The Oil Spill: Day 93
Updated: Thursday, July 22, 2010

Tropical Storm Could Delay Gulf Oil Spill’s Permanent Fix

There is a tropical storm that formed near the Bahamas Thursday morning which could threaten efforts to permanently contain the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico this weekend.

According to CNN meteorologist Sean Morris, the weather system showed significant signs of intensification during the overnight hours with thunderstorm activity increasing.

Furthermore, several forecast models indicate that the said weather system could move into the Gulf forcing BP to put the “casing” process of the relief well on hold.

BP is also studying the possibility of using a tactic called “static kill” to help seal the broken well. This “static kill” process will involve pumping mud into the well to force oil back into the reservoir. If the weather permits, BP could begin this process as early as the weekend.

So far, the new cap that BP placed on the sunken well last July 12 is still keeping the oil inside.

The Oil Spill: Day 87
Updated: Thursday, July 115, 2010

NEW ORLEANS – BP finally choked off the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday — 85 days and up to 184 million gallons after the crisis unfolded — then began a tense 48 hours of watching to see whether the capped-off well would hold or blow a new leak.

To the relief of millions of people along the Gulf Coast, the big, billowing brown cloud of crude at the bottom of the sea disappeared from the underwater video feed for the first time since the disaster began in April, as BP closed the last of three openings in the 75-ton cap lowered onto the well earlier this week.

But the company stopped far short of declaring victory over the biggest offshore oil spill in U.S. history and one of the nation's worst environmental disasters, a catastrophe that has killed wildlife and threatened the livelihoods of fishermen, restaurateurs, and oil industry workers from Texas to Florida.

Now begins a waiting period during which engineers will monitor pressure gauges and watch for signs of leaks elsewhere in the well. The biggest risk: Pressure from the oil gushing out of the ground could fracture the well and make the leak even worse.

"For the people living on the Gulf, I'm certainly not going to guess their emotions," BP vice president Kent Wells said. "I hope they're encouraged there's no oil going into the Gulf of Mexico. But we have to be careful. Depending on what the test shows us, we may need to open this well back up."

The news elicited joy mixed with skepticism from wary Gulf Coast residents following months of false starts, setbacks and failed attempts. Alabama Gov. Bob Riley's face lit up when he heard the oil flow had stopped.

"That's great. I think a lot of prayers were answered today," he said.

President Barack Obama called it a positive sign, but cautioned: "We're still in the testing phase."

The stoppage came 85 days, 16 hours and 25 minutes after the first report April 20 of an explosion on the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon oil rig that killed 11 workers. Somewhere between 94 million and 184 million gallons spilled into the Gulf, according to government estimates.
"Finally!" said Renee Brown, a school guidance counselor visiting Pensacola Beach, Fla., from London, Ky. "Honestly, I'm surprised that they haven't been able to do something sooner, though."

"I don't believe that. That's a lie. It's a (expletive) lie," said Stephon LaFrance, an oysterman in Louisiana's oil-stained Plaquemines Parish who has been out of work for weeks. "I don't believe they stopped that leak. BP's trying to make their self look good."

Wells said the oil stopped flowing into the water at 2:25 p.m. CDT after engineers gradually dialed down the amount of crude escaping through the last of three valves in the cap, an 18-foot-high metal stack of pipes and valves.

On the video feed, the violently churning cloud of oil and gas coming out of a narrow tube thinned, and tapered off. Suddenly, there were a few puffs of oil, surrounded by cloudy dispersant BP was pumping on top. Then, there was nothing.

"I am very pleased that there's no oil going into the Gulf of Mexico. In fact, I'm really excited there's no oil going into the Gulf of Mexico," Wells said.

The cap is designed to stop oil from flowing into the sea, either by bottling it up inside the well, or capturing it and piping it to ships on the surface. Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the Obama administration's point man on the disaster, said it is not yet clear which way the cap will be used. The answer could depend on the pressure readings over the next two days.

Even if it works, the cap is not a permanent fix, and not the end of the crisis by any means. BP is drilling two relief wells so it can pump mud and cement into the leaking well in hopes of plugging it permanently by mid-August. After that, the Gulf Coast faces a monumental cleanup and restoration that could take years.

BP stock, which has mainly tumbled since the spill began, closed nearly 8 percent higher on the New York Stock Exchange after the news.
Steve Shepard, Gulf Coast chairman of the Mississippi Chapter of the Sierra Club, said he was still skeptical about the news. "I think it's a little premature to say it's definitely over. They've gotten our hopes up so many times before that in my mind I don't think it's going to be over until Christmas."

Nine-year-old Lena Durden threw up her hands in jubilation when her mother told her the oil was stopped.

"God, that's wonderful," said Yvonne Durden, a Mobile-area native who now lives in Seattle and brought her daughter to the coast for a visit. "When came here so she could swim in the water and see it in case it's not here next time."

Randall Luthi, president of the Washington-based National Ocean Industries Association, a national trade group representing the offshore oil industry, said: "This is by far the best news we've heard in 86 days. You can bet that industry officials and their families are taking a big sigh here."

The Oil Spill: Day 81
Updated: Friday, July 9, 2010

Major progress in containing oil spill may come soon: U.S. incident commander

Major progress in British oil major BP's fight against the weeks-long Gulf oil spill may come soon with a third oil-capture vessel and a new containment cap expected to be put in place as early as this weekend, the U.S. commander for the spill said Friday.

BP currently captures about 28,000 barrels of oil a day from the blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico, largely by two vessels, the Discoverer Enterprise and the Q4000.

A new oil-recovery vessel, the Helix Producer, could be hooked up to the underwater gusher Friday, thanks to a good "weather window", retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the U.S. national commander for the spill, said Friday.

The vessel is intended to increase oil-capture capacity to 53, 000 barrels a day.

The ship is expected to start siphoning oil by Sunday, Allen said.

Meanwhile, Allen said, the current containment cap "can be removed quite quickly" and BP could start replacing it with a larger and more permanent new sealing cap as early as Saturday.

There should be three to four days before crews can put the new cap in place as special tools are needed to switch out the cap, Allen said.

Once the new cap is installed, BP and U.S. government scientists should have accurate data on how much oil is leaking, according to Allen.

U.S. government scientists have estimated 35,000 to 60,000 barrels of oil are gushing into the Gulf of Mexico a day.

The spill, the worst in U.S. history, began April 20 with an explosion and fire aboard the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon drilling rig off the Louisiana coast, killing 11 workers.

So far, the spill has reached all five U.S. Gulf states, costing BP more than 3 billion U.S. dollars to clean up the Gulf.

The Oil Spill: Day 73
Updated: Friday, July 2, 2010

Florida oil spill update: Beach advisories issued at Pensacola Beach, Escambia, Walton counties

As Florida continues to deal with the horrific aftermath of the massive BP oil spill, more beaches have issued health advisories. Current advisories are underway at Pensacola Beach, Johnson Beach, Perdido Key State Park, County Park West (Escambia County) and at Dune Allen Beach Access in Walton County.

According to a release by Escambia County, the health advisory was issued after a heavy presence of oil sheen, oil mousse and tar balls were seen. All gulf beachside waters in Escambia County are under a health advisory.

Walton County beaches are open but remain under a health advisory. Authorities will assess the situation and determine whether or not to lift the advisory on Friday.

Those in Tampa and St. Petersburg, Florida are under no health advisories and beaches are open. As the 4th of July weekend approaches many Floridians and visitors would like to visit the beach to enjoy the holiday. There is no reason that those in Hillsborough and Pinellas County cannot safely enjoy our local beaches and fishing activities as the oil has not reached our waters.
Popular Tampa beaches include:Bahia Beach, Ben T. Davis North, Cypress Point North, Cypress Point south, Davis Island, Picnic Island North, Picnic Island South and Simmons Park .

Popular beaches in Pinellas County include: Courtney Campbell Causeway, Fort Desoto North Beach, Gandy Boulevard, Honeymoon Island Beach, Indian Rocks Beach, Indian Shores Beach, Madiera Beach, Mobbly Bayou Preserve, North Shore Beach, Pass-A-Grille Beach, Reddington Shores, Sand Key, Sunset Beach- Tarpon Springs and Treasure Island Beach.

Those in northern Florida should remain vigilant and continue to monitor the situation through the Healthy Beaches program here: My Florida Beaches

The Oil Spill: Day 69
Updated: Monday, June 28, 2010

Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill – June 28, 2010 Update. British Petroleum has announced that in just the last three days they have spent $100 million each day in response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, making this their most intensive spending so far, amounting to $300 million.

BP said that this amount of expenditure in such a short period demonstrates their commitment to dealing with the situation, this new round of checkbook signing brings their total so far to $2.65 billion.

Included in these new expenditures are the ongoing attempts to cap off the well, as well as dealing with the environmental destruction being wreaked on the ocean and coastline from the leaking crude oil. It also includes large amounts of direct compensation being paid out to individuals and companies who have been affected by the oil spill.

The company also announced that they are still on schedule with the drilling of the two relief wells, which are intended to permanently end the release of oil into the Gulf.

