Gulf Coast braces for an oily mess

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Obama puts freeze on offshore drilling

Last Updated: Thursday, May 27, 2010 | 1:24 PM ET



At a press conference at the White House on Thursday, U.S. President Barack Obama moved to freeze new offshore oil activity in the Arctic. (Associated Press)

Facing backlash over a devastating oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, U.S. President Barack Obama announced a moratorium on new drilling for oil below the Arctic Ocean.

"We will suspend planned exploration on two locations off Alaska … and suspend the issuance to drill new deep water wells for six months," Obama said at a press conference at the White House outlining the plan.

Although the moves fall short of an outright ban on offshore drilling, Obama laid out four new rule changes:

• Exploration in two sites off Alaska's coast have been suspended.
• Plans for leases off the coast of Virginia and in the Gulf of Mexico have been cancelled.
• Permits for new deep-water wells in the Gulf have been suspended for six months.
• Thirty-three current projects in the Gulf of Mexico have been suspended.

"For years the oil and gas industry has leveraged such power that they have been effectively able to regulate themselves," Obama said. "This oil spill is an unprecedented disaster."

Offshore watchdog resigns

Only hours before Obama spoke, Elizabeth Birnbaum, the head of the troubled agency that oversees offshore drilling, resigned from her post.
"The oil industry's cozy and sometimes corrupt relationship with regulators meant little or no regulation at all," Obama said of the leadership change.

There has been a lot of public outrage over the administration's handling of the devastating oil spill, which followed the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon oil platform on April 20. Although BP is managing the effort to plug the leak, Obama insisted that the U.S. government has ultimate control.

"Every action must be approved by us in advance," he said.
BP was making its latest attempt to plug the leak with a so-called "top kill" method of pumping dense mud and concrete into the hole on Thursday.

'We are going to stop it.'—U.S. President Barack Obama

"We will take ideas from anywhere, but we are going to stop it," Obama said.

The moratorium will include Shell Oil's plans to begin exploratory drilling this summer on Arctic leases as far as 225 kilometres off Alaska's shores. Now those wells will not be considered until 2011.

In March, Obama announced a new policy on offshore drilling, throwing open a huge swath of east coast waters and other protected areas in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico to drilling. That expansion now looks like it will be dramatically rolled back for some time to come.

Thursday will also be the first time the U.S. president has made himself available for a lengthy press since the platform sank more than five weeks ago.

[Beetle]

Cool solution to clean up oil disaster.

http://www.wimp.com/solutionoil/

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Florida Gulf oil spill: Plans to evacuate Tampa Bay area are in place

May 9, 8:56 PMHernando County Political Buzz ExaminerMaryann Tobin

Updated: May 22, 2010

Gulf Oil Spill 2010: Plans to evacuate Tampa Bay area are in place

As FEMA and other government agencies prepare for what is now being called by some, the worst oil spill disaster in history, plans to evacuate the Tampa Bay area are in place.

The plans would be announed in the event of a controlled burn of surface oil in the Gulf of Mexico, if wind or other conditions are expected to take the toxic fumes through Tampa Bay.

This practice is common for the US Forestry service, when fire and smoke threaten the health and well being of people.

The elderly and those with respiratory problems would be more susceptible to health risks, in the event of a controlled burn.

Estimates of the rate of BP's Deepwater Horizon oil spill have varied. SkyTruth.com, estimates the numbers at more than 1 million gallons a day, based on satellite and Coast Guard images.

Since the April 20th explosion, which resulted in the sinking of the rig, there have been more than 650,000 gallons of chemicals poured into the Gulf of Mexico in efforts to break up the spill. However, the chemicals have come under some scrutiny recently, because of their own toxic nature.

It is not certain if the massive slick will have to be set on fire near Tampa Bay, but the possibility has not been ruled out. BP has been using controlled burnes as a way to control the oil spill since the crisis began more than a month ago.

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BP Bans Aircraft Photos of the Gulf Oil Spill

Photographers say BP and government officials are preventing them from documenting the impact of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Gerald Herbert / AP

Jean-Michel Cousteau (center) was turned away from a wildlife sanctuary by the U.S. Coast Guard after they discovered that an AP photographer was on board.

As BP makes its latest attempt to plug its gushing oil well, news photographers are complaining that their efforts to document the slow-motion disaster in the Gulf of Mexico are being thwarted by local and federal officials—working with BP—who are blocking access to the sites where the effects of the spill are most visible.

More than a month into the disaster, a host of anecdotal evidence is emerging from reporters, photographers, and TV crews in which BP and Coast Guard officials explicitly target members of the media, restricting and denying them access to oil-covered beaches, staging areas for clean-up efforts, and even flyovers.

Read more at: http://www.newsweek.com/2010/05/26/t...ll-photos.html

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Obama Defends Response to Gulf Oil Spill, Pledges to 'Shut This Down'

Published May 27, 2010
| FOXNews.com


President Obama speaks at a press conference in the East Room of the White House May 27. (AP Photo)

President Obama assured the public that he is seizing the reins of the oil spill response in the Gulf of Mexico, saying Thursday that Washington is calling the shots even though it needs to rely on BP's expertise.

"I take responsibility. It is my job to make sure that everything is done to shut this down," Obama said.

Speaking at his first full-blown press conference since July, Obama rejected the notion that Washington has been sitting on the "sidelines."

He said the response is "absolutely not" going perfectly and that he was "wrong" to believe oil companies "had their act together when it came to worst-case scenarios," but insisted his administration is committed to stopping the leak and controlling the damage.

"We are relying on every resource and every idea," he said Thursday.

"We will take ideas from anywhere, but we are going to stop it."

The press conference comes as the White House battles the perception that it has not done enough to contain the damage from the gushing oil spill. The criticism has been mounting in recent days, particularly from lawmakers and political strategists typically aligned with the Obama White House.

The president took questions from 10 reporters at the press conference -- most of them dealt with the oil spill.

From the top, Obama called the leak his administration's "highest priority" and said the federal government is "in charge." He said anyone claiming otherwise doesn't know the facts.

"This entire White House and this federal government has been singularly focused on how do we stop the leak and how do we prevent and mitigate the damage to our coastlines," Obama said.

Obama said response teams are using the "best science" to plug the leak, but stressed that BP, not the federal government, has the "superior technology" to get the job done. He said the federal government is taking "full advantage" of that expertise.

But he insisted that Washington is the one giving the orders and has the authority to direct BP to change course.

"From the moment this disaster began, the federal government has been in charge of the response effort," Obama said. "BP is operating at our direction."

He added that BP will pay "every dime" for the damage it has done to the coastal communities. "BP is responsible for this horrific disaster and we will hold them fully accountable on behalf of the United States," he said.

The Obama administration unveiled a host of policy changes in the run-up to the event -- Obama confirmed at the press conference that he was extending a moratorium on new deepwater drilling permits for another six months. He also announced that drilling off the coast of Alaska was being suspended and that certain lease sales off the coast of Virginia and in the Gulf have been canceled.

Shortly before Obama entered the East Room, the head of the Minerals Management Service, which oversees offshore drilling, resigned. Obama pointed the finger at MMS during his press conference for lax oversight, but claimed that he only found out about director Elizabeth Birnbaum's departure Thursday.

"I don't know the circumstances in which this occurred," he said. Asked whether Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's job was safe, Obama said it was.

Obama claimed his administration inherited the problems at MMS, but said "I take responsibility" for problems that persisted since he took office.

As he spoke, BP was trying to inject mud into the leak to plug it, an effort the Coast Guard said was seeing some success.

