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Oil Spill in the Gulf
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Workers gather oil-soaked algae on a beach in Gulfport, Miss. Some scientists are predicting that the oil spill will result in a calamity of historic proportions, whose impact could last decades.
Experts envision devastation for gulf
gulf from A1
as if choosing its moment of at- tack. It has changed sizes: In rough, churning seas, the visible slick at the surface has shrunk in recent days. The oil by its nature is hard to
peg. It’s not a single, coherent blob but rather an irregular, amoeba-shaped expanse that in some places forms a thin sheen on the water and in other loca- tions is braided and stretched into tendrils of thick, orange- brown gunk. There may be a large plume of oil in the water column, unseen. A BP executive said the com-
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pany has had success in treating the oil at the point of the leak with dispersant chemicals sprayed by a robotic submarine. A federal fleet has fought high waves in attempts to skim or burn the oil. Rough weather has actually been a blessing, said Ian MacDonald, an oceanography professor at Florida State Univer- sity. In heavy surf, the oil has been breaking up, and toxic, vola- tile substances have been evapo- rating. “It chews up the oil; some of it
sinks,” MacDonald said. The good news ends there. “What remains forms what’s called mousse, which is like choc- olate mousse. It’s an emulsion, which is an emulsion of oil, air and water, in a thick, gelatinous layer, and that’s nasty stuff,” Mac- Donald said. No one is sure how much oil is
spilling. An early estimate by the Coast Guard of a 1,000-barrel-a- day flow was upped to 5,000 bar- rels with the discovery of an addi- tional leak, but officials now cau-
tion against giving any estimate too much credence. The oil so far has barely touched coastal islands and hasn’t come ashore, but environ- mentalists are poised for a cata- strophic impact that could last decades. “It’s going to have a ripple ef-
fect throughout the entire food chain, from the plankton to the fish that consume them, to the predators, like the pelicans and the dolphins,” said Doug Inkley, a senior scientist with the National Wildlife Federation. “It’s like a slow-moving train wreck about which you can do nothing, or very little.” At a news conference Tuesday,
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) said he had asked federal officials to look for ways to increase the Mississippi River’s flow to keep the slick at bay. “Let’s make no mistake about
what’s at stake here,” he said. “This is our very way of life.” The crisis began April 20 with
an explosion and fire on the Deepwater Horizon, a huge rig owned by Transocean and leased by BP. The South Korean-built rig, insured for $560 million, sank two days later; the riser, the pipe leading to the rig, collapsed. Three leaks have developed, the largest at the end of the drill pipe that extends from the end of the riser.
Robotic submarines have tried
to activate a structure called a blowout preventer that sits atop the wellhead and has multiple tools for clamping the flow of oil in an emergency. So far those ef- forts have failed. “It’s really, really devastating,” said Greg McCormack, director of
the Petroleum Extension Service at the University of Texas. “On the political front, are we going to be allowed to drill in the deep water again? That’s going to be more devastating to society than to the industry. We’re going to have much higher oil prices because of that.” Few people have a more apoca- lyptic view than Matt Simmons, retired chairman of the energy investment banking firm Sim- mons & Company International and a 41-year veteran of the in- dustry. Simmons, who will speak at the Offshore Technology Con- ference in Houston this week, has been famous in recent years for warning that the industry is run- ning out of oil. Now he sees a dis- aster on an epic scale as the pres- surized subterranean reservoir known as the Macondo field, tapped for the first time by Deep- water Horizon, continues to vent into the gulf. “It really is a catastrophe,” Sim- mons said. “I don’t think they’re going to be able to put the leak out until the reservoir depletes. It’s just too technically challeng- ing.” He said BP’s cleanup costs could ruin the company. “They’re going to have to clean up the Gulf of Mexico,” he said. Jindal’s news conference Tues-
day opened with an invocation from Randy Craighead, the pas- tor of a New Orleans area church. He asked for divine intervention. “Father, we pray for a prevail-
ing north wind,” he said, “to drive that oil slick southward.”
achenbachj@washpost.com
Staff writer David Fahrenthold in New Orleans contributed to this report.
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Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal discusses the crisis at a news conference in New Orleans.
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