A Taiwanese supertanker skimmed oil from the Gulf of Mexico yesterday as the months-long disaster became the worst accidental spill on record.
Rough seas and strong winds continued to delay clean-up efforts, displace protective booms and push the oil deeper into fragile coastal wetlands, endangering wildlife preserves and the thousands of birds nesting there.
“This is going to be a very long and arduous clean-up operation in the days to come,” US Coast Guard Admiral Paul Zukunft said. “I’m especially concerned with some of the wildlife habitats.”
PHOTO: EPA
An estimated 35,000 to 60,000 barrels of oil per day have been gushing out of the ruptured well since the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon drilling rig sank on April 22, about 80km off the coast of Louisiana.
A containment system has captured about 557,000 barrels of oil, but rough seas have delayed the deployment of a third vessel, which is set to increase capacity from 25,000 barrels to 53,000 barrels a day. That means an estimated 1.9 million to 3.6 million barrels of oil has now gushed into the Gulf.
Using the high end of that estimate, the spill has now surpassed the 1979 Ixtoc blowout, which took nine months to cap and dumped an estimated 3.3 million barrels into the Gulf of Mexico.
It is topped only by the deliberate release of 6 million to 8 million barrels of crude by Iraqi troops, who destroyed tankers and oil terminals and set wells ablaze in Kuwait during the 1991 Gulf War.
And it will likely take until the middle of next month, at the earliest, before the Gulf well is permanently capped by injecting mud and cement with the aid of relief wells.
The Monrovian-flag supertanker provided by TMT Shipping of Taiwan could radically increase the amount of oil crews are able to recover.
“It ingests oil and oily water and then separates out the oil and expels the water,” BP spokesman Toby Odone said.
The giant ship, which has cuts in its sides, is abou 275m long and can suck up 21 million gallons (about 80 million liters) of oily water a day.
The small skimming boats that have been patrolling the Gulf for the past 10 weeks have only collected 28.2 million gallons of oily water to date.
The tanker began initial skimming operations on Friday, with crews testing whether it could safely handle and dispose of the oil, but it will take several days before a final deployment decision is made, Odone said.
Rough seas caused by the first hurricane of the Atlantic season have kept the thousands of ships hired to skim oil, lay boom, carry out controlled burns and move equipment in harbor since Tuesday.
Skimmers had been collecting about 12,000 barrels of oil a day before they were sent back to port, while about 8,000 barrels of oil was being burned off the surface.
About 725km of US shorelines have now been oiled as crude spews into the sea at an alarming rate, 73 days into the worst environmental disaster in US history.
A third containment ship aimed at doubling the amount of oil captured from a rupture well in the Gulf of Mexico should hopefully be working by Wednesday, said Admiral Thad Allen, who oversees operations.
The deployment of the Helix Producer is set to increase capacity from about 25,000 to 53,000 barrels of oil per day.
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