[American Patriot]

Obama Returns to Gulf Amid Escalating Anger


Published May 28, 2010
| FOXNews.com

AP2010


May 27: A sign protesting the oil spill and BP is shown in Grand Isle, La.

President Obama left for the Gulf Coast Friday to survey the damage from the BP oil spill for the first time in nearly a month, while criticism of the government's response continued to build.



The president forcefully defended his administration's approach to managing the effort to both plug the leak and mitigate the damage to the coastline during a lengthy press conference Thursday afternoon. He declared that Washington is "in charge," and pledged to "shut this down." The president called the oil spill his top priority -- he was interrupting a Memorial Day vacation in Chicago to fly to Louisiana for the afternoon Friday.



But lawmakers and organizations typically allied with the White House have joined the chorus of criticism aimed at the administration. A coalition of environmental and local groups planned a press conference in Louisiana Friday to call on Obama to "federalize" the clean-up and tap the U.S. military to play a full-blown leadership role in that effort. The groups want Obama to assign a single "military disaster response director" as former President George W. Bush did after Hurricane Katrina.



"I hate to say it, but we do not have that type of federal leadership right now and so we're calling for it," Aaron Viles, campaign director for the Gulf Restoration Network, told FoxNews.com. He conceded that the government needs to rely on BP to plug the leak itself, but said more federal resources should be tapped to keep the spill from spreading and damaging the coastal environment and economy. The local Sierra Club and other groups are participating in the announcement.



"We are underwhelmed by the response," Viles said.

More than 200,000 gallons of oil a day are spewing from the blown-out well at the site of the Deepwater Horizon, which exploded April 20 and sank two days later. Meanwhile, concern grows about animals and plants on the ecologically fragile coastline, where oil began washing ashore April 29.




Obama was scheduled to attend a briefing Friday at the U.S. Coast Guard Station in Grand Isle, La., by Adm. Thad Allen, who is the one overseeing the response to the spill. An oil rig leased by BP PLC exploded April 20 and later sank, killing 11 people and releasing millions of gallons of crude oil into the Gulf. Obama first visited the region to survey the damage on May 2.
BP continued to try Friday to stop the leak a mile deep in the Gulf. After a delay Thursday to assess progress and replenish materials, the company resumed pumping heavy drilling mud into the blown-out underwater well, adding rubber and other man-made junk to increase pressure on the oil well.


Officials said it would be 48 hours during the weekend before the company will know whether the "top kill" procedure has succeeded in cutting off the oil that has been gushing into the Gulf for five weeks.



Separately, Elizabeth Birnbaum, the head of the Minerals Management Service that oversees offshore drilling, became the highest-ranking political casualty of the spill when she resigned Thursday under pressure.



Public support for Obama's handling of the ecological disaster is dropping and his move to take responsibility, answer questions and visit the region represent a more aggressive White House effort to quell the frustration.
"My job right now is just to make sure everybody in the Gulf understands: This is what I wake up to in the morning, and this is what I go to bed at night thinking about. The spill," Obama said.


Some of those feeling the effects of the oil that is soiling birds and darkening beaches along the coast had mixed feelings about whether Obama should even come to see what is happening along the coast.



"He'll have a better idea of what he needs to do or get other people to do," said Donald Lefort, 41, a convenience store clerk in Venice, La., which has become a staging area for efforts to fight the oil.



Larry Freman, 72, who was cleaning up around his vacation home on Grand Isle's main drag, which usually is packed with vacationers this close to Memorial Day, said Obama should stay home.



"I think he's wasting his time coming here," the oil business veteran said.



Buggie Vegas, owner of Bridge Side Cabins and Marina on Grand Isle, criticized the federal response but said it would be helpful for Obama to see the effects of the disaster.



New government estimates Thursday put the size of the spill at nearly 18 million to 39 million gallons over the past five weeks, surpassing the 1989 Exxon Valdez accident in Alaska. Then, nearly 11 million gallons spilled.



The Associated Press contributed to this report.

[American Patriot]

Scientists Oppose Nano-Dispersant Proposed for Gulf


Updated: 9 minutes ago



Andrew Schneider Senior Public Health Correspondent


AOL News
(May 28) -- The massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill has already hemorrhaged anywhere from 18 million to 40 million gallons of oil into the water, leaving federal and state emergency response officials desperate for any way to capture the spreading raw crude and protect the U.S. coastline.

But this week, scientists in the U.S., Canada, South America and elsewhere pleaded with the government not to approve one option: a dispersant that contains unidentified and possibly untested nanoparticles.

A group of environmental, public health advocacy and research organizations wrote a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson asking that her agency refuse to allow the use of a nano-based dispersant produced by Green Earth Technologies in response to BP's oil leak, the worst in U.S. history.

The Stamford, Conn.-based company says it sells "totally green" products created from nanotechnology and wishes to scatter G-Marine Fuel Spill Clean-UP! on land and in water affected by the BP rig collapse, the letter warned.

And Green Earth Technologies is not at all subtle about lobbying hard to obtain expedited approval for the use of the nano-dispersant. The company's green logo is a large G with wings with "Save the Earth" on one side and "Sacrifice Nothing" on the other.

"Call GET and your congressman ... need to act fast and G.E.T. Going!" urges a line at the bottom of their promotional material, websites and advertisements.

That's pretty much the last thing that those who signed the letter want to see happen.

They say that manufactured nanoparticles have been shown to be toxic to humans, mammals and aquatic life. In their letter to Jackson, they included citations to specific peer-reviewed studies documenting those findings.

"We should not blindly trust a company that will not disclose the exact nature of the manufactured nanomaterials it proposes to dump into the sea. You or I wouldn't trust a stranger who wanted to dump undisclosed chemicals in our backyards, and the EPA shouldn't trust this corporation," said Ian Illuminato, health and environment campaigner for Friends of the Earth, which distributed the letter to EPA.

Secret Ingredients

Beth Burrows, who heads the environmental think tank the Edmonds Institute and is also a signatory, expressed concerns about the secrecy that protects manufacturers from having to disclose what's in their product.

"In the case of this nano-dispersant, we do not know what the ingredients are because the companies who make it have the legal privilege of keeping its composition secret so as to protect their 'confidential business information,'" Burrows told AOL News.

Because of the secrecy, the public cannot predict what will happen when these nanomaterials are given access to a new environment, she said.

"By using these untested dispersants, we may simply be entering a new phase of pollution -- one potentially worse -- more costly to the ecosystem, the critters who live there, and those who ultimately make a living and eat from the products of that ecosystem. All of us," she added.

The nanotech company admits: "This dispersant formula is protected by trade secrets pursuant to Occupational Safety and Health Agency."

EPA Administrator Jackson was fervent in her testimony before Congress that if proper regulation of toxic material is to occur, companies must be forbidden from hiding behind the confidential business information barricade, as AOL News reported in a March series on nanotechnology.

This week's letter challenged her to keep that vow.

"The undersigned public-interest organizations respectfully urge the EPA to deny approval of this and similar projects that seek to release nanoscale chemicals or chemicals measuring less than 300 nanometers into the environment. ... We fully oppose this irresponsible, unscientific, and dangerous experiment," the letter continued.

Product Safe, Company Says

Green Earth's website says its nano emulsion technology is "a unique blend of plant derived, water based and ultimate biodegradable ingredients specifically formulated to quickly emulsify and encapsulate fuel and oil spills."

In a news release, Jeff Marshall, the company's chairman and CEO, reported that, "The (spraying) planes are on the ground and ready to go; we are just waiting for the green light from BP, EPA and FEMA.

