The oil leak has been the worst offshore spill in US history The ruptured well that has spewed millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico has finally been sealed, US officials say.
Oil giant BP fired a final cement plug into the well on Sunday to permanently kill the leak.
The spill began after the Deepwater Horizon rig blew up on 20 April, killing 11 workers and later sinking.
A cap sealed the flow on 15 July, stemming what has been the worst offshore oil spill in US history.
The top US federal official overseeing the disaster, Coast Guard Adm Thad Allen, said the well was “effectively dead”.
“Additional regulatory steps will be undertaken but we can now state definitively that the Macondo Well poses no continuing threat to the Gulf of Mexico,” Adm Allen said.
A pressure test on cement that had been fired in on Friday and hardened on Saturday confirmed that the plug was holding.
The disaster has brought an environmental nightmare to hundreds of miles of US coast. It led to the resignation of BP chief executive Tony Hayward and the imposition of a moratorium on deepwater offshore drilling.
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