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Oil Comes Ashore in Gulf, Scale of 'Historic' Disaster Sets In
Oil Hits Louisiana Shore, Federal Government Increases Response
Oil from a collapsed offshore drilling platform oozed onto the Louisiana coastline early Friday morning, threatening the worst environmental disaster to hit the U.S. in two decades.
Birds fly above land in Breton Sound off the coast of Louisiana on Thursday, while containment booms are in place to try to keep the oil spill at bay. (Liz Condo/Associated Press)
The oil began washing ashore where the Mississippi River hits
the coast. Louisiana is home to 40 percent of the United States'
wetlands and the oil now threatens some 400 species of animals. The
slick is threatening migrating birds, nesting pelicans and even river
otters and mink along Louisiana's fragile islands and barrier marshes.
Meanwhile, the White House announced Friday morning that there will be no new offshore drilling until there is an "adequate review" of what happened.
"No additional drilling has been authorized and none will until we find out what happened here and whether there was something unique and preventable here," White House senior advisor David Axelrod told George Stephanopoulos on "GMA" today.
Three members of the president's cabinet are expected to descend on the region today to observe the response efforts to contain the massive oil spill that continues to leak thousands of barrels a day into the Gulf.
The oil is leaking at a rate of 210,000 gallons per day. At this rate it will surpass the Exxon Valdez spill, which released a total of 11 million gallons of oil, in approximately 55 days, according to Nancy Kinner, the co-director of Co-Director, Coastal Response Research Center, UNH.
Overnight BP said it would make another attempt to stop the flow of oil under the Gulf using chemical dispersants to break up the oil at the well, a method which has never been used a mile underwater.
Yesterday the Obama administration labeled the spill as an event of "national significance."
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said during a White House briefing that designating the spill as one of "national significance" means that "we can now draw down assets from across the country" to assist with cleanup.
She said 1,100 people are working on the cleanup effort, which so far has collected 685,000 gallons of oil and water from the polluted Gulf.
On Thursday the Coast Guard had predicted that oil could begin to hit the Louisiana coastline as early as tonight. At the time, the floating oil slick was just 3 miles from land and 25 miles from the nearest populated area.
The White House said 174,060 feet of flotation booms had been deployed to corral the floating oil. It said an additional 243,260 feet is available and 265,460 feet has been ordered.
It said 76 tugs, barges and skimmers were on scene to help in containment and cleanup, along with six fixed-wing aircraft, 11 helicopters, 10 remotely operated vehicles, and two mobile offshore drilling units.
BP's chief operating officer, Doug Suttles, said the company has been reviewing research on using chemical dispersants to break up the oil -- pumping them all the way down to the leaking wellhead to keep the crude from reaching the surface.
That's been done before, but never at such depths. The wellhead is almost a mile underwater, 50 miles south of the mouth of the Mississippi River.
U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry called it "a novel, absolutely novel idea."
At an afternoon event in the White House Rose Garden, President Obama said that the federal government is prepared to assist with cleanup efforts.
"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.
"I have ordered the secretaries of the Interior and Homeland Security, as well as administrator Lisa Jackson of the Environmental Protection Agency, to visit the site on Friday to ensure that BP and the entire U.S. government is doing everything possible not just to respond to this incident but also to determine its cause," the president said.
Louisiana Declares State of Emergency
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal declared a state of emergency today because of the oil slick.
Meanwhile, Louisiana shrimpers filed a class-action lawsuit against BP, the owners of the oil rig, and Halliburton, which they say was working to cement the rig's well and well-cap. The suit claimed that these companies and others were negligent in allowing the explosion that led to the spill, which they claim now threatens their livelihoods. They are asking for damages of at least $5 million.
Jindal said BP had agreed to allow local fishermen to assist in the expected cleanup. Under the agreement, shrimpers and fishermen could be contracted by BP to help. Jindal said the state was also training prison inmates to help clean up wildlife harmed by oil slicks moving toward shore.
Billy Nungesser, the president of Plaquemines Parish, the county closest to the spill, said he thought BP underestimated what's about to come ashore and are only asking for help now that it may be too late.
