May 8, 2010
Jacqui Goddard
As a high-stakes operation to shut off a blown-out oil well unfolded on the seabed and a 130-mile wide slick menaced the coastline of four US states, a top US official was warning that the survival of BP as a company was under threat.
Ken Salazar, the US Interior Secretary, accused the oil giant and its partners in the Deepwater Horizon rig of “major mistakes”, adding that ’s] life is very much on the line here”.
A six-member board made up of personnel from the US Coast Guard and the Minerals Management Service, which regulates the oil industry, will begin hearing evidence next week on the April 20 disaster in which 11 workers were killed when pressure surged up a drill pipe and exploded the rig.
“From my own observations, there were some very major mistakes made by the companies that were involved,” said Mr Salazar. “Are they doing everything that they can possibly do? I hope they are.”
The slick is being watched by a satellite orbiting 440 miles above Earth, aircraft flying over the sea, boats on the surface and submarines one mile below. It has grounded industries, crushed livelihoods, triggered more than 65 lawsuits and created political uproar.
Two and a half weeks after the accident BP was making its boldest attempt yet at shutting off the flow. Deep down on the ocean floor, 50 miles off Louisiana in the Mississippi Canyon, a specially built 125-tonne box was close to being placed over the source of the leak in a nail-biting attempt at capping the ruptured well. A mile below the surface robotic submarines were helping to guide the box into place as it was lowered from the deck of a barge.
Phase two of the project involves connecting the box to a 1,5000m (5,000ft) pipe, allowing the gushing oil to be channelled to the surface and collected in a tanker. It could be operating by Sunday.
Further challenges must be overcome once the box is in place, including clogged pipes — a problem that crews will try to prevent by continuously pumping in warm water and methanol — and the danger of an explosion when separating the mix of oil, gas and water that is brought to the surface.
“I hope it works. But we are proceeding as if it won’t,” said Janet Napolitano, the Homeland Security Secretary. “We are facing an evolving situation. The possibility remains that the BP oil spill could turn into an unprecedented environmental disaster. The possibility remains that it will be somewhat less.”
Shifting winds and currents continued to keep the slick largely clear of the mainland. Southerly winds are expected to hold it offshore over the weekend although currents have started to carry it to the west of the Mississippi Delta, and some oil has settled on Louisiana’s outlying marshes and barrier islands.
The leak, which is spewing more than 200,000 gallons a day — or 2.5 million gallons since the blowout two weeks ago — has overtaken the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker disaster in terms of volume. , Commander Thad Allen of the US Coast Guard, who is overseeing the federal response, likened the salvage attempt to the rescue of three astronauts in 1970 and said that the crisis was “closer to Apollo 13 than the Exxon Valdez” because of its remote location and complexity.
Nearly 270 vessels are involved in efforts to contain the slick. More than 10,000 people are laying defences to keep it at bay, 17,500 members of the National Guard have been approved for action and thousands of civilian volunteers are on standby with buckets and shovels if and when it comes ashore.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is conducting daily imaging missions to plot its density and area, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention is assessing its health implications and the Environmental Protection Agency is monitoring pollution levels. The US Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service and multiple environmental groups are poised for an influx of oiled and poisoned birds and animals, and a ship carrying researchers from the National Institute for Undersea Science and Technology has been diverted from its mission of exploring for deep-sea corals to collect samples from the sea bed.
“In terms of the source, we know where Ground Zero is. What we don’t know is where Ground Zero is going to be at landfall,” said Rusty Gaude, a biologist with the Louisiana Sea Grant College Programme. “Whether we see oil on the beaches, or anywhere on the mainland, should not divert attention from the fact that there is now an enormous amount of contaminant floating around the Gulf.”
Biologists are worried that the oil, combined with the chemicals that have been used to fight it, will turn areas of the Gulf into a toxic dead zone. “The use of dispersants doesn’t make the contamination go away, it just changes it,” said Mr Gaude. “As the contamination is transformed by the dispersant it will move into the water column. This is our spawning system and the larva and very small animals that result from spawning are at the whims of the current — they can’t escape hostile environments as bigger fish can.
“If we are trying to keep landfall from happening, then in one sense the dispersants help accomplish that goal. But the trade-off is that we have exchanged one contaminant for another.”
Friends of the Earth started television advertisements mocking the pro-oil mantra “Drill, baby, drill!”, featuring old clips of the former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin and Michael Steele, head of the Republican National Committee, leading crowds in the chant during the 2008 election campaign. The 30-second slot shows the clips with images of the Deepwater Horizon rig in flames and shots of stricken wildlife. “If we listen to slogans, more disasters will follow,” it says.
Mrs Palin has seemed to criticise BP as a foreign — and therefore an unreliable — company. “Gulf: learn from Alaska’s lesson w/foreign oil co’s: don’t naively trust — VERIFY,” she told her 143,000 followers this week on Twitter.
The disaster has not daunted big oil. Shell urged an appeals court in Oregon to allow it to drill in the Arctic, countering a challenge by environmentalists. The Louisiana Oil and Gas Association admitted that while it expects to be hit with tighter safety regulations, the industry must stand firm.“We don’t stop because we’ve run up against the wall,” Don Briggs, its president, said. “There are 250 million vehicles in this country and 96 per cent of them run on oil.”
Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7120158.ece
Jacqui Goddard
As a high-stakes operation to shut off a blown-out oil well unfolded on the seabed and a 130-mile wide slick menaced the coastline of four US states, a top US official was warning that the survival of BP as a company was under threat.
Ken Salazar, the US Interior Secretary, accused the oil giant and its partners in the Deepwater Horizon rig of “major mistakes”, adding that ’s] life is very much on the line here”.
A six-member board made up of personnel from the US Coast Guard and the Minerals Management Service, which regulates the oil industry, will begin hearing evidence next week on the April 20 disaster in which 11 workers were killed when pressure surged up a drill pipe and exploded the rig.
“From my own observations, there were some very major mistakes made by the companies that were involved,” said Mr Salazar. “Are they doing everything that they can possibly do? I hope they are.”
The slick is being watched by a satellite orbiting 440 miles above Earth, aircraft flying over the sea, boats on the surface and submarines one mile below. It has grounded industries, crushed livelihoods, triggered more than 65 lawsuits and created political uproar.
Two and a half weeks after the accident BP was making its boldest attempt yet at shutting off the flow. Deep down on the ocean floor, 50 miles off Louisiana in the Mississippi Canyon, a specially built 125-tonne box was close to being placed over the source of the leak in a nail-biting attempt at capping the ruptured well. A mile below the surface robotic submarines were helping to guide the box into place as it was lowered from the deck of a barge.
Phase two of the project involves connecting the box to a 1,5000m (5,000ft) pipe, allowing the gushing oil to be channelled to the surface and collected in a tanker. It could be operating by Sunday.
Further challenges must be overcome once the box is in place, including clogged pipes — a problem that crews will try to prevent by continuously pumping in warm water and methanol — and the danger of an explosion when separating the mix of oil, gas and water that is brought to the surface.
“I hope it works. But we are proceeding as if it won’t,” said Janet Napolitano, the Homeland Security Secretary. “We are facing an evolving situation. The possibility remains that the BP oil spill could turn into an unprecedented environmental disaster. The possibility remains that it will be somewhat less.”
Shifting winds and currents continued to keep the slick largely clear of the mainland. Southerly winds are expected to hold it offshore over the weekend although currents have started to carry it to the west of the Mississippi Delta, and some oil has settled on Louisiana’s outlying marshes and barrier islands.
The leak, which is spewing more than 200,000 gallons a day — or 2.5 million gallons since the blowout two weeks ago — has overtaken the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker disaster in terms of volume. , Commander Thad Allen of the US Coast Guard, who is overseeing the federal response, likened the salvage attempt to the rescue of three astronauts in 1970 and said that the crisis was “closer to Apollo 13 than the Exxon Valdez” because of its remote location and complexity.
Nearly 270 vessels are involved in efforts to contain the slick. More than 10,000 people are laying defences to keep it at bay, 17,500 members of the National Guard have been approved for action and thousands of civilian volunteers are on standby with buckets and shovels if and when it comes ashore.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is conducting daily imaging missions to plot its density and area, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention is assessing its health implications and the Environmental Protection Agency is monitoring pollution levels. The US Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service and multiple environmental groups are poised for an influx of oiled and poisoned birds and animals, and a ship carrying researchers from the National Institute for Undersea Science and Technology has been diverted from its mission of exploring for deep-sea corals to collect samples from the sea bed.
“In terms of the source, we know where Ground Zero is. What we don’t know is where Ground Zero is going to be at landfall,” said Rusty Gaude, a biologist with the Louisiana Sea Grant College Programme. “Whether we see oil on the beaches, or anywhere on the mainland, should not divert attention from the fact that there is now an enormous amount of contaminant floating around the Gulf.”
Biologists are worried that the oil, combined with the chemicals that have been used to fight it, will turn areas of the Gulf into a toxic dead zone. “The use of dispersants doesn’t make the contamination go away, it just changes it,” said Mr Gaude. “As the contamination is transformed by the dispersant it will move into the water column. This is our spawning system and the larva and very small animals that result from spawning are at the whims of the current — they can’t escape hostile environments as bigger fish can.
“If we are trying to keep landfall from happening, then in one sense the dispersants help accomplish that goal. But the trade-off is that we have exchanged one contaminant for another.”
Friends of the Earth started television advertisements mocking the pro-oil mantra “Drill, baby, drill!”, featuring old clips of the former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin and Michael Steele, head of the Republican National Committee, leading crowds in the chant during the 2008 election campaign. The 30-second slot shows the clips with images of the Deepwater Horizon rig in flames and shots of stricken wildlife. “If we listen to slogans, more disasters will follow,” it says.
Mrs Palin has seemed to criticise BP as a foreign — and therefore an unreliable — company. “Gulf: learn from Alaska’s lesson w/foreign oil co’s: don’t naively trust — VERIFY,” she told her 143,000 followers this week on Twitter.
The disaster has not daunted big oil. Shell urged an appeals court in Oregon to allow it to drill in the Arctic, countering a challenge by environmentalists. The Louisiana Oil and Gas Association admitted that while it expects to be hit with tighter safety regulations, the industry must stand firm.“We don’t stop because we’ve run up against the wall,” Don Briggs, its president, said. “There are 250 million vehicles in this country and 96 per cent of them run on oil.”
Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7120158.ece
Comments
Post a Comment