THE U.S.Coast Guard said progress was being made to contain the oil, but predicted that the cleanup effort could extend into autumn.
“We’re making the right progress,” Admiral Thad Allen, who is overseeing the federal response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill told CNN. But “I don’t think anybody should be pleased as long as there’s oil in the water.”
Earlier, BP PLC Chief Executive Tony Hayward said a containment cap was now funneling off more than 10,000 barrels of oil a day from the blown-out well, which has been gushing out oil a mile beneath the ocean surface.
Allen said vents on the cap were slowly being turned off to keep additional oil from leaking. In a separate appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” he said the “final fix” would be the drilling of a relief well, which was estimated to be completed by August.
Allen predicted that even if the latest effort to contain the leak works, “this will be well into the fall,” citing the oil-remediation effort and long-term environmental impact. “There will be oil out there for months to come,” he told CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
He declined to speculate on how much oil the containment cap has been capturing since Friday, saying more data are needed on the amount of oil being produced from the flow captured from the broken well.
Some government scientists have predicted the oil could move up the East Coast and head toward Europe. Mr Allen told Fox that “the probability exists but it’s a low probability.”
He added that while BP has been trying every step possible to try to stem the flow, it needed “to get better at the retail side,” when dealing with those impacted by the spill and the general public.
With the cap allowing BP to siphon off only a portion of the oil at a time, Allen said, “nothing should be taken as good enough.”
Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour said the media’s tendency to lump all the Gulf coastlines and beaches as victims of the spill was hurting the state’s tourism industry. “We’ve had virtually no oil,” he said.
Be the first to comment