(AP) - A summary of events on Thursday,
June 10, Day 51 of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill that began with the April 20 explosion and fire on the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon, owned by Transocean Ltd. and leased by BP PLC, which is in charge of cleanup and containment. The blast killed 11 workers. Since then, oil has been pouring into the Gulf from a blown-out undersea well.
COLLECTING OIL
BP plans to boost its ability to directly capture oil leaking from the well in the Gulf of Mexico by early next week. Kent Wells, BP's senior vice president of exploration and production, said a semi-submersible drilling rig should be set up early next week to capture and burn
about 420,000 gallons of oil a day. Once on board, the oil and gas collected from the well will be sent down a boom and burned at sea. A drill ship already at the scene can process a maximum of 756,000 gallons of oil daily that's sucked up through a containment cap sitting on the well head.
DAMAGE CLAIMS
The
Obama administration said BP has agreed to expedite the payment of claims to businesses and individuals whose livelihoods have been disrupted by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Tracy Wareing, of the National Incident Command office, said administration officials raised a "pressing concern" with BP executives during a meeting Wednesday about the time BP has been taking to provide relief payment. She said the company will change the way it processes such claims. Among other things, it will drop the current practice of waiting to make such payments until businesses have closed their books for each month.
more
The catastrophic explosion that caused an oil spill from a BP offshore drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico has reached the shoreline. Efforts to manage the spill with controlled burning, dispersal and plugging the leak have so far been unsuccessful.
