Oil gusher tapering off
Source: Agencies |
June 8, 2010, Tuesday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
A GEYSER of oil spewing from the sea floor is tapering off more day by day with the help of a wellhead cap, but there's no quick fix for containing much of the crude that has already escaped and is spreading across the Gulf of Mexico.
The cap is keeping up to 1.74 million liters of oil a day from leaking into the Gulf, Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen said yesterday. That's up from about 1.67 million liters on Saturday and 946,000 liters on Friday.
Federal authorities have estimated the ruptured pipe is leaking between 190,000 liters and 3.8 million liters a day.
The battle against the oil already in the Gulf now involves "hundreds of thousands" of individual patches, said Allen, who is in charge of the government's spill response. Small vessels in the area have been enlisted to help capture those patches using skimmers.
The patchy oil slick now stretches from 160 kilometers east of the Texas-Louisiana border to northwestern Florida, and down to the open sea about 240 kilometers west of Tampa, Florida, officials said.
Allen elaborated on comments over the weekend that the spill cleanup would last into fall, acknowledging the full cleanup would take much longer.
"Dealing with the oil spill on the surface will take a couple of months," he said, but the process of getting oil out of marshlands and other habitats "will be years."
In Florida, tar balls continued to roll onto Pensacola Beach yesterday morning and left a distinct line in the sand from the high-rise condos above as the sun rose. Beach walkers had to stay between the line of coin-size tar balls and the retreating surf or risk getting the gummy gunk stuck to their feet.
The cap is keeping up to 1.74 million liters of oil a day from leaking into the Gulf, Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen said yesterday. That's up from about 1.67 million liters on Saturday and 946,000 liters on Friday.
Federal authorities have estimated the ruptured pipe is leaking between 190,000 liters and 3.8 million liters a day.
The battle against the oil already in the Gulf now involves "hundreds of thousands" of individual patches, said Allen, who is in charge of the government's spill response. Small vessels in the area have been enlisted to help capture those patches using skimmers.
The patchy oil slick now stretches from 160 kilometers east of the Texas-Louisiana border to northwestern Florida, and down to the open sea about 240 kilometers west of Tampa, Florida, officials said.
Allen elaborated on comments over the weekend that the spill cleanup would last into fall, acknowledging the full cleanup would take much longer.
"Dealing with the oil spill on the surface will take a couple of months," he said, but the process of getting oil out of marshlands and other habitats "will be years."
In Florida, tar balls continued to roll onto Pensacola Beach yesterday morning and left a distinct line in the sand from the high-rise condos above as the sun rose. Beach walkers had to stay between the line of coin-size tar balls and the retreating surf or risk getting the gummy gunk stuck to their feet.
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