McNamee/Getty
Jul 21, 2010 8:00 AM EDT
On July 15th, just as this article was going to press, BP lowered a 75-ton cap over the damaged wellhead in the Gulf of Mexico and closed — at least temporarily — the gushing hellmouth of oil. How long that cap will hold is not clear. At the moment, BP and government scientists are trying to determine whether the structure of the well itself was damaged by the blowout, and, if it was, whether oil and gas could be leaking through other parts of the well, or even through the sea floor itself. Depending on the integrity of the well, the gusher could be permanently capped in a matter of weeks; or there could be oil flowing into the Gulf again tomorrow. "This is an extremely unstable situation," retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, who is overseeing the federal response to the clean-up, told me on the day the cap was lowered into place.
Capping the well, even temporarily, is welcome progress, but it is not the end of the story. Since the blowout in late April, up to four million barrels of oil and nearly two million gallons of toxic dispersants have been dumped into the Gulf. The clean-up operation will continue for months, but it's mostly PR — only a small fraction of the oil will actually be removed. More important, no one has a clue yet what the longer-term effects of this catastrophe will be: how many dead dolphins will wash up on the beaches, how many local residents will lose their livelihoods, how the complex ecosystem of the Gulf will be altered, or, indeed, what the political fallout will be for the Obama administration. Sorting all that out is a much larger story, and right now, it is just beginning.
— Jeff Goodell, July 21st, 2010
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