Crews cleaning oil residue from Louisiana wetlands

Crews using special vacuum devices are sucking pools of spilled Macondo crude oil residue out of Louisiana marshes, said US Coast Guard Rear Adm. Paul D. Zukunft, federal onscene coordinator for the Deepwater Horizon response.

“At some point, we will let Mother Nature do the work,” Zukunft said, adding the USCG and other federal officials are working with state officials to mutually determine when “there is no net environmental benefit” to continuing to clean marsh areas.

During a Sept. 29 teleconference, Zukunft said 588 miles of shoreline remained oiled and are being cleaned. This includes both marshes and beaches.

In Louisiana, one particular marsh cleanup crew involves 600 people, he said. Nine marsh areas continue to be cleaned, and they are all in Louisiana. Zukunft described a heavy, black “sticky residue in marsh grass.”

An Apr. 20 blowout of the deepwater Macondo well resulted in a fire and explosion on Transocean Ltd.’s Deepwater Horizon semisubmersible, killing 11 workers and resulting in a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. No oil has spilled since the installation of a capping stack on July 15. BP operated the well.

API reaffirms oil and gas industry commitment to safety

While the US Coast Guard searched for workers missing after an explosion and fire on a semisubmersible rig off Louisiana, American Petroleum Institute Pres. Jack N. Gerard told reporters in Houston that safety is the oil and gas industry’s top priority.

“Every time an incident happens, we ask ourselves what we can do better,” Gerard said. “We’re working for a zero-injury, zero-fatality effort.” Industry considers workers to be its “most sacred” asset, he added.

April has been marred by accidents, both upstream and downstream. An Apr. 2 explosion in a naphtha hydrotreater within Tesoro Corp.’s 120,000-b/d refinery at Anacortes, Wash., killed six employees. The hydrotreater was undergoing maintenance at the time (OGJ Online, Apr. 5, 2010).

On Apr. 12, the United Steelworkers issued a news release saying the refinery industry fails to learn from past disasters. The union called on refiners to develop and implement policies requiring full safety reviews before all process start-ups and scheduled shutdowns.

Gerard said API devotes much of its staff’s attention to safety, adding that API’s activities involve research, standards development and reviews as well as training efforts and information transfers.

On Apr. 20-21, Gerard was in Houston to speak to the local API chapter and to brief reporters. He told reporters that his thoughts were with the families of 11 missing workers.

An explosion and fire rocked the Transocean Ltd. Deepwater Horizon rig at about 10 p.m. CDT Apr. 20. The semi was drilling for BP Exploration & Production Inc. on Mississippi Canyon Block 252 about 41 miles off Louisiana.