By Michael Graham Richard / Source: TreeHugger

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The BP oil spill that followed the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in 2010 was one of the defining environmental moments of the past decade. It showed the world that things will sometimes go terribly wrong, which is why we shouldn’t take stupid risks (can you imagine if that rig had been in the Arctic ocean? How easy would it have been to go up there to plug the leak and rescue people..).

It’s now been almost 5 years since over 200 million U.S. gallons of oil were spilled over an area of around 68,000 square miles, and we’re still picking up the pieces.

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The latest mystery that was finally solved involves about 10 million gallons of crude oil that government officials and BP cleanup crews couldn’t account for until now…

It was known that a portion of the oil from the spill had settled on the Gulf of Mexico sea floor, but only a small fraction had been found so far, with 70% of the oil remaining “missing”. But a new study published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology found up to 10 million gallons of crude that settled at the bottom of the Gulf.

Read more @ TreeHugger