They say that progress has slowed a little in the last few days but they still believe that their initial three-month deadline can be met. They are drilling down at a rate of an average of 1000 feet each day, but technical issues meant that over this last weekend they only managed 100 feet each day.

The Oil Spill: Day 64
Updated: Wednesday, June 23, 2010

The tourism business thrives on perception. Think billboards and TV spots, deals and discounts, pretty pictures, ambiance. You can’t sell a place if you can’t sell a frame of mind. Think Nashville after those pictures of a flooded Grand Ole Opry hit the wires, or a dusted and distraught Manhattan in the days and weeks after 9/11. One could argue that nothing makes a regional catastrophe — like the Gulf oil spill — worse than when the rest of the country, or even the rest of the world, perceives the entire region to be damaged beyond visitation.

Members of the tourism industry say this crucial element of the Gulf Coast economy hangs in the balance, and with it, $94 billion in annual revenue across Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

New Orleans, for instance, sits 100 miles north of the Gulf of Mexico, but most newspapers dateline their stories from that city instead of the tiny beach towns where oil has actually washed ashore. Some of the cable networks also base their coverage out of New Orleans, combining videos of dying birds and brown waves shot an hour and a half south of the city with video shot in New Orleans. “This visual can be misleading,” said Kelly Schulz of the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau.

“Many of their television reports come from the riverfront in the heart of the New Orleans tourist district. So if our customers in Washington, D.C., turn on their TV and see water in the background, they may think the oil is in New Orleans.”

It’s not just visual confusion that poses a risk to tourism. Consider that most outlets refer to the coastal region, which runs from Los Fresnos, Texas, to Marco Island, Fla. — -a distance of more than 1,500 miles — as one place: the Gulf Coast.

It’s almost as if media coverage is contaminating the Gulf at a faster rate than the oil.

According to Jennifer Spann of the Mississippi Development Authority, “The phones just aren’t ringing as much” in Mississippi’s coastal towns. Her evidence is anecdotal, as her state has yet to compile comprehensive economic impact data for the tourism industry, but she’s heard from fishing guides and hoteliers, and business isn’t what it should be this time of year. This is somewhat maddening for Mississippi residents for one very simple reason: Their coast isn’t contaminated. From Pascagoula to Pearlington is nothing but clean beach. And that’s not just according to Spann. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which publishes maps several times a week showing which parts of the Gulf Coast are contaminated, has given Mississippi the all-clear on nearly every inch of coast.

In fact, the total number of beaches contaminated by the oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill is relatively small, according to the NOAA.

But based on media reports, you could be forgiven if you thought the entire Gulf Coast was one big tar slick. This has tourism promoters scrambling for marketing that will keep local economies in all four states from collapsing.

“We need to get on this now instead of waiting three months,” said Kristy Chandler at the U.S. Travel Association. “There are 1 million jobs on the line.”

U.S. Travel is working with state organizations to drive travel to unaffected beaches in the hopes that positive reports from these areas will keep visitors coming through August, and national companies that have a stake in the industry’s success are pitching in as well. In an effort to encourage people to visit the beach, both Trip Advisor and Travelocity have waved cancellation fees in the event that the beaches become contaminated after the trip has been scheduled. State organizations have several million dollars from BP to work with, and the Panama City Beach Convention and Visitors Bureau has invested in 25 digital billboards across the Southeast which update every couple of hours with pictures taken that day at the city’s beach.

Schulz said that the media should keep reporting aggressively on the spill. “We acknowledge what a catastrophe it is,” she said. “But we don’t want to make this disaster worse by jeopardizing the tourism industry, which employs 70,000 people in New Orleans alone.”

Even then, Schulz added, there’s no getting around the fact that “many people just don’t understand geography.”

The Oil Spill: Day 59
Updated: Friday, June 18, 2010

Officials say Pensacola Beach Dodged a Bullet

(PENSACOLA BEACH, Fla.) Some oil has washed ashore in Pensacola, but this week the beaches have been pretty clean and officials say there has not been a major dent in tourism.

Officials say in many ways Pensacola Beach dodged a bullet, at least for now, because the oil is either going to the east or the west of the beach and that means hundreds of people are still out in the sand and in the water.

Skimmers couldn't even be spotted offshore Thursday, that's because the oil sheen is even farther out than it has been in days past. Tar balls haven't skipped Pensacola Beach complete. Crews have scooped up tar balls quarter-sized and smaller, and most of the cleanup is being done at night instead of during the day because of the intense heat. With green flags flying, officials say hotels are booked.

"It's been amazing the last five weeks our hotels have been full to capacity practically," Buck Lee with the Santa Rosa Island Authority said.

Lee says cameras installed on the beach will allow people at home to see what's happening on the beach for themselves. Those cameras should be up and running this weekend

The Oil Spill: Day 58
Updated: Thursday, June 17, 2010

Gulf oil spill: Relief well is ahead of schedule

Work on the relief well, the ultimate solution to stopping the gulf oil spill, is slightly ahead of schedule, and BP expects to be able to collect up to 80,000 barrels of oil a day by late July, Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said Thursday.

Collection systems have been capturing up to 16,000 barrels of oil per day but that could increase to 28,000 barrels a day by "sometime early next week," said Allen, the Obama administration's point man on the spill. A government group has estimated that between 35,000 and 60,000 barrels a day is gushing from the well.

BP also plans to make the recovery operation more hurricane-proof with a new system of production platforms and shuttle tankers. A fleet of tankers was en route "from as far away as the North Sea and Brazil," Allen said. "But to make this operation work we will have to put in more flexible moorings and pipes with flexible hoses," he said.

In the meantime, the relief well, BP's ongoing effort to tap into the busted well head with a shaft and plug it with mud and cement is moving forward, Allen said. The interception shaft was about 1,000 feet away from the well on Thursday. BP has said that the relief will be complete in August.

"We are going down to the very bottom of the well bore for this intercept," Allen said. "Hopefully, at that point, we will start pumping mud in and fill the well bore … then put enough weight into the mud to hold the oil in the reservoir and put a plug in it."

The Oil Spill: Day 57
Updated: Wednesday, June 16, 2010

NEW ORLEANS – After 50 years of watching wetlands created by the fertile Mississippi River turn into open water, Louisiana residents finally got what they'd long awaited: A U.S. president saying he'll fight to save what little is left along their eroding coast.

Though details were vague, President Barack Obama's pledge to restore the Gulf Coast's degraded coast line has multibillion-dollar implications for the region's culture and economy and could preserve wildlife endangered by the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

In an Oval Office address Tuesday night, Obama said he was committed to making sure southern Louisiana, which is hemorrhaging a football field of marshland every 38 minutes, and other coastline are saved.

"We need a long-term plan to restore the unique beauty and bounty of this region," Obama said. "The oil spill represents just the latest blow to a place that has already suffered multiple economic disasters and decades of environmental degradation that has led to disappearing wetlands and habitats."

Obama appointed Ray Mabus, the secretary of the Navy and a former Mississippi governor, to lead the effort to develop a long-term Gulf Coast restoration plan. Obama said he wanted BP to "pay for the impact this spill has had on the region."

Coastal advocates have long said the human fabric and economic future of the Gulf Coast are at risk unless more aggressive steps are taken to inject freshwater sediment into Louisiana's estuaries. About 2,300 square miles of marshland have been lost from the state's coastline since the 1930s.

"Finally, we have someone at the highest level recognizing the significance of this issue and the significance of the pending tragedy, and just that is worth its weight in gold," said R. King Milling, a banker who chairs Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's coastal commission.

The Mississippi River built all of south Louisiana, including the fragile area on which the city of New Orleans sits, as it moved silt from the nation's heartland to the coast, creating land. But the river has been channeled since the 1930s with massive flood control structures and levees, cutting off its natural flow tendencies.

Without a new feed of nutrients and fresh water, natural erosion processes that are worsened by powerful hurricanes have steadily worn down the coast from Atchafalaya Bay to New Orleans. Delicate wildlife estuaries that provided a buffer and kept the full force of hurricane storm surge ramming urban areas have all but vanished in some places.

"For us coastal Louisiana is on life support, and it will take more than a cleanup for it to survive," said Val Marmillion, a founder of the America's WETLAND campaign, an initiative to persuade the U.S. government to use more offshore drilling royalty taxes to shore up the coast.

Obama provided few details about how his administration would restore the coast. He noted that he had approved a plan by Louisiana officials to build new barrier islands to block oil coming ashore.

Experts believe the best way to rebuild the coast is to redirect the Mississippi River's flow so that the river could mimic the way it once built up estuaries before the levees were erected.

Glen Swift, a fisherman and Arkansas native who came to Louisiana in the 1970s, said his marsh cannot be rebuilt unless the levees are taken down.

"They got it where the current (in the Mississippi) is so fast, it's carrying all the sediment out to the Gulf," Swift said. "The land's disappearing so quick, it's a man-made thing."

In 1990, Congress passed the Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection and Restoration Act, which allowed federal agencies to do about $50 million a year in small-scale restoration.

At the time, Louisiana had lost about 1,800 square miles of coastal wetlands, an area roughly the size of Delaware, according to U.S. Geological Survey maps.

