The Search for the Source of the Us Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Is Underway

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The U.S. Coast Guard and oil company experts used aircraft and underwater tests to monitor and search for a 10-mile stretch of oil in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday. Coast Guard spokeswoman Elizabeth Bordelon told AFP that the 1.6-kilometer (one-mile) width is about 210 km (130 miles) southeast of New Orleans. "Early this morning, the first airport sent a helicopter with a pollution investigator to the New Orleans airport," Bordelon said. The Bordelon oil field is between two offshore oil rigs owned by Royal Dutch Shell. However, Shell said six barrels of oil were not coming out of its rigs. Officials with the US Environmental Protection Agency, which enforces regulations for offshore oil rigs, first saw the site at 1730 GMT on Wednesday.

The bureau said in a statement on Thursday that the bureau's executive database personnel "were cruising at sea when they sighted an oil slick in the central Gulf of Mexico." The bureau said it had ordered "Shell to assess the seabed using a remotely operated vehicle" and also identified pipelines in the area and "directed pipeline operators to monitor their lines". Shell said it had thoroughly inspected its property and found "no signs of leakage". "We have also confirmed that there are no well control issues related to our drilling operations in the area." "At this point we believe Sheen is not coming from a Shell operation," he said, but said he would respond "on a cautious note.




The company said it had activated the Louisiana Responder, a vessel designed to recover and lift the oil. Shell also said it has deployed two remotely operated vehicles to inspect Shell and non-Shell infrastructure and search for potential natural gas exploration in the area. Shell said it had previously notified the US National Response Center of a "light coating" in the central Gulf of Mexico. The National Response Center, operated by the Coast Guard, is the federal government's point of contact for reporting oil and chemical spills in the United States. The Gulf of Mexico region is recovering from the 2010 BP oil spill. The spill blackened beaches in five US states and devastated the Gulf Coast's tourism and fishing industries. It took 87 days to cap BP's leaky well 5,000 feet (1,500 meters) below water, as 4.9 million barrels (206 million gallons) of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico. Koprak oka