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.

http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20100430/NEWS01/4300329/1006/Brevard+emergency+officials+focus+on+oil+spill

FloridaToday.com

Brevard emergency officials focus on oil spill

BY JIM WAYMER * FLORIDA TODAY * APRIL 30, 2010

Brevard County emergency management and environmental officials will keep close watch into next week, should the Space Coast have to brace for globs of oil or tar that might lap ashore, kill sea turtles and foul new multi-million-dollar beaches.

As the 4,700-square-mile oil slick spread toward Louisiana, experts wondered if a shift in winds or currents might send it to Florida next.

“There’s wild trajectory at this point, because you don’t know,” said Ernie Brown, director of the Natural Resources Management Office.

He met Wednesday with Brevard Emergency Management Director Bob Lay to talk over potential scenarios and impacts.

The slick drifted about 90 miles south of Pensacola Bay Thursday, but only 30 miles north of its potential conveyor belt to the Space Coast: the Gulf of Mexico Loop Current.
The current can surge northward by several hundred miles. And if oil entrains into the current, it could sweep into the Keys, around Florida and be offshore of Brevard within a week. Then it would be up to which way the wind blows.

“For Florida, it’s not good news,” said Yonggang Liu, an oceanographer at the University of Florida who’s using numerical models and satellite imagery to forecast the slick’s trajectory. “Once it gets close to shore, it’s more driven by the winds.”

His forecast through May 2 shows the slick stretching out into three main large fingers. Two swing toward the Mississippi Delta, but a third lingered along the Panhandle as the Loop Current swells ever closer to the spill zone.

If the two meet and the oil swings around Florida, eddies that spin off the Gulf Stream could carry emulsified oil and soft tar balls, the same way red tide that originates in the Gulf gets delivered to Brevard and the Indian River Lagoon.

“We anticipate it going into the Loop Current in a few days, then it will be headed to the Florida Keys and the East Coast of Florida,” said Mitchell Roffer of Roffer’s Ocean Fishing Forecasting Service in West Melbourne. “Very scary. Very scary.”
His forecast, which also taps satellite imagery, put the edge of the sheen about 30 miles north of the northern edge of the Loop Current.

“Not all the ocean is controlled by winds,” Roffer added. “It’s certainly going to be pushed back toward the northwest, but you’re not going to stop the flow of that water with the short-term wind.”

The spill threatens peak spawning season for Atlantic bluefin tuna, a threatened species, his forecast said.

“This whole zone is a highly populated area with such fish as tuna, dolphin, wahoo, marlin, snapper, grouper and sharks, as well as turtles and birds,” Roffer said in his forecast.
Sea turtles could get hit the worst as they enter their nesting season, which officially begins May 1 for most species.

State biologists already find tar and plastic in the guts of about 90 percent of the baby turtles captured along seaweed lines in the Gulf Stream. Either their mouths get sealed shut with tar, or their guts are lined with plastic.

The tar and oil also could threaten to foul a just-completed $12.4 million dredging project that pumped sand onto beaches in Indialantic and Melbourne Beach, as well a $7.8 million project that bypassed sand from Port Canaveral onto more than a mile of Cape Canaveral shoreline.

County officials expect a less toxic brew, should the slick reach here.

“By that point in time, you’d have extremely weathered, emulsified petroleum product,” Brown said. “If that happened, we would be moving very quickly to remove it from the beach.”

Oil emulsifies within about three days, said John Trefry, a geochemist at Florida Tech.
About 10 to 20 percent would vaporize.

“The rest is just going to either decompose, mainly with sunlight or bacteria over time or end up on the beach,” Trefry said.
The drilling rig, Deep Horizon, sank on Earth Day, April 22, about 130 miles southeast of New Orleans, after an explosion two days earlier. The rig blew up after a high-pressure surge during drilling. Eleven mission crew members were never recovered.
Officials this week increased their earlier estimate of the well’s leak rate from 1,000 barrels of oil per day to 5,000 barrels, or 210,000 gallons. Efforts to shut off the well have failed.

