BP and Transocean to submit clean-up operation, after scientists link three-mile oil slick to Deepwater Horizon disaster.

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Government scientists have definitively linked a new oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico to the BP oil spill disaster of 2010.

A senior government scientist said the most likely source of the new oil is the mile-long length of pipe from the Deepwater Horizon rig, now lying in a crumpled loop on the ocean floor.

At worst, he said, the pipe was thought to contain some 1,800 barrels of oil – a minuscule amount compared with the 4.9m barrels that gushed into the ocean from BP‘s well during the 2010 oil disaster.

“When you look at all those pieces of information and put them together there is a high degree of confidence that the oil we are seeing and the sheening on the surface is coming from the riser, and that this is residual oil,” said Frank Csulak, who is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s scientific co-ordinator for the Deepwater Horizon disaster site.

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