GULF OIL SPILL NEWS
Worst oil spill in U.S. history
The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico now appears to be the worst in U.S. history, based on new estimates of the oil flow released today by a government task force.
In a press conference at the White House this afternoon, President Obama said the government's response to the spill is equally historic, calling the effort to contain and clean up the spill the largest of its kind in the nation's history.
Obama also asserted that his administration has actively controlled the response.
Earlier in the day, the scientific team charged by Obama with determining the rate of oil flow estimated that the initial release following the accident was 12,000 to 19,000 barrels of oil per day, far higher than the 5,000 barrel-per-day estimate long maintained by BP and the U.S. Coast Guard.
The new spill estimate amounts to up to 798,000 gallons of oil per day since April 20, when the Deepwater Horizon rig blew up and later sank, larger than the volume of an entire Olympic-sized swimming pool.
Even under the most conservative estimate, nearly 17 million gallons would have leaked from the Deepwater Horizon well since the start of the disaster. On the high end of the estimate, some 29.5 million gallons may have been spilled. Either total would mean that the current crisis in the Gulf far surpasses the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, which spilled 11 million gallons of oil off the coast of Alaska.
Also today Elizabeth Birnbaum, the head of the MMS, the government agency that regulates offshore drilling, resigned from her office under pressure.
BP said it wouldn't be able to determine the success of the "top kill" until later today. If it fails, the company has other backup plans that include another cap and a so-called "junk shot" to clog the leak with debris.
"The American people should know that from the moment this disaster began, the federal government has been in charge of the response effort," he said. "BP is operating at our direction. Every key decision and action they take must be approved by us in advance."
Latest Update: Chemical dispersants getting workers sick
Some Louisiana fishermen affected by the massive oil spill in the Gulf — including some hired by BP to help in the cleanup — are reporting cases of debilitating headaches, burning eyes and nausea, and some industry and public officials are pointing the finger at chemical dispersants as the cause.
Gary Burris, a fisherman who works along the Gulf Coast, said he has observed planes spraying dispersants into the water, a chemical rain meant to stop oil slicks from forming and break down the crude more quickly.
Now Burris says that after breathing in the dispersants he grew ill and disoriented, confining himself to bed for days and ultimately going to a doctor for treatment and antibiotics.
"It filled my lungs with fluid," he said. "I'm hurting — I'm sore from coughing."
Burris and other residents of the Gulf are reporting a slew of symptoms that some biologists say are directly attributable to the chemicals now gushing into the Gulf on a daily basis.
"These are the exact symptoms that you could expect from overexposure to crude oil and to the chemicals that are being used out on the cleanup," said Riki Ott, a marine toxicologist and activist who worked on the cleanup in Alaska after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.
Ott said she had been in contact with several Louisiana fishermen suffering a range of ailments —"sore throats, burning headaches, burning eyes, skin rashes, nausea, dizziness" — that track with those suffered in the aftermath of the Valdez spill. The dispersants, she says, compound the health risks created by exposure to crude oil.
"This is like throwing kerosene on a fire," she said.
BP has sprayed more than 800,000 gallons of dispersant into the Gulf since an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig on April 20. At the same time, the oil giant has been enlisting the paid help of Gulf fishermen, whose fleet of hundreds of boats provides them broad access to areas affected by the spill.
"They're putting themselves at risk ... [with] nothing to protect themselves," he said Thursday. "Their eyes are burning, their noses are burning, but all of them need to go — they need the money."
"The release of hundreds of thousands of gallons of chemicals into the Gulf of Mexico could be an unprecedented, large and aggressive experiment on our oceans," said Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts.
"[T]he reality is we know almost nothing about the potential harm from the long-term use of any of these chemicals on the marine environment in the Gulf of Mexico, and even less about their potential to enter the food chain and ultimately harm humans," Markey said in a written statement Sunday.
Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-La., is urging the White House to establish temporary health clinics in the Gulf to help afflicted workers.
"Many residents and volunteers are being exposed to hazardous materials on a daily basis, and some will have to travel hours to get treatment at the nearest health care facility," he said in a letter to Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services.
