WASHINGTON (AP) - Live video of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill
shows the underwater plume getting significantly darker. A top oil
engineering expert says that suggests heavier, more-polluting oil
is spewing out.
The color of the oil gushing from the main pipe has changed in
color from medium gray to black. Two scientists noticed the change,
which oil company BP downplayed as a natural fluctuation that is
not likely permanent.
But engineering professor Bob Bea at the University of
California at Berkeley says the color change may indicate the BP
leak has hit a reservoir of more oil and less gas. Gas is less
polluting because it evaporates. Bea has spent more than 55 years
working and studying oil rigs.
Oil has been spewing from the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil
rig that exploded April 20.

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