Gulf oil spill threatens economic, environmental catastrophe
Workers along the Mississippi River try to con-
tain the hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel
oil from a barge and ship collision on Wednesday.
The river is now closed to the Gulf of Mexico.
Eliot Kamenitz / The Times-Picayune
Oil is leaking into the Gulf of Mexico from the well beneath where a British Petroleum (BP) drilling rig exploded at the rate of 5,000 barrels a day, a rate five times greater than earlier estimates, the US government reported late Wednesday night. US Coast Guard officials said a scientist from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had reached the conclusion based on aerial surveys of the slick.
The spill, which is expected to hit land Friday near the mouth of the Mississippi River, threatens an ecological and economic disaster, imperiling beaches, estuaries, marshlands and wildlife. Gulf Coast fishing and tourism industries could be crippled.
Eleven workers died and four more were critically injured in the April 20 explosion on the oil rig operated by BP contractor Deepwater Horizon as it neared completion of drilling. A blowout caused by cementing operations was the likely cause.
At the current rate of leakage, some 210,000 gallons daily, the Gulf oil spill will exceed the volume of the Exxon Valdez disaster by the third week of June. By some time next week the spill will likely surpass the magnitude of the 1969 oil spill in the Santa Barbara Channel off the coast of California. That disaster led to the moratorium on offshore oil and gas drilling along wide portions of the US coast that President Obama now wants lifted.
Efforts to cap the leak, at a depth of 5,000 feet, have so far failed. Proposed solutions, such as drilling an offset well to relieve pressure or dropping a dome over the leak at the seafloor, are untested and could take weeks or months to implement. A large-scale mobilization is now under way to try to contain the spill, but major damage appears inevitable. Globe & Mail: New leak found in Gulf Spill. -Incompetent drilling leads to environmental catastrophe (about 210,000 gallons a day). The Star: Halliburton said it did a variety of work on the rig and was assisting with the investigation ["Oil slick approaches U.S. wildlife reserve"]