From the L.A. Times. The study was done at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

I reproduce in full the pathetic attempts by Woods Hole to salvage the disaster they so desperately want:

^But though it would be heartening to think that the bacteria had digested all the oil, Richard Camilli, an oceanographer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, said it was also possible that that the oil plume had moved or diluted to a point beyond detection.^

^"It becomes more difficult to find the plume after you've turned off the source," said Camilli, who led a study published last week in Science that found the oil plume was 22 miles long when it was mapped in June. He compared it to "a train that's leaving the station."^

^Camilli said the new study showed the bacteria weren't severely depleting the oxygen in the water. Thus, they were unlikely to create any "dead zones" - ocean regions where marine life cannot flourish - around the gulf's fisheries.^

^But the study also showed the bacteria preferred to eat certain hydrocarbons in the oil - short-chain alkanes - over others. This suggested that long-chain molecules, including some of the more damaging hydrocarbons, would not disappear as quickly, Camilli said.^

I want you to roll that phrase around in your mind a bit: "it was also possible that the oil plume had moved or diluted to a point beyond detection." In short, the inability to prove it's there is no proof that it isn't there.

As a side note, an earlier story, linked elsewhere on this thread, quoted Woods Hole as follows:

^"The scientists said that when they studied it, they saw little evidence that the oil was being rapidly consumed by the gulf's petroleum-eating microbes. The plume was in a deep, cold region where microbes tend to work slowly."^

Note in the L.A. Times story that the oil-eating microbes in question functioned quite well packed in ice.