Tag: Afternoon Edition

The Loop Current has started sweeping leaking crude from the giant slick off Louisiana towards Florida’s popular tourist beaches and fragile coral reefs, threatening a whole new dimension to the unfolding environmental disaster.

Scientists laid out a worst-case scenario in which the oceanic conveyor belt would see the first oil wash up in Florida in as little as six days, before carrying it up the US east coast and even into the Gulf Stream.

The British energy giant, which has been struggling to contain a month-long environmental disaster, said a tube inserted into a leaking oil pipe is now sucking up about 40 percent of the crude, twice as much as a day earlier.

The company said its “riser insertion tube tool” is carrying about 2,000 barrels a day of oil up to the Discoverer Enterprise drill ship on the surface via a mile-long pipe.

But the British energy giant’s first concrete success in almost a month of efforts to tackle the spill risked being overshadowed by fears that huge underwater plumes of crude could be starving the waters of oxygen.

“BP is burying its head in the sand on these underwater threats,” said Democratic congressman Ed Markey.

In an unusually harsh tone, Obama said he had ordered “top to bottom” reform of the federal agency that oversees oil drilling, and announced a review of the enforcement of environmental protection rules.

He hit out at the three oil companies linked to the sunken rig gushing oil into the Gulf for seeking to pass the blame, denouncing what he called a “ridiculous spectacle” by their top officials during congressional hearings.

Operations could begin as early as Thursday, as congressional hearings revealed multiple warning signs were overlooked before the April 20 blast on the BP-operated Deepwater Horizon rig.

The indicators of things being wrong included a key pressure test that failed during final operations to seal the well being drilled about 50 miles (80 kilometers) offshore.

Frustrated by the lack of progress so far, President Barack Obama dispatched a top team to BP’s command center in Houston, Texas, to discuss how to stop the estimated 210,000 gallons of oil spewing into the sea daily from a sunken rig.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu voiced some optimism as he emerged from the talks, as oil company executives were grilled for a second day by lawmakers in Washington.

Oil industry titans faced off at two separate congressional hearings examining the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig, which killed 11 workers and has led to one of the worst spills in American history.

Rig operator BP said rig owner Transocean, the world’s largest offshore drilling contractor, was responsible for the failure of the giant blowout preventer valve to stop the blast.

The British energy giant said its clean-up costs had reached 350 million dollars since the Deepwater Horizon rig sank 50 miles (80 kilometers) off the Louisiana coast on April 22 following an explosion that killed 11 workers.

The pressure on BP to plug the leak from a fractured pipe on the seabed is mounting as an estimated 210,000 gallons of crude spews into the sea each day, feeding fears of an environmental catastrophe.

The unprecedented operation to drop the 100-ton (90-tonne) chamber some 5,000 feet (1,500 meters) below the surface to cap the leak was expected to be completed within hours Friday.

“They are in the process of lowering it now,” BP spokesman John Curry told AFP about the operation seen as the best hope to stave off the biggest US environmental disaster since the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska.

A crane lowered the 100-ton dome onto the “Joe Griffin” before the barge embarked on the 12-hour journey from Port Fourchon on the Louisiana coast to the epicenter of the disaster some 50 miles (80 kilometers) offshore.

A white silo with a dome-shaped top that stands five stories high, it carries with it the hopes of coastal communities from Texas to Florida whose very way of life is under threat from the slick.

Days of work off the coast of Louisiana with underwater submarines nearly a mile below the surface finally bore fruit as a valve was secured over the smallest of the three leaks and the flow shut off.

The feat does not alter the overall amount of crude spilling into the sea and threatening the fragile US Gulf coast, but is significant nonetheless as the focus can now narrow on just two remaining leaks.

The operation to place the giant structure over the largest of three oil leaks is unprecedented and, facing depths of almost a mile, remote-controlled submarines will have to guide it into place, hopefully by the weekend.

“We are aiming to put in on the ship today and start the process,” BP spokesman John Curry told AFP, adding that containers for the remaining leaks were still being built.