gulf of mexico oil spill articles

8/8/2019 Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Articles

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Articles For Current Events Project #3: Sophia 9B

INTERACTIVE SITES:

Oil Impact Environmenthttp://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126484584

Tracking the Oil Spill in the Gulf http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/01/us/20100501-oil-spill-

tracker.html?hp

PODCASTS:

As bad as it is, BP's Gulf oil spill dwindles compared with gushers of the

past. David Biello reportsMay 12, 2010http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=how-bad-is-the-oil-spill-10-05-12

Study Finds Bacteria Ate Most Methane BP From WellJan 6, 2011

http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=132706612&m=132717127

TV SOURCES:

Matthew Simmons Discusses BP's Oil Leak in Gulf of Mexicohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwX9RXFRJD4

Oil spill in Gulf of Mexico reaches US Gulf coasthttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68bKMtncSuw

NEWSPAPER ARTICLES:

Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Creates Political DilemmasBy Steven Mufson

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, April 27, 2010The growing spill also threatened to churn political waters as lawmakers weigh what buffer zonesto establish between rigs and shorelines in the wake of President Obama's decision to open up

new regions to offshore drilling. It could also alter details of a climate bill that three leadingsenators were trying to restart after postponing plans for a rollout that would have featured

leading oil company executives.

The Deepwater Horizon, owned by Transocean and leased to BP, caught fire April 20 after anexplosion and sank. Eleven oil rig workers are missing and presumed dead. The rig, with a



platform bigger than a football field and insured for $560 million, was one of the most modern andwas drilling in 5,000 feet of water.

Remotely operated vehicles located two places where oil was leaking from the well pipe, the U.S.Coast Guard said. The Coast Guard said there was an area 42 miles by 80 miles with a rainbowsheen of emulsified crude located less than 40 miles offshore. An oil rig 10 miles away from the

Deepwater Horizon was evacuated as a precaution.

Environmentalists noted that although the sunken rig's distance from shore gives oil companiesmore time to keep the spill from reaching U.S. coastlines, it also means that the water is deeper,

making it harder to get the spill under control. "It's good because it gives you the chance tointercept it before it reaches the coast, but it is harder to cap a well the deeper the water you'redrilling in," said Aitan Manuel, an expert on offshore drilling at the Sierra Club. "It's presenting a

lot of challenges to the companies."

Some lawmakers called for an inquiry into safety regulation. "This may be the worst disaster inrecent years, but it's certainly not an isolated incident," Sens. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), Frank R.

Lautenberg (D-N.J.) and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), all foes of expanded offshore drilling, wroteto the heads of the Energy and Commerce committees. They said that before the Deepwater

Horizon accident, the Minerals Management Service had reported 509 fires, resulting in at least

two fatalities and 12 serious injuries, on rigs in the Gulf since 2006.

Some former federal oil safety regulators suggested that MMS, which runs lease sales, shouldtransfer rig safety oversight to a separate agency.

Meanwhile, BP and U.S. Coast Guard vessels rushed to contain the spill. A similar spill off thewestern Australia coast last year took 10 weeks to bring under control.

BP said it would attempt to drill two relief wells to intercept the oil flow and divert it to new pipesand storage vessels. It said it was also working to fabricate a dome to cover the leak area andchannel it into a new pipe to storage facilities. Such a technique has been used in shallower

water but not at these depths, Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer, said in a conference call.The company continued to try to activate the blowout preventer, a 450-ton piece of equipment on

the sea floor that is supposed to seal the well to prevent the type of accident that took place.

Gulf Oil Spill Is Bad, but How Bad?By JOHN M. BRODER and TOM ZELLER Jr.

Published: May 3, 2010

WASHINGTON — The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is bad — no one would dispute it. But justhow bad?

Some experts have been quick to predict apocalypse, painting grim pictures of 1,000 miles of irreplaceable wetlands and beaches at risk, fisheries damaged for seasons, fragile species wiped

out and a region and an industry economically crippled for years.

President Obama has called the spill“a potentially unprecedented environmental disaster.

”And

some scientists have suggested that the oil might hitch a ride on the loop current in the gulf,bringing havoc to the Atlantic Coast.

