Gulf of Mexico oil spill: Burning should have started a week ago, former NOAA official says

There has been something that has not set well about this blow-out of the BP well in the Gulf and couldn't figure out what I would hear from oil people versus the federal government double speak. Tonight in doing the research I came upon this article from Thursday and everything became clear. There was a plan in place that immediate action should have been taken by the Federal Government, but it wasn't.

"They had pre-approval. The whole reason the plan was created was so we could pull the trigger right away instead of waiting ten days to get permission," Gouget said. "If you read the pre-approval plan, it speaks about Grand Isle, where the spill is. When the wind is blowing offshore out of the north, you have preapproval to burn in that region. If the wind is coming onshore, like it is now, you can't burn at Grand Isle. They waited to do the test burn until the wind started coming onshore."

Asked why officials waited for a week before conducting even a test burn, Gouget said, "Good question. Maybe complacency was the biggest issue. They probably didn't have the materials on hand to conduct the burn, which is unconscionable."

They have preapproval to start immediate action without having to get approval from the the Federal Government, but they didn't -- as the paragraph above points out they waited a week. No matter how the White House wants to spin this, it is another example of the Federal Government not being on top of things. This article explains what should have been done and it wasn't.

Yet, what does Obama do first -- bans additional off-shore drilling. This whole thing smells big time and have to wonder if they decided to wait and let the spill get out of control in order to stop off-shore drilling or is there something more involved? Will we ever know the full truth of what happened with this Administration in charge? We have our doubts that this Administration will ever be honest about any of this as they seek to blame everyone else.

Gulf of Mexico oil spill: Burning should have started a week ago, former NOAA official saysBy Ben Raines
April 29, 2010, 1:33PM

This satellite photo taken April 26, 2010 and provided by DigitalGlobe, shows cleanup vessels working in the area of an oil slick created after the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. A massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is even worse than believed and as the government grows concerned that the rig's operator is ill-equipped to contain it, officials are offering a military response to try to avert a massive environmental disaster along the ecologically fragile U.S. coastline.

MOBILE, Ala. -- Federal officials should have started burning oil off the surface of the Gulf last week, almost as soon as the spill happened, said the former oil spill response coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Ron Gouget, who also managed Louisiana's oil response team for a time, said federal officials missed a narrow window of opportunity to gain control of the spill by burning last week, before the spill spread hundreds of miles across the Gulf, and before winds began blowing toward shore.

He also said the heavy use of dispersants, which cause oil to sink, has likely knocked so much oil into the water column that portions of the Gulf may be on the threshold of becoming toxic to marine life. Add in the oil spreading into the water as it rises from the seafloor, and Gouget said he expected officials would have to think about limiting the use of the dispersants.

"There was a threshold of about 35 part per million for oil in the water. Above that, white shrimp larvae died in the laboratory. I don't know where the levels are now in the Gulf, but that is something they will have to keep an eye on," Gouget said.

Gouget, now an environmental consultant with Windward Associates in Seattle, was part of the group that created the 1994 plan designed to allow federal responders to begin burning oil as soon as a major spill occurred, without an approval process.

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He said the NOAA officials involved at the Unified Command Center in Louisiana know how to respond to spills, and know burning should have started as soon as possible after the initial release was detected. Gouget said they may have been overruled.

"It may have been a political issue. The burn would make a big big plume and lots of soot. Like Valdez, the decisions to get the resources mobilized may not have occurred until it was too late," Gouget said. "This whole thing has been a daily strip tease. At first they thought it was just the diesel, then they said the well wasn't leaking. It's unfortunate they didn't get the burning going right away. They could have gotten 90 percent of the oil before it spread."

Gouget said portions of the oil will still burn, especially the stuff bubbling up from the broken well. (Watch Coast Guard video of test burns here.)

"The bottom line, the limiting factor on burning is can you get it to burn. If it gets too thin, like a sheen, it won't burn because you don't have a fuel," Gouget said. "Generally, it's got to be thick enough, and it can't be too weathered. This stuff is weathering immediately coming out of the pipe, losing the volatiles that burn most easily. They've got to get to it right away."

Gouget said officials could still make a big dent in the amount of oil that will hit seashores over the next several months by burning.

Excerpt: Read more at Mobile Press Register