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The US government on Tuesday approved a plan to build the country's first offshore wind farm, in a picturesque bay near Cape Cod, a popular Massachusetts holiday destination.

Auburn University researchers said oil mats submerged in the seabed more than a year after the biggest oil spill in U.S. history pose long-term threats to coastal ecosystems across the northern Gulf of Mexico. The study, released on Tuesday by the school's engineering department, showed that tarballs churned to the surface by Tropical Storm Lee and deposited along Alabama beaches this month had "essentially identical" chemical composition as samples taken from mats after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. "Our interpretation of these observations is that submerged tar mats buried offshore of this coastline are breaking apart to yield these tar balls," the study reads, estimating the tarballs in question contained about 17 percent oil by mass.

A year after the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history, some experts are pondering the next doomsday scenario - a massive oil well blowout in the icy waters off Alaska's northern coast.