Engineers finally figured out how to siphon some of the oil that has been spewing into the Gulf for almost a month, but it may be too late to stop the ooze from reaching a major ocean current that could carry it through the Florida Keys and up the East Coast.
After weeks of failed attempts, BP PLC crews on Sunday hooked up a 1.6km long tube to funnel the crude from a blown well into a tanker ship.
However, experts continued to express concern as to the uncertain ecological impact of the spill.
Dean of the University of South Florida’s College of Marine Science, William Hogarth said one computer model shows oil has already entered the loop current, while a second shows the oil just 4.8 kilometers from it.
“This can’t be passed off as ‘it’s not going to be a problem’ ... This is a very sensitive area. We are concerned with what happens in the Florida Keys,” Hogarth said.
The damage is already done, the only remaining question is how much more is to come, said Paul Montagna from the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University.
BP previously said the tube, if successful, was expected to collect most of the oil gushing from the well. The first chance to choke off the flow for good should come in about a week. Engineers plan to shoot heavy mud into the crippled blowout preventer on top of the well, then permanently entomb the leak in concrete. If that doesn’t work, crews also can shoot golf balls and knotted rope into the nooks and crannies of the device to plug it, BP’s senior vice president for exploration and production Kent Wells said.
Top officials in US President Barack Obama’s administration urged caution
“We will not rest until BP permanently seals the wellhead, the spill is cleaned up and the communities and natural resources of the Gulf Coast are restored and made whole,” Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said in a joint statement.
Meanwhile, researchers said huge underwater plumes of oil discovered in recent days could poison and suffocate sea life across the food chain, with damage that could endure for a decade or more.
Professor of marine sciences at the University of Georgia, Samantha Joye described the hazards of the oil plumes as twofold. The oil itself can prove toxic to fish, while vast amounts of oxygen is also being sucked from the water by microbes that eat oil. Dispersants used to fight the oil also are food for the microbes, speeding up oxygen depletion.
The government initially estimated the spill at 794,913 liters a day, a figure that has since been questioned by some scientists who fear it could be far more. BP executives have stood by the estimate while acknowledging there’s no way to know for sure.
Steve Shepard, chairman of the Gulf Coast group of the Sierra Club in Mississippi, said the BP solution to siphon off some of the oil as “hopefully the beginning of the end of this leak.”
He, like others, expressed concern that much more than that estimated is leaking and that the long-term damage is hard to measure.
“We have a lot to be worried about ... We are in uncharted territory,” he said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not