BP plans to use device to burn off oil spilling from sea well

BRITISH oil corporation BP plans to use a floating platform and device called an EverGreen Burner to burn off oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico from an undersea oil well.

BP says that its proposed device turns a flow of oil and gas into a vapour that is pushed out its 12 nozzles and burned without creating visible smoke.

What is not known, however, is how much oil is eluding capture.

Scientists on a team analysing the flow said that the amount of crude still spewing into the Gulf of Mexico might be considerably greater than what the government and company have claimed.

Their assertions – combined with BP’s rush to build a bigger cap and its apparent difficulty in immediately processing all the oil being collected – have only added to the impression that BP is still floundering in dealing with the catastrophe.

A cap placed on the ruptured well last week to channel much of the billowing oil to a surface ship collected about 620,000 gallons on Monday and another 330,000 from midnight to noon on Tuesday, BP said.

That would mean the cap is collecting better than half the escaping oil, based on the government’s estimate that about 600,000 to 1.2m gallons a day are leaking from the bottom of the sea.

A team of researchers and government officials and run by the director of the US Geological Survey is studying the flow rate and hopes to present its findings in the coming days on what is the biggest oil spill in US history.

Team member and Purdue University engineering professor Steve Wereley said it was a “reasonable conclusion” but not the team’s final one to say that the daily flow rate is, in fact, somewhere between 798,000 gallons and 1.8m gallons.

Depending on which model is used and its settings, it can handle from 10,500 to 630,000 gallons of oil a day, according to promotional materials by Schlumberger Ltd, the company that makes the device and whose website touts it as producing “fallout-free and smokeless combustion”.