Transcript from press briefing on ongoing response to oil spill

biguglyjoe · May 1, 2010

<div id="postDateBar">
DATE: May 01, 2010 19:25:21 CST
</div>

<div id="headlines">
<div class="headline"><h1>Transcript from press briefing on ongoing
response to oil spill</h1></div>
</div>PRESS BRIEFING BY
COAST GUARD COMMANDANT THAD ALLEN, AND ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT FOR
HOMELAND SECURITY JOHN BRENNAN ON ONGOING RESPONSE TO OIL SPILLVia Conference
Call3:52 P.M. EDTMR. McDONOUGH: Thanks, everybody, for joining
us this afternoon. We're joined today by Admiral Thad Allen, Commandant
of the United States Coast Guard, and also as of earlier this
afternoon, the National Incident Commander for continued response to the
oil spill in the Gulf; and by John Brennan, Assistant to the President
for Homeland Security.We'll go into opening remarks from Admiral
Allen and John Brennan in just one minute. I want to just underscore
that this conference today is being coordinated by the Joint Information
Center. The Joint Information Center includes communications
professionals from each of the agencies involved in this interagency
government-wide response effort. And all the information as it relates
to the response -- the federal government's response to this spill
will be coordinated and sent out through the Joint Information Center.You can get on the Joint Information Center's
release list by going to deepwaterhorizonresponse.com. That's all one
word -- deepwaterhorizonresponse.com. With that, let me turn it over to Admiral
Allen for some opening remarks. Sir. ADMIRAL ALLEN: Thank you, Denis. Good
afternoon to you all. This afternoon it was announced that I would be
the National Incident Commander for this continuing response. I'd like
to provide some context at the outset and make a couple of comments
about myself personally and some background that I have. And then John
Brennan will make some remarks. Regarding this incident, as you all know,
this began with a catastrophic explosion on the drilling rig, followed
by what was an extraordinary search and rescue case, where over 90
people were evacuated and three were critically injured and evacuated
by Coast Guard helicopters. And unfortunately, we had a lot of losses
of life. That was followed by three intensive days of searches of
nearly 30 aircraft and vessel sorties, over 5,000 square miles
searched.As the fire
continued, most of the product was rising through the pipe but consumed
by the fire. When the drill unit sank on Thursday, we began a series
of events where we were trying to discover the implications of the
sinking, the status of the riser and the status of the wellhead. That
required extensive investigation by remotely operated vehicles over the
entire 5,000 length of pipe that was arrayed around the floor of the
ocean.In that period of
discovery we continued to find a leak and then another leak and then
finally a third leak late last week, and in the course of doing that,
adjusted our response, the commitment of resources there; work with
British Petroleum as a responsible party to make sure they adhered to
their responsibilities; and continued our coordinating work in the
interagencyAs the complexity
and the asymmetry and anomalous nature of this event continue to reveal
itself, we continue to adapt and make sure that we are leaning forward
and capable of responding to the worst-case scenario. At the outset,
when we realized that the unit had sunk, we made preparations to stage
equipment for a worst-case scenario. The deployment of our equipment
was not related to any of the early estimates related to 1,000 barrels a
day or 5,000 barrels a day, and in fact, any exact estimation of
what's flowing out of those pipes down there is probably impossible at
this time due to the depth of the water and our ability to try and
assess that from remotely operated vehicles and video.Our preparations
were for something way beyond that, and we continue to stage large
amounts of equipment, and direct BP to do the things that they're
responsible for.My assignment is
just a further evolution in our adaptation to this event to make sure
that we can carry out our responsibilities and to ensure that British
Petroleum carries out their responsibilities.As a matter of
history for you all, we have something called a spill of national
significance exercise required every three years under the Oil
Pollution Act of 1990. The most recent exercise was held in -- last
month, and we can provide details on that separately. In April of 2002,
there was a spill of national significance exercise held in New
Orleans that dealt with implications of a wellhead loss in the Gulf of
Mexico. I was assigned as the united carrier commander at that time
and I was the national incident commander for that exercise.This is a
continuation of longstanding relationships that I have had in the Gulf
Coast for nearly 10 years, and also reflects the ability to interact
with the folks down there as I did during the assignment as the
principal federal officer for Hurricane Katrina. I'm honored that I've
been asked to do this. I appreciate the confident that the President
and Secretary Napolitano have in me, and I'm committed to working
across interagency to assure the success of this response.MR. McDONOUGH:
Thank you, Admiral.We'll go to John
Brennan, and then we'll be open to your questions.John Brennan,
Assistant to the President for Homeland Security. John.MR. BRENNAN: Good
afternoon, everyone. As Admiral Allen said, this has been an evolving
situation over the past 10 or 12 days or so, and the President has been
fully engaged from the beginning and wants to make sure that we are
being as proactive as possible so we can respond to this situation.He set a couple
principles that he has wanted to make sure that we are following. One
is to make sure that this an integrated effort. Clearly the federal
government as a whole needs to be working with BP, that has
