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Officials Set to Burn Oil in Gulf Soon
Loading ...Crews responding to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico will soon light some of the petroleum on fire in an attempt to burn it off before it reaches shore.
A Coast Guard spokesman said on Wednesday morning that crews were preparing to conduct a test burn in a confined area of the spill around midday Central time.
“The attempt is scheduled between 11 and 12 — that’s not to say it’s actually going to happen,” the spokesman, Petty Officer Steve Lehmann, said. “Right now, it’s a test burn. We’re trying to see how it works.”
Petty Officer Lehmann said the test burn would be confined to an area of emulsified crude oil about 500 feet around, and that he was not sure precisely where the area would be.
“It’s not something we do very often, so we want to make sure we do it right,” he said. “You need to herd it up and group it a certain way, and then there’s the whole lighting of it.”
Officials turned to the burning option when the slick of oil, released when a drilling rig caught fire 50 miles offshore and sank last week, drifted to within 20 miles of the ecologically fragile Louisiana coastline on Tuesday.
Via NYTimes.com.
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