So, BP went ahead with the "top kill" method.
"Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the national incident commander for the federal government, said in media interviews that the top kill was working as planned and that oil and gas were no longer leaking."
Phew. But don't get too excited, folks. It will take 24 to 48 hours to know if it's actually working. Additionally, if you've been watching BP's live feed, you might have noticed:
"The flow from the damaged riser pipe has turned muddy, suggesting that oil and gas are no longer leaking. "What you've been observing out of the top of that riser is most likely mud," BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said Wednesday night. "We can't fully confirm that because we can't sample it."
Meanwhile, the spill has been officially named the country's worst. Estimates suggest between 504,000 and 798,000 gallons of oil have been leaked into the Gulf of Mexico per day for almost 40 days now.
"Figuring that the leak began when the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig sank to the gulf bottom April 22, and subtracting the oil siphoned from the leaking pipe and pumped onto a barge, the flow rate would mean that between 17 million and 27 million gallons of oil have polluted the gulf. The 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, by comparison, put 11 million gallons of oil along more than a thousand miles of Alaska's coastline."
That's some ultra-bad news. Alaska is still suffering from the 1989 spill 21 years later. What does that mean for the Gulf of Mexico?
***Update***
It's both kinda annoying and kinda exciting when an article changes while you're actually writing about it!
New title: "BP: 'Top Kill' Fails to Stop Flow So Far"
I'm watching the live feed now and wondering what the hell they're doing. I don't see the muddy gushing anymore, but there's definitely a robot party going on down there.
So far, the 'top kill' method has failed. BP says they will try again later tonight (maybe that's what they're doing now?).
Full article here (Washington Post)
Check this link for updates!!
No comments:
Post a Comment