Oil leak in Gulf is 5 times worse now. 210K gallons a day leaking into the Gulf.

[BigRedChief]

Not intended to be a political thread so please keep that out of here. This is going to be an enviornmental disaster for the coasts. Oil leak in Gulf may be 5 times worse than feared By the CNN Wire Staff STORY HIGHLIGHTS Oil spill has increased to as much as 5,000 barrels a day, Coast Guard official says Third underwater oil leak has been located; two other leaks found days after April 20 blast Coast Guard: Controlled attempt to burn off part of the spill successful BP Group exec focuses blame on rig owner Transocean Ltd. New Orleans, Louisiana (CNN) -- The estimated amount of oil leaking from a sunken rig in the Gulf of Mexico has increased to as much as 5,000 barrels a day -- five times more than what was originally believed, a Coast Guard official said. Rear Adm. Mary Landry told reporters late Wednesday that the increased estimate is based on analysis from the federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "This is not an exact science when you estimate the amount of oil," Landry said, noting there are a lot of variables in calculating the rate of the spill. "However, NOAA is telling me now that they prefer we use the 5,000 barrels [210,000 gallons] a day as an estimate of what has actually leaked from this well and will continue to leak until BP secures the source." Some 250,000 gallons of oily water has been collected from the scene, she said. BP is the owner of the well, while Transocean Ltd. owns and operates the rig. Additionally, a third underwater oil leak has been located in the pipeline that connected the rig to the oil well, said Doug Suttles, chief operating officer for BP, who joined Landry at a news conference. Two other leaks were located within a few days of the April 20 explosion. The cause of the explosion remains under investigation, and search efforts have been halted for 11 workers missing after the blast. "I do not disagree with the admiral's estimate that it could be 5,000 barrels a day -- it's clearly within the range of uncertainty," Suttles said. Landry said President Obama was briefed on the latest development from the spill site. "The president urged out of an abundance of caution and, mindful of the new information, that BP must position resources to continue to aggressively confront this incident," Landry said. "That said, BP has always planned and anticipated for a much larger spill. We have urged BP to leverage additional assets to help lead the response to an oil spill incident for which they are responsible." Military planners on Wednesday night began examining options to provide assistance to the Coast Guard in cleaning up the spill, said James Graybeal, a spokesman for U.S. Northern Command in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Northern Command is responsible for coordinating and providing military assistance inside the United States. While the specifics of the assistance have yet to be determined, some of the ways the military could help would be putting a ship in the Gulf of Mexico to support and resupply other vessels in the region or providing aircraft to help map the spill. The head of BP Group told CNN's Brian Todd in an exclusive interview Wednesday that the accident could have been prevented, and he focused blame on rig owner Transocean. CEO Tony Hayward said that Transocean's blowout preventer failed to operate before the explosion. A blowout preventer is a large valve at the top of a well, and activating it will stop the flow of oil. The valve may be closed during drilling if underground pressure drives up oil or natural gas, threatening the rig. "That is the ultimate fail-safe mechanism," Hayward said. "And for whatever reason -- and we don't understand that yet, but we clearly will as a consequence of both our investigation and federal investigations -- it failed to operate. "And that is the key issue here, the failure of the Transocean BOP," Hayward said, describing the valve as "an integral part of the drilling rig" A Transocean spokesman on Wednesday declined to respond to Hayward's comments in the CNN interview, citing pending litigation against both companies. However, Transocean Vice President Adrian Rose has said its oil rig had no indication of problems before the explosion. Asked whether the accident could have prevented, Hayward said, "All accidents can be prevented -- there's no doubt about that." At least one of the victims' families has filed a lawsuit against BP and Transocean, accusing BP specifically of negligence. "The responsibility for safety on the drilling rig is with Transocean," Hayward added. "It is their rig, their equipment, their people, their systems, their safety processes." He insisted that, despite reports to the contrary, BP has not resisted attempts at tightening safety regulations. "We welcome tighter safety regulations. But we'd like them to be applied in a way that makes them practically impermeable." Before the explosion, Hayward had announced a "significant" discovery of at least 50 million barrels of oil. "Of course, all of that is completely irrelevant in the context of what we're now dealing with," he said. A controlled attempt to burn off part of the spill was successful Wednesday, Landry said. The burnoff is part of the effort to prevent the spread of oil from an underwater well that was broken open when the drill rig Deepwater Horizon blew up and sank last week. BP and the Coast Guard corralled part of the oil slick using a 500-foot, specially designed boom, and then set it ablaze. The flames were expected to destroy between 50 percent to 90 percent of the oil in that section, and winds were expected to blow the resulting cloud of smoke and soot out to sea, Lt. Cmdr. Matt Moorlag, a Coast Guard spokesman, said before the burn. "It's a historically proven technique, and it has multiple preventative safety measures in place to ensure that that burn area remains controlled," Moorlag said. The slick stretched about 100 miles across the north-central gulf Wednesday afternoon and had advanced to within 16 miles of the mouth of the Mississippi River, the U.S. Coast Guard reported. The oil spill has the potential to become one of the worst in U.S. history, Landry said earlier. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said the slick, which is about 30 miles wide at some points, was expected to hit the state's southeastern shoreline later this week. Jindal said the state has asked for 55,000 feet of booms to keep oil away from the marshy, environmentally delicate coast that's rich in shellfish and wildlife. "We want to approach this situation the same way we would approach a hurricane or other natural disaster," he said. "We think it's best to hope for the best, but prepare for the worst." The slick left many who draw their living from the water and coastal wetlands "watching and praying," said Tony Fernandez, owner of the Breton Sound Marina near Hopedale, Louisiana. "For the most part, what we're doing is mostly waiting," Fernandez said. "There's not much that laypeople can do with this." Most of the slick is a thin sheen on the water's surface. About 3 percent of it is a heavy, pudding-like crude oil. Efforts already are under way to position boom material around sensitive ecological areas. Five staging areas have been set up on land, stretching from Venice, Louisiana, to Pensacola, Florida. "If it reaches the shoreline, ourselves and the Coast Guard ... will deal with it," BP's Hayward said. "And we will clean it up, if we get to that position." CNN's Barbara Starr contributed to this report.