Still, the loss has outpaced restoration. Since the 1990s, more than 400 square miles of wetlands have been lost, the USGS says.

Fixing Louisiana's estuarine environment is estimated to cost between $10 billion and $50 billion. To do the costly work, Douglas Brinkley, a Rice University historian, said Obama could tap a share of the billions of dollars BP is expected to pay for damage caused by the oil spill. Obama was scheduled to meet with BP executives Wednesday to negotiate a deal on compensation for the fishermen and towns affected by its April 20 blowout of the 5,000-foot-deep well.

"They (the White House) need to attack the wetlands issue head on right now," Brinkley said.

Rebuilding coastal Louisiana with river water and sediment has been studied for years and there are detailed plans on the shelf to ramp up conservation efforts.

Experts say one early effort could be to open a portion of the lower Mississippi River levee system. The break in the levee, known as a crevasse, would flush out oil and slowly help build land.

But allowing the river to run free of its channel also presents problems.

Louisiana's coast is dotted with river diversion structures running below capacity — and in some cases left unused for years. Opposition from shippers, oystermen, towns and some ecologists has stymied the reintroduction of fresh, but polluted, Mississippi water and mud in the coastal system.

"It's a balancing act," said Robert Turner, the regional director of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East, a levee agency that oversees flood protection around New Orleans.

Over at least two generations, Louisiana residents have watched as places dear to them have turned into open water. It's common to talk with 50-year-old fishermen who can point to places where ridges, airstrips, cemeteries and entire villages once stood.

Even New Orleans is at risk. Founded in 1718 on a high ridge next to the Mississippi, its growth for nearly 300 years has spread to the mushy ground once poured out by the Mississippi. Those coastal marshes are a first line of defense against massive storm surges driven in from the Gulf by hurricanes.

"If this country fails to understand the significance of this delta region, the damage to the area and the impacts of the citizens of this country will be astronomical," Milling said.

The Oil Spill: Day 56
Updated: Tuesday, June 15, 2010

'I Am With You,' Obama Promises the People of the Gulf

Briefly mentioning his upcoming Oval Office address to the nation tonight, the president promised the people of the Gulf Coast today that he is with them as they clean up from the damage of the oil spill.

“I am with you,” Obama promised from a hanger in Pensacola's Naval Air Station, “my administration is with you for the long haul to make sure BP pays for the damage that it has done and to make sure that you are getting the help you need, to protect this beautiful coast and to rehabilitate the damaged areas, to revitalize this region, and to make sure that nothing like this ever happens again. That is a commitment I am making to the people of Florida and people all across this Gulf.”

Mr. Obama referred to the oil spill – as he has in recent days – as an “assault on our shores,” which he promised to fight back with “everything that we’ve got.” He said that this is not just an environmental disaster but also an “economic disaster” for the people in the affected communities.

“Here in Pensacola and the panhandle, tourism is everything. And when the tourists stay home, it ripples out and hits folks across these communities: the charter boats, the hotels, the restaurants, the roadside stores, the shops, the suppliers, the dive shops. And if your inland waters are contaminated, if the bays and bayous are contaminated, it could be devastating, changing the way of life down here for years to come”

The president again plugged the local beaches of Pensacola, and said that people need to know that they are open for business, with sand still white and oceans still blue.

“But that doesn't mean that people aren't angry,” he admitted, “That doesn't mean that people aren't scared. That doesn't mean that people have concerns about the future. We all have those concerns. And people have every right to be angry. Those plumes of oil are off the coast. The fishing waters are closed. Tar balls have been coming ashore. And everybody's bracing for more. “

The Naval Air Station has been one of the staging areas for the response efforts in the area, and the president thanked the sailors and the Marines offering their help – along with ships, skimmers, helicopters and boom – to the relief efforts.

The Oil Spill: Day 56
Updated: Monday, June 14, 2010

(CNN) -- Oil coming ashore on the Gulf Coast has tourists keeping a close eye on conditions. States and visitors bureaus are working hard to keep the public updated and reassure beach-bound travelers. Here are some of the latest updates from destinations affected by the oil disaster:

Northwest Florida

All of Florida's beaches remain open, according to Visit Florida, the state's tourism corporation. Scattered tar balls have been found from the Alabama-Florida state line east to Walton County.

"There have been no reports of Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill-related oil products reaching the shore beyond the Northwest Florida region," Visit Florida's website said. A portion of beach was closed Saturday in Panama City, Florida, after an oil container with BP markings washed ashore. There have been no oil impacts, the Panama City Beach Convention and Visitors Bureau website said.

The water at Pensacola Beach is open for swimming and fishing, according to the Pensacola Bay Area Convention and Visitors Bureau.

A health advisory has been issued for beaches stretching from the Florida-Alabama line to the entrance of Johnson Beach on Perdido Key, the Pensacola Bay Area visitors bureau said. Swimming and fishing in the affected waters are not advised.

Gulf Islands National Seashore

The National Park Service reported heavier oiling at Perdido Key last week. The area is part of the Florida portion of Gulf Islands National Seashore. All of the Gulf Islands National Seashore sites, which are located in Florida and Mississippi, are open, the park service's website said.

Gulf Shores and Orange Beach, Alabama

Gulf Shores and Orange Beach, Alabama, have experienced significant oiling, accoring to the Alabama Gulf Coast Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Public beaches in both cities are flying double red flags, meaning the waters are closed to the public. The beaches remain open for sunbathing and walking, the visitors bureau site said. The Alabama Department of Public Health has issued an advisory against swimming in waters off Gulf Shores, Orange Beach and Fort Morgan or in bay waters close to Fort Morgan, Bayou St. John, Terry Cove, Cotton Bayou or Old River.

Grand Isle, Louisiana

Oil is affecting more than 45 miles of Louisiana coast, according to a state emergency website, although most of the coast is unaffected.
"The primary affected area is from the mouth of the Mississippi River extending east. Over 75 percent of Louisiana's coastal waters extend westward from the mouth of the Mississippi River," according to the Cajun Coast Visitors and Convention Bureau website.

Grand Isle has closed its public beach, the site said.

Forget Valdez, scientists say BP oil spill may have leaked 42M-100M gallons into Gulf of Mexico
The Oil Spill: Day 56
Updated: Friday, june 11, 2010

The Gulf oil spill is making the Exxon Valdez disaster look like a mere grease spot. Government scientists yesterday said anywhere from 42 million to more than 100 million gallons of oil gushing from a BP well has already fouled the waters from Louisiana to Florida and perhaps beyond.
The daily spill from April 20's Deepwater Horizon explosion may have been as high as 2.1 million gallons, double the previous estimate, according to the U.S. Geological survey. Exxon Valdez, once the worst U.S. spill, was about 11 million gallons.

Scientists said even if the flow so far is only half as bad as the highest estimate, gallon jugs full of the lost oil would stretch 5,500 miles from the spill to BP's headquarters in London and then on to Rome. As the oil kept spilling, packs of lawyers were circling, Wall Street traders were running scared and BP lost half its market value.

Company shares rebounded yesterday from a steep earlier slide, but Wall Street has lost confidence in the firm's ability to pay its obligations: the cost of insuring BP's debt exploded to a level normally associated with "junk" status.

Some of the more dramatic seers predict a speedy demise.

"They have about a month before they declare Chapter 11," Texas banker and oil industry expert Matt Simmons flatly declared to Fortune magazine. "There isn't enough money in the world to clean up the Gulf. Once BP realizes the extent of this, my guess is that they'll panic and go into Chapter 11."

Even pricier than the cleanup is likely to be the legal cost: more than 6,000 state and federal lawsuits have already been filed against BP, and the number grows every day. Plaintiffs include the families of the 11 workers killed in the April 20 rig explosion, thousands of fishermen and hotel owners and shareholders. State and local governments that suffered tourism losses are expected to get into the act, and the federal government is considering criminal charges.

Three separate class action suits have been filed in South Carolina - hundreds of miles away from the spill and on a different coastline.

At least six groups of BP shareholders are also suing, alleging BP misled investors about safety measures. Still, most analysts say BP - the world's fourth largest corporation - is big enough to absorb the costs of the spill./p>

The Oil Spill: Day 45
Updated: Thursday, July 22, 2010

Cap collects some Gulf oil; crude washes into Fla.

PENSACOLA BEACH, Fla. — Waves of gooey tar balls crashed into the white sands of the Florida Panhandle on Friday as BP engineers adjusted a sophisticated cap over the Gulf oil gusher, trying to collect the crude now fouling four states.

Even though the inverted funnel-like device was set over the leak late Thursday, crude continued to spew into the sea in the nation's worst oil spill. Engineers hoped to close several open vents on the cap throughout the day in the latest attempt to contain the oil.

As they worked on the system underwater, the effect of the BP spill was widely seen. Swimmers at Pensacola Beach rushed out of the water after wading into the mess while children played with it on the shore and others inspected the clumps with fascination, some taking pictures. Brown pelicans coated in chocolate syrup-like oil flailed and struggled in the surf on a Louisiana island, where the beached was stained in hues of rust and crimson, much like the color of drying blood.