"We know the weather's coming. We know the wind is going to be 25 to 30 knots coming, blowing that oil into the bayous," he said. "Somebody's got to be able to draw a line in the sand."
Cleanup Could Cost $8 Billion
With five times more oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico than originally estimated and the price tag for last week's explosion predicted at $8 billion, questions about BP's response and level of responsibility are mounting.
BP's Suttles admitted some responsibility for the disaster "because we're the lease holder," but assigning blame, he said, should come after the cleanup.
"I can tell you we're not worried about that right now," he said. "Who's ultimately responsible for what will come out over time through an investigations process."
The new leak estimate is about 5,000 barrels a day, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Suttles told ABC News he still believes it to be between 1,000 barrels -- the company's original estimate -- and 5,000.
The Deepwater Horizon rig was reportedly not equipped with a shutoff switch that could have been used to try to close the well. Such switches are not required in the United States, but are used in other countries such as Norway and Brazil.
But Suttles said the rig was equipped with some safety devices that should have prevented this kind of spill.
"They didn't do that, we don't know why they didn't do that and ultimately we will find out," he said.
Suttles was quick to point out that another company was operating the rig at the time of the explosion, not London-based BP.
"I can say that we had equipment required by the regulations," he said. "We don't know why, when the accident occurred, and I should probably clarify, the lease we are drilling on is owed by BP and a few other companies."
Parts of the massive spill were set on fire Wednesday as part of an experiment to try and stop the oil slick from reaching the coastline. Officials said the burn worked, but it was too windy today to try it again.
As the oil approached the coastline, biologists said it threatened as many as 400 species, including sea turtles and dolphins.
One ray of hope is that about 30 percent of an oil slick usually evaporates in the strong southern sun, and microbes and waves take care of another large portion.
"Mother nature does a much better job at cleaning up than we do of picking up," said Ed Levine, an oceanographer with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.
Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill: Slick Close to Shore
The Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, operated by BP Oil and owned by Transocean Ltd., exploded and started burning April 20. Eleven rig workers were never found and are presumed to have died.
BP and its contractors are fighting a high-stakes battle to keep the spill from getting worse. They have tried, unsuccessfully so far, to cover the leaking wellhead with a dome or close it with a submersible robot.
Oil from the area is called light sweet crude, but Edward Overton, a professor emeritus of environmental science at Louisiana State University, said the name is deceptive. It contains heavy compounds, called asphaltenes, that do not burn easily or evaporate, even in the warm climate off Louisiana.
"When you've got a spill like this," said Overton, "there are three things you can do. You can burn it, scoop it up out of the water, or use chemical dispersants to break it up. This oil is not particularly good with any of those three."
"With light crude," he said, "you could burn most of it -- 70 or 80 percent. With heavy crude, I don't know. I'm not optimistic."
ABC News' Matt Gutman, Jake Tapper and Sam Champion provided additional information. ABC News Radio and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
138 Comments so far
Show AllWhy no Shutoff valve required for record profit making corporations?
Forget fossils fuels they are a losing proposition.
Renewables are where the smart money is.
There is a BOP (Blow-out-Preventer) at the well head. it just didnt/won't kick-in. They will probably find out it is an old, outdated, second hand model for use on land, not 5000ft down. But hey, who can inspect it to see if it was to code.
True, however, money is not smart, money is expedient. Shortcuts will always be sought when it comes to making money.
There needs to be a shutoff valve on Greed. We need to learn the meaning of Enough. That means each of us. Like drug addiction, our addiction to oil is what fuels (no pun intended) the need for more drilling and warring.
It all starts with us.
Smart money in my sense is money spent wisely and many intelligent wealthy(and not wealthy) do spend money wisely, for example wealthy people who have no real economical gain in doing so, will purchase hugh photovoltaic systems for the ethical reason of boosting the economy of scales for renewables.
Though it is true in corporate USA expenses are habitually externalized.
