Options Explored for Containing Oil Rig Leak
TONY HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: I'm totally looking into that. We're talking about what we're going to be talking about tomorrow. But you've got a full show -- boy, I took a peek at your rundown. You are stacked.</s>ALI VELSHI, HOST: We're busy today.</s>HARRIS: Have a good one.</s>VELSHI: That's the way it should be. Thanks, buddy.</s>HARRIS: Yes, sir.</s>VELSHI: I'll see you -- and tomorrow I'll be in Washington. I'll see you on your show from there.</s>HARRIS: Terrific. Terrific.</s>VELSHI: All right, everybody. Welcome. Thanks very much. I'm Ali Velshi. I'm going to be with you for the next two hours today and every weekday. I'm going to take every important topic we cover, and I'm going to break it down for you, try and give you a level of detail that's going to help you put your world in context. Let's get started right now. Here's what I've got on the rundown. A sunken oil rig is bleeding crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Authorities know they've got to do something quickly to plug it up and to prevent a potential environmental disaster. But are time and technology on their side? We'll get into the details. Plus, damage teams are fanning out across the south. They've got a lot of work on their hands. Tornado-filled storms have taken lives, leveled neighborhoods and caused what Mississippi's governor calls utter obliteration. Reynolds Wolf is live on the scene. And it could be a grueling day on Capitol Hill tomorrow for Goldman Sachs. I'm heading to Washington myself to cover the hearings into the fraud case against the banks. Some say Goldman is Wall Street's boogieman. Others say it's Washington's scapegoat. Today I'm going to try and give you some perspective. And by the way, tell me what you think. Post to my Facebook or Twitter accounts. The race against time right now in the Gulf of Mexico to stop a huge oil spill triggered by the explosion and the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig last week. What you see in this amazing picture is oil gushing out of the rig's drill pipe. The leak is spilling about 42,000 gallons of oil into the gulf each day. That's 1,000 barrels. The cause of last week's explosion is still a mystery. The good news, such as it is, is that the situation could have been much worse. Right now the spill is not heading towards shore too much. You can see it there. You can actually see the oil spill in this video. At its current rate, the leak would have to continue for 262 days to match the $11 million-gallon -- 11-million-gallon spill from the Exxon Valdez in 1989. That's the worst spill in U.S. history. But that's really not something we want to aim for. This diagram that you're looking at gives you an idea of what's being done right now to try and plug it up. Robot subs are trying to trigger a so-called blowout preventer, which by the way, may have been the reason this thing exploded in the first place. The blowout preventer may have failed. If they can trigger the blowout preventer, it would seal off the well. That could take 24 to 36 hours. Now, here's the problem. If those efforts to do that fail, the other alternative, as you can see in this diagram, is to really put another rig about a mile away from this spill and dig an alternative well, a relief well as they call it, to get the oil out of there and contain it. The well would drill down and attempt to enter the damaged rig at an angle, help to plug -- help to plug it, and that process -- here's the bad news -- would take two to three months. Joining us from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, with his take on all of this is environmental sciences expert Ed Overton, who was with us last week as we were trying to figure this out. Ed, good to see you. Thank you for being with us.</s>ED OVERTON, ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES EXPERT: Thank you, Ali.</s>VELSHI: I mean, it's pretty bad when you -- when we talk about how many days it would have to be worse than the Exxon Valdez. The bottom line is most of us, when we think about 1,000 barrels of oil, 42,000 gallons of oil a day going into the ocean, think that's got to be a bad thing. Put this into perspective for us.</s>OVERTON: Well, remember, the Exxon Valdez spill occurred over a period of a day or two, so it launched an awful lot of oil in a short period of time. The good news about this spill is, it's 1,000 barrels a day is a lot of oil, but it's -- relative to what was done in the Exxon Valdez, it's not all that much. In other words, it's 1/260th of that number of oil. And it's spread out over that number of days. So when oil gets in the environment, it gets changed and weathered and made less toxic. And of course, this is further offshore than the Exxon Valdez. So the -- we're comparing apples and oranges. You can't compare the total volume of these spills. They're done under different conditions. The good news is this that is a slower spill. No spill is good, but this is certainly not the worst case yet.</s>VELSHI: Now, let's just get a perspective on this. There's a whole lot of pressure in the earth. When you drill a hole, generally speaking, the oil and the natural gas come out of their own accord, early in a well's life, right? It pushes out. The fact that we're only getting 1,000 barrels a day, what is that -- is that because it's going through the pipe, the drill pipe that was put in there to get this oil out? What's the -- what's happening?</s>OVERTON: I suspect that the blowout preventer has clogged the lines somewhat, because if this was an open pipe, you'd be getting a lot more oil being gushed out. So this -- I was not able to see the pictures that you showed. But this is certainly not a free-flowing well. It's a restricted flow. And that is good news. Hopefully, they can -- they can prevent or stop or cut off this restricted flow. If the -- if the well blowout preventer was not doing at least a partial job, then we would see a lot worse spill.</s>VELSHI: Now, OK. So they're going to try and get the submersible down there. They're going to try and deal with the blowout preventer and plug this thing. What are the chances of success, as far as you can tell, on that?</s>OVERTON: Well, these guys know what they're doing. The technology is a lot better than it has been in the past. There was a major well blowout in 1981, down in the Bay of Campeche, which was a free-flowing well. So the technology is a lot better. And we are all cautiously optimistic that they can shut off this flow and even prevent the 1,000-barrel-a-day spill.</s>VELSHI: What do you do with 1,000 barrels a day that are spilling? That's a separate deal, right? They've got the Coast Guard. They're trying to contain this. What do you actually do to deal with 1,000 barrels of oil going into the ocean right now?</s>OVERTON: Well, they use basically two procedures. First of all, when the oil gets to the surface, a substantial portion of it will evaporate. That's part of the natural weathering processes. Then they have ocean skimmers that skim the thicker patches of oil off the water. And they use a soapy material called a dispersant to basically wash the surface of the water and dissolve the oil down into the water column. When it gets down into the water column, then the natural bacteria can start degrading it and turning it back to carbon dioxide.</s>VELSHI: What's the -- what's the danger to the environment right now?</s>OVERTON: Well, we want to keep it offshore. The danger to the environment is that the weather conditions get bad, strong winds out of the south will push the oil closer to land. And of course, the closest land, there's some fairly fragile coastal areas of Louisiana, some barrier islands, the Chandelier Islands, and then you've got the recreational beaches along the Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida panhandle.</s>VELSHI: All right. We're going to keep an eye on that with you, Ed. Thanks very much for being with us and giving us the -- this information to us so clearly. Ed Overton is an environmental scientist expert, joining us from Baton Rouge.</s>OVERTON: Thank you.</s>VELSHI: All right. Take a look at this tornado. Look at that. This is incredible. I mean, all last week we were looking at incredible tornado pictures, and I didn't think they were going to get bigger than they were. This thing traveled 150 miles across Mississippi on Saturday night. Residents now are trying to pick up the pieces. Reynolds Wolf is in Yazoo City. That's the hardest part -- the hardest-hit part of the state. We're going to check in with him right after the break.