oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded today. All crew members survived. Right now, nobody knows whether or not the explosion caused a leak in any of the seven wells that the rig collects from. There have been reports of an oil slick on the water near the fire, but that could just as easily be from the finite amount of oil stored on the rig—which would still a spill, but a significantly less problematic one.
Other than that, there's not really much information out about this right now. If anybody's learned anything from Deepwater Horizon it seems to be that you're better off, PR-wise, if you don't have to correct everything you say two days later.
To give you something to chew over in the meantime, though, Deep Sea News has been doing a really interesting series on the science (such as it is) of oil dispersants. It's interesting, not just because of the basic facts, but also because it gets into the details of why we don't know more.
Promoting microbial degradation of oil has been one of the main arguments in favor of dispersant use. Interestingly, the PWSRCAC review (covering literature from 1997-2008) did not identify any recent study that explicitly found dispersant use enhancing the biodegradation of oil. Actually, ~50% of studies found that chemical additives inhibited microbial degradation and the other half of studies didn’t find any significant difference between treatment and control groups.
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