A popular tourist beach in Louisiana remained closed because of oil contamination yesterday as BP officials denied botching the month-long clean-up and deliberately hiding the true extent of the spill.
As Grand Isle, Louisiana, closed its beach to clean up an orange slick washing ashore, the British energy giant once again postponed an operation aimed at permanently stopping the leak.
The “top-kill” operation to inject heavy drilling fluids into the ruptured well, a month after the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon rig, and then seal it permanently with cement will now not take place until Tuesday at the earliest.
Just how much oil is gushing daily from the rig’s wreckage has been a contentious issue, with BP initially putting the figure at 5,000 barrels.
“That’s the best estimate we have,” BP’s chief operating officer Doug Suttles told ABC television on Friday.
In further confusing comments, however, BP also radically slashed by more than half its figures for how much of the oil it is siphoning up daily from the ruptured well via a 1,600m insertion tube.
BP spokesman John Curry said on Friday that it now estimated some 349,772 liters of oil had been diverted from the well in the 24 hours before midnight on Thursday.
That would mean BP is sucking up only 2,200 barrels daily from the pipe, not the 5,000 barrels it had estimated on Thursday.
Coast Guard commandant Thad Allen later told reporters that the flow was variable, fluctuating from a low rate of 2,000 barrels a day to a high of 5,000 barrels.
Live Webcam pictures showed more oil continuing to spew into the Gulf from the ruptured well.
Grand Isle shut down its beach as volunteers armed with spades sought to scoop up the oil into plastic bags.
“This is only the beginning. It happened 30 days ago and it just came yesterday. Yesterday, it was the very first, it was very little, and now it’s all over,” angry resident Lana Downing said.
Democratic Representative Ed Markey voiced the frustrations of many.
“We’re beginning to understand that we cannot trust BP. People do not trust the experts any longer. BP has lost all credibility,” he said.
In related news, the White House has tapped former Florida senator Bob Graham and former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator William Reilly to lead a presidential commission investigating the oil spill.
The White House was expected to make the announcement later yesterday.
The choices were confirmed ahead of time by two people familiar with the decision who would speak only on condition of anonymity ahead of the formal announcement.
Graham is a Democrat and Reilly served in a Republican administration, a bipartisan model similar to other high-level investigative panels. The White House has said it was modeling the commission on panels that investigated the 1986 space shuttle Challenger disaster and the nuclear power plant accident at Three Mile Island in 1979.
Graham served in the Senate from 1987 to 2005 and previously served two terms as Florida governor. Reilly served as EPA administrator under former president George H.W. Bush.
The commission’s inquiry will range from the causes of the spill to the safety of offshore oil drilling and the functioning of government agencies that oversee drilling.
The appointment of the pair was welcomed by environmental groups, lawmakers and others.
“This independent commission will guarantee a transparent and accountable investigation so the public can have complete trust in the integrity of its findings,” said Representative Lois Capps, who had called for the creation of such a panel.
A number of other investigations are already under way into circumstances surrounding the massive leak.
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