BP Partially Contains Gulf Oil Spill; Environmental Cleanup Will Take Years
After many failed attempts, BP is finally making progress at containing the oil that is leaking into the Gulf of Mexico.
Over the weekend, BP nearly doubled the amount of crude oil it is collecting from the ruptured undersea oil well that has been spewing oil into the gulf since April 20, when the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig killed 11 people and started the largest man-made environmental disaster in U.S. history.
Despite that positive news, U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the federal government’s response manager for the disaster, said that surface cleanup of the oil spill would take “well into the fall” and that repairing environmental damage and restoring wildlife habitat are “long-term issues” that “will be years” of ongoing effort.
“We’re making the right progress, [but] I don’t think anyone should be pleased as long as there’s oil in the water,” Allen said on CNN’s State of the Union. “The oil “is an insidious enemy. It’s attacking all of our shores; it’s holding the Gulf hostage, basically.”
In another weekend television appearance, on ABC’s This Week, Allen described the oil spill as a series of disconnected pools, ranging from 20 yards to several miles in length.
“The spill has disaggregated over a 200-mile radius around the wellbore,” he said. “It’s not a monolithic spill. It is literally hundreds and thousands of smaller spills.”
On Saturday morning, engineers reported that the new containment dome they placed over the damaged oil well on late last week had enabled them to collect 6,000 barrels of oil in 24 hours. By Sunday, they were collecting oil at the rate of 10,000 barrels daily, and by early Monday that figure had increased to just over 11,000 barrels.
The oil is captured by the containment dome as it leaks out of the ruptured well and funneled to a ship on the surface. Admiral Allen said on Monday that BP now “anticipates moving another craft” to the well site to further increase the amount of oil the company is able to capture to about 20,000 barrels daily. The ships BP is using are capable of collecting about 15,000 barrels of oil per day, Allen said.
Current officials estimates are that the ruptured well is releasing approximately 19,000 barrels of oil per day into the Gulf of Mexico, but some estimates say the figure is probably closer to 25,000 barrels. There is also some concern among government officials that BP may have increased the flow of oil by as much as 20 percent when engineers cut the damaged riser before lowering the containment dome. Engineers cut the riser to improve their chances of achieving a better seal with the new dome, and to avoid problems that caused an earlier attempt to contain the well to fail.
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