Catastrophe in the Gulf - Oil habit will lead to more Macondos

FOR seven weeks, the greatest superpower the world has seen has been unable to stop a cocktail of oil and methane – some suggest up to 25,000 barrels a day but no one really knows – pouring into the Gulf of Mexico from BP’s broken, deep-ocean Macondo well.

Though it’s over 40 years since the US put a man on the moon, the challenge of stopping the mixture spewing into the ocean depths has proved beyond their, and BP’s, capabilities. Though the country’s economy is going through a phase as grim as any in the western world, this seems to be the domestic issue with the greatest capacity to undermine President Barack Obama.

When he won the election with his great rallying call – “Yes, we can” – he did not envisage having to plug a hole in a rogue oil gusher 5,000 feet below the sea’s surface billowing a mixture of crude oil and dissolved methane under tremendous pressure and temperature. Basically, a physical challenge beyond our reach.