Like a video game: Big box lowered over Gulf well

ON THE GULF OF MEXICO (AP) - Workers gathered to begin lowering a giant concrete-and-steel box over the blown-out oil well at the bottom of the sea Thursday in a risky and untested bid to capture most of the gushing crude and avert a wider environmental disaster.

"We haven't done this before. It's very complex and we can't guarantee it," BP spokesman David Nicholas warned.

The 100-ton containment vessel is designed to collect as much as 85 percent of the oil spewing into the Gulf and funnel it up to a tanker. It could take several hours to lower it into place by crane, after which a steel pipe will be installed between the top of the box and the tanker. The whole structure could be operating by Sunday.

The technology has been used a few times in shallow waters, but never at such extreme depths - 5,000 feet down, where the water pressure is enough to crush a submarine.

The box - which looks a lot like a peaked, 40-foot-high outhouse, especially on the inside, with its rough timber framing - must be accurately positioned over the well, or it could damage the leaking pipe and make the problem worse.

Other risks include ice clogs in the pipes - a problem that crews will try to prevent by continuously pumping in warm water and methanol - and the danger of explosion when separating the mix of oil, gas and water that is brought to the surface.

"I'm worried about every part, as you can imagine," said David Clarkson, BP vice president of engineering projects.

If the box works, a second one now being built may be used to deal with a second, smaller leak from the sea floor.

"Hopefully, it will work better than they expect," first mate Douglas Peake told The Associated Press aboard the ship that brought the box to the site. The AP is the only news organization on board the vessel.

The well blew open on April 20 when the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform exploded 50 miles out in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers. The well has been spewing an estimated 200,000 gallons a day in the nation's biggest oil spill since the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska in 1989.

Oil slicks stretched for miles off the Louisiana coast, where desperate efforts were under way to skim, corral and set the petroleum ablaze. People in Mississippi, Alabama and Florida watched in despair.

The dropping of the box is just one of many strategies being pursued to stave off a widespread environmental disaster. BP is drilling sideways into the blown-out well in hopes of plugging it from the bottom. Also, oil company engineers are examining whether the leak could be shut off by sealing it from the top instead.

The technique, called a "top kill," would use a tube to shoot mud and concrete directly into the well's blowout preventer, BP spokesman Bill Salvin said. The process would take two to three weeks, compared with the two to three months needed to drill a relief well.

On Thursday, oil reached several barrier islands off the Louisiana coast, many of them fragile animal habitats. Several birds were spotted diving into the oily, pinkish-brown water, and dead jellyfish washed up on the uninhabited islands.

"It's all over the place. We hope to get it cleaned up before it moves up the west side of the river," said Dustin Chauvin, a 20-year-old shrimp boat captain from Terrebonne Parish, La. "That's our whole fishing ground. That's our livelihood."

During a visit to Biloxi, Miss., Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said of the containment vessel: "I hope it works. But we are still proceeding as if it won't. If it does, of course, that will be a major positive development."

"We are facing an evolving situation," she warned. "The possibility remains that the BP oil spill could turn into an unprecedented environmental disaster. The possibility remains that it will be somewhat less."

Meanwhile, a six-member board composed of representatives of the Coast Guard and the federal Minerals Management Service will begin investigating the accident next week.

And a federal judicial panel in Washington has been asked to consolidate at least 65 potential class-action lawsuits claiming economic damage from the spill. Commercial fishermen, business and resort owners, charter boat captains, even would-be vacationers have sued from Texas to Florida, seeking damages that could reach into the billions.

"It's just going to kill us. It's going to destroy us," said Dodie Vegas, who owns a motel and cabins in Grand Isle, La., and has seen 10 guests cancel.

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Associated Press writers Ray Henry, Cain Burdeau, Holbrook Mohr and Vicki Smith in Louisiana, Brian Skoloff in Mississippi and Curt Anderson in Miami contributed to this story.

ON THE GULF OF MEXICO (AP) - The burly, bearded man in overalls settled into the command chair of the Joe Griffin and admired the precious cargo firmly attached to the stern of the supply boat: a four-story box jutting from the deck that will be lowered into the Gulf of Mexico to contain an out-of-control oil gusher.

Sean "Slim" Weichel was on the same boat 16 days ago when he and his mates responded to the oil rig explosion, dousing the flames of the Deepwater Horizon in what proved to be a futile effort to keep it from sinking.

