BP engineers desperately explored options on Sunday to control oil gushing from a ruptured well deep under the Gulf of Mexico after a setback with a huge undersea containment dome fueled fears of a prolonged and growing environmental disaster.
The spill is spreading west, further from Florida’s beaches but toward the important shipping channels and rich seafood areas of the central Louisiana coast, where fishing, shrimping and oyster harvesting bans were extended.
BP is exploring several new options to control the spill after its 98-ton containment chamber, which took about two weeks to build, struck a snag on Saturday.
A buildup of crystallized gas in the dome forced engineers to delay efforts to place the huge containment device over the rupture and funnel leaking oil to a waiting drillship.
“We’re gathering some data to help us with two things. One is another way to do containment, the second is other ways to actually stop the flow,” BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles told Reuters in Venice, Louisiana.
BP was also exploring ways to work around the containment dome’s problem with gas hydrates, or slushy methane gas that would block the oil from being siphoned.
“One is a smaller dome; we call it the ‘top hat.’ The second is to find a way to tap into the riser, the piece of pipe the oil is flowing through, and taking it directly to the pipe up to a ship on the surface,” Suttles said.
Conducting operations a 1,6km below the ocean’s surface complicated BP’s efforts. Engineers worked with remote-controlled vehicles in the blackness of “inner space”.
At least 5 000 barrels (795 000 litres) of oil a day have been gushing unchecked into the Gulf since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20, rupturing the well and killing 11 crew members. The leak threatens to become the worst US oil spill.
On Dauphin Island, Alabama, a barrier island and beach resort, sunbathers found tar balls along a short stretch of beach on Saturday, and experts were testing the tar to determine if it came from the Gulf spill.
Ecological disaster
The spill threatens economic and ecological disaster on Gulf Coast tourist beaches, wildlife refuges and fishing grounds. It has forced President Barack Obama to rethink plans to open more waters to drilling.
The disaster could slow the exploration and development of offshore oil projects worldwide, Nobuo Tanaka, executive director of the International Energy Agency warned on Sunday.
“The future potential is offshore in deeper water and in the Arctic, so if offshore investment is going to be slowed down, that is a concern,” Tanaka told Reuters.
BP chief executive Tony Hayward told London’s Sunday Telegraph it could be weeks or months before the spill is brought under control. He said the company could spend $10-million a day on clean-up efforts.
BP may next try to plug the damaged blowout preventer on the well by pumping debris into it at high pressure, a method called a “junk shot,” or by putting a new preventer on top.
“They are actually going to take a bunch of debris — some shredded up tires, golf balls and things like that — and under very high pressure shoot it into the preventer itself and see if they can clog it up to stop the leak,” US coast board Admiral Thad Allen told CBS News. BP also is drilling a relief well to halt the leak, but that could take three months.
Hundreds of boats deployed protective booms and used dispersants to break up the oil again on Sunday, but rougher seas threatened to curtail the spill response. Crews have laid more than 305km of boom and spread 1,2-million litres of chemical dispersant.
Sandbags
The spill’s major contact with the shoreline so far has been in the Chandeleur Islands off Louisiana, mostly a wildlife reserve. The next few days threatens wider contact.
Forecasts show the giant oil slick moving west, as brisk onshore winds blow from the south-east through next weekend.
A state of emergency was declared on Sunday in Lafourche and Terrebonne Parishes in Louisiana, west of the Mississippi Delta, where training is under way to teach local fisherman how to deploy booms and assist with oil spill contractors.
Sheen was about 13 km off the coast of Port Fourchon, with heavy oil still about 45km offshore, said Charlotte Randolph, president of Lafourche Parish. “We’re keeping a very close watch, deploying boom and closing some beaches,” she said.
Truckloads of sand were being delivered to Port Fourchon to fill large sandbags, which will be dropped by National Guard helicopters in five areas along the coast.
Louisiana officials closed more waters to fishing and shrimp and oyster harvesting as the slick edged westward.
Shrimp harvesting is now banned from Freshwater Bayou on the central coast to Louisiana’s border with Mississippi. Some oyster beds west of the Mississippi River also are shut.
Seafood is a $2,4-billion industry in Louisiana, which produces more than 30% of the seafood originating in the continental United States.
In Bayou La Batre, Alabama, the Coast Guard and BP were contracting boat owners at an average rate of $3 000 per day to help with oil-skimming operations.
“I want to get it cleaned up as fast and right as I can. This is my hometown. I want to be part of this for myself and for my son,” said Lane Zirlott, a third generation shrimper.
On Dauphin Island, workers contracted by BP wore rubber boots and gloves to lay down oil-absorbing synthetic fibres called pom-poms, erect storm fencing along the beach and collect samples of the tar and water for testing.
Gary Bratt, owner of Chaise N’ Rays Rentals, which rents recreational equipment on Dauphin Island, said the threat of the spill reaching shore was ruining his business. “Our business is off 70% at this point,” with potential vacationers cancelling “right and left,” he said.
Gulf Coast politicians echoed the public’s fears.
“You’re talking about massive economic loss to our tourism, our beaches, our fisheries, very possibly disruption of our military testing and training which is in the Gulf of Mexico,” Florida Democratic Senator Bill Nelson told CNN.”
Crews laboured all weekend to cordon off the entrance to Alabama’s Mobile Bay with a containment boom fence to try to safeguard America’s ninth-largest seaport.
Ships arriving at Southwest Pass, the deepwater entrance to the Mississippi River and New Orleans, will be inspected to determine if they need cleaning.
Jon Jarvis, director of the National Park Service, and Rowan Gould, acting director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, were sent to the Gulf to help lead efforts to protect coastal communities. Gould is a veteran of cleanup efforts following the 1989 Exxon Valdez accident, the worst US oil spill on record. – Reuters