BP well is finally dead

So are fish, shrimp, birds, turtles, dolphins, whales, livelihoods... Nearly five months after the largest environmental oil disaster in U.S. history began, the U.S. announced today that the relief well has successfully been plugged with cement.

“We can finally announce that the Macondo 252 well is effectively dead,” Thad W. Allen, the former Coast Guard admiral who leads the federal spill response, said in a statement. The well, he said, “poses no continuing threat to the Gulf of Mexico.”

Crews aboard the Development Driller III drill rig conducted a successful pressure test early Sunday on cement that had been pumped into the bottom of the once-gushing well through a relief well. The tests confirmed that the cement formed an effective, and final, seal to prevent oil and gas from coming up from a formation about 13,000 below the seabed.

It is still to be determined how to get BP to take full responsibility for this catastrophe, after their self-issued report that pointed the finger at their sub-contractors (a peek into their legal defense strategy):

With a conclusion unlikely to be taken as seriously as independent investigations, BP has issued its own internal report on the Gulf oil disaster that shifts the blame to its subcontractors -- primarily Transocean and Halliburton -- as the primary potential plaintiffs in the disaster.

There is also an ongoing dispute as to the disposition of the millions of gallons of oil and oxygen depleted-greenhouse gas, methane, that made its way into the Gulf. Continued...

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