{"id":544911,"date":"2010-04-27T08:15:56","date_gmt":"2010-04-27T12:15:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.earthportal.org\/news\/?p=3309"},"modified":"2010-04-27T08:15:56","modified_gmt":"2010-04-27T12:15:56","slug":"cleanup-continues-on-leaking-gulf-coast-rig","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/544911","title":{"rendered":"Cleanup continues on leaking Gulf Coast rig"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Greenwire<\/a>: Officials acknowledge it could be months before they can stop the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico<\/a> from a rig that sank last week near Louisiana<\/a>. Crews worked yesterday to shore up the leak that is estimated at 42,000 gallons of oil a day.<\/p>\n

Response crews are setting up containment booms around coastal areas. They are working on three strategies: one that could stop the leak in two days, one that would take months and a third that would simply capture the oil and push it to the surface. The 600-square-mile sheen of oil and water will remain at least 30 miles from shore for at least the next three days, but Gulf Coast states have been warned to be on alert.<\/p>\n

The leak is coming from a riser on the rig that exploded and sank last week, leaving 11 crew members missing and presumed dead. Workers are using remote-controlled vehicles to try to activate the rig’s blowout preventer, which can seal the well within 24 to 36 hours. But officials from BP, which leased the rig, said that operation was “highly complex” and might not be successful.<\/p>\n

A second effort would involve drilling relief wells nearby, which could take two to three months. Those wells would push mud and concrete into the cavity of oil and gas punctured by accident. Officials are also planning to place a dome directly over the leak to catch the oil and send it to the surface if the blowout preventer fails. The dome strategy has never been used in water this deep.<\/p>\n

Crews had to stop working for most of the weekend because of rough seas, but by yesterday afternoon, planes were dropping dispersant to break down the oil. Last night, 15 boats were skimming the oil off the ocean surface (Robertson\/Kaufman, New York Times<\/em><\/a>, April 25). – JP<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Greenwire: Officials acknowledge it could be months before they can stop the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico from a rig that sank last week near Louisiana. Crews worked yesterday to shore up the leak that is estimated at 42,000 gallons of oil a day. Response crews are setting up containment booms around […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4055,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-544911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4055"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544911\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}