Amount of Spill Could Escalate, Company Admits
WASHINGTON — In a closed-door briefing for members of Congress, a senior BP executive conceded Tuesday that the ruptured oil well in the Gulf of Mexico could conceivably spill as much as 60,000 barrels a day of oil, more than 10 times the estimate of the current flow. 

The scope of the problem has grown drastically since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and sank into the gulf. Now, the discussion with BP on Capitol Hill is certain to intensify pressure on the company, which is facing a crisis similar to what the Toyota Motor Company had with uncontrolled acceleration — despite its efforts to control the damage to its reputation as a corporate citizen, the problem may be worsening. 


Amid growing uncertainty about the extent of the leak, and when it might be stanched, pressure on BP intensified on multiple fronts Tuesday, from increasingly frustrated residents of the Gulf Coast to federal, state and local officials demanding more from the company. 

The company considered a broad advertising campaign, but top BP executives rejected the idea before planning even started. “In our view, the big glossy expressions of regret don’t have a lot of credibility,” said Andrew Gowers, a BP spokesman. 

Instead, the company has dispatched executives to hold town meetings in the affected region, and it has turned to lower-profile social media outlets to trumpet its cleanup efforts and moves to organize volunteers. 

The Senate energy committee has summoned executives from BP and Transocean Ltd., the rig operator, as well as a number of oil industry technical experts to a hearing next week. 

That panel, which will look at the possible problems leading to explosions on the rig as well as the adequacy of containment and cleanup measures, would probably be the first of several, Representative Bart Stupak, Democrat of Michigan, the subcommittee 

At Tuesday’s briefing, David Rainey, the BP vice president for Gulf of Mexico production, said the company was employing a variety of untried techniques to stanch the oil gushing from the well 5,000 feet below the surface. 

At the briefing, Mr. Rainey and officials from Transocean and from Halliburton, which was providing cementing services on the platform, also acknowledged that they did not know how likely it was that oil from the spill would be caught up in the so-called loop currents in the gulf and be carried through the Florida Keys into the Atlantic Ocean. “What we heard today from BP, Halliburton and Transocean were a lot of worst-case scenarios without any best-case solutions,” said Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, who leads the Energy and Environment Subcommittee of the House energy panel. 

Federal officials have raised the possibility of a leak of more than 100,000 barrels a day if the well were to flow unchecked, but the chances of that situation occurring were unclear. 

Also on Tuesday, the company’s chief executive, Tony Hayward, told Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, that the spill would clearly cause more than $75 million in economic damage, the current cap on liability for drilling accidents. 

While BP continues to acknowledge its responsibility to shut off and clean up the oil, it is being barraged by government officials and civil lawyers who are redoubling efforts to ensure that the company’s legal obligations are clearly defined and strictly enforced. 

Attorneys general from the five Gulf Coast states have been drafting a letter to BP that will lay out demands. In the letter, they are expected to urge BP specifically to define what is meant by its repeated statement that it intends to pay “legitimate” claims, a term Attorney General Troy King of Alabama said was unacceptably nebulous. 

The attorneys general asked for the creation of such a fund in a meeting with BP officials on Sunday, and the next day BP announced that $25 million block grants were going to the four states most likely to be affected to help begin their efforts to prepare. But, Mr. King said, “that’s not going to be enough.” 

BP has significantly stepped up its lobbying on Capitol Hill, spending nearly $16 million in 2009, more than triple what it spent just two years before, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, a watchdog group. 


The company’s top crisis managers have been dispatched to the gulf. Mr. Gowers, the BP spokesman, said the company was now “considering some targeted advertising in the affected states” to publicize how to make claims and how to sign up to help with the cleanup. 

Mr. Hayward also gave a briefing on Tuesday for reporters from Gulf Coast newspapers and The Associated Press in which he said he wanted to “win the hearts and minds” of the people. 

Mr. Hayward has been a frequent guest on the morning news shows, with a consistent message: “It wasn’t our accident, but we are absolutely responsible for the oil, for cleaning it up.” 



“It’s a situation laced with irony, and perceived hypocrisy,” said Abbey Klaassen, executive editor of Advertising Age. “It is a fine line between what they want to say for legal reasons and what consumers want to hear which is: ‘Mea culpa. We accept responsibility, we will clean it up, and this will never happen again.’ ” 

BP is playing to a particularly skeptical and vigilant audience in the gulf, where people have become accustomed to frustrating clashes with insurance companies and government agencies in the five years since Hurricane Katrina. 


Campbell Robertson reported from New Orleans, John M. Broder from Washington, and Clifford Krauss from Houston. Sewell Chan contributed reporting from Washington.


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Oil Spill Clean Up: 150,000 Gallons Of Dispersant Dropped On Oil Slick 

ROBERT, La. — An executive with BP PLC says the good weather in the Gulf of Mexico is continuing to help crews clean up the oil and that more than 140 miles of containment boom have been put out.

Chief operating officer Doug Suttles said Thursday that tens of thousands of gallons of oil have been burned off the surface. Suttles says he has also met with local officials in Louisiana. He says he is listening to their criticisms and they are also providing good feedback.

