Clean-up workers clutch at straws (literally) as BP says oil cap is working

Jacqui Goddard, Miami

The official leading the US Government’s response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico warned against celebration yesterday as BP claimed to have got a partial grip on the ruptured well after nearly seven weeks of trying.

Admiral Thad Allen, the US Coast Guard commandant, countered remarks by Bob Fryar, vice-president of the oil company, who said that he was “pleased” by the success of a containment system that is filtering off 10,000 barrels (420,000 gallons) of oil a day.

“I don’t think anybody should be pleased as long as there’s oil in the water,” said Admiral Allen, likening the slick to an enemy that was “holding the Gulf hostage” as it claimed more land, livelihoods and wildlife.

“There will be oil out there for months to come. This is a siege. It’s going to go on for a long time,” he said during a round of television interviews. “This is a war, an insidious war, and it’s attacking four states at one time.”

Where five different techniques to halt or contain the flow of oil since April 22 had tried and failed, or been aborted, the “cut-and-cap” technique carried out by sub-sea robots last week succeeded in capturing what BP said was nearly half the daily flow from the Macondo well between midnight on Friday and midnight on Saturday.

Tony Hayward, the company’s chief executive, said that further improvements would be made to the new containment system this week, allowing it to capture “probably the vast majority” of the leak.

Yet BP’s triumph on the seabed was tempered by the worsening situation on the surface. In Louisiana, birds sat trapped and exhausted in a thick tide of oil, prompting a demonstration in New Orleans by protesters dressed as dead and ailing birds. In Florida, Alabama and Mississippi, beaches were sticky with tarballs. Civic officials in Alabama complained of a “nightmare” blighting their communities’ economies and ecologies, and scientists predicted that the Gulf’s recovery could take decades.

“Can we put everything back exactly as it was? No,” said Doug Inkley, a senior scientist with the National Wildlife Federation. He told The Times: “BP has made a commitment to helping the Gulf recover, but only time will tell. BP has proclaimed in their press releases and oral statements that they are committed to full transparency. Unfortunately, BP’s transparency has an opaque lens in front of it.”

Dr Inkley last week toured Louisiana’s marshes, where the oil is now taking its toll on colonies of nesting pelicans. “I personally, and everybody I have spoken to, finds it very, very difficult to look at the images of those oiled birds. Heartbreaking. And the oiling of birds that we’ve seen so horrendously illustrated is only one small measure of the total impact of this spill.”

Questions remain over precisely how much has leaked, how much is still leaking, and how much can realistically be captured. A scientific task force appointed by the federal Government estimated last month that between 12,000 and 25,000 barrels a day (504,000 to 1.05 million gallons) a day have been gushing from the well. In cutting the damaged pipe from the oil well in order to fit a cap over the top and divert some of the flow to a surface tanker, engineers may have increased that flow rate by up to 20 per cent, the White House said last week.

That would yield an upper flow rate of 30,000 barrels (1.26 million gallons) a day, meaning that the 10,000 barrels that BP is now capturing may represent just one third of the total.

While the disaster has put thousands of fishermen out of work — with 32 per cent, or 78,000 square miles, of the Gulf’s fisheries now closed — BP has hired 4,000 unemployed people across the four affected states to help with the clean-up as wind and currents pushed the slick northeast, landing waves of tarballs and mats of weathered oil on beaches in Pensacola, Florida.

In his weekly radio address, President Obama defended his Administration against accusations that its response to the disaster had not been aggressive enough, and repeated his pledge that BP would be held accountable for every last cent of damage.

“These folks work hard,” he said of the fishermen, shrimpers and oystermen who are now out of work. “They meet their responsibilities but now because of a man-made catastrophe — one that’s not their fault and that’s beyond their control — their lives have been thrown into turmoil. It’s brutally unfair. It’s wrong.”

BP has launched a $10 million public relations campaign with television adverts that feature Mr Hayward apologising for the spill.

“To those affected, and your families, I am deeply sorry,” he says, pledging to make amends. “We will get this done. We will make this right.”