responsibility as far as the cleanup is concerned, but also make sure
that the federal government, BP is working very closely with the state
and local communities that are there.He also wants to
make sure that we are moving aggressively and adapting to what is a
dynamic situation. As Admiral Allen said, the Secretary of Homeland
Security declared that this was a spill of national significance this
past Thursday, after additional leaks were discovered, and therefore,
moved quickly to name Admiral Allen as the National Incident Commander.There are several
components of this and I wanted to make sure we're able to address all
of them. In the initial phases it was the search and recovery effort
that really consumed and was the focus of the priority efforts there.
And then once there was a better understanding exactly what the
situation entailed -- these have moved along several tracks -- one was
to make sure we could move aggressively to stop a leak and to cap the
well. And that has been going on from the very beginning.But also, though,
while that effort is underway, we want to make sure that we're able to
contain the spread of the oil, and that's why the deployment of all the
various vessels and the booms that are there so that we can limit that
spread of the oil as the leak continues. Also, though, we need to move
aggressively to mitigate the environmental damage to the coast and the
coastal waters as this spill spreads to the coast, but also to ensure
that we're working with the states as well as with BP to address the
impact on the local communities in those Gulf states.And while these
efforts are underway, various activities are being attempted to see if
we can mitigate the impact of this spill. And there are some promising
developments as far as some of the technologies that are being used on
top of the water, in addition to the in-situ burns, but also some of
the dispersant options that are being pursued right now.BP also I think has
been rather forward leaning as far as their commitment to the local
communities to hire, employ and train the local citizens for this
cleanup, so that commitment is strong.The infrastructure
is being put in place both in terms of BP as well as the federal
government. And with the JIC and others there, the appropriate points
of contact are being made available to the state and local communities,
as well as to the citizens.Again, as the
President has observed this evolving situation, he has directed that no
effort be spared to ensure that we're able to address the various
dimensions of this challenge that we face right now. And that's why
with someone with Admiral Allen's experience to head this up as the
National Incident Commander allows us to bring this together in a very
unified manner and move forward aggressively on all these various
fronts.MR. McDONOUGH:
Okay, John, Admiral Allen, thank you much. With that, why don't we open
it to your questions.Q Admiral, you've
obviously had a lot of experience in this area over the last several
years. Can you talk a little bit about what will be happening in terms
of the key efforts being made to try to cut this off -- and I'm
talking in terms of the federal government effort in terms of trying to
cut off the flow of oil, as opposed to just the efforts that BP is
taking. Will there be an effort made by the military to come in with
submersibles or any other sorts of efforts to help deal with that.ADMIRAL ALLEN:
Going into this thing we all understand there are four significant
things that have to be accomplished. You can establish them as
operational priorities. The first thing is to stop this thing at the
source. Continuing to fight this thing at the surface and on the shore
is not the right way to do that. The extensive pressure on British
Petroleum Industry together to come up with technical solutions to first
stop the leakage that is apparent around the wellhead and the pipe
riser, and then to facilitate the drilling of a relief well which will
relieve the pressure on the current well and allow it to be capped --
that will only remove the threat, when the well is capped.Second, we need to
attack the oil that is there at sea with all means available --
mechanical skimming, dispersant delivery, in-situ burning -- and we are
continuing to do that. That is very much dependent on weather and sea
condition.We need to then
protect the resources, and that's prestage -- to deploy boom around the
resources from Southwest Pass around to the northeast and wherever the
spill trajectory takes us.Finally, we need to
recover and mitigate the impacted areas. And we are doing that right
now. There are town hall meetings that have been held in southern
Louisiana. We have elicited the aid of volunteer boatmen. We have
mechanisms by which people can volunteer to assist us in this.Regarding the
inclusion of the Department of Defense and/or the Navy, I've been in
constant communication with my counterparts and in the last 72 hours
have had two conversations with Chairman Mike Mullen, Chairman of the
Joint Staff, and Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Stockton. We have
developed a force generation cell in Robert, Louisiana, that has
direct contact with Assistant Secretary Stockton, to pass immediate
requests for assistance to the Department of Defense.I'm completely
satisfied with the support we're getting, and we're validating the
requirements and passing them to them as we got them. We need to
understand, though, that the mere presence of, say, a Navy ship doesn’t
necessarily add to the response, and a lot of the submersibles that are
being used there that in some cases are very technically superior,
have the ability to pick up small screwdrivers at a depth of 5,000
feet. And we need to make sure that there is a match for our
requirements with what DOD can offer.We have the complete
support of Secretary Gates and the Chairman in that regard, and I will
have no reservation about asking them. Q Thank you for taking the question.
