BP Gulf Oil Spill (spill, not exactly the right word)

[Greedyfly]

Seeing as I am a non news watcher. I have only seen the basics regarding this matter.

What exactly happened? Why is there so much? What are they doing? And what are they doing about the animals? - the photos are awful.

I have been googling but keep getting the same articles, nothing saying how it all happened.

Thanks

Greedyfly

[redman41]

In a nutshell the Oil Rig went on Fire and blew up and they could not cap the Oil that was spewing forth. Sea depth at that point is about 1 mile. Big mess, Big problem for everyone in Gulf region.......

[Greedyfly]

According to the headlines it may not be fixed until december - seems unreal to me. How can such things still happen?

[stewey]

Greedyfly, there was a discussion , although not technical, on this situation the other day.

http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/user/stats.php

[Greedyfly]

Yeah I saw that one but that was more due to ignoring the situation so people didnt have to see them horrific pictures.

[Zeuhl]

If a drill a hole 13000 feet through the sea bed to get oil gushing up so we can fuel cars and make things out of plastic - and the rig explodes and the drill pipe fractures ... and the gizmo that's supposed to seal off the well fails ...

you get lots of oil spewing out. It's happened before - just not a mile under the sea.

New rigs drilling new wells will relieve the leak hopefully by august. Until then, the job of sealing it off is difficult and has to be done by remote control submarines.