DATE OF DISASTER: APRIL 20, 2010

RATE OF OIL LEAK: 210,000 GALLONS EVERY DAY

As the top kill method continues to try to stop oil leaking into the Gulf, BP CEO, Tony Hayward, says that it will be at least 48 hours until the company can determine whether their plan actually worked.

Tony Hayward told NBC’s TODAY show that the attempt, which involves shooting heavy drilling mud into the blown-out well 5,000 feet underwater, was “proceeding pretty well.”

But the exec maintained that the procedure, which has never been attempted before so deep underwater, still had only a 60-70 percent chance of success, although some of the risks had been reduced.

“It will probably be another 48 hours before we know if we’ve met the success,” Hayward added.

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Primary Sources:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37394541

DATE OF DISASTER: APRIL 20, 2010

RATE OF OIL LEAK: 210,000 GALLONS EVERY DAY

Since Wednesday, BP has been trying a new method to stop the leaking oil which is being referred to as “top kill.” This involves pumping heavy mud and eventually cement into the oil pipe in order to plug the leak. As of today, reports say that the top kill method is going well but it is too soon to determine whether this will stop the leak or not.

One of BP’s top executives says crews trying to plug a massive Gulf oil leak are pumping mud into a blown-out well as effectively and efficiently as they had hoped.

BP PLC Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said Wednesday night that the company would continue to monitor the procedure known as a top kill and that officials should know in the next 24 hours whether it has been successful.

BP started pumping the heavy mud into the leaking Gulf of Mexico well Wednesday in the company’s boldest attempt yet to plug the gusher that has spewed millions of gallons of oil over the last five weeks.

BP hoped the mud could overpower the steady stream of oil. The company wants to eventually inject cement into the well to permanently seal it.

The stakes are high. Fisherman, hotel and restaurant owners, politicians and residents along the coast are fed up with BP’s so far ineffective attempts to stop the oil leak that sprang after an offshore drilling rig exploded April 20. Eleven workers were killed, and by the most conservative estimate, 7 million gallons of crude have spilled into the Gulf, fouling Louisiana’s marshes and coating birds and other wildlife.

The top kill has worked above ground but has never before been tried 5,000 feet beneath the sea. Company officials peg its chance of success at 60 to 70 percent.

President Barack Obama said “there’s no guarantees” it will work. The president planned a trip to Louisiana on Friday.

“We’re going to bring every resource necessary to put a stop to this thing,” he said.

The Coast Guard says 100 miles of coastline in Louisiana is being hit by oil.

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Primary Sources:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/05/26/national/main6519746.shtml?tag=channelMore;pop

DATE OF DISASTER: APRIL 20, 2010

RATE OF OIL LEAK: 210,000 GALLONS EVERY DAY

The Obama administration is feeling the pressure from building dissatisfaction with the way the oil spill in the Gulf has been handled since the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said Sunday he was “not completely” confident that BP knows what it’s doing.

“If we find they’re not doing what they’re supposed to be doing, we’ll push them out of the way appropriately,” Salazar said.

The White House said the Justice Department has been gathering information about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Press secretary Robert Gibbs didn’t say whether the department has opened a criminal investigation. He would only tell CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that department representatives have been to the Gulf as part of the response to the BP oil leak.

Salazar and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano were to lead a Senate delegation to the region Monday to fly over affected areas.

BP is getting barges and other equipment ready to prepare for a risky procedure midweek that the company hopes will finally halt the gusher.

But the “top kill” maneuver, which shoots heavy mud and then cement into the blown well, has never been tried at 5,000 feet underwater and BP officials caution they are working on a range of backup plans.

And even if one of these plans works to stop the oil from spewing into the water, scientists now believe that the oil spill from the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform may have exceeded the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989.

At least 6 million gallons of crude have spewed into the Gulf, though some scientists have said they believe the spill already surpasses the 11 million-gallon 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska as the worst in U.S. history.

A mile-long tube operating for about a week has siphoned off more than half a million gallons in the past week, but it began sucking up oil at a slower rate over the weekend. Even at its best, the effort did not capture all the oil leaking.

The spill’s impact now stretches across 150 miles, from Dauphin Island, Ala. to Grand Isle, La.

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Primary Sources:
http://cbs5.com/national/gulf.oil.spill.2.1711359.html

DATE OF DISASTER: APRIL 20, 2010

RATE OF OIL LEAK: 210,000 GALLONS EVERY DAY

The damage to wildlife along the Gulf worsens as the oil continues to spill.

On Sunday, some brown pelicans coated in oil couldn’t fly away on Barataria Bay of the Louisiana coast. All they could do was hobble. Their usually brown and white feathers were jet black, and eggs were glazed with rust-colored gunk.

When wildlife officials tried to rescue one of the pelicans, the birds became spooked. Officials weren’t sure whether they would try again, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman Stacy Shelton said it is sometimes better to leave the animals alone than to disturb their colony.