"In Revelations, it says the water will turn to blood. That's what it looks like out here — like the Gulf is bleeding," said P.J. Hahn, director of coastal zone management for Plaquemines Parish as he kneeled down to take a picture of an oil-coated feather. "This is going to choke the life out of everything."

President Barack Obama was in Louisiana, his second trip in a week and the third since the disaster unfolded following an April 20 oil rig explosion. Eleven workers were killed.

In Grand Isle where the president was headed, the once-bustling fishing pier was filled not with anglers, but photographers seeking a new angle on the invading ooze. The community of 1,500 rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina and residents savor their pristine shoreline.
Their frustration is boiling over. One sign on the street said: "Tony Bologna," a dig at BP PLC CEO Tony Hayward.

Stephanie and Eugene Ryman Jr., who live in nearby Rockport, come to the pier every year to celebrate their wedding anniversary. This was their 33rd, and they were going to make the most of it — even if it meant looking at oil sheen instead of a beautiful vista.

Eugene, 54, who has worked for decades in a shipyard, said he was growing tired of the government's response.

"He ain't much of a leader," he said of Obama. "The beach you can clean up. The marsh you can't. Where's the leadership. I want to hear what's being done. We're going to lose everything."

Off the coast and a mile below the water's surface, crews were working on the cap to try to curtail the spill. The device has different colored hoses loosely attached to combat near-freezing temperatures and icylike crystals that could clog it. It started pumping oil and gas to a tanker on the surface overnight, but it wasn't clear how much.

"Progress is being made, but we need to caution against over-optimism," said Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government's point man for the disaster.

He said a very rough estimate of current collection would be about 42,000 gallons a day, though he stressed the information was anecdotal.
Robots a mile beneath the Gulf were shooting chemical dispersants at the escaping oil — though it looked more like flares when illuminated a mile underwater.

To put the cap in place, BP had to slice off the main pipe with giant shears after a diamond-edged saw became stuck. By doing so, they risked increasing the flow by as much as 20 percent, though Allen said it was still too soon to know whether that had happened.

"Once the containment cap is on and it's working, we hope the rate is significantly reduced," he said.

The jagged cut forced crews to use a looser fitting cap, but Allen did not rule out trying to again smooth out the cut with the diamond saw if officials aren't satisfied with the current cap.

The best chance to plug the leak is a pair of relief wells, which are at least two months away. The well has spit out between 22 million and 47 million gallons of oil, according to government estimates.

In Florida, spotters who had been seeing a few tar balls in recent days found a substantially larger number before dawn on the beaches.
David Lucas, of Jonesville, La., and a group of friends abruptly ended their visit to Pensacola Beach after wading into oily water.

"It was sticky brown globs out there," Lucas said after the group cleaned their feet in the parking lot and headed south to Orlando.

People should stay away from oil on the beach or in the water, but swallowing a little oil-tainted water or getting slimed by a tarball is not considered grounds for a trip to the emergency room, health officials said.

Oil is considered toxic. Short exposures may cause only fleeting symptoms, and exposure to large amounts of it for a long time could lead to problems with breathing, thinking and coordination, and potentially raise the risk of cancer, said Niladri Basu, a University of Michigan environmental toxicologist.

Children are more sensitive to pollution than adults.

Steven Majerus and his 11-year-old nephew, Zach, walked along Pensacola Beach and checked out the oil clumps as family members splashed in the surf. Majerus filled a plastic baggy with tar and photographed it with his phone.

"It's really hot. See how hot it gets in this bag with the sun beating down on it," he said.

Just to the west at Gulf Shores, Ala., Wendi Butler watched glistening clumps of oil roll onto the white sand beach during a morning stroll. An oily smell was in the air.

"You don't smell the beach breeze at all," said Butler, 40.

Butler moved to Perdido Bay from Mobile days before the spill. Now, her two kids don't want to visit because of the oil and she can't find a job.

"Restaurants are cutting back to their winter staffs because of it. They're not hiring," she said.

Meanwhile, BP's Hayward sought to reassure investors, saying the company has "considerable firepower" to cope with the severe, long-running costs. Hayward and other senior BP executives struck a penitent note in their first comprehensive update to shareholders since the oil rig explosion, stressing their commitment to rebuilding BP's tarnished reputation, improving safety measures and restoring the damaged Gulf coast.

The Oil Spill: Day 44
Updated: Thursday, June 4, 2010

Once again, BP experiment in Gulf spill hits snag
Courtesy of AP News

PENSACOLA, Fla. – BP fumbled its latest underwater experiment with the wild Gulf gusher - just like every other endeavor the company has tried to fix the nation's worst oil spill and BP's chief executive said the company wasn't fully prepared for the disaster.

First, a 100-ton, four-story box couldn't contain the spill because icelike crystals clogged the top. Then, a straw-like device that actually did capture crude was inconsistent at best. The supposed top kill — shooting heavy mud and junk into the well — couldn't overcome the pressure of the oil. And the most recent risky gambit ran into trouble a mile under the sea Wednesday when a diamond-tipped saw became stuck after slicing through about half of the blown-out well.

It took BP 12 hours to free the saw, and the company hopes to use giant shears similar to an oversized garden tool to snip off the pipe. However, the cut won't be as clean if successful, and a looser fitting cap will have to be placed over the spill.
No timetable was given for when that might start, a familiar refrain in this six-week-old disaster.

The Financial Times on Thursday quoted BP CEO Tony Hayward as saying it was "entirely fair" to criticize the company's preparations.
The newspaper quotes Hayward as saying: "What is undoubtedly true is that we did not have the tools you would want in your tool kit."
However, Hayward said BP had been successful so far in keeping most of the oil away from the southeastern U.S. coast.

"Considering how big this has been, very little has got away from us," Hayward was quoted as saying.

So far, each novel attempt to stop more oil from spewing into the Gulf has dragged on and misfired. All along, the company has been drilling a relief well, the best option at stopping the gusher — but it's still two months away.

Since the biggest oil spill in U.S. history began to unfold April 20 with an explosion that killed 11 workers aboard an offshore drilling rig, crude has fouled some 125 miles of Louisiana coastline and washed up in Alabama and Mississippi. The well has leaked anywhere from 21 million to 45 million gallons by the government's estimate.

The latest attempt to stop it, the so-called cut-and-cap method, is considered risky because slicing away a section of the 20-inch-wide riser could remove kinks in the pipe and temporarily increase the flow of oil by as much as 20 percent.

And the situation on the water's surface becomes more dire with each day.

Oil drifted perilously close to the Florida Panhandle's famous sugar-white beaches, and crews on the mainland were doing everything possible to limit the catastrophe. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the nation's point man for the spill, directed BP to pay for five additional sand barrier projects in Louisiana. Boats were also sent packing east, along with four helicopters to help skimmers spot oil threatening Alabama, Mississippi and the Florida coast.

As the edge of the slick drifted within seven miles of Pensacola's beaches, emergency workers rushed to link the last in a miles-long chain of booms designed to fend off the oil. They were slowed by thunderstorms and wind before the weather cleared in the afternoon.

Forecasters said the oil would probably wash up by Friday, threatening a delicate network of islands, bays and white-sand beaches that are a haven for wildlife and a major tourist destination dubbed the Redneck Riviera.

"We are doing what we can do, but we cannot change what has happened," said John Dosh, emergency director for Escambia County, which includes Pensacola.

The effect on wildlife has grown, too. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reported 522 dead birds — at least 38 of them oiled — along the Gulf coast states, and more than 80 oiled birds have been rescued. It's not clear exactly how many of the deaths can be attributed to the spill.
Dead birds and animals found during spills are kept as evidence in locked freezers until investigations and damage assessments are complete, according to Teri Frady, a spokeswoman for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

"This includes strict chain-of-custody procedures and long-term locked storage until the investigative and damage assessment phases of the spill are complete," she wrote in an e-mail.

As the oil drifted closer to Florida, beachgoers in Pensacola waded into the gentle waves, cast fishing lines and sunbathed, even as a two-man crew took water samples. One of the men said they were hired by BP to collect samples to be analyzed for tar and other pollutants.

A few feet away, Martha Feinstein, 65, of Milton, Fla., pondered the fate of the beach she has been visiting for years. "You sit on the edge of your seat and you wonder where it's going," she said. "It's the saddest thing."

Officials said the slick sighted offshore consisted in part of "tar mats" about 500 feet by 2,000 feet in size.

County officials set up the booms to block oil from reaching inland waterways but planned to leave beaches unprotected because they are too difficult to defend against the action of the waves and because they are easier to clean up.

"It's inevitable that we will see it on the beaches," said Keith Wilkins, deputy chief of neighborhood and community services for Escambia County.

Florida's beaches play a crucial role in the state's tourism industry. At least 60 percent of vacation spending in the state during 2008 was in beachfront cities. Worried that reports of oil would scare tourists away, state officials are promoting interactive Web maps and Twitter feeds to show travelers — particularly those from overseas — how large the state is and how distant their destinations may be from the spill.

