for starters you produce a lot of carbon dioxide. if you are into the whole global warming debate. crude oil crude mixture if you don t control all of the stuff that goes into the burner you get unintended by products come out. some that comes out is sulfur dioxide which is acid rain. relative to the big picture this isn t a whole lot of sulfur dioxide coming out. the number one drawback with this burner is simply volume. this thing can burn off 15,000 barrels per day. you are leaking 60, shep. shepard: mike tobin live tonight in chicago. warning of a new danger in the gulf region, a scientist from texas a&m reports huge qualities of methane gas coming out of the well. the has 8 times the amount of methane and typical oil deposits. the concern is that all that methane could suffocate sea life and create dead zones in the water where nothing can live. a bp spokesman says workers are
steve, thanks. there is new evidence that bp is taking sweet time paying folks for submitted damages. the house judiciary committee reports bp has paid only $71 million of the 600 million in claims made by people. bp insists it s actually paid $95 million. in any event, bp is now leaving the payout business. an independent administrator is going to run the 0 billion-dollar fund that the oil company is creating and that administrator, kenneth feinberg promises he is going to sign the checks quickly. the president of the united states has made very clear is that these programs, this program that he has asked me to undertake has got to accelerate the ability to get money into the hands of individuals and and small businesses that need these funds to stay alive. shepard: you will remember feinberg is the man who ran the claims process after the attacks of 9/11 and also examined executive salaries after the bank bailouts. by the way, bp reports it will sell off billions in assets to get
across america. i m shepard smith, this is the fox report. it s the bottom of the hour, time for the top of the news. they could make a real difference in the effort to clean up the oil in the gulf of mexico. or that s what bp executives are saying about the machine kevin costner has been trying to get the government of the industry to buy for some 15 years. well, bp finally ordered some. 32 of them. and today it s about to put them to work. costner says he has mixed emotions since it took the worst oil spill in u.s. history to get someone to listen to him. the word disaster doesn t begin to do justice to this one. what do we call this? a catastrophe? there is not a word big enough or ugly enough to describe what s going on out there. shepard: costner invested $20 million of his own money to build these machines. he says they use centrifuges to
remove at his estimate 99% of the oil from the water. bp executives tell us they hope the devices can eventually handle almost 130,000 barrels a day. that s about twice the estimated amount gushing from the well right now. bp is also capturing and burning off some of that crude but environmentalists say that s just transferring the pollution from the water to the air. mike tobin with us tonight. how does this burner work, mike? well, this burner is called an evergreen burner. it works a lot like the fuel inject tore of a car. the crude oil is forced through novels that turn into novels turned into a fine mist. it creates big plume of flame that you see now in so much of the video. when it s burning efficiently. when all the mixture is right, 99% of what you proves by burning this crude oil is just carbon dioxide and water, shep. shepard: environmentalists say there is a downside to getting rid of the oil this way. certainly not perfect.
we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume. today in an interview with our sister network sky news in great britain, the bp chairman karl henrik svanberg acknowledged hayward s issues. it is true he has remarks that s inappropriate. in one year s time either you or tony or both will not be in the company. that s north something i would speculate on. shepard: forget the speculation. let s focus on something we know. we know at this hour oil is still hemorrhaging from the gulf floor. we know gallons that may be measured in the millions are flowing flowing from the blown out well every day. the coast guard is changing strategy to try to capture more oil closer to the shore. that word came today and the fox business network jeff flock went out on the water to get a first-hand look at the effort. you are looking at one of the skimming operations. this is typically a shrimp boat, right, mike?