For the past few weeks we've seen the size -- from 1,000 barrels a day
to 5,000 barrels a day. Now experts are saying that the spread could
be approaching the size of Puerto Rico. Admiral, you said estimates at
the leak are impossible, in your own words. Do you have a good handle
on how big this leak is? And if you don't have a handle on how big
the leak is, does that hamper your ability to deal with it? ADMIRAL ALLEN: I didn’t say estimates are
impossible. Estimates are what they are -- the precision. I think in
this case, the difference between 1,000 barrels a day and 5,000 barrels
day -- if you look at potentially this can go on for 45 or 90 days if
we don't cap it, the rate is less important than the accumulation of
oil on the surface, and at that point, really it would be an
undetermined amount of oil that's in the reservoir that's 18,000 feet
below the wellhead.That's the reason
the focus has got to be to stop it at the source. We can talk about the
difference between a thousand and 5,000 barrels a day, but quite
frankly, the continued leakage of anything for that period of time is
going to cause an extraordinary amount of problems for us. We've got
to attack this on the surface.So the estimates are
useful, but we are planning far beyond that because we don't know how
many days this will occur. That's the reason it's so important to stop
this at the wellhead. Q Admiral, you said there were some
positive developments today. Can you just bring us up to date on what
those were exactly? And can you also be give us a little bit more in
terms of when you expect this to hit Alabama and Mississippi -- in
terms of the size of the slick? ADMIRAL ALLEN: Sure. We've had pretty
good success when the weather has allowed us to deploy dispersants on
the oil that's on the surface. Dispersants act like -- they separate
the oil in much smaller particles in the water stream and natural
bacteria can degrade it.Industry working
together -- and this is a real positive sign in and of itself -- but
British Petroleum operating with their private sector partners came up
with an idea to put a pipe down 5,000 feet at the source of the leaks
and apply dispersants where the oil is leaking out of the riser pipe,
with the hope that it would disperse the oil there and it would not
rise to the surface. A test application was made and it appeared
visually to have an effect. What we are doing now is establishing the
conditions to do another test, and we want to make sure by taking water
samples and analyzing the impact of the dispersants that there's not a
deleterious effect on the ecosystem down thereAbsent of that, this
looks like this could be a promising way to reduce the amount of oil
that reaches the surface. It doesn’t stop the oil at its source, but
it significantly mitigates the amount that will make it to the surface
and ultimately could be a threat to beaches. And in answer to the second part of your
question, over the lifecycle of this event the wind has actually moved
around 270 degrees of a compass, which is three-quarters of it, from
west to north, to south, to southeast where it's at right now. There's a
line of weather coming through. It's very rough and windy down there,
as you know. The prevailing winds have been from the south and
southeast, which would mean it's pushing towards Louisiana. We know
it's lingering offshore -- there's been some sheening that's approached
shore. But at the time of this conversation, we have no reported
actual contact with the heavy oil on the beaches in and around
Louisiana. As the weather moves around from the south
to the southwest,which it could over the next 48 to 72 hours,
that potentially starts to put Mississippi and Alabama at risk. And
what we do is we do three-day trajectories and they're updated a couple
of times a day, and it allows us to try and figure out where we need
to put those resources. We have an inordinate amount of boom and other
types of materials, but we need to have it where the oil is going to
be and the real challenge is trying to predict that. But I think we
need to be looking at the implications for Mississippi and Alabama over
the next 72 to 96 hours. Q Hi, thanks for taking my question. I
was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the shipping impact
today. I was wondering if the Southwest Pass is still open and if
you're getting other updates on that situation. ADMIRAL ALLEN: Sure. Actually that's a
great question. There are a number of fairways that are used in that
