U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who declared a Gulf of Mexico oil spill an event of "national significance" nine days after a deadly oil-rig explosion, on Monday said that the Obama administration had showed an "all hands on deck" response "since day one."
Napolitano also said that the response to the disaster could be far from winding down. "Worst-case scenario is we'll be at this for quite a while," Napolitano told the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. "We're not at the beginning--we've been at it a month almost--but we're not near the end as well."
Early on, the Obama administration came under criticism for the amount of time it took to respond to the April 20 explosion. The Homeland Security chief waited until April 29 to declare the spill of "national significance," which allowed the federal government to funnel more people and resources into the effort.
To date, more than 17,000 people at the federal, state and local level have been deployed, Napolitano said. The Defense Department has approved the activation of up to 17,500 National Guard troops, with more than 1,300 of those deployed, Napolitano said. The responders appear to be growing strained; the government will have to "start rotating people in and out," she said.
Lawmakers reserved their toughest criticism for officials from the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service, who declined to testify. The Senators questioned why the agency had approved BP PLC's spill-response plans in the first place. The criticism came as the top federal official who led regulation of offshore oil drilling at MMS circulated an email to colleagues saying that he would retire at the end of the month, according to an email that was distributed by one of the agency's top officials and viewed by The Wall Street Journal.
Asked why MMS officials elected not to testify, Interior spokeswoman Julie Rodriguez said that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar "will be the first DOI official to testify on this topic."
Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I., Conn.) said that MMS had to answer questions. "They'e got all sorts of authority here; they just didn't use it," he said to reporters after the hearing. He said that "I don't see how our government can allow any new deepwater wells to be permitted and drilled," until questions about the regulation of deepwater drilling are answered. Deepwater drilling involves drilling 1,000 feet or more below the sea.
With BP still working out how to contain the spill, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last week approved the use of chemical dispersants underwater in order to break up the oil before the fluid reaches shorelines. Most of the oil has remained offshore, though soft "tar balls" have washed ashore at the South Pass entry to the Mississippi River in Louisiana and on Alabama's Dauphin Island, Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary Landry said at a press conference last week. Oil has washed ashore on Louisiana's Chandeleur Islands as well.
Some people worried that underwater chemical dispersant could be responsible for large oil plumes that have formed beneath the sea's surface, warning that the plumes could deplete the sea of oxygen.
"We have to be careful right now about what is being assumed relative to the undersea plume and not," Napolitano said, backing up National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief Jane Lubchenco. The NOAA administrator has called reports about the effects of underwater dispersants "misleading, premature, and in some cases, inaccurate."
Coast Guard Rear Admiral Peter Neffenger, who is helping oversee response efforts, told the committee that the response was complicated because a fail-safe device called a blowout preventer didn't work, thousands of feet of pipeline lay on the sea floor "like spaghetti," and measuring the pressure inside the pipe was difficult.
The response would have been "much more rapid" had the accident occurred closer to the sea's surface, he said. "It's the distance below the surface that was challenging."
BP said it has had a breakthrough in an effort to stop the leaks, using robots to insert one end of a mile-long tube into a broken oil pipe on the sea floor. The intent is to siphon off the crude oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. But the success of the operation isn't assured and BP is still focused on drilling so-called relief wells to stanch the flow of oil.
"No one seems to know really what to do," said Sen. Susan Collins (R. Maine), the top Republican on the panel. "The impression that you get is that there's no plan." sports
here and where
The way to the dream
I lover chinese
friendsinmyhearthttp://forums.sounddevices.com
http://mnaabr.com/vb
http://forum.skodovka.pl
http://www.esensja.pl/forum
http://djforo.es