The Oil Spill: Day 43
Updated: Wednesday, June 2, 2010

The photo featured in this article is part of the gallery of images taken by various NASA satellites over the course of the ongoing Deepwater Horizon disaster and ensuing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The natural-color image below was taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite on May 31, 2010:

In this photo we can see the position of the now-sunk Deepwater Horizon oil rig, owned by Transocean Ltd. but leased and operated by BP, who is responsible for the leak containment and cleanup cost and operations.

You can just see the Mississippi Delta poking down through the heavy white clouds in the center top portion of the photo. Oil can be seen a significant distance (221 miles) to the southwest of the leak proper, but some of this may be natural oil seepage. Oil naturally seeps up to the surface from wells, and this process has been seen in the Gulf before. It's tough to tell from this image what the source of this oil is, but it does seem to clearly be oil. They are large streaks of about 1 mile wide each.

The images selected to be shown on NASA's Earth Observatory site are actually just that - a selection of more images taken. You can go here to view the images that MODIS takes twice daily of the Gulf oil spill as part of its Rapid Response System.

The Oil Spill: Day 41
Updated: Monday, May 31, 2010

As BP prepares to launch its seventh and riskiest plan to halt the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, calls on the White House to intervene are growing.

"This is literally a war we're in," Democratic strategist James Carville told "Good Morning America" today. "There are foreign substances invading our coastline."

BP's latest plan after the failure of its much-touted "Top Kill" solution would send undersea robots to lop off the crippled pipeline. The company would then lower a small dome -- the third they've tried -- to siphon the oil.

But White House officials say this potential solution could release up to 20 percent more oil than is already gushing into the gulf if it fails. The only real fix -- two relief wells -- won't be completed until August.

Last week, Carville called President Obama's response to what is poised to become the country's biggest environmental disaster on record "lackadaisical."

Today he said Obama was doing "better," but said it's clear BP has lost control of the situation.

"I do know, for too long, they were taking BP's word for everything which turned out to be wrong at every junction," Carville said. "It's all turned out on the wrong side."

He said Obama needs to tell Americans exactly what is happening with relief efforts and why the gulf region is so important to the country's economy and environment.

"I think the president has to address the nation," Carville said. "His legacy depends on what happens with the oil in the Gulf of Mexico."

But Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told "Good Morning America" that the government doesn't have any more tactics in its arsenal than the oil industry.

"The real challenge from my perspective have been the technology aspect of this," he said. "The best technology in the world with respect to that exists in the oil industry."

The military has activated 1,400 guardsmen to the gulf region, Mullen said, and provided "tens of thousands of feet" of boom to help corral the floating gunk.

"We actually have been involved, but we have not been the lead," he said. "Any change with respect to the lead would be a decision the president would have to make."

The Oil Spill: Day 37
Updated: Thurssday, May 27, 2010

ROBERT, La. – BP hoped to know as early as Thursday afternoon if a stream of mud will finally end its Gulf of Mexico oil spill, a five-week disaster that was putting other U.S. offshore drilling projects on hold as far away as Alaska.

President Barack Obama planned to announce Thursday that a moratorium on new deepwater oil drilling permits will be continued for six months while a presidential commission investigates, a White House aide said.

Controversial lease sales off the coast of Alaska will be delayed pending the results of the commission's investigation, and lease sales planned in the Western Gulf and off the coast of Virginia will be canceled, the aide said, speaking on condition of anonymity ahead of a midday Obama news conference.
Those steps, along with new oversight and safety standards also to be announced, are the results of a 30-day safety review of offshore drilling conducted by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar at Obama's direction. Salazar briefed Obama on its conclusions Wednesday night in the Oval Office, the aide said.

With the moves, Obama is escalating his administration's response to the BP spill amid growing criticism about leadership from the White House.
It comes as British-based BP PLC, the largest oil and gas producer in the Gulf, was in the middle of its latest effort to plug the blown-out seafloor well by pumping in heavy mud.

If the risky procedure, known as a top kill, stops the flow, BP would then inject cement into the well to seal it. The top kill has worked above ground but has never before been tried 5,000 feet beneath the sea. BP pegged its chance of success at 60 to 70 percent.

The gusher off the coast of Louisiana has spilled at least 7 million gallons of crude into the sea since an oil rig explosion April 20 that killed 11 workers. Dozens of witness statements obtained by The Associated Press show a combination of equipment failure and a deference to the chain of command aboard the rig impeded the system that should have stopped the gusher before it became an environmental disaster.A BP executive said early Thursday it was too soon to say if the top kill was working and described the maneuver as an arm-wrestling match between two equal forces: the pressure of oil shooting out of the earth and the force of mud being injected into the well. "It's quite a titanic struggle of forces, and it's going to go slow," BP managing director Bob Dudley told ABC's "Good Morning America."

BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward said engineers would not know until at least Thursday afternoon whether the latest remedy was having some success.

"The absence of any news is good news," said Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, who is overseeing the operation. He added: "It's a wait and see game here right now, so far nothing unfavorable."

Fishermen, hotel and restaurant owners, politicians and residents along the coast are fed up with BP's failures to stop the oil that is coating Louisiana's marshes and the wildlife that relies on them. The anger has turned toward Obama and his administration. Polls show the public is souring on their handling of the catastrophe.

Some 100 miles of Louisiana coastline had been hit by the oil, the Coast Guard said.

Sarah Rigaud, owner of Sarah's Restaurant in Grand Isle is tired and nervous. The oil has to be stopped, she said.
"The tourists won't come," Rigaud said Wednesday, serving lunch to a half-full restaurant of mostly oil workers and local politicians who are worrying themselves.

"It makes me very nervous. I have anxiety attacks," she said. "Every day I pray that something happens, that it will be stopped and everybody can get back to normal."

Also Wednesday, the Coast Guard pulled commercial fishing boats from oil cleanup efforts in Breton Sound off the Louisiana coast after several people became ill. Crew members on three vessels reported nausea, dizziness, headaches and chest pains, the Coast Guard said. Four people were hospitalized, including one who was flown to a hospital.

The Coast Guard told all 125 commercial vessels that were helping clean up spilled oil to return to shore. Medical workers evaluated the crew members as a precaution.

If the top kill fails, BP says it has several backup plans, including sealing the well's blowout preventer with a smaller cap, which would contain the oil. An earlier attempt to cap the blowout preventer failed. BP could also try a "junk shot" — shooting golf balls and other debris into the blowout preventer to clog it up — during the top kill process.

Last week, the company inserted a mile-long tube to siphon some of the oil into a tanker. The tube sucked up 924,000 gallons of oil, but engineers had to dismantle it during the top kill.

A permanent solution would be to drill a second well to stop the leak, but that was expected to take a couple months.

The Oil Spill: Day 35
Updated: Tuesday, May 25, 2010

BP will try a controversial and unproven method tomorrow to try and kill its broken oil well on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico.
The petroleum giant will pump mud and cement into the well in a procedure called "top kill." BP admits in a statement that a top kill has never been done, quote, "at these depths and conditions before and the success ... cannot be assured." BP says the equipment for the top kill has been on site for several days and if successful could halt the flow of crude oil by Wednesday evening.

The company puts its chances of success at roughly 60 to 70 percent.

At the same time, BP is readying still another type of containment cap in the event the top kill fails. BP would first remove the damaged top of the pipe, leaving a cleaner cut that would fit neatly under the new cap. BP says the special cap, called a lower marine riser package, is on site and could be deployed by the end of the month. The oil well has been gushing crude since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20th and sank several days later.

Eleven workers were killed.

The Oil Spill: Day 34
Updated: Monday, May 24, 2010

BARATARIA BAY, La. — The Gulf of Mexico oil spill seeped miles deeper into Louisiana's fragile marshes, making it tougher to clean up or to rescue wildlife like the brown pelican, as the federal government questioned whether BP will be able plug its blown-out well on the seabed.

With frustration mounting at the global oil giant and at the government, the Obama administration pressured BP PLC to fix the gusher finally after several failed ventures in the weeks since an April 20 oil rig explosion.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said Sunday he was "not completely" confident that BP knows what it's doing.

"If we find they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing, we'll push them out of the way appropriately," Salazar said.

The White House said the Justice Department has been gathering information about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Press secretary Robert Gibbs didn't say whether the department has opened a criminal investigation. He would only tell CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sunday that department representatives have been to the Gulf as part of the response to the BP oil leak.

Salazar and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano were to lead a Senate delegation to the region Monday to fly over affected areas.
BP is getting barges and other equipment ready to prepare for a risky procedure midweek that the company hopes will finally halt the gusher.
But the "top kill" maneuver, which shoots heavy mud and then cement into the blown well, has never been tried at 5,000 feet underwater and BP officials caution they are working on a range of backup plans.

Even if it works, the damage has been done.

On Sunday, some brown pelicans coated in oil couldn't fly away on Barataria Bay of the Louisiana coast. All they could do was hobble. Their usually brown and white feathers were jet black, and eggs were glazed with rust-colored gunk.

When wildlife officials tried to rescue one of the pelicans, the birds became spooked. Officials weren't sure whether they would try again, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman Stacy Shelton said it is sometimes better to leave the animals alone than to disturb their colony.

