New Orleans: Crude oil was leaking on Sunday from two newly discovered leaks in a lengthy conduit connecting the sunken Deepwater Horizon oil rig to a well site in the Gulf of Mexico, officials said.
The estimate - and there is a strong emphasis on the fact that it is an estimate - is the rate of (the leaks) is 1,000 barrels a day," Ron Rybarczyk, a spokesman for BP Production & Exporation, said.
A 20-mile-by-20-mile (32-kilometer) sheen of the emulsified crude spread over the gulf, approximately 40 miles off the Louisiana coast, according to a joint statement released on Saturday by BP, Transocean, the Coast Guard and the federal Mineral Management Service.
The status of a second pollution source - 700,000 barrels of diesel fuel stored on the Horizon when it sank - remained a mystery on Saturday.
"The disposition of the diesel fuel is unknown," BP spokesman Rybarczyk said.
The news about the crude oil leaks came one day after Coast Guard officials said visual images and sonar data from a remotely operated robot found that the well head had stopped leaking oil.
But on Saturday, a second robot found two oil leaks in the 5,000-foot (1,525-meter) riser - a conduit of pipe that connects the wellhead -- to the sunken rig, Rybarczyk said.
"We have had a visual image of the (sunken) rig," he noted. "We know that the rig is stable and it is staying in one place. Our approach now is to make the best fix toward getting those release points stopped."
With oversight from federal technical teams, BP and Transocean officials are evaluating two traditional plans of attack on the crude oil leak.
The optimal approach is to get the blow-out preventer - an iron hydraulic device near the well on the ocean floor - "fully engaged" in sealing off the crude oil source, Rybarczyk said. "The other method being discussed is a relief well. We have those resources available but we have not deployed them."
More time-consuming than the blow-out preventer option, a relief well would involve drilling a new hole near the BP well, intercepting the leaking conduit, then pumping cement or heavy mud down into the hole until the BP well is fully sealed.
Meanwhile, sea-surfaced skimming operation involving a flotilla of oil spill vessels has recovered at least 33,726 gallons (127,667 litres) of crude oil since Tuesday`s accident, officials said.
However, thunderstorms and rough seas hampered skimming operations on Saturday.
There was no news of the 11 missing Horizon crewmembers Saturday - 24 hours after the Coast Guard announced the end of an exhaustive search by sea and by air.
Bureau Report
