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NEW ORLEANS — An oil consortium says an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico today can be cleaned up far faster than five years ago when BP's Macondo well blew out 45 miles off the coast of Louisiana, spawning the nation's worst offshore oil spill.

It took BP and the industry's best containment technology 87 days to contain the deep-water blowout. The Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion and spill on April 20, 2010, resulted in as much as 172 million gallons of oil getting into the Gulf of Mexico.

On Tuesday, the Marine Well Containment Co., a Houston-based consortium developing high-tech containment technology, presented its latest pieces of equipment at a business luncheon at the Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans.

In January, the consortium announced the arrival of an expanded containment system. The containment system is made up of deep-sea capping stacks that fit over an out-of-control well and funnel spewing oil and gas through "umbilicals" to oil tankers waiting at the sea surface. The plan also includes deep-sea dispersant devices, "top hats" and other containment devices.

Read the full story at the Star Tribune>>

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