Coast Guard plans to start oil burn this morning

Houston Chronicle ^ | April 28, 2010, 10:54AM | BRETT CLANTON

[thackney]

Coast Guard officials said they are scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. today lighting afire parts of a massive oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico to halt its spread to coastal ares from Louisiana to Florida. (See a map of the spill here.)

Weather conditions were favorable to start burning of pockets of thick, clumpy oil, which pose the biggest threat to shorelines, Coast Guard Senior Chief Steve Carlton said.

Light wind out of the northwest is providing good conditions for a controlled burn because it will blow the smoke out to sea, he said.

Under the plan as it now stands, workboats will coral oil into a fire-resistant boom about 500 feet long and tow it to remote ares where it will be lit and burned.

The plan calls for "small, controlled burns of several thousand gallons of oil lasting approximately one hour each," the Coast Guard said in a statement today.

The huge slick — estimated to be 600 miles in circumference — began last week when the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig sank into the Gulf after an apparent blowout sent the facility up in flames on April 20. The rig, owned and operated by Swiss-based Transocean, had been drilling a well at BP’s Macondo prospect some 40 miles off the coast of Louisiana when the accident occurred.

The spill continues to grow as a damaged well on the sea floor, 5,000 feet below the water’s surface, leaks up to 42,000 gallons, or 1,000 barrels, per day of crude oil into the Gulf. As of Tuesday afternoon, it had crept within 20 miles of Venice, La., the Coast Guard said.

[houeto]

I know some people that would take any work they can get.

Me too. Wish BP would hire them.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

information on original problem will be a while before settled.

If accidental, I'm going to hazard a guess at static electrical discharge of some sort.

[ColdWater]

I am deeply worried .... will this add to GW or save the planet?

[thackney]

Nearly all of the early reliable reports indicate this started with a blowout. A sudden increase in pressure from the reservoir 2.5 miles below the seabed which was nearly a mile deep in the water.

A lot of things went wrong to reach this point, but it most likely started far deep below, like a gas pocket releasing.