Satellite Image, courtesy of NASA, of Gulf from New Orleans to Mobile, showing oil slick.
Fourth in a series 1, 2, 3, 4) that began on “Earth Day” (0).
Steve Gelsi at Marketwatch (click here) reports that BP is now siphoning 3,000 Barrels Per Day from the Deepwater Horizon Spill. According to research by NPR, the spill was 70,000 barrels per day. In the 30 days that have elapsed since the April 20 accident a total 2,100,000 to barrels have spilled. And BP is siphoning off 3,000 per day. At that rate the spill will be cleaned up in only 700 days if it were to stop gushing now. That’s less than two years.
Greg Bluestein and Michael Kunzelman at Gouverneur Times (click here) report that oil from the slick has entered the Loop Current – which is part of the Gulf Stream.
This could be for fossil fuels what Chernobyl was for nuclear power.
Full text below the click.
May 20, 2010, 9:30 a.m. EDT
BP now siphoning 3,000 barrels a day from subsea spill
Disaster marks one month anniversary since April 20 accident
By Steve Gelsi, MarketWatchNEW YORK (MarketWatch) — BP said Thursday that the volume of oil being collected from the leak in the Gulf of Mexico is now around 3,000 barrels a day, as the environmental disaster marks one month since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20.
Houston energy research firm Tudor Pickering Holt noted the cause of the blast remains unknown despite a series of hearings on Capitol Hill between energy company executives and members of Congress.
Reports surfaced of oil washing up in Louisiana wetlands, while parts of the massive spill have apparently been caught up by the powerful Loop Current, which leads to the Gulf Stream on the Eastern Seaboard.
Greenpeace scale BP’s London HQGreenpeace activists scale BP’s London HQ building and hang a oil stained flag with “British Polluters” on it on the day of a visit by BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward. Video Courtesy of Greenpeace.
BP (NYSE:BP) (LONDON:UK:BP.) said it managed to boost the amount of oil from a mile-long collection pipe reaching down to the broken well pipe at the bottom of the ocean to 3,000 barrels a day from 2,000 barrels a day. BP and the U.S. Coast Guard have officially estimated the spill at 5,000 barrels a day, but others have said it could be much higher.
In its latest update, BP is readying a “top kill” operation to seal the leaking well with cement as soon as Sunday.
So far, 19,000 claims related to the spill have been filed and around 8,000 payments have been made by the company. The company added that skimming operations have recovered 187,000 barrels of oil liquid from the surface of the water.
Tudor Pickering Holt analysts said they’re been frustrated the “lack of answers” from BP executive Lamar McKay, who testified Wednesday at the House Infrastructure committee.
Tudor Pickering said they’d like to know why more precautions weren’t taken during the cementing process of the well casing, prior to the gas leak and subsequent explosion. After the blast on April 20, the Deepwater Horizon rig, leased by BP and owned by Transocean (NYSE:RIG) , sank on April 22.
They’d like BP to reveal the testing data about the rate of the leak and more information on why a pressure test of sealing cement in the well casing was apparently ignored or overlooked.
“When will BP provide someone on Capitol Hill who has the ability/willingness to answer the questions?” analysts said. “After Congress asks these simple questions, we’re sure there will be more to ask, but that would be a decent start.”
Meanwhile, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal said late Wednesday that a slick of heavy oil was seen in wetland areas.
“The oil is no longer just a projection or miles from our shore. The oil is here. It is on our shores and in our marsh,” he said during a press conference, according to reports.
The National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration said late Wednesday that a small portion of the Gulf of Mexico oil slick has reached the Loop Current.
“In the time it would take for oil to travel to the vicinity of the Florida Straits, any oil would be highly weathered and both the natural process of evaporation and the application of chemical dispersants would reduce the oil volume significantly,” NOAA said.
“However, the oil may get caught in a clockwise eddy in the middle of the gulf, and not be carried to the Florida Straits at all.”
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Oil arrives on La. shore, edges into key current
Written by Greg Bluestein and Michael Kunzelman, Gouverneur Times
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — BP conceded Thursday that more oil than it estimated is gushing into the Gulf of Mexico as heavy crude washed into Louisiana’s wetlands for the first time, feeding worries and uncertainty about the massive monthlong spill.Mark Proegler, a spokesman for oil giant BP PLC, said a mile-long tube inserted into a leaking pipe over the weekend is capturing 210,000 gallons a day — the total amount the company and the Coast Guard have estimated is gushing into the sea — but some is still escaping. He would not say how much.