area to approach not only Southwest Pass for the entrance to the
Mississippi River, but ports such as Gulfport, Biloxi, Pascagoula and
probably, notably, Mobile after all of those.There are actually
established what we would call fairways in marine navigation. They're
not marked like highways are, but traffic -- shipping traffic adheres
to those because it increases safety and security of shipping.Right now there is
no significant impact of the oil on those fairways, but we are watching
that. We're watching it for a couple of reasons. Number one, if we
try to do cleanup operations where shipping is trying to move through
we're going to have to come up with a protocol whereby we either stop
shipping, or the shipping is allowed to pass through the contaminated
area and decontaminated before it moves further on. If there's going
to be an impact on marine transportation we'll activate what is called a
marine transportation recovery unit that will prioritize shipping,
deal with the private sector on where product has to be delivered, and
the implications of non-delivery.This is a protocol
that we set up in St. Louis to handle the reestablishment of ports after
Hurricane Katrina and also Ike and Gustav. It's also the way we
handle the waterway if there's been an oil spill like there was last
year on the Mississippi River.So we're watching that very closely. There is
no impact at this time, but we have a protocol to handle it should it
happen. Q Thank you, good afternoon. Perhaps
this is for both of you, or perhaps Homeland Security. I'm wondering
about the military dispersing chemicals -- that has been dropped from
planes. How effective have the C130 drops been? Are they happening
often? Are there plans to increase that? ADMIRAL ALLEN: There have been. We've
been dropping dispersants from commercial aircraft since the start of
the incident. We have gone to DOD and asked for two more C130s -- this
will increase our capacity. On any individual sortie by a C130, they
can cover 250 acres of oil, and it has proven extremely effective in
dispersing the oil into the water column.We are going to
continue to use those two DOD C130s and we will fly and deliver
dispersants whenever we have the weather to do it. We have a
significant stockpile of dispersants and we've gone back to the supply
chain to make sure they are ramping up. They were not producing any
and we we're relying on stock at the start of this, but going back to
the supply chain through British Petroleum, they've increased their
production to 70,000 gallons a day. MR. McDONOUGH: This is Denis again. I
would just -- as it relates to DOD, John Brennan here convened another
in the latest of principal committee meetings yesterday afternoon. And
both Chairman Mullen and Secretary Gates were on the call and made
very clear then again, as they have throughout the week, that they are
leaning very far forward in providing material as needed including from
day one. ADMIRAL ALLEN: I might add, I'm in a
unique position as the Commandant of the Coast Guard -- by Title 10 I'm
not a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but I do sit in the tank
sessions with the service chiefs. I interact with them several times a
week, and it's been very easy for me to do to coordinate with them.
And I appreciate the leadership of Secretary Gates and Chairman Mullen. Q My question is about BP. How do you
judge how they're doing. Are they doing enough to address the problem
and the cleanup? And who else can the U.S. turn to if it needs
additional help? Other United States companies, for example. ADMIRAL ALLEN: Well, I think we all
understand that BP will be graded on the things that I established early
on that were the goals of this operation: number one, the ability to
stop the leak at its source; number two, the ability to attack the oil
at sea; number three, to protect the resources ashore; and number four,
to recover and mitigate the impacted areas. We've had extensive briefings by the BP
leadership. Earlier today the deputy secretaries of the affected
departmentsHad an hour-long brief, and I was involved in
that briefing as well. BP is reaching out to the local communities
establishing town hall meetings, places for volunteers to enroll, and
actually are engaging the local shipping community in southern
Louisiana as vessels of opportunity. We continue to monitor them. They are
responsible for this spill, they are paying for the cost of the spill.
