It's almost as if BP was inspired to do this…. Check this book review from 2007

Ill Wind
Kevin J. Anderson & Doug Beason
Paperback 576 pages
March 2007

Ill Wind deals with an unexpected end to the world as we know it and the attempts by the U.S. government to hold the nation together, for good or ill. A very readable and believable story, this book takes its place among other speculative visions of the way our world will end, and how the pieces will be picked up.

Curled Up With a Good BookAlex Kramer is a bioremediation researcher for oil giant Oilstar, cultivating natural microbes to clean up millenial civilization's messes. His Prometheus microbe is experimental, awaiting approval by the federal government for use in oil spill cleanup operations. Racked by the pain of leukemia and grieving the deaths of his wife and two children, Alex Kramer feels he has nothing to lose when the Oilstar tanker Zoroaster spills its entire cargo off the shores of San Francisco. He prepares a modified Prometheus for Oilstar to use in its defensive public relations plan.

Todd Severyn, a Wyoming cowboy who has worked oil all his life, is put in charge of the Zoroaster cleanup. When the tanker sinks before all its cargo can be offloaded, he takes Alex Kramer's Prometheus microbe up in a helicopter to spray the spill before the bioremediation process can be stopped by court injuction. What Todd and Stanford microbiologist and chemist Iris Shikozu don't know is that the microbe they release is a mean cousin to the samples Iris okayed for the operation. This Prometheus doesn't stop at gobbling up crude oil in a restricted area. It can feed on gasoline and most of the plastics made from petroleum — the very fabric of modern civilization. Most frightening of all, it can spread through the air.

Entire review at :
http://www.curledup.com/illwind.htm