TELEVISION COMMENTATORS yesterday began asking whether the oil spill off the coast of Louisiana “will be Obama’s Katrina moment”, an allusion to the hurricane in 2005 that gave George W Bush’s administration a reputation for tardy and inadequate response to disaster.
Reversing a controversial announcement in March, the White House said it will suspend expansion of off-shore drilling until the spill’s causes are known.
At the same time, oil began coming ashore in the southernmost part of Louisiana, at Pass a’Loutre. Experts fear an ecological and economic disaster. “We’re taking every step we can to help protect our coast, wildlife, environment and our people,” Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana said. “We absolutely have to be prepared for the worst.”
Mr Jindal said he was worried that “the booms currently deployed are not effective”. He has asked the Department of Defense to deploy up to 6,000 soldiers and airmen for 90 days to protect his state from the spill.
The slick now covers 2,100 sq m, an area almost as big as Delaware. Eleven workers were killed when the Deepwater Horizon rig, owned by British Petroleum (BP), exploded and sank 52 miles southeast of Venice, Louisiana, on April 20th. A pipe on the ocean floor, under more than a mile of water, is leaking in three places, spewing 210,000 gallons (795,000 litres) of crude into the Gulf each day. Earlier this week, BP said the spill amounted to 42,000 gallons a day.
It is much more difficult to clean oil from the delicate ecosystem of marshes, estuaries and wetlands than from beaches and rocks, as was the case when the Exxon Valdez tanker ran aground in Alaska in 1989. Ten wildlife sanctuaries lie in the path of the oil spill. The US Department of Corrections is to train prison inmates to clean wildlife of oil.
Mr Obama yesterday announced he had dispatched the secretaries of the Interior and Homeland Security, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, the presidential assistant for Energy and Climate Change Policy and the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to Louisiana.
Mr Obama noted that “BP is ultimately responsible under the law for paying the costs of response and clean-up operations”. But he said the government was “fully prepared to meet our responsibilities to any and all affected communities”. Mr Obama said there were now five staging areas to protect the shoreline, 1,900 response personnel in the area and 300 ships and aircraft on the scene. The government has laid 217,000 feet of protective boom.
Reports from Louisiana spoke of a powerful smell. Health authorities on the Gulf coast warned that residents could suffer nausea, vomiting and headaches from exposure to petroleum fumes. They were advised to stay indoors, to use air conditioning and to avoid strenuous activities.
Mr Jindal said he has asked several times for the Coast Guard’s plans to handle the disaster, but has “not seen a quantifiable plan”. It could take up to a month to contain the spill, and 90 days for BP to complete the $100 million (€75 million) relief well intended to lower pressure in the oil field and slow the leak.