Disaster washes ashore; oil slick out of control

VENICE, La. — An oil spill that threatened to eclipse even the Exxon Valdez disaster spread out of control with a faint sheen washing ashore along the Gulf Coast late Thursday as fishermen rushed to scoop up shrimp and crews spread floating barriers around marshes.

BP, the operator of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig confirmed that it is worried the spill rate will increase from its latest estimate of 5,000 barrels, or 210,000 gallons, a day. The British company said it would start Saturday drilling a relief well, which could take 90 days to complete. At that rate, the spill could reach 18.9 million gallons, eclipsing the grounded Exxon Valdez's 11 million-gallon spill, the nation's worst, in Alaska's Prince William Sound in 1989.

Faint fingers of oily sheen from the growing oil slick, already more than 100 miles long, lapped the Louisiana shoreline in long, thin lines late Thursday.

"It is of grave concern," said David Kennedy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). "I am frightened. This is a very, very big thing. And the efforts that are going to be required to do anything about it, especially if it continues on, are just mind-boggling."

Indeed, the outlook in the Gulf remained bleak in the wake of the April 20 explosion that sank the Deepwater Horizon 40 miles offshore; 11 workers are missing and presumed dead. A change in the weather and choppy waters prevented a second burn of oil at sea and slowed efforts by a flotilla of ships to skim the oily mixture from the surface of the Gulf, federal officials said.

Continuing efforts to use remote-controlled robotic submarines to activate a malfunctioning blowout preventer on the seafloor in 5,000 feet of water failed.

The oil slick threatened hundreds of species of fish, birds and other wildlife along the Gulf Coast, one of the world's richest seafood grounds, teeming with shrimp, oysters and other marine life.

An emergency shrimping season was opened to allow shrimpers to scoop up their catch before it is fouled by oil. And shrimpers were being lined up to use their boats as makeshift skimmers in the shallows.

Members of Congress, meanwhile, issued new calls for President Obama to abandon his plans for expanded offshore drilling, and administration officials conceded the spreading slick could cause the president to rethink his position. "We need to figure out what happened," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said. "Would a finding of something possibly affect that? Of course."

Obama sent Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson to help with the spill. The president said his administration would use "every single available resource" to respond.

The cost of the cleanup will fall on BP, White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said.

The Coast Guard approved an experimental plan by BP to apply chemical dispersants underwater near where oil is gushing from three breaks in the well pipes.

Aircraft have dropped nearly 100,000 gallons of dispersants on the water's surface to break down the oil, a more conventional strategy.

For days, as oil spread in the Gulf, BP assured the government the oil plume was manageable, not catastrophic. Federal authorities were content to let the company handle the mess.

But then government scientists realized the leak was five times larger than they had been led to believe, and days of lulling statistics and reassuring words gave way Thursday to an all-hands-on-deck emergency response.

The Navy provided 50 contractors, seven skimming systems and 66,000 feet of inflatable containment boom. About 210,000 feet of boom had been laid down to protect the shoreline in several places along the Gulf Coast, though experts said that marshlands presented a far more daunting cleaning challenge than beaches.

In another effort to contain the spill, BP is designing and building large boxlike structures that could be lowered over the leaks in the riser, the 5,000-foot-long pipe that connected the well to the rig and has since become detached and is snaking along the seafloor. The structures would contain the leaking oil and rout it to the surface to be collected. This temporary solution could take several weeks to execute.

Doug Suttles, chief operating officer for exploration and production for BP, said three such structures were being prepared.

Another proposed solution is the drilling of relief wells that would allow crews to plug the gushing cavity with mud, concrete or other heavy liquid. The drilling of one such well is expected to begin in the next 48 hours, Suttles said, but it could be three months before the leak is plugged by this method.

The legal and political dimensions of the oil spill were spreading, with lawyers filing a flurry of suits on behalf of commercial fisherman, shrimpers and injured workers against BP; Transocean; Cameron, the company that manufactured the blowout preventer; and other companies involved in the drilling process, including Halliburton.

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., called for a moratorium on all new offshore oil exploration while the cause of this rig explosion is under investigation. Nelson, a longtime opponent of oil drilling off the coasts of Florida, said in a letter to Obama that the spreading oil spill threatened environmental and economic disaster all along the Gulf Coast.

The catastrophe amounts to a forceful rebuke of the oil industry's assertion that it could drill near Florida safely, a claim based in large part on the use of the fail-safe valves on the seafloor that are supposed to close manually or automatically in emergencies.

For nearly nine days, a fleet of robotic submarines has worked to manually trigger the Deepwater Horizon's fail-safe valve, or "blowout preventer." The massive and powerful piece of equipment should have been activated April 20, the day the rig caught fire.

"The report from the bridge was (that), before they (the crew) abandoned the vessel, they actually activated the blowout preventer," Suttles said. "We don't know why it didn't stop the flow."

The U.S. Minerals Management Service said it would inspect all drilling rigs in deep water within seven days to confirm that their emergency valves are functioning, even though the cause of the Deepwater Horizon's valve failure remains unknown.

Meanwhile, anger flared along the Gulf Coast. Cade Thomas, a fishing guide in Venice, worried that his livelihood will be destroyed.

He said he did not know whether to blame the Coast Guard, the federal government or BP or Transocean.

"They lied to us. They came out and said it was leaking 1,000 barrels when I think they knew it was more. And they weren't proactive," he said.

"As soon as it blew up, they should have started wrapping it with booms."

Compiled from The Associated Press, The Orlando Sentinel, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post.