Their latest assignment: Return to the scene of the disaster with a giant concrete-and-metal box designed to cover the biggest leak and funnel the oil to a tanker on the surface.

"We are carrying a tool that could possibly end a lot of this ordeal," said Weichel, a bespectacled 35-year-old deckhand from Rocklin, Calif. "It is exhilarating to know we might be able to do some more good than we could before."

The Associated Press obtained exclusive access to the transport ship and the tricky oil containment endeavor, set to begin Thursday evening. Crews planned to remove the containment box from the ship with a crane and lower the contraption to the muddy seabed, a mile below the surface. They will then lay a pipe that will funnel the oil to the surface.

Crew members strapped the containment device to the ship with heavy-duty chains and rumbled out to sea in their 280-foot vessel. As they got closer to the spill site, the crackling of radio transmissions and the pungent odor of oil filled the night air. Once there, the ship was surrounded by globs of oil as far as the eye could see.

The crew was eager to accomplish something positive just two weeks after they watched in horror as the inferno raged and the rig sank to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.

As they waited to lower to containment box, they watched the news in the ship's entertainment room. They ate chicken wings and pecan pie. They studied a bank of flat-screen monitors filled with navigational information. The captain, Demi Shaffer, drank another cup of coffee and looked out at the containment box through a pair of black sunglasses, his long brown hair touching his shoulders.

The workers had to wait several hours at the scene as the crew of another ship made final preparations to grab the device with a giant crane and put it in the water.

Men in red jumpsuits with white hard hats and life vests were lowered to the deck of the Joe Griffin from the other ship, a hulking semi-submersible drilling vessel called the Helix Q4000. They removed some sandbags from the Joe Griffin that will be used in the oil containment effort.

All the while, the big box loomed in the background, ready to be submerged in the Gulf.

The sides of the concrete-and-steel structure are marked with "N," "S," "E" and "W" to help ensure it is set down correctly. Several notches designate depth, almost like a supersized yard stick.

The mission was not assured of success. This method of containing the oil has been used before, but never in such deep water.

Douglas Peake, first mate of the Joe Griffin, was hoping this trip to the source of the spill would wash away the disappointment from the last one, when the crew watched the Deepwater Horizon sink into the gulf.

"It sounds kind of corny," he said, "but it was like we just lost a fight or something."

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - The calamitous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico isn't just a mess for the people who live or work on the coast. If you drink coffee, eat shrimp, like bananas or plan to buy a new set of tires, you could end up paying more because of the disaster.

The slick has forced the shutdown of the gulf's rich fishing grounds and could also spread to the busy shipping lanes at the mouth of the Mississippi River, tying up the cargo vessels that move millions of tons of fruit, rubber, grain, steel and other commodities and raw materials in and out of the nation's interior.

Though a total shutdown of the shipping lanes is unlikely, there could be long delays if vessels are forced to wait to have their oil-coated hulls power-washed to avoid contaminating the Mississippi.

Some cargo ships might choose to unload somewhere else in the U.S. That could drive up costs.

"Let's say it gets real bad. It gets blocked off and they don't let anything in. They lose time, and they are very concerned about that," said river pilot Michael Lorino. "It's going to be very costly if they have to unload that cargo in another port and ship it back here because it was destined for here."

When a tanker and a tugboat collided near New Orleans two years ago, oil cascaded down the river and some 200 ships stacked up, unable to move for several days while the Coast Guard had the vessels scrubbed. Millions of dollars were lost.

Several river boat pilots said the edge of the oil slick Monday was 15 to 20 miles off the Southwest Pass, where ships headed to New Orleans enter the Mississippi. The latest satellite image of the slick, taken Sunday night, indicates that it has shrunk since last week, but that only means some of the oil has gone underwater.

The new image found oil covering about 2,000 square miles, rather than the roughly 3,400 square miles observed last Thursday, said Hans Graber of the University of Miami.

The new image also shows that sizable patches have broken away and are moving to the north and east, Graber said.

Crews have been struggling to stop the more than 200,000 gallons a day spewing from the sea after an offshore drilling platform blew up and sank last month in a disaster that killed 11 workers. The accident is the worst U.S. oil spill since the tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground in Alaska, leaking nearly 11 million gallons of crude.

Chemical dispersants seemed to be helping to keep oil from floating to the surface, but crews haven't been able to activate a shutout valve underwater. And it could take another week before a 98-ton concrete-and-metal box is placed over one of the leaks to capture the oil.

