New Cleanup Technique Holds Hope for Oil Spill Cleanup - NYTimes.com

New Cleanup Technique Holds Hope for Oil Spill Cleanup - NYTimes.com: ""

By LESLIE KAUFMAN

NEW ORLEANS — Officials in charge of the cleanup of a massive oil spill now approaching three Gulf Coast states said Saturday that a new technique in battling the leaks 5,000 feet beneath the sea showed promise.

Among the various weapons employed against the gushing crude has been the distribution of chemical dispersants on the water’s surface to break down the oil. The new approach involves the deployment of the dispersants underwater, near the source of the leaks. Officials said that in two tests, that method appeared to be keeping crude oil from rising to the surface. They said that the procedure could be used more frequently once evaluations of its impact on the deepwater ecology were completed.

Those experiments at the wellhead of the collapsed Deepwater Horizon oil rig were just one sign of the frantic efforts to contain the estimated 210,000 gallons a day still leaking 11 days after the rig exploded and sank.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that she was changing the federal leadership of the oil spill operations. Adm. Thad W. Allen, the commandant of the Coast Guard, is now directly overseeing the work of Rear Adm. Mary E. Landry, who had been in charge of the response. Admiral Allen was in charge of the federal response to Hurricane Katrina.

In his first daily briefing, Admiral Allen emphasized that capping the well was the priority.

“Estimates are useful, but we are planning far beyond that,” he said. It doesn’t really matter, the admiral said, whether it is 1,000 barrels or 5,000 barrels a day that are leaking.

Asked whether the slick was affecting shipping lanes and other offshore drilling operations, Admiral Allen said that disruptions had been minimal.

The tenor on shore among local residents was increasingly angry, with criticism directed at federal officials, who they said should have responded more quickly after the rig exploded April 20. Some said that not enough booms had been placed in the area, and fishermen noted the growing public concern over contaminated seafood, though they said such worries were premature.