05/01/10 05:50 PM
A sense of doom settled over the American coastline from Louisiana to Florida on Saturday as a massive oil slick spewing from a ruptured well kept growing, and experts warned that an uncontrolled gusher could create a nightmare scenario if the Gulf Stream carries it toward the Atlantic.
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The Coast Guard conceded Saturday that it's nearly impossible to know how much oil has gushed since the
April 20 rig explosion, after saying earlier it was at least 1.6 million gallons – equivalent to about 2 1/2 Olympic-sized swimming pools. The blast killed 11 workers and threatened beaches, fragile marshes and marine mammals, along with fishing grounds that are among the world's most productive.
Even at that rate, the spill should eclipse the 1989 Exxon Valdez incident as the worst U.S. oil disaster in history within about a week. But a growing number of experts warned that the situation may already be much worse.
The oil slick over the water's surface appeared to triple in size over the past two days, which could indicate an increase in the rate that oil is spewing from the well, according to one analysis of images collected from satellites and reviewed by the University of Miami. While it's hard to judge the volume of oil by satellite because of depth, it does show an indication of change in growth, experts said.
"The spill and the spreading is getting so much faster and expanding much quicker than they estimated," said Hans Graber, executive director of the university's Center for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing. "Clearly, in the last couple of days, there was a big change in the size."
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Florida State University oceanography professor Ian R. MacDonald said his
examination of Coast Guard charts and satellite images indicated that 8 million to 9 million gallons had already spilled by April 28.
Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer for exploration and production, said it was
impossible to know just how much oil was gushing from the well, but said the company and federal officials were preparing for the worst-case scenario.
Oil industry experts and officials are reluctant to describe what, exactly, a worst-case scenario would look like – but if the oil gets into the Gulf Stream and carries it to the beaches of Florida, it stands to be an environmental and economic disaster of epic proportions.
The Deepwater Horizon well is at the end of one branch of the Gulf Stream, the famed warm-water current that flows from the Gulf of Mexico to the North Atlantic. Several experts said that if the oil enters the stream, it would flow around the southern tip of Florida and up the eastern seaboard.
"It will be on the East Coast of Florida in almost no time," Graber said. "I don't think we can prevent that. It's more of a question of when rather than if."
At the joint command center run by the government and BP near New Orleans,
a Coast Guard spokesman maintained Saturday that the leakage remained around 5,000 barrels, or 200,000 gallons, per day.
But Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, appointed Saturday by Obama to lead the government's oil spill response, said no one could pinpoint how much oil is leaking from the ruptured well because of its depth – about a mile underwater.
"Any exact estimation of what's flowing out of those pipes down there is impossible," he told reporters on a conference call.
From land, the scope of the crisis was difficult to see. As of Saturday afternoon, only a light sheen of oil had washed ashore in some places.
Gulf Coast Oil Spill: Rough Seas Thwarting Cleanup
Leave it to a halfwit like yourself to open his pie hole with absolutely zero evidense.
