Oil plumes form below slick as BP battles on

OIL from a blown-out well is forming huge underwater plumes as much as 16km long below the visible slick in the Gulf of Mexico, scientists said as BP wrestled for a third day with its latest contraption for slowing the nearly month-old gusher.

BP, the largest oil and gas producer in the US, has been unable to thread a tube into the leak to siphon the crude to a tanker, its third approach to stopping or reducing the spill on the ocean floor. Engineers remotely steering robot submersibles were trying again yesterday to fit the tube into a breach over a kilometre below the surface, BP said.

Oil has been spewing since the rig Deepwater Horizon exploded on April 20, killing 11 people and sinking two days later.

The government shortly afterward estimated the spill at 210,000 gallons – or 5,000 barrels – a day, a figure that has since been questioned by some scientists who fear it could be far more. BP executives have stood by the estimate, while acknowledging there’s no way to know for sure.

BP also owns a rig that operated with incomplete and inaccurate engineering documents, which one official warned could “lead to catastrophic operator error,” records and interviews show.

Two months before the accident, 19 members of Congress called on the agency that oversees offshore oil drilling to investigate a whistle-blower’s complaints about the BP-owned Atlantis, which is stationed more than 240km south of New Orleans.

It has been learned that an independent firm hired by BP substantiated the complaints in 2009 and found that the company was violating its own policies by not having completed engineering documents on board the Atlantis when it began operating in 2007.

Word of huge submerged oil plumes, meanwhile, raised the spectre of more damage to the ecologically rich Gulf. It also adds to questions about when large amounts of crude might hit shore.

“It’s just a matter of time ... and the first significant amount of oil is going to show up around the US,” said Hans Graber, director of the University of Miami’s satellite sensing facility.