"There seems to be a lot of confusion as to who has the authority to approve these types of initiatives, so we hope to cut through the red tape as quickly as possible," he added.

AOL News asked a company spokeswoman specifically about the safety and health testing of the dispersant and which nanomaterial Green Earth uses. She said she would have Marshall answer the questions.

But late Thursday, she said that Green Earth declined to comment.

Marshall explained on his website that the small particle size (1 to 4 nanometers) of his dispersant enables it to penetrate and break down long chain hydrocarbon bonds in oils and grease and holds them in a colloidal suspension when mixed with water. Further, he says that EPA has ruled that all of his ingredients are nonhazardous.

The EPA was asked if it had blessed or even evaluated the nano-dispersant. A spokesperson pointed to the agency's latest list of 118 approved oil controlling products and said that Green Earth's nanoproduct was not on the list.

The EPA says that so far, BP has probably sprayed or dumped a million gallons of various dispersants onto the surface of the gulf, or a mile down at the spewing Deepwater Horizon leak site or into the center of submerged, moving lakes of oil in between.

An EPA toxicologist told AOL News that "there is concern over the toxicity and possibility of harm to the environment, cleanup workers and sea life of some of the agents on the approved list."

He said "increasingly frustrated" EPA scientists and investigators have been working around the clock to verify and back-track the accuracy of the toxicity data of the authorized dispersants, often stymied because some were approved 20 or more years ago.

"If you're adding nanoparticles into the mix, how does anyone know what the health risk is to humans let alone shrimp, crab, fish and other coastal wildlife," said the veteran risk assessor, who didn't want his name used because he wasn't authorized to speak for the agency.

Concerns for Shrimper, Workers

For weeks, Dr. Michael Harbut, and other occupational medicine specialists have been voicing concerns about fishers, shrimpers and workers on the cleanup and response teams being expose to the chemicals accompanying the penetrating stench of the oil vapor and the dispersants.

Turns out those concerns were well founded.

The Coast Guard said that late Wednesday, it had to order a cleanup fleet of more than 100 boats back to their respective ports after seven crewmen on four different vessels fell ill, probably from the inhalation of toxic vapors. Five were released from the hospital, and the other two were being observed. Reports differ on whether the workers were wearing the government-approved respirators.

The report of the possible use of nano-dispersants has outraged Harbut, who heads the Environmental Cancer Initiative at Michigan's Karmanos Cancer Institute.

"A decision to use nanoparticle-based dispersants in the gulf is less an engineering or environmental decision, but more a public health and individual patient care issue. As does asbestos, nanoparticles have been shown to cause an aggressive cancer called mesothelioma," he said.

And like asbestos in its early usage, human health effects of exposure, ingestion or breathing of nanoparticles have been rarely observed, let alone studied.

"To dump tons of nanoparticles into the food and respiratory cycle in this manner is irresponsible," Harbut told AOL News

"The EPA and OSHA are well aware of carcinogens and other toxins which permeate neighborhoods and workplaces unfettered or inadequately regulated, but for political, economic or other reasons have been left to kill thousands of Americans every year. This is a record that doesn't justify trusting the agencies or the oil companies to do the right things on their own."

The EPA and the Coast Guard are trying to monitor which dispersants BP is using. But environmentalists say it's almost impossible to know what unauthorized materials and oil cleanup concoctions are being used by marina and dock operators and frustrated fishers, shrimpers and crabbers fighting to save their vital breeding grounds.

There is also clear scientific evidence showing that manufactured nanoparticles can travel up the food chain from smaller to larger organisms, thus allowing the toxic properties of manufactured nanoparticles to take hold in the animal food chain, scientists say.

"There is a very legitimate concern that nanosize particles employed in a dispersant could have a seriously damaging effect on the ecology of the ocean and sea life," said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch.

"The use of nanotechnology in the ocean is making an irresponsible experiment, and no one knows what the consequences are for the ocean or our food system."

Back-and-Forth Arguments

The entire issue of safety to the environment, sea life and humans has been hurled back and forth from Washington to the Gulf Coast in increasing ferocity. The EPA's Jackson told BP to reduce the amount of dispersants it was dumping into the water. BP ignored the request, the EPA boss said in a news conference last week.

"Due to the unprecedented nature of this event, BP has used dispersants in ways never seen before. That is in terms of both the amount applied -- which is approaching a world record -- and in the method of application," Jackson explained.

She said that dispersants were having some effect but "continue to be the best of two very difficult choices. Their use inevitably means that we are making environmental trade-offs."

But her remarks leave it unclear whether Jackson's agency will approve a nano-dispersant like Green Earth's product.

"We are still deeply concerned about the things we don't know," she said. "The long-term effects on aquatic life are still unknown, and we must make sure that the dispersants that are used are as nontoxic as possible. Those unknowns -- and the lengthening period of this crisis -- are why we last week directed BP to look for a more effective, less toxic alternative to their current dispersant."

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BP Was Concerned About Well Control Six Weeks Before Incident

Published May 31, 2010
| FOXNews.com

E-mails released by the House Energy and Commerce Committee show BP told regulators they were having trouble maintaining control of the well six weeks before it exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, Bloomberg reported.

"We are in the midst of a well control situation on MC 252 #001 and have stuck pipe," BP executive Scherie Douglas wrote in an e-mail to Frank Patton, the U.S. Minerals Management Service's drilling engineer for the New Orleans district on March 10. "We are bringing out equipment to begin operations to sever the drillpipe, plugback the well and bypass."

The e-mails, released by the committee Sunday, show BP was getting advice from J. Connor Consulting Inc., a Texas-based consulting firm that has dealt with some of the world's largest energy companies on how to deal with oil spills, as early as the second week of March.

Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, and Representative Bart Stupak, a Michigan Democrat and chairman of the panel’s oversight subcommittee, said the documents, "raise questions, but their connection to the blowout, if any, require additional investigation," according to Bloomberg.

The e-mails also show special permission was given to BP by federal regulators to cement the well at a shallower depth than normally required because the hole caved in on drilling equipment.

Click here to read more on this story from Bloomberg. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?s...I&pid=20601087

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Efforts to End Oil Flow From BP Well Over Until Relief Wells Are Finished

By Jim Polson - Jun 1, 2010

BP Plc has decided not to attach a second blowout preventer on its leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico and efforts to end the flow are over until the relief wells are finished, according to the U.S. Coast Guard’s Thad Allen, who spoke at a press conference today.

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Alabama prepares for possible Wednesday oil spill landfall at mouth of Mobile Bay

By Dan Murtaugh

June 01, 2010, 8:03AM



MOBILE, Ala. -- Oil from the massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico is forecast to hit Alabama's shores for the first time Wednesday afternoon.

A forecast map issued Monday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows a light sheen of oil completely covering the mouth of Mobile Bay and coming ashore in Baldwin County by noon Wednesday.

The NOAA maps note that moderate south to southwest winds are forecast for the upcoming week, which "indicate that oil may move north to threaten the barrier islands off Mississippi and Alabama."

"I think it's uncharted territory for everybody," said Bethany Kraft, the director of the Alabama Coastal Foundation.

An estimated 18 to 40 million gallons of oil have been unleashed since BP's Deepwater Horizon platform exploded and sank last month, killing 11.

Officials at Mobile's Unified Command Center said they will be increasing their efforts as the oil nears.

That means more boats in the water and more planes and helicopters in the air looking for surface oil near the coastline, said Lt. Cmdr. Natalie Murphy of the U.S. Coast Guard.

