Gulf oil spill reaches US wildlife coasts
Heavy oil from the massive Gulf of Mexico spill reached wildlife sanctuaries on Louisiana coasts today.
The brown ooze was the first heavy oil seen on shore since the BP well blew out following a rig explosion.
“This is the heavy oil that everyone’s been fearing that is here now,” Governor Bobby Jindal said.
BP was conducting tests ahead of a new effort to choke off the oil’s flow.
Experts hoped that by Sunday they could start to pump heavy mud into the crippled equipment on top of the well, then permanently seal it with cement.
The procedure has been used before to halt oil leaks above ground, but like other methods BP is exploring it has never been used 5,000ft below the sea.
Scientists and engineers have spent much of the last week preparing for the complex operation and taking a series of measurements to make sure that the mission does not backfire.
“The philosophy from the beginning is not to take any action which could make the situation worse, and those are the final steps we’re doing,” said Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer.
Meanwhile the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said that a small part of the slick had entered the “loop current”, a stream of faster moving water that circulates around the Gulf before bending around Florida and up the Atlantic coast. Its arrival may portend a wider environmental catastrophe affecting the Florida Keys and tourist-dotted beaches along the state’s east coast.
Tracking the unpredictable spill and the complex loop current is a challenge for scientists.
The loop moves based on the shifting winds and other environmental factors, so even though the oil is leaking continuously it may be in the current one day, and out the next. And the slick itself has defied scientists’ efforts to track it and predict its path. Instead, it has repeatedly advanced and retreated, an ominous, shape-shifting mass in the Gulf, with vast underwater lobes extending outward.
Florida’s state meteorologist said it will be at least another seven days before the oil reaches waters west of the Keys, and state officials sought to reassure visitors that its beaches were still clean and safe.
At least six million gallons have already poured into the Gulf off Louisiana since the rig explosion that killed 11 workers.
BP succeeded in partially siphoning away the leak over the weekend, when it hooked up a mile-long tube to the broken pipe, sending some of the oil to a ship on the surface.
