This increase will allow us to further intensify this already historic response, contain and remove oil more quickly, and help minimize the time that any oil comes into contact with our coastline.

WHITEHOUSE: President Obama Assesses BP Oil Spill Response

Cleanup crews could easily trample the vegetation in trying to remove the oil.

WSJ: Gauging Harm to Ecosystem Could Take Years

Human efforts and natural degradation did remove most of the oil, but some areas still have oil under the surface.

BBC: Oil spills: What is the long-term damage?

As you know, yesterday BP began a controlled burn designed to remove large quantities of oil from the open water in an effort to protect shoreline and marine and other wildlife.

WHITEHOUSE: Press Briefing on Oil Spill in Gulf of Mexico

The number of service unit operators, who keep the oil flowing from wells and remove obstructions such as stuck pipes and casings, is up by a fifth, to 30, 440 from 25, 360 a year earlier, putting them at number three on our list behind aircraft assembly workers.

FORBES: America's Top 20 Growing And Disappearing Jobs

Remove tens of billions of dollars invested in oil installations in Nigeria, Angola, Gabon and (more recently) in Sudan and Equatorial Guinea, and the stock of capital invested elsewhere in the continent is pitifully small.

ECONOMIST: Zambian copper

As a prelude to permanently shutting down the well, crews are trying to withdraw drill pipe hanging below the bottom of the blowout preventer and remove it from the well, so they can then remove the capping stack that's kept oil from leaking since July 15 and replace the old blowout preventer with a new one.

CNN: STORY HIGHLIGHTS

The remaining oil is treated with an alkali to remove free fatty acids (which form a soap).

ECONOMIST: Monitor

The public thinks it's likely that Obama will improve race relations, improve economic conditions, bring stability to the financial markets, make the U.S. safer from terrorism, reduce the country's dependence on foreign oil, reduce global warming, win the war in Afghanistan and remove U.S. troops from Iraq without causing a major upheaval in that country.

CNN: Poll finds great expectations for Obama