Now that BP has temporarily plugged the oil spill and remains confident that a successful permanent plug is within reach, federal scientists estimate 4.9 million barrels of oil have gushed into the Gulf since April 22. The calculation makes BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill the largest in history, far surpassing Mexico’s 1979 Ixtoc spill, which released 3.3 million barrels into the Gulf.
BP announced today that its new cap over the well in the Gulf of Mexico has killed the flow of oil for the first time since April. The company has been gradually closing the vents on the new cap since it was successfully installed on Monday. Although higher pressure within the capping structure could theoretically lead to another blowout, BP executives and government officials are greeting the progress with guarded optimism.
Kate Sheppard, a Washington-based journalist who covers energy and environmental politics in Mother Jones’ Washington bureau, recently came across an August 2008 article in BP’s magazine Frontiers in which the company boasts of its cutting-edge technological abilities to measure oil flow.
Carried by water currents, BP’s giant oil slick could hit the U.S. east coast in a few weeks and spread out across thousands of miles of Atlantic ocean, according to government scientists monitoring the spill. The government’s oil spill trajectory shows the slick traveling down Florida’s Gulf coast and around the state’s southern tip, where it enters the rapid Gulf Stream. It then mucks the eastern shoreline all the way to Cape Hatteras, North Carolina before veering east into the open Atlantic.
Federal regulations require oil companies to prepare and submit detailed spill-response plans before they can begin drilling offshore in American waters — and rightfully so. That body of water we call the Gulf of Mexico is a rich and diverse natural resource that directly sustains a way of life for millions of residents, whether they’re employed by the multi-billion-dollar seafood and tourism industries or any business in between. Simply put, a threat to the Gulf of Mexico’s ecosystems is a threat to our economy and national security.
Much press has been given to the dire threat BP’s oil slick poses to the coastal ecosystems, marine environment, and the economies that depend on the health of both. But now another tragic extension of the oil disaster is becoming apparent – a feeling of hopelessness and abandonment that threatens ways of life and cultural traditions that give the Gulf Coast its own unique, irreplaceable personality.
The Environmental Protection Agency gave BP on Wednesday 24 hours to find an oil dispersant less toxic than the ones it has been spraying in massive quantities above the Gulf of Mexico and under the surface. The EPA requested that BP provide it with a list of available dispersants and begin using the new dispersants within 72 hours.
Environmental Protection Agency officials are reviewing BP’s troubled record of drilling for oil on U.S. soil and federal waters to determine whether the company should be barred from receiving government contracts. Such a move, if it comes to pass, could cost the company billions of dollars in revenue.
Since the Deepwater Horizon leased by BP exploded and sank in the Gulf of Mexico, analysts have been trying to determine how much crude oil has been spewing into the water. The official number for the gushing oil flow, established by the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration and announced by the U.S. Coast Guard on April 28, is 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons) per day. However, other scientists and researchers analyzing video footage of the leak say that the actual amount of oil escaping from the broken pipe is likely to be much, much larger.
