The Legacy of Oil Spills

摘要

On April 20, 2010, an explosion occurred on a British Petroleum (BP) Deep Water Horizon platform, and 2 days later, the platform collapsed. Eleven workers were killed, and oil has been gushing out ever since. Although the initial reports were that about 50,000 gal were being released per day, every few weeks, the estimates released to the American public increased, until in early June, the company admitted that the actual rate has been and continues to be nearly 1 million gallons per day. It is now June, and oil continues to spew forth into the Gulf of Mexico, with BP telling us that no stoppage is possible until (maybe) August. Currently, about 45 miles of the Louisiana coast line are impacted, and it is feared that oil will spread until the coasts of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida are seriously damaged. Even worse, it is possible that the oil will continue to move Northward, up the Eastern coast of the USA until most of the US Atlantic coast is affected.