The oil is coming ashore, seeping into the Louisiana marshes and washing up on Alabama beaches. Daily overflights show an oily sheen stretching over several hundred miles of the Gulf of Mexico?rainbow sheen, intermittent sheen, windows of sheen. In places it clots into mousse, orange and brown. Underwater cameras give a live feed from the source, a mile below the surface: oil gushing up from the seabed in a sinuous, ceaseless heave.

It has been more than five weeks since the Deepwater Horizon rig sank, and the oil spill that resulted is very conspicuously continuing. While BP, the company responsible for the disaster, has not contradicted a government estimate that the well is spilling some 5,000 barrels a day, outside scientists have estimated that the rate is as much as ten times greater. Teams of ships have skimmed up millions of barrels of oily water, and unfurled miles of barrier boom. Tony Hayward, the company?s CEO, vows to clean up ?every last drop? of oil that reaches land, which is a bit unrealistic.

The larger issue is that oil is still leaking. BP has thrown ideas at the situation, none of which, to date, have made a big difference. The company has managed to thread a long, thin tube into the broken pipe, but that is only drawing off a fraction of the flow. On May 26th BP started to pump heavy drilling mud into the blowout preventer, the set of valves at the top of the well to which that broken pipe is attached. This ?top? is meant to get enough mud into the well to stop the flow of oil. More than one attempt may be necessary, as may the injection of a ?bridging agent? to further gum up the blowout preventer.

As the weeks grind on, relations between BP and the federal government are fraying. Shortly after the spill, interior secretary Ken Salazar promised to keep his ?boot on the throat? of the company, but the administration insisted over and over that BP would be responsible for the cleanup, and it was content to let the company largely direct the effort. This week, in Houston, Salazar said that the administration would push BP out of the way if necessary. But that may be an empty threat. Thad Allen, the coastguard admiral overseeing the federal response, has suggested that the government needs the company: ?To push BP out of the way would raise the question of replacing them with what.? If the top kill fails, though, the government may feel that it has to exert more control over the company?s efforts, even while relying on it to do much of the work.

According to a new poll from CBS News, public opinion is contemptuous of BP, and nearly 50% Americans disapprove of Obama?s response, which has done less than some would like to interrupt business as usual. Despite the spread of the disaster, the government has continued to issue permits and waivers for offshore drilling projects, saying that offshore oil is an important part of America?s energy portfolio. But Obama seems to have decided that a tougher tone is in order. He is expected to announce new safety measures for the industry imminently.

As the federal government becomes frustrated with BP, state and local authorities are frustrated with both. Louisiana officials want to start building sand berms as barrier islands, to block oil from entering the fragile marsh ecosystems; the Army Corps of Engineers has yet to approve the plan. In the meantime, the frantic response continues. The damage will continue to spread for some time even if the leak itself is plugged.

?? The Economist Newspaper Limited