Pelicans are especially vulnerable to oil because they dive through the water’s surface to feed. They could eat tainted fish and feed it to their young, and they could die of hypothermia or drown if their feathers become soaked in oil. Just six months ago, the birds had been removed from the federal endangered species list.

With oil pushing at least 12 miles into Louisiana’s marshes and two major pelican rookeries now coated in crude, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said the state has begun work on a chain of berms, reinforced with containment booms, that would skirt the state’s coastline.

“As we talk, a total of more than 65 miles of our shoreline now has been oiled,” Jindal said.

Jindal, who visited one of the affected pelican nesting grounds Sunday, said the berms would close the door on oil still pouring from a mile-deep gusher about 50 miles out in the Gulf. The berms would be made with sandbags; the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers also is considering a broader plan that would use dredging to build sand berms across more of the barrier islands.

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Primary Sources:
http://cbs5.com/national/gulf.oil.spill.2.1711359.html

DATE OF DISASTER: APRIL 20, 2010

RATE OF OIL LEAK: 210,000 GALLONS EVERY DAY

Thick oil from the Deepwater Horizon explosion on April 20, 2010 is ruining the marshes and shoreline of Louisiana.

Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana said Wednesday that sheets of heavy crude oil from the offshore spill had seeped deep into the delicate marshes around the mouth of the Mississippi River. He called on the federal government to approve a plan to build sand berms to protect the bayou country.

“These are not tar balls, this is not sheen, this is heavy oil,” Mr. Jindal told reporters on a pier here, holding up a plastic bag full of sticky brownish liquid, after taking a helicopter and boat tour of the area. “What we are seeing yesterday and today is literally this heavy oil coming into our wetlands.”

While the oil is spreading and destroying the coast and the livelihood of those who live there, BP is still trying to find a final solution to stop the leaking oil. Even after inserting a tube into the pipe on the ocean floor to pump the oil to a tanker on the surface, the oil is still leaking into the Gulf.

Efforts to contain the spill continued Wednesday, but a procedure that could possibly shut the well off completely will not be ready until next week, officials said. The procedure, called a top-kill, in which heavy fluid would be pumped into the well, could be conducted on Sunday at the earliest, said Doug Suttles, chief operating officer for BP.

For four weeks, BP has been trying to stem the leak on several fronts, even taking e-mail suggestions for stopping the flow. Next week, BP will start testing six centrifuge machines that separate the oil from the water, a project that is financed by the actor Kevin Costner, Mr. Suttles said. Mr. Costner bought technology in development from the government in 1995, hired scientists and developed the centrifuge machines for the private sector, financing the $24 million project.

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Primary Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/20/us/20spill.html?src=mv

DATE OF DISASTER: APRIL 20, 2010

RATE OF OIL LEAK: 210,000 GALLONS EVERY DAY

Yet another major problem has surfaced relating to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Scientists have found that the oil may be in a current that will quickly carry the oil towards Florida’s coastline.

The latest satellite images taken by NASA suggest that the oil along the Gulf Coast is extremely close and maybe partially in a loop current. This loop current is responsible for transporting the oil southeast away from the Louisiana Coast and toward the Florida Keys. Scientist have been growing increasingly worried about this.

The pollution could endanger Florida’s shoreline mangroves, seagrass beds and the third-longest barrier reef in the world, the 221 mile long Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, which helps draw millions of snorkelers, fishermen and other tourists whose dollars are vital to the state’s economy.

On Monday night, the Coast Guard reported that 20 tar balls were found along the shore at Fort Zachary Taylor State Park in Key West. Samples of the tar balls found by park rangers and ranging in size from three to eight inches in diameter will be sent to a laboratory for analysis, according to the Coast Guard.

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Primary Sources:
http://www.examiner.com/x-30794-Chicago-Weather-Examiner~y2010m5d18-Oil-spill-encounters-loop-current-20-tar-balls-found-along-the-beach-in-Key-West-FL

DATE OF DISASTER: APRIL 20, 2010

RATE OF OIL LEAK: 210,000 GALLONS EVERY DAY

Initial reports are coming in that the tube BP started inserting into the leaking oil pipe last Friday may be working to contain the spill.

According to reports, the engineers were successful in inserting a tube into the broken pipe and captured the oil and gas, which in turn resulted in a breath of success. The BP officials said that this process has not completely curbed the problem, but this opens a way on how to actually get the work of stopping the oil leak done.

The tube system is just one of many ways proposed by the BP engineers to stop the mayhem of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill that is destroying marine wildlife. The oil and gas collected were sent up the drill ship, Discovery Enterprise, which has a process of getting rid of the gas by burning it out by a flare system.

Reports say that the system of putting a five foot section pipe of the damaged section has a rubber seal around it, which will in turn help the water to stay away from the pipe and get the gas and oil to the surface. The whole process was undertaken by the help of robots.

The attempt of actually putting a mile long pipe on the broke section failed earlier, but after reconfiguring the technology the process of capping the oil worked. But this is one of BP’s short term plans to curb the disaster, some plans include putting trash into the hole of the well and plug it.