Pelicans are especially vulnerable to oil because they dive through the water's surface to feed. They could eat tainted fish and feed it to their young, and they could die of hypothermia or drown if their feathers become soaked in oil. Just six months ago, the birds had been removed from the federal endangered species list.

With oil pushing at least 12 miles into Louisiana's marshes and two major pelican rookeries now coated in crude, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said the state has begun work on a chain of berms, reinforced with containment booms, that would skirt the state's coastline.

"As we talk, a total of more than 65 miles of our shoreline now has been oiled," Jindal said.

Jindal, who visited one of the affected pelican nesting grounds Sunday, said the berms would close the door on oil still pouring from a mile-deep gusher about 50 miles out in the Gulf. The berms would be made with sandbags; the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers also is considering a broader plan that would use dredging to build sand berms across more of the barrier islands.

At least 6 million gallons of crude have spewed into the Gulf, though some scientists have said they believe the spill already surpasses the 11 million-gallon 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska as the worst in U.S. history.

A mile-long tube operating for about a week has siphoned off more than half a million gallons in the past week, but it began sucking up oil at a slower rate over the weekend. Even at its best, the effort did not capture all the oil leaking.

The spill's impact now stretches across 150 miles, from Dauphin Island, Ala. to Grand Isle, La.

At Barataria Bay, globs of oil soaked through containment booms set up in the area. Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said BP needed to send more booms. He said it would be up to federal wildlife authorities to decide whether to try to clean the oil that has already washed ashore.

"The question is, will it do more damage because this island is covered with the mess?" Nungesser said.

Officials have considered some drastic solutions for cleaning the oil — like burning or flooding the marshes — but they may have to sit back and let nature take care of it.

Plants and pelican eggs could wind up trampled by well-meaning humans. If the marshes are too dry, setting them ablaze could burn plants to the roots and obliterate the wetlands.

Flooding might help by floating out the oil, but it also could wash away the natural barriers to flooding from hurricanes and other disasters — much like hurricanes Katrina and Rita washed away marshlands in 2005. State and federal officials spent millions rebuilding the much-needed buffer against tropical storms.

On Sunday, oil reached an 1,150-acre oyster ground leased by Belle Chasse, La., fisherman Dave Cvitanovich. He said cleanup crews were stringing lines of absorbent boom along the surrounding marshes, but that still left large clumps of rust-colored oil floating over his oyster beds. Mature oysters might eventually filter out the crude and become fit for sale, but this year's crop of spate, or young oysters, will perish.
"Those will die in the oil," Cvitanovich said. "It's inevitable."

The Oil Spill: Day 31
Updated: Fridat, March 21, 2010

The Oil Spill: Day 29
Updated: Wednesday, May 19, 2010

WASHINGTON -- The massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill is growing despite British Petroleum's effort to siphon some of the spewing crude from its ruptured deepwater well, the U.S. Coast Guard official leading the cleanup warned Tuesday.

BP doubled its estimate of the amount of crude being captured by a mile-long recovery tube to 2,000 barrels per day - but what percentage of the spill that is remains uncertain. BP has said it thinks that 5,000 barrels of crude a day are leaking from the well, but a video made public Tuesday after the tube was placed inside the broken pipe showed clouds of crude oil still billowing into the sea.

Another video provided the first public view of a second leak much nearer the runaway well's failed blowout preventer spewing oil, too. A BP robot took that video on Saturday and Sunday.

The Coast Guard commandant, Adm. Thad Allen, said that despite the siphoning, the spilled oil is spreading and now stretches from western Louisiana to Florida's Key West. The extent of the spill was straining even the substantial resources deployed for one of the worst ecological disasters in recent history, he said.

Allen said the approximately 20,000 people now working to prevent the spill from reaching land were struggling to deal with an environmental threat that he called "omni-directional and almost indeterminate" in size. He said federal disaster plans had been formulated to deal with far more localized spills.

"We're dealing with something that's more complicated than any spill I've ever dealt with," Allen told the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. "The national system did not contemplate that we would have to do all of this at once."

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration widened its no-fishing zone to cover 19 percent of the Gulf, or 45,728 square miles, and its head, Lubchenco, told a news conference that "a light tendril of oil" is spreading eastward and approaching the loop current, a powerful warm-water current that could drag the oil around Florida and into the Gulf Stream that flows up the Atlantic coast.

Lubchenco said the current would dilute much of the oil into thin strips, and some scientists have warned that these strips could cause major damage to the extensive coral reefs that hug Florida's southern coastline.

The worsening forecasts came as lawmakers turned up the heat on oil company executives for their response to the spill, which began on April 20 when BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and sank two days later into the waters off Louisiana.

BP released the new videos in response to requests from Sens. Bill Nelson of Florida and Barbara Boxer of California, both Democrats.
"Its my worst nightmare apparently becoming a reality," said Nelson, who brought to the committee hearing maps showing the potential spread of oil along the Atlantic coastline within 10 days.

Under sharp questioning from Nelson and other lawmakers, Lamar McKay, the head of BP America, said the company was focused on sealing off the spill but couldn't offer estimates of how much oil was flowing into the ocean.

The company said it would employ a new method in about a week to inject heavy fluids into the well to stanch the flow of oil and gas, followed by cement to close off the rupture - a procedure known as "top kill."

In a separate hearing, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar acknowledged to the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources that failures at his department's Minerals Management Service could have played a role in the accident.

Salazar, appearing before Congress for the first time since the spill, said the Obama administration was committed to dividing the MMS into two agencies - one to inspect oil rigs and enforce safety and another to oversee offshore drilling leases and collect royalties. The agency has been roundly criticized for what President Barack Obama has called a "cozy relationship" with oil companies it was supposed to regulate
"We need to clean up that house," Salazar said.

While some lawmakers criticized the Obama administration for what they described as a slow response to the disaster, the White House accused congressional Republicans of blocking legislation that would raise the limits on liability payments faced by oil companies from $75 million to $10 billion. BP has said it won't limit payments to the $75 million and will pay the full amount of "valid claims, which could reach into the billions.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, blocked a voice vote on the legislation because she said it would hurt small oil companies' ability to drill offshore.

In a statement, Obama said, "This maneuver threatens to leave taxpayers, rather than the oil companies, on the hook for future disasters like the BP oil spill."

The Oil Spill: Day 27
Updated: Monday, May 17, 2010

NEW ORLEANS — Oil company engineers on Sunday finally succeeded in keeping some of the oil gushing from a blown well out of the Gulf of Mexico, hooking up a mile-long tube to funnel the crude into a tanker ship after more than three weeks of failures.

Millions of gallons of crude are already in the water, however, and researchers said the black ooze may have entered a major current that could carry it through the Florida Keys and around to the East Coast.

BP PLC engineers remotely guiding robot submersibles had worked since Friday to place the tube into a 21-inch pipe nearly a mile below the sea. After several setbacks, the contraption was hooked up successfully and funneling oil to a tanker ship. The oil giant said it will take days to figure out how much oil its contraption is sucking up.

The blown well has been leaking for more than three weeks, threatening sea life, commercial fishing and the coastal tourist industry from Louisiana to Florida. BP failed in several previous attempts to stop the leak, trying in vain to activate emergency valves and lowering a 100-ton container that got clogged with icy crystals.

A researcher told The Associated Press on Sunday that computer models show the oil may have already seeped into a powerful water stream known as the loop current, which could propel it into the Atlantic Ocean. A boat is being sent next week to collect samples and learn more.

William Hogarth, dean of the University of South Florida's College of Marine Science, said one model shows oil has already entered the current, while a second shows the oil is 3 miles from it – still dangerously close. The models are based on weather, ocean current and spill data from the U.S. Navy and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, among other sources.

Hogarth said it's still too early to know what specific amounts of oil will make it to Florida, or what damage it might do to the sensitive Keys or beaches on Florida's Atlantic coast. He said claims by BP that the oil would be less damaging to the Keys after traveling over hundreds of miles from the spill site were not mollifying.

"This can't be passed off as 'it's not going to be a problem.'" Hogarth said. "This is a very sensitive area. We are concerned with what happens in the Florida Keys."

BP had previously said the tube, if successful, was expected to collect most of the oil gushing from the well. On Sunday, the company said it was too early to measure how much crude was being collected and acknowledged the tube was no panacea.

The Oil Spill: Day 23
Updated: Thursday, May 13, 2010

SAN ANGELO, Texas — NEW ORLEANS — Global oil company BP PLC said Thursday its costs for fighting a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico have risen by $100 million in three days to total about $450 million.

London-based BP PLC said in a filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that the tab includes money it has given to the coastal states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida and to the federal government for their responses.

The costs also include efforts to contain the crude, ongoing work to drill a relief well and settlements.

BP has estimated the price tag increases by at least $10 million a day. BP hasn’t incurred any massive new expenses, and the sharp increase since Monday was likely caused by a lag in reporting costs to BP, company spokesman Mark Proegler said.

Shares of BP have fallen about 20 percent on the New York Stock Exchange since the oil rig accident.