Yet the Deepwater Horizon blowout is not unprecedented, nor is it yet among the worst oilaccidents in history. And its ultimate impact will depend on a long list of interlinked variables,

including the weather, ocean currents, the properties of the oil involved and the success or failureof the frantic efforts to stanch the flow and remediate its effects.

As one expert put it, this is the first inning of a nine-inning game. No one knows the final score.



The ruptured well, currently pouring an estimated 210,000 gallons of oil a day into the gulf, couldflow for years and still not begin to approach the 36 billion gallons of oil spilled by retreating Iraqiforces when they left Kuwait in 1991. It is not yet close to the magnitude of the Ixtoc I blowout inthe Bay of Campeche in Mexico in 1979, which spilled an estimated 140 million gallons of crude

before the gusher could be stopped.

And it will have to get much worse before it approaches the impact of the Exxon Valdez accidentof 1989, which contaminated 1,300 miles of largely untouched shoreline and killed tens of

thousands of seabirds, otters and seals along with 250 eagles and 22 killer whales.

No one, not even the oil industry’s most fervent apologists, is making light of this accident. Thecontaminated area of the gulf continues to spread, and oil has been found in some of the fragilemarshes at the tip of Louisiana. The beaches and coral reefs of the Florida Keys could be hit if

the slick is captured by the gulf ’s clockwise loop current.

But on Monday, the wind was pushing the slick in the opposite direction, away from the current.The worst effects of the spill have yet to be felt. And if efforts to contain the oil are even partly

successful and the weather cooperates, the worst could be avoided.

“Right now what people are fearing has not materialized,” said Edward B. Overton, professor

emeritus of environmental science at Louisiana State University and an expert on oil spills.“People have the idea of an Exxon Valdez, with a gunky, smelly black tide looming over the

horizon waiting to wash ashore. I do not anticipate this will happen down here unless things get alot worse.”

Dr. Overton said he was hopeful that efforts by BP to place containment structures over theleaking parts of the well will succeed, although he said it was a difficult task that could actually

make things worse by damaging undersea pipes.

Other experts said that while the potential for catastrophe remained, there were reasons toremain guardedly optimistic.

“The sky is not falling,” said Quenton R. Dokken, a marine biologist and the executive director of

the Gulf of Mexico Foundation, a conservation group in Corpus Christi, Tex. “We’ve certainlystepped in a hole and we’re going to have to work ourselves out of it, but it isn’t the end of the

Gulf of Mexico.”

Engineers said the type of oil pouring out is lighter than the heavy crude spilled by the ExxonValdez, evaporates more quickly and is easier to burn. It also appears to respond to the use of dispersants, which break up globs of oil and help them sink. The oil is still capable of significantdamage, particularly when it is churned up with water and forms a sort of mousse that floats and

can travel long distances.

Jacqueline Savitz, a senior scientist at Oceana, a nonprofit environmental group, said that muchof the damage was already taking place far offshore and out of sight of surveillance aircraft and

research vessels.

“Some people are saying, It hasn’t gotten to shore yet so it’s all good,” she said. “But a lot of animals live in the ocean, and a spill like this becomes bad for marine life as soon as it hits the

water. You have endangered sea turtles, the larvae of bluefin tuna, shrimp and crabs and oysters,grouper. A lot of these are already being affected and have been for 10 days. We’re waiting to

see how bad it is at the shore, but we may never fully understand the full impacts on ocean life.”

The economic impact is as uncertain as the environmental damage. With several million gallonsof medium crude in the water already, some experts are predicting wide economic harm. Experts

at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies in Corpus Christi, for example,



estimated that as much as $1.6 billion of annual economic activity and services — includingeffects on tourism, fishing and even less tangible services like the storm protection provided by

wetlands — could be at risk.

“And that’s really only the tip of the iceberg,” said David Yoskowitz, who holds the endowedchair for socioeconomics at the institute. “It’s still early in the game, and there’s a lot of potential

downstream impacts, a lot of multiplier impacts.”

But much of this damage could be avoided if the various tactics employed by BP and governmenttechnicians pay off in the coming days. The winds are dying down and the seas are calming,

allowing for renewed skimming operations and possible new controlled burns of oil on thesurface. BP technicians are trying to inject dispersants deep below the surface, which could

reduce the impact on aquatic life. Winds and currents could move the globs of emulsified oil awayfrom coastal shellfish breeding grounds.

