Nine Questions (and Provisional Answers) About the Spill

The sea is slow to reveal its secrets, and so is BP. The regulators and other companies caught up in the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster are almost as opaque. Whether motivated by the need for self-protection, the desire to get it right before releasing information, or the inevitable fog of a shape-shifting crisis, the sometimes conflicting statements released by BP, the Minerals Management Service, and others have left a raft of unanswered questions. How much oil is spewing into the Gulf each day? How much damage is it doing, and will the ecosystem ever recover? Who made the decisions that led to this nightmare?