As the cement hardens Friday in the crippled oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, federal officials are sounding increasingly optimistic that the end is in sight in the drive to permanently seal the well.
BP finished pouring cement down the well on Thursday in an operation known as a "static kill," completing the job earlier than expected. The process took six hours.
The cement was poured on top of 2,300 barrels of heavy drilling mud sent down from a ship on the surface Tuesday, pushing oil back into the well reservoir.
Before word came that the cementing had been completed, retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said the development would amount to a "significant milestone" in the long-running fight against the BP oil spill. Allen is the federal point man in the oil spill effort.
He said the cementing phase of the "static kill" operation is not the end of the process, "but it will virtually assure us there's no chance of oil leaking into the environment."
"We will have created a significant milestone and made a major step forward probably by tomorrow [Friday] when the cementing is done," Allen told reporters. Although Allen expected the job to take until Friday, BP announced late Thursday that the work had been finished.
The New York Times, August 4, 2010:
The Obama administration’s latest report on the Gulf of Mexico disaster set off a war of words Wednesday among scientists, Gulf Coast residents and political pundits about what to make of the Deepwater Horizon spill and its aftermath.
The report, the subject of an extended White House briefing, claimed that most of the estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil that have leaked into the gulf could be accounted for, that much of it was effectively gone already, and that most of the remaining oil was in a highly diluted form. The implication of the report was that future damage from the oil might be less than had been feared.
That suggestion was not happily received on the Gulf Coast, where people are still coping with the collapse of fishing and tourism and saw the report as fresh evidence that the Obama administration was preparing to abandon them in the same way they felt the Bush administration did after Hurricane Katrina.
Gulf residents pointed to oiled beaches, blackened marshes and dead birds as evidence that, whatever the future damage from the remaining oil, the damage already done was severe enough.
[...]
Some researchers attacked the findings and methodology, calling the report premature at best and sloppy at worst. They noted that considerable research was still under way to shed light on some of the main scientific issues raised in the report.
“A lot of this is based on modeling and extrapolation and very generous assumptions,” said Samantha Joye, a marine scientist at the University of Georgia who has led some of the most important research on the Deepwater Horizon spill. “If an academic scientist put something like this out there, it would get torpedoed into a billion pieces.”
[...]
By a process of elimination, the researchers concluded that only 26 percent of the oil had come ashore or was still in the water in a form that could, in principle, do additional shoreline damage. And much of that was breaking down quickly in the warm waters of the gulf, the report said.
Of course, that 26 percent equals more than 53 million gallons of oil, five times the size of the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska.
“One way of looking at it is to say that 26 percent of the world’s largest oil spill is still out there,” said Greg Butcher, director of bird conservation for the National Audubon Society. “And that is a lot of oil.”
ProPublica, August 2, 2010:
It’s been two weeks since BP last applied dispersant in the Gulf, and every major newspaper seems to have a piece on how BP received exemptions to apply dispersant on the surface nearly every day.
The latest tide of dispersant stories comes after Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., sent a strongly worded letter [PDF] to retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, in charge of the spill response, noting that despite the EPA-Coast Guard directive requiring BP to “eliminate the surface application of dispersants” except in “rare cases [PDF] when there may have to be an exemption,” the exemptions were routine, and requesting them became little more than a formality. This is evidenced by the fact that the Coast Guard approved the use of dispersants 74 times over 54 days, the letter pointed out.
ProPublica, August 5, 2010:
Those who’ve followed the Gulf spill coverage know that early on in the BP disaster, before there was any real public discussion of the potential health and environmental trade-offs, BP began spraying dispersants in the Gulf with the knowledge and approval of the EPA and the Coast Guard.
How exactly those dispersants came to be approved was the subject of a hearing today before a Senate Environment and Public Works subcommittee.
As we’ve reported, the EPA already had a list of authorized dispersants on the National Contingency Plan Product Schedule. To get on that list, manufacturers must submit information on a dispersant’s effectiveness and toxicity.
[...]
The EPA does make clear that just because a product is on the authorized list does not mean it can automatically be applied to an oil spill—it needs additional approval. But what today’s hearing revealed is that none of those additional layers of approval compared the toxicity of different dispersants or tried to distinguish which dispersants might be preferable.
So when the spill occurred, a team of government agencies and state officials (also known as a regional response team) "preapproved" the EPA's entire list of dispersants—once again, without evaluating the toxicity of individual dispersants. The Coast Guard’s federal on-scene coordinators then gave BP the final nod to go ahead and apply one of the products, Corexit, in the Gulf.
