Excerpt, from CNN Blog, June 6th 2010.
The federal government’s response manager to the Gulf oil disaster, Thad Allen, says BP has made progress, but cautioned it was too early to call the effort a success.
“We’re making the right progress. I don’t think anyone should be pleased as long as there’s oil in the water,” Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday.
Allen was responding to remarks over the weekend by BP’s senior vice president, Bob Fryar, who said the company was “pleased” with its operation to funnel crude up from the ruptured undersea well to a drilling ship a mile above on the Gulf of Mexico.
Fryar said the company funneled about 250,000 gallons of oil in the first 24 hours from a containment cap installed on the well to a drilling ship on the ocean surface.
But that’s only about 31 percent of the 798,000 gallons of crude federal authorities estimate is gushing into the sea every day.
Allen confirmed that BP has been able to bring oil to the surface after placing the cap, but said no one should be pleased until a relief well is completed and the leaking stops.
“This is an insidious enemy,” Allen said. “It’s attacking all of our shores, it’s holding the gulf hostage, basically.”
Even as the administration has tried to distance itself from oil company BP in recent days, with the Justice Department launching both criminal and civil investigations into the spill, it has not been enough to temper the frustration seething among residents along the coastline.