Several professors who have watched video of the leak have already said they believe the amount spewing out is much higher than the official estimates.
Proegler said the 210,000 gallons — 5,000 barrels — has always been just an estimate because there is no way to measure how much is spilling from the seafloor.
The well blew out after an explosion a month ago on the offshore drilling rig Deepwater Horizon that killed 11 people.
Brown ooze from the spill coated marsh grasses and hung in the shallow water of a wetland at Louisiana’s southeastern tip, the first heavy oil seen on shore so far. Gov. Bobby Jindal declared Wednesday it was just the outer edge of the real spill, much heavier than an oily sheen seen before.
“This is the heavy oil that everyone’s been fearing that is here now,” Jindal said during a boat tour. The wetlands at the mouth of the Mississippi are home to rare birds, mammals and a wide variety of marine life.
BP, which was leasing the rig when it exploded, was marshaling equipment and conducting tests Thursday ahead of a new effort to choke off the oil’s flow. Crews hoped that by Sunday they can start a procedure known as a “top kill,” which involves pumping heavy mud into the crippled equipment on top of the well, then permanently sealing it with cement.
The procedure has been used before to halt gushing oil above ground, but like other methods BP is exploring it has never been used 5,000 feet below the sea. That’s why scientists and engineers have spent much of the last week preparing and taking a series of measurements to make sure that the mission doesn’t backfire.
“The philosophy from the beginning is not to take any action which could make the situation worse, and those are the final steps we’re doing,” said Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer.
In addition to the oil washing up in Louisiana, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Wednesday that a small portion of the slick had entered the so-called loop current, a stream of fast moving water that circulates around the Gulf before bending around Florida and up the Atlantic coast. Its arrival may portend a wider environmental catastrophe affecting the Florida Keys and tourist-dotted beaches along that state’s east coast.
Tracking the unpredictable spill and the complex loop current is a challenge for scientists, said Charlie Henry, a NOAA environmental scientist.
The loop moves based on the shifting winds and other environmental factors, so even though the oil is leaking continuously it may be in the current one day, and out the next. And the slick itself has defied scientists’ efforts to track it and predict its path. Instead, it has repeatedly advanced and retreated, an ominous, shape-shifting mass in the Gulf, with vast underwater lobes extending outward.
Even farther south, U.S. officials were talking to Cuba about how to respond to the spill should it reach the island’s northern coast, a U.S. State Department spokesman said.
Florida’s state meteorologist said it will be at least another seven days before the oil reaches waters west of the Keys, and state officials sought to reassure visitors that beaches are still clean and safe. During a news conference, David Halstead, the director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, showed off a picture of a Coppertone bottle on a beach.
“What’s the only oil on the beaches? Suntan oil,” Halstead said.
Tar balls found earlier in the Florida Keys were not from the spill, the Coast Guard said Wednesday. Still, at least 6 million gallons have already poured into the Gulf off Louisiana since the rig explosion. The Exxon Valdez tanker spilled 11 million gallons in Alaska in 1989.
Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., said in a news release that BP complied with his request that a live feed of the oil spill be made publicly available on the Web.
It was not available Thursday morning but Eben Burnham-Snyder, spokesman for the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, said in an e-mail that it should show up soon.
Greenpeace activists scaled BP’s London headquarters Thursday to hang a flag accusing the oil company of polluting the environment. The group said the action was prompted by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill as well as a controversial project in Canada.
“It takes some cheek to go and use a sunflower logo when your business is dirty oil,” Greenpeace activist Ben Stewart said from a balcony above the headquarters’ front door in a telephone interview.
BP spokesman Robert Wine called the action “a very calm and genteel protest,” and said no employees had been prevented from getting to work.
Associated Press Writers Kelli Kennedy in Miami, Ben Evans in Washington, Chris Kahn in New York, Kevin McGill in Venice, La., Janet McConnaughey in New Orleans, and Mike Baker in Raleigh, N.C., contributed to this report.