By Celsias team
Some sort-of-good news from the rapidly-history making environmental disaster zone that is BP’s ruptured Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico.
With an approach which sounds like something from a Bond film, engineers seem to have made a breakthrough in stemming the flow of oil with what is being termed a “top kill” operation. After failing earlier this month to halt the leak with a top hat shaped dome, the new approach involves pumping thick mud at high speed into the well to displace the oil back into the rock below, ultimately "killing" the well.
However, BP has admitted the mud will merely slow the process, and other materials may be needed to plug the well. The Macondo well has been estimated to be leaking 12- 19,000 barrels of oil a day since the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig which precipitated the accident, on April 20.
BP has said the disaster has so far cost it US$850 million. Meanwhile, others are more concerned about the environmental costs of a new plume and the impending hurricane season.
This from the Guardian:
"The modest signs of progress came amid dismal news on the sheer extent of the environmental damage caused by the accident, which began when BP's Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on 20 April, killing 11 workers. New government estimates of a leak of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels of oil a day indicated that after 37 days, the slick could be twice as large as the fallout from the tanker Exxon Valdez, which hit a reef off Alaska in 1989.
"This will be felt for generations to come," said Regan Nelson, senior oceans advocate at the Natural Resources Defence Council in Washington. "It's an unprecedented disaster."
Environmental scientists who have toured the marshes off Louisiana by boat described a vast expanse of crude half an inch thick, with no visible sign of the BP or government clean-up efforts.
"We couldn't see into the water at all, one engine quit working," said Larry Schweiger of the National Wildlife Federation. "We are talking about really heavy oil spill out there, and no one is out there cleaning it. No one is out there measuring the scope of the oil mass."
Doug Inkley, a wildlife biologist with the National Wildlife Federation, described seeing dead jellyfish and sharks affected by the slick. "It's impossible to me to know how any living organism could survive in that," he said.
At least seven oil clean-up workers were taken to hospital yesterday after reporting nausea and headaches as a result of contact with chemical dispersants used to break up the slick.Administration officials said the cause of the illness was unclear.
Offshore, marine scientists from a University of South Florida research ship reported the discovery of a new underwater plume of oil extending 22 miles from the ruptured well towards Mobile Bay, Alabama, raising new fears about deep water toxicity."
