The State of the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

Reader Contribution by Sean Rosner

As most of you probably already know, the current oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is shaping up to be one of the United States’ worst environmental disasters in recent history.

If you’ve missed out, or just want a central source of information on the event, here’s where things stand at the moment:

Everything started with an explosion on the British Petroleum-leased Deepwater Horizon oil rig on April 20, which killed 11 workers and left several others injured. When the rig sank and turned over two days later, oil from the well began spilling out toward the gulf coast at the rate of 200,000 gallons per day. See this New York Times interactive map for a visualization of the spill.

Area wildlife is at huge risk due to the spill, not to mention the region’s fishing and tourism industries.

The spill could potentially surpass the 1989 Exxon Valdez incident, which spilled 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound. As of Saturday, the total size of the spill was estimated at more than 2 million gallons.

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