BP Oil Spill: Thad Allen Cites Progress, but Long Campaign Lies Ahead

Fresh off a spate of appearances on the Sunday morning news shows, Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen visited the White House on Monday with news both good and bad regarding the latest efforts to contain the BP oil spill. Allen repeated much of the hopeful information he delivered over the weekend, saying a containment dome placed atop the leaking wellhead last week was capturing 11,000 barrels of oil per day. Allen further noted that the Coast Guard was moving another ship into the area to increase containment capacity to nearly 20,000 barrels per day. In noting this progress, he reiterated his belief that the "final solution" to stopping the leak lay with the relief wells expected to be completed in August. But he was not optimistic about seeing an end to the disaster anytime soon, conceding cleanup could extend for not just months, but years into the future. "This is a long campaign," Allen said, "and we're going to be dealing with oil for the foreseeable future."

One of the biggest questions that remains unanswered is the rate at which oil is still spilling into the Gulf of Mexico. Two initial flow-rate estimates pegged the output as between 12,000 and 19,000 barrels per day and 12,000 to 25,000 barrels per day. (A barrel of oil contains 42 gallons.) Allen stated that "once we know the production flow, and we seal off the vents [on the cap] and assess the leakage . . . we will have a hard and fast number."

Charged with overseeing the response to the spill, Allen remained hesitant to criticize BP for its actions both before and after the April 20 explosion that caused the spill, but he did concede that the oil company needed to increase the speed with which it was processing claims, both for businesses that have lost the ability to operate during this period and individuals seeking claims for payment relating to the spill. Allen said, "We need to get that routinized so [people] can look forward to that check coming in."

Allen minced no words in describing the task at hand, saying it was one of the most difficult problems he had faced in his life, noting that the "disaggregation" of oil -- essentially, the fact that it has spread over an extraordinarily large area -- has made the spill especially complex. "We are adapting to an enemy that changes," he said. And while the containment cap has seen success thus far, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs described it as a "delicate" operation. Allen, for his part, was even less sanguine, saying, "I don't think we should ever be comfortable with the containment [cap] operation. We will be watching it very, very closely."