ASSOCIATED PRESS: The federal official leading the Gulf oil spill cleanup said Friday a new containment cap and an additional ship collecting oil could effectively contain the spill in the next three days The work to replace a leaky containment cap on the well head with a tighter one will begin Saturday, National Incident Commander Thad Allen said. At the same time, a ship connecting to a different part of 
the leak is expected to come online Sunday. Oil will flow unimpeded into the Gulf during the cap switch for at least part of the weekend. If all goes according to plan, the combination of the cap and the new vessel could collect all the leaking oil by Monday, stopping it from escaping into the Gulf of Mexico for the first time since April 20. MORE
PREVIOUSLY: BP Clean-Up Farcically Inadequate
RELATED: “The atmosphere under Obama for federal scientists remains largely unchanged from the Bush era,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, whose organization works with federal scientists seeking to remedy scientific misconduct and political obfuscation. “Federal agency science is still manipulated for political reasons largely because there are still no rules against it.”
The muddled federal response to the massive BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico illustrates a lack of scientific transparency and candor in agency decision-making. Key examples include –
- Without any scientific undergirding, EPA approved widespread application of oil dispersants deep underwater, despite the fact that these chemicals were designed for surface application. EPA even lacked baseline information about oil droplet size, the information it would need to measure just how effective the dispersant is at breaking up the oil slicks;
- The National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration has flip-flopped on release of scientific observations about the size and nature of swelling underwater oil plumes; and
- EPA also lacks information about dioxin and other toxic byproducts of burning large expanses of oil in the Gulf. MORE