The gulf is not a pristine environment and has survived both chronic and acute pollution problemsbefore. Thousands of gallons of oil flow into the gulf from natural undersea well seeps every day,engineers say, and the scores of refineries and chemical plants that line the shore from Mexico to

Mississippi pour untold volumes of pollutants into the water.

After the toxic spill 31 years ago, the second-largest oil release in history, the gulf rebounded.Within three years, there was little visible trace of the spill off the Mexican coast, which was

compounded by a tanker accident in the gulf a few months later that released 2.6 millionadditional gallons, experts said.

“The gulf is tremendously resilient,” said Dr. Dokken, the marine biologist. “But we’ve always gotto ask ourselves how long can we keep heaping these insults on the gulf and having it bounce

back. As a scientist, I have to say I just don’t know”

Creeping oil slick slipping through growing containment effortBY SHELDON ALBERTS, WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, CANWEST

NEWS SERVICE

APRIL 30, 2010

VENICE, La. — Way down near the mouth of the Mississippi River, in a place local fishermen call"the end of the world," John Pope stepped back from the water's edge to snap a few pictures of

his day's catch.It was an impressive display — a dozen fresh redfish that Pope pulled from the still-clean waters

of the Louisiana delta.But he wondered if they might be his last.

"It's a terrible thing that's happening, a terrible thing," Pope, a recreational fisherman fromGeorgia, said of the massive oil spill lurking in open water just a few kilometres from this fishing

village on the Mississippi's west bank."I just hope the folks are able to get this cleaned up before it does too much damage."

Ten days after an oil rig under lease to British Petroleum exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, theprospects of averting a major environmental calamity dimmed Friday as high winds pushed a vast

oil slick to the edge of Louisiana's sensitive coastal marshlands.

The bad weather forced BP to halt efforts to skim oil from the water's surface, adding to thefrustration of federal and state government officials who blamed company officials for a sluggish

response to a spill that is pumping 210,000 gallons of light crude into the Gulf each day."We need to work more speedily to protect wetlands, to protect marshes, to protect our

ecosystem here," said U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. She said the Obamaadministration "will continue to push BP to engage in the strongest possible response."



Official with BP said they welcomed any ideas and assistance — both from Washington andcompeting oil firms. But the company also said there was little they could do to stop the spill'sspread until the weather improves. The National Weather Service currently predicts the high

winds could last until Monday."When winds come up and the seas come up, unfortunately we can't do much on the surface of

the sea," said Doug Suttles, a BP spokesman. "Because of wave heights we are not able toskim."

BP said it is spending between $6 million and $7 million a day to try and contain the spill."Clearly as the oil reaches the shoreline, those costs will increase as we mount cleanup

activities," Suttles said."Like everyone we understand and completely agree that we need to bring this event to closure

as quickly as possible."Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, speaking at a news conference in Robert, La., said booms

deployed to control the spread of the oil slick are being overwhelmed by rough water. He said thenext several days would be "critical" and called up 6,000 National Guard troops to aid in potential

cleanup efforts.

"I do have concerns that BP's current resources are not adequate to meet the three challenges

we face," Jindal said.In Washington, President Barack Obama announced he was ordering a halt to new offshore

drilling leases as the federal government investigates the cause of the explosion that destroyedthe Deepwater Horizon rig. The blast ruptured an oil well located about 80 kilometres offshore

and 1,500 metres underwater. Eleven rig workers were killed.

"I continue to believe that domestic oil production is an important part of our overall strategy for energy security," Obama said at the White House. "But I've always said it must be done

responsibly, for the safety of our workers and our environment."The president has dispatched inspectors to the Gulf to examine all deepwater rigs and platforms

for ensure they meet safety requirements.

The Obama administration pledged to provide every available resource to help BP fix the oil leak

and contain the spill.More than 66,000 metres of protective boom have been laid in the Gulf to help block the oil fromshorelines. More than 300 Coast Guard and Naval vessels have been deployed alongside 1,900

federal personnel.While winds wreaked havoc with the response on the water, the U.S. air force continued to dumpdispersant chemicals over the oil slick using two C-130 planes. To date, more than 530,000 litres

of dispersant have been sprayed into the Gulf.

