Dome suspended over Gulf oil leak

Oil washes ashore in Louisiana wildlife refuge

An aerial view of the northern Chandeleur barrier islands in the Gulf of Mexico shows sheens of oil reaching land on Thursday. (David Quinn/Associated Press)

The box was lowered by cable 1,500 metres underwater beginning late Thursday night. By dawn on Friday it

had been lowered about 1,200 metres, according to U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Shawn Eggert. It was lowered fully by just after noon ET.


The robots had earlier placed buoys around the leak to act as markers to help line up the 12-metre tall box, called a cofferdam, said Douglas Peake, the first mate of the supply boat that brought the box to the site.

But securing the box over the leaking pipe so far below the water's surface will take the robots hours — and require a feat of precision not previously seen. Robots are the only option because the water pressure that far below the surface is enough to crush a typical submarine.


We are essentially taking a four-storey building and lowering it 5,000 feet (1,500 metres) and setting it on the head of a pin," BP spokesman Bill Salvin said Friday.

Once it's in place, workers will have to install a riser pipe to funnel the leaking oil from the cofferdam to a barge on the surface.

The cofferdam is designed to trap the oil gushing out of one of two leaks from the undersea well and suck it up — like a vacuum — to a tanker on the water's surface.

The structure, which looks something like a milk carton, is seven metres by four metres in width and 12 metres tall, with a dome-like roof inside it.

Oil giant BP, which is in charge of the cleanup, hopes it will collect as much as 85 per cent of the almost 800,000 litres of crude that have been gushing out of the well daily for the last two weeks.

The leak is one of three that opened after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig leased by the multinational petroleum company exploded April 20, killing 11 people. The rig sank two days later 80 kilometres off the coast of Louisiana.

Crews waited hours before they began lowering the cofferdam, fearing that with the dangerous fumes rising from the oily water, a spark caused by the scrape of metal on metal could start a fire.

On Friday, a separate mission was close to getting underway to spray water around the rig and reduce the level of fumes.

Oil touches shore

Oil from the leak reached the shores of several barrier islands off the coast of Louisiana on Thursday, U.S., state and BP officials confirmed.


Cleanup crews found oil on a beach of the Chandeleur Islands, a small group of uninhabited islands 32 kilometres east of Louisiana.

Traces of oily sheen had been reported in Louisiana's coastal wetlands since April 29. This is the first confirmation by government officials that oil had washed ashore.

As of Friday, BP had laid more than 240,000 metres of boom in the hopes of containing oil on the water's surface before it floats to shore. But high winds and choppy waves rendered the boom almost ineffectual earlier this week.

BP has also conducted controlled burns of parts of the oil slick on open water, and deployed more than a million litres of chemical dispersants meant to break up the oil.

Several birds were spotted diving into the oily, pinkish-brown water, and dead jellyfish washed up on the islands.

The islands are part of the Breton National Wildlife Refuge, a nationally protected wilderness area. The protected area is a frequent home to 23 species of seabirds and shorebirds and a nesting place for 13 species, including brown pelicans, laughing gulls and sandwich terns, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

At the southernmost tip of the islands is Freemason Island, a long, barren stretch of sand held together by sea grass and shrubs. Paul Leblanc, who runs a fishing camp, first discovered the sludge-like substance there.

"It's horrible," Leblanc told CBC News as he approached the island in his boat Thursday. "This is what my livelihood depends on … fishing around these islands."

"I'm petrified," fellow camp owner Mark Stebley said. "This could ruin my entire way of life."



Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/05/07/gulf-of-mexico-0507.html#ixzz0nBgbejww


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