Scientists worry current could carry oil to Keys
ROBERT, LA
Scientists said the oil will move into the so-called loop
current soon if it hasn't already, though they could not say
exactly when or how much there would be. Once it is in the loop, it
could take 10 days or longer to reach the Keys.
"It's only a question of when," said Peter Ortner, a
University of Miami oceanographer.
In the month since an offshore drilling platform exploded,
killing 11 workers, BP has struggled to stop the leak, trying in
vain to activate emergency valves and lowering a 100-ton box that
got clogged with icy crystals. Over the weekend, the oil company
finally succeeded in using a stopper-and-tube combination to siphon
some of the gushing oil into a tanker, but millions of gallons are
already in the Gulf.
The loop current is a ribbon of warm water that begins in the
Gulf of Mexico and wraps around Florida. Some scientists project
the current will draw the crude through the Keys and then up
Florida's Atlantic Coast, where the oil might avoid the beaches of
Miami and Fort Lauderdale but could wash up around Palm Beach.
Many scientists expect the oil to get no farther north than Cape
Canaveral, midway up the coast, before it is carried out to sea and
becomes more and more diluted.
The pollution could endanger Florida's shoreline mangroves,
seagrass beds and the third-longest barrier reef in the world, the
221-mile-long Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, which helps
draw millions of snorkelers, fishermen and other tourists whose
dollars are vital to the state's economy.
Pollutants can smother and kill corals -- living creatures that
excrete a hard exterior skeleton -- or can hinder their ability to
reproduce and grow. That, in turn, could harm thousands of species
of exotic and colorful fish and other marine life that live in and
around reefs.
In other developments:
-- Chris Oynes, who oversees offshore drilling programs at the
federal Minerals Management Service, will retire at the end of the
month, becoming the Interior Department's first casualty of the
disaster. Oynes has been criticized as too cozy with the oil
industry.
-- The White House will establish a presidential commission to
investigate the spill, according to an administration official
speaking of condition of anonymity.
-- California Sen. Barbara Boxer and other Democrats are calling
on the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation.
-- BP said it has spent $500 million on the spill so far.
-- The oil company said it will never again try to produce oil
from the well, though it did not rule out drilling elsewhere in the
reservoir. "The right thing to do is permanently plug this well,
and that's what we will do," said Doug Suttles, BP chief operating
officer.
William Hogarth, dean of the University of South Florida's
College of Marine Science, said one computer model showed oil had
already entered the loop current, while a second model showed the
oil was three miles from it. Mike Sole, Florida's environmental
protection secretary, said the edge could still be two to 18 miles
away.
BP said it is having some success with a mile-long tube that is
funneling a little more than 42,000 gallons of crude a day from the
well into a tanker ship. That would be about a fifth of the 210,000
gallons the company estimated is gushing out each day, though
scientists who have studied video of the leak say it could be much
bigger.
Crews will slowly increase how much they are collecting over the
next few days. They need to move slowly to prevent the formation of
the ice-like crystals that doomed the effort to lower a big
concrete-and-steel box over the blown-out well.
BP initially said it hoped the system would capture most of the
leaking oil, but Suttles said Monday that officials would be
pleased if the tube eventually sucks up half of it.
The siphoning is not a permanent solution. BP is preparing to
shoot a mixture known as drilling mud into the well later this week
in a procedure called a "top-kill" that would take several weeks
but, if successful, would stop the flow altogether. Two relief
wells are also being drilled to take pressure off the blown-out
well, but that will take months.
Chemicals being sprayed underwater are helping to disperse the
oil and keep it from washing ashore in great quantities, but
researchers said that in recent days they have discovered
miles-long underwater plumes of oil that could poison or suffocate
sea life across the food chain, with damage that could last for a
decade or more.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Monday
that the researchers' announcement of the oil plumes was premature
and that further tests are needed to confirm that the plumes
detected were indeed caused by the blowout.