Suttles also was confident the containment box crews hope to lower 5,000 feet could in no way make the spill worse. He says submarine robots have been moving pieces around on the sea floor to prepare for the containment system.

He also says drilling on the relief well is making good progress.

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Gulf Oil Spill Is Bad, but How Bad?

Some experts have been quick to predict apocalypse, painting grim pictures of 1,000 miles of irreplaceable wetlands and beaches at risk, fisheries damaged for seasons, fragile species wiped out and a region and an industry economically crippled for years. 

President Obama has called the spill “a potentially unprecedented environmental disaster.” And some scientists have suggested that the oil might hitch a ride on the loop current in the gulf, bringing havoc to the Atlantic Coast. 


The ruptured well, currently pouring an estimated 210,000 gallons of oil a day into the gulf, could flow for years and still not begin to approach the 36 billion gallons of oil spilled by retreating Iraqi forces when they left Kuwait in 1991. It is not yet close to the magnitude of the Ixtoc I blowout in the Bay of Campeche in Mexico in 1979, which spilled an estimated 140 million gallons of crude before the gusher could be stopped. 

And it will have to get much worse before it approaches the impact of the Exxon Valdez accident of 1989, which contaminated 1,300 miles of largely untouched shoreline and killed tens of thousands of seabirds, otters and seals along with 250 eagles and 22 killer whales. 

No one, not even the oil industry’s most fervent apologists, is making light of this accident. The contaminated area of the gulf continues to spread, and oil has been found in some of the fragile marshes at the tip of Louisiana. The beaches and coral reefs of the Florida Keys could be hit if the slick is captured by the gulf’s clockwise loop current. 

But on Monday, the wind was pushing the slick in the opposite direction, away from the current. The worst effects of the spill have yet to be felt. And if efforts to contain the oil are even partly successful and the weather cooperates, the worst could be avoided. 

Dr. Overton said he was hopeful that efforts by BP to place containment structures over the leaking parts of the well will succeed, although he said it was a difficult task that could actually make things worse by damaging undersea pipes. 

Other experts said that while the potential for catastrophe remained, there were reasons to remain guardedly optimistic. 

“The sky is not falling,” said Quenton R. Dokken, a marine biologist and the executive director of the Gulf of Mexico Foundation, a conservation group in Corpus Christi, Tex. “We’ve certainly stepped in a hole and we’re going to have to work ourselves out of it, but it isn’t the end of the Gulf of Mexico.” 

Engineers said the type of oil pouring out is lighter than the heavy crude spilled by the Exxon Valdez, evaporates more quickly and is easier to burn. It also appears to respond to the use of dispersants, which break up globs of oil and help them sink. The oil is still capable of significant damage, particularly when it is churned up with water and forms a sort of mousse that floats and can travel long distances. 

Jacqueline Savitz, a senior scientist at Oceana, a nonprofit environmental group, said that much of the damage was already taking place far offshore and out of sight of surveillance aircraft and research vessels. 

“Some people are saying, It hasn’t gotten to shore yet so it’s all good,” she said. “But a lot of animals live in the ocean, and a spill like this becomes bad for marine life as soon as it hits the water. You have endangered sea turtles, the larvae of bluefin tuna, shrimp and crabs and oysters, grouper. A lot of these are already being affected and have been for 10 days. We’re waiting to see how bad it is at the shore, but we may never fully understand the full impacts on ocean life.” 

The economic impact is as uncertain as the environmental damage. With several million gallons of medium crude in the water already, some experts are predicting wide economic harm. Experts at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies in Corpus Christi, for example, estimated that as much as $1.6 billion of annual economic activity and services — including effects on tourism, fishing and even less tangible services like the storm protection provided by wetlands — could be at risk. 


But much of this damage could be avoided if the various tactics employed by BP and government technicians pay off in the coming days. The winds are dying down and the seas are calming, allowing for renewed skimming operations and possible new controlled burns of oil on the surface. BP technicians are trying to inject dispersants deep below the surface, which could reduce the impact on aquatic life. Winds and currents could move the globs of emulsified oil away from coastal shellfish breeding grounds. 
Thousands of gallons of oil flow into the gulf from natural undersea well seeps every day, engineers say, and the scores of refineries and chemical plants that line the shore from Mexico to Mississippi pour untold volumes of pollutants into the water. 

“The gulf is tremendously resilient,” said Dr. Dokken, the marine biologist. “But we’ve always got to ask ourselves how long can we keep heaping these insults on the gulf and having it bounce back. As a scientist, I have to say I just don’t know.” 

A front-page news analysis article on Tuesday discussed the uncertainty over the ultimate environmental impact of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. One expert quoted was Quenton R. Dokken, a marine biologist who is the executive director of the Gulf of Mexico Foundation. (He said the spill “isn’t the end of the Gulf of Mexico,” but also said that “we’ve always got to ask ourselves how long can we keep heaping these insults on the gulf and having it bounce back.”) 

The article described the Gulf of Mexico Foundation simply as a conservation group. It should have included more information about the organization, a nonprofit group that says its mission is “to promote and facilitate conservation of the health and productivity of the Gulf of Mexico and its resources” through research and other programs. , it also receives some money from the oil industry and other business interests in the gulf, and includes industry executives on its board.


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