US Vice President To Visit Gulf Spill Area

29th Jun 2010 11:21

NEW ORLEANS (AFP)--U.S. Vice President Joe Biden was set to head to the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday to inspect oil spill cleanup efforts, as strong winds from Tropical Storm Alex thwarted efforts to double the amount of oil captured from the ruptured well. Biden was due to visit the New Orleans oil cleanup command center before traveling to the Florida panhandle, where authorities have closed down some of the area's iconic beaches because of the oil slick. While cleanup crews will likely be spared a direct hit, strong winds from Alex, which is likely to gain hurricane strength, are churning up waves too rough for crews to attach a third vessel to siphon oil from a containment cap some 5,000 feet (1,500 meters) below the surface. U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, who is overseeing the response efforts, said Monday even the threat of gale force winds--upward of 45 miles per hour (72 kilometers per hour)--would suffice to force drilling and containment ships to withdraw from the spill site some 52 miles off the coast of Louisiana. Evacuations must begin 120 hours in advance, and operations will be shut down for about two weeks to "take down the equipment, move it off to a safe place, bring it back and re-establish drilling," he said. That would delay the completion until September of relief wells designed to permanently plug the well, and would drastically increase the flow of oil still gushing into the sea some 70 days after the deadly explosion on the BP PLC-leased (BP) Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. The current containment system is capturing nearly 25,000 of the estimated 30,000 to 60,000 barrels of crude gushing out every day. The now-delayed Helix Producer vessel was set to increase containment capacity to 40,000 to 50,000 barrels per day by early July. Rough seas could also push the oil deeper into fragile coastal wetlands and has already shifted parts of the slick closer to sensitive areas in Florida and Louisiana, Allen said. "Any kind of a surge or a storm would obviously exacerbate the oil further into marshes, which would cause problems, and we're going to face that potential throughout the hurricane season." A frustrated former U.S. president Bill Clinton said blowing up the well "may become necessary" and expressed concern about the ultimate success of the two relief wells currently being drilled. "This is a geological monster," he told CNN. "You could stop that well, but what else might you do that might upset the ecostructure of the Gulf?" BP vice president Kent Wells said the energy giant has a "high degree of confidence in the relief wells." The first well, which stretches over 16,700 feet (5,090 meters), is now only 20 horizontal feet (six meters) away from the original well, he said. Engineers will drill parallel to the original well for about another 1,000 feet (305 meters) before trying to cut into it and block the flow of oil. "I'm really confident in the team's chance of being successful here." BP earlier raised its costs over the oil spill to $2.65 billion, an increase of about $300 million over the weekend that means the energy firm is now forking out about $4 million an hour. The firm was also forced to deny reports its chief executive Tony Hayward was set to resign after weeks of taking flak for a string of gaffes and insensitive remarks about the disaster. Meanwhile Alex gained strength as it moved into the southwestern Gulf after dumping heavy rains across the Yucatan peninsula, having killed at least 10 people in Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador. On its current path, Alex is projected to make landfall as a hurricane late Wednesday or early Thursday just south of the U.S.-Mexico border, Miami-based National Hurricane Center said. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries has urged the U.S. to reconsider legal moves and ditch a ban on deep water drilling slapped on the oil industry in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster. (END) Dow Jones Newswires June 29, 2010 06:21 ET (10:21 GMT)