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BP’s latest attempt to contain the ongoing oil disaster in the Gulf has come up woefully inadequate. Its containment dome effort has successfully siphoned 250,000 gallons of oil to the surface, which sounds impressive until you realize that it’s only a third of the 798,000 gallons spilling daily.

According to BP’s senior VP Boy Fryar, “that operation has gone extremely well.” Extremely well is, of course, extremely relative in such a situation; the placement of the cap itself is definitely a success, though there’s still a massive amount of oil spilling into the ocean every day. BP says that when the pressure inside the cap lessens, valves on the cap can be closed, allowing the apparatus to siphon up to 630,000 gallons to the surface a day. That’s a good number, but still not enough to divert all the oil.

Meanwhile, on the internet, there’s no shortage of places to find information on what’s happening in the Gulf (or opinions on how BP’s handing it) but here are a few particular powerful items that are making the rounds:

• Oilaholic is a new aggregator for all-things-oil-disaster,
packing a live UStream, Flickr photos, and Twitter updates on one page.

• Boston.com’s Big Picture blog delivered some of the most powerful imagery of the saga yet with “Caught in the oil,” a disturbing collection of photographs showing oil-covered wildlife.

• And Robert Reich, Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, posted a disheartening item on his blog entitled “Closing the Hole in the Gulf: A Petroleum Engineer Responds.” Take Reich’s anonymous source with a grain of salt, but it makes BP look even worse than they already do.

Source: Gizmodo.