Oil-Skimming Efforts In Gulf Halted Due To Weather -Unified Command

29th Jun 2010 20:01

HOUSTON (Dow Jones)--Oil skimming efforts in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico have been halted since Monday due to high seas preceding the arrival of a tropical storm in the region, a spokeswoman with the Deepwater Horizon Incident Joint Information Center said Tuesday. The skimming operations "continue being suspended today, until the seas calm down," the spokeswoman said. "We don't know when that's going to be." The first tropical storm of the season, dubbed Alex, headed toward the Mexico-Texas border, far away from the Deepwater Horizon spill site, and is expected to make landfall Wednesday night. The storm is likely to become a hurricane later on Tuesday. Oil-collection efforts at the spill site continued despite the high seas. BP Plc (BP), the company responsible for the spill, recovered 23,395 barrels of oil on Monday from the broken Macondo well. It also flared some 54.1 million cubic feet of natural gas. Even though Tropical Storm Alex isn't tracking toward the well, the system is expected to delay by a week BP's plan to increase the amount of oil collected from the leaking well. Waves of 10 to 12 feet would prevent BP from connecting a third vessel to an underwater containment system, a BP executive said Monday. When this system is put in place, BP should be able to increase the amount of oil that it is vacuumed from the leak to between 40,000 to 50,000 barrels a day. Federal and independent scientists estimate that between 35,000 to 60,000 barrels a day could be leaking from the well. -By Angel Gonzalez, Dow Jones Newswires; [email protected] (Susan Daker contributed to this report) (END) Dow Jones Newswires June 29, 2010 15:01 ET (19:01 GMT)