
Credit: NOAA
The Coast Guard says it has gained the upper hand on an oil spill off Plaquemines Parish.
“At approximately noon (Sunday), our well intervention team — they were successful in their attempt to cut the flange on the discharging wellhead, which allowed them to install a system that would allow us to regain control of the source,” says Coast Guard Lt. Phillip VanderWeit. “And then yesterday afternoon, we successfully secured the source of discharge.”
Well 59, located near Garden Island Bay, sprung a leak more than a week ago, spewing tens of thousands of gallons of oil into gulf waters.
“We’ve got teams on site. We were able to bring more assets in over the weekend to continue the very important work to clean up as much oil as possible as quickly as possible and as safely as possible,” says Lt. VanderWeit. “As of this morning, we have collected a total of 79,212 gallons of oily water mixture. And it’s a lengthy but important process to separate the oil out of that mixture.”
Exactly how long the remainder of the cleanup will last is anyone’s guess at this point.
“It’s going to be an exhaustive and long-term duration cleanup effort,” VanderWeit says, “and we’ll remain on site with the hardworking folks in the field for as long as we need to, to remove oil from the environment.”
Environmentalists fear the oil that seeped through the well and into the water could threaten marine wildlife and further erode Louisiana’s coastline.
VanderWeit says Coast Guard crews are working to protect as much marine wildlife as they can.
“We’ve got wildlife assessment teams in the field that are surveying, assessing, and obviously keeping an eye out for impact of wildlife,” says VanderWeit. “To date, we are still at our one oiled bird that we observed, but we were unable to capture it.”
The Coast Guard has 20 skimmers, 220 responders, more than 20-thousand feet of containment boom on site. While Well 59 has not been abandoned, it has not had any measurable oil pressure since the 1990s.
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