Gulf Coast braces for an oily mess

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Gulf Coast braces for an oily mess

By Matt Smith, CNN
April 29, 2010 10:33 p.m. EDTApril 29, 2010 10:33 p.m. EDTApril 29, 2010 10:33 p.m. EDT


People in Lousiana's important seafood industry say they fear the coming oil spill could be disastrous.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Slick threatens marshlands and beaches at mouth of Mississippi River
• Shrimp boat captain: "This has the potential to be a disaster"
• Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal: Leading edge of oil slick could reach state shores late Friday
• The Gulf Coast hasn't seen a major oil spill in about 40 years

(CNN) -- The Gulf Coast braced for a greasy and unwelcome tide Thursday as the region's largest oil spill in decades threatened the marshlands and beaches at the mouth of the Mississippi River.

"This Saturday is the first date we can go catch live bait," said Glenn Sanchez, who runs a marina in Hopedale, Louisiana. "If this was to happen, this could just devastate the whole of Louisiana."

Hopedale is in what Sanchez calls the "big toe" of Louisiana, about 35 miles southeast of New Orleans.

It's where dry land gives way to a patchwork of marshes, lagoons and canals that drain into Chandeleur Sound and the Gulf of Mexico. The estuaries are rich in crab, oysters and shrimp, and Breton Sound Marina is home to a variety of commercial and sport-fishing vessels that buy bait from Sanchez.

But the spill that began last week when the Deepwater Horizon drill rig blew up and sank has cast a new shadow on a region already under heavy environmental pressure.

Share your stories of how the oil spill is affecting you
The rig sat atop an oil well that is now spewing up to 210,000 gallons of light sweet crude a day into the Gulf of Mexico. BP, the well's owner, has been trying to shut off the flow using eight remote-controlled submarines. It's had no success up to this point.

iReport: BP stages Alabama coast



Video: Gulf Coast braces for oil spill's impact



Video: Fishermen brace for oil disaster



Video: Options for battling oil spill



Interactive: Responding to an oil spill

RELATED TOPICS

• Oil Spills
• Mississippi River
• Louisiana
• Gulf of Mexico

George Crozier, administrator of Alabama's Dauphin Island Sea Lab, said the worst of the spill appeared most likely to hit Chandeleur Sound and western Mississippi Sound, to the north. The barrier islands that shielded those waters were devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and have yet to bounce back, he said.

But weather patterns and the amount of oil released make it difficult to predict where the slick will wash ashore.

"It's just too early to have much sense of what's going to happen," Crozier said.

The Coast Guard has begun attempting to burn the oil off in sections, but the rainbow sheen on the surface now stretches for about 100 miles and was less than 20 miles off the mouth of the Mississippi River late Wednesday.

"This is very frightening to us, because we don't know what the impact is," said Frankie Duggan, port director for Biloxi, Mississippi.

Read the latest news on the oil spill

Louisiana is the No. 1 producer of shrimp and oysters in the United States, while fishing remains a major industry on the Mississippi coast even after casino gambling has come to dominate the local economy.

The smell of heavy oil already was wafting ashore Tuesday, said Barry Deshamp, a charter boat skipper in Long Beach, Mississippi.

Deshamp's business is ramping up ahead of the summer, and while no one has canceled trips yet, "Nobody wants to fish in an oil slick," he said.

The 120-mile oil slick advanced to within a few miles of the mouth of the Mississippi River on Thursday -- well within the 10- to 20-mile range Deshamp usually fishes. The bigger commercial boats "can pretty much go around it," but the slick is drifting over prime fishing grounds for popular catches, such as red snapper.

"It's unreal they haven't even stopped it yet," Deshamp said. "At first they were telling us it's not even leaking."

Worse yet, the spill is happening at a time when Gulf shrimp are in their spawning season. That puts more pressure on fishermen already feeling the pinch from high fuel prices, increased imports and a late spring, said Scott St. Pierre, captain of the shrimp boat "Mom and Dad" out of Port Fourchon, Louisiana.

"This is our critical time. We want our babies to grow. We need south wind and warm weather," St. Pierre said. "If the south wind brings them oil, we thought we had problems before? This has the potential to be a disaster."

The first of the oil slick could hit southeastern Louisiana's shores late Friday, Gov. Bobby Jindal said. The area is home to several wildlife reserves, and the state might even put prison inmates into the effort by using them to clean oil from birds, Jindal said.

