It wasn’t until seven weeks after the BP oil well began gushing that the company acknowledged oil remained hidden under the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, and it continues to dispute the extent of miles-long submerged plumes.
But an unusual experiment conducted in 2000 off the coast of Norway, a trial run of a deep-water oil and gas spill that BP helped pay for, showed that oil could remain underwater for some time.
The North Atlantic exercise was designed to understand how a spill would behave as the drilling industry plumbed new depths to extract oil and gas. The federal Minerals Management Service and 22 companies took part in the test, at about half the depth of the gulf disaster.
Read the complete story at The Boston Globe.