Coast Guard: Oil Hits Land South of New Orleans

BATON ROUGE, La. (May 6) -- The Gulf of Mexico oil spill has hit land for the first time, the Coast Guard said today, as BP prepared to deploy a 100-ton metal box that the company hopes will contain the well that has been gushing 200,000 gallons of crude every day for more than two weeks.

The British energy company is expected to use a crane to lower the four-story containment box over one of the well's two leaks -- nearly a mile below the surface -- later today, the Coast Guard said. If it works, the operation could contain the amount of spewing oil by 85 percent, but company executives made plain that it's a high-risk experiment.

"My expectation is it will probably have its startup troubles," BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles said at a Houma, La., news conference this evening.

If all goes according to plan, the box should be in operation by Monday, Suttles said, funneling the leaking oil through a pipe up to a tanker 5,000 feet above on the water's surface. But it's a plan that has never before been tried at such depths, in undersea darkness and under crushing water pressure.

"It's never been done before at this depth, and that's the scary part," Suttles said.

The box, or containment dome, is "essentially a very, very large metal building" that will be lowered on a cable and maneuvered into place atop the leak using remote-controlled, robotic submarines, Suttles said. The dome was designed by BP engineers in Houston and manufactured in Port Fourchon, La., in the days since the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform blew up April 20 and sank two days later, killing 11 workers.

In effect, deployment of the dome is an admission from BP that its efforts to cap the well using the robot subs have failed. An 18,000-foot relief well that's intended to cut off the oil flow from the well entirely is being drilled nearby, but that effort won't be completed until August. Crews have drilled 7,800 feet of that distance so far, and drilling has not yet started on a second relief well, the company said.

Coast Guard Petty Officer David Mosley said the oil spill's first landfall was confirmed this morning on Freemason Island, one of Louisiana's Chandeleur Islands, a string of uninhabited barrier islands in the gulf southeast of New Orleans. He described it as "sheen, not the heavier oil." A reported landfall April 29 was not confirmed.

Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries agents found two dead seabirds covered in oil near the state's barrier Grand Gosier Islands, the agency said today. It was unclear whether the oil killed the gannets, which are large birds common along Louisiana's coast, it said.

Meantime, BP is using various means to control the slick's expansion: skimming the crude off the surface, burning off concentrated areas of oil and spraying chemicals that act to break the oil down into small particles. Suttles said roughly 100,000 gallons of oil were burned off Wednesday and more burns were under way today.

"Good weather is helping us fight this thing offshore," Suttles said.

Environmentalists have raised concerns about the volume of dispersants -- more than 190,000 gallons -- that have been sprayed on the gulf and pumped from the seafloor. Several told The New York Times that it is difficult to evaluate the chemicals' effects because some of their ingredients are trade secrets.

"We flew over there and saw BP spraying all over the place," Frederic Hauge, head of the Oslo, Norway-based international environmental group Bellona, told the Times. "We deserve to know what's in there."

Success with the dome would contain about 85 percent of the leaking oil, said Bob Fryar, a BP vice president who helped engineer it.

But there are risks. David Clarkson, a BP vice president, said computer models showed that ice particles could form inside the pipe leading to the tanker, because water at the sea bottom is frigid. That ice could clog the pipe, so the chemical methanol will be pumped inside to keep it warm enough to prevent ice formation, Clarkson said.

"I'm worried about every part" of the operation, said Clarkson, who spoke with reporters in a Wednesday conference call.

BP scored a minor success Wednesday, shutting off one of three leaks by closing a valve. But Suttles said that development would not reduce the oil flow.

Forecasts show that winds from the north should keep the Delaware-size oil slick from hitting the Gulf Coast through Friday, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

More than 130 miles of boom now line the Gulf Coast, officials said, in an attempt to block the oil's advance to shore and limit the environmental damage in sensitive areas from Louisiana to Florida.