The Gulf of Mexico oil spill nearly tripled in size over two days — leading experts to believe that the 11-day-old leak, caused by an oil-rig explosion off the coast of Louisiana, has gotten much worse.
President Obama is scheduled to travel to the Gulf Coast today to get updated on plans to halt the spill, whose surface area has expanded since Thursday from 1,150 to 3,850 square miles — or roughly the size of Puerto Rico.
“The spill, and the spreading, is getting so much faster and expanding much quicker than they estimated,” said Hans Graber, executive director of the University of Miami’s Center for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing.
The Coast Guard had earlier estimated that about 200,000 gallons of oil a day was seeping into the Gulf. Yesterday, the Coast Guard admitted that it was impossible to estimate how much oil was in the water.
The sheen has already reached shoreline fish and wildlife habitats — and experts say if the spill keeps growing unchecked, currents could suck the toxic mess past the Florida Keys and up the Eastern Seaboard.
Officials have so far been unable to stop the underwater spill — caused by an April 20 explosion of an offshore rig operated by oil giant BP — because shut-off valves that were supposed to switch on in the event of an accident had failed to do so.
Rough weather, meanwhile, continued to hamper efforts to burn off the oil, suck it up with skimmer vessels or hold it in check with miles-long chains of inflatable booms along the coast.