Almost five months after an explosion killed 11 workers and sank a drilling rig that led to the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, the blown-out Deepwater Horizon, BP/Transocean well has officially been declared dead.
A pressure test confirmed that cement pumped into the bottom of the well, situated some 18,000 feet below the surface of the northern Gulf of Mexico and 480 miles to the northwest of Key West is holding.
"With this development, which has been confirmed by the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, we can finally announce that the well is effectively dead," said Retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the federal government's point person for the disaster. "Additional regulatory steps will be undertaken but we can now state, definitively, the well poses no continuing threat to the Gulf of Mexico."
The "bottom kill" was the final step in a long process to permanently seal the well that gushed an estimated 206 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico between April 20 and July 15.
No significant amounts of oil have leaked into the Gulf since July 15 when a cap was installed on a failed blowout preventer. Later, mud and cement was pushed down through the top of the well, allowing the cap to be removed.
Concerns that oil might become entrained in the Gulf Loop Current and migrate south to the Florida Keys did not come to fruition, as there have been no evidence of BP oil remnants impacting the region, according to U.S. Coast Guard and Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary officials.
"The Florida Keys did not receive any physical impacts from the spill," said Captain Pat DeQuattro, commanding officer of Coast Guard Sector Key West, who led the unified command response in the Keys.
On Sept. 3, NOAA reopened a larger portion of the Gulf of Mexico previously closed to recreational and commercial fishing. The closest point of the closure to the Keys is more than 270 miles to the northwest of Key West.
Additional details can be found on these official websites:
Florida Department of Environmental Protection
NOAA
Deep Water Horizon Response
Florida Oil Spill Hotline (8 a.m.- 6 p.m.): 1-888-337-3569
More than 40 web cams streaming live video from the Keys’ waters, shorelines and area attractions are also available for the public to view.
Information is also available at Twitter and Facebook.
