Interior Secretary Ken Salazar warned graduates of the Denver School of Science and Technology today that they will encounter challenges they can’t foresee even as he learned the biggest one in his federal career just got tougher.
He learned that the top kill operation in the Gulf of Mexico – recently thought to have been succeeding – doesn’t appear to be working and now plans are in motion to try the next idea to curb what has already become the largest oil spill in U.S. history.
“That’s what I do. That’s my challenge today,” Salazar told the students at the celebrated charter school that was one of three schools in the running to have President Barack Obama give a commencement address. “I am confident this problem will be solved.”
It was a mind-boggling, real-life illustration for 18-year-olds just entering the work-force or turning to college to mull over.
Just after Salazar assured the graduates America would be better off once they applied their immense talents, he acknowledged in a brief discussion with reporters that the Gulf oil gusher is still spewing oil.
“Right now we are evaluating a backup plan,” Salazar said.
The next step will be to attempt to use a pipe to cap the well and stop the flow of millions of gallons of oil into the gulf, Salazar said.
“We’ll keep staying at it until we get it solved,” he said. “We’re doing everything with the best minds in the world to get it solved.”
The ultimate solution will be when relief wells in the area are completed and oil will be diverted away from the leaking well, Salazar said. But BP has said that effort won’t be completed until August.
On Friday, material shooting from the pipe appeared to be muddy brown, a promising sign that the top kill was working, according to an Associated Press report.
But by Saturday the well appeared to be ejecting only a black plume, said Eric Smith, associate director of the Tulane Energy Institute.
“They warned us not to draw too many conclusions from the effluent, but … it doesn’t look like it’s working,” he said.
It’s now been five weeks since the April 20 explosion that destroyed the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform, killing 11 workers.
Salazar supported Obama’s decision Thursday to suspend deep-water drilling in the gulf and exploratory drilling off the coast of Alaska.
“We need to get to the bottom of the safety problems so this will never happen again,” he said.
During his commencement address, Salazar told the graduates that regardless of their upbringing or their race there wasn’t anything they couldn’t achieve.
He said he never imagined that one day he would be dealing with such weighty problems as the Gulf spill after growing up with seven siblings on a farm with an outhouse and no phone in the San Luis Valley.
Growing up, he always thought he, too, would spend his life on a farm, where he once walked in fifth-generation hand-me-down shoes of different sizes.
Who would have thought that Obama, a skinny, mixed-race child raised by a single parent with a Muslim name, would achieve what he has. He has sat in the oval office with Obama, staring at him and wondering…
“How did this happen?”
Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com
