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Two years ago, 11 men lost their lives as a backlash of gas exploded into the night from the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico. In the ensuing months, roughly 5 million barrels of oil and more than 6 billion cubic feet of natural gas spewed into the ocean from the Macondo well more than a kilometer underwater. It took the combined efforts of the U.S.

Microbes kept the oil and gas spewing from the Macondo well from becoming even more of a disaster, preventing the Deepwater Horizon blowout from deeply befouling the Gulf coast . But these hydrocarbon-chompers got an assist from the Gulf of Mexico the prevailing tides and currents helped keep hydrocarbon-eating microbes on the job, according to the results of a new model published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on January 9. Simply put, the study sought to answer the question: how did five families of bacteria keep 4.1 million barrels of oil (and billions of cubic feet of natural gas) from becoming a bigger disaster

COCODRIE, La.-- Five million barrels of oil seems like a lot. That is approximately what spewed from the blowout at BP's Macondo well last year, about enough to fill an American football field more than 90 meters deep--and much of it has gone missing. [More]

One year after the blowout at the Macondo oil well in the Gulf of Mexico and subsequent burning and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, what has been learned? [More]

For the second time in under a year, a large-scale energy disaster is unfolding before our eyes.