"We'll have more eyes to look for oil, and then we'll take care of it away from the coast," Murphy said.

There will also be people on the shore going up and down the coast looking for any sign of oil on the ground. So far, the only thing they've seen is tar balls, which they've cleaned up immediately, Murphy said.

"If and when it hits the beach, that's not to say that we've failed," she said. "Anything we keep offshore is a win, but we still have the resources to do a shoreside cleanup."

Murphy said the northern Gulf coastline has been lucky that the oil didn't arrived sooner. Forecasts released soon after the April 20 spill projected oil would hit Alabama in early May.

"We've had the gift of time," she said. "If I could thank Mother Nature, I certainly would."

Responders have used that time to place booms along the coastline, protecting marshes and other vulnerable spots, Murphy said.

"We're prepared," she said. "We've been prepared for this."

Even if the oil completely blocks the entrance to Mobile Bay, don't expect the Port of Mobile to close, said Jimmy Lyons, chief executive officer of the Alabama State Port Authority.

A project to create a floating gate of booms at the mouth of the bay to keep the oil away failed, Lyons said. But there is a "substantial amount of skimming equipment staged" in the bay to clean the oil.

As for ships traveling through the oil, Lyons said that so far the fluid has stuck only to vessels that were working deep in the spill or were anchored in the oil.

"For ships going through the thin sheen of oil, the force of water just pushes it away" he said.

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BP Effort Turns to Capturing Oil, No Plugging Before August

By Jim Polson - Jun 1, 2010



BP has given up trying to plug its leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico any sooner than August. Photographer: Patrick Kelley/U.S. Coast Guard via Bloomberg

BP Plc has given up trying to plug its leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico any sooner than August, laying out a series of steps to pipe the oil to the surface and ship it ashore for refining, said Thad Allen, the U.S. government’s national commander for the incident.

Undersea robots began sawing away damaged pipe today, preparing for the first of those attempts, Allen said today at a press conference in New Orleans. The new strategy, which is subject to disruption by tropical storms and hurricanes, will continue until relief wells being drilled can plug the damaged well from the bottom, he said.

That will happen no earlier than August. BP on May 30 said its “top kill” attempt to plug the well with mud and rubber scrap had failed.

BP will try to install a snug-fitting “top cap” over the gusher within 24 hours to 48 hours once the robots complete severing the pipe. To get a good seal, BP needs a clean cut at the top of the blowout preventer, a five-story stack of valves that failed to prevent an April 20 blowout that killed 11 people and started the spill, Allen said. Should the jet of oil and gas drive the cap aside, another cap designed to let more oil escape will be tried, Allen said.

“We’re talking about containing the well,” Allen said. “We don’t want to restrict the pressure or flow down that well bore because I don’t think we know the condition of it after the top kill.”

Relief Wells

The drilling of a second relief well resumed May 30, Allen said. It had been suspended for several days as BP and government officials, including Energy Secretary Steven Chu, weighed whether to use the rig that was drilling it to install a second blowout preventer atop the damaged one. BP decided not to, Allen said.

The odds of success for installing the oil-capturing system are better than the 60 percent to 70 percent chances the company gave for the top kill attempt that failed May 29, BP Managing Director Robert Dudley said on NBC’s “Today” show. Cutting the pipe may temporarily boost the flow of oil into the Gulf by as much as 20 percent, Dudley said on CBS’s “Early Show.”

BP fell the most in 18 years in London trading today after top kill failed to plug the worst oil spill in U.S. history. Top kill was an effort to pump fluids into the well to hold back the oil and gas long enough to allow a cement seal to stop the flow. BP is now trying to capture the oil, estimated by government scientists last week at 12,000 barrels to 19,000 barrels a day, while it drills two relief wells to permanently stop the leak.

‘Risks Are Lower’

“This is a lower-risk activity than what we were doing with the top kill,” Dudley said of the cap. “We’ve gone down this path because the risks are lower. The engineering, while not simple, is certainly simpler than what we were trying with the top kill.”

Video on BP’s oil-spill website showed a circular saw making preliminary cuts on a smaller pipe that’s part of the riser, the cluster of lines that once extended from the well to the drilling rig, said Jon Pack, a BP spokesman. Shears were already grasping the riser, he said.

BP fell 63.35 pence, or 12.8 percent, to 431.45 pence at 3:39 p.m. in London, the biggest drop since 1992. The company has dropped 34 percent since the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded on April 20.

Disappointed Hopes

“The market had hoped they’d get it under control and they haven’t,” Peter Hitchens, an analyst for Panmure Gordon UK Ltd. in London, said today in a telephone interview. Hitchens rates the stock at “buy” and owns none. “Clearly, the damages and costs are going to go up.”

President Barack Obama will meet today with the co-chairs of his oil-spill commission and then give a statement, according to a schedule provided by the administration.

BP plans “in a couple of weeks” to reverse the system of pipes and hoses that injected mud into the well for top kill, achieving another route to storage on the surface, he said. As part of the top-kill effort, BP had to remove a tube from the riser that was capturing as much as 6,100 barrels a day from the well.

Engineers also are working on a free-standing riser pipe to be installed later this month that would allow tankers to take on oil, Dudley said. That equipment would include a quick- disconnect coupling so tankers could depart ahead of a hurricane, Dudley said on CNN today. Hurricane season starts in the Gulf today.

Changing Winds

Southwest winds predicted this week would push oil from the well to a wider area of the U.S. coast, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a May 31 statement on its website.

“Results indicate that oil may move north to threaten the barrier islands off Mississippi and Alabama later in the forecast period,” the agency said. As of yesterday, the Unified Area Command in Robert, Louisiana, reported oil along 100 miles (161 kilometers) of Louisiana coastline.

BP has spent $990 million on the spill response, according to a statement today. The company has paid $39.4 million in damage claims as of May 31, the unified command for the spill response reported yesterday. BP reported 30,619 claims and has denied none, it said.

BP needs the equivalent of a lottery win to succeed with its first attempt with a relief well, David Rensink, president- elect of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, said in an interview.

Permanent Seal

The relief well aims to intercept the damaged hole at an angle thousands of feet below the seabed and permanently close it with heavy mud and cement. The method is the surest way for BP to end the largest oil spill in U.S. history, yet initial failure is “almost a certainty,” Rensink said.

“What you’re doing is trying to intersect a well bore that is probably roughly a foot across with another well that is about a foot across,” he said. “It’s a hit-or-miss sort of thing. Ultimately the relief well will work. It’s just a matter of time, of continuing to poke at it until you intersect it.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Jim Polson in New York at jpolson@bloomberg.net.

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Obama demands thorough probe from oil spill panel

Jun 1 12:28 PM US/Eastern
By DARLENE SUPERVILLE
Associated Press Writer



WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama gave the leaders of an independent commission investigating the Gulf oil spill marching orders Tuesday to thoroughly examine the disaster and its causes to ensure that the nation never faces such a catastrophe again. He said if any laws were broken, people will be prosecuted.

Obama spoke in the Rose Garden on Tuesday after meeting with the co-chairmen of the commission, Bob Graham, a former Florida governor and U.S. senator, and William K. Reilly, a former head of the Environmental Protection Agency,

"They have my full support to follow the facts wherever they lead, without fear or favor," Obama said.

The president said that if laws are insufficient, they'll be changed. He said that if government oversight wasn't tough enough, that will change, too.

And Obama said if laws were broken, those responsible will be brought to justice.

