Oil Drilling, Bp Oil Spill | featured news

A new oil sheen was spotted in the Gulf of Mexico, although energy company BP said Thursday the discovery had nothing to do with its operations and was far from the site of its disaster-hit Macondo well.

Months after the nation’s worst oil disaster, the Obama administration will lift its moratorium on deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, the White House announced Tuesday morning.

BP Plc's ruptured Gulf of Mexico well that caused the biggest U.S. offshore oil spill ever could be killed for good within four days, the U.S. official overseeing the spill response said on Wednesday.

BP said today its attempt to place a new cap on its ruptured undersea well was proceeding as planned. But while robots replace the old cap, crude is flowing freely.

A co-chairman of the commission that will study the oil spill said it would probably not lift the moratorium on deepwater drilling until next year.

Government scientists say as many as 40,000 barrels of oil per day have been gushing into the gulf. BP has said the blown-out well will not be plugged before August.

Government scientists said Thursday that as many as 40,000 barrels of oil have been flowing daily from the blown-out BP well, doubling earlier estimates and greatly expanding the scope of what is already the largest spill in U.S.

The effort to place a massive containment dome over a gushing underwater wellhead in the Gulf of Mexico was dealt a setback when a large volume of hydrates -- icelike crystals that form when gas combines with water -- accumulated inside the vessel, a BP official said Saturday.