Political India: Engaging America

From The Hindu

Even as British Petroleum (BP) announced that it would deploy the world’s biggest skimmer to mop up oil from the Gulf of Mexico — an enormous ship named “A-Whale” — the fingerprints of the oil spill from its Deepwater Horizon rig were detected in tar balls that washed ashore in parts of Texas.

The A-Whale, a super tanker, will be used to “suck” or “swallow up” the slimy oil-water mix that has spread across vast areas of the Gulf. Subsequently, the ship will separate the oil from the water and return the water to the sea. According to reports, the A-Whale is capable of processing 21 million gallons (500,000 barrels) of oil-slicked water a day.

The last one week has reportedly seen smaller skimmers and other methods of mopping up the spill being slowed down by choppy seas and strong winds from Hurricane Alex.

The super tanker is currently undergoing several tests north of the Deepwater Horizon rig, BP’s oil well that exploded in April causing this environmental disaster. Yet bad weather has, according to reports, rendered the results from an initial 48-hour testing period inconclusive.

As the Fourth of July long weekend drew to a close, fresh environmental concerns were also sparked in Texas as investigators discovered “very small tar balls in the surf, but not on shore”, according to official sources. In a statement, the unified command for the spill response said, “The tar balls were collected and sent to the lab to be tested where they were determined to be associated with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.”

Officials noted that tar balls were collected from the Crystal Beach area of the Bolivar Peninsula of Texas over the weekend but said, “It is unclear how the material got to Texas.” Reports quoted Galveston Mayor Joe Jaworski as saying, “It is a very small amount of oil so that is inconsistent with the thought that our time has come and the oil has finally hit our shores. There may be another reason.”

Meanwhile, the unified command also reported continued progress in drilling relief wells despite the “elevated sea states”. Officials said the first relief well had been drilled to a depth of more than 17,700 feet below the Gulf surface and the second relief well, “a redundancy measure taken at the direction of the administration”, to a depth of approximately 13,900 feet below the surface.

Simultaneously, the administration continued to oversee BP’s processing of claims linked to the impact of the spill on local communities along the Gulf coastline. Government officials said, “To date, 95,387 claims have been opened, from which more than $147.2 million have been disbursed. No claims have been denied to date. There are 951 claims adjusters on the ground.”

Labels: A-Whale, BP oil spill, Deepwater Horizon rig, oil spill mop up, tar balls