The best way I'd described this is BP is the responsible party, but the
federal on-scene coordinator, I now as the National Incident Commander,
am the accountable party. Q This may be best for Mr. Brennan. To
what extent are you bearing in mind the lessons of the federal
government's response to Hurricane Katrina as you go ahead and mount
another major response in a very similar area? MR. BRENNAN: Well, I think one of the
things that the President said early on is he wants to be very
aggressive and proactive, and not wait for and having to respond to
developments, but to anticipate them, and therefore move aggressively.
And as Admiral Allen said, the interaction right now with BP and the
Department of Defense is trying to make sure they're doing everything
possible moving it forward.Clearly there are
some lessons from Katrina and there have been some adjustments within
the federal government as a result of Katrina. But one of the things
the President wants to make sure is that we're not going to rest until
these leaks are stopped, the well is capped and oil is cleaned up. And
so therefore, what we want to do is to make sure we're moving on all
these fronts that Admiral Allen has identified -- the containment, the
stopping of the leaks, and also the mitigation on the shoreline.And so the President wants to ensure that no
effort is being spared. Clearly this is something where there has to
be a strong partnership with BP. They have the responsibility, but now
with Admiral Allen at the helm, we want to make sure that the federal
government as a whole is taking the lead in making sure that everything
is being done and that no effort is spared in this regard. ADMIRAL ALLEN: I think it's also useful to
make a distinction between the legal basis and the funding for which
both of these response actions are carried out. Actions following
Hurricane Katrina were pursuant to emergency declarations made under
the Stafford Act. A response to a spill of national significance are
coordinated and the funding source is the U.S. (inaudible) Trust Fund,
which is funded from a tax on crude oil that's imported in this
country, an 8 cent a barrel tax. And that fund is $1.6 billion right
now. And the National Contingency Plan, the National Response Team and
the National Incident Command is the mechanism that is by long statute
for response to an oil spill. So while they're both catastrophic
events, there is a difference of the basic statutory authorities for the
response and the funding that's involved. Q Admiral, you mentioned at the
beginning that there was an exercise that was done in 2002 that sort of
looked like -- a similar sort of event. Can you talk a little bit
about what that exercise taught you guys and what you have learned from
this that is different? ADMIRAL ALLEN: I can. And I was the
National Incident Commander. One of the things we learned was to create
a vertically integrated organization that links the local response
requirements to what we call a regional response team, which is a
collection of the federal agencies that have responsibilities, and then
have those requirements generated passed up to the National Response
Team in Washington and how that's integrated across the federal
government. And in fact, as a direct result of those exercises and
other exercises, the protocol by which we've been integrating our
response from day one on this event have been guided by the lessons
learned from the previous spill of national significance exercises. There's actually a report on that. I don't
have it with me right now, but we can probably make that public. Q Thank you very much. This is a
question for either the Admiral or Mr. Brennan. Is contamination of the
shoreline inevitable at this point, given the size of the slick? ADMIRAL ALLEN: Well, the inevitability of
contact of the shoreline is really dependent on the weather. I've been
telling folks Mother Nature gets a vote in this thing. It's probably
the most unpredictable thing we've got -- is know what the weather is.
Sustained weather from any direction is going to push the oil towards
shore. It's pushed it very close to the shore of Louisiana. I think
we need to prepare that it will come ashore. We'd obviously like the
wind to change and not to happen at all, but the fact of the matter is
it's likely to contact shore in Louisiana, Mississippi or Alabama at
some point.That's the reason
we've activated command posts, prestaged or put boom in the water of
almost a million feet, and been prepared with our local partners to
identify those areas that need to be protected and boomed off. And
that is done with the concurrence of state and local authorities and
the trustees of folks like Fish and Wildlife Service and Marine Fishery
Service.So I can't give you
an exact crystal ball on when and if it's going to happen. There's
enough oil out there I think it's really plausible to assume it's going
to impact the shoreline. The real question is when and where. Q I was wondering if you could, first of
all, give us an update on the progress of the drilling of the relief
well, which I understand began today. And then also, give us some more
information on the -- there were a couple of rigs that were shut down
today, I understand voluntarily -- give us some more information on how
many rigs have been shut down and the effect on production. ADMIRAL ALLEN: Let me start with the first
part, and I'll have to get some other information and get back to you
on the second. Regarding the drilling of the relief well, I think it
would be a misnomer to say that drilling started today. What they are
doing is they're staging equipment in preparation to drill.One of these
