A new oil sheen was spotted in the Gulf of Mexico, although energy company BP says the discovery had nothing to do with BP’s operations and was far from the site of its blown-out Macondo well. A spokesman for another company involved in investigating the sheen says he believed it had already dissipated since being first spotted last week.
BP spokesman Daren Beaudo says his company had sent several remotely controlled mini-submersibles into the water over the weekend to investigate the source of the sheen—a shiny coating that floats on the surface of the water and that generally comes from leaked or spilled oil. Beaudo says BP concluded “that it couldn’t have been from anything of ours.” When asked to estimate the distance between the sheen and the Macondo well, he says he believes it was far away. “We’re talking tens of miles, if not further,” he says.
A statement from BP placed the site of the sheen near two abandoned exploration well sites in the Green Canyon Block in the Gulf of Mexico, although its size and exact location weren’t disclosed. According to an online map published by the U.S. Department of Energy, the Green Canyon Block—a huge square-shaped area of water south of Louisiana—is south and west of the Mississippi Canyon Block where the Macondo well blew up.
A catastrophic April 2010 explosion at the Macondo well killed 11 men and led to the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history. The stricken well spewed more than 200 million gallons of oil into the gulf before it was capped some three months later.
