BILOXI, Miss. — Weather forecasters warned Wednesday that shifting winds could drive a massive oil spill across islands off the Louisiana coast Friday even as British Petroleum officials announced they had succeeded in shutting off one of three leaks spewing crude into the Gulf of Mexico.
Coast Guard officials said they had taken full advantage of the weather’s lull to set fire to some of the drifting oil, and BP officials said they would begin today wrestling into place a 125-ton dome — a tool they think is the best hope of stopping the oil’s hemorrhage from the larger of the two remaining leaks.
The push and pull of good and bad news kept emergency managers from Texas to Florida working madly to head off the worst effects of the unfolding environmental disaster, triggered by the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig and its sinking two days later. Eleven oil workers were killed.
The oil hasn’t yet hit shore, but wind that had died down Wednesday was expected to pick up today.
Currents were expected to push the oil slick to the west near islands in Louisiana. Weather models suggest the bulk of the oil won’t make landfall before week’s end, officials said.
BP had used remote-operated vehicles to install a valve late Tuesday on one of the smaller leaks at the end of a broken drill pipe, allowing them to shut off the oil there.
Hope for shutting off the remaining flow, however, rests with the placement of a giant containment dome over the largest of the leaks.
Engineers hurriedly designed it to fit like a hat over the gushing oil.
The dome was placed aboard a barge Wednesday and towed 60 miles to the leak, where officials hoped to begin lowering it into place today, a process that could take three days or longer, depending on the weather.
It likely won’t be working until sometime early next week.
“If this works — hallelujah,” said Paul Bonner, a petroleum engineering professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