Some residents of Plaquemines Parish, which includes most of the Mississippi River wetlands,reported seeing the first fingers of oil wash up onshore at Pass-a-Loutre Wildlife Reserve —

although the U.S. Coast Guard had not confirmed a widespread landfall.Still, the anxiety is growing among Louisiana residents who fear one of the richest fisheries in

North America will be badly damaged — or destroyed — if BP is unable to quickly find a way to

close down the offshore well.

The fishing community of Venice, one of the last slips of land reachable by car, has become ahub of activity as the response to the oil spill intensifies.

The Cypress Cove Marina, where shrimp and oyster boats line the dock, was crowded with TVsatellite vehicles and oil spill recovery trucks. Coast Guard boats shared the narrow channels with

the few remaining fishing charters still plying the delta's waters.

Environmentalists say it's only a matter of time before the crude begins to slip into the hundredsof estuaries and coves that are home to some of the continent's biggest bird, fish and wild



populations."This is the nursery of North America — and we have spilled oil right across its surface," said

Mark Floegel, a senior investigator with Greenpeace USA. "Anything that swims, flies or crawls inthe Gulf, this is where they feed. They feed on the surface."

While the oil spill is — so far — much smaller than the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska'sPrince William Sound, the potential for environmental ruin may be higher, environmentalists say.

That's because the oil spilling from the BP well is a light crude that stays on the surface. WhileAlaska's rocky coastline aided removal of the oil, the Mississippi Delta is full of marshes and

reeds that could make cleanup far more difficult."Here we've got barrier islands. We've got swamps and bayous . . . It's not like scrubbing rock. It'sdevilishly hard to get this oil out of there," Floegel said. "And the coastline is exponentially much

larger because of all the little inlets."Worries about the oil spill extend well beyond the Louisiana coast to Alabama, Mississippi and

Florida, where Gov. Charlie Crist declared a state of emergency in six counties on Friday.

WEBSITE ARTICLES:

Oil Spill Affects Enviroment

Charlie Henry, the lead science coordinator for the National Oceanic and AtmosphericAdministration, said that three sperm whales were seen swimming near the spill but that they

appeared unaffected.

But other environmentalists warned of damage. "Oil spills are extremely harmful to marine lifewhen they occur and often for years or even decades later," said Jacqueline Savitz, a marine

scientist and climate campaign director at Oceana, an environmental group. She said spills couldcoat sea birds and limit their flying ability and damage fisheries by injuring marine organism's

systems related to respiration, vision and reproduction.

Savitz said that the Gulf of Mexico is host to four species of endangered sea turtles and bluefintuna, snapper and grouper. "Each of these can be affected," she said. "Turtles have to come tothe surface to breathe and can be coated with oil or may swallow it." And, she added, the Gulf isone of only two nurseries for bluefin tuna, more than 90 percent of which return to their place of

birth to spawn.

Size of Spill in Gulf of Mexico Is Larger Than Thought

NEW ORLEANS — Government officials said late Wednesday night that oil might be leaking froma well in the Gulf of Mexico at a rate five times that suggested by initial estimates.

In a hastily called news conference, Rear Adm. Mary E. Landry of the Coast Guard said ascientist from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had concluded that oil is

leaking at the rate of 5,000 barrels a day, not 1,000 as had been estimated. While emphasizingthat the estimates are rough given that the leak is at 5,000 feet below the surface, Admiral Landry

said the new estimate came from observations made in flights over the slick, studying thetrajectory of the spill and other variables.

An explosion and fire on a drilling rig on April 20 left 11 workers missing and presumed dead. Therig sank two days later about 50 miles off the Louisiana coast.

Doug Suttles, chief operating officer for exploration and production for BP, said a new leak had



been discovered as well. Officials had previously found two leaks in the riser, the 5,000-foot-longpipe that connected the rig to the wellhead and is now detached and snaking along the sea floor.

One leak was at the end of the riser and the other at a kink closer to its source, the wellhead.