The Gulf Coast hasn't seen a major oil spill in about 40 years, Crozier said. Most of the toxic components in the crude spill are likely to evaporate in the sun, but a "physical mess" is likely to remain in the marshes.

"The occasional drum has fallen overboard, but we've never had anything of this magnitude," he said.

Wilma Subra, a chemist who advises the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, said hundreds of spotters are watching for signs of the slick along the shoreline. But until the damaged well is capped, the coast could be hit over and over again when weather patterns shift.

Subra expressed hope the planned burning would limit the slick's advance, "but it all depends on how the weather moves."

"This is just going to be unbelievable," Subra said. "It's not going to be just a one-time event."

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White House Says No New Offshore Drilling Until Investigation is Complete

Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Threatens to Jeopardize President Obama's Offshore Drilling Policy

By HUMA KHAN

April 30, 2010



As some Democratic lawmakers call on President Obama to suspend his plans to expand offshore oil drilling, the White House today said that there will be no new domestic offshore drilling until the investigation into the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is complete.

WH senior adviser David Axelrod says president is reconsidering his stance.

"All he has said is that he's not going to continue the moratorium on drilling but... no additional drilling has been authorized and none will until we find out what happened here and whether there was something unique and preventable here," White House senior adviser David Axelrod said on "Good Morning America" today, defending the administration's policy.

Axelrod said no new drilling in domestic areas will go forward until "there is an adequate review of what happened here and what is being proposed elsewhere."

As Gulf Coast residents brace for mounds of slick to hit their shores, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has seeped into the energy debate in Washington, D.C., and threatens to disrupt Obama's policy and the bipartisan energy legislation in the Senate.

Obama last month lifted a longtime ban on offshore drilling and oil and gas exploration, saying it was crucial to U.S. energy security. In a rare case of bipartisanship, the proposal won broad support from Republicans. But it angered environmentalists, who argued that offshore drilling won't help lower gas prices or reduce the United States' dependence on foreign oil. Rather, it will adversely impact marine life and beaches.

The Senate energy and climate bill drafted jointly by Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, also encouraged offshore oil drilling, a move aimed at attracting Republican support.

But now, with environmentalists and some lawmakers pointing to the Gulf of Mexico disaster and arguing that there is no truly safe offshore operation, the Obama administration and senators who drafted the bill could have a tougher time moving forward.

"The problem for the president and for the Congress in general is that they were already facing this very uphill climb because there was this really diverse disagreement about how to shape an effective energy bill or climate bill," said Amy Myers Jaffe, director of the Baker Institute Energy Forum at Rice University. "Now it all becomes much more complex."

The administration was hoping to build a broad coalition for an energy and climate bill, experts say, and this incident only complicates that matter.

"The administration, I think, has moved quite systematically to try to broaden and strengthen that coalition and this really, I think, substantially complicates what was already a very complicated job of building a broad enough coalition so there would be adequate support for climate change legislation," said Bill Galston, senior fellow at Brookings Institute and a former policy adviser to President Clinton.

"This is sure going to slow things down."

The Deepwater Horizon exploration well, operated by BP Oil and owned by Transocean Ltd., exploded and started burning April 20. The U.S. Coast Guard estimates that 5,000 barrels a day are leaking from the rig. Much of the sea life in the region is in danger and the beaches are likely to be heavily polluted as slick washes up to the shore.

Democratic lawmakers already are lining up against Obama's policy to expand offshore drilling and any bill that includes such measures. On Thursday, Democratic senators spent more time debating offshore drilling than the financial reform bill.

"I'm deeply concerned that the current five-year plan recently announced by the administration would allow oil drilling less than 5 miles from Cap May, New Jersey," said Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J. "It is a wakeup call for all of us."

Menendez and Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, also a Democrat, are calling on the president to nix it altogether.

"Big oil has perpetuated a dangerous myth that coastline drilling is a completely safe endeavor, but accidents like this are a sober reminder just how far that is from the truth," the senators said in a joint statement Thursday.

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., wants to block Obama's offshore oil drilling plan while the Deep Water Horizon investigation is ongoing and called on him to ask "tough questions" of big oil companies.

"It's unclear whether any additional shut-off controls would have made a difference in this case," Nelson wrote in a letter to Obama Thursday. "But the questions about the practices of the oil industry raised in the wake of this still-unfolding incident require that you postpone indefinitely plans for expanded offshore oil drilling operations."

