of the event. the explosion, even if the oil does not reach your beach or fishing ground until day 81. this as the oil is still making new ground, reaches lake pontchartrain and texas. it will be another two to four days before bp can hook up a third collection vessel. the helix that will double the collection capacity at the spill site. we are joined now by mitch weiss. one of the correspondents who broke the story about the gulf s abandoned wells. mr. weiss, thank you for your time tonight. thank you for inviting me, keith. can you quantify this problem? how many inactive wells in the gulf? how many only temporarily capped? how many do we need to worry about? well, we were able to crunch data and we found that there are 27,000 abandoned wells. within that, there s a subset of 3,500 temporarily abandoned wells.
really hampered the skimming effort offshore and near the spill site, also in mississippi, alabama and florida. so they really lost five days last week because of hurricane alex and the remaining remnants of that 120ir8 storm and now they re dealing with patchy storms and that s really hindering a lot of the efforts to try and contain and corral that oil. while we were out there, we got a chance to look up and look down and see some of the areas surrounding the a-whale that has the capacity to take in 500,000 barrels of oily water per day. there s a lot of hype, but the coast guard has been skeptical saying it needs a little bit more testing, because it s such a large tanker, but the problem is this oil spill is not one big
they recovered stood at 900. there is a huge gap there. as you mentioned at the top and as the meteorologist mentioned right before this, this is all weather dependent and yesterday we flew over the spill site and minimal skimming going on. we did see the a whale and so much potential there because of the super tanker and super skimmer, but the coast guard admiral that we spoke with yesterday said it has a lot of weaknesses, specifically maneuverability. it has to be able to maneuver and chase a lot of the streamers because the oil is really widespread at this point. they really say at this point a whale needs more testing even though it has a lot of potential. tom, thanks so much. in what has been a rocky relationship, president obama meets with israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu in the oval office this morning. top of the agenda, jump starting the mideast peace process. last month s meeting was postponed so netanyahu could deal with the fallout from the
names fisherman who have been harmed in the spill. weather, we had a tornado touch down here not far from where i stand today. you can see the breeze that continues to blow through. a nasty cloud cover. this is making it tough at the spill site. that big whale as they call it, the a whale, a four football field long skimmer, they re trying to test it but the water is too rough. tomorrow we ll be live along the shoreline out into the gulf bringing you the latest on what this weather is doing to the clean up activity. it s not good news, i can tell you that. brian: certainly not. jeff flock action thank you very much. forget mars, nasa s mission to the muslim world. improving relations, why is our space department sounding like
more than 400 miles from the spill site over to the beaches of galveston or whether that comes off of a ship that was traveling through there. they re really uncertain at this point. what they do know is that it did come and originated from this oil spill. thank you, tom. and there is some real turmoil within the republican party today. probably don t have to tell you that. key gop leaders and lawmakers are just fuming over remarks by the chairman of the republican national committee about the war in afghanistan. it was just last friday video surfaced of michael steele s comments at a recent fund-raiser that took place in connecticut. this was a war of obama s choosing. this is not, this is not something the united states had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in. not understood that, one thing