Oh, and how's that oily, drilly thing working out for ya, baby?