Oil pours into Gulf in setback

June 24, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS

Oil spewed uncontrolled into the Gulf of Mexico again Wednesday after an undersea robot bumped the cap being used to contain it, forcing BP engineers to remove the device and then scramble to reattach it.

The latest setback left nothing to stem the flow of oil at its source. A camera recording the well showed huge clouds of black fluid coming out of the seafloor. BP hoped to quickly replace the cap, which since June 4 had been carrying some of the oil gushing from the blown-out well to a surface ship.

Most recently, it was sucking up about 29,000 gallons an hour, crude that spewed back into the Gulf on Wednesday. Another ship was still collecting a smaller amount of oil and burning it on the surface.

BP engineers removed the cap after the mishap because fluid seemed to be leaking, creating a possible safety hazard because of the flames above, and they were concerned ice-like crystals might clog it. They were working to replace it Wednesday night.

The latest problem with the nine-week effort to stop the gusher came as thick pools of oil washed up on Pensacola Beach in Florida and the Obama administration sought to resurrect a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling.

Under the worst-case scenario, as much as 104,000 gallons an hour — 2.5 million gallons a day — is flowing from the site where the offshore rig Deepwater Horizon exploded April 20, killing 11 workers.

Meanwhile, pools of oil washed up along miles of national park and Pensacola Beach shoreline, and health advisories against swimming and fishing in the once-pristine waters were extended for 33 miles east from the Alabama border.

The oil had a chemical stench as it baked in the afternoon heat. The beach looked as if it had been paved with a 6-foot-wide ribbon of asphalt, much different from the tar balls that washed up two weeks earlier.

Park rangers in the Gulf Islands National Seashore helped to rescue an oily young dolphin found beached in the sand. They later transported it to a rehabilitation center in Panama City, about 100 miles to the east.

The Obama administration was plotting its next steps Wednesday after U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman in New Orleans overturned a moratorium on new drilling, saying the government simply assumed that because one rig exploded, the others pose an imminent danger, too.

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen says two contract workers helping with the Gulf of Mexico oil spill cleanup have died. Neither death appears to have a direct connection to the spill.

Allen said Wednesday in Washington that one man was killed by what investigators later called a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Allen said the other worker’s death involved swimming. He would not provide more details.