"BP: Crews Dealt Setback in Placing Containment Dome at Oil Spill Site"

The oil spill, which is increasing by 210,000 gallons: equal to 5,000 barrels a day, was set to be potentially 'fixed' aka 'under control' by placing a containment dome over the broken wellhead. However, BP was dealt a setback because many hydrates (crystals which form when gas combines with water) accumulated inside of the dome. The hydrates make the dome float and they blocked the tope of the dome so BP would not be able to funnel the oil up into a ship. Now the crews must work hard to get rid of the hydrates. Workers did know that hydrates would be a problem, just not this big of a problem. The dome is not guaranteed to work, it has never been tested at the conditions it will be in in the ocean. There is another possible solution be considered, which includes "tak[ing] ground up material of various types and try[ing] to inject it into the blowout preventer at the bottom of it and it will flow up and plug it up." This method also has it's risks. Some success can be said about the oil spill though. Thousands of volunteers worked to skim the water's surface and collected 17,500 barrels of an oily-water mix and there were five successful controlled burns.

I'm glad to hear that some success and progress is being made on fixing this oil spill. However, I must say that I'm disappointed in the actions or lack of actions that people are taking. To me it seems that BP has not reacted quickly enough. The oil spill began shortly after April 20. That is ten days short of a full month now. I would think that they would have done something by now to try and halt the growing spill issue. I know that they were working on making this dome, but now to find that they have to do more work on it to make it successful... I would think that with almost a month in preparation, they would have worked out all of the kinks. This spill is a disaster, a man made disaster that is going to harmfully impact the environment in a way that will last for decades! And still, almost a month now, 5,000 barrels of oil are spilling into the ocean every day! I just can't really grasp on the idea that it has been a month and nothing has been done or attempted... well I guess one thing has, but still, I feel that this attempt is long overdue and should have been done a matter of days after the spill began. People should have been working major overtime, and more workers, more ideas, more care, more action should have been present. Maybe I'm just thinking idealistically and none of this is actually possible, but then again, maybe I'm not. All I can do is pray that things get fixed soon and that actions are made and something turns out to be successful. My prayers go out to all of the volunteers, to the people living on the coastline, to the environment and to all of the attempts and work going into trying to fix this disaster.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/05/07/gulf.oil.spill/index.html?eref=rss_topstories&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_topstories+%28RSS%3A+Top+Stories%29