By Curtis Morgan, Laura Figueroa and Manny Navarro
McClatchy Newspapers
MIAMI – Drifting ooze and tar balls will survive BP’s deep-sea drilling disaster in the Gulf of Mexico better than the oil giant’s embattled chief executive, who will reportedly be shown the door as early as today.
On Sunday, crews took to sea and air to renew work on driving a cement stake into BP’s botched well, and to assess how the remnants of the foul slick it spewed may have shifted after a few days of rough seas and blustery winds brought by meek Tropical Depression Bonnie.
Meanwhile, on Sunday aboard a U.S. Coast Guard plane, nearly 12,000 feet above the Deepwater Horizon oil spill site, Coast Guard Rear Adm. Paul Zukunft looked out from a small window and saw signs of progress where there had once only been continued setbacks.
“It’s presenting itself in the last phase of its life,” Zukunft, the federal site commander for the spill site, told a handful of reporters, referring to the oil streams below.
From initial reports, the most serious damage was to the timetable for permanently plugging the well. Earlier, retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said it would add seven to nine days to work on two relief wells and push back a planned interim step for a “hydrostatic kill,” which will pump heavy drilling mud through a new cap on the existing leaky well, until after Aug. 1.
“Generally the next week will be preparations, making sure everything is ready to go,” said Allen during a conference call Sunday.
Also ready to go: BP’s Tony Hayward.
The BBC and Wall Street Journal both reported the company CEO was negotiating an exit that could be announced within days following three months of cleanup oversight marked by repeated public-relations gaffes.
Hayward displayed an unfortunate penchant for saying and doing the wrong thing, initially downplaying the severity of the spill by noting that the Gulf was a “big ocean” and later noting he just wanted his “life back.”
That sentiment did not play well in Congress or Gulf Coast communities that lost thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in the aftermath of the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon, which killed 11 rig workers.
U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., told The Associated Press that BP’s attitude about making things right is more important than who is running it.
“BP, from I think everybody’s perspective, made a very bad mistake,” she said. “I think what the world expects from BP is an acknowledgment that something was done wrong. I think BP has a long way to go to gain the trust of the people.”
That view was echoed by David Duet, 62, of LaRose, La., as he filled his ice chest at the grocery store in Grand Isle, where he brings his camper every weekend despite repeated tides sullied by the oil.
“I don’t think he’s directly responsible for the spill, but he still had to answer for it,” Duet, who worked on oil rigs for more than 22 years, told The AP. The board of BP, which has spent $4 billion on the cleanup to date and has lost about 40 percent of its market value since the blowout, would have to approve any change.
A potential successor, according to numerous reports: BP Managing Director Robert Dudley, who has become a familiar face to American television viewers from his frequent appearances at news conference as he oversees the company’s spill response.
Early Sunday, a drill rig began reconnecting to the relief tunnel that will pump in mud and cement to seal the well for good, Allen said. Crews had pulled nearly a mile of segmented steel casing pipes out of the water Thursday and Friday after the government ordered an evacuation ahead of Bonnie.
Allen said he expected the Development Driller III, which is working on the primary relief well, to be fully connected by midnight.
Just as critical, seismic tests showed that no oil had leaked from the sea floor near the site during the storm.
Crews must first finish the final casting for the relief well and pour cement over it to keep it in place before the “hydrostatic top kill” operation can begin. After saying Saturday that the top kill could begin within three to five days, Allen said Sunday a more conservative and accurate estimate is the first week of August.
While Bonnie amounted to little more than rain and wind gusts by the time it reached the Louisiana coast early Sunday, it brought good news in the way of winds that were able to disperse and dilute some of the cocktail of crude and seawater in the Gulf.
The light storm also meant ships could be redeployed to continue in the cleanup efforts, and air reconnaissance flights like the one being flown on by Zukunft, could resume tracking the oil.
“We’re seeing a couple of pockets of heavier oil and that’s what we’re targeting with these flights,” Zukunft said, over the loud buzz of the plane’s propellers.
Every day 150 air reconnaissance planes hover over the vast stretches of the Gulf Coast from Panama City Beach to Galveston, Texas, mapping the latest oil stream sightings. Coast Guard crews snap shots of the visible oil streams and floating tar patches, with cameras equipped with GPS capability, that provide detailed coordinates of the gunk’s location.
More than three months into the environmental crisis, the oil sightings continue to diminish in size and volume, as skimmer boats work around the clock scooping up oil floating on the surface.
“What we’re seeing is that the oil has dissolved into a light sheen,” Zukunft said. “Its consistency is not thick enough to be picked up by skimmers.”
Cleanup efforts are now focused on scooping up more concentrated blankets of oil still floating around.
“The patches of oil that we’re seeing now may persist for another 30 days, but we’re able to get a better handle on them now that there’s no new oil being released,” Zukunft said.
From aboard the flight, boats and barges could be seen still circling the Macondo well site. A promising sign, Zukunft said, considering most of the cleanup vessels had cleared the area Friday and weren’t expected back until Tuesday in lieu of the storm threat.
“By Monday we expect to be back 100 percent,” he said.