— T-shirts with slogans like “Drill Baby Drill” and “No Moratorium” were common sights Wednesday as thousands of people rallied against the federal moratorium on deepwater oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
About 15,000 people packed the Cajundome on the campus of the University of Louisiana-Lafayette as Gov. Bobby Jindal and a stream of speakers blasted the six-month moratorium declared after BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The “Rally for Economic Survival,” orchestrated by a coalition of business organizations, was set in the heart of Louisiana’s oil patch, where thousands of jobs are tied to oil companies or companies that serve them.
“I’m here because I’m worried,” said John Henry, 43, whose company does cement work for offshore wells. “We’re already slowing things down at work. If companies can’t drill, it will get worse.”
— Scientists studying the massive BP oil spill are turning to a vast collection of preserved animals at the Smithsonian to see what kind of changes the oil spill may wreak among life forms in the Gulf of Mexico.
The museum and research complex in Washington holds the most complete set of invertebrate species from the Gulf, offering scientists studying the spill’s effects a look at life before the gusher began. A researcher pulling a creature from the Gulf can use the Smithsonian’s collection to compare its size, body chemistry and other characteristics to a specimen collected before the catastrophe.
— A storm brewing in the Caribbean brought the deep-sea effort to plug the ruptured oil well to a near standstill Wednesday just as BP was getting tantalizingly close to going in for the kill.
Work on the relief well — now just days from completion — was suspended, and the cap that has been keeping the oil bottled up since last week may have to be reopened, allowing crude to gush into the sea again for days, said retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government’s point man on the crisis.
“This is necessarily going to be a judgment call,” said Allen, who was waiting to see how the storm developed before deciding whether to order any of the ships and crews stationed some 50 miles out in the Gulf of Mexico to head for safety.
— Big Oil is trying to assure Washington its prepared for the next big oil spill.
ExxonMobil, Chevron Corp., Conoco Phillips and Shell Oil said Wednesday they’ve agreed to pool $1 billion to form a new company that would respond to offshore oil spills at up to 10,000 feet underwater. The system would deploy equipment that could arrive at a spill within days and be fully operational within weeks, the companies said.
Members of Congress investigating the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig have criticized the oil industry for being ill-prepared for a major oil spill, and regulators want the industry to develop a thorough spill containment plan. Meanwhile, the White House has imposed a moratorium on deepwater drilling, and oil company share prices have plunged. Stricter regulations are also likely on the way for offshore drillers.
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