Oil slick chaos as 210,000 gallons leaking daily into Gulf

29 April 2010 29 April 2010

BonTrade

American oil slick chaos in the Gulf of Mexico is on the horizon as the latest find of a third leaking location is found beneath the sea from the doomed Deepwater Horizon well, threatening 210,000 gallons of crude oil to leak daily from the Gulf sea bed.

The US Coast Guard has said five times as much oil as previously thought is leaking from a well beneath where a rig sank in the Gulf of Mexico last week.

Earlier, a Coast Guard crew set fire to part of the oil slick, in an attempt to save environmentally fragile wetlands. The “controlled burn” of surface oil took place in an area about 30 miles (50km) east of the Mississippi river delta, officials said.

Weather forecasters have meanwhile warned that changing winds could drive the oil slick ashore by Friday night.

Neither the US coast guard nor BP offered any new information on efforts to seal off the underwater well head that has caused the massive oil slick. Four remote controlled robotic submarines deployed to the leak site earlier in the week have so far failed to activate a shutoff device, called a “blowout preventer”, at the head of the well.

As an emergency back-up, BP engineers are also working to construct a giant dome to place over the leaking well to contain it. Collected oil could then be pumped out of the structure.