After three days of trying to force heavy drilling mud into the busted well 5,000 feet below the surface, BP's chief operating officer, Doug Suttles, said at a news conference yesterday that the "top kill" had failed. Now, in consultation with the government, the company will try one of the last known methods to stop the oil flow while simultaneously digging relief wells. The latest strategy is called a "lower marine riser package cap." Expected to take four to seven days, it's a complex containment procedure in which robotic submarines will try to cut the damaged riser pipe and cap it with a containment valve.
Speaking from Chicago during the Memorial Day weekend, President Obama said that the ongoing flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico is "as enraging as it is heartbreaking." Of the new method to be tried, Obama said the approach "is not without risk and has never been attempted at this depth. That is why it was not activated until other methods had been exhausted."
Meanwhile, the New York Times is reporting that internal BP documents show "there were serious problems and safety concerns with the Deepwater Horizon rig far earlier than those the company described to Congress last week."
As criticism of BP'S handling of the crisis continues the Gulf economy is suffering from both the reality and the perception of the oil spill. Ken Montana, president of the Mississippi Gulf Coast Tourism Commission, told CNN a few days ago that cancellation rates are running at nearly 50 percent. After oil, tourism is the second largest industry in the Gulf of Mexico, followed by fishing and shipping. About 46percent of the Gulf economy, or over $100 billion, is from tourism dollars, according to a 2007 report published by Texas A&M University Press.
But those aren’t the only woes. On Friday, Ken Rosenberg, director of conservation science at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, said in a statement that "bird experts in Louisiana are seeing large numbers of oiled and dead birds along the Louisiana coast, including oiled Sanderlings, oystercatchers, plovers, pelicans, egrets and terns. No bird that touches the water or the shoreline is immune if it’s in the path of the oil slick.” He added, “Birds that dive for food, such as pelicans, Northern Gannets and terns, are especially vulnerable, but even migratory shorebirds like Sanderlings, Red Knots and Ruddy Turnstones are accumulating oil just by walking on an oiled beach."
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Related links:
Gulf Oil Spill: What's at Stake
'It's BP's Oil'