Scientists said the rarity of such large-scale spills in the gulf and a lack of observation instruments make it difficult to predict what the oil slick might do.

On April 9, a British consultant released a 177-page report that found only a 1 percent chance per year or less of a blowout and oil spill from offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. They called the risks “serious but manageable” and dwarfed by risks from hurricanes and shipping but stressed the uncertainty.

So does Trefry.

“It’s hard to know,” he said of the slick reaching here. “It depends on how much it keeps on coming. It’s such an unknown right now. Certainly this is the fear of everyone. This is the worst of all scenarios. Nobody wants that. If none of this gets beached, we’ll be O.K.”

 Contact Waymer at 242-3663 or jwaymer@floridatoday.com.  Special thanks to Richard Charter

Special thanks to Richard Charter
By Ben Raines
April 30, 2010, 2:18PM

 A leaked memorandum obtained by the Press-Register on the unfolding spill disaster in the Gulf makes clear the Coast Guard now fears the Deepwater Horizon well site could be on the verge of becoming an unchecked gusher shooting millions of gallons of oil per day into the Gulf. ‘The following is not public’ document states

 A confidential government report on the unfolding spill disaster makes clear the Coast Guard now fears the well could be on the verge of becoming an unchecked gusher shooting millions of gallons of oil per day into the Gulf. A confidential government report on the unfolding spill disaster in the Gulf makes clear the Coast Guard now fears the well could become an unchecked gusher shooting millions of gallons of oil per day into the Gulf.

“The following is not public,” reads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Emergency Ops document dated April 28. “Two additional release points were found today. If the riser pipe deteriorates further, the flow could become unchecked resulting in a release volume an order of magnitude higher than previously thought.”

In scientific circles, an order of magnitude means something is 10 times larger. In this case, an order of magnitude higher would mean the volume of oil coming from the well could be 10 times higher than the 5,000 barrels a day coming out now. That would mean 50,000 barrels a day, or 2.1 million gallons a day. It appears the new leaks mentioned in the Wednesday release are the leaks reported to the public late Wednesday night. 

“There is no official change in the volume released but the Coast Guard is preparing for a worst-case release,” continues the document.

The emergency document also states that the spill has grown in size so quickly that only 1 to 2 percent of it has been sprayed with dispersants.

The Press-Register obtained the emergency report from a government official. The White House, NOAA, the Coast Guard and BP Plc did not immediately return calls for comment made early this morning.

The worst-case scenario for the broken and leaking well pouring oil into the Gulf of Mexico would be the loss of the wellhead and kinked piping currently restricting the flow to 5,000 barrels — or 210,000 gallons — per day.

If the wellhead is lost, oil could leave the well at a much greater rate.

“Typically, a very good well in the Gulf can produce 30,000 barrels a day, but that’s under control. I have no idea what an uncontrolled release could be,” said Stephen Sears, chairman of the petroleum engineering department at Louisiana State University.

On Thursday, federal officials said they were preparing for the worst-case scenario but didn’t elaborate.

Kinks in the piping created as the rig sank to the seafloor may be all that is preventing the Deepwater Horizon well from releasing its maximum flow. BP is now drilling a relief well as the ultimate fix. The company said Thursday that process would take up to 3 months.

Gulf oil spill
See continuing coverage of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill of 2010 on al.com and GulfLive.com.

To keep track of the Gulf of Mexico oil slick, visit www.skytruth.org or  follow its Twitter feed.

To see updated projection maps related to the oil spill in the Gulf, visit the Deepwater Horizon Response Web site established by government officials.

How to help: Volunteers eager to help cope with the spill and lessen its impact on the Gulf Coast environment and economy.

“I’m not sure what’s happening down there right now. I have heard there is a kink in what’s called the riser. The riser is a long pipe that connects the wellhead to the rig. I really don’t know if that kink is a big restriction. Is that really a big restriction? There could be another restriction further down,” said LSU’s Sears. “An analogy would be if you have a kink in a garden hose. You suspect that kink is restricting the flow, but there could be another restriction or kink somewhere else closer to the faucet.

