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United States News Title: Gulf Winds Turn on BP as Oil Containment Plan Snarls May 10 (Bloomberg) -- Weather forecasts in the Gulf of Mexico indicate winds will push an oil slick toward Louisiana in the next few days after the failure of BP Plc’s latest attempt to stem the gushing offshore leak. Oil may come ashore 100 miles (161 kilometers) west of the main entrance to the Mississippi River tomorrow, according to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast. Winds as high as 23 miles an hour may cause six-foot waves from tomorrow night through May 13, the National Weather Service said in a forecast this morning. “The winds may play a huge role,” said Kristina Pydynowski, a senior meteorologist with AccuWeather.com in State College, Pennsylvania. “The big threat is that the potential exists for the oil slick to be pushed closer, if not onto, some of the Louisiana coastline.” Tarballs as big as golf balls were found this weekend on Dauphin Island, Alabama, and they are being analyzed for the origin of the oil, B.V. Castillo, a BP government and public affairs representative, said in a conference call. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Saturday stopped public access to Louisiana’s Chandeleur and Freemason islands, where oil from the spill first reached shore. BP lowered a 40-foot-tall (12 meter) steel chamber over the oil leak about a mile below the surface this weekend, hoping to capture the 5,000 barrels of crude oil leaking each day and pump it to a ship. The effort failed when an icy mixture of gas and water near the seafloor clogged the chamber, forcing the company to remove it and study how to stop the ice forming before trying again. Long Shot “People knew it was a long shot, but they were also looking at it as the beginning of the end,” said Mark Schexnayder, regional coastal adviser for the Louisiana State University Agricultural Center’s Sea Grant program, referring to the chamber. “We were going to turn the corner. Right now, that corner is looking like it’s moving further away.” BP said in a statement today that it has spent $350 million so far responding to the disaster. More than 315,000 gallons of dispersant have been applied to the spill and 275 tugs, barges and other ships are being used. Shares Fall BP fell 7.4 pence, or 1.3 percent, to 546.5 pence as of 4:29 p.m. in London. The shares have lost 17 percent since BP’s Macondo well began spewing oil into the Gulf after an April 20 explosion on Transocean Ltd.’s Deepwater Horizon rig, resulting in the death of 11 people. Louisiana’s wildlife agency yesterday extended offshore fishing closures as far west as Point au Fer, south of Morgan City, for fear of oil contamination. The closures shut down large areas of the state’s fisheries, particularly shrimp and crab harvesting, along with tens of thousands of acres of oyster reef and dozens of recreational fishing outposts, Schexnayder said. “This is right at the peak of shrimp season and crab season,” Schexnayder said. “That’s the lifeblood of these small communities.” The slick hasn’t curtailed shipping, U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Matthew Schofield said today in a telephone interview. “We don’t have any restrictions,” Schofield said. The Coast Guard has set up operations to clean ships that are oiled coming in or out of the Gulf, none have needed it, he said. Ships passing through the thickest of the spill would require “about two hours” cleaning, he said. Containment Dome BP’s containment system, now set aside on the seabed, was the London-based company’s plan to slow the spread of oil while it drills a relief well to inject heavy mud and cement into the leak to plug it permanently. That well may take three months to complete. BP said it may try to jam the well by injecting pieces of rubber and installing a blowout preventer to shut off flow. The company is preparing a second, smaller containment dome to be lowered over the main leak. It is designed to resist the formation of large hydrate volumes, the company said. Both the second containment dome and the effort to plug the leak at the top of the well will be “pursued in parallel over the next two weeks,” BP said. “All of the techniques being attempted or evaluated to contain the flow of oil on the seabed involve significant uncertainties because they have not been tested in these conditions before,” BP said. Mike Voisin, who owns Motivatit Seafoods Inc. in Houma, Louisiana, said he was disappointed the containment plan hadn’t worked and the spill had drifted west. He said he fielded calls from worried fishermen. ‘Waiting a While’ “We may be waiting a while until they drill that well to finally shut it down,” Voisin said. Local residents and fishermen continued preparations to fight the oil slick. The U.S. National Guard will drop sandbags from helicopters to plug areas of the beachfront that have been washed away by hurricanes and storms, said Brennan Matherne, a spokesman for Lafourche Parish. “Because of erosion, there is now a clear shot from the beach to the marsh,” he said. “It’s got everyone really nervous,” Billy Nungesser, president of Plaquemines Parish in Louisiana, said in an interview about the failure to contain the spill. “If oil gets into the marshes, we are finished. Everything breeds in there, the whole food chain.” Dean Blanchard, owner of Grand Isle, Louisiana-based Dean Blanchard Seafood Inc., said he’d been “hoping and praying” the containment chamber would work, even though he thought it wouldn’t. “I don’t know how many times you can knock a man down before he stops getting back up,” he said.
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#1. To: Brian S (#0)
So, does this make you happy, or worry the hell out of you, Brian S?
I can see NOVEMBER from my House....
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