But Mr. Suttles said a third leak had been discovered Wednesday afternoon even closer to thesource. “I’m very, very confident this leak is new,” he said. He also said the discovery of the newleak had not led them to believe that the total flow from the well was different than it was before

the leak was found.

The new, far larger estimate of the leakage rate, he said, was within a range of estimates giventhe inexact science of determining the rate of a leak so far below the ocean’s surface

Juvenile Tuna Reduced 20 Percent By Oil Spill

Research conducted by the Ocean Foundation has led researchers to estimate that juvenilebluefin tuna may have been reduced by as much as 20 percent due to the effects of the

BP/Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Researchers mapped the location of the oil spill, and its overlap with known tuna spawninggrounds in the Gulf of Mexico, and found that the spill impacted at least one bluefin tuna of the

two major bluefin spawning areas in the Gulf.

Atlantic bluefin tuna are highly migratory, and some come to the Gulf of Mexico to spawn in thewinter and spring, with a peak spawning period in April and May. Atlantic bluefin can be huge,

with larger fish reaching lengths of about 9 feet and weights of up to about 1,500 pounds.

A decrease in healthy fish is the last thing the bluefin tuna needs. Atlantic bluefin tuna are highlysought-after for food - their meat is prized for steaks and sushi. Consequently, many say they are

overfished and are calling for greater restrictions on tuna fishing.

How Bad Is the Oil Spill?

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico worsens literally by the minute, with the addition of an estimated3.5 barrels of crude. That's more than 200,000 gallons of oil a day adding to a slick that now

covers an area roughly the size of Delaware. And some experts estimate the spill could actuallybe as much as 10 times worse.

That would make BP's Gulf spill already worse than the infamous 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster,which discharged roughly 11 million gallons of oil off Alaska. But it would take two more years of spillage to catch up to another deep-water catastrophe: a blowout in an exploratory well off the

coast of Mexico in 1979.

That spill took more than a year to stop, spewing an estimated 140 million gallons of oil into theGulf. And that is dwarfed by the willful spill of oil by Iraq's Saddam Hussein, who dumped roughlyone billion gallons of oil during the 1991 Gulf War, at least a quarter of it into the Arabian Gulf.

Regardless, the aftereffects of an oil spill are likely to last for a long time. Twenty years after Exxon Valdez, puddles of crude oil can still be found in Prince William Sound.

—David Biello

BP continues hunt to stop Gulf of Mexico oil spill



Nearly three weeks after an oil rig explosion turned the Gulf of Mexico into an environmentaldisaster zone, BP today still casting about for a clear plan to shut off the gusher of crude that has

cost the company $350m (£235m).BP crews were simultaneously exploring a number of different approaches to plugging the leak,

known in industry slang as top hat, top kill, and junk shot.

"We are pursuing multiple options in parallel and we are learning all the time," BP's CEO, TonyHayward, told reporters tonight. "There's a lot of real-time learning going on."

The search for an early fix comes as BP officials put the cost of its response to the spill to date at$350m. The final bill could run into the billions.

With the failure at the weekend of attempts to lower an enormous dome over one of two leaks,BP was turning towards deploying a more modest containment box known as a "top hat".

The initial effort was scrapped because of the formation of ice-like hydrates, a mixture of water and gas, which clogged up the four-storey-high concrete and steel box.

Oil industry experts said placing a smaller box over the smaller of the two leaks would limit theamount of sea water, and so reduce the formation of the crystals that BP feared would destabilise

the box. The first attempt could get under way mid-week.

Engineers are also looking at a "top kill", installing a new stack of valves on top of the blowoutpreventer whose failure in the wake of the 20 April explosion gave way to the disaster. Then there

is a "junk shot", firing shredded tyres and golf balls into the blowout preventer in the hope of clogging it. Engineers would then attempt to put in a concrete seal. That effort could get started

next week.BP is also studying the idea of fitting a new, larger pipe at the end of the well's original 5,000ft

pipe, which now lies crumpled on the ocean floor.

But all of those options are highly challenging. "You are doing this at 5,000 feet water depth,under immense pressure and in complete darkness and you're doing all this with remote

vehicles," said Byron King, an energy industry analyst. "You are feeling your way around, andthat is a very tricky idea." They also carry the risk of making the disaster even worse, said Philip

Johnson, a petroleum engineering professor at the University of Alabama.