BP Plc executive Doug Suttles said Thursday the company was worried about “erosion” of the pipe at the wellhead.

Sand is an integral part of the formations that hold oil under the Gulf. That sand, carried in the oil as it shoots through the piping, is blamed for the ongoing erosion described by BP.

“The pipe could disintegrate. You’ve got sand getting into the pipe, it’s eroding the pipe all the time, like a sandblaster,” said Ron Gouget, a former oil spill response coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Oil scooped up from the Gulf of Mexico 17 miles southeast of the South Pass of the Mississippi River is seen on the hand of deck hand Jordan Ellis on the Louisiana coast Friday, April 30, 2010. The oil originated from a leaking pipeline after last week’s explosion and collapse of the Deepwater Horizon.”When the oil is removed normally, it comes out at a controlled rate. You can still have abrasive particles in that. Well, now, at this well, its coming out at fairly high velocity,” Gouget continued. “Any erosive grains are abrading the inside of the pipe and all the steel that comes in contact with the liquid. It’s essentially sanding away the pipe.”

The formation that was being drilled by the Deepwater Horizon when it exploded and sank last week is reported to have tens of millions of barrels of oil. A barrel contains 42 gallons.

“The loss of a wellhead, this is totally unprecedented,” said Gouget. “How bad it could get from that, you will have a tremendous volume of oil that is going to be offgassing on the coast. Depending on how much wind is there, and how those gases build up, that’s a significant health concern.”

Alex Kaplun, E&E reporter

Left-wing interest groups are launching campaigns to lean on President Obama to reinstate the ban on offshore drilling, and there are signs that the idea is getting increased traction on Capitol Hill.   MoveOn.org, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth are among the groups using the ever-expanding Gulf of Mexico spill to fight the recent push for increased offshore drilling.

Today, MoveOn.org urged its members to call the White House and ask Obama to reinstate the offshore drilling moratorium that was allowed to expire in 2008.   “The spill is already a major environmental and commercial disaster for the Gulf Coast,” MoveOn organizers wrote in an e-mail blast to its membership today. “It’s also a wake up call. The Senate is considering legislation that will promote new offshore oil exploration. President Obama can stop this by reinstating the ban on new offshore drilling. Hearing from Americans coast to coast will send a powerful message that we don’t want new drilling.”
Greenpeace is also using the opportunity to call on Obama to not only reinstate the offshore moratorium but also block Royal Dutch Shell PLC’s plans to start drilling in parts of the Arctic this summer. And the Alaska Wilderness League similarly called on the administration to shelve the Arctic drilling, stating that the administration would have a significantly harder time responding to a spill in Alaska than the Gulf of Mexico.
“The risk is too high in the Arctic, especially since the lessons from the Gulf have yet to be learned,” said Alaska Wilderness League Executive Director Cindy Shogan. “Obama must act now on his timeout on all offshore drilling before we sacrifice another one of our precious coasts.”
Friends of the Earth this week also launched its own petition effort, calling on Obama “to focus on investing in clean energy instead of reverting to more drilling,” and has also called on offshore drilling language to be stripped from the climate and energy bill. The group says that thus far, the petition has garnered 18,000 signatures.

The Obama administration today already ordered a freeze on any new offshore drilling until an investigation is complete into the ongoing Deepwater Horizon spill. That, however, has not been good enough for MoveOn and others on the left who want nothing less than the reinstatement of the offshore moratorium that had been on the books for 30 years.
“This spill isn’t just about one accident,” MoveOn wrote. “It’s also a powerful reminder that this country needs an energy policy that breaks our addiction to oil, that invests in clean energy solutions like wind and solar, and that keeps our communities safe.”    The groups behind the campaigns largely represent the left flank of the Democratic Party, and many major Washington-based environmental groups have yet to make similar statements. But there are also signs on Capitol Hill that some Democratic lawmakers are moving toward embracing a reinstatement of the moratorium.    Four members of New Jersey’s delegation today called for the administration to at the very least reverse the decision to increase drilling along the East Coast. “This catastrophe demonstrates exactly why no new drilling should proceed in any U.S. waters, and certainly not in the Atlantic,” the members wrote.    Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) also hinted in his own statement today that the spill will force Congress to take another look at offshore drilling policy.    “This terrible event will, undoubtedly, require us to re-examine how we extract our nation’s offshore energy resources and will have to be taken into consideration with any legislation that proposes to open new areas to development,” Reid said.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.adn.com/2010/04/30/1257776/obama-offshore-oil-leases-will.html
 
