BY Helen Kennedy
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Originally Published:Sunday, May 30th 2010, 2:14 PM
Updated: Sunday, May 30th 2010, 10:27 PM
Oil is spewing into the Gulf of Mexico at a rate of one Exxon Valdez disaster every 10 days – and BP officials admitted Sunday they won’t be able to stop it until August.
“The oil is going to flow for a while,” Robert Dudley, BP’s newly installed head of disaster management, told CNN.
Dudley appeared on all the major TV news shows to say that BP, which has failed repeatedly to stop the environmental cataclysm it started, is now focusing on containing the oil.
“We’re going to redouble our efforts to keep it off the beaches,” Dudley said. “If we can contain the flow of the well between now and August and keep it out of the ocean, that’s also a good outcome.”
Saturday’s wrenching failure of the “top kill” effort to choke the well laid bare the extent to which the company was unprepared for catastrophe.
BP’s new plan involves making a clean cut in the bent, broken riser pipe and attempting to cap it, drawing the oil up to a drillship at the surface.
Some experts warn that the new plan could cause the leak to grow worse – by as much as 20% – because the crimped riser pipe could be restricting the flow of oil.
Dudley said “there may be a small increase” but insisted it would be worth it to get the oil out of the sea.
BP says the oil gusher can be stopped for good only by drilling a relief well, which won’t be finished for three months.
In those months, millions of barrels of oil would shoot from the seabed into the gulf, killing fish, mammals and birds and turning giant areas of the ocean and marshland into dead zones.
BP had said about 5,000 barrels of oil were leaking a day since the April 20 rig explosion, but new figures from government experts last week found the real number to be well over twice that, and possibly as high as 20,000 barrels a day.
When the Exxon Valdez tanker ran aground in 1989, it spilled 257,000 barrels into Alaska‘s Prince William Sound.
The new estimates mean the equivalent of roughly four Exxon Valdez spills has already polluted the gulf – and seven more may join it by August.
“This is probably the biggest environmental disaster we’ve ever faced in this country,” White House energy adviser Carol Browner told ABC.
She said efforts to keep the oil off the beaches – including burning it on the surface of the sea, skimming it up and corralling it with long floating booms – were continuing with great urgency and some effect.
Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said he found documents showing BP knew at least 14,000 barrels a day were flowing right from the start, but said the company covered that up because environmental fines are set by barrels of oil leaked per day.
“They had a stake in lowballing the number right from the very beginning,” Markey told CBS. “They were either lying or they were incompetent. … I have no confidence whatsoever in BP.”
If left alone, the underwater geyser would not run dry for seven years, experts say.