Obama directed the co-chairs to report back in six months "with options for how we can prevent and mitigate the impact of any future spills that result from offshore drilling."

In a sign of an increasingly assertive administration role, Attorney General Eric Holder also planned to visit the Gulf Coast Tuesday to see areas affected by the oil spill and to meet with state attorneys general and U.S. prosecutors.

Several senators have asked the Justice Department to determine whether criminal or civil laws were broken in the spill. The Justice Department has told Sen. Barbara Boxer, who heads the Senate'sBP PLC not to destroy documents that could be relevant in an investigation.
environment committee, that it has ordered Holder was scheduled to receive a Coast Guard tour, then meet with the attorneys general of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi and several U.S. attorneys.

The independent commission's inquiry will range from the causes of the spill to the safety of offshore oil drilling and the functioning of government agencies that oversee drilling.

Obama's session with Graham and Reilly and Holder's visit to the Gulf Coast come three days after BP said its latest attempt to stop the oil spewing out of a broken well 5,000 feet underwater had failed. Obama visited coastal Louisiana four days ago to assess the situation and assure residents frustrated by the government's response that he is doing everything possible to fix the well.

Amid concern that the worst oil spill in U.S. history could threaten his presidency, Obama has stepped up his public appearances to demonstrate that he is engaged. He held a White House news conference Thursday, focused almost entirely on the oil spill, and followed that with the Gulf visit on Friday.

Tuesday's meeting was Obama's first with the commission since he named it less than two weeks ago.

Obama still must name five members of the commission, which will investigate such issues as what caused the spill, the safety of offshore drilling and operations at the federal agency that grants drilling rights.

The Gulf oil spill began April 20 when BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded off the Louisiana coast, killing 11 workers and rupturing the underwater pipe.

In the six weeks since, the government estimates that between 19.7 million and 43 million gallons of crude have poured into the Gulf—affecting beaches, wildlife and the local economy and making it the worst spill in U.S. history.

After BP announced Saturday that its latest attempt to stop the oil, known as a "top kill," had failed, Obama said that disappointing news was "as enraging as it is heartbreaking."

It was the latest in a series of failed efforts by the British oil company to shut off the oil flow. BP will try again as early as Wednesday when it attempts to put a cap on the leaking well so oil can be siphoned to the surface.

Graham, a Democrat, served in the Senate from 1987 to 2005 and previously served two terms as Florida governor. Reilly served as EPA administrator under President George H.W. Bush.

Meanwhile, Carol Browner, a top adviser to Obama, said she doesn't want to guess the prospects for success when BP again tries to use a containment cap to control the Gulf Coast oil spill.

Interviewed Tuesday on ABC's "Good Morning America," the White House energy and global warming czar said, "I don't want to put odds on it. ... We want to get this thing contained."

Browner said "everyone, I think, is hoping for the best, but we continue to plan for the worst." She said she's concerned about the impact the hurricane season could have on ending the environmental crisis.

[Ryan Ruck]

No, the link does not take you to The Onion.

Director James Cameron Called In To Stop Oil Spill

June 1, 2010

"Top kill" did not stop the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. How about something "titanic"?

Federal officials are hoping film director James Cameron can help them come up with ideas on how to stop the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Avatar and Titanic director was among a group of scientists and other experts who met on Tuesday with officials from the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies for a brainstorming session on stopping the massive oil leak.

The Canadian-born Cameron is considered an expert on underwater filming and remote vehicle technologies. Avatar and Titanic are the two highest-grossing films of all time.

Meanwhile, the United States has launched civil and criminal investigations into the oil spill.

US Attorney-General Eric Holder said the US would "prosecute to the fullest extent of the law anyone who has violated the law ... we will not rest until justice is done".

Holder said the criminal probe began "some weeks ago" but declined to elaborate on what kind of charges could be laid.

BP's revelation of the losses caused by the massive oil spill sparked a 13 per cent plunge in its shares after the latest attempt to fix the leaking well failed.

At its lowest point, the British energy giant's share price was down nearly 17 per cent on the day, but it recovered slightly to close at 430 pence, a fall of 13.1 per cent.

The sell-off wiped more than £12 billion ($20.6 billion) off its market value - its biggest one-day fall for 18 years.

In a statement, BP said: "The cost of the response to date amounts to about $US990 million [$1.2 billion], including the cost of the spill response, containment, relief well drilling, grants to the Gulf states, claims paid and federal costs.

"It is too early to quantify other potential costs and liabilities associated with the incident."

US President Barack Obama vowed to hold those responsible for the spill to account.

"If our laws were broken leading to this death and destruction, my solemn pledge is that we will bring those responsible to justice on behalf of the victims of this catastrophe and the people of the Gulf region," Obama vowed.

BP announced on Saturday that the risky operation - to plug the leak by pumping heavy drilling mud into the well - had not worked.

Tuesday's dizzying share-price drop was the first opportunity that London investors had to react to the news after a British public holiday on Monday.

Engineers had spent days pumping heavy drilling fluid into the leaking well head on the ocean floor in a bid to smother the gushing crude and ultimately seal the well with cement.

BP said its next approach would be to place a cap on the fractured oil pipe and contain the spill within the next 24 hours.

"If everything goes well, within the next 24 hours, we could have this contained," chief operating officer Doug Suttles told reporters in Louisiana.

BP's market value has dropped dramatically since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, operated by the firm and owned by US contractor Transocean, exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers, and sank two days later.

At least 75 million litres of oil are feared to have already flooded into the Gulf since the rig exploded, threatening an environmental disaster.

The imminent start of the hurricane season could further complicate efforts to contain the leak.

In a gloomy assessment, Dougie Youngson, oil analyst at Arbuthnot, warned that the crisis had the potential to "break" the company.

"This situation has now gone far beyond concerns of BP's chief executive Tony Hayward being fired, or shareholder dividend payouts being cut - it's got the real smell of death. This could break BP," said Youngson.

"Given the collapse in the share price and the potential for it to fall further, we expect that it could become a takeover target - particularly if its operating position in the US becomes untenable."

Westhouse Securities oil analyst David Hart said BP might find it difficult to operate around the world as a result of the disaster.

"BP's stewardship of the environment will now become a major issue for the company as it attempts to operate elsewhere in the world as a preferred partner by governments and national oil companies.

"Weather in the Gulf is also becoming an issue as we are now within the hurricane season which is expected to be active this year."

I hear Obama has also assembled a crack, expert drilling team as well. An AP photo of the team...

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Director James Cameron Called In To Stop Oil Spill
I hear Obama has also assembled a crack, expert drilling team as well. An AP photo of the team...

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BP: Day 43 on the heels of a Criminal Investigation

BP faces the heat of the Justice Department.

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Effort to contain Gulf oil stalls with stuck saw

By GREG BLUESTEIN and BRIAN SKOLOFF, Associated Press Writers Greg Bluestein And Brian Skoloff, Associated Press Writers – 8 mins ago

PORT FOURCHON, La. – As the crude crept closer to Florida, the risky effort to contain the nation's worst oil spill hit a snag Wednesday when a diamond-edged saw became stuck in a thick pipe on a blown-out well at the bottom of the Gulf.

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said the goal was to free the saw and finish the cut later in the day. This is the latest attempt to contain — not plug — the gusher. The best chance at stopping the leak is a relief well, which is at least two months from completion.

"I don't think the issue is whether or not we can make the second cut. It's about how fine we can make it, how smooth we can make it," Allen said.

