Gulf Oil Spill | featured news

A culture of politics trumping science, many say, persists despite the president's promises. The use of potentially toxic dispersants to fight the gulf oil spill is cited as just one example.

When he ran for president, Barack Obama attacked the George W. Bush administration for putting political concerns ahead of science on such issues as climate change and public health.

The federal official leading the Gulf oil spill cleanup said Friday a new containment cap and an additional ship collecting oil could effectively contain the spill in the next three days.

"Bottom kill" -- a massive dose of mud and cement shot through a relief well to stop the gushing of oil -- could take place before by July 20, BP says.

As engineers bore deeper into the seafloor toward the source of the oil still spewing into the Gulf of Mexico, BP PLC is growing more confident that the relief well it expects to complete in August will succeed where all previous efforts to contain or kill the gusher have failed.

But what if it doesn't work?

At the very least, oil would continue to spill while workers try something else.

That proposition would surely bring more misery for the people who live, work and play along the shores from Louisiana to Florida.

Tests on a supertanker adapted to skim large quantities of oily water from the surface of the Gulf of Mexico are inconclusive because of high seas, ship owner TMT Shipping Offshore said on Monday.

BP says that it has now spent more than $3 billion in attempts to stop an oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico and to settle damage claims.

Washington was preparing a revised offshore oil drilling moratorium and cleanup efforts in the Gulf of Mexico returned to normal on Friday after hurricane Alex passed through the region without doing major damage.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has been probing major financial firms' exposure to BP Plc to ensure that if the oil giant buckles under the costs of the Gulf oil spill, it won't put Wall Street or the global financial system at risk, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

The first named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season was on track on Saturday to reach the Gulf of Mexico within days, a potential threat to containment and cleanup of the worst ever US oil spill.

The Coast Guard says BP has been forced to remove a cap that was containing some of the oil gushing into the gulf.