TalkBaja.com » Baja Mexico Forums » Baja News Wire

AFP - US Vice President Joe Biden heads to the Gulf of Mexico Tuesday, as a tropical storm -- forecast to reach hurricane strength -- was likely to hamper oil spill cleanup efforts.

A spokeswoman for US Vice President Joe Biden told AFP the stormy weather would not affect his trip, which was to take him first to the crisis command center in Louisiana and then on to tar-balled beaches in Florida.

Ten weeks after the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon platform exploded, setting off the worst environmental disaster to afflict US shores, Biden was given an earful on his arrival about the slow response from Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal.

Countless birds and pristine shorelines have been oiled since the rig sank on April 22, spewing crude ever since at an alarming rate into the Gulf of Mexico and leaving the region's vital fishing and tourism industries reeling.

"We didn't see one vessel out there trying to capture that oil. We need to have a greater sense of urgency," Jindal complained to Biden. "They need to treat this like the war that it is."

At the leak site 50 miles (80 kilometers) offshore, winds of up to 22 knots churned up large waves that made it too rough for crews to attach a third vessel that could greatly increase the capacity of BP's containment system.

And although Alex, which was forecast to become the first hurricane of the Atlantic season later Tuesday, was expected to pass hundreds of miles from the site, some clean-up operations were already being curtailed.

"They are still doing dispersant flights, but no skimming and no burning," said a Coast Guard official, adding that waves out at the site of the sunken BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig were already up to seven feet (two meters).

Forecasters said it was likely the oil spill area would be spared a direct hit, but Alex had already forced officials to delay the deployment of a new ship expected to nearly double BP's capacity to capture the leaking oil.

"We're going to have to stop preparations for the Helix Producer," Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, who is overseeing disaster response efforts, told reporters Monday.

The Helix Producer vessel is set to increase the capacity to gather the gushing oil to between 40,000 and 50,000 barrels per day by early July, from the current 25,000 barrels.

BP hopes a new mooring system will make the containment cap deep down on the sea floor easier to disconnect and reconnect in the case of inclement weather -- a vital contingency as the Atlantic hurricane season gets into full swing.

Allen told reporters on Monday that even the threat of gale force winds -- upward of 45 miles (72 kilometers) per hour -- would be enough to force drilling and containment ships to withdraw from the spill site.

Officials have said they will suspend operations if gale force winds are projected to hit the disaster zone within five days to give the thousands of sea vessels time to make it safety to shore.

In the event of an evacuation, operations will be shut down for about two weeks to "take down the equipment, move it off to a safe place, bring it back and reestablish drilling," Allen said.

That would be another major setback for the ill-fated oil collection effort in the Gulf, and would probably delay until September the completion of relief wells designed to permanently plug the well.

It would also drastically increase the flow of oil still gushing into the sea more than two months after the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon, which left 11 workers dead.



More...

This is just going from very bad to nightmare...