If the cut is not as smooth as engineers would like, they would be forced to put a looser fitting cap on top of the oil spewing out. This cut-and-cap effort could temporarily increase the flow of oil by as much as 20 percent, though Allen said officials wouldn't know whether that had happened until the cut could be completed.

Engineers may have to bring in a second saw awaiting on a boat, but it was not immediately clear how long that could delay the operation. Live video of the saw showed oil spitting out of the new cut, and crews were shooting chemicals to try to disperse the crude. The cap could be placed over the spill as early as Wednesday.

The effort underwater was going on as oil drifted close to the Florida Panhandle's white sand beaches for the first time and investors ran from BP's stock for a second day, reacting to the company's weekend failure to plug the leak by shooting mud and cement into the well, known as the top kill.

The Justice Department also has announced it started criminal and civil probes into the spill, although the department did not name specific targets for prosecution.

Shares in British-based BP PLC were down 3 percent Wednesday morning in London trading after a 13 percent fall the day before. BP has lost $75 billion in market value since the spill started with an April 20 oil rig explosion and analysts expect damage claims to total billions more.
In Florida, oil was about seven miles south of Pensacola beach, Allen said.

Thunderstorms were making it difficult to track the slick, Escambia County emergency director John Dosh said, and officials hoped the weather would clear so they could get an aerial view.

"We are looking at a Wednesday to Friday shoreline impact, but there is a line of uncertainty that depends on the wave action and the winds," Dosh said.

"Today we are in a monitoring mode."

Emergency crews began scouring the beaches for oil and shoring up miles of boom, though choppy waters from thunderstorms could send the oil over the protective lines. County officials are using the boom to block oil from reaching inland waterways but plan to leave beaches unprotected 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.

The oil has been spreading in the Gulf since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded six weeks ago, killing 11 workers and eventually sinking. The rig was being operated for BP, the largest oil and gas producer in the Gulf.

Crude has already been reported along barrier islands in Alabama and Mississippi, and it has polluted some 125 miles of Louisiana coastline.
Allen, the national incident commander for the spill, said the threat of oil hitting the coast was shifting east and skimmer vessels would be working offshore to intercept as much crude as possible.

Earlier this week, BP officials said they were concentrating cleanup efforts in Louisiana because they did not expect oil to reach other states. The company has set up floating hotels on barges to house cleanup crews closer to the Louisiana shores.

More federal fishing waters were closed, too, another setback for one of the region's most important industries. More than one-third of federal waters were off-limits for fishing, along with hundreds of square miles of state waters.

Fisherman Hong Le, who came to the U.S. from Vietnam, had rebuilt his home and business after Hurricane Katrina wiped him out. Now he's facing a similar situation.

"I'm going to be bankrupt very soon," Le, 53, said as he attended a meeting for fishermen hoping for help. "Everything is financed, how can I pay? No fishing, no welding. I weld on commercial fishing boats and they aren't going out now, so nothing breaks."

Le, like other of the fishermen, received $5,000 from BP PLC, but it was quickly gone.

"I call that 'Shut your mouth money,'" said Murray Volk, 46, of Empire, who's been fishing for nearly 30 years. "That won't pay the insurance on my boat and house. They say there'll be more later, but do you think the electric company will wait for that?"

BP may have bigger problems, though.

Attorney General Eric Holder, who visited the Gulf on Tuesday, would not say who might be targeted in the probes into the largest oil spill in U.S. history.

The federal government also ramped up its response to the spill with President Barack Obama ordering the co-chairmen of an independent commission investigating the spill to thoroughly examine the disaster, "to follow the facts wherever they lead, without fear or favor."
The president said that if laws are insufficient, they'll be changed. He said that if government oversight wasn't tough enough, that will change, too.

BP has tried and failed repeatedly to halt the flow of the oil, and the latest attempt like others has never been tried before a mile beneath the ocean. Experts warned it could be even riskier than the others because slicing open the 20-inch riser could unleash more oil if there was a kink in the pipe that restricted some of the flow.

"It is an engineer's nightmare," said Ed Overton, a Louisiana State University professor of environmental sciences. "They're trying to fit a 21-inch cap over a 20-inch pipe a mile away. That's just horrendously hard to do. It's not like you and I standing on the ground pushing — they're using little robots to do this."

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Oil could hit Florida Panhandle by Wednesday

By MELISSA NELSON
The Associated Press

Updated: 12:28 p.m. Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Posted: 5:50 p.m. Tuesday, June 1, 2010



PENSACOLA BEACH, Fla. — A Florida beach might get hit with oil from the Deepwater Horizon accident for the first time Wednesday as sheen likely caused by the accident was reported less than 10 miles off Pensacola Beach.

A charter boat captain reported the oil Tuesday afternoon and state and local environmental officials confirmed that it was about 9.5 miles offshore. Winds are forecast to blow from the south and west, pushing the outer edges of massive slick from the spill closer to western Panhandle beaches.

Emergency crews began Tuesday scouring the beaches for oil and shoring up miles of boom. Escambia County will use it to block oil from reaching inland waterways, but plans to leave beaches unprotected because they are too difficult to protect and easier to clean up.

The spill's arrival coincides with the beginning of the Panhandle's summer tourism season, which normally brings millions of dollars to the region.
"It's inevitable that we will see it on the beaches," said Keith Wilkins,
Escambia's deputy chief of neighborhood and community services.

The oil has been creeping toward Florida since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers and eventually collapsing into the Gulf of Mexico. An estimated 20 million to 40 million gallons of oil has spewed into the Gulf, eclipsing the 11 million that leaked from the Exxon Valdez disaster. The rig was being operated for petroleum giant BP, which has tried unsuccessfully for six week to stanch the oil.

The Florida report followed an orange and oily mess washing up on Alabama's beaches earlier Tuesday. Crews cleaned up the oil that they described as having the consistency of a "tarry mousse," but health officials closed the beaches to swimming.

Pensacola Beach officials said their request for about $150,000 from BP to buy sifting machines and a tractor to help remove oil from the beach's famous white sands has lingered unanswered for more than three weeks.

BP has promised it will pay any expenses, but Panhandle officials say the bureaucracy has been slow. Some think the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be running the cleanup operation, not BP.

"We need the sifters and we haven't gotten them approved yet," said W.A. "Buck" Lee, Santa Rosa Island Authority's executive director. "It's been three weeks and the oil is coming. In my opinion, this entire thing should have been a FEMA project all along. If a hurricane blows the roof off your jail, you shouldn't have to wait and send a letter to BP to replace the roof on your jail."

Lee said BP has spent money on public relations, but not on preparations for beach cleanup. The company has provided the sate with $25 million to promote tourism. Escambia approved $700,000 in emergency funding for tourism promotion Tuesday, with another $700,000 to be allocated in 45 days.

Lee said the bureaucratic process set up at the federal staging centers in Alabama and Louisiana have also made it difficult to get information about his pending request.

Coast Guard Chief Peter Capelotti, spokesman for the Mobile, Ala.-based command center, did not have an immediate answer late Tuesday about the delay in approving Escambia county's request for the tractor and other equipment.

Capelotti said command center officials expect more oil to make landfall in Alabama and the Florida Panhandle through Friday.

On Pensacola Beach, emergency crews are prepared for a long summer of oil clean up. They plan to remove oil in cycles after it is pushed onshore and the winds shift. Removing oil while it's moving onshore doesn't make sense, Wilkins said.

"It would be like trying to go out and clean up in the middle of a hurricane," he said. "We will wait until after the bands make their way onshore and the weather shifts and then we will clean up before the next band hits."

