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Massive oil spill reaches Louisiana shore

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30th April 2010

Kelowna.com, Kelowna, British Colombia, Canada

A massive and growing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has reached the coast of Louisiana, which is in a state of emergency to help prevent catastrophic environmental damage.

Faint fingers of oil sheen began lapping at the state's shoreline on Thursday night while thicker oil hovered about eight kilometres offshore. Oil is expected to wash ashore in Mississippi on Saturday before reaching Alabama on Sunday and Florida on Monday.

The oil is gushing from a sub-sea well about 80 kilometres off the coast of Louisiana and 1,500 metres below the water's surface. The leak occurred after a drilling rig exploded on April 20 and then sank.

As of Thursday, an estimated 794,936 litres (5,000 barrels) of sweet crude oil were leaking daily. BP officials say it could take as long as 90 days to stop the leak, meaning as many as 71.5 million litres could ultimately get into the water.

The Exxon Valdez, currently the country's worst oil spill, spilled 41.6 million litres in Alaska's Prince William Sound in 1989.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal declared a state of emergency Thursday night, mobilizing the Louisiana National Guard.

The area is teeming with shrimp, oysters and other marine life, helping to make Louisiana's $1.8-billion annual seafood industry the largest in the lower 48 states. More than 1.8 million migratory waterfowl use the Louisiana coastal wetlands as a habitat, with large numbers of neighbouring mink and river otter.

Officials 'frightened'

U.S. Coast Guard crews were patrolling the coastal marshes early Friday morning looking for areas where the oil has flowed in.

“I am frightened,” said David Kennedy, acting assistant administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Ocean Service.

“This is a very, very big thing,” Kennedy said. “And the efforts that are going to be required to do anything about it, especially if it continues on, are just mind-boggling.”

Oil clumps seabirds' feathers, leaving them without insulation, and when they preen, they swallow it.

Prolonged contact with the skin can cause burns, said Nils Warnock, a spill recovery supervisor with the California Oiled Wildlife Care Network at the University of California.

Oil swallowed by animals can cause anemia, hemorrhaging and other problems, said Jay Holcomb, executive director of the International Bird Rescue Research Center in California.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was focusing on national wildlife refuges on a chain of barrier islands.

“We're trying to go for the ones where the pelicans are nesting right now,” said Tom McKenzie, the agency's regional spokesman, adding that about 900 were on North Breton.

About 34,000 birds have been counted in the national refuges most at risk, McKenzie said. Gulls, pelicans, roseate spoonbills, egrets, shore birds, terns and blue herons are in the path of the spill.

Mink and river otter also live in the delta and might eat oiled carcasses, Love said.

Moratorium issued

The White House said Friday it will prohibit new offshore oil drilling until authorities learn what caused the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig.

“No additional drilling has been authorized and none will until we find out what has happened here,” presidential adviser David Axelrod told ABC's Good Morning America.

U.S. President Barack Obama had recently lifted a drilling moratorium for many offshore areas, including the Atlantic and Gulf areas.

U.S. Homeland Secretary Janet Napolitano, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Lisa Jackson, administrator of the Environmental Protection Association, are scheduled to travel to Louisiana on Friday to oversee the cleanup operations and an investigation into what caused the spill.

London-based BP, which had contracted the drilling rig, is fully responsible for funding the cleanup, which is costing about $6 million US a day.

The oil company has already deployed more than 54,000 metres of booms, which are dragged across the water's surface to contain parts of the oil slick.

It is also working hard to stem the flow of oil into the water at the wellhead, including developing a unique dome collection system.

“It's this massive square structure that you could liken to an umbrella that we would place down over the leak itself to collect it and pipe it up to a vessel on top of the water,” BP spokesman Mike Abendhoff told CBC News.

Fellow oil giants Exxon, Shell and Conoco are aiding in the cleanup, Abendhoff said.

“But we also have to recognize, too, [the oil] over a very large area and it's a very light sheen, so the ability to be able to get every last drop is going to be difficult,” he said.