SCIENCE IN THE NEWS WEEKLY
BP Relief Well May Be Completed This Week
It looks as though BP's leaking oil well in the Gulf of Mexico could be permanently sealed this week by means of a relief well. This development follows the successful pumping of heavy drilling mud and cement down the damaged well last week.
Meanwhile, some scientists questioned a government report issued last Wednesday that claimed that about three-quarters of the oil spill has either evaporated or been dispersed, captured or burned off. They say figures in the report were based on assumptions and estimates with a significant margin of error.
Also last week, the most precise estimates yet of the well's flow rate indicated that the BP spill has been by far the world's largest such accident, to the tune of some 5 million barrels.
Some scientists are saying that there's no effective way to clean up the oil-damaged wetlands in the region. The best hope may be to let Mother Nature do its own cleaning.
Finally, the New York Times looked at a principal tenet of geology: that the vast majority of the world's oil arose from tiny organisms at sea.
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