Oil spill: Obama to travel to Gulf of Mexico
Updated on 01 May 2010
President Barack Obama is to travel to the Gulf coast in the next 48 hours after pushing energy firm BP to help prevent an environmental disaster as a huge oil spill threatens the Louisiana coast line.
Oil has been pouring into the Gulf of Mexico at a rate of 200,000 gallons per day from the ruptured deepwater well Deepwater Horizon off the coast of Louisiana.
All efforts to stop the flow of oil have so far failed.
The giant slick is threatening the coastline around the Mississippi River Delta and the many native wildlife species there. Local businesses are also bracing for the worst.
Local weather conditions are hampering the clean-up effort and appear to be driving the oil towards the coastline more rapidly then first feared.
The oil can coat bird's feathers preventing them from flying and can burn their skin and eyes. If consumed, it would cause breathing problems too.
The rig exploded last Friday, making it BP's fourth major incident in the US in the last four years. 11 men were killed and President Obama has ordered a complete halt to all oil exploration in the area for now, pending a review into the cause of the explosion.
The governor of Louisiana Bobby Jindal has declared a state of emergency, and warned that the slick "threatens the state's natural resources."
He also asked the Defence Department for funds to deploy up to 6,000 National Guard troops to help with the expected clean-up.
Channel 4 News Science Correspondent Julian Rush reports:
With the winds forecast to shift to the south-east, oil engineers are in a race against time to prevent the growing oil slick from hitting the Louisiana shore near New Orleans.
At its closest, the slick is only 16 miles from the coast, and it is forecast to come ashore by Friday. The outflow of water from the huge river may push some of it back but no-one's pretending the environmental impact won't be immense - the fragile ecosystem of the Mississippi River delta is very delicate.
NASA satellite imagery shows the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
There's the long term solution. A second drilling rig is now on site and will "spud" this weekend (start drilling). The aim is to drill down to meet the existing well in the seabed beneath the well head, to divert the flow and cap it again.
It's been done often enough before, but it's difficult - they have to drill down and sideways for several thousand feet to hit a target that is two feet wide, several hundred feet underground. And it will take at least a month.
