Engineers searched for ways to capture more oil flowing from a ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico yesterday after energy giant BP said a cap was currently catching around 10,000 barrels a day.
As significant amounts of oil continued to escape into the sea, BP chief executive Tony Hayward told the BBC: “As we speak, the containment cap is producing around 10,000 barrels of oil a day to the surface.”
Earlier accounts put the amount of captured oil at 6,000 barrels a day. While encouraging, the new figure was dwarfed by estimates that up to 19,000 barrels a day could be spewing from the well.
He said yesterday he won’t step down over the spill, and predicted his company will recover.
Hayward added that he hoped that another containment system, to be installed next weekend, would help contain “the vast majority” of the leaking oil, but did not offer a specific figure.
The latest containment effort involves a cap placed over the leak that gathers the oil, allowing it to be siphoned up via a pipe to a container ship.
News of any successful effort to contain the disastrous spill will be welcomed by the four states so far affected by what is now the worst environmental disaster in US history. The slick is now threatening Alabama, Mississippi and Florida after contaminating more than 200km of Louisiana coastline. An estimated 476,000 barrels of crude has poured into the Gulf since the Deepwater Horizon sank on April 22, 80km off Louisiana.
Citing new government and BP documents and testimony by witnesses, the New York Times reported yesterday that a hodgepodge of oversight agencies granted rig operators exceptions to rules, allowed risks to accumulate and made the disaster more likely.
BP said on Saturday it had paid out US$46 million in more than 17,000 claims checks since the disaster began and expected to pay the same amount this month.
Meanwhile, an apologetic advertising campaign has earned the company more criticism than sympathy as the pollution spreads across the US Gulf Coast from Louisiana into Alabama and Florida.
The new radio, TV, online and print ads feature Hayward pledging to fix the damage and saying the company will “do everything we can so this never happens again.”
Picking up tar on Saturday with her parents on Pensacola Beach, 13-year-old Annie Landrum of Birmingham, Alabama, called Hayward’s apology a joke.
“It’s a lame attempt a month and half after the disaster. It’s too late,” she said.
The government is aiming to recruit 1,096 foreign English teachers and teaching assistants this year, the Ministry of Education said yesterday. The foreign teachers would work closely with elementary and junior-high instructors to create and teach courses, ministry official Tsai Yi-ching (蔡宜靜) said. Together, they would create an immersive language environment, helping to motivate students while enhancing the skills of local teachers, she said. The ministry has since 2021 been recruiting foreign teachers through the Taiwan Foreign English Teacher Program, which offers placement, salary, housing and other benefits to eligible foreign teachers. Two centers serving northern and southern Taiwan assist in recruiting and training
RESTAURANT POISONING? Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Victor Wang at a press conference last night said this was the first time bongkrekic acid was detected in Taiwan An autopsy discovered bongkrekic acid in a specimen collected from a person who died from food poisoning after dining at the Malaysian restaurant chain Polam Kopitiam, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said at a news conference last night. It was the first time bongkrekic acid was detected in Taiwan, Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Victor Wang (王必勝) said. The testing conducted by forensic specialists at National Taiwan University was facilitated after a hospital voluntarily offered standard samples it had in stock that are required to test for bongkrekic acid, he said. Wang told the news conference that testing would continue despite
WIDE NET: Health officials said they are considering all possibilities, such as bongkrekic acid, while the city mayor said they have not ruled out the possibility of a malicious act of poisoning Two people who dined at a restaurant in Taipei’s Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 last week have died, while four are in intensive care, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. All of the outlets of Malaysian vegetarian restaurant franchise Polam Kopitiam have been ordered to close pending an investigation after 11 people became ill due to suspected food poisoning, city officials told a news conference in Taipei. The first fatality, a 39-year-old man who ate at the restaurant on Friday last week, died of kidney failure two days later at the city’s Mackay Memorial Hospital. A 66-year-old man who dined
‘CARRIER KILLERS’: The Tuo Chiang-class corvettes’ stealth capability means they have a radar cross-section as small as the size of a fishing boat, an analyst said President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday presided over a ceremony at Yilan County’s Suao Harbor (蘇澳港), where the navy took delivery of two indigenous Tuo Chiang-class corvettes. The corvettes, An Chiang (安江) and Wan Chiang (萬江), along with the introduction of the coast guard’s third and fourth 4,000-tonne cutters earlier this month, are a testament to Taiwan’s shipbuilding capability and signify the nation’s resolve to defend democracy and freedom, Tsai said. The vessels are also the last two of six Tuo Chiang-class corvettes ordered from Lungteh Shipbuilding Co (龍德造船) by the navy, Tsai said. The first Tuo Chiang-class vessel delivered was Ta Chiang (塔江)