The well has spewed more than 4 million gallons of oil into the Gulf.

The Oil Spill: Day 21
Updated: Tuesday, May 11. 2010

ON THE GULF OF MEXICO — A remote-controlled submarine shot a chemical dispersant into the maw of a massive undersea oil leak Monday, further evidence BP expects the gusher to keep erupting into the Gulf of Mexico for weeks or more.

Crews using the deep-sea robot attempted to thin the oil — which is rushing up from the seabed at a pace of about 210,000 gallons per day — after getting approval from the Environmental Protection Agency, BP PLC officials said.

Two previous tests were done to determine the potential impact on the environment, and the third round of spraying began early Monday and will last 24 hours.

The EPA said in a statement the effects of the chemicals still were widely unknown.

BP engineers, casting about after an ice buildup thwarted their plan to siphon off most of the leak using a 100-ton containment box, pushed ahead with other potential short-term solutions, including using a smaller box and injecting the leak with junk such as golf balls and pieces of tire to plug it. If it works, the well will be filled with mud and cement and abandoned.

However, none of these attempts has been tried so deep — about a mile down. Workers were simultaneously drilling a relief well, the solution considered most permanent, but that was expected to take up to three months.

At least 4 million gallons were believed to have leaked since an April 20 drilling rig blast killed 11. If the gusher continues unabated, it would surpass the Exxon Valdez disaster as the nation's worst spill by Father's Day.

The engineers appear to be "trying anything people can think of" to stop the leak, said Ed Overton, a Louisiana State University professor of environmental studies.

The new containment device is much smaller, about 4 feet in diameter, 5 feet tall and weighing just under two tons, said Doug Suttles, BP PLC chief operating officer. Unlike the bigger box, it will be connected to a drill ship on the surface by a pipe-within-a-pipe when it's lowered, which will allow crews to pump heated water and methanol immediately to prevent the ice buildup.

The Oil Spill: Day 20
Updated: Monday, May 10. 2010

BP’s effort to use a giant containment dome to stop the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico failed over the weekend. Engineers are now mulling other options to stem the flow of oil from the stricken well.

The oil spill was spawned by the April 20th explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. The blast, which killed 11 crew members, stands as the deadliest U.S. offshore rig explosion since 1968. Since the blast, the leaking well has spewed at least 220,000 gallons of oil into the Gulf every day.

On Saturday, BP’s ’s chief operating officer, Doug Suttles said the company had to at least temporarily abandon efforts to use the containment dome to cap the spill after ice-like crystals formed and clogged the structure. According to a report from McClatchy Newspapers, there appears to be no certain plan for sealing the well, raising the specter of a worse-case scenario – that the well could continue gushing for the next three months until a relief well can be completed to contain the flow.

According to the Associated Press, at least 3.5 million gallons of crude oil have poured into the Gulf since the April blast. If it continues unabated, the spill will surpass the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster next month.

BP still maintains that getting the containment dome operating is a priority. The Associated Press is reporting that BP is preparing smaller containment dome for the site. It is hoped that the smaller size will prevent the formation of the ice that clogged the first structure.

Engineers are also said to be mulling a plan to cork one of two leaks by stuffing shredded tires, golf balls and other debris into the well’s failed blowout preventer, McClatchy said. But its unclear how seriously that plan is being considered. It does come with some pretty serious risks. Officials at BP have said it could make things worse by damaging whatever part of the blowout preventer was still working.

The oil spill now covers an area in excess of 2,000 square miles. On Friday, it was confirmed that oil had reached Freemason Island, part of the Chandeleur islands. The Chandeleur Islands are a chain of uninhabited barrier islands of the Louisiana coast that are part of the Breton National Wildlife Refuge. They serve as an important migrating point for birds and are a prime marsh and forest wildlife area.

Over the weekend, tar balls began turning up on the beach of Dauphin Island, off of Alabama.

According to the Associated Press, BP has spent $350 million on the spill so far, with no end in sight. The company did not speculate on the final bill, which most analysts expect to run into tens of billions of dollars. BP, which leased Deepwater Horizon from Transocean LTD, is liable for the oil spill, including any economic damages sustained by people or businesses along the Gulf Coast.

The Oil Spill: Day 18
Updated: Saturday, May 8, 2010

NEW YORK - A methane bubble seeped from the well, burst through seals and barriers and contributed to a major explosion on April 20 that killed 11 people and caused an uncontained oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico, according to reports on Saturday.

Meanwhile, at the site of the spill about 40 miles from shore in the Gulf, authorities lowered a 40-foot containment dome over the spill, in the hope that it could start sucking up ocean water and oil by Sunday. See oil containment story.

U.S. Coast Guard
The mobile offshore drilling unit Q4000 lowers a pollution containment chamber Into the Gulf of Mexico above a massive oil spill. The chamber was designed to cap the oil discharge.
The contraption reached the sea floor late Friday. It'll take at least 12 hours to settle before robots hook up a pipe and hose that will funnel the oil up to a tanker.

While investigators have yet to finalize the cause, the possible source of the blast emerged in interviews between rig workers and University of California at Berkeley Prof. Robert Bea, who shared them with the Associated Press. Bea is an engineering professor on a National Academy of Engineering panel on oil safety and worked for BP PLC as a risk consultant in the 1990s.

Just prior to the accident, members of BP management were on board the Deepwater Horizon rig, which BP leased from Transocean , to celebrate its safety record, according to the interviews. The rig had struck oil and BP officials planned to convert the well from exploration to production.

Bea told the AP he believes a chemical reaction caused by setting cement created heat and a gas bubble which destroyed the seal.

"A small bubble becomes a really big bubble," told the AP. "So the expanding bubble becomes like a cannon shooting the gas into your face."

A BP spokesman declined to comment on the blast report late Friday.

A sheen of oil has washed up on some Louisiana barrier islands, a thicker, stickier goo is drawing closer to coastal communities.

The Oil Spill: Day 16
Updated: Thursday, May 6, 2010

ON THE GULF OF MEXICO – With success uncertain, a boat carrying a 100-ton concrete-and-steel contraption designed to siphon off the oil fouling the Gulf of Mexico arrived at the scene Thursday in an unprecedented attempt to cap a blown-out well spewing hundreds of thousands of gallons a day.

Another boat with a crane would start lowering the box to the seafloor later in the day. Engineers hope it will be the best short-term solution to controlling the leak that has only worsened since it began two weeks ago.

The waters at the spill site Thursday morning were calm with some clouds in the sky, though visibility was good. Roughly a dozen other ships either surrounded the spill site or could be seen in the distance.

Thick, tar-like oil surrounded the boat for as far as the eye could see. The pungent scent of oil could be smelled even in the bridge of the boat.
The Joe Griffin was expected to meet up with another BP-chartered boat, the Boa Sub C, a Norwegian vessel that will use a crane to lower the contraption to cover the gusher of oil spewing from the seabed — something that has never been tried before at such depths. BP spokesman Bill Salvin said the drop is expected at about noon Thursday.

"We're even more anxious," the Joe Griffin's first mate, Douglas Peake, said. "Hopefully, it will work better than they expect."
A rapid response team planned to head to the Chandeleur Islands off Louisiana's coast Thursday to look into unconfirmed reports that oil from the spill had arrived there, Coast Guard Petty Officer Erik Swanson said.

The boat hauling the specially built containment box and dome structure pushed off Wednesday evening from the Louisiana coast. The dome-like top of the structure is designed to act like a funnel and siphon the oil up through 5,000 feet of pipe and onto a tanker at the surface. Oil has been gushing into the Gulf of Mexico at a rate of at least 200,000 gallons a day since an offshore drilling rig exploded and sank last month, killing 11 people.

"We're a little anxious. They're gonna try everything they can. If it don't work, they'll try something else," Capt. Demi Shaffer told The Associated Press aboard his boat just after it set off. The AP is the only news organization with access to the containment effort.

A 12-man crew aboard a supply boat was carrying the precious cargo. The 280-foot Joe Griffin, owned by Edison Chouest Offshore, also was involved in helping fight the fire that resulted from the oil rig explosion. The vessel is named for a boat captain who worked with company founder Edison Chouest, when Chouest was still in the shrimping business.

(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

The Oil Spill: Day 15
Updated: Wednesday, May 5, 2010

NASA released updated satellite imagery of the oil spill caused by the April 20 explosion of the BP-operated Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig. Over 5,000 barrels of oil spilled into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico causing a stain that now covers 2,000 square miles.

"In an incident like this, coastal birds will be among the hardest hit. There are millions of birds at risk as the US Gulf coast is not only home to many resident species, but also a regular refuge for many birds migrating north," said Dr. Ian Robinson, IFAW Emergency Relief Director.

Species at risk include terns, herons, egrets, gannets, ducks, and Louisiana's state bird, the Brown pelican.

"When a bird's feathers become clogged with oil they no longer act as a waterproof coat. Cold water penetrates to the bird's skin and rapidly leads to hypothermia," added Dr. Robinson. "At the same time, as the bird preens, to try and clean the oil from the feathers, it inadvertently ingests toxic oil which leads to symptoms of poisoning, including diarrhea and dehydration."