Find this article at: http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/04/29/lou...ex.html?hpt=T1

[Mr. Flopnuts]

Originally Posted by Bwana

This should give the boys an excuse to raise gas prices 25 cents a gallon.

Shut the thread down. They **** up, we pay for it. Free enterprise!

[Mr. Flopnuts]

Btw, it is $3 a gallon here in the pacific northwest.

[HemiEd]

Originally Posted by BigRedChief

uhhhhhh. Non-political thread......Keep it clean.

Yeah, that was a very dirty thing he said.

[Donger]

Originally Posted by oldandslow

The environmental impact of this is going to be devastating.

This hurts everyone.

No, it won't.

[BigRedChief]

Originally Posted by Valiant

No idea.. I personally do not think it would be worse then a volcano going off.. Hell I have always wondered why they do not light the floating trash islands on fire and sink them to the ocean floor for fish cover..

Of course they need to stop that leak first..

I don't understand why they don't just blow it up at the source and keep it from leaking. Isn't that what they do with oil rigs that are on fire? I know thats what they did when Saddam set all the oil rigs on fire during the gulf war.

[Donger]

Originally Posted by BigRedChief

I don't understand why they don't just blow it up at the source and keep it from leaking. Isn't that what they do with oil rigs that are on fire? I know thats what they did when Saddam set all the oil rigs on fire during the gulf war.

The sunken rig is 5,000 feet beneath the water.

[oldandslow]

Originally Posted by Donger

No, it won't.

You are quite literally full of shit.

I know you could care less about the coastline of Miss, Ala, and quite possibly Fl. or about the birds and aquatic life that lives there. Not to mention the humans.

210,000 bpd...with really no way to stop it except to drill a relief well that will take 90 days to finish. And in waters so deep the tech is a bit dicey.

I know you are in bed with big oil, but they ****** up here. Period. And yes, it will hurt us all.

[pr_capone]

Originally Posted by Delano

Isn't there a giant, floating island of plastic in the gulf? Maybe that will come in handy.
Posted via Mobile Device

[BigRedChief]

Originally Posted by Donger

The sunken rig is 5,000 feet beneath the water.

We can't rig some explosives that deep?

[BigRedChief]

Originally Posted by pr_capone

wow thats amazing. Is it true?

[pr_capone]

Originally Posted by BigRedChief

wow thats amazing. Is it true?

absolutely

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/...in566138.shtml

[Donger]

Originally Posted by oldandslow

You are quite literally full of shit.

I know you could care less about the coastline of Miss, Ala, and quite possibly Fl. or about the birds and aquatic life that lives there. Not to mention the humans.

210,000 bpd...with really no way to stop it except to drill a relief well that will take 90 days to finish. And in waters so deep the tech is a bit dicey.

I know you are in bed with big oil, but they ****** up here. Period. And yes, it will hurt us all.

It might be messy for a little while, sure. But let's not forget this is just crude. I well recall the hand-wringing after Exxon Valdez, too (devastated area for thousands of years, etc.) that wasn't accurate either.

