Huge chamber positioned over U.S. Gulf oil leak
VENICE, La. – BP Plc engineers carefully lowered a massive metal chamber toward a gushing oil well on the Gulf of Mexico seabed Friday in a high-stakes mission to contain a leak that threatens an environmental catastrophe on U.S. shores. The four-story structure, BP’s only short-term hope of controlling the leak, is supposed to redirect the unchecked flow of crude from nearly 1 mile below the water and, once connected, pump it to a surface tanker. But the technique has never been tried at that depth, where engineers guiding remote-controlled undersea robots must overcome darkness, currents and intense undersea pressure. Light oil washed ashore for the first time on a chain of islands off the Louisiana coast Thursday as the slick expanded. At least 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons ) have poured into the Gulf each day since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded two weeks ago, killing 11 workers. BP says the containment dome could be in place and operating by Monday. The company is drilling a relief well to halt the leak that could take two or three months to complete. …
A sheen of oil washed ashore on much of Chandeleur Islands, barrier islands that are part of the Breton National Wildlife Refuge, in the first confirmation of the oil slick hitting land, a U.S. response team spokeswoman said. … “The beaches are beautiful, the weather is great and the water is clean. The oil is way offshore,” Alabama real estate agent Bobby Hornsby said in a message to customers. … M.A. Sanjayan, chief scientist for The Nature Conservancy, flew over the Chandeleur Islands and described seeing “ribbons and ribbons” of orange-colored oil stretching for miles and penetrating the numerous small bays, channels and inlets of the islands. From the air, he said, the oil containment operations appeared almost futile compared with the enormity of the slick. “We saw over a dozen skimmers working one slick,” he said. “As the boats would approach (the oil), it would just give way right in front of them, from the wake. So they looked like toys, like Q-tips, trying to mop up a very large area.” …
