BP resumed full siphoning operations from the ruptured Gulf of Mexico oil well on Thursday, but Florida was forced to close down popular tourist beaches at the height of the summer season as more crude washed ashore.
BP has spent US$2.35 billion in its response to the spill, the company said yesterday.
The figure included the cost of “the spill response, containment, relief well drilling, grants to the Gulf states, claims paid, and federal costs,” it said in a statement.
The vast slick has already soiled the coastlines of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, but could spell disaster for Florida, one of the world’s top tourist destinations with more than 80 million visitors a year. The state’s 2,000km of western coastline is home to scores of popular beaches as well as pristine coral reefs and an important fishing industry.
“There’s oil both in the water and in the sand,” said Warren Bielenberg, an official with the Gulf Islands National Seashore, one of the areas in northwestern Florida affected by the spill.
The swimming ban runs from far western Florida to the east side of Pensacola Beach through Santa Rosa Island, one of the region’s most popular tourist attractions, as oily sludge washed up along the shoreline.
“It’s pretty ugly, there’s no question about it,” Florida Governor Charlie Crist said.
State officials have mounted an aggressive beach and coastline cleanup effort to stop the oil from reaching Florida beaches.
At a time of high unemployment in other sectors, tourism in Florida generates more than 1 million jobs, bringing the state US$65 billion in revenue in 2008.
Oil siphoning operations, however, resumed at around 7pm on Wednesday, some 11 hours after BP removed the containment cap over the gushing well after a remotely operated submarine robots bumped into the device.
The accident shut down a vent, forcing gas up into part of the system. The device traps spewing crude and siphons it up to two surface vessels, the Discovery Enterprise and the Q4000.
The system had been capturing some 25,000 barrels of leaking oil a day, but capacity was cut for 24 hours to midnight on Wednesday, officials overseeing the spill response said.
The setbacks were bad news for Bob Dudley who replaced gaffe-prone British CEO Tony Hayward as BP’s spill response coordinator on Wednesday.
Dudley is an American who spent much of his childhood in Mississippi, one of the four southern US states currently threatened by the catastrophe.
His first day on the job was further marred by the news that two people involved in spill cleanup efforts were reported dead in separate incidents — one described as a swimming pool accident, the other a likely suicide.
On Thursday Dudley and three other BP executives met with Carol Browner, US President Barack Obama’s assistant for Energy and Climate Change, to discuss “key issues including containment, redundancy, claims and scientific monitoring,” the White House said.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese