Legal Commentary

Sign of Progress on Oil Disaster?

By Professor University of Miami School of Law

I hope this cautious optimism about stopping the gushing oil in the Gulf is correct. Even so, it's “progress” only in the sense of “not making things even worse.”

The latest effort to plug a gushing underwater oil well in the Gulf of Mexico appeared to be working, officials and engineers said on Thursday morning, though definitive word on its success was still hours away.

Disaster junkies may enjoy the live blogging of the efforts to stop the spill.

Even if they stop it now, though, there's an awful lot of oil in the water.

At the same time, government experts said that the flow of oil from the well, which has been gushing since an explosion and fire wrecked a drilling rig in late April, was several times worse than the preliminary estimate by BP, the oil company responsible for the rig and the well. If these new estimates prove to be accurate, the spill would be far bigger than the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989 and the worst in United States history.

Full post as published by Discourse.net on May 27, 2010 (boomark / email).