Lisa Suatoni, National Resources Defense Council, August 4, 2010:
This week, the EPA released an additional round of research findings on the dispersant used in the Gulf Oil Spill.
[...]
The first round of EPA laboratory testing found that the dispersants were less toxic than the southern Louisiana crude itself and that they displayed similar toxicities to one another. The second round of EPA testing found that the dispersant/oil mixtures had similar toxicities to southern Louisiana crude itself and similar toxicities to one another (with the exception of the dispersant brand Nokomis/oil mixture which was more toxic to the shrimp than oil alone).
[...]
In a statement to the press about these research results, Dr. Paul Anastas said that ‘while more needs to be done, the picture is becoming clearer’ that dispersants were an ‘important tool in this response.’
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But while it may be tempting to conclude that the use of dispersants during this catastrophic oil spill was a good idea, we urge the federal government not to hasten this evaluation and rush to judgment.
The unprecedented and widespread application of dispersants in this oil spill was a grand experiment. Given the scale of this spill, its position offshore, and the severe and long-lasting impacts of oil to salt marsh ecosystems, the rational was clear and defensible.
However, as the most recent National Research Council panel on the topic concluded in 2005, much remains unknown about the efficacy and impacts of chemical dispersants. And as a consequence, careful and thorough study of these factors is imperative.
The Christian Science Monitor, August 4, 2010:
The public summary of a new federal report on the fate of the oil that poured into the Gulf of Mexico following the Deepwater Horizon explosion and blowout suggests that close to half the oil from the disaster may still lurk in some form in the ocean, sand, and sediment.
Earlier today, President Obama's environmental adviser, Carol Browner, told NBC's "Today Show" that "the vast majority of the oil is gone. It was captured. It was burned. It was skimmed. It was contained. And mother nature did her part" through bacteria breaking down oil.
But the "vast majority" includes dispersed oil. The summary released Wednesday does not make clear the rate at which bacteria are degrading that oil. Researchers are still trying to assess this process – especially in the deep ocean, where much of the remaining oil is thought to be.
[...]
Some in the marine science community are looking askance at the report, in essence a preliminary estimate.
"This is a shaky report. The more I read it, the less satisfied I am with the thoroughness of the presentation," Florida State University oceanographer Ian MacDonald told The Associated Press. "There are sweeping assumptions here."
Kate Sheppard, Mother Jones, August 5, 2010:
The federal government is now painting a rosy picture of the Gulf spill, reporting Wednesday that much of the oil has miraculously disappeared. The folks at the New York Times bought in, proclaiming, "US Finds Most Oil From Spill Poses Little Additional Risk."
But the oil isn't gone. More than 100 million gallons of it—at least nine and a half times more oil than the Exxon Valdez dumped—remain at the surface or dispersed undersea. And the government is still keeping crucial information about the extent of the damage a carefully guarded secret—from everyone except BP.
National Wildlife Federation, August 4, 2010:
In an open letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and BP CEO Robert Dudley, nine prominent scientists and marine researchers expressed concern over reports that BP is asking scientists to sign confidentiality agreements in connection with findings related to the Gulf oil spill, and asked for "full and prompt" release of information assessing the damage with a special emphasis on "key data relating to wildlife mortality and injury."
"We are greatly concerned with reports that BP is requiring confidentiality agreements in research contracts with scientists, which would preclude them from releasing any of their findings for a three year period," the letter said. "Failure to disclose this scientific information in a timely manner hides critically important information from the public -- the owners of the natural resources at risk."
"Just as the unprecedented use of dispersants has served to sweep millions of gallons of oil under the rug, we're concerned the public may not get to see critical scientific data until BP has long since declared its responsibility over," added Dr. Bruce Stein, the National Wildlife Federation’s associate director for wildlife conservation and global warming, and one of the letter's signers. "Reported three-year confidentiality agreements in contracts between BP and researchers makes transparency that much more imperative to avoid perceived conflicts of interest or allegations of obfuscation. Do we really want scientists forced to choose who to share their data with – BP or the public?"
[...]
“From day one, BP has been sluggish and selective in releasing vital environmental data. BP needs to open the books on everything, no exceptions. And the Obama administration needs to do a better job enforcing the directive it issued requiring BP to make data public,” said Jeremy Symons, senior vice president of the National Wildlife Federation. “BP is mounting a PR campaign suggesting that the environmental damage of the spill is over when we know that they have dumped millions of gallons of toxic dispersants to sink the oil out of sight, turning the Gulf into a toxic chemistry experiment.”
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