Crews raced to protect the Gulf of Mexico coastline Monday as a remote sub tried to shut off an underwater oil well that’s gushing 42,000 gallons a day from the site of a wrecked drilling platform.
Oil is gushing from the floor of the Gulf of Mexico a deep water well exploded about one week ago. A remote submarine is being used to attempt to shut off oil flow. If the submarine cannot fix the gushing oil, a new well will have to be built so that the oil flow can be diverted to the new well — a process that could take over two months. So far there is no shoreline impact, but oil could reach the shore in about three days in the swamps of Louisiana and the Florida panhandle. The current click is the size of Rhode Island. The deep water well ‘Horizon’ exploded on April 20, 2010.