Meanwhile, environmental groups are hoping that the incident will validate their opposition.

"There are grave environmental concerns which this horrific spill has highlighted," said Bob Deans, spokesman for the Natural Resources Defense Council, which opposed the policy. "We need a time out on any action to go forward with new offshore drilling because this has obviously raised a bunch of questions. We need a full comprehensive independent investigation."

The White House has said it is too early to tell how the incident would impact the president's proposal, saying the policy is only the beginning.

"There will be ample opportunity for public input. There will be ample opportunity for congressional and governor input," Carol Browner, assistant to the president for energy and climate change, said Thursday.

"That is the beginning of the process, not the end of the process. ... We need to stay focused on the incident. We need to learn from the incident."

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs stressed that the president's decision was "the beginning of a longer process" that will take into account any new developments, including the oil spill from BP's well.

Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes told reporters Thursday that he believes the fundamental practices of offshore drilling are safe and that this particular incident was highly unusual, but "everything is on the table."

Brown countered the idea that the spill would jeopardize the debate on the energy and climate bill.

"This will become part of the debate. That goes without saying," she said. "It doesn't mean we can't get the kind of energy legislation we need for this country."

Supporters of offshore oil and gas drilling say one incident doesn't mean the United States should completely do away with it altogether.

"We must continue to drill," Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-Louisiana, said on the Senate floor Thursday, comparing the disaster in the Gulf to two previous incidents, the nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island and also the Challenger space shuttle explosion.

"What we did not do is end the space program. We did not stop launching. We did not stop exploring," she said. "We have to find a way to make sure it never happens again, strengthen our resolve and ... continue to be the world leader."

Experts say what will really determine the impact of this incident is whether it was caused by human error or by structural or technological damage.

"Until we know how and why this happened, it is pretty hard to evaluate how serious this is," Jaffe said. "The answer to the question of what caused this accident is just critical because all these people who were in favor of [offshore] drilling need to know that answer before they can reevaluate their position. ... We can't have proper national debate until we know the answer."

High gasoline prices and reliance on foreign oil both encourage support for new drilling, recent polls have shown. A Pew poll last month found that nearly two-third of Americans, about 63 percent, favored more offshore drilling for oil and gas. A Fox News poll earlier this month found that 70 percent of registered voters supported an increase in offshore drilling.

But surveys from the time of the last major spill, the Exxon Valdez disaster of March 1989, show that environmental concerns also take a place at the table. In April 1989, the month after the Exxon Valdez spill, the percentage of people who favored "stronger regulations on where and how the oil companies drill for offshore oil and gas" jumped to 62 percent from 49 percent a year ago. By March 1990, 70 percent of those polled felt that way.

[Ryan Ruck]

You know... If I were one to wear the tin foil, I might say that it sure is coincidental to have the big mine accident and now a huge oil spill with cap and trade on the legislative horizon.

If we end up with an incident at a nuclear power plant (or something similar) I will be going to Sam's Club and buying them out of tin foil to thoroughly cover my house.

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Second drilling rig overturns in Louisiana

Reuters
Friday, April 30, 2010; 5:29 PM

HOUSTON (Reuters) - The Coast Guard said Friday it was responding to another oil drilling rig accident near Morgan City, Louisiana.

A "mobile inland drilling unit" overturned in the Charenton navigational channel south of U.S. Highway 90 near Morgan City, the Coast Guard said in a statement.

There were no reports of injuries, the Coast Guard said. The floating shallow-water rig was not immediately identified and the importance of the channel was not clear.

The vessel has a 20,000-gallon diesel fuel capacity, but the Coast Guard, citing officials on the scene, said there was no fuel leaking.

As a precaution, 500 feet of oil spill containment boom was deployed around the rig and an additional 500 feet were being brought in, the Coast Guard said in its statement.

(Reporting by Bruce Nichols)

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US: BP Must Do More To Prevent Oil Disaster

10:42pm UK, Friday April 30, 2010
Rob Cole and Tim Hewage, Sky News Online

US authorities have told BP it has to do more to prevent a huge oil slick causing an ecological disaster along the coast of Louisiana.
Up to 5,000 barrels of oil a day are spewing into the Gulf of Mexico from a leaking BP well, which was ruptured after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank.

US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the British oil giant had not committed enough resources to the clean-up operation.
"We continue it urge BP to leverage additional assets to help lead the response in this effort," she said.

