HOUSTON, April 15 (Xinhua) -- British oil giant BP said Tuesday that the U.S. Coast Guard has ended patrols and operations on a Louisiana shoreline affected by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, bringing to a close the extensive four-year active cleanup of the Gulf coast.
The company, responsible for the infamous spill in the Gulf of Mexico, said in a press release that it has spent more than 14 billion U.S. dollars and more than 70 million personnel hours on response and cleanup activities, some of which -- in the states of Florida, Alabama and Mississippi -- finished in June last year.
BP's executive vice president for Response and Environmental Restoration, Laura Folse, said, "Even though active cleanup has ended, we will keep resources in place to respond quickly at the Coast Guard's direction if potential Macondo oil is identified and requires removal."
The Coast Guard issued on Tuesday a directive on transitioning the cleanup to a phase in which U.S. Coast Guard teams, BP cleanup crews and equipment will be pre-positioned to respond to new reports of oil as needed.
On April 20, 2010, BP's Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank, killing 11 people and triggering a sea-floor gusher spewing oil for nearly three months.
With millions of barrels of oil dumped into the Gulf of Mexico, the incident is considered the largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry.
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