Oil giant BP succeeded Sunday in connecting a mile-long pipe to help capture oil flowing into the Gulf of Mexico from its damaged well, "an important step" toward capping the massive spill, the company said, but not a complete solution.
The company initially connected the tube overnight, collecting some oil, gas and water, but then the tube was temporarily dislodged. It was reconnected on Sunday morning.
"We are restarting the operation now'' to siphon oil from the ocean floor to a ship 5,000 feet above where it can be stored temporarily, BP spokesman David Nicholas said.
The effort doesn't plug the massive oil leak that began on April 20 when an offshore rig caught fire and sank, but it's the first successful attempt in almost a month to begin capping the erupting flow. A similar effort had failed on Saturday.
The tube "is fashioned from a 4-inch pipe and is inserted into the leaking riser, from which the majority of the flow is coming. While not collecting all of the leaking oil, this tool is an important step in reducing the amount of oil being released into Gulf waters," said a statement from the Deepwater Horizon Incident Joint Information Center.
Methanol, a kind of antifreeze, will be put into the riser to stop gas crystals from forming, which could block gas and oil from flowing to the ship. Crystals got in the way of a previous attempt to lower a 100-ton containment cap over the leak site.
The surface ship will separate the oil, gas and water mixture for storage and eventual offloading. Overnight, some of the collected gas was burned through a flare system on the ship.
Meanwhile, reports of huge submerged oil plumes raised fears of more ecological damage to the Gulf and raised questions about when large amounts of crude might hit shore. Tar balls have washed up sporadically on beaches in several states, but oil hasn't come ashore in big quantities.
Researchers from the National Institute for Undersea Science and Technology said they had detected the underwater oil plumes at depths from just beneath the surface to more than 4,000 feet.
Three or four large plumes have been found, and at least one is 10 miles long and a mile wide, said Samantha Joye, a marine science professor at the University of Georgia.
Researchers Vernon Asper and Arne Dierks of the National Institute for Undersea Science and Technology at the University of Southern Mississippi said in web posts that the large plumes were "perhaps due to the deep injection of dispersants."
The researchers also were testing the effects of large amounts of subsea oil on oxygen levels in the water. The oil can deplete oxygen in water, harming plankton and other tiny creatures that serve as food for a wide variety of sea creatures.
Oxygen levels in some areas have dropped 30 percent and should continue to drop, Joye said.
The Environmental Protection Agency gave BP the go-ahead on Saturday to use dispersants, chemicals that break the oil into small droplets and keep it from rising to the surface.
"It appears that the application of the sub-sea dispersant is actually working," BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said. "The oil in the vicinity of the well is diminished from previous observations."
At least 210,000 gallons of oil have been gushing into the Gulf each day since the Deepwater Horizon exploded on April 20, and some independent scientists think the leak may be 10 times that bad.
Environmentalists — and some leaders in the fishing and oil-spill cleanup industries _have raised concerns about the chemical dispersants.
"Cosmetically, it makes it seem that the oil has gone away," said Tom Manton, the retired president and CEO of the International Oil Spill Control Corporation. "But the
oil doesn't go away. It ends up in small drops, either on the beach or on the seabed...In
many cases, the dispersants are more polluting to the water than the actual oil is."
The EPA and Coast Guard, however, say that the dispersants are "generally less harmful" than oil and will biodegrade in a shorter time span.
Technicians had tried to stop the leak Saturday by guiding a six-inch-wide tube with a rubber stopper into the broken undersea pipe. But they had trouble connecting the tube to an oil tanker on the surface, and had to bring the apparatus back to the surface.
"The challenge here is working with 5,000 feet of water," Suttles said.
On Sunday, BP succeeded using a four-inch-wide tube.
Officials have not ruled out another potential solution called a ''junk shot." That entails shooting golf balls, shredded tires, knotted pieces of rope and other types of debris into the blowout preventer to clog the leak.
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/16/v-fullstory/1632437/bp-finally-connects-mile-long.html#ixzz0o7gkJmEe
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