BP Says Oil Leak Stopped

BP announced yesterday that it had capped its hemorrhaging well, at least temporarily, marking the first time in 86 days that oil was not gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. Oil stopped flowing around 3:25 p.m. [ET] when the last of several valves was closed on a 75-ton cap at the top of the well, said Kent Wells, a senior vice president for BP. However, even in the most optimistic case, the spill is far from over. There are still millions of barrels of oil out in the gulf and months of work missing for fishermen and shrimpers, and inestimable harm is still being inflicted on wildlife throughout the food chain along the Gulf coast. But for the first time since an explosion on the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon oil rig killed 11 workers April 20th and unleashed the spill 5,000 feet beneath the water’s surface, no oil was flowing into the Gulf. Between 93.5 million and 184.3 million barrels of crude spilled into the ocean.