The oil spill

Damn! Hope it doesnt end up as bad as it seems its going to! We are truly destroying this planet. ...Skip navigation 

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Compare PricesCrews scramble to keep oil from shore
Spill could reach Mississippi River delta by Thursday night

Chris Graythen / Getty Images
A boat works to collect oil leaked from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead in the Gulf of Mexico on April 28, near New Orleans.
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updated 5 minutes ago
VENICE, Louisiana - The edge of a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was expected to reach the Mississippi River delta by Thursday night and a new technique to break up the oil a mile underwater could be tried, officials said.

As of this morning, part of the slick was about 3 miles from the Louisiana shore, said National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration spokesman Charles Henry said. It's too late to stop some of the spill from reaching the coast, but BP PLC said it might attempt to break up some of the oil spewing from a blown-out a mile under water.

The company also has asked the Department of Defense if it can help with better underwater equipment that is available commercially, said BP PLC chief operating officer Doug Suttles.

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In addition, he said the company has been reviewing research on using chemical to break up the oil, which has been done before, but never at these depths. The well is almost a mile underwater off the Louisiana shore.

U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry called it "a novel, absolutely novel idea."

Louisiana scrambles
Meanwhile, Louisiana Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal declared a state of emergency and announced that BP had agreed to allow local fishermen to assist in the expected cleanup. Under the agreement, shrimpers and fishermen could be contracted by BP to help. Jindal said the state was also training prison inmates to help clean up wildlife harmed by oil slicks moving toward shore.

The federal government sent in skimmers and booms Thursday. BP operated the rig that exploded and sank 50 miles offshore last week, which led to the spill, and is directing the cleanup and trying to stop the leak.

If the chemical technique is approved, work could start Thursday night, Suttles said.

"We want to pursue every technique we can find," he said.

Coast Guard Rear Adm. Sally Brice-O'Hara said at the White House that the government's priority was to support BP as it fights to hold back the oil surging from the seabed in amounts much higher than previously estimated.

 


BP was operating the Deepwater Horizon, which was drilling in 5,000 feet of water about 40 miles offshore when it exploded last week. Eleven crew members are missing and presumed dead, and the government says 5,000 barrels of oil a day are spewing from the well underneath it.

Those who count on the Gulf for their livelihoods fretted about the oil that will reach the coast soon.

'We started smelling it?'
In Empire, La., Frank and Mitch Jurisich could smell the oil coming from just beyond the murky water where their family has harvested oysters for three generations.


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"About 30 minutes ago we started smelling it," Mitch Jurisich said. "That's when you know it's getting close and it hits you right here."

They spent Thursday hauling in enough oysters to fill more than 100 burlap sacks, stopping to eat some because it might be their last chance before oil contaminates them.

 Slideshow

 
  Oil rig disaster in Gulf
Crews scramble to stop an oil well gushing thousands of gallons a day off the Louisiana coast.
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President Barack Obama has dispatched Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson to help with the spill. The president said his administration will use "every single available resource at our disposal" to respond.

Obama directed officials to aggressively confront the spill, but the cost of the cleanup will fall on BP, spokesman Nick Shapiro said.

A third leak at the well site was discovered Wednesday, and government officials said the amount coming out is five times as much as originally estimated.

Suttles had initially disputed the government's estimate, and that the company was unable to handle the operation to contain it.

But early Thursday, he acknowledged on NBC's TODAY that the leak may be as bad as the government says. He said there was no way to measure the flow at the seabed and estimates have to come from how much oil makes it to the surface.

If the well cannot be closed, almost 100,000 barrels of oil, or 4.2 million gallons, could spill into the Gulf before crews can drill a relief well to alleviate the pressure. By comparison, the Exxon Valdez, the worst oil spill in U.S. history, leaked 11 million gallons into Alaska's Prince William Sound in 1989.

As dawn broke Thursday in the oil industry hub of Venice, about 75 miles from New Orleans and not far from the mouth of the Mississippi River, crews loaded an orange oil boom aboard a supply boat at Bud's Boat Launch. There, local officials expressed frustration with the pace of the government's response and the communication they were getting from the Coast Guard and BP officials.

"We're not doing everything we can do," said Billy Nungesser, president of Plaquemines Parish, which straddles the Mississippi River at the tip of Louisiana.

"Give us the worst-case scenario. How far inland is this supposed to go?" he said.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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April 28: Officials from the Coast Guard and British Petroleum say a new leak has been found in the Gulf of Mexico, where up to 5,000 gallons per day could be leaking into the water.
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FD HIDDEN DIV

what a mess man.... pretty sad news

Makes me weep in my soul.
I worked in AK years after the Valdez spill, and though the shore & wildlife seemed rich to me, the effects on the small local economies was only beginning to recover.  My boss lost his house, charter boat, and 80% of his business, and in 1998 was finally saying the business was back on its feet.
His reimbursement check from Exxon came while I was there, it was for $33.00 and he tossed it in the trash in pieces.
If this reaches the everglades the damage will be terribly cruel to the wildlife first, and people second.
Cheap gas just isn't worth this.

