One of the worries about the cap that has mostly contained the Gulf oil well was that it would have to be reopened and left gushing if a major storm system came through.
Now engineers are confident enough in the strength of the cap that they decided on Thursday to leave it sealed while most of the ships on the surface were ordered to evacuate ahead of the approaching Tropical Storm Bonnie.
The storm, which blossomed over the Bahamas and was to enter the Gulf of Mexico by the weekend, could delay by another 12 days the push to plug the broken well for good using mud and cement, retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen and BP officials said. Even if it’s not a direct hit, the rough weather will push back efforts to kill the well by a week.
“While this is not a hurricane, it’s a storm that will have probably some significant impacts, we’re taking appropriate cautions,” Allen said in Mobile, Alabama.
The delay would be worse if BP had to fully open the cap while the ships closely monitoring the well head left. More oil would have been allowed to spew into the Gulf until they returned.Meanwhile, the head of the American Association of Professors in a BBC interview yesterday accused BP of trying to buy the silence of scientists and academics to protect itself after the Gulf oil spill.
“This is really one huge corporation trying to buy faculty silence in a comprehensive way,” Cary Nelson said.
BP is facing lawsuits after the oil spill, which has destroyed the livelihoods of many people along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. A copy of a contract offered to scientists by BP, which the BBC said it had obtained, said scientists are not allowed to publish the research they do for the oil giant. They are also not allowed to speak about the data for at least three years or until the government gives final approval for the company’s restoration plan for the whole of the Gulf, the British broadcaster said.
Nelson warned BP’s actions could be “hugely destructive.”
“Our ability to evaluate the disaster and write public policy and make decisions about it as a country can be impacted by the silence of the research scientists who are looking at conditions,” he said. “It’s hugely destructive. I mean at some level, this is really BP versus the people of the United States.”
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