By H. JOSEF HEBERT and JULIE PACE
The Associated Press

(04/30/10 11:59:06)
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Friday directed that no new offshore oil drilling leases be issued unless rigs have new safeguards to prevent a repeat of the explosion and resulting massive spill threatening the Gulf Coast with major environmental damage.
Obama ordered Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to report within 30 days on what new technologies are needed to tighten safeguards against oil spills from deep water drilling rigs.
“We are going to make sure that any leases going forward have those safeguards,” said Obama at a White House Rose Garden event.
The president sought to reassure the jittery Gulf Coast that Washington is on top of the mounting oil spill crisis, saying people’s livelihoods and a region’s ecology are at stake.
His declaration on future lease sales is not expected to have any immediate impact.
White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said no oil production is being halted and there are no new drilling lease sales in the pipeline for the 30-day period Salazar has to get the report back to Obama. Oil rigs and platforms currently operating in the Gulf are being inspected by the Interior Department.
Interior has two lease sales scheduled for Gulf waters later this year and four more in the Gulf and off Alaska in 2011. The first offshore leases under an expanded drilling plan announced by Obama a month ago would be issued for waters off the Virginia coast in 2012 at the earliest.
Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters Friday that he wouldn’t rule out changes to Obama’s offshore drilling plan, pending the results of Salazar’s report.
It’s still unclear what caused the explosion on the BP rig more than 40 miles off the Louisiana coast.
But foreshadowing the possible legal fallout from the increasingly menacing oil spill, the Justice Department said Friday it was sending a team of attorneys to New Orleans to meet with the U.S. attorney and response teams and to monitor the spill.
“The British Petroleum oil spill has already cost lives and created a major environmental incident,” Attorney General Holder said in a statement. “The Justice Department stands ready to make available every resource at our disposal to vigorously enforce the laws that protect the people who work and reside near the Gulf, the wildlife, the environment and the American taxpayers.”
Several civil suits already have been filed by private lawyers in the Gulf region.
Government officials said the blown-out well 40 miles offshore is spewing five times as much oil into the water as originally estimated — about 5,000 barrels, or 200,000 gallons, a day. The oil slick could become the nation’s worst environmental disaster in decades, threatening hundreds of species of fish, birds and other wildlife along the Gulf Coast, one of the world’s richest seafood grounds.
In his remarks Friday, Obama cited a series of federal interventions in recent days, all designed to blunt the oil spill’s impact and put people at ease.
“Let me be clear: I continue to believe that domestic oil production is an important part of our overall strategy for energy security,” Obama said. “But I’ve always said that it must be done responsibly for the safety of our workers and our environment.”
Obama said that oil company BP ultimately is responsible for the crisis, but that the federal government is fully prepared to meet its responsibilities to communities.
Gibbs wouldn’t say whether the White House has confidence in BP’s handling of the incident, only telling reporters Friday that the government “has had oversight over this the entire time.”
Earlier, a top adviser to Obama said no new oil drilling will be authorized until authorities learn what caused the explosion.
David Axelrod also defended the administration’s response to the April 20 accident, saying “we had the Coast Guard in almost immediately.”
He deflected comparisons with the government’s slow response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, telling ABC’s “Good Morning America” that such speculation “is always the case in Washington whenever something like this happens.”
Obama recently lifted a drilling moratorium for many offshore areas, including the Atlantic and Gulf areas. But Axelrod said Friday “no additional drilling has been authorized and none will until we find out what has happened here.”