The "A Whale" skimmer ship, the world's largest oil skimming vessel, skims oil, seen in the foreground, in the Gulf of Mexico July 3, 2010. With a length of 3 1/2 football fields and towering 10 stories high, "A Whale" is designed to collect up to 500,000 barrels of oily water a day through 12 vents on either side of its bow. The ship has arrived in the Gulf to assist with the cleanup of the BP oil spill. UPI/A.J. Sisco.. |
License Photo
VENICE, La., July 6 (UPI) -- The next week to 10 days will be crucial in dealing with the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill, U.S. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said Tuesday.
Allen, in an interview on CNN, said the floating production platform, the Helix Producer, will be coming online, enabling the processing of 53,000 barrels of oil a day -- more than double the current capacity and more than three times the amount of oil collected Monday from the site of the crippled Transocean rig operated by BP that exploded April 20, killing 11 workers, and started the spill that has been spewing as much as 60,000 gallons of oil a day into the gulf.
The Helix Producer will be coupled with a tanker that can hold 1 million barrels of oil, Allen said, adding that experts are looking at deploying a new containment cap that would allow the capture of 80,000 barrels a day.
"Those decisions will be forthcoming. A lot of technical details associated with that, and that's best done face to face on understanding exactly what the proposal is and what we are going to need to act on," Allen said, calling the next week or so "very consequential seven to 10 days."
U.S. Coast Guard officials said a blimp known as the MX-3A was expected to arrive Tuesday. It can carry as many as 10 crew members as it flies slowly over the region to track the direction of the oil flow and how it is washing ashore, CNN reported.
"The aircraft get on top of the oil," Coast Guard Capt. Brian Kelley said. "They can identify what type of oil it is and they can vector in the skimmer vessels right to the spot."
Efforts to clean up the oil that has been spilling into the gulf have been stalled because of rough seas caused by Hurricane Alex. The chop also hampered testing of A Whale, a converted oil tanker that is claimed to be capable of skimming between 15,000 and 50,000 barrels of oil off the sea in a day.
Officials in Texas, meanwhile, are expressing concern about the permanent disposal in Texas of oil and other waste generated from the gulf spill, the Houston Chronicle reported. Texas, home to several environmental services companies, refineries and oil salvage operators, is one of several states recycling or disposing of what's collected during cleanup efforts.
Officials said they were concerned about the type of waste coming in and how it was being processed.
Last week the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued new directives to BP on recovered oil waste management, including guidelines on how to inform communities about waste being brought to their towns and requirements to provide access to waste facilities and detailed tracking reports.
Officials said Monday tar balls washed ashore on Louisiana's Lake Pontchartrain and beaches near Galveston, Texas.
In Louisiana, a multi-tiered effort to protect Lake Pontchartrain is under way. John Lopez, a member of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation, said he has been studying models that try to predict the flow of oil, The (New Orleans) Times Picayune reported.
"I don't want to be alarmist," Lopez said. "I think what we'll see will be very modest, and there's a lot of protective measures."
While the model predicts several days at a time, Lopez said the amount of time it will take to clean up the oil in the gulf after the well is capped and the flow of water in the area indicate oil could continue to enter the lake.
