An oil well that exploded and unleashed the worst oil spill in US history has finally been sealed.
With a final shot of cement, BP permanently "killed" the runaway Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico.
The top US spill official confirmed the successful completion of the relief well.
The well flowed unchecked for 87 days after an April 20th explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig killed 11 workers.
It released a torrent of oil that marred the coasts of four Gulf Coast states and spurred a standstill on all new U.S. offshore drilling.
The oil seeped into fragile wetlands, threatened wild life, and dealt a severe blow to the Gulf Coast fishing industry.
BP engineers sealed off the flow on July 15th with a cap on the mile-deep well, after it spewed more than 4 million barrels into the Gulf.
The BP disaster spilled around 16 times more oil than the 257,000 barrels of oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska in 1989.