A long term process has reportedly been decided, BP will drill to relief well around the site, but this process is due to start only in August.

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Primary Sources:
http://uktodaynews.com/4765/gulf-of-mexico-oil-spill-2010-bp-reports-success-in-capturing-oil-by-inserting-oil-leak-tube/

DATE OF DISASTER: APRIL 20, 2010

RATE OF OIL LEAK: 210,000 GALLONS EVERY DAY

After the failure of both containment boxes, BP has come up with another plan to try to stop the massive amounts of oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico from the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig on April 20, 2010.

Early this morning, BP workers started trying to insert a tube into the leaking pipe on the sea floor in hopes of getting that oil to the surface to start filling up an oil tanker.

The company was trying to move the 6-inch tube into the leaking 21-inch pipe, known as the riser. The smaller tube will be surrounded by a stopper to keep oil from leaking into the sea, which could be in place later Friday, BP said. The plan is for the tube to siphon the oil to a tanker at the surface.

As BP keeps working on a solution to stop the leak, reports are coming out on the enormous costs of battling this spill.

BP said the costs for fighting the spill now total about $450 million — $100 million more than it was three days ago. The company said in a filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that the tab includes money it has given to Gulf Coast states and the federal government for their responses. The costs also include efforts to contain the crude, ongoing work to drill a relief well and settlements. The company says the price tag generally is increasing by at least $10 million a day. A spokesman says the $100 million increase was likely caused by a lag in reporting costs.

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Primary Sources:
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wirestory?id=10637414&page=1
http://www.delmarvanow.com/article/20100514/NEWS01/100514009/1002/GULF-OIL-SPILL–BP-hopes-tube-will-siphon-oil-to-tanker–

DATE OF DISASTER: APRIL 20, 2010

RATE OF OIL LEAK: 210,000 GALLONS EVERY DAY

The crippling affect of the oil spill is really taking a toll on Gulf Coast residents and businesses.

Terry Drawdy, who owns Drawdy Crab Co., said his business has suffered deeply since oil started leaking.

On a typical day, he said, his company sells anywhere between 10,000 and 12,000 pounds of crab. On Wednesday morning, the only order he received was for 200 pounds.

“All this uncertainty’s kill me,” he told King. “It’s eating me alive.”

As the oil continues to pour into the Gulf of Mexico, it is becoming clear that it is not only humans who are suffering.

Federal wildlife officials are treating the deaths of six dolphins on the Gulf Coast as oil-related even though other factors may be to blame.

Blair Mase (MACE’) of the National Marine Fisheries Service said Tuesday that the carcasses have all been found in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama since May 2. Samples have been sent for testing to see whether a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico helped kill the dolphins.

Marine birds and sea turtles have also been found covered in oil.

We are fighting… for the safety and security of you and your family. Making cruise lines, other commercial facilities, and products safer and more secure, one case at a time.

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Primary Sources:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g1MJa_skdce6dgsc45KixWpPLmcwD9FL0MI02
http://blog.al.com/live/2010/05/troy_king_says_bp_should_pay_g.html
http://cnmnewsnetwork.com/113593/oil-spill-in-gulf-of-mexico-2010-bp-oil-spill-and-birds-dolphins-and-sea-turtles/

DATE OF DISASTER: APRIL 20, 2010

RATE OF OIL LEAK: 210,000 GALLONS EVERY DAY

Since the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon on April 20, 2010, over 4 million gallons of oil have leaked into the Gulf of Mexico. And because no attempt to stop the leak has worked, that number will continue to rise.

The initial containment box did not work to contain the leak so BP is now trying to use a smaller containment box.

A second, smaller oil containment box was lowered into the sea near the blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico.

The box was being slowly submerged to the seabed Tuesday. But it won’t be placed over the spewing well right away. BP spokesman Bill Salvin says engineers want to make sure everything is configured correctly and avoid the same buildup of ice crystals that stymied their first attempt at using a larger box that was about 100 tons.

This box will be connected to a ship on the surface by a pipe-within-a-pipe when it’s lowered. Crews plan to pump in heated water and methanol so ice won’t build up.

Salvin said undersea robots will position the box over the gusher by Thursday.

BP hopes that the smaller size of the second containment box will improve the chances of success.

There will be less seawater in the smaller dome, which will reduce the chance of hydrate formation, BP said. Moreover, methanol will be injected into the chamber to try to prevent the formation of hydrates.

The original dome, which took about two weeks to build, was four stories high and weighed 98 tons. The smaller dome, which will be anchored to the sea floor with pipe, is four feet in diameter and five feet high, BP said.

We are fighting… for the safety and security of you and your family. Making cruise lines, other commercial facilities, and products safer and more secure, one case at a time.

CONTACT US AND SEE OUR RESULTS AT: www.hickeylawfirm.com and CALL US TOLL FREE AT 1.800.215.7117.

Primary Sources:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37092959/ns/us_news-gulf_oil_spill/