More ominously, it could take three months to drill sideways into the well and plug it with mud and concrete.

BP said Monday it would compensate people for "legitimate and objectively verifiable" claims from the explosion and spill, but President Barack Obama and others pressed the company to explain exactly what that means.

By all accounts, the disaster is certain to cost BP billions. But analysts said the company could handle it; BP is the world's third-largest oil company and made more than $6 billion in the first three months of this year. The oil spill has drained $32 billion from BP's stock market value.

Restaurants, hotels, casinos and other coastal businesses from Florida to Texas are bracing for their own pain.

Dana Powell expects at least some lost business at the Paradise Inn in Pensacola Beach, Fla., and could see a different type of guest altogether: Instead of families boating, parasailing and fishing, workers on cleanup crews will probably be renting her rooms.

"They won't be having as much fun," she said, "but they might be buying more liquor at the bar, because they'll be so depressed."

And what will she serve in her restaurant? Hamburgers and chicken fingers instead of crab claws. Federal officials have shut down fishing for at least 10 days from the Mississippi River to the Florida Panhandle.

In the Chandeleur Sound on Monday, about 40 miles northeast of Venice, La., thick, heavy oil formed long clumps that looked like raw sewage. Dying jellyfish could be seen in the water. A dolphin surfaced nearby but did not appear to be in distress.

The news was better from Mississippi to the Florida Panhandle, where the sheen isn't expected to touch beaches before Thursday. Wind and sea currents have helped to keep the oil away from points farther west, said Coast Guard Capt. Steve Poulin.

Hundreds of Coast Guard crews, private vessels and others are working offshore fighting to keep the slick at bay.

Poulin used a map that projected what people can expect to see when the oil begins to hit. The outermost layer will include sticky tar balls that can adhere to bird feathers and accumulate in grasses and marshes. The next layer will have bigger pancakes of emulsified oil.

In Alabama, scores of shrimp boats sat at dock in Bayou La Batre, their crews unable to work. Vietnamese immigrant Minh V. Le, who owns two trawlers, said: "I'm confused about how I'm going to survive, and how my crews are."

The Port of New Orleans handled 73 millions tons of cargo in 2008, including coffee from South America and steel from Japan, Russia, Brazil and Mexico. More than 245,000 tons of coffee came through the port in 2008, second only to the New York-New Jersey port. And last year, it imported nearly 260,000 tons of rubber from such countries as Indonesia and Malaysia, making it nation's No. 1 gateway for natural rubber.

Upriver is the Port of South Louisiana, the nation's busiest port with 224 million tons of cargo a year - mostly grain, other agricultural commodities and chemicals. Farther east lies Mississippi's Port of Gulfport, the nation's second-largest importer of green fruit. Central American bananas from Chiquita and Dole account for a big chunk of its cargo.

Some businesses were prepared because of their experience during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Folgers Coffee Co., which ships its coffee through the Port of New Orleans, has several weeks' worth of green coffee on hand and has made arrangements to use other ports in the event of a shutdown, spokeswoman Mary Beth Badertscher said.

"We've learned a lot of valuable lessons from Hurricane Katrina about supply logistics," she said.

About 60 percent of the grain exported from the U.S. goes through the Southwest Pass. If the spill delays barge traffic going down the Mississippi, prices for corn, soybeans and wheat could rise quickly on global markets, said Greg Wagner, a commodity analyst.

Grain prices within the U.S. could actually fall if shipments are unable to leave the U.S. and the grain begins piling up at silos in the U.S. But the price decreases would probably be small and wouldn't show up at the grocery store anytime soon, said Seth Meyer, an agricultural transportation analyst at the University of Missouri.

While a port shutdown would be devastating to the Gulf Coast region, many economists believe the overall damage to the $14.6 trillion U.S. economy could be small.

Cargo can be rerouted to other ports, and the income would be shifted but not lost. Even the lost income from tourism and fishing could be offset by more spending on cleanup.

"The U.S. economy is adaptable," said Martin Regalia, chief economist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "When natural disasters strike, money may be lost in one area but can be made up by spending in other areas. It is more than a nuisance, but it is not a calamity in an economic sense."

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Associated Press writers Sarah Larimer, Mike Schneider, Jay Reeves, Jeannine Aversa, Christopher Leonard, Alan Sayre, Melissa Nelson and Allen G. Breed contributed to this report.