Obama brain trust battles oil spill
Kate Murphy – Wed May 12, 4:58 pm ET
HOUSTON, Texas (AFP) – A brain trust of scientists has been assembled by President Barack Obama's administration to help BP cap the well that has been gushing oil into the Gulf of Mexico for nearly three weeks.
Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, a Nobel prize-winning physicist, told reporters Wednesday that the "intellectual horsepower of the country is engaged in solving this problem."
Chu said he had called upon the "very best" physicists, engineers, materials scientists and geologists from the government, academia and industry to "think outside of the box" in finding ways to tackle the spill.
"Things are looking up. Progress is being made," he told reporters. Chu declined to explain the reason for his newfound optimism, saying simply: "I'm feeling more comfortable than I was a week ago."
At his side, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said the mobilization of the best minds at the BP Command Center in Houston, Texas was not a vote of no confidence in the British energy giant's ability to plug the well.
"They are not flailing around," he said, noting that there is nonetheless, "a great deal of frustration" in the lack of progress in preventing an estimated 210,000 gallons of crude from streaming into the sea each day.
The gathering of scientists under Chu's direction came as crews added the finishing touches to a small box on the sea bed it is hoped will contain much of the leak by Thursday or Friday and funnel the oil up a mile-long pipe to a waiting ship.
The so-called "top hat" is the key component in the latest bid to end the crisis set off when the Deepwater Horizon rig, 80 kilometers (50 miles) off Louisiana, exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers.
Two days later the rig sank, fracturing the riser pipe in the process and sending crude shooting unabated into the sea ever since.
An earlier attempt to funnel the oil up using a much larger dome failed when the low temperatures and extreme pressure at the sea floor caused an icy slush to clog the container.
Preparations are also under way to pump a "junk shot" of materials ranging from golf balls to shredded tires into the well's blowout preventer, which failed to shut off the flow of oil after the explosion.
It is expected to take almost three months to complete the drilling of a relief well that could allow the well to be permanently sealed.
"There is a menu of technical possibilities," said Salazar, adding that the scientists assembled by the administration were helping to tweak current strategies and come up with new ones.
They will also help collect information to help determine what kind of regulation is necessary to ensure that such an accident won't happen again, Salazar said.
While BP is the responsible party, the company is not alone in its liability.
"There's going to be lot of blame to go around," Salazar told reporters.
The entire industry may feel the effects.
The White House moved Wednesday to boost funding for the clean-up of oil spills by hiking taxes on oil companies and raising the cap on a special liability fund.
The proposal calls for increasing taxes that oil companies pay into the oil spill liability fund from eight cents a barrel to nine starting this year.
The administration also proposed that the cap on the fund -- set up to ensure cash is available to help pay for any clean-ups and damage caused by an oil spill -- be raised from one billion dollars to 1.5 billion.
"What we're trying to do is make sure that the Coast Guard and other responders can get access to the funds they need without having to wait for the appropriations process," said Jeff Liebman, acting deputy director at the Office of Management and Budget.
The team sent to BP includes: Tom Hunter, director of the Department of Energy's Sandia National Labs; George Cooper, an expert in materials science and retired professor from UC Berkeley; Richard Lawrence Garwin, a physicist and IBM Fellow Emeritus; Jonathan Katz, a professor of physics at Washington University; and Alexander Slocum, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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