$33?????? are you seroius, crazy!

I grew up fishing summers with my family off the oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico and in the marshes of the River Delta...

Those rigs are like giant artificial reefs and the fishing is super diverse and fun.

Amazing place, great fishing and gonna be a HUGE loss to the environment AND the local economy that really depends on that fishery for their livelihood...

Oysters, shrimp, commercial fisherman, charter guides etc...

Very sad...I have plenty of cousins that work offshore still and I am very thankful that none were on that rig.

The wetlands down there are already endangered by other man-made issues, and have been eroding at a horrifying rate...this seems like another nail in the coffin..

 

Sincerely,

Jim

Makes me weep in my soul

Amen   

 Been researching the area since I bought my ticket to go to Grand Isle in a few weeks for the Hero's on The Water Conference. I have been amazed about how much diverse fishing and wildlife is there. Really excited about going and now I'm studying the path of this slick.

It's truly Horrifying....  It's far worse than they have been saying, with no " Real " plan. The Local Fishermen and even Oil Rig workers are saying more could be done, but the reality is there about to be Hit by a Tidal Wave of Oil....

And they want to Open up Drilling off our Coast?  Nice.... This Oil rig that Blew was Even the Latest, Greatest Titanic of " Impossible " for anything to go wrong.... 

Well,  if you want to see the future of the US Gulf Coast....

Click on this website.....   


 http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com/go/site/2931/

 

  This truly does suck!  Not only will the oil completely screw up the coast and pretty much everything living near it,  I suspect fuel prices will sky rocket once again.  Even though BP made what zillions last year?  Someone better go all Abyssal and get that damn pipe capped SOON!
 

As if New Orleans hasn't had enough troubles. 
Better get your driving trips in now my friends. The oil companies are going to milk the hell out of this one and I predict gas prices will hit an all time high by a big margin. 
We have created so many potential catastrophies. Someday Mother Nature will have it all back to herself.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100501/us_nm/us_usa_rig_leak_fishermen

     All they need now is another hurricane to drive that oil slick deep inland!   What a complete mess.

This is all very scary.  I don't understand how they can raise the price when all they ever do is show a propphit.  the working mans hands are tied and there is no apperent help.

just my .02 cents

This is a major major catastrophe!! It's actually so frightening to think of all the damage that this spill is going to cause to wildlife, fish, birds, mollusk, shrimp etc in the gulf, atlantic, worldwide in the months and years to come. And that's not even considering what this means for the people of New Orleans, Louisiana in terms of them just seeing some recovery from the effects of Katrina...and now this!! This spill is destroying their livelihoods. I for one, have been against offshore drilling and now, will do more to protest offshore drilling here in California till the day that I die. It's just not worth it. Let's seek other alternatives to oil.
I'll step down from my soapbox now...

I just took action with Environment California in response to the oil spill off the Louisiana coast.

Please visit Environment California to ask President Obama to pull back his plans for more oil drilling off of our nation's shores. The oil slick from BP's rig is now three times the size of Rhode Island, with 200,000 gallons of crude per day threatening to cover sperm whales, brown pelicans, shrimp, fish, and the fragile coast itself. We must not allow more drilling off of our coasts

Check out this page at the Environment California Web site:

http://www.environmentcalifornia.org/action/oceans/gulf-oil-spill-disaster?id4=tafsent

Thanks.

And there was recent discussion about opening up the drilling off the California Coast again!  There must be better way........solar, wind, Hydrogen, nuclear, fuel cells????????? 

This is Truly Horrific..,

The facts about what they know and are not telling us, are not as scary as what is to come or has happened already....

 the 200,000 Gallons of Oil a day is a reprieve... Basically when the Oil Rig went down, it

 " Kinked.. " the line, kinda like Kinking a garden hose. But, it's a Volcano of Hot Oil, gas and Sand...

It is or has already " Sand Blasted " it's way thru this Pipe and will be or is, gushing 10x the amount of Oil it is Gushing now...

The only real option on the table is to drill a " Relief " bore into this Gusher....

Approx time to completion... 3 months....

The US Gulf Sea shore and The World is going to feel this one.....

Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen called the bid to shut down a wellhead spewing at least 210,000 gallons of oil a day from nearly a mile beneath the ocean surface “one of the most complex things we’ve every done.”

He went on to say that, in a worst-case scenario, the well could vent 4.2 million gallons of oil into the Gulf daily. Currently, a crumpled “riser” pipe is preventing the full flow of oil – like a kinked garden hose – though reports suggest it is gradually deteriorating.

an oil pocket was opened when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig sank after exploding April 20. All that is preventing the free flow of oil – which could amount to tens of millions of gallons – is the kinked riser pipe, which is springing leaks.