http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2010/04/oil_from_gulf_spill_could_reac.html
Times-Picayune New Orleans; special thanks to Richard Charter April 29, 2010, 10:14PM
This story is by Paul Rioux and Robert Travis Scott
Susan Poag / The Times-Picayune Oil containment booms float Thursday near the beach at Port Eads in South Pass, south of Venice, near where the Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico.
With an oily stench permeating the air across southeastern Louisiana, a massive oil spill was expected to start coming ashore in the Mississippi River delta early Friday, triggering all-out efforts to stave off an enironmental and fishing industry disaster as some state officials feared a repeat of the botched response that doomed the region during Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath.
Pushed by strong southeasterly winds and rising tides, oil that has gushed from a well in the Gulf of Mexico since an April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig was expected to reach the tip of Plaquemines Parish as early as Thursday night.
Gov. Bobby Jindal declared a state of emergency Thursday after the Coast Guard confirmed that the undersea well was spewing five times as much oil as previously thought and that it was leaking from three spots instead of two.
Oil giant BP, which had been leasing the sunken rig, is leading efforts to contain and clean up the 210,000-gallon-a-day spill. But as the crisis worsened, President Barack Obama said the federal government is stepping up its involvement.
“While BP is ultimately responsible for funding the cost of response and cleanup operations, my administration will continue to use every single available resource at our disposal, including potentially the Department of Defense, to address the incident,” Obama said.
Federal officials will visit spill zone Friday
Top officials from the Homeland Security Department, Environmental Protection Agency and Interior Department were scheduled to visit the vast spill zone Friday to help coordinate the response.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration models show the sweet crude oil spill could reach parts of the Louisiana coastline late Thursday and proceed into Breton Sound and Chandeleur Sound by Saturday.
At least 10 state and national wildlife management areas and wildlife refuges in Louisiana and Mississippi are in the path of the more than 20,000-square-mile oil plume.
Officials with the state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority announced they will open the the Caernavon Diversion in Plaquemines Parish at a rate of 8,000 cubic feet per second to deliver fresh water into the marshes on the edge of Breton Sound on the east side of the Mississippi River. On the west side, The David Pond in St. Charles Parish will divert 4,000 cubic feet per second into the Barataria basin.
Booms are being deployed to protect Louisiana’s fragile coast, but the winds, high waves and high tides that are expected to pick up in the next few days threaten to wash the oil over the boom lines, state officials said.
Oily odor reported in New Orleans
Residents throughout the New Orleans area on Thursday reported an oily odor apparently coming from the spill, which was more than 90 miles from the Cresecent City.
State health and environmental officials requested continuous air quality testing and monitoring by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
Health officials said people sensitive to reduced air quality may experience nausea, vomiting or headaches. Anyone with these symptoms should consider staying indoors, ventilating their homes with air conditioning and avoiding strenuous outdoor activity, the officials said.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano declared that the oil spill is of “national significance,” allowing the federal government to devote more people and resources to clean-up efforts.
Jindal asked the Defense Department to pay for 6,000 members of the Louisiana National Guard to assist with the cleanup for at least 90 days.
Commercial fishers pitched in by placing containment booms to help protect their livelihoods as the spill threatened one of the nation’s most productive fisheries, supplying 50 percent of the wild shrimp crop.
Federal ‘lackadaisical response’ worrisome
State lawmakers expressed growing concern about whether the federal government and corporate officials are reacting with the speed and resources required to avert an environmental and fishing industry disaster.
Citing memories of the faltering federal response to Hurricane Katrina nearly five years ago, Rep. Sam Jones, D-Franklin, told the House chamber that he was “in deep concern about the lackadaisical response we have gotten on the oil spill containment.”
After participating in a conference call with officials from the state and BP, Jones said he was distressed about what appeared to be a lack of plans and preparation for containment to prevent the oil from coming ashore. He said the officials have a clean-up policy, but not a prevention policy.
“I would ask the president to send all he can now,” said Jones, who was an aide to Gov. Kathleen Blanco during the Katrina response. “We need the facts, we need the A-team here.”
Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer, said the response is the largest oil spill containment operation in history, with more than 1,000 workers and 76 vessels.
Suttles said workers have been placing containment booms to protect Louisiana’s coastline for the past four or five days. He said 34 miles of booms were in place Thursday afternoon, with nearly 60 more miles of boom on hand.
New dispersal method planned
He said workers are poised to deploy underwater dispersants to try to break up the spill before it reaches the water’s surface, a new method that has never been used in the United States.
A test burn of floating oil corralled in a boom succeeded in burning off about 450 gallons of oil in 45 minutes Wednesday night, Suttles said. He said additional burns are planned in the coming days.
But efforts to plug the leak have been complicated because the well is 5,000 feet below the water’s surface.
A robotic submarine has failed in numerous attempts to stop the leak by activating a blowout preventer, a series of shut-off valves connected to the wellhead. Suttles said workers activated the device after the explosion, but it apparently didn’t seal completely.
BP is building three containment domes to be placed underwater to corral the oil as it leaks from three spots on a pipe attached to the wellhead. But the domes won’t be finished for two to four weeks, and the method has never been used on a leak so far below the water’s surface.
A rig is in place to begin drilling a relief well within the next day or two, but Suttles said the drilling could take three months.
Spill experts are brainstorming
In the meantime, BP has assembled spill experts from several major oil companies to brainstorm ways to stop the leak. The company has also asked for military technology, including better underwater imaging equipment and robotic submarines.
“We’re going to turn over every single stone until we get this thing stopped,” Suttles said. All clean-up costs will be paid by BP, formerly British Petroleum, which saw its stock price plunge more than 8 percent Thursday.
Oil containment booms are everywhere in Coast Guard Cut at the mouth of South Pass, south of Venice, on Thursday. The Department of Interior announced it will send teams to conduct safety inspections on all oil rigs and platforms in the Gulf. Three similar inspections on the Deepwater Horizon this year, including one days before the explosion, found nothing amiss.
State Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Secretary Robert Barham said the agency has biologists at the projected impact points along the coast to monitor the situation. He said bird nesting grounds and other wildlife habitats are in danger in the Breton Sound area.
With oil predicted to reach Pass a Loutre on Thursday night, Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said he would declare a state of emergency. He said predictions are that the oil could reach marshes as far inland as Fort Jackson in four days.
‘A second line of defense’
“We’re going to set up a second line of defense,” a haggard-looking Nungesser said shortly after emerging from a closed-door meeting with BP, Coast Guard and parish officials in Belle Chasse.
He said commercial fishers are volunteering to lay booms, hoping to protect the marshes.
The Obama administration said the spill could affect plans the president announced just last month to allow oil and gas drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the outer continental shelf off the mid-Atlantic coast.
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the plans could be altered depending on the findings of a federal investigation into what caused the oil rig explosion, which left 11 workers missing and presumed dead.
Gulf Coast environmental groups, joined by Greenpeace USA, urged Obama to personally view the damage so he can re-examine his plan to expand off-shore drilling.
“This rig was equipped with the latest technology, yet still we have a catastrophe on our hands,” said Aaron Viles of the Gulf Restoration Network. “Once an accident of this magnitude occurs, it’s clear that there’s little that can be done to protect our coasts.”
Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., took to the Senate floor Thursday afternoon to warn that the response to the deadly oil rig accident and spill shouldn’t be to limit future off-shore drilling.
While Landrieu said the spill is a major disaster and substantial threat to her state’s coastlines and wildlife, she said the sweet crude oil slick isn’t nearly as thick as the one that caused substantial damage to the Santa Barbara, Calif., coastline in 1969, leading to a four-decade moratorium on drilling off the California and Florida coasts.
Paul Purpura, Kia Hall Hayes and Bruce Alpert contributed to this report.
Paul Rioux can be reached at prioux@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3785.