By Geoffrey Lean
Oysters were broiling, softshell crabs frying, seafood gumbo simmering and spirits being obstinately kept up at the Plaquemines Parish annual seafood festival at the weekend. But then the devastating news came through. Billy Nungesser, the rotund president of the Louisiana parish at the centre of the US fishing industry in the Gulf of Mexico, was just getting up to speak when a BlackBerry message told him of the failure of the “top kill”. It was BP’s best chance of choking off the volcano of oil a mile beneath the surface of the sea, which opened up after the accident on the Deepwater Horizon rig that killed 11 people.
“I saw the message and my knees got weak and I forgot everything I was going to say,” he recalls. “I looked at those men and women in the crowd. And I couldn’t, didn’t have the heart to tell them it didn’t work.”
Continue reading The Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill is Now Turning Into a Catastrophe
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