HOUMA, La. – August 4, 2010 – For decades, the oil industry has lobbied regulators to let it use chemicals to stop spilled oil from washing ashore.
Following the April 20 explosion of a well owned by BP PLC, which dumped millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, the industry succeeded in using chemical dispersants on a broad scale.
But the question remains whether the industry's tactical success will come at an acceptable cost to the environment.
In the Gulf, the U.S. accepted dispersants as a cost-effective and reliable way to keep spilled oil off shorelines. The chemicals break the oil into tiny particles that drop below the water's surface, where natural bacteria can eat them. But dispersants present an environmental trade-off, putting oil in the path of organisms that live underwater.
Read the complete story from the Wall Street Journal.