page 2

Oil From Spill Is Reported to Have Reached the Coast


(Page 2 of 2)

BP, in turn, has pointed out on more than one occasion that Transocean owned the oil rig and the blowout preventer, a device that apparently failed to function properly and that is continuing to be the most significant obstacle to stopping the spill.


Underscoring how acute the situation has become, BP is soliciting ideas and techniques from four other major oil companies — Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Shell and Anadarko. BP officials have also requested help from the Defense Department in efforts to activate the blowout preventer, a stack of hydraulically activated valves at the top of the well that is designed to seal it off in the event of a sudden pressure release.

Doug Suttles, the chief operating officer for exploration and production for BP, said the company had asked the military for better imaging technology and more advanced remotely operated vehicles. As of now, there are six such vehicles monitoring or trying to fix the blowout preventer, which sits on the sea floor.

“To be frank, the offer of help from all quarters is welcome,” said David Nicholas, a BP spokesman.

But Norman Polmar, an expert on military systems, said the robotic submersibles used by the oil industry were better equipped to try to stop the oil leak than any of the Navy’s minisubs. The Navy’s unmanned subs have cameras and can retrieve bits of hardware, he said, but are not designed to plug a hole in a pipe or do repair work.

Other efforts to contain the spill included a tactic that Admiral Landry called “absolutely novel”: crews awaited approval on Thursday night to begin deploying chemical dispersants underwater near the source of the leaks. Aircraft have dropped nearly 100,000 gallons of the dispersants on the water’s surface to break down the oil, a more conventional strategy.

BP is also designing and building large boxlike structures that could be lowered over the leaks in the riser, the 5,000-foot-long pipe that connected the well to the rig and has since become detached and is snaking along the sea floor. The structures would contain the leaking oil and route it to the surface to be collected. This temporary solution could take several weeks to execute.

Mr. Suttles said three such structures were being prepared, one of which is complete and could corral the worst of the leaks. But citing the disclosure of the new leak on Wednesday night, experts said more were certainly possible.

“All that movement is going to continue to stress and fatigue the pipe and create more leaks,” said Jeffrey Short, Pacific science director for Oceana and former chemist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who helped clean the spill from the Exxon Valdez in 1989.

“This is not on a good trajectory,” he added.

The next solution is drilling relief wells that would allow crews to plug the gushing cavity with mud, concrete or other heavy liquid. The drilling of one such well is expected to begin in the next 48 hours, Mr. Suttles said, but it could be three months before the leak is plugged by this method.

The legal and political dimensions of the oil spill spread as well on Thursday, with lawyers filing suits on behalf of commercial fishermen, shrimpers and injured workers against BP; Transocean; Cameron, the company that manufactured the blowout preventer; and other companies involved in the drilling process, including Halliburton.

Representative Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, has asked the heads of major oil companies, including BP, to testify at a hearing about the spill.

Opponents of President Obama’s plan to expand offshore drilling have also called for a halt. Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, called Thursday for a moratorium on all new offshore oil exploration while the cause of this rig explosion is under investigation. Mr. Nelson, a longtime opponent of oil drilling off the coasts of Florida, said in a letter to Mr. Obama that the spreading oil spill threatened environmental and economic disaster all along the Gulf Coast.

Administration officials stressed that the president’s offshore drilling plan was the beginning of a lengthy review process and did not mean that large new areas would see immediate oil and gas activity. They also said that they expected that members of Congress and the public would have new questions about the safety of offshore operations and that the administration would rethink its commitment to offshore drilling in light of the accident.

“That is the beginning of a process,” said Carol M. Browner, the White House coordinator of energy and climate policy. “What is occurring now will also be taken into consideration.”