such great insights in what is going on and the immense harmlessness of oil don't cast the slightest doubt on all the rest we are reported. basically, how much oil is still escaping and how long will it circulate. today some additional equipment is supposed to have arrived and upped the 'containment capacity'. my guess is they are now collecting about half. however by now vessels from all over the world are on their way to the gulf, so either there is plenty of oil floating about to be sure they all have a job for july, or perhaps they are collecting much less then half afterall.
yesterday i read one more of the 'hopefull' statements the flow hadn't abaided in a meaningfull way yet.
the oil is expected to start flowing somewhat more gently whenever the gas that drives it looses some pressure. the whole well is rather deep, so deep i would think there is no real danger in sealing it in an explosive way, allthough you would want to be sure of the exact depth and sedimentary layer of your effort. and at that depth (and with the apparent 60-40% oil gas mix)
usually there is rather more then less gas then expected. i know that because you can make use of the feature to get extra gas production.
so altho i must admit the idea that gas flowing at such a rate would somehow run out at some point is an attractive one, it's quite as probable the turtles died from birds flue.
good news about the turtles is a 100 are saved, of wich btw a whole 3 got rereleased, i wonder why in fact, i suppose to see the effect of oil on a life turtle. if they swim straight into it eg.
talking about turtles, the newssites don't make an estimate about the nr of animal that died and somehow went out of sight. apparently they sink, and hide to die, but not one estimate of nr's.
i have no idea myself, it should be a really simple estimate to make, x percent of birds sink, x percent hit the beach. x percent hide an die, there are some 1000 oilcovered naturally dead birds recovered,

perhaps 8 times more of them sank? and 10 times more of them hid?
a bit less i guess. in the ordre of 100000s dead birds then.
but they admitted.. managed to make the nation and world believe (or at least not rise up in protest) a whole ZERO, just today.
i won't touch mammals, dolphins have a very sensitive skin. they flock so close to beach now it would be a bad example. i learned one more thing, the gulf and it's wildlife are widely promoted as splendid (and these days as unaffected) but it is actually poor, there arent so many dolphins, and really few turtles, i bet, just like the english catches, the fish caught is neither bountyfull nor as tasty as it was 100 years ago. you could even tell that when the spill hadn't started.
so my guess is after this is all over and by when we hopefully switch to cleaning the niger delta,
there is an interesting ecological project to start in the gulf of mexico, involving no fishing for a decade for starters, it may sound farfetched, but it would be nice to see some of the oil money reserved to observe the ecology as it develops.