http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/20/us/20spill.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
Some Oil From Spill Reaches Current
By LIZ ROBBINS
Published: May 19, 2010
Approaching the one-month mark since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, officials reported progress in capturing some of gushing crude oil even as some of the sheen has entered the loop current and they prepare another large-scale attempt to stop the oil near its source on Sunday.
GULF SPILL: READERS' REPORTSAs the oil spill reaches land, we would like your updates and photographs of what you’re seeing. Photos are optional but recommended.
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BP, the company responsible for cleaning up the spill, says it is now able to siphon 3,000 of the 5,000 barrels of oil flowing daily from the ruptured well beneath the gulf with the mile-long tube in inserted last Sunday into the riser pipe.
“It’s performing well,” said Doug Suttles, the chief operating officer of BP, calling that method, “sustainable.”
Due to favorable weather conditions lately, Mr. Suttles said that crews had been able to skim 50 percent oil from the water in certain offshore areas, calling that “a large improvement.”
But closest to the source of the leak, BP crews are looking ahead to the end of this weekend. Mr. Suttles said that by Sunday at the earliest, crews hoped to start the “top kill” procedure, which would stop the leak by pumping heavy drilling mud into the well.
“We absolutely are holding out hope that ‘top kill’ works,” Rear Admiral Mary Landry of the U.S. Coast Guard said on the teleconference. “Everybody wants to see success from this intervention.”
The spreading sheen has already rendered 19 percent of the federally-controlled fishing waters off-limits. The Coast Guard confirmed that thick pockets of brown oil have washed up on the marshy shores of Pass-a-Loutre, near the Mississippi Delta in the Gulf, said Petty Officer Erik Swanson.
But the Coast Guard released encouraging news on Wednesday when it reported its Marine Safety Laboratory in New London, Conn. determined that none of the collected samples of 20 tar balls that washed up on the Florida Keys shoreline on Monday were from the oil spill.
For four weeks, BP says it has been trying to stem the dangerous spread on several fronts, even taking suggestions for stopping the flow via e-mail and accepting offers from celebrities. Next week, BP will start testing six centrifuge machines that separate the oil from the water, a 15-year project that is funded by actor Kevin Costner, Mr. Suttles said.
Costner bought technology in development from the government in 1995, hired scientists and developed the centrifuge machines for the private sector, funding the $24 million project.
“Kevin saw the Exxon Valdez spill and as a fisherman and an environmentalist, it just stuck in his craw, the fact that we didn’t have separation technology,” said John Houghtaling, Mr. Costner’s lawyer and business partner as chief executive with Ocean Therapy Solutions, which developed the machines. The largest machine can separate 210,000 gallons of oil from water per day,. Mr. Houghtaling said, and that six machines are in Venice, La., waiting to be taken out to the Gulf to be tested. The machines pump 99.9 percent of the oil onto a tanker and put the cleansed water — also at a rate of 99.9 percent — back in the water.
Mr. Houghtaling said that the machines operate without chemicals. "They are a huge super vacuum cleaner of the ocean," Mr. Houghtaling said in an interview. “We’re hoping that BP embraces this and stops the awful dispersants,”.
Scientists, meanwhile, are closely monitoring the path of the oil and the possibility it could enter the loop current, affecting Florida’s beaches and loop around to the Atlantic Ocean.
“There is some light oil filling the loop current,” said Charlie Henry, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Scientific Support Coordinator. “But we expect it to degrade before it comes close to threatening South Florida.”
The largest portion of the oil is still to the northwest of the current. Mr. Henry explained that the oil would take a long time — likely 10 days — to get to South Florida if it enters the loop current.
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