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White House Warns 'Permanent Solution' to Oil Spill Months Away

Published June 01, 2010
| FOXNews.com


In this image made from video released by BP, equipment is seen on the live feed from the Deepwater Horizon oil rig June 1. (AP Photo)

The White House on Tuesday repeated its warning that the "long-term solution" to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill could take until August -- or later -- to complete, vowing to press BP hard while acknowledging "frustration" in the Oval Office over the growing crisis.

The Obama administration appears to be preparing the public for the possibility that BP's daring and untested attempts to staunch the leak at its source will continue to end in failure. The oil company, after acknowledging one of those failures over the weekend, was trying another method on Tuesday.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that the administration "will continue to push BP to do whatever we feel is necessary to respond to the leak." But he repeated White House energy adviser Carol Browner's warning that oil could continue to leak until August, when so-called relief wells are expected to be finished. And he acknowledged that even August is not a firm estimate.

"Regardless of the success of the operation currently ongoing, that's the permanent solution," he said. "I assume it could be both earlier and later (than August)," Gibbs said. He described the president as both "enraged" and "frustrated" by BP's response.

"I think he's enraged at the time that it's taken, yes. I think he's been enraged over the course of this, as I've discussed, about the fact that, when you're told something is fail-safe and it clearly isn't, that that's the cause for quite a bit of frustration," Gibbs said.

The Obama administration, which had been facing pressure to claim more of an assertive role in responding to the crisis, is taking an increasingly firm public tone with regard to BP. Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday that the federal government has opened a criminal investigation into the explosion, while President Obama pledged to conduct a "full and vigorous accounting" of what went wrong in the lead-up to the "worst oil spill in U.S. history."

But while the administration pursues investigations and calls for policy changes in the wake of the tragedy, officials acknowledge that BP has both the expertise and the equipment to stop the leak at its source. The administration has focused more on deploying ships and workers to the Gulf to mitigate the spread of the leak as much as possible.

BP was trying to pick up the pieces this week after its "top kill" method -- in which the company tried to inject mud into the leak -- was added to the long list of tactics that have failed to plug the well.

The new plan involves cutting through pipe and capping the spill. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said it could take up to three days for oil to then be siphoned to the surface.

The Obama administration, though, warned that the new method could lead to a temporary 20 percent increase in the amount of oil flowing out of Gulf floor. Gibbs said Tuesday that BP was not entirely honest about the impact of what it calls its "cut and cap" procedure.

"Do I think that BP was forthcoming on what the impact would be of cutting the riser off? No, obviously," Gibbs said.

BP claims the latest procedure could suck most of the oil to the surface if it works properly.

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30 Shocking Quotes About The Gulf Of Mexico Oil Spill That Reveal The Soul-Crushing Horror This Disaster Is Causing



It is incredibly hard to put into words the absolute horror that is happening in the Gulf of Mexico right now. The millions of gallons of oil that have gushed into the Gulf of Mexico and BP's efforts to fight the massive leak are turning the Gulf into a lifeless toxic stew of oil and chemicals.

The damage caused to wildlife in the Gulf by this spill will be incalculable. Entire species are at risk of being wiped out. Scientists are telling us that the primary dispersant being used by BP ruptures red blood cells and causes fish to bleed. This is by far the greatest environmental disaster in U.S. history, and there is no end in sight.

It is a worse environmental and economic disaster than all of the hurricanes of the past ten years combined. The great wetlands and beaches along the Gulf of Mexico will never be the same in our lifetimes.

The seafood and tourism industries in the Gulf are being completely destroyed. The thousands of jobs and businesses being wiped out by this disaster could potentially throw the entire Gulf coast region into a depression. The damage already caused by this oil spill is beyond measure and yet the government tells us that up to 19,000 barrels (798,000 gallons) of oil a day continue to flow into the Gulf of Mexico.

Federal officials have expanded the "no fishing" area in the Gulf of Mexico to 75,920 square miles. That is 31 percent of all federal waters in the Gulf. As the oil continues to spread out there may soon be nowhere to fish.

And the oil is starting to come ashore in more places. Red-brown oil was found on Alabama's Dauphin Island on Tuesday. As Gulf coast residents slowly watch this oil destroy everything around them they are starting to realize that this is it.

Life along the Gulf of Mexico will simply never be the same again.

The following are 30 shocking quotes about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill that reveal the soul-crushing horror this disaster is causing....

#1) Councilman Jay LaFont of Grand Isle, Louisiana:
"As long as you have something to look forward to, a little glimmer of hope, you can move on. But this just drained everything out of us."

#2) Billy Nungesser, president of Plaquemines Parish:
"They said the black oil wouldn’t come ashore. Well, it is ashore. It’s here to stay and it’s going to keep coming."

#3) Prosanta Chakrabarty, a Louisiana State University fish biologist:
"Every fish and invertebrate contacting the oil is probably dying. I have no doubt about that."

#4) Marine toxicologist Dr. Susan Shaw, director of the Marine Environmental Research Institute on BP's use of chemical dispersants:
"They've been used at such a high volume that it's unprecedented. The worst of these – Corexit 9527 – is the one they've been using most. That ruptures red blood cells and causes fish to bleed. With 800,000 gallons of this, we can only imagine the death that will be caused."

#5) Dr. Larry McKinney, director of the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies in Texas:
"Bluefin tuna spawn just south of the oil spill and they spawn only in the Gulf. If they were to go through the area at a critical time, that's one instance where a plume could destroy a whole species."

#6) Carol Browner, Barack Obama's adviser on energy and climate:
"This is probably the biggest environmental disaster we have ever faced in this country. It is certainly the biggest oil spill and we are responding with the biggest environmental response."

#7) Richard Charter of the Defenders of Wildlife:
"It is so big and expanding so fast that it's pretty much beyond human response that can be effective. ... You're looking at a long-term poisoning of the area. Ultimately, this will have a multidecade impact."

#8) Reverand Mike Tran:
"We don't know when this will ever be over. It's a way of life that's under assault, and people don't when their next paycheck is going to be."

#9) Louis Miller of the Mississippi Sierra Club:
"This is going to destroy the Mississippi and the Gulf Coast as we know it."

#10) Dean Blanchard, owner of a seafood business:
"I hold Obama responsible for not making BP stand up and look at the people in the face and fix it."

#11) Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal:
"The day that we’ve been fearing is upon us."

#12) Billy Nungesser, president of Plaquemines Parish, about BP CEO Tony Hayward:
"We ought to take him offshore and dunk him 10 feet underwater and pull him up and ask him 'What's that all over your face?"

#13) Former Clinton adviser James Carville:
"The country feels like it's entitled to abuse this state and forget about us, and we are sick of it."

#14) An anonymous Louisiana resident:
"A hurricane is like closing your bank account for a few days, but this here has the capacity to destroy our bank accounts."

#15) U.S. Representative Edward Markey:
"I have no confidence whatsoever in BP . I think that they do not know what they are doing."

#16) Gulf coast resident Marie Michel:
"Immediately, it's no more fishing, no more crabbing, no more swimming, no more walking on the beach." #17) Brenda Prosser of Mobile, Alabama:

"I just started crying. I couldn't quit crying. I'm shaking now. To know that our beach may be black or brown, or that we can't get in the water, it's so sad."

#18) Qin Chen, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge on the possibility that a hurricane could push massive amounts of oil ashore along the Gulf:
"A hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico this year would be devastating."

#19) Retired Army General Russel Honore on the effect this spill is having on residents of the Gulf coast:
"I'm sure, every time they hear a negative word, their skin crawls, 'cause they need these jobs. ... This is what's going to put their kids in school, and what pays the rent."