Yes, this is BP's screw up. But, we need the crude.

[Donger]

Originally Posted by BigRedChief

We can't rig some explosives that deep?

I don't know why you're talking about explosives. That wouldn't help. They are using ROVs to try to close the valves and stop the leak(s).

[BigRedChief]

Feds: BP will pay cost of oil cleanup
‘How do we stop this flow and how do we stop it now?’
msnbc.com news services
updated 11:01 a.m. CT, Thurs., April 29, 2010


VENICE, Louisiana - As military officials consider joining the battle against the massive oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico, the Obama administration said Thursday that the cost of the cleanup will fall on BP, the company in charge of the rig that exploded.

White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said President Barack Obama has directed his administration to confront the oil spill aggressively. The military is working to determine how its array of aircraft, ships and equipment might be able to assist the cleanup operation.

"We'll take help from anyone," Doug Suttles, chief operating officer of BP's exploration and production unit, said on NBC's TODAY show.

"We're not interested in where the idea comes from, what we're interested in is how do we stop this flow and how do we stop it now?" Suttles said.
But time may be running out: Oil from the spill had crept to within 12 miles of the coast, and it could reach the shore as early as Friday.

A third leak was discovered, which government officials said is spewing five times as much oil into the water as originally estimated — about 5,000 barrels a day coming from the blown-out well 40 miles offshore.
Suttles had initially disputed the government's estimate, or that the company, BP PLC, was unable to handle the operation to contain it.
But early Thursday, he acknowledged on 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.

'Give us the worst-case scenario'
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?" Nungesser said. He has suggested enlisting the local fishing fleet to spread booms to halt the oil, which threatens some of the nation's most fertile seafood grounds.

Louisiana has opened a special shrimp season along parts of the coast so shrimpers can harvest the profitable white shrimp before the spill has an effect.
Michael Nguyen, 58, was aboard his 82-foot shrimp boat, the Night Star III, waiting for news Thursday morning on what has happening with the slick.

"My boat is ready: New nets, did repairs. I'm ready to go," he said.
He wasn't panicking, but was clearly worried.

"The oil come in everywhere, the shrimp die, the crabs die, the fish die. What do I do? Stay home a long time?"

The spill has moved steadily toward the mouth of the Mississippi River and the wetland areas east of it, home to hundreds of species of wildlife and near some rich oyster grounds.

'No way to stop it'
A federal class-action lawsuit was filed late Wednesday over the oil spill on behalf of two commercial shrimpers from Louisiana, Acy J. Cooper Jr. and Ronnie Louis Anderson.

The suit seeks at least $5 million in compensatory damages plus an unspecified amount of punitive damages against Transocean, BP, Halliburton Energy Services Inc. and Cameron International Corp.
Jim Klick, a lawyer for Cooper and Anderson, said the oil spill already is disrupting the commercial shrimping industry.

"They should be preparing themselves for the upcoming shrimp season," he said. "Now they're very much concerned that the whole shrimp season is out."

Mike Brewer, 40, who lost his oil spill response company in the devastation of Hurricane Katrina nearly five years ago, said the area was accustomed to the occasional minor spill. But he feared the scale of the escaping oil was beyond the capacity of existing resources.

"You're pumping out a massive amount of oil. There is no way to stop it," he said.

The rig Deepwater Horizon sank a week ago after exploding two days earlier. Of its crew of 126, 11 are missing and presumed dead. The rig was owned by Transocean Ltd. and operated by BP. Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry said BP is responsible for bringing resources to shut off the flow and clean up the spill.

Video: BP exec welcomes military help with cleanup

"It has become clear after several unsuccessful attempts to determine the cause" that agencies must supplement what's being done by the company, she said.

A fleet of boats working under an oil industry consortium has been using booms to corral and then skim oil from the surface.

Landry said a controlled test to burn the leaking oil was successful late Wednesday afternoon. BP was to set more fires after the test, but as night fell, there were no more burns. No details have been given about when more were planned were given during the news conference.
The decision to burn some of the oil came after crews operating submersible robots failed to activate a shut-off device that would halt the flow of oil on the sea bottom 5,000 feet below.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was briefed Thursday morning on the issue, said his spokesman, Capt. John Kirby. But Kirby said the Defense Department has received no request for help, nor is it doing any detailed planning for any mission on the oil spill.
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36800673/ns/us_news-environment/

[BigRedChief]

Its a good thing to get our military involved. Its no longer just a one company issue. The Feds have to take over. Get all the military, goverment resources out and down there to help. And just send the bill to BP to pay.