2010-04-23 08:25:05
By JANET McCONNAUGHEY, Associated Press Writers Janet Mcconnaughey, Associated
Press Writers 1 hr 24 mins ago
NEW ORLEANS As hope dimmed for the lives of 11 crew members missing since a
drilling rig exploded in flames in the Gulf of Mexico, authorities turned their
focus to controlling an oil spill that could threaten the fragile ecosystem of
the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts.
The Deepwater Horizon had burned violently for nearly two days until it sank
Thursday morning. The fire's out, but as much as 336,000 gallons of crude oil a
day could be rising from the sea floor 5,000 feet below, officials said.
"If it gets landward, it could be a disaster in the making," said Cynthia
Sarthou, executive director for the environmental group Gulf Restoration
Network.
Ed Overton, an LSU environmental sciences professor, said he expects some of
the light crude oil to evaporate while much of it turns into a pasty mess
called a "chocolate mousse" that ultimately breaks apart into "tar balls,"
small chunks of oily residue that can wash ashore.
"It's going to be a god-awful mess for a while," he said. "I'm not crying
doomsday or saying the sky is falling, but that is the potential."
The Coast Guard early Friday was searching for the missing, but some family
members said they had been told that officials assumed all were dead, though
others were praying for a different outcome. Most of the crew 111 members
were ashore, including 17 taken to hospitals. Four were in critical condition.
The accident shows that drilling is not safe, said Abe Powell, who heads Get
Oil Out!, created after a 1969 platform accident off Santa Barbara, Calif.,
fouled miles of ocean and beaches with wildlife-killing goo and spawned the
environmental movement.
"When oil companies say drilling is safe now and we won't allow any accidents
... we know that's not true," he said.
Weather forecasts indicate the spill was likely to stay well away from shore at
least through the weekend, but if winds change it could come ashore more
rapidly, said Doug Helton of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric
Administration's office of response and restoration.
The Coast Guard, which was leading the investigation, hadn't given up the
search early Friday for those missing from the rig, which went up in flames
Tuesday night about 41 miles from the mouth of the Mississippi River.
Four who made it off safely were still on a boat operating one of several
underwater robots being used to assess whether the flow of oil could be shut
off at a control valve on the sea floor, said Guy Cantwell, spokesman for rig
owner Transocean Ltd.
Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry said crews saw a 1-mile-by-5-mile rainbow
sheen of what appeared to be a crude oil mix on the surface. There wasn't any
evidence crude was coming out after the rig sank, she said, but officials
weren't sure what was going on underwater.
At the worst-case figure of 336,000 gallons a day, it would take more than a
month for the amount of crude oil spilled to equal the 11 million gallons
spilled from the Exxon Valdez in Alaska's Prince William Sound.
A turn in winds and currents might send oil toward fragile coastal wetlands
nurseries for fish and shrimp and habitat for birds.
"As you get closer to shore, you get richer and richer marine habitats, and
also get the potential for long-term exposure," Helton said.
Animals at sea will be briefly exposed to the oil when the slick passes over,
but when it hits land, it sticks, he said.
To prevent that, the Marine Spill Response Corp., an energy industry cleanup
consortium, brought seven skimmer boats to suck oily water from the surface,
four planes that can scatter chemicals to disperse oil, and 500,000 feet 94.6
miles of containment boom.
Another 500,000 feet of boom were on the way, said Tom Mueller, spokesman for
BP PLC, which leased the rig and took the lead in the cleanup.
"Right now we are over-responding with resources to manage the potential spill
here," he said. "We will be well-prepared to manage whatever comes."
He said 6,000 feet, about 1.1 mile, of boom was in the water by Thursday
evening.
While this was happening on the surface, robots tethered to ships nearly a mile
above the sea floor sent back video of the damage so crews can decide whether a
shutoff valve called a blowout preventer can be closed.
Authorities don't know whether the rig sank to the bottom or, if it did,
whether it hit the blowout preventer, Lt. Cdr. Cheri Ben-Iesau said.
"It didn't sink catastrophically. It kind of settled into the water" and may
still have some buoyancy, she said.
If the valve is too badly damaged to cut off the flow of oil, a nearby rig a
safe distance from the broken well will drill a new hole intersecting the one
that blew wild. Then heavy fluid called "kill fluid" will be pumped in to plug
it, said Scott D. Dean, a BP spokesman.
In addition to other environmental concerns, the well is in an area where a pod
of sperm whales is known to feed, said Kim Amendola of NOAA. Sarthou said she
was worried the activity around the well might disturb the whales.
Meanwhile, relatives of the missing waited for news.
Carolyn Kemp of Monterey, La., said her grandson, Roy Wyatt Kemp, 27, would
have been on the drilling platform when it exploded.
"They're assuming all those men who were on the platform are dead," Kemp said.
"That's the last we've heard."
Jed Kersey, of Leesville, La., said his 33-year-old son, John, had finished his
shift on the rig floor and was sleeping. He said his son told him all 11
missing workers were on the rig floor at the time of the explosion.
"He said it was like a war zone," said Jed Kersey, a former offshore oil
worker.
The family of Dewey Revette, a 48-year-old from southeast Mississippi, said he
worked as a driller on the rig and had been with the company for 29 years.
"We're all just sitting around waiting for the phone to ring and hoping for
good news. And praying about it," said Revette's 23-year-old daughter, Andrea
Cochran.
Those who escaped did so mainly by getting on lifeboats that were lowered into
the Gulf, said Adrian Rose, vice president of Transocean.
Weekly emergency drills seemed to help, he said, adding that workers apparently
stuck together as they fled the blast.
"There are a number of uncorroborated stories, a lot of them really quite
heroic stories, of how people looked after each other. There was very little
panic," Rose said.
Family members of two missing workers filed separate lawsuits Thursday accusing
Transocean and BP of negligence. Both companies declined to comment about legal
action against them after the first suit was filed.
The U.S. Minerals Management Service, which regulates oil rigs, conducted three
routine inspections of the Deepwater Horizon this year in February, March and
on April 1 and found no violations, MMS spokeswoman Eileen Angelico said.
___
Associated Press Writer Noaki Schwartz reported from Los Angeles, Holbrook Mohr
from Jackson, Miss., Mike Kunzelman, Cain Burdeau and Alan Sayre in Louisiana,
Chris Kahn in New York and Sofia Mannos of AP Television News contributed to
this report.