"We will continue to push BP to engage in the strongest possible response."

The US Air Force has been given the go-ahead to dump chemicals on the spill.

The Pentagon said it had approved the operation to break up the slick using chemicals dropped by two C-130 Hercules cargo planes.

The planes are on standby and awaiting orders.




The US Coast Guard is helping clear up the massive slick

Each plane is capable of covering up to 250 acres in a single flight, and could fly three missions in a day.

Experts warn that a major environmental disaster is looming.
A state of emergency was declared in Florida today and Louisiana this week after the slick began washing ashore.

Experts said it could be very difficult to clean up the slick from the fragile marshland at the edge of the Mississippi Delta.

"It is of grave concern," said David Kennedy, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"I am frightened. This is a very, very big thing. And the efforts that are going to be required to do anything about it, especially if it continues on, are just mind-boggling."

The US Coast Guard told the Reuters news agency that a second rig - a "mobile drilling unit" - had overturned in a navigational channel near Morgan City, Louisiana.

The floating shallow-water rig has a 20,000-gallon diesel fuel capacity but officials said there was no fuel leaking and no one had been injured.
Sky's US correspondent Greg Milam said the latest efforts to stop the oil slick from the first rig have involved rounding up some of the oil and lighting it with flares.

"The stakes could not be higher. In the past, burns like this have had some success, as it did off Canada 17 years ago," he said.
"Fumes are an obvious problem, but they may be the lesser of two evils."

This is a very, very big thing. And the efforts that are going to be required to do anything about it, especially if it continues on, are just mind-boggling.

David Kennedy, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

However, the burn-off attempt in one of the thickest parts of the slick was suspended because of heavy winds.

President Barack Obama pledged to "use every single available resource" including the National Guard to help prevent an environmental disaster.

Members of his cabinet including his homeland security, environment and interior chiefs have been sent to conduct an aerial survey of the area off the Gulf Coast.

A White House official has also announced there would be no new offshore oil drilling until a Deepwater Horizon investigation was completed.

Senior adviser David Axelrod told broadcaster ABC: "No additional drilling has been authorised and none will until we find out what happened here and whether there was
something unique and preventable."

Louisiana's Governor declared the state of emergency and warned the slick "threatens the state's natural resources".

Bobby Jindal asked the defence department for funds to deploy up to 6,000 troops to help with the clean-up.

But many of those who depend on the region's fisheries and nature reserves have already given up on efforts to stave off an environmental disaster.


Environmentalists are worried about hundreds of species in the marshland

"As it gets into the wildlife management area it is going to kill us," said Brent Roy, who charters fishing boats off the coast.

"It's the worst-case scenario for shrimpers, oyster harvesters, crabbers - all the commercial fishermen."

Mr Obama said BP, which leases the Deepwater Horizon, was ultimately responsible for the cost of the clean-up.

The company tried to use robotic submarines to cap the ruptured well on the seabed but this has also been unsuccessful.

Engineers are now building a giant dome that could be placed over the leaks to trap the oil, allowing it to be pumped up to container ships on the surface.

This operation is expected to take weeks.

Eleven workers are missing and presumed dead after the rig sank on April 22, two days after it exploded.

[vector7]

Friday, Apr 30, 2010 17:40 ET
Sarah Palin calls for more drilling as second rig overturns

By Alex Pareene

Reuters/Facebook

At almost the exact moment that Reuters broke the news (on Twitter) that a second oil drilling rig had overturned off the coast of Louisiana, Sarah Palin posted her latest Facebook "note." The headline: "Domestic Drilling: Why We Can Still Believe."

5,000 barrels of oil are already leaking into the Gulf of Mexico every day.

The massive and growing oil slick is reaching the shores of Louisiana and it's scheduled to touch Alabama this weekend. And now the coast guard confirms that a "mobile inland drilling unit" near Morgan City, Louisiana overturned today.

This all says one thing to the former Governor of Alaska: accidents happen, but we must continue to drill.

Alaskans understand the tragedy of an oil spill, and we've taken steps to do all we can to prevent another Exxon tragedy, but we are still pro-development. We still believe in responsible development, which includes drilling to extract energy sources, because we know that there is an inherent link between energy and security, energy and prosperity, and energy and freedom. Production of our own resources means security for America and opportunities for American workers. We need oil, and if we don't drill for it here, we have to purchase it from countries that not only do not like America and can use energy purchases as a weapon against us, but also do not have the oversight that America has.

