BP, U.S. blasted for ignoring aid offers

Boats, crews sit idle, waiting for instructions

By: JournalNow Staff | THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: July 02, 2010

NEW ORLEANS

Many fishing boats signed up to skim oil sit idle in marinas. Some captains and deckhands say they have been waiting around for instructions while drawing checks from BP of more than $1,000 a day per vessel. Thousands of offers to help clean beaches and wetlands have gone unanswered.

BP and the Obama administration faced mounting complaints yesterday that they are ignoring foreign offers of badly needed equipment and making poor use of the fishing boats and volunteers available to help clean up what may now be the biggest spill ever in the Gulf of Mexico.

Based on some government estimates, more than 140 million gallons of crude have now spewed from the bottom of the sea since the April 20 explosion that killed 11 workers on the Deepwater Horizon oil platform, eclipsing the 1979-80 disaster off Mexico that had long stood as the worst in the Gulf.

In recent days and weeks, for reasons that BP has never explained, many fishing boats hired for the cleanup mostly have been waiting around. At the same time, there is mounting frustration over the time that the government has taken to approve offers of help from foreign countries and international organizations.

The Coast Guard said that there have been 107 offers of help from 44 nations, ranging from technical advice to skimmer boats and booms. But many of those offers are weeks old, and only a small number have been accepted, with the vast majority still under review, according to a list kept by the State Department.

A report prepared by investigators from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform for Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., detailed a case in which the Dutch government on April 30 offered to provide four oil skimmers that collectively could process more than 6 million gallons of oily water a day. It took seven weeks for the U.S. to approve the offer.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs yesterday scorned the idea that "somehow it took the command 70 days to accept international help."

"That is a myth," he declared, "that has been debunked literally hundreds of times."

A BP spokesman declined to comment.

Newly retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government's point man for the response effort, bristled at some of the accusations in Issa's report.

"I think we've been pretty transparent throughout this," Allen said at the White House. He disputed any suggestion that there aren't enough skimmers being put on the water, saying that the spill area is so big that there are bound to be areas with no vessels.

Some government estimates put the amount of oil spilled at 160 million gallons. That calculation was arrived at by using the rate of 2.5 million gallons a day all the way back to the oil-rig explosion. The Associated Press, relying on scientists who advised the government on flow rate, bases its estimates on a lower rate of 2.1 million gallons a day up until June 3, when a cut to the well pipe increased flow.

By either estimate, the disaster would eclipse the 140 million gallons that the Ixtoc disaster spilled in the Gulf more than 20 years ago, and rank it as the biggest offshore oil spill during peacetime. The biggest spill in history happened in 1991 during the Persian Gulf War, when Iraqi forces opened valves at a terminal and dumped about 336 million gallons of oil.

The total in the Gulf disaster is significant because BP is likely to be fined per gallon spilled. Also, scientists say that an accurate figure is needed to calculate how much oil may be hidden below the surface, doing damage to the deep-sea environment.

"It's a mind-boggling number, any way you cut it," said Ed Overton, a professor of environmental studies at Louisiana State University. "It'll be well beyond Ixtoc by the time it's finished."

In other developments, the House passed the first major bill related to the explosion, voting to allow families of the killed and injured workers to be compensated far more generously than current law allows.

The bill now goes to the Senate.

A Gulf Record

• BP spill: 140.6 million gallons or more.

• Previous Gulf record: 140 million gallons off Mexico's coast from 1979 to 1980.

• Largest oil spill: Iraqi forces opened valves at a terminal and dumped as much as 336 million gallons of oil during the first Persian Gulf War in 1991.