The best cure for any addiction is to make a transition to the cure that will actually cancel the addiction. The Nancy Reagan "Just say no" did nothing to solve drug addictions and it certainly won't work on oil addictions either. To end the addiction on oil requires great replacements at least at basic levels. Hemp and alga, transportation reform, business locations restructuring, fuel efficiency, etc... come to mind. Great points on the shortcuts trap society falls into and I know that I too fell for it.
I faintly smell the rising of gas prices.
You're right, and unfortunately, when the oil companies raise prices they are being opportunistic-- they use the money to pay for lawsuits, and lawyers to forever put off paying for any of it, and to line their pockets; instead of using it for safety improvements, future environmental protection and cleanup, and alternate energy research.
Look for Proctor & Gamble stocks to soar in value. They manufacture Dawn Dish Detergent, which is used in the rescue of animals caught in the spill.
Wall Street wins again.
I also smell an upcoming war with the one nation on the planet with huge oil reserves we either haven't conquered or don't own outright: Iran.
Canada's Tarsands are closer, and the Government more agreeable to immediate capitulation. And Mexico is just an Arizona two-step away.
The US could walk there. No chancy ride across an ocean.
All they would have to face is people who look *exactly like them* fighting back.
Heh.
It would be very interesting for US servicemen on leave in 'friendly country', I can guarantee you.
The rest of the world would be smart to somehow isolate the US, quarantine it as it were. Maybe start with boycotts of US manufactured goods, but they'd have to be careful because the US might attack boycotters out of plain mean spite which is what I think drives it all anyway.
The United States Government is run by paranoid lunatics and greed heads. It is a bully with atomic bombs. It's probably only a matter of time before we actually do get a Rush Limbaugh or a Sean Hannity as president. How about a nice 'populist' Beck/Palin ticket, eh? Hey, we could use the laughs, but don't laugh too hard. We've already had a third rate demented cowboy actor in the whitehouse letting the greed heads run the place while jacking the national debt from a little over 30% of gross domestic product to about 65% of same, over a 100% increase.
In fact, the national debt steadily fell from a high of around 120% in 1945 through the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations to around 32% of GDP. And then, in 1980, organized crime took over the Whitehouse and has held it ever since.
National debt? Clinton managed to knock that back a few percent. The came W to save the day by taking the debt nearly ballistic from 58% to 78% of GDP. But wait! Now we have in office, one Mr. Barack Obama who actually is taking the increase ballistic. See graph:
http://zfacts.com/p/318.html
What happens when the debt goes beyond 100% of GDP? Well, take a look at Greece, and their debt was nowhere near that.
Sioux Rose
KENT: Thank you for all your posts on this thread. I appreciate how you think outside the box, and give a damn about the things caving in all around us as "the guardians" tell us to remain calm and continue working and shopping.
and hoping.
I was thinking the same thing. BP is going to have to recoup its losses somehow. A year at inflated prices would probably cover it. Apparently they are going to be footing the bill, but now that the military and other government forces are involved don't be suprised if Americans are stuck holding the very expensive bag for cleanup and paying higher prices at the pump!
I hope everyone really enjoys driving their gas guzzlers this summer...
Every dollar spent by the US Govt on this cleanup should be billed to BP and if they can't pay up the US Govt should arbitrarily take a 51% ownership of the company and divert all profits to the US Treasury until the debt is settled. Yes, fill those SUV tanks now because it'll never be cheaper than it is today.
Why couldn't the oil be siphoned into tankers, seperated from the water and then refined? Dumb question, I know.
That's a great question. Anyone know if this is a possibility?
-"Why couldn't the oil be siphoned into tankers, seperated from the water and then refined? Dumb question, I know."
The last I heard (yesterday) the spill was 250x100 km across, and growing. Also more oil is still coming to the surface, faster than it can be dealt with. And winds are blowing it in different directions towards multiple shore lines. All this was predicted by people concerned with the state of the planet. Unfortunately, the local fishermen and tourist industry couldn't compete with the campaign contributions big oil gave to the Republicans and Democrats, to expand deregulated offshore drilling in sensitive ecological areas.