"No human endeavor is ever without risk," Palin's ghostwriter adds later, comparing dangerous and pointless off-shore domestic drilling to the moon landing.

(At press time, 925 people "like" this.)

Between the West Virginia mine disaster and this horrific oil spill, it is a bad time to be an advocate for any of the traditional conservative energy proposals.

(If, like celebrity deaths, these things happen in threes, I advise you to avoid nuclear power plants for the time being.)

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Second rig overturns in Gulf of Mexico

Fears that oil slick will get worse after coastguards said a second rig has overturned in the Gulf of Mexico.

Published: 10:00PM BST 30 Apr 2010



The slick is visible from space Photo: AP

The rig overturned in inland waters near Morgan City off Louisiana on America's southern coast.

It will hamper efforts to clear up oil from a massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico which is starting to ooze ashore in the southeastern US, threatening birds and other wildlife along fragile islands and barrier marshes and putting one of the world's richest seafood grounds in peril.

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Crews in boats were patrolling coastal marshes early Friday looking for areas where the oil has flowed in, the Coast Guard said. Storms loomed that could push tide waters higher than normal through the weekend, the National Weather Service warned.

A top adviser to President Barack Obama said Friday that no new oil drilling would be authorised until authorities learn what caused the explosion of the rig Deepwater Horizon.

David Axelrod told ABC television that "no additional drilling has been authorised and none will until we find out what has happened here." Obama recently lifted a drilling moratorium for many offshore areas, including the Atlantic and Gulf areas.

The leak from a blown-out well a mile underwater is five times bigger than first believed. Faint fingers of oily sheen were reaching the Mississippi River delta late Thursday, lapping the Louisiana shoreline in long, thin lines. Thicker oil was about five miles (eight kilometres) offshore. Officials have said they would do everything to keep the Mississippi River – the largest U.S. river, running up the country's middle – open to traffic.

The oil slick could become the nation's worst environmental disaster in decades, threatening to eclipse even the Exxon Valdez in scope. It imperils hundreds of species of fish, birds and other wildlife along the Gulf Coast, one of the world's richest seafood grounds, teeming with shrimp, oysters and other marine life.

"It is of grave concern," David Kennedy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told The Associated Press about the spill. "I am frightened. This is a very, very big thing. And the efforts that are going to be required to do anything about it, especially if it continues on, are just mind-boggling."

Oil clumps seabirds' feathers, leaving them without insulation – and when they preen, they swallow it. Prolonged contact with the skin can cause burns, said Nils Warnock, a spill recovery supervisor with the California Oiled Wildlife Care Network at the University of California-Davis. Oil swallowed by animals can cause anaemia, haemorrhaging and other problems, said Jay Holcomb, executive director of the International Bird Rescue Research Center in California.

The spewing oil – about 210,000 gallons (795,000 litres) a day – comes from a well drilled by the rig Deepwater Horizon, which exploded in flames April 20 and sank two days later. BP was operating the rig that was owned by Transocean Ltd. The Coast Guard is working with BP to deploy floating booms, skimmers and chemical dispersants, and set controlled fires to burn the oil off the water's surface.

Protective boom has been set out on Breton Island, where colonial species such as pelicans, gulls and skimmers nest, and at the sandy tips of the passes from the Mississippi River's birdfoot delta, said Robert Love, a state wildlife official.

[zenbudda]

no theories on why obama would send a "swat" team to the oil rigs, instead of national guard or military?

i have to say it was a good call to have some type of presence there. however, the timeliness of this disaster really has me curious. coincidences do happen. i'm not sure if the gulf is deep enough for subs, but i'd be putting about 4 tactical subs right between the gulf and cuba. i'd even drop sonar buoys and have ships with towed sonar arrays. ....juuuuuust to make sure.

[Toad]

I also wonder just why the Blowout Preventer failed. It's installed on the well head just specifically to prevent this.

[Toad]

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...SxVPAD9FF7IO03

Another week at least of unabated Gulf oil geyser

By HOLBROOK MOHR and ALLEN G. BREED (AP) – 4 hours ago

VENICE, La. — Another week of oil pouring from the seafloor. That is the best-case scenario for the Gulf Coast, where dead sea turtles washed ashore and a massive rust-colored slick continued to swell from an uncontrolled gusher spewing into the water.