#20) A group calling itself "Seize BP":
"The greatest environmental disaster with no end in sight! Eleven workers dead. Millions of gallons of oil gushing for months (and possibly years) to come. Jobs vanishing. Creatures dying. A pristine environment destroyed for generations. A mega-corporation that has lied and continues to lie, and a government that refuses to protect the people."

#21) Louisiania Governor Bobby Jindal:
"There has been failure, particularly with the effort to protect our coast and our marsh. And that was the biggest topic of discussion in a very frank meeting we had with the president."

#22) BP’s chief operating officer, Doug Suttles:
"This scares everybody — the fact that we can’t make this well stop flowing, the fact that we haven’t succeeded so far."

#23) Doug Rader, chief ocean scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund:
"You simply cannot make more (reefs), unless you have a few thousand years to wait."

#24) Public Service Commissioner Benjamin Stevens:
"You get hit by a hurricane and you can rebuild. But when that stuff washes up on the white sands of Pensacola Beach, you can't just go and get more white sand.''

#25) Wilma Subra, a chemist who has served as a consultant to the Environmental Protection Agency:
"Every time the wind blows from the south-east to the shore, people are being made sick."

#26) Hotel Owner Dodie Vegas:
"It's just going to kill us. It's going to destroy us."

#27) Louisiana resident Sean Lanier:
"Until they stop this leak, it's just like getting stabbed and the knife's still in you, and they're moving it around."

#28) White House energy adviser Carol Browner:
"There could be oil coming up until August."

#29) Marine toxicologist Dr. Susan Shaw, director of the Marine Environmental Research Institute:
"We'll see dead bodies soon. Sharks, dolphins, sea turtles, whales: the impact on predators will be seen in a short time because the food web will be impacted from the bottom up."

#30) Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser:
"We will die a slow death over the next two years as this oil creeps ashore."

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BP Oil Leak May Last Until Christmas in Worst Case Scenario

June 02, 2010, 3:22 AM EDT

(See {EXT4 } for more on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.)

By Jessica Resnick-Ault and David Wethe

June 2 (Bloomberg) -- BP Plc’s failure since April to plug a Gulf of Mexico oil leak have prompted forecasts the crude may continue gushing into December in what President Barack Obama has called the greatest environmental disaster in U.S. history.

BP’s attempts so far to cap the well and plug the leak on the seabed a mile below the surface haven’t worked, while the start of the Atlantic hurricane season this week indicates storms in the Gulf may disrupt other efforts.

“The worst-case scenario is Christmas time,” Dan Pickering, the head of research at energy investor Tudor Pickering Holt & Co. in Houston, said. “This process is teaching us to be skeptical of deadlines.”

Ending the year with a still-gushing well would mean about 4 million barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf, based on the government’s current estimate of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels leaking a day. That would wipe out marine life deep at sea near the leak and elsewhere in the Gulf, and along hundreds of miles of coastline, said Harry Roberts, a professor of Coastal Studies at Louisiana State University.

So much crude pouring into the ocean may alter the chemistry of the sea, with unforeseeable results, said Mak Saito, an Associate Scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.

No Guarantee

BP, based in London, says it can’t guarantee the success of its attempt now underway to capture the flow of oil and divert it to a ship at the surface. Thad Allen, the U.S. government’s national commander for the incident, said operations may need to be suspended to allow for an evacuation ahead of a tropical storm or hurricane, during which oil would continue to gush into the Gulf.

The so-called relief well being drilled to intercept and plug the damaged well by mid-August might miss -- as other emergency wells have done before -- requiring more time to make a second, third or fourth try, Dave Rensink, President Elect of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, said.

Robert Wine, a spokesman for BP, declined to detail the company’s own worst-case scenario.

In its original exploration plan for the Macondo well about 40-miles from the Louisiana coast, BP estimated the worst-case scenario for an oil spill was 162,000 barrels of crude a day, according to a filing with the U.S. Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service.

Hurricane Season

BP Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward has more recently put the maximum potential leak rate at 60,000 barrels a day.

Wine reaffirmed BP’s estimate that it will take 90 days to stop the leak with a relief well, which would be the first half of August. He said an early, vigorous hurricane season could have an impact on the schedule.

The ultimate worst-case scenario is that the well is never successfully plugged, said Fred Aminzadeh, a research professor at the University of Southern California’s Center for Integrated Smart Oil Fields who previously worked for Unocal Corp. That would leave the well to flow for probably more than a decade, he said in a telephone interview.
More likely, the relief wells will eventually succeed, though it might take longer than the three months predicted by BP, he said.

Pemex Spill

It took Mexico’s state-owned oil company, Petróleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, nine months to plug its Ixtoc I well after an explosion and fire in 1979.

The company’s first attempt with a relief well failed, so it had to drill a second. Eventually, more than 140 million gallons of crude spilled into the Gulf of Mexico -- the biggest offshore oil spill on record.

Last year, an explosion at a well off the Australian coast owned by Thailand’s national oil company, PTT Exploration & Production Pcl, required five attempts before it could be plugged by a relief well 10 weeks after the spill began.

BP has improved its odds by drilling two emergency wells at once. If a first attempt fails, it will have the second well ready to try again. The company is using techniques such as a larger well bore, raising its chances of hitting its mark, said Robert MacKenzie an analyst with FBR Capital Markets in Arlington, Virginia.

Plugging the well is another challenge even after BP successfully intersects it, Robert Bea, a University of California Berkeley engineering professor, said. BP has said it believes the well bore to be damaged, which could hamper efforts to fill it with mud and set a concrete plug, Bea said.

Evacuating Ships

While these efforts are underway, BP could face delays if a hurricane enters the Gulf, forcing an evacuation. BP says it is developing a mechanism to quickly disconnect the ship collecting oil from the well so that it can evacuate ahead of a storm. That would leave the well gushing oil, Bea said.

Ocean biologists are concerned the oil could linger in deep layers in the sea, generating oxygen-depleted “dead zones” that kill marine life.
Plumes of oil spinning off of the spill have been detected in two directions, and researchers suspect there are more.

“Clearly, oxygen levels are going to be decreased in the vicinity of the plume area, and it looks like it could be a very large plume area,” said Saito, of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Birds, Oysters

The crude oil could enter a current that would draw it out of the Gulf and up along the East Coast of the U.S. all the way to Nantucket, Roberts, of Lousiana State University, said.

The American Bird Conservancy has identified 10 key regions on the Gulf Coast where birds could be harmed. If the oil is spread widely by a hurricane, there could be long-term damage to bird populations, the non-profit organization has said.

“What is difficult to measure is the loss of future generations of birds when birds fail to lay eggs or when eggs fail to hatch,” George Fenwick, the organization’s president, said in a statement on at-risk areas in the Gulf Coast.

Marine life may take decades to recover, wiping out businesses along the coastline that depend on the fishing and seafood industry.
Al Sunseri, who runs P&J Oyster Co., the oldest continually operated oyster dealer in the U.S., said he could end up out of business:
“This could be the end of our 134-year-old business,” he said. “I’ve been doing this 30 years. I have a son and I don’t know if he’ll be able to carry on this next generation.”

--With assistance from Jordan Burke, Jim Polson in New York, and Mark Chediak in San Francisco, Aaron Kuriloff in Port Fourchon, Louisiana. Editors: Susan Warren, Peter Langan, John Viljoen.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jessica Resnick-Ault in New York at jresnickault@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Susan Warren at susanwarren@bloomberg.net.