The profits go to BP and friends. The cost of the cleanup, if a cleanup is even possibe in this case, is borne by you, the taxpayer. All supposedly, to give Americans a two percent boost in their domestic oil production, when most acknowledge that sustainable power like wind and solar are the way to go. Really sad.
"All this was predicted by people concerned with the state of the planet."
Yes, but that was just paranoid exaggerations coming from some damn tree huggers.
Erm... ahhh... you see, what happened... is... welllll... I guess shit just happens, you know? I mean you couldn't predict an accident like this anymore than you could predict a bunch of criminals hijacking airliners and flying them into skyscrapers and the Pentagon? Oh. Wait. Yes, someone had already thought of that but I guess they forgot to tell Condi and George. But, actually they did.
Ahhhh... ummmm... you see...
Hey, wait a minute. Think of all the jobs this is going to provide after the next inevitable hurricane crosses the gulf.
Disaster Capitalism indeed, Naomi.
And so we move from one disaster to the next. The coal mine disaster followed up by this one, all so we can meet our insatiable energy demands. And there will be plenty more to come. This may cause Obama to briefly delay offshore drilling, but it will proceed apace once cursory investigations show no one is to blame, or a wrist or two gets slapped, and it's back to business as usual. After all, we've destroyed Iraq in our obsessions over oil, but that hasn't stopped anything. The profit imperative of the oil companies overrides every other consideration, and Obama is definitely there to protect that, not the environment.
Just as an add: Washington State lost its seventh victim to burns when a portion of the refinery in Anacortes dedicated to gasoline production blew up as they were preparing to restart the machinery. How many more deaths and how much more ecological destruction are we willing to shoulder before policy is changed? I'm wondering if there is a mass mobilization going forth at this very minute to prepare for the triage of wildlife to be cleaned and saved. We need to have a national day of mourning for the hell humans put wildlife through, those without a say in their daily existence confronting disasters and environmental degradation of untold proportions as the beat goes on, and the machine continues its pervasive advance.
We need to have a national day of mourning for the hell humans put wildlife through, those without a say in their daily existence confronting disasters and environmental degradation of untold proportions as the beat goes on, and the machine continues its pervasive advance.
Well put.
I love the timing. Just when president Obama was set to okay drilling in other offshore areas. Drill, baby drill and damn the consequences.
sabotage perhaps?...................
Sabotage or act of God. Whatever. It is another nail in the coffin of the oil industry's claim that it can simultaneously drill and maintain environmental integrity.
Act of God? Ya mean like an earthquake in Haiti? I've heard that earthquakes, aftershocks & tsunamis can travel great distances.
I'm with you randolfski.
Al Qaeda? ;/
If I were a Bible-thumpin', end-of-time preacher I would deliver this message: God has been upset with America ever since the turn of the century. First He gave us Bush & Cheney, then 9/11, the wars in Iran & Afghanistan, Katrina, Obama and now this. God is telling us to stick our heads between our legs and kiss..........
Wow, the governor of Louisianna is asking five million
in a lawsuit... He sure was quick with his filing.
$5,000,000.00!? Shoot, that's chicken feed. No surprise if bp wouldn't pay that much to everybody on the Louisianna coast and not blink an eye, but this is disaster capitalism so those living on the coast get nothing but some of them 'fema trailers'.
right after the next hurricane and its oil squalls
no new offshore drilling until...........bla, bla, bla.
nothing like shutting the stable door, after the horse has bolted...................
Right on Ted Markow, how many of us have ordered an electric car? How many are driving 350 horses to pull one person? We the people have the power to stop it, instead we enable them.
I think we should all be good stewards and do our best to limit our use of oil, but what we consume is a drop in the bucket compared to what the Department of Defense is using for these pointless wars: something like 295,000 gallons per day.
They'll burn the last available drop of petroleum fighting over the last available drop of petroleum.
300 million people consume a drop in the bucket? Don't think so.
The DoD will not stop. Are we going to do nothing while they keep on going? Will that make us righteous? Is that our only response?
You're forgetting the ELECTRICITY part. Hint: coal and nuclear likely to come into play.
Thank you maxpayne. And it takes a lot of energy just to manufacture the electric cars. We need high speed rail, light rail, more walking .... gasp! If the latter ever came about, we'd all be so svelte!