BP PLC was preparing a system never tried before at such depths to siphon away the geyser of crude from a blown-out well a mile under Gulf of Mexico waters. However, the plan to lower 74-ton, concrete-and-metal boxes being built to capture the oil and siphon it to a barge waiting at the surface will need at least another six to eight days to get it in place.

Crews continued to lay boom in what increasingly feels like a futile effort to slow down the spill, with all ideas to contain the flow failing so far.

"I've been in Pensacola and I am very, very concerned about this filth in the Gulf of Mexico," Florida Gov. Charlie Crist said at a fundraiser for his U.S. Senate campaign Sunday night. "It's not a spill, it's a flow. Envision sort of an underground volcano of oil and it keeps spewing over 200,000 gallons every single day, if not more."

Fishermen from the mouth of the Mississippi River to the Florida Panhandle got the news that more than 6,800 square miles of federal fishing areas were closed, fracturing their livelihood for at least 10 days and likely more just as the prime spring season was kicking in. The slick also was precariously close to a key shipping lane that feeds goods and materials to the interior of the U.S. by the Mississippi River.

Even if the well is shut off in a week, fishermen and wildlife officials wonder how long it will take for the Gulf to recover. Some compare it to the Hurricane Katrina that Louisiana is still recovering from after nearly five years.

"My kids will be talking about the effect of this when they're my age," said 41-year-old Venice charter boat captain Bob Kenney.

At BP's Houston offices, dozens of engineers and technicians were cloistered on the third floor, working 12-hour shifts round-the-clock to come up with a solution.

"It's probably easier to fly in space than do some of this," Charlie Holt, BP's drilling and completion operations manager in the Gulf of Mexico, said Sunday.

Everything engineers have tried so far has failed. After the April 20 oil rig explosion, which killed 11 people, the flow of oil should have been stopped by a blowout preventer, but the mechanism failed. Efforts to remotely activate it continue to prove fruitless, weather has hampered plans to burn the oil and is making booms all along the coast ineffective.

Teams working to contain the spill have had limited success using airplanes to drop chemical dispersants meant to break up the oil, and rough seas have prevented ships from skimming crude from the surface. The oil probably will keep gushing for months until a second well can be dug to cut off the first.

Besides the immediate impact on Gulf industries, shipping along the Mississippi River could soon be limited. Ships carrying food, oil, rubber and much more come through the Southwest Pass to enter the vital waterway.

Shipment delays — either because oil-splattered ships need to be cleaned off at sea before docking or because water lanes are shut down for a time — would raise the cost of transporting those goods.

"We saw that during Hurricane Katrina for a period of time — we saw some prices go up for food and other goods because they couldn't move some fruit down the shipping channels and it got spoiled," PFGBest analyst Phil Flynn said.

The Port of New Orleans said projections suggest the pass will be clear through Tuesday.

President Barack Obama toured the region Sunday, deflecting criticism that his administration was too slow to respond and did too little to stave off the catastrophe.

A piece of plywood along a Louisiana highway had these words painted on it: "OBAMA SEND HELP!!!!"

The blessing of the boats is normally a joyous kickoff to the spring fishing season in St. Bernard Parish. But this year, it had more the air of a funeral.

Some years, as many as 200 craft, most of the working boats, lined up at the Gulf Outlet Marina to be sprinkled with holy water by a priest. On Sunday, only four boats floated by — and not one a commercial vessel.

Capt. Doogie Robin, 84, sat at a bar, sipping a Budweiser from the jaws of an alligator-head beer cozy. He runs eight oyster boats.

"Katrina really hit us hard," he said. "And this here, I think this is going to finish us now. I think this will wipe us off the map."

The Coast Guard and BP have said it's nearly impossible to know exactly how much oil has gushed since the blast, though it has been roughly estimated to be at least 200,000 gallons a day.

At that rate, it would eclipse the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker spill — which dumped 11 million gallons off the Alaska coast — as the worst U.S. oil disaster in history in a matter of weeks.

"None of us have ever had experience at this level before. It ain't good," said Bob Love, coastal and nongame resources administrator with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

Even if the oil stays mostly offshore, the consequences could be dire for sea turtles, dolphins and other deepwater marine life — and microscopic plankton and tiny creatures that are a staple of larger animals' diets.

Moby Solangi, director of the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Gulfport, Miss., said at least 20 dead sea turtles were found on the state's beaches. He said it's too soon to say whether oil contamination killed them but that it is unusual to have them turning up across such a wide stretch of coast, nearly 30 miles.

