The Black Gulf: as the world reacts to the images of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the full ramifications of this disaster have yet to be seen or understood.

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Black, sticky, and lethal: the oily mass gushes up from the depths of the ocean, increasing in size minute by minute. The black tide is uncontainable. Pushed and stirred by winds, it advances towards the coasts of Louisiana and other states, threatening biodiversity, ecosystems, and the quality of life for thousands of North Americans. In May, US President Barack Obama underscored the gravity of the situation saying: "This is what I wake up to in the morning and this is what I go to bed at night thinking about: the spill."

Nearly a mile under water in the Gulf of Mexico, 40 miles from the southeastern coasts of Louisiana, the oil spill began last April 20 after the explosion of Transocean's Deepwater Horizon drilling platform operated by British Petroleum (BP). Eleven workers were killed and the resulting "black tide" has been called the greatest ecological disaster ever produced by the oil industry, now severely criticized for its negligence on safety issues. Current oil-spill related statistics are colossal, and they are just the beginning of efforts to understand what will be incalculable damage to ecosystems.

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Efforts to repair the leaking well have been fraught with difficulties and setbacks, some related to the fact that much more oil was flowing from the leak than first reported. By June, two months after the explosion, the most successful measures still involved funneling as much oil as possible towards tanker ships on the surface, even as large amounts continued to flow directly into the ocean. "BP officials are trying to capture as much oil as possible without creating too much pressure or allowing the buildup of ice-like hydrates, which form when water and natural gas combine under high pressures and low temperatures," the Associated Press explained.

Finally, on July 13, BP successfully installed a tightly fitting temporary containment cap on the ruptured wellhead, stopping the flow. "That will not mean the flow of oil and gas has been stopped permanently," a BP press release stated, however. A few days later, fears about the new cap were raised after engineers detected seepage of oil through cracks in the seabed. Hopes for a definitive stop to the leak are resting on the drilling of a relief well which is expected to be completed sometime in August. As Américas goes to print, the hurricane season is sporadically slowing these efforts. The battle is not over yet.

Meanwhile the environmental disaster is...

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