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NEW ORLEANS – The Coast Guard says oil is now leaking from the damaged well that fed a massive rig that exploded this week off Louisiana's coast.
Guard officials on Saturday estimated that as much as 1,000 barrels of oil is escaping each day from the well head on the ocean floor, increasing the threat to the Gulf's fragile ecosystem.
As recently as Friday, the Coast Guard said no oil appeared to be leaking. Rear Adm. Mary Landry said on Saturday that the leak was a new discovery but could have begun when the rig sank on Thursday, two days after the initial explosion.
BP PLC, which leased the rig and is taking the lead in the cleanup, says it's studying how to stop the leak.
Eleven workers missing after the blast are presumed dead, and a search for them has been called off.

About 1,000 barrels of oil a day are leaking into the Gulf of Mexico at the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig which caught fire last Tuesday, April 21, then exploded. Eleven of the rig’s 126 crewmembers are presumed dead.

Remote underwater vehicles exploring beneath the site, off the coast of Louisiana, found two leaks about 5,000 feet below the ocean surface; one at the riser and one in the drill pipe, the U.S. Coast Guard said today. The rig was found capsized on the sea floor about 1,500 feet (457 meters) northwest of the well site.

The Coast Guard also reported that it had observed a 20-mile by 20-mile oil slick about 40 miles offshore by air on Saturday.

The Coast Guard, Marine Spill Response Corporation, an energy industry cleanup consortium, and BP owner of the rig, are reportedly working in collaboration to contain and secure the spill.

"Our response plan is focused on quickly securing the source of the subsurface oil emanating from the well, clean the oil on the surface of the water, and keeping the response well offshore," said Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary Landry.

BP, the responsible party, is required to fund the cost of the response and cleanup operations, according to the Coast Guard. The Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, established after the Exxon Valdez incident, may also be tapped for cleanup efforts.

The Coast Guard ended its search for the 11 missing crewmembers late Friday afternoon.

Officials said its still too early to determine the cause of the explosion.

The oil well connected to a drilling rig that sank in the Gulf of Mexico last week after a fiery explosion is gushing crude oil, raising fears of a severe environmental hazard.

An oily sheen on Sunday covered 600 square miles, an area twice as large as the five boroughs of New York. The slick, which is spreading north, is about 70 miles south of the Mississippi and Alabama coastline, the U.S. Coast Guard said.

Efforts to shut off the well have been unsuccessful. The leak, which was discovered Saturday through information from underwater cameras, is still gushing 1,000 barrels a day from the seafloor.

The offshore accident has left BP PLC, the U.K.-based company that was exploring for oil on the rig, scrambling to contain both the spill and any potential damage to its reputation. BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward flew to the gulf coast on Friday to oversee the response.

BP has mobilized most of its senior management to deal with the oil spill, which is being seen as potentially the biggest crisis the company has faced since the explosion and fire at its Texas City, Texas, refinery five years ago that left 15 people dead and scores injured.

The fallout for BP and the oil industry could largely depend on the spill's severity and the extent of its ecological impact. An unknown amount of crude has already been released deep underwater, and it wasn't clear how quickly crews could disable the well. The Coast Guard hasn't offered any estimates of the total spill.

If the spill moves close to shore it could threaten Louisiana's $2 billion seafood industry, said Rex Caffey, director of the center for natural resources and economic policy at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

The job of shutting off the well is made all the more difficult by its location. Much of the critical equipment is under almost 5,000 feet of water on the seafloor.

A well in such deep water was unthinkable in prior decades, but the industry has pushed the technological envelope in recent years in its search for new sources of oil and natural gas.

The spill comes as the industry is hoping to expand potentially lucrative offshore drilling into new parts of Alaska, the east coast of the U.S. and parts of the Gulf of Mexico long off-limits to the industry.

Late last month, President Barack Obama gave preliminary approval to expanded offshore drilling, although that legislation, expected this week, has slowed amid Washington wrangling.

University of California Santa Barbara Prof. Keith Clarke, who studied a 1969 oil spill off the Southern California coast, said: "Worst-case scenario would be loss of sea life, especially sea birds and marine mammals. Fishing could be significantly impacted. A great deal depends on how long the site leaks."

BP has deployed 32 spill-response vessels to skim off the oil slick and prevent it from reaching shore.

Since oil is lighter than water, the spilled oil is slowly rising from a mile deep.

Recovering oil in calm waters is a fairly easy task, says Nancy Kinner, co-director of the Coastal Response Research Center, a partnership between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of New Hampshire. But the waters have been choppy in the past couple days, and authorities won't send out skimming boats and other equipment if emergency workers could be in danger.

Rough seas also churn up the oil, mixing it up with water to form a sticky emulsion that can't be skimmed off the surface as easily. "It's almost like a fluffy, fluffy chocolate mousse," Ms. Kinner said.

The initial efforts are aimed at using remote-controlled submarines to activate a 450-ton device on the seafloor that can clamp off the well.

The submarine tactic is continuing, but at the same time BP is bringing in another rig to drill down and intercept the existing well. It would then inject a dense fluid into the well to block it and prevent further spillage. BP officials said it could take two to three months for this to work.

The company is also looking at covering the underwater area with a giant dome to suck up the leaking oil and treat it on a ship.

The spill started when the rig, the Deepwater Horizon owned by Switzerland-based Transocean Inc. and contracted by BP, was putting the final touches on a well in 5,000 feet of water last week that had successfully encountered a deep reservoir containing tens of millions of barrels of oil. On Tuesday evening, a fire broke out.

Most workers evacuated but 11 are missing and presumed dead.

Some 36 hours after the initial well blowout, the rig sank to the bottom of the Gulf. Remote-controlled submarines were sent to the seafloor and sent initially hopeful reports that the well appeared to be sealed off. But further inspection over the weekend showed that the pipe still attached to the well equipment on the seafloor was gushing oil.

Although there were no preliminary estimates on the amount of oil released so far, this appears to be the largest oil spill in the gulf for a decade at least. There were several oil spills associated with hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, but none that exceeded 2,000 barrels. The worst oil spill in U.S. history was the 260,000 barrels dumped into Prince William Sound in Alaska from the Exxon Valdez in 1989.

clv101 wrote:Thanks for quoting the full text from Rigzone, the text on their site seems to have changed a lot now!

The Guardian - 28/04/10

The Deepwater Horizon rig disaster will wreak havoc on coastal ecosystems. We need clean, safe energy – not offshore drilling.

Article continues ...

BBC News - 28/04/10

Growing concerns over Gulf of Mexico oil leak - how the oil has spread

Article continues ...

On Monday, April 26, rig personnel were evacuated from Diamond Offshore's Ocean Endeavor semisubmersible drilling rig, located on Mississippi Canyon Block 211.

An oil slick spreading from the nearby Mississippi Canyon 252 area, where the Deepwater Horizon semisub sunk on April 22 in approximately 5,000 ft of water, spurred Exxon Mobil Corp. to take precautionary measures to ensure the safety of its offshore personnel.

Workover operations at the Mica field have been temporarily suspended, and the Ocean Endeavor is currently on standby, according to the conference call provided yesterday on the Deepwater Horizon incident.

Working for ExxonMobil on a sublet from Devon Energy Corp., the Ocean Endeavor is earning a dayrate in the high-$290s. The 5th generation semisub is currently outfitted to work in water depths up to 8,000' and has a rated drilling depth capacity of 35,000'.