Oil Rising from Macondo Well: BP Hires Fleet of 40 Shrimp Boats to Lay Boom Around Deepwater Horizon Site
Fresh oil is surfacing all over the northern quadrant of the Gulf of Mexico. Reports of slicks that meander for miles and huge expanses of oil sheen that look like phantom islands are becoming common, again. Fresh oil, only slightly weathered, is washing ashore in areas hit hardest by last year’s massive spill, like Breton Island, Ship Island, the Chandeleurs and northern Barataria Bay. BP has reactivated its Vessels of Opportunity (VoO) program to handle cleanup.
That report looks like a lawyer trying to drum up some business.
Other sources report it quite differently.
http://fuelfix.com/blog/2011/08/18/bp-investigates-new-sheen-in-gulf/
Cheri Ben-Iesau, commander of Coast Guard District 8 in New Orleans, said a Coast Guard plane was doing flyovers Thursday afternoon of the Green Canyon site as well as the Macondo well and was awaiting an update.
But she said the agency had so far found no evidence at the Green Canyon site that the sheen was linked to a leaking well head or subsea pipeline, nor that oil was still spilling into the water.
She said the Coast Guard gets roughly 10,000 reports a year of surface sheens in the Gulf, some of which are caused by natural oil seeps on the sea floor. Given the hot weather, the sheens tend to dissipate quickly, she said.
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http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/08/18/national/main20093934.shtml
A statement from BP PLC placed the site of the sheen near two abandoned exploration well sites in the Green Canyon Block in the Gulf of Mexico, although its size and exact location wasn’t disclosed.
According to an online map published by the U.S. Department of Energy, the Green Canyon Block — a huge square-shaped area of water south of Louisiana — is south and west of the Mississippi Canyon Block where the Macondo well blew up.
A U.S. government official also said the area around Macondo was clear.
“They are not investing any sheens in the vicinity of the BP well,” Paul Barnard, Operations Controller for the New Orleans sector of the Coast Guard, told the AP on Thursday.
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Authorities juggle sheen reports
http://www.upstreamonline.com/live/article273371.ece
Commander Cheri Ben-Iesau of the US Coast Guard in New Orleans said there had been a number of reports of sheens in the area in recent weeks. It asked area operators with pipelines and wellheads nearby, including BP, Shell and Enterprise Products Partners, to check into the situation.
Ben-Iesau told Upstream that two of the sheens were determined to be discharges authorised by US environmental regulators. The rest, she said, were natural seepages from the ocean floor.
The largest of the releases was estimated to be around 300 gallons, she said. But given choppy water conditions and hot weather leading to evaporation, any evidence of silvery oil or other materials was broken up too quickly to require any cleanup.
Nonetheless, “We take every one of them very, very seriously,” she said.
The drilling regulator for US waters, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and Enforement (BOEMRE), said officials were continuing to respond to the situation.
“BOEMRE is working with area operators to determine if the sheen is associated with any permanently abandoned wells in the area,” spokeswoman Melissa Schwartz said in a statement. “We will continue to investigate the situation.”
BP was asked to check into two of its plugged and abandoned exploration wells in the area, the company and Coast Guard said. It sent an ROV down to check out the site this past weekend, and saw no leakage around the wellheads, spokesman Daren Beaudo said.