Oil spill an unexpected crisis

WASHINGTON – Suddenly, everything changed.

For days, as an oil spill spread in the Gulf of Mexico, BP assured the government the plume was manageable, not catastrophic. Federal authorities were content to let the company handle the mess while keeping an eye on the operation.

But then government scientists realized the leak was five times larger than they had been led to believe, and days of lulling statistics and reassuring words gave way Thursday to an all-hands-on-deck emergency response. Now questions are sure to be raised about a self-policing system that trusted a commercial operator to take care of its own mishap even as it grew into a menace imperiling Gulf Coast nature and livelihoods from Florida to Texas.

The pivot point had come Wednesday night, at a news conference at an oil research center in the tiny community of Robert, La. That’s when the nation learned the earlier estimates were way off, and an additional leak had been found.

On Thursday, President Barack Obama set in motion a larger federal mobilization, pledging to deploy “every single available resource” to the area and ordering his disaster and environmental leaders to get down there in person. Only a few days after the Coast Guard assured the country there was “ample time” to protect the coast if oil came ashore, warnings from the government were newly alarming.

The political subtext of the crisis was clear and increasingly on people’s minds, whether from a federal office deploying oil-containment booms or from a Louisiana parish awaiting yet another sucker punch from the sea.

Will this be Obama’s Katrina? Should the federal and state governments have done more, and earlier? Did they learn the lessons of the devastating hurricane?

The crisis began with a massive explosion aboard the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon on April 20, more than 40 miles off the Louisiana coast. The search for 11 missing workers overshadowed environmental concerns until they were given up for lost.

Rear Adm. Mary Landry, chief of the Coast Guard in the region, said at the outset that most of the oil was burning off, leaving only a moderate rainbow sheen on the water and no sign of a major spill.

“Both the industry and the Coast Guard have technical experts actively at work,” she said. “So there’s a whole technical team on both sides of the aisle here to ensure we keep the conditions stable.”

Two days later, the Deepwater Horizon sank and crews spotted a 1-by-5-mile sheen with a dark center that appeared to be a crude oil mix. Obama got his first briefing on the accident.

Landry said the following day that no oil appeared to be leaking from a wellhead at the ocean floor, nor was any leaking noted at the surface.

At the White House, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said that sometimes accidents happen, and the loss of the Deepwater Horizon was no reason to back off on the president’s recent decision to support expanded offshore drilling.

Throughout last week and into this one, the government was deferring to BP on what was being done at the site and on assessments of progress.

The Coast Guard was not doing its own independent, firsthand assessment of the seabed rupture. Landry repeatedly asserted that BP was the responsible party and would shoulder the costs and organizational duties associated with the cleanup effort while the Coast Guard monitored things and approved the numbers of vessels working the scene and the methods of control.

Then, on Wednesday night, she reported the findings of federal experts that up to 5,000 barrels a day were leaking from the well. BP had estimated only 1,000. As well, the company told the Coast Guard a new leak had been found.

By Thursday afternoon, the White House had assembled a team of top advisers to showcase the administration’s determination to head off the damage posed by the oil slick. And Gibbs acknowledged details of the president’s drilling proposal might be revisited, depending on the investigation into the rig explosion and spill.

The equation had changed, like a hurricane setting a new course.