75% of oil already cleaned up???

Yes, this whole thing still has me amazed. I think it is hard to believe nobody could fix that mess for a long time. Now they say it is 75% cleaned up. I am glad they could do so much when they finally decided to do something.

I'm hoping for the best. But I'm more willing to bet that actually means they don't know where 70% of it went.

I'm with you on that one. Maybe they are trying to play down this whole disaster.

I think it's a whole lot of playing down, and a whole bunch of "I don't know?" (meaning they are saying I don't know. )

Now they are finally coming clean and saying that it is the largest man-caused oil spill (is there another kind of oil spill?) ever, with 5 million barrels of oil. Who actually believed them (both BP and the US government) when they said it was something like 5,000 barrels/day? If the well were spewing at the same rate from beginning to day 100(ish) when they finally got it really clamped down, it would have been gushing 50,000 barrels/day. And it wasn't - it increased the longer it went on; even I could see that.

For those of us who don't work with barrels of oil and haven't a clue how much that really is (I looked it up and did the math ):

1 barrel = 42 gallons
5 million barrels = 210,000,000 gallons; 210 million gallons

Seriously...think about it. They (BP) were thrilled when they were able to collect and/or burn ~24,000 barrels/day when they got that going ~day 85, if I remember right. That was less than 1/2 of what was coming out.

But they (not BP this time, who would have a vested interest...the White House) are now saying that it's mostly all gone? 75% or more??? With the collection, burning and skimming. And some is just in the ocean, but it's OK.

Really??

I'm not an oceographer or whatever, and I'm not someone who really knows oil, so I sure don't know what happens with oil spewing from the ground into the Gulf of Mexico...but this doesn't add up at all to me.

I was in Alaska for the Exxon Valdez. The majority of the oil spilled stayed underwater while the rest made it to the surface and everyone was scratching their heads wondering what to do. Tides and currents have a big play in what happens to the oil and yes, if it is a swift current, the oil can indeed "vanish." The problem is that it resurfaces later on, the thickest grade of oil will evaporate over time, the rest sinks and becomes part of the ocean floor. In the EV Spill it was estimated by outside experts that 7 MILLION gallons of oil was "unaccounted" for- if you view the shoreline in present day, you will see that the oil is still there.

The Exxon spill happened in 1989- here is an interesting research paper ten years later

http://arcticcircle.uconn.edu/SEEJ/Alaska/miller2.htm

As for the statement from today that the oil is "gone" I have one word to say- "BULL!"