drilling operations requires anchoring systems, it requires to put the
platform in place and get equipment in place down to the seabed to be
able to start the drilling. That is all started. I think the actual
physical drilling will come at a later date. But the vessels are
arriving on scene and activity is beginning to drill the relief well,
but I don't think actual drilling began today. I think preparations and
placing of equipment began today.And I would have to
go back and get some information -- I've been in meetings today about
shutdown. I do know that we've had a couple of rigs that have shut
down for environmental reasons due to the proximity of oil, just out of
an abundance of caution for the employees that are onboard. But we
can follow up with you on that. Q First I just want to say I feel
immeasurably better to hear you're in charge. Beyond that, I've been
talking to some folks who say that crimping the 2 foot diameter, 1 inch
steel pipe occurs fairly regularly in the offshore environment. I'm
wondering what the risks of attempting such a thing would be on this
pipe. And I'm wondering about the state of the riser, whether you all
think it's going to crumble at any point or if we have any kind of time
frame. ADMIRAL ALLEN: Well, there are
technologies to crimp a pipe. One of the real problems we're having
working in that area is what I would call the tyranny of distance and
the tyranny of depth. Trying to use some of these technologies at that
depth with remotely operated vehicles is proving to be somewhat of a
challenge. The riser is already crimped about two feet above what they
call the stack, and the stack is where the broad preventers are placed
above the wellhead, and those are the ones that we're not sure are
activated or activated all the eay.There was already a
crimp in that pipe. What we don't know is whether or not that is
what's reducing the flow to what we have right now, or a much larger
flow would be expected if there was a total wellhead failure. There
are some plans in place that are being evaluated where the pipe could
be crimped or potentially just cut off and another blowout preventer
just placed above it. The real problem is the engineering associated
with that and how to mechanically accomplish that 5,000 feet down.But both those
scenarios of crimping and cutting the pipe and replacing it with a new
blowout preventer are both being looked at by British Petroleum right
now. They are a high degree of difficulty and there are more risks
associated with that than the current mitigating efforts to replace,
which are to build a cofferdam to place over the leak and to collect
the oil and pipe it to the surface and the test that we talked about
earlier regarding the use of dispersants. Q I am an attorney in New York. I
represent a Scandinavian company that might have the solution. What it
does is that it normally would take care of floods, and it could
potentially just sink down a tube that would be sank over the place
with (inaudible) and thereby channeling the oil up to a dam that would
be artificially created. Is there anybody that would like to speak to
me about that? And in that case, who should I contact, say, on Monday? ADMIRAL ALLEN: Well, what you're saying is
actually a variation on a theme we've already considered, which is
putting a cofferdam over it and evacuating the oil and pumping it --
and it sounds like -- I think they're willing to listen to anything.
Where we're evaluating new technologies and people that want to promote
ideas, you can go to British Petroleum directly, if you would like.
But we will make available later on -- the first-generation cell in
Robert, Louisiana, are operating under Admiral Landry under the
direction of Rear Admiral Jim Watson, U.S. Coast Guard -- are the ones
that are dealing with requirements and they're also the ones that are
dealing with the Department of Defense and requests of types of
capability we don't have.I'm not sitting here
with the number in front of me, but I would recommend you go directly
to BP with your proposal or to the Unified Command in Robert,
Louisiana, and Rear Admiral James Watson. Q Good to talk with you again, Admiral
Allen, and I'm very glad we're not talking about Alaska this time. The
(inaudible) in the lower Mississippi is highly controlled. Has there
been any thought given to possibly increasing the outflow of the
Mississippi to provide a little counter-pressure against the inflow of
the oil slick? ADMIRAL ALLEN: That's an interesting
question. It hasn’t been discussed in the context of the Mississippi
River. I did an overflight of the affected area three days ago with
Governor Riley of Alabama, and he raised the rhetorical question which
we are looking into right now, on whether or not the flow of the five
rivers of Mobile Bay might be adjusted from reservoirs from
hydroelectric plants upstream to increase the pressure from out of
Mobile Bay, which is the same question you have raised. We have posed
that back to the Unified Command in Robert, Louisiana, and we are
investigating it.So just to let you
know that was raised in another context, but I do understand that and we
do understand the tremendous pressure on the outflow of the river and
the ability to adjust that outflow. I think it's more controllable and
maybe more feasible in terms of what can be possible at Mobile Bay,
but we'll continue to look at it. Q I wanted to circle back to possible
production curtailments. I mean, can you comment on how much actual
infrastructure is either in the range of the flow and what the
potential impact there may be? Also, as far as -- if I understand this
correctly, you said that shipping fairways haven’t been affected yet.
