Down in the Gulf, oil still is bubbling to the surface near BP’s disastrous Macondo well. Local fishermen know it, environmental watchdogs know it, local journalists know it. Now, five weeks after it was first spotted, the government knows it too. Following repeated BP denials that its well is leaking, the feds have finally taken action. They’ve ordered Transocean to investigate the mile of Deepwater Horizon riser pipeline that lies crinkled on the ocean bottom, blown to pieces by last year’s catastrophic well explosion.