Marine mammals and sea turtles are also at risk due to the volatile chemicals that will be inhaled when they surface for air and the oil that will cover their bodies as they swim.

To report oiled or injured wildlife, please call 1-800-557-1401. To report oil on land or for general Community and Volunteer Information, please call 1-866-448-5816.

The Oil Spill: Day 14
Updated: Tuesday, May 4, 2010

VENICE, Louisiana (AFP) – BP prepared Tuesday to deploy a 98-ton containment "dome" to try and stem a tide of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico and avert an environmental catastrophe.

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.

Two weeks after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, the full impact of the disaster is being realized as a massive slick looms off the US Gulf coast, threatening to wipe out the livelihoods of shoreline communities.

If estimates are correct, some 2.5 million gallons of crude have streamed into the sea since the BP-leased platform spectacularly sank on April 22, still ablaze more than two days after an initial blast that killed 11 workers.

The riser pipe that had connected the rig to the wellhead now lies fractured on the seabed spewing out oil at a rate that could see the spill rival the 1989 Exxon Valdez environmental disaster in Alaska.

ExxonMobil was forced to pay out 3.4 billion dollars (2.6 billion euros) in clean-up and compensation costs for that tragedy and BP is anxious to make sure Louisiana's ecologically fragile wetlands don't suffer the same fate.

The British energy giant has been operating a fleet of robotic submarines in the murky depths to try to activate a 450-tonne valve system that should have shut off the oil automatically when the initial blowout occurred.

Another remotely-operated vehicle has been pumping dispersant directly into the leaks, but Curry said it was too early to know if this was having a significant impact on the amount of oil reaching the surface.

BP began operations on a relief well Sunday, penetrating the sea floor as it started drilling down to approximately 18,000 feet so that special fluids and then cement can be injected to seal off the supply.

But with this process expected to take up to three months and a slick the size of a small country looming off Louisiana and threatening states from Texas to Florida depending on the wind, the dome is seen as a vital short-term fix.

The idea is to place the dome over the main leak to trap the oil so it can be funneled up to the Deepwater Enterprise, a giant ship the size of three football fields that can safely process and store the crude-water mix.

"We'll have to position it in just the right position that will enable us to lower this 98-tons of steel down into the sea over the pipe that is leaking the most," said Curry.

"The main leak is much bigger so this would greatly minimize the impact to the environment which is the primary focus here."
Stormy weather through Monday grounded aerial sorties of dispersants and prevented skimming vessels from mopping up the slick, an ever-changing rectangle covering an area 130 miles (200 kilometers) long and 80 miles wide.

Curry said the army of some 3,000 responders and 200 boats hoped to take advantage of better conditions to intensify their cleanup and preparation efforts.

"I am hopeful that we'll have some really strong efforts on the surface this week to do the skimming," he said.
The stakes are high as the region boasts some 40 percent of US wetlands -- prime spawning waters for fish, shrimp and crabs and a major stop for migratory birds -- as well as a 2.4 billion dollar fishing industry.

The first dose of economic pain came on Sunday when the government announced a 10-day ban on all commercial and recreational fishing in oil-affected parts of the Gulf.

The Oil Spill: Day 13
Updated: Tuesday, May 3, 2010

BP says it will pay "all necessary and appropriate clean-up costs" resulting from the blown-out oil well that has caused a massive slick that continues to swell in the Gulf of Mexico.

In a fact sheet posted to the company's website on Monday, BP said it took responsibility for the response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and says, "we will clean it up." The document says "BP will pay all necessary and appropriate clean-up costs."

The company says it will pay compensation for "legitimate and objectively verifiable" claims for property damage, personal injury, and commercial losses.

Federal officials shut down fishing from the Mississippi River to the Florida Panhandle on Sunday. The environmental disaster is still expected to take at least a week to cut off.

Latest NASA image (courtesy of NASA):

The Oil Spill: Day 11
Updated: Saturday, May 1, 2010

Watch as NASA zooms in on the slick.

The Oil Spill: Day 10
Updated: Friday, April 30, 2010

The unified command continues with a comprehensive oil well intervention and spill-response plan following the April 22 sinking of the Transocean Deepwater Horizon drilling rig 130 miles southeast of New Orleans. Nearly 2,000 personnel are involved in the response effort with additional resources being mobilized as needed. The federal government has been fully engaged in the response since the incident occurred April 20.

The Minerals Management Service remains in contact with all oil and gas operators in the sheen area. Currently, no production has been curtailed as a result of the response effort.

Incident Facts:

More than 217,000 feet of boom (barrier) has been assigned to contain the spill. An additional 305,760 feet is available.

To date, the oil spill response team has recovered 20,313 barrels (853,146 gallons) of an oil-water mix. Vessels are in place and continuing recovery operations.

75 response vessels are being used including skimmers, tugs, barges and recovery vessels.

139,459 gallons of dispersant have been deployed and an additional 51,000 gallons are available.

Five staging areas are in place and ready to protect sensitive shorelines. These areas include:

Biloxi, Miss., Pensacola, Fla. Venice, La., Pascagoula, Miss., and Theodore, Ala.

A sixth staging area is being set up in Port Sulphur, La.

Weather conditions for April 30 - Winds from the southeast at 20 knots, 5 - 7 seas with slight chance of afternoon showers.

126 people were on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig when the incident occurred. 11 remain unaccounted for; 17 were injured, 3 of them critically. 1 injured person remains in the hospital.

To report oiled or injured wildlife, please call 1-800-557-1401.

To discuss spill related damage claims, please call 1-800-440-0858.

To report oil on land, or for general Community and Volunteer Information, please call 1-866-448-5816.

For the latest information visit www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com or follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/RobertLAJIC or on Facebook at Deepwater Horizon Response.

For media needing more information regarding the Deepwater Horizon incident, contact the joint information center at (985) 902-5231/5240.

The Oil Spill: Will it Reach Us?
Updated: Thursday, April 29, 2010

UPDATE 11- Controlled Burn Scheduled to Begin
(courtesy of www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com)
Updated: Wednesday, April 28, 2010

NEW ORLEANS – The response to BP/Transocean’s Deepwater Horizon incident continues as responders have scheduled a controlled, on-location burn to begin at approximately 11 a.m. CDT today—a strategy designed to minimize environmental risks by removing large quantities of oil in the Gulf of Mexico following the April 20 explosion.

Part of a coordinated response combining tactics deployed above water, below water, dozens of miles offshore, as well as closer to coastal areas, today’s controlled burn will remove oil from the open water in an effort to protect shoreline and marine and other wildlife.

Workboats will consolidate oil into a fire resistant boom approximately 500 feet long. This oil will then be towed to a more remote area, where it will be ignited and burned in a controlled manner. The plan calls for small, controlled burns of several thousand gallons of oil lasting approximately one hour each.

No populated areas are expected to be affected by the controlled burn operations and there are no anticipated impacts to marine mammals and sea turtles. In order to ensure safety, the Environmental Protection Agency will continuously monitor air quality and burning will be halted if safety standards cannot be maintained.

The Minerals Management Service is in contact with the oil and gas operators in the sheen area to discuss any concerns with operations that may arise from their activities with the response efforts underway. Currently, no production has been curtailed as a result of the response activities.

The vast majority of this slick will be addressed through natural means and through use of chemical dispersants. Today’s burn will not affect other ongoing response activities, such as on-water skimming, dispersant application, and subsurface wellhead intervention operations. Preparations are also underway in Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida and Alabama to set up a protective boom to minimize shoreline impact.

These efforts are happening concurrently with BP/Transocean’s continued efforts to stop the crude that is still leaking from the well. BP is the responsible party due to the fact that they own the oil that was leaking from their well.

Emphasizing the importance of continued vigilance and interagency coordination in the response to BP/Transocean’s Deepwater Horizon incident in the Gulf of Mexico, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar yesterday announced the next steps for the investigation that is underway to determine the causes of the explosion, which left 11 workers missing, three critically injured, and an ongoing oil spill that the responsible party and federal agencies are working to contain and clean up.

Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change Carol Browner, White House Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett, Secretary Napolitano, U.S. Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Thad Allen, Secretary Salazar and DOI Deputy Secretary David Hayes also held meetings yesterday with BP, the responsible party in the oil spill, to discuss the response effort.

A coordinated response continues by federal, state and local partners while BP and other contractors work to stop the flow of oil and minimize its environmental impact. Approximately 1,100 total personnel are currently deployed and have used approximately 56,000 gallons of oil dispersant so far. Approximately 260,000 gallons of oily water have been collected. Nearly 50 vessels—including 16 skimming boats, four storage barges, 11 support vessels—and multiple aircraft are conducting containment and cleanup operations in the area.

A Web site has been established where photos, press releases and fact sheets are available at www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com. A toll free number has been established to report oiled or injured wildlife. To report affected wildlife, call (866) 557-1401. Individuals are urged not to attempt to help injured or oiled animals, but to report any sightings to the toll free number.

For more information regarding the Deepwater Horizon incident, contact the joint information center at (985) 902-5231/5240