With no clear sign of an early fix, authorities were stepping up their efforts to keep the oil frommaking landfall. More than a million feet of boom have been deployed along the coast, and in

Louisiana helicopters having been dropping sandbags along barrier islands and marshes.

Submersible robots, meanwhile, were squirting chemical dispersants directly into the well atdepths of 5,000ft to try to thin the oil before it rises to the ocean surface.

But there were reports that the oil, which had been seen for days on uninhabited barrier islands,had now reached the mainland. Greenpeace said it had found blobs of oil on the beach and in the

reeds at Port Eads, the southernmost tip of Louisiana.

Gulf of Mexico oil spill 2010: The worst-case scenario

The worst-case scenario for the broken and leaking well gushing oil into the Gulf of Mexico wouldbe the loss of the wellhead currently restricting the flow to 5,000 barrels -- or 210,000 gallons per

day.If the wellhead is lost, oil could leave the well at a much greater rate, perhaps up to 150,000barrels -- or more than 6 million gallons per day -- based on government data showing daily

production at another deepwater Gulf well.By comparison, the Exxon Valdez spill was 11 million gallons total. The Gulf spill could end up

dumping the equivalent of 4 Exxon Valdez spills per week.



"Typically, a very good well in the Gulf can produce 30,000 barrels a day, but that's under control.I have no idea what an uncontrolled release could be," said Stephen Sears, chairman of the

petroleum engineering department at Louisiana State University.

Minerals Management Service data indicates that the deepwater Thunderhorse productionplatform, also owned by BP, has produced up to 150,000 barrels per day.

Gulf oil spillSee continuing coverage of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill of 2010 on al.com and GulfLive.com.To keep track of the Gulf of Mexico oil slick, visit www.skytruth.org or follow its Twitter feed.

To see updated projection maps related to the oil spill in the Gulf, visit the Deepwater HorizonResponse Web site established by government officials.

Thursday, federal officials said they were preparing for the worst-case scenario but didn'telaborate.

Kinks in the piping created as the rig sank to the seafloor may be all that is preventing theDeepwater Horizon well from releasing its maximum flow. BP is now drilling a relief well as the

ultimate fix. The company said Thursday that process would take up to 3 months.

"I'm not sure what's happening down there right now. I have heard there is a kink in what's calledthe riser. The riser is a long pipe that connects the wellhead to the rig. I really don't know if thatkink is a big restriction. Is that really a big restriction? There could be another restriction further

down," said LSU's Sears."An analogy would be if you have a kink in a garden hose. You suspect that kink is restricting the

flow, but there could be another restriction or kink somewhere else closer to the faucet."

View full size(AP Photo/Derick E. Hingle)BP executive Doug Suttles: said Thursday the company was worried about "erosion" of the pipe

at the Deepwater Horizon wellhead. A new leak in that piping was discovered Wednesday,suggesting the erosion is worsening.

BP Plc executive Doug Suttles said Thursday the company was worried about "erosion" of thepipe at the wellhead. A new leak in that piping was discovered Wednesday, suggesting the

erosion is worsening.

Sand is an integral part of the formations that hold oil under the Gulf. That sand, carried in the oil

as it shoots through the piping, is blamed for the ongoing erosion described by BP.

"The pipe could disintegrate. You've got sand getting into the pipe, its eroding the pipe all thetime, like a sandblaster," said Ron Gouguet, a former oil spill response coordinator for the

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"When the oil is removed normally, it comes out at a controlled rate. You can still have abrasiveparticles in that. Well, now, at this well, its coming out at fairly high velocity," Gouguet continued.

"Any erosive grains are abrading the inside of the pipe and all the steel that comes in contact withthe liquid. It's essentially sanding away the pipe."

The formation that was being drilled by the Deepwater Horizon when it exploded and sank lastweek is reported to have tens of millions of barrels of oil. A barrel contains 42 gallons.

"The loss of a wellhead, this is totally unprecedented," said Gouguet. "How bad it could get fromthat, you will have a tremendous volume of oil that is going to be offgassing on the coast.Depending on how much wind is there, and how those gases build up, that's a significant health

concern."

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