Thomas O’Hanlon
Staff Reporter
Attention was drawn back to the Gulf Coast as a 300- ton blowout preventer was extracted from the Gulf of Mexico Saturday, Sept. 4. For the first time, investigators will have the ability to examine why the piece of equipment failed to prevent the flow of oil at the beginning of the spill.
The massive oil leak, the largest in history, began when an explosion and fire occurred on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in April. The explosion is estimated at spilling up to 53,000 barrels into the Gulf of Mexico per day. While BP has claimed complete responsibility for the cleanup, picking up the check for this job isn’t going to come easily.
According to the Associated Foreign Press, BP (British Petroleum) spent 6.1 billion dollars as of Sept. 6, in the recovery effort of the colossal Deepwater Horizon spill. This number is just a small portion of the cleanup’s cost, which is projected to come to a 32.2 billion dollar total.
“It’s frightening to think about all of the financial aspects,” said Junior Zach Biondi. “The money necessary for this cleanup is hard to comprehend. That explosion has caused quite a sticky financial situation if you consider the losses BP has faced not only from investors but from the spill itself.”
The company recently faced its worst second quarter loss, listed at almost 17 billion dollars. The company, however, has plans to sell 30 billion dollars in assets in the near future. BP is hoping these will be able to fund the reparations needed.
As of Sept. 8, BP stated the well is on schedule to be sealed permanently by the middle of the month of September. These plans came after the success of a multipurpose cap that placed in July. The cap serves to temporarily seal the flow of oil into the gulf.
The “static kill” operation of August has also been reported to work in cleaning the Gulf, leaving only 25 percent still affected. According to Adam Gabbatt of Guardian News and Media, “The static kill involved slowly pumping the mud from a ship into the top of the ruptured well a mile below.” Gabbatt also wrote, “BP said it had reached a significant milestone overnight when mud forced down the Gulf of Mexico well – the static kill operation – held back the flow of crude.”
In late July, it was revealed that the alarms on the Deepwater Horizon had been shut off at the time of the explosion in order to let the workers sleep undisturbed. While this is being formally blamed on the contracted companies BP hired to do their drilling, this still looks poor for BP.
British Petroleum recently admitted using Photoshop on an image showing the monitoring of the spill. The image was of BP’s Houston monitoring center and depicted a wall of screens with video images. The image shows a bank of ten screens watching the leak, when in reality several of the screens had no image on them. BP released a statement apologizing and claiming the photographer was simply practicing his Photoshop skills.
BP and other officials are working to place a final cap on the well this month.
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