Ecological disaster looms as oil from damaged BP well head reaches US shoreline

Ecological disaster looms as oil from damaged BP well head reaches US shoreline
By Kris Jepson Updated on 30 April 2010
The prospect of an ecological disaster looms along America’s vulnerable Gulf of Mexico coastline as oil from a damaged BP well head begins to wash ashore. But BP’s head of group media tells Channel 4 News that the cause of the accident is still not known.



It is BP’s fourth major incident in the United States in as many years.

The rig exploded last Friday, killing 11 men. One week on, oil is still belching out of the open well hole, 5,000 feet below sea level, at the rate of 5,000 barrels a day.

Desperate efforts have been launched to try to protect the wildlife habitats along the coast.

President Obama has ordered a complete halt on oil exploration in the area.

The White House has suspended any new exploration in the Gulf pending the review of last week's explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.

Interview: Andrew Gowers, BP head of group media
The head of group media for BP, Andrew Gowers, told Jon Snow that the rig involved in the incident was operated by Transocean, an American company.



He said it was BP's responsibililty to cope with the consequences of the incident. BP was now staging a massive clean-up operation, both below the surface in efforts to cap the well, and on the surface with the largest maritime clean-up the world had ever seen.

Mr Gowers said huge volumes of dispersants were being sprayed on the leak.

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He conceded that the oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico was BP's – "and that's why we have primary responsibility for cleaning up the consequences and stopping it."

He stressed that "the issue of fault and responsibility between various operators is not actually an issue for now". And he stated that the rig involved "was owned and operated and regulated separately, under Transocean".

Mr Gowers admitted that the cause of the accident was not known. BP, Transocean and the US government had all launched investigations, and that it would take some time to determine the cause, he said.

He continued: "What we know as a consequence of that accident was that the piece of kit – the vital, failsafe piece of safety machinery that is supposed to stop wells tight when trouble happens – failed to work. That's a piece of kit on the Transocean rig."

BP was focused on "helping them (Transocean) (…) by making the blowout preventer (…) work and, failing that, doing other things to cap off the spill."

State of emergency in Louisiana
President Barack Obama pledged to "use every single available resource" and the US military is mobilizing to help contain the spreading spill from the deepwater leak in the Gulf of Mexico.

Crude oil is spewing out of the well, following the explosion which sank the BP rig Deepwater Horizon, at a rate of up to 5,000 barrels a day, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

That is five times the original estimate.

Local residents in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida have expressed concerned the slick will damage fisheries, wildlife refuges and tourism.

The governor of Louisiana Bobby Jindal has been heading up the ongoing recovery from the devastating damage caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Declaring a state of emergency, he has warned that the slick "threatens the state's natural resources." He also asked the Defence Department for funds to deploy up to 6,000 National Guard troops to help with the expected clean-up.

Experts have warned that the ecology of the Mississippi Delta area is under threat as the huge 3 mile oil slick spreads to marshland.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Neopolitano declared it "a spill of national significance", which essentially means funds and federal resources could be used from other states to help in the clean-up.

Napolitano, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson are travelling to the Gulf coast today to assess the situation.

Drilling permits
For Barack Obama, he says the London based BP PLs shoulders most responsibility for the clean-up, but his current proposals to offer new offshore drilling permits, which are before Congress, may be an incentive for the US to do whatever it can to help.

However, opponents of Obama's plan for more drilling permits are moving to block the legislation.

Democratic Senator from Florida, Bill Nelson, said he was filing a bill to temporarily prohibit the administration from expanding offshore drilling, citing the risk of a potential "environmental and economic disaster" from the spill.

The Obama administration did not rule out imposing a pause in new deepwater drilling until oil companies can show they can control any spills that may happen.

Resources deployed so far
· 174,060 feet of boom (barrier) to contain the spill. An additional 243,260 feet is available and 265,460 feet has been ordered.

· Recovered 18,180 barrels (763,560 gallons) of an oil-water mix.

· Deployed 98,361 gallons of dispersant. An additional 75,000 gallons are available and 184,748 have been ordered.

· Deployed 76 response vessels, including skimmers, tugs, barges, and recovery vessels to assist in containment and cleanup efforts-in addition to six fixed-wing aircraft, 11 helicopters, 10 remotely operated vehicles, and two mobile offshore drilling units.

· Five staging areas (Biloxi, Miss., Pensacola, Fla. Venice, La., Pascagoula, Miss. and Theodore, Ala.) are in place and ready to protect sensitive shorelines.

Containment
The navy has supplied inflatable booms and seven skimming systems to the coastguard to contain the oil.

US coastguard Captain Steve Poulin in Alabama said: "We have a booming strategy for coastal Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle."

Poulin added that some 500,000 protection and containment booms were stockpiled along the coastline for deployment.

BP and the coastguard are working together in what the company says is the biggest oil spill containment operation in history.

The oil giant confirmed that it is struggling to control the spill. It has asked the Pentagon for access to military imaging machinery and remotely operated vehicles to help plug the leak in the well which lies 5,000 feet under the sea.

Eleven workers are missing and presumed dead after the rig exploded and caught fire 11 days ago.

Underwater robots failed to activate a cutoff valve on the ocean floor and now BP is relying on a plan to cover the well with a steel cap. However, this will take at least four weeks to put in place, by which stage over 150,000 barrels could have been spilled.

If that plan fails, BP has no alternative other than drilling a relief well, which would take two to three months. If it takes that long, there is a strong chance that over 300,000 barrels could be leaked - that is more than the US's worst oil spill in 1989 by the Exxon Valdez in Alaska.

Obama has been briefed over any disruption to the shipping channels of the Gulf, which is crucial for the delivery petroleum to the US market. But no disruption has been reported as yet.

Channel 4 News Science Correspondent Julian Rush reports:

With the winds forecast to shift to the south-east, oil engineers are in a race against time to prevent the growing oil slick from hitting the Louisiana shore near New Orleans.

At its closest, the slick is only 16 miles from the coast, and it is forecast to come ashore by Friday. The outflow of water from the huge river may push some of it back but no-one's pretending the environmental impact won't be immense - the fragile ecosystem of the Mississippi River delta is very delicate.

NASA satellite imagery shows the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

There's the long term solution. A second drilling rig is now on site and will "spud" this weekend (start drilling). The aim is to drill down to meet the existing well in the seabed beneath the well head, to divert the flow and cap it again.

It's been done often enough before, but it's difficult - they have to drill down and sideways for several thousand feet to hit a target that is two feet wide, several hundred feet underground. And it will take at least a month.

Lawsuit
BP's shares took a massive hit yesterday, falling by six per cent, as investors realised the consequences of the potential cost to stop the leak.

BP has seen its shares plummet by 10 per cent since the explosion, and Transocean Ltd's, the firm which owns the rig, has fallen by 14 per cent.

Oilfield services companies Cameron International Corp and Halliburton Co have also seen their shares tumble on fears about their ties to the Deepwater Horizon rig.

Cameron, which supplied the blowout preventer for the rig, says it is insured for $500 million of liability, if needed. Halliburton says it did a variety of work on the rig and is assisting with the investigation.

Shrimp fishermen in Louisiana filed a class-action lawsuit against BP, Transocean, Halliburton and Cameron, accusing them of negligence. None of the companies would comment on the lawsuit.