Offshore Oil Drilling, Gulf Oil Spill Cleanup | featured news

Spill from blowout is degrading rapidly in warm waters, becoming tougher to find, director says.

In the 77 days since oil from the ruptured Deepwater Horizon began to gush into the Gulf of Mexico, BP has skimmed or burned about 60 percent of the amount it promised regulators it could remove in a single day. The disparity between what BP promised in its March 24 filing with federal regulators and the amount of oil recovered since the April 20 explosion underscores what some officials and environmental groups call a misleading numbers game that has led to widespread confusion about the extent of the spill and the progress of the recovery.

A day after its chief executive's widely panned appearance before Congress, BP said Friday that it would replace Tony Hayward as head of its oil-spill cleanup effort.

The  cost of cleaning the Gulf oil spill and compensating its victims won’t be known for years.

The cap on the damaged BP oil well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico is now keeping up to 462,000 gallons of oil a day from leaking into the ...