More than 40M gallons of oil MIA

By Rick Jervis, USA TODAY

NEW ORLEANS — For more than three months, Gulf Coast residents and federal officials have asked where the oil spill was headed and how much damage it would deliver.

Now, a new, equally baffling question looms: Where has the oil gone?

The amount of surface oil that has bubbled up from the leaking well at the site of the Deepwater Horizon rig sinking has rapidly shrunk in size since the well was capped 11 days ago, according to the Coast Guard.

Recent flyovers of the spill area spotted only one sizeable oil deposit in the region, down considerably from the large pools of thick, reddish oil that washed into Louisiana's coastal marshes and beaches along the Gulf of Mexico.

"What we're trying to figure out is: Where is all the oil at?" said retired Coast Guard admiral Thad Allen, the oil response's federal overseer. "There's still a lot of oil that's unaccounted for." (more)