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发帖数: 675 | 1 WASHINGTON — U.S. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, who is overseeing the
federal response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, on Sunday said progress
was being made to contain the oil, but predicted that the cleanup effort
could extend into the fall.
"We're making the right progress," Mr. Allen told CNN. But "I don't think
anybody should be pleased as long as there's oil in the water."
Earlier Sunday, BP PLC Chief Executive Tony Hayward said a containment cap
was now funneling off more than 10,000 barrels of oil a day from the blown-
out well, which has been gushing out oil a mile beneath the ocean surface.
Mr. Allen said vents on the cap were slowly being turned off to keep
additional oil from leaking. In a separate appearance on "Fox News Sunday,"
he said the "final fix" would be the drilling of a relief well, which was
estimated to be completed by August.
The oil spill is increasingly taking toll on wildlife. Video courtesy of
Reuters.
video
BP Collected 6,077 Barrels At Well
1:43
With a cap lowered over a runaway well, BP is beginning to capture some of
the oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico, but residents are worried about oil
hitting beaches. Video courtesy of Fox News.
View Slideshow
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Associated Press
This computer image released shows that oil leaking from a damaged well in
the Gulf of Mexico could wind up on the East Coast and even get carried on
currents across the Atlantic Ocean.
The Gulf Oil Spill
See graphics covering how the spill happened, what's being done to stop it,
and the impact on the region.
Mr. Allen predicted that even if the latest effort to contain the leak works
, "this will be well into the fall," citing the oil-remediation effort and
long-term environmental impact. "There will be oil out there for months to
come," he told CBS's "Face the Nation."
He declined to speculate on how much oil the containment cap has been
capturing since Friday, saying more data is needed on the amount of oil
being produced from the flow captured from the broken well.
Some government scientists have predicted the oil could move up the East
Coast and head toward Europe. Mr. Allen told Fox that "the probability
exists but it's a low probability."
Mr. Allen made the rounds on all the major news talk shows on Sunday to
discuss efforts by the government and BP to stem the oil spill. The oil
company had previously tried several other approaches, which failed.
Mr. Allen said that while BP has been trying every step possible to try to
stem the flow, it needed "to get better at the retail side," when dealing
with those impacted by the spill and the general public.
With the cap allowing BP to siphon off only a portion of the oil at a time,
Mr. Allen said, "nothing should be taken as good enough."
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a Republican, said on Fox News that the
media's tendency to lump all the Gulf coastlines and beaches as victims of
the spill was hurting the state's tourism industry. "We've had virtually no
oil," he said.
Mr. Barbour echoed concerns expressed by Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal that
temporarily shutting down offshore drilling, even for six months, could harm
the economy and drive oil companies to other resource-rich coastlines,
including in West Africa.
Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, appearing on ABC News's "This
Week," said he thought the Obama administration was holding BP's "feet to
the fire," but Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas said, "We need the
president to step up and asset himself."
Meanwhile, BP said Sunday that a containment cap placed on a ruptured well
collected 10,500 barrels of oil Saturday, adding the company hopes to
increase the amount of oil funneled to the surface in the next few days.
"At the moment it is difficult to say, but we would expect it to be the
majority, probably the vast majority of the oil," Mr. Hayward said earlier
in an interview on BBC. The amount of oil collected Saturday was up from the
6,077 barrels captured on Friday. There are 42 gallons in a barrel of oil.
"We have a further containment system to implement in the course of this
coming week which will be in place by next weekend. So when those two are in
place we would very much hope to be containing the vast majority of the oil
," Mr. Hayward said. Scientists led by the U.S. Geological Survey have
estimated that 12,000 to 19,000 barrels of oil a day were gushing into the
Gulf. In an update on its Web site, the company also said it flared off 22
million standard cubic feet of gas collected from the leak on Saturday.
The containment effort is the latest in a series of procedures attempted by
BP to contain the leak sprung by late April's explosion and sinking of the
Transocean Ltd. drilling rig, which BP was leasing. The accident killed 11
workers. The London-based company has come under increasingly withering
criticism for its inability to stem the leak as oil fouls the shorelines of
four Gulf states.
—Mark Long and Nicholas Winning contributed to this article. |
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