BP cap leaking a little oil, gas

NEW ORLEANS — Oil is leaking from the cap on BP’s ruptured oil well, but federal officials intend to leave it in place for now.

Retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said Monday afternoon that the leaks are so far not a major concern.

Ever since the cap was used to bottle up the oil last week, engineers have been watching underwater cameras and monitoring pressure and seismic readings to see whether the well would hold or spring a new leak, perhaps one that could rupture the seafloor and make the disaster even worse.

Small amounts of oil and gas started coming from the cap late Sunday, but “we do not believe it is consequential at this time,” Allen said.

Also, seepage from the seafloor was detected over the weekend less than two miles away, but Allen said it probably has nothing to do with the well. Oil and gas are known to ooze naturally from fissures in the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.

At an afternoon briefing in Washington, Allen said BP could keep the cap closed at least 24 hours longer, as long as the company remained alert for leaks.

BP and the government are at odds over the company’s desire to simply leave the cap in place and employ it like a giant cork in a bottle until a relief well being drilled deep underground can be used to plug up the well permanently.

Allen initially said his preference was to pipe oil through the cap to tankers on the surface to reduce the slight chance that the buildup of pressure inside the well would cause a new blowout. That plan would require releasing millions more gallons of oil into the sea for a few days during the transition.

On Monday, Allen budged a bit, saying that unless larger problems develop, he’s not inclined to open the cap.

Also on the table: pumping drilling mud through the top of the cap and into the well bore to stop up the oil flow. The idea is similar to the failed “top kill” plan that couldn’t overcome the pressure of the geyser pushing up.

BP said it could work now because there’s less oil to fight against, but it wasn’t clear how such a method would affect the cap’s stability. Allen said the relief well was still the plan for a permanent fix.

Allen said BP and the government are still trying to understand why pressure readings from the well are lower than expected. He offered two possible explanations: The reservoir the oil is gushing from is dwindling, or there is an undiscovered leak somewhere down in the well.

“I’m not prepared to say the well is shut in until the relief well is done,” which is still several weeks away, Allen said. “There are too many uncertainties.”

Robert Carney, a Louisiana State University expert on biological oceanography, said the seepage is far enough away from the well that it could be occurring naturally.

“You have little bubbles rising up from the bottom frequently; that’s the methane gas” he said. “Oil would be a little black dot, more difficult to see. But both escape into the water regularly.”

Work on a permanent plug is moving steadily, with crews drilling into the side of the ruptured well from deep underground. By next week,they could start blasting in mud and cement to block off the well for good. Killing the well deep underground works more reliably than bottling it up with a cap.

Somewhere between 2.24 million and 4.38 million barrels have gushed into the Gulf over the past three months in one of America’s worst environment crises. There are 42 gallons in a barrel.

SPILL’S TAB NEAR $4 BILLION

BP said the cost of dealing with the spill has now reached nearly $4 billion. The company said it has made payments totaling $207 million to settle claims for damages. Almost 116,000 claims have been submitted and more than 67,500 payments have been made.

The administrator of the $20 billion compensation fund offered a hard sell Monday, promising fishermen and others with lost-income claims from the disaster that he’ll be more generous with them than any court would be.

Kenneth Feinberg noted that claimants are free to instead file a lawsuit, but added, “You’re crazy to do so, though.”

“Because under this program, you will receive, if you’re eligible, compensation without having to go to court for years, without the uncertainty of going to court, since I’ll be much more generous than any court will be,” Feinberg said. “And at the same time, you won’t need to pay lawyers and costs.”

Feinberg made the comments in a speech to the Economic Club of Washington, D.C., but his target audience included people and businesses who have suffered economic harm in the Gulf Coast area. He reminded them they were under “no obligation” to waive their rights to sue unless and until they decide to accept a lump sum for all present and future injury.

He noted that claimants could get emergency payments for six months without giving up their right to sue.

“If you decide after that to litigate, you still keep the check. I mean, who wouldn’t come into this program?” he asked in an incredulous tone. “It is, to my way of thinking, an easy call.”

MAINTENANCE LAGGED

The rig that exploded in April was behind on its 2009 maintenance schedule, according to an audit report cited by a government official on the board investigating the Gulf of Mexico disaster.

A “lack of manpower” was referenced by a rig supervisor for the delay, Jason Matthews, an investigation board member from the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, said Monday during testimony at hearings in Kenner, La. The bureau is the successor to the Minerals Management Service.

Transocean Chief Engineer Stephen Bertone, who is being questioned as a witness, said he didn’t recall the report. Bertone said the rig was scheduled to go to a shipyard in early 2011 for planned work on thrusters, engines, and seawater and ballast systems.

Bertone said he had requested additional engineers and motormen to assist in routine maintenance and he got those requests filled when it was possible.

SEAFOOD THREATENED

Meanwhile, Gov. Bobby Jindal and seafood industry representatives said Monday that Louisiana’s $2 billion seafood industry is threatened not only by the spill but also by a government bureaucracy that has been too slow to reopen waters off the state’s coast to commercial fishing.

Louisiana reopened large areas of its waters to sport fishing last week after tests showed that fish caught in those areas were safe to eat. But federal approval is needed for commercial fishing in those same waters, Jindal said during a news conference at a suburban New Orleans processing plant.

“This is probably the last bit of inventory I’ve got left,” plant owner Harlon Pearce said, gesturing toward a pallet of iced-down fish on his loading dock.

Pearce, chairman of the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board, said Food and Drug Administration bureaucracy has slowed the process of getting samples to a testing lab.

“We sent samples. The samples, last Monday, got there. The FDA said, ‘Wait a second. You can’t even take samples until we tell you you can take samples.’” Pearce said. More samples were sent to a federal lab in Pascagoula, Miss., over the weekend, Jindal said.

Meghan Scott, an FDA spokesman in Maryland, said she did not have details on when the tests would be completed. She said the tests are being done at a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration lab in Pascagoula and added that NOAA will ultimately decide when to open the waters.

Jindal said he’s been assured by FDA officials that enough tests will be completed to begin opening at least some areas to commercial fishing in about a week. Seafood-related businesses can’t wait much longer, he said.

“Continuity of supply at our restaurants is very important,” Pearce said. “We don’t want to open the marketplace to other competitors from out of the country and out of the state.”

Several oyster processors have already shut down over the past few weeks. Finfish processors are now feeling the pinch.

“I really didn’t think we’d be hitting the wall until August,” Pearce said. “But we’re hitting the wall now.”

GOOD NEWS FOR FLORIDA

Also on Monday, favorable winds and ocean currents gave Floridians a reprieve from the spill, and state officials said the slick was far from a loop current that could carry the crude around Florida and up the East Coast.

Mike Sole, secretary of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, said a steady east wind has pushed the slick about 89 miles to the south and west of Florida’s panhandle. The slick is also about 300 miles from the loop current, a ribbon of warm water that runs from the Gulf of Mexico through the Florida Straits and up the Atlantic coast.

Sole and U.S. Coast Guard Cmdr. Joe Boudrow, the point man in Florida for the Coast Guard’s response to the oil spill, said the state still has many concerns about tar and oil than began washing up on its beaches in early June. A lot of oil remains in the water and officials are focused on how to best fight it as hurricane season heightens, Boudrow said. Information for this article was contributed by Colleen Long, Matthew Daly, Erica Werner, David Dishneau, Frederic J. Frommer, Melissa Nelson and Kevin McGill of The Associated Press and by Mark Chediak, Jim Polson, Joe Carroll and Katarzyna Klimasinska of Bloomberg News.