None of the turtles have oil on them, but Solangi said they could have ingested oily fish or breathed in oil on the surface.

The situation could become even more grave if the oil gets into the Gulf Stream and flows to the beaches of Florida — and potentially whips around the state's southern tip and up the Eastern Seaboard. Tourist-magnet beaches and countless wildlife could be ruined.

Crist has declared a state of emergency for six counties in Florida. Louisiana also has declared an emergency.

Obama has halted any new offshore drilling projects unless rigs have new safeguards to prevent another disaster. On Sunday he called the spill a "massive and potentially unprecedented environmental disaster," and made clear that he was not accepting blame.

"BP is responsible for this leak. BP will be paying the bill," he said.

The containment boxes being built were not part of BP's original response plan. The approach has been used previously only for spills in relatively shallow water. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said engineers are still examining whether the valves and other systems that feed oil to a ship on the surface can withstand the extra pressures of the deep.

If the boxes don't work, BP also has begun work on its only other backup plan: two relief wells that will take as long as three months to drill.

"What BP's doing is throwing absolutely everything we can at this," said Bob Fryar, senior vice president for BP in Angola. "We certainly want to do everything we can, everything we can possibly think of, as a company, as an industry."

BP has not said how much oil is beneath the seabed the Deepwater Horizon rig was tapping when it exploded. A company official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the volume of reserves, confirmed reports that it was tens of millions of barrels. Fryar said any numbers being thrown out are just estimates at best. The rig was operated by BP and owned by Transocean Ltd.
Peter Young has spent the better part of 18 years earning a living as fishing guide and he's afraid his way of life may be slipping away. The government has overreacted by shutting down vital fishing areas in the marshes before the oil has posed a threat, he said.

Until he sees oil himself, Young will keep fishing the closed areas.
"They can take me to jail," he said. "This is our livelihood. I'm not going to take customers into oil, but until I see it, I can't sit home and not work.
"I've got customers that are canceling because they're scared, and I don't know what to tell them."

Associated Press writers Harry R. Weber, Jay Reeves, Mike Graczyk, Tamara Lush, Brian Skoloff, Melissa Nelson, Mary Foster, Chris Kahn, Vicki Smith, John Flesher, Holbrook Mohr and AP Photographer Dave Martin contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[American Patriot]

I guess there's some rumors about possibly an attack or sabotage on that oil rig.

[Toad]

The ecological damage for the wildlife is bad enough, but there's hundreds if not thousands of fishermen and fishing related jobs that just got severely damaged. Lot of families down there needing to look for another source of employment.

[Malsua]

What turned over Rig 2?

[Toad]

It overturned in a navagational canal. Sounds like a tow gone bad.

It was just a drilling unit, 20,000 gal capacity max, details to just how much it did or did not have on board isn't known.

http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7018578366

So new, details are few.

[vector7]

Something to consider,

How does a sea literally turn red you ask?

If this spill continues...

Rev. 16:3

The second angel poured out his bowl into the sea, and it became blood like that of a dead man; and every living thing in the sea died.

The blood of a dead person is partially coagulated dark and thick, it resembles oil.

[vector7]

And lest we forget...

Maxine Waters threatens to nationalize U.S. oil industries

March 13, 2009 — A slip of the tongue reveals the true intentions of Socialist, "Maxine Waters" (D) during a house hearing while arrogantly grilling oil executives including John Hofmeister, President of Shell Oil Company.

This liberal, Maxine Waters starts to be honest by revealing herself as a Socialist, but stops, stumbles and then comes up with a more accepted answer.

Oops!

The guy next to her sighs with relief when she finally gets the words out America would want to hear her actually say, the lady next to him seems to be holding back her laughter.

A pathetic real time revelation of the true identity of one of our nations liberal Democrat decision makers.

Rosie O'Donnell and Friends Make The Case For Marxism to take over oil

[American Patriot]

I thought this was posted elsewhere?

[vector7]

What seemed like wishful idle babble a year ago is now becoming a more serious possible reality.

Regardless if this was an accident or sabotage, this administration will not allow this crisis to go to waste.

[American Patriot]

True. Very true.

[zenbudda]

i'm thinking the crisis is a little TOO timely. i'm hearing a lot of halliburton chatter out there. i'm just trying to conceive an angle that would benefit haliburton on this one. it would only hurt them that this happened.