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No oil found Thursday at Macondo site
BP to send ROV tonight just to be sure
A day's worth of searching by boat and air turned up no signs of the oil reported Wednesday by the Mobile Press-Register at the site of the Deepwater Horizon spill, sources told Upstream late Thursday.
Kathrine Schmidt 25 August 2011 19:57 GMT
But BP, which said it visited the site with two separate boats and observed no evidence of a sheen, will send a remotely operated vehicle down to the wellsite Thursday night for a "routine inspection."
The goal is "to further confirm that there is no release," said Daren Beaudo, a spokesman for the company, which has juggled various unconfirmed reports of oil in the vicinity.
The Coast Guard on Thursday sent an airplane and the cutter Razorbill to Mississippi Canyon Block 252, the site of the plugged gusher that caused last year's devastating spill. The air search lasted at least four hours, he said.
"Nobody out there saw anything,” Chief Petty Officer John Edwards told Upstream. "We searched the area all day. There's not much else we can do."
Late Wednesday, the Press-Register published a lengthy written and photographic account capturing a scene in which “hundreds of small, circular patches of oily sheen dotted the surface within a mile of the wellhead.”
Each “expanding bloom released a pronounced and pungent petroleum smell,” reporter Ben Raines wrote.
The report, the third in less than two weeks claiming to spot oil at the site, put BP back on the defensive.
Chemists performed tests for the newspaper and determined the oil was sweet Louisiana crude that could “possibly” be from the well. But the sheens could also be due to natural seepages and oil escaping from the wreckage of the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig, experts cited by the paper said.
Beaudo, the BP spokesman, said Thursday the company had conducted a flyover on 20 August and "saw no evidence of hydrocarbons within a 20 mile radius". Scientists doing previously scheduled work this week for a Natural Resource Damage Assessment on a nearby vessel and will sample any sheens that are observed, he added.
“We stand by what we said last week, neither BP nor the Coast Guard has seen any scientific evidence that oil is leaking from the Macondo well which was permanently sealed almost a year ago,” Beaudo said in a statement.
“We welcome the opportunity to test any hydrocarbon sheens detected in the area of the well.”
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which regulates US drilling, said it was monitoring the situation.
"We are aware of the reports and are currently coordinating with BP, USCG, and NOAA to investigate the sightings," spokeswoman Eileen Angelico said.
Edwards, the Coast Guard spokesman, said that often in the case of a severe spill, a report will be called in and authorties can continually see it getting worse, he said.
But both before and after the Deepwater Horizon spill, the Coast Guard gets thousands of reports annually of "mystery sheens" that are so small they disappate quickly.
"Sheens are a part of business in the Gulf of Mexico," he said. "Now people are -- rightfully so -- a lot more sensitive."
Published: 25 August 2011 19:57 GMT | Last updated: 25 August 2011 22:54 GMT