"What is most frightening about the long-term effects of the oil and the dispersant chemicals isn't what we know, it is what we just don't know," said Markey.
Media Coverage
The media has been all over the oil spill news from live video fees on CNN to front-page headlines in your daily newspaper. Some of the coverage about how the disaster is affecting the lives of everyday people was captured in an Associated Press story distributed on May 1. This snippet was taken from that story:
Capt. Mike "Sandbar" Salley, who runs Sure Shot Charters out of Orange Beach, Ala., is one of many fishermen watching helplessly as customers cancel fishing excursions at the start of a busy summer season, in which he makes 80 percent of his income. Salley, 51, is a plaintiff in one of the potential class-action lawsuits seeking to recover damages from the operators of the sunken oil rig.
"It's somebody's fault and somebody needs to answer for it," said Salley. "This is going to shut down the entire coast."
Salley is not alone in this dilemma. And the media are focusing on that and the many other legal issues that are surfacing in the wake of this disaster. Here are a few:
White House Raises Specter of Misconduct in Oil Spill
FOXNews.com
Despite BP's vow to pay "all necessary and appropriate clean-up costs" from the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, White House officials have not shied away from linking the oil giant to potential misconduct in the accident -- a scenario that would put BP on the hook for all economic damages despite a $75 million cap.
Concerns mount about oil spills' impact on wildlife
From USA TODAY
Efforts to rescue wildlife continue as concerns intensify about the impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on the Gulf Coast's ecosystem.
A team of eight specialists from the International Bird Rescue Research Center is combing the outer-islands of the Mississippi Delta in Louisiana today after four days of bad weather hampered efforts.
"Now we have a window of time and we are going to try to get out there and catch up," Jay Holcomb, executive director at IBRRC, tells Green House.
"It really has the potential to affect the food chain," he says. "How bad it will be, I can not even estimate, because it is impossible to do that."
Gulf Coast oil spill could eclipse Exxon Valdez
From YAHOO.COM
By CAIN BURDEAU and HOLBROOK MOHR, Associated Press Writers Cain Burdeau And Holbrook Mohr, Associated Press Writers
VENICE, La. - An oil spill that threatened to eclipse even the Exxon Valdez disaster spread out of control and drifted inexorably toward the Gulf Coast on Thursday as fishermen rushed to scoop up shrimp and crews spread floating barriers around marshes.
The spill was both bigger and closer than imagined - five times larger than first estimated, with the leading edge just three miles from the Louisiana shore. Authorities said it could reach the Mississippi River delta by Thursday night.
"It is of grave concern," David Kennedy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told The Associated Press. "I am frightened. This is a very, very big thing. And the efforts that are going to be required to do anything about it, especially if it continues on, are just mind-boggling."
The oil slick could become the nation's worst environmental disaster in decades, threatening hundreds of species of fish, birds and other wildlife along the Gulf Coast, one of the world's richest seafood grounds, teeming with shrimp, oysters and other marine life.
The leak from the ocean floor proved to be far bigger than initially reported, contributing to a growing sense among many in Louisiana that the government failed them again, just as it did during Hurricane Katrina. President Barack Obama dispatched Cabinet officials to deal with the crisis.
Cade Thomas, a fishing guide in Venice, worried that his livelihood will be destroyed. He said he did not know whether to blame the Coast Guard, the federal government or oil company BP PLC.
"They lied to us. They came out and said it was leaking 1,000 barrels when I think they knew it was more. And they weren't proactive," he said. "As soon as it blew up, they should have started wrapping it with booms."
The Coast Guard worked with BP, which operated the oil rig that exploded and sank last week, to deploy floating booms, skimmers and chemical dispersants, and set controlled fires to burn the oil off the water's surface.
The Coast Guard urged the company to formally request more resources from the Defense Department. A BP executive said the corporation would "take help from anyone."
Government officials said the blown-out well 40 miles offshore is spewing five times as much oil into the water as originally estimated - about 5,000 barrels, or 200,000 gallons, a day.
At that rate, the spill could easily eclipse the worst oil spill in U.S. history - the 11 million gallons that leaked from the grounded tanker Exxon Valdez in Alaska's Prince William Sound in 1989
