leventhal live in grand aisisle louisiana with the latest on the containment effort. reporter: bp says it collected 25 barrels of thick crude oil from the broken well on friday. it sounds like a big number but could be less than half of what is spewing from the sea floor on a daily basis and the containment will stop completely, as you said, if tropical storm alex changes course, the storm is gaining quickly and winds topping 60 miles per hour and is moving faster over mexico and could become a hurricane over the warm gulf waters by early next week. now, the coast guard says it will stop drilling those two relief wells, and stop the containment and cleanup efforts, out of the spill site, five days before high winds are expected to arrive, at that site, if high winds arrive they have to secure all the equipment and move all the workers to safety, and the coast guard says it hopes that it will not be necessary. hopefully, not. but we re ready to respond, if
latest report shows 35,000 to 60,000 barrels of oil are leaking a day. 80 to 250 million gallons have been spilled since the oil rig explosion april 20th. engineers hoping they can reposition a relief cap on wednesday. rick leventhal monitoring all of this in grand isle, louisiana. from there, rick, good to see you, great reporting this week. what effect would a tropical storm have had on the cleanup efforts? well, first of all, all work would be suspended at the spill site and in the surrounding waters and that includes the drilling of the two relief wells and a containment of the oil that is gushing from the sea floor, along with the cleanup of the area around that site and along the shores. we have heard from coast guard admiral thad allen who says they re watching the storm closely and they know it could change direction at any moment. if it does, heading toward the spill zone, they would suspend operations there five day before the storm s arrival to give everyone time to be pac
numbers, bp capturing anywhere from 840,000 to 1.2 million gallons of oil a day. good news? that s far below the government s worst case scenario that 2.5 million gallons a day would be leaking. in all, though, it s thought anywhere from 69 million to more than 131 million gallons of oil have spewed into the gulf. our rick leventhal is live in grand isle, louisiana. the coast guard is obviously preparing for the possibility of the storm changing directions at this point. we know now that the storm is strengthening very quickly. alex winds up to 65 miles per hour, still 115-mile wide tropical storm moving faster to the west northwest. if it does change direction and head towards the spill site, there is going to be a scramble to pack things up and get the workers out of there and the equipment tied down before that storm arrives. the coast guard told us that it needs five days before gale force winds arrive to pack everything up and evacuate
contributor fran townsend. first of all to you, john, you were out there and in the region, and are they ready for something like this? well, they have anticipated this, so they have a plan in place, but the problem is that if it takes a path anywhere near the spill site, and then to the coastline, it will cause significant setbacks. if it goes near the spill site, there are dozens of ships there, and that is where the oil is coming up from the containment cap. if they plan for a hurricane or anything close to a hurricane, the ships have to get out of there, because it is not safe to operate. that would be a setback to the cleanup, and the skimming, and the containment of the oil cap, and th and that is where there are giant skimming ships out there. that is where the enterprise and other ships are. when you come closer to the shore, and barrier islands like that, and marshlands like that, there are flimsy boons set up
shore is yesterday i went out with the coast guard to burn the oil gathered around the spill site. it s about 3 to 12 miles from the site of the deepwater horizon. they are collecting these oil in booms and burning them. this is actually, john, a relative success in this operation. they are burning on some days we only know this anecdote tale, up to 5,000 barrels of oil an hour and up to 30,000 or 40,000 barrels a day. you see a success burning the oil so it doesn t get to shore and kill pelicans and shrimp and oysters. you also see a big, big plume of smoke in the area, and everybody says, what are we doing to the environment with the smoke. can you imagine we are in a place where we decided it is less dangerous to burn the oil and have the pollution go into the air than to have that oil go to shore and continue to damage