‘Oil spill biggest environmental disaster in US’

[1]

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is probably “the biggest environmental disaster” that the United States has ever experienced, senior White House official Carol Browner said on Sunday.
Ms Browner, a White House adviser on energy and climate change, told NBC’s Meet the Press that the leak was “probably the biggest environmental disaster we’ve ever faced in this country.”
Estimates now suggest that between 12,000 to 19,000 barrels of crude are gushing into the Gulf each day from a well pipe damaged when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and then sank two days later on April 22.
That means “more oil is leaking in the Gulf of Mexico than at any other time in our history. It means there is more oil than the Exxon Valdez,” Ms Browner said.
Approximately 11 million gallons of crude spilled into the sea during the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster.
Meanwhile, with the failure of “Top Kill,” BP now moves from a plan to plug the undersea well to a plan to contain “a great majority” of the oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico, BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles said on Saturday.
The new containment plan, scheduled to begin sometime next week, is called the “Lower Marine Riser Package Cap (LMRP Cap),” which will try to siphon off the leaking oil to the surface.
Installing the cap is a complex operation that will be carried out by remotely operated robots on the ocean floor. The robots, wielding cutting tools, would cut off the bent riser pipe and replace it with the LMRP cap. Mr Suttles stressed the LMRP cap is “not a tight mechanical seal” on the leaking well head, “but should be able to capture most of the oil.”