I was wondering what exactly would it take to limit traffic in the
fairways -- ADMIRAL ALLEN: Let me work backwards.
Where the current trajectory of the oil spill sits right now -- and
maybe this is one of the good things that has happened -- is actually
between all the fairways. They're not impacted -- the fairways -- into
the Southwest Pass or the Mississippi River, nor are the impacting at
this point the fairways of the Gulfport, Biloxi, Pascagoula or Mobile.The potential exists
that that could happen as the spill moves around and potentially moves
towards Mississippi or Alabama. Our way to handle that is to put
together a interagency and private sector team that takes a look at the
implications of denying traffic to pass through -- economic
implications.To give you a good
example, we had an oil spill at the intersection of the Lake Charles
shipping channel and Intercoastal Waterway and also one at Port Arthur
not long ago, which basically stopped barge traffic and ship traffic.
And normally we would not let anybody pass through a contaminated area,
but what you do is you put the oil on the hull of the ship and it
takes the oil someplace else -- But in the case where we had to make a
delivery of product or faced a $30 million or $40 million cost of
shutting down and restarting, we authorized the vessel to go through
and be decontaminated on the other side.These are
case-by-case situations that have to be evaluated by a team of both
government, state and local and private sector folks that take a look
at the implications of those decisions.As far as the effect on production, to my
knowledge there has not been a significant impact on production. There
is a team that's been established across the interagency at the
direction of the principals and the deputies to take a look at the
economic conditions, and that information is being generated right
now. As of this conversation, I do not have any specific information
on the impact on production, but we will look into that. MR. McDONOUGH: All right, why don't we go
for one more question here. Q Hi. Thanks for doing this. My
question is I'd like to get a sense of kind of the historical
perspective on this. I recognize that each one of these events is
going to be -- how do you say -- unprecedented, but can you compare this
and maybe if there's any lessons learned from each (inaudible) -- ADMIRAL ALLEN: Yes, I can. We've actually
gone back and done some historical work of going back actually three
decades of what's happened in the Gulf of Mexico. I think what's
unprecedented about this event is the depth of the water and the
complexity associated with working with a wellhead at 5,000 feet, the
use of remotely operated vehicles and the issues associated with where
it's at and, again, the depth.In the past, most of
these events have related to surface incidents or collisions of very
large ships carrying crude oil. And we've been able to actually
quantify how much oil was at risk. When a vessel has a collision or
runs aground, we know the volume of the vessel, we know what's still
onboard, and we can assess to a very precise degree how much product is
actually in the water. What makes this anomalous is until we cap the
well we have an indeterminate of oil potentially that could come to the
surface and have to be dealt with. And in terms of planning
assumptions, we're planning for a very, very broad case scenario where
there would be a lot of oil left there. But there is really no way to
predict with absolute certainty until the well is capped how much oil
we're going to be dealing with. And that is probably the main feature
that makes this unprecedented and asymmetric and difficult to deal with. MR. GIBBS: Well, that's it for questions.
What I will say in closing is I just want to, again, direct you to the
Joint Information Center and deepwaterhorizonresponse.com. We want to
make sure that we're making all of our action officers, our
policymakers, available to you to keep you up to date on late breaking
information.For example, earlier
this week, Admiral Landry went out and briefed on the new information
that we'd learned during the course of the day on Wednesday regarding
the identification of an additional breach, bringing to three the
number of total breaches associated with this incident. And so we'll
continue to keep you up to date on developments, following them as we
are very, very closely. And your point of contact obviously will
continue to be the agency spokespeople, but also the Joint Information
Center, which will be making information and expertise available to you
and to your colleagues in the press on a very regular basis. And so with that, we thank you all for
taking some time with us and we'll be back in touch with you again soon. END 4:32 P.M. EDT

quickdawg · May 1, 2010

Yep.

Thanks for posting the transcript by the way.

Transcript from press briefing on ongoing response to oil spill

biguglyjoe

Redshirt

quickdawg

Redshirt