It would be a pipe dream to watch Hampton Roads going railroad let alone light rail. The state government is a crock when it comes to their budgeting plans for public transportation except for perhaps Northern VA. Virginia Beach and Chesapeake were able to get more side walks going despite the local rightwingers trying to complain about "waste of taxpayer money" but the Maglev train project that was sort of gaining popularity in Norfolk hasn't gotten far. There were a few Hampton Roads buses in 2008 when the gas prices were high up but they slowly diminished out of sight a few months after the gas prices fell off their peak.
PS: I didn't know that it took a lot more energy to manufacture electric cars.
It is 1.1 miles from my front door to a supermarket. In other than inclement weather I sometimes walk to the store. I carry two empty fabric reusable grocery bags and bring them back full. And the return trip is mostly uphill, darn it. I need to do that more often.
"I need to do that more often."
One of the most courageous and responsible things I've read on Common Dreams in a while.
Thanks.
I need to do more too.
It appears the lack of a shutoff valve is due to lack of regulation. Does this ring a bell? Finance industry collapses amid corruption due to lack of government regulation. Here is environmental disaster due to lack of a shut off valve :
"The Deepwater Horizon rig was reportedly not equipped with a shutoff switch that could have been used to try to close the well. Such switches are not required in the United States, but are used in other countries such as Norway and Brazil."
So to win elections in November will the Obama administration continue to court the right wing and follow their plan to starve the government until it is weak enough to drown in the bathtub - as advocated by Grover Norquist?
The question is whether to have more government regulation over banks and offshore oil drilling and all the rest of the corporate rapers of society and the planet or to let the greedy and powerful continue?
The question is whether to have more government regulation over banks and offshore oil drilling and all the rest of the corporate rapers of society and the planet or to let the greedy and powerful continue?
To my way of thinking you just defined "capitalist". Capitalism can only work if planetary resources are unlimited which is false by definition. "Human resources", a term I loathe nearly as much as "The Homeland", are already nearly unlimited, driving down the cost of labor worldwide.
If we cannot find a way to, hopefully humanely, limit population growth we are on the road to extinction. Even with a stable but ideally declining world population finite planetary resources will still eventually be used up without 100% efficient recycling of all "raw materials". If we continue to allow environmental pollution we will eventually virtually choke on our own sewage (CO2, methane, mercury and other heavy metals, arsenic, PCB's, industrial effluents, acid rain from smokestack emissions, much of that from coal fired plants worldwide but especially in China and what have you including literally our sewage). And, speaking of China, take a look at pictures of urban air pollution there. That is our worldwide future before we all finally choke to death on the atmosphere.
The only possible way to thwart the rabid extractive (not quite successfully fighting the urge to write "running dog") capitalist planet destroyers is to dramatically, radically reduce demand for their output. If the population of a country goes from one hundred million to one hundred fifty million, then another ten million cars and 10 million refrigerators and ten million HD televisions and ten million matchbox townhouses and another 500 million gallons (!) a day of fresh water are needed. All of it comes with an increase in total 'carbon footprint' size attached. Obviously not all needs are true needs. Water is probably a bit higher on the needs scale for most people than new wall to wall carpeting. Unless its on sale.
There will probably at some point evolve a super-killer virus or a super-killer bacteria or massive poisoning from a polluted environment resulting in mass death. I mean, really, how much longer can the rape continue? A hundred years? 200? A thousand? A thousand is pure fantasy. And so is, probably, five hundred.
It kinda pisses me off, but hey, we had a good run but we were just too stupid to keep greed from doing us in. Instead of around 1956 figuring out how to limit the world to its then 2.2 billion we allowed the population to grow to today's nearly seven billion. We were quite happy to make a buck on the construction boom, the oil sales, the vehicle sales, all of the sales of every modern convenience. So, anyway, instead of a minimum 1.1 billion gallons of fresh water a day we now need a minimum 3.5 billion. Instead of a barely sufficient 1.1 billion pounds of food a day we now need 3.5 billion pounds. Et cetera. I guess there's still lots of land left to rape in Africa. We'll only have to relocate or murder a hundred million of the indigenous population currently in the way there. We, us humans, are pretty good at that sort of thing as we've proven through the centuries.
looks like it is time for an executive order to seize BPs assests (and their operator's too) before it vanishes into a maze of shells.
