World

Rig Spill Clean-Up Begins

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

March 20, 2001 / 9:16 AM EST / CBS

Clean-up crews Wednesday scrambled to contain some 300,000 gallons of diesel fuel that has already started to leak from the world's largest oil rig, which sank off the coast of Brazil the day before.

A cleanup flotilla of 11 ships with floating barriers and oil-dispersing chemicals surrounded a slick at the spot 75 miles off the coast where the P-36 rig, owned by the Brazilian state oil company Petrobas, went down.

Petrobras Chief Executive Henri Philippe Reichstul said all the oil would eventually leak into the sea.

He said containers holding 312,000 gallons of diesel fuel would collapse under water pressure on the sea bottom at a depth of 4,455 feet.

The rig also had 78,000 gallons of crude — most of it in hoses between the wells and the rig. Those hoses were attached when the rig went down and could break, he said.

As barriers were set up around the spill, a second slick was sighted, Petrobras said. It wasn't known whether the new spill was crude or diesel.

"There is a plan in place to protect the environment," Reichstul said.

Scientists agreed the environmental impact would likely be negligible in part because of the isolated location.

"It would be different if it were in a bay or on the coast, but the open sea is relatively sterile, and fish can just avoid it," said Paulo Cesar Rosman, professor of coastal and oceanographic engineering at Rio de Janeiro's Federal University. "It probably will surface little by little, a slick here and there."

Navy divers, engineers and foreign consultants had been working around the clock for days, using nitrogen and compressed air to expel water from the rig's flooded compartments.

But the rig tipped over and sank in about ten minutes Tuesday. Workers who had been trying to save the 40-story-tall rig were evacuated to another floating platform after it "shifted suddenly" before dawn, the company said.

Built in Italy and later modified in Canada, the rig was the top producer in the oil-rich Campos Basin, which accounts for most of the 1.5 million barrels of oil Brazil produces daily.

The platform was pumping about 83,000 barrels of oil and processing 1.3 million cubic meters of gas daily, but the company had plans to raise its production to 180,000 barrels a day.

Yet video footage of the sinking released by Petrobras showed a patch of white foam and a black oil stain on the deep blue ocean were all that remained seconds after the massive rig sank.

Oil workers looked on, many sobbing for the two comrades who died in last week's explosion. Eight others were missing and presumed dead.

The platform could be seen turned on its side at a 90 degree angle to the sea while two of the pontoons which had kept the rig afloat and the green heliport slid quickly in the rough seas.

President Fernando Henrique Cardoso lamented the loss of life and voiced his continued support for the embattled oil company, which has suffered a string of embrrassing accidents over the last few months.

"Just as the space shuttle Challenger explosion did not impede continued space exploration, the country will continue to believe in Petrobras and in the company's work," Cardoso said through spokesman Georges Lamaziere.

A Petrobas refinery in July released oil into the Igacu River that eventually moved 25 miles downstream, making it Brazil's worst oil spill in 25 years.

In recent years the company has slashed its work force and farmed out jobs to private companies, which some union officials say are less qualified.

Accidents at oil rigs in the Campos Basin have become routine, said Fernando Carvalho, a director of the Oil Workers' Federation.

Petrobras issued a statement late Tuesday regretting the loss of life, and said it had been unable to recover the bodies of the victims.

"Petrobras did everything that was in its reach and the reach of the most modern technology to rescue them. But this does not console us," the statement said.

Mourning relatives believed otherwise, and on Tuesday evening Rio de Janeiro Judge Marcia Capanema de Souza accepted their request to grant an injunction requiring the oil company to recover the bodies.

If the company does not do so within 24 hours, Petrobras faces a fine of $75,000 a day, the Estado news agency reported.

Petrobras Environment, Safety and Health Superintendent Irani Varela said recovering the bodies would be almost impossible given the depth of the water.

Oil workers plan to stage a 24-hour work stoppage to honor the dead on Thursday.