Sioux Rose
One reads this and wants to weep. The devastation is unbearable... to dolphin, sea turtles, wild birds.
It just reminds that for every dollar wasted on war, militarism, and supporting a network of over 700 MIC bases worldwide, THAT money might have gone towards a new "Manhattan Project," one that brought the most inventive minds together, invested in high school students with promising intellectual gifts, and likely come upon the NEXT great technology... one that does not depend upon OIL! The second best option was to use stimulus money to create a back-to-work corps implementing GREEN technology. But no, better to give the crafty bankers who engineered a crisis of global proportions yet more money to bet on, while never putting any regulations on their already bankrupt enterprises firmly into place. The gushing from this oil rig is a metaphor for the gushing sound of money being printed. In both instances, everything in their wake is being destroyed.
So with probably trillions wasted on what is arguably anything BUT defense, our problems come full circle. The nation's infrastructure is crumbling, citizen hates citizen, the school system is an exercise in robotic training (that will put millions of young imaginations to waste), the "leaders" hand OUR money to the banksters, weapons makers, and oil men who grease the engines of war for their own dark profits. And nature dies. Writhes. Sends out paroxysms of despair (i.e. earthquakes).
EVEN now, an intelligent leader, one who was truly dedicated to the welfare of the nation, would make an exceptional speech, one that would redefine the nation's energy goals and protocols along FAR MORE reasonable lines.
Instead, we are living the hell that results when priorities consistent with Mars (the make-war state) wedded to Mammon (money is king) define the nation's course.
New Orleans, the symbolic belly/center of our nation is where the fatal blows have landed. And still the leaders continue on a course of M.A.D.ness.
Yes, metaphors abound. I hope every photographer in the country is headed for the Gulf today, because this is going to look as ugly as it is. A picture is indeed worth many thousands of words. Just as the Abu Ghraib photos revealed the soul of our occupying army, so the upcoming obliteration of sea life will reveal the soul of big oil and the fouled nest of Gas Junkie Central.
At least some others are more concerned about the whales, birds, trees, turtles and myriad of wildlife that will be affected more then "How it will hurt the shrimp industry".
I think if we learned to put the enviroment first and foremost and made it MORE important then livelihoods only then can we work towards sustainability and true balance with the Earth.
I shall shed more tears over the oil covered egrets and ducks and drowning turtles then I will over peoples losing their jobs because Tourism shuts down are there no shrimp to catch. WE as people have a choice as to how we want to live and earn our "livelihoods".
The animals do not.
Exactly so. The economic meltdown was caused by humans and mainly affected humans. In a collective way it served us all right for being greedy and stupid and for allowing others to be greedy and stupid. We have the right to bunch up in our hellhole cities and swindle and bugger one another to our hearts content, but we don't have the right to impinge on the natural world, what's left of it, with our toxic effluent.
Richard Dawkins had better be right about God, because if she exists I don't know how we'd go about explaining this.
I think Nemesis has just nudged the environmental stewards and that will not be her last act. The stewards of the environment will find that they are totally out of their league here.
Wonder how long it will take to empty this vast reservoir of crude but I think the bet, if at least 50/50, that Nemesis will show us. And the new name will be the 'Gulf of Toxico'. Wonder how all those beach front properties are coping with the eventual turning of white sand into black stinking sticky sand... wait a minute, revelation here, let all the oil get in the sand on the beaches because it will create the largest 'natural resource' of asphalt in the world. I bet the corporate best and brightest have already had this figured.
" wait a minute, revelation here, let all the oil get in the sand on the beaches because it will create the largest 'natural resource' of asphalt in the world. I bet the corporate best and brightest have already had this figured."
I'm having a Homer Simpson "Doh!" moment here. Disaster Capitalism at its finest hour.