12000 To 19000 barrels per day said one

The stigmas are still there. Views of the back door of the aircraft of the coast guard, the huge swath red and Brown extend eye around "ground zero". Eight weeks after the explosion of the platform Deepwater Horizon of BP, on 20 April, off the coast of Louisiana, no one knows precisely how much crude oil escaped from the Macondo well, to 1,600 metres in depth. 12,000 To 19,000 barrels per day, said one. Probably 40,000 barrels or more..., have corrected Thursday night the Government experts. One thing is certain: the magnitude of the spill already exceeds three to four times that of the "Exxon Valdez" in 1989. According to a study of Credit Switzerland, the final bill could rise to 37 billion dollars for BP. Analysts are already betting on its dismantling and sale of its US assets to ExxonMobil. But it is first on the ecological impact of the disaster that is at stake, the outcome of the duel between Obama-BP in the Gulf of the Mexico.

"I know what behind kicking", launched the American President, on 8 June, on NBC, before calling, on Wednesday, the pattern of BP in the White House. It is not the only dream of kicking the train of Tony Hayward, since said that the environmental impact of the spill would probably "very very small." The sale of t-shirts "british pigs" raging on Bourbon Street in the heart of the French quarter of New Orleans. The President of the parish of Plaquemines, Billy Nungesser, promised to immerse Tony Hayward in full black tide for him proving the existence of "submarine groundwater." But the Federal Government was not very good press in the region. "The response has been as slow and bureaucratic than Katrina." "It appears that Obama has suddenly discovered with horror the degree of connivance between the oil industry and the regulators", says Robert Thomas, Director of the Center for Environmental Communication at Loyola University.

Erin Brockovich monte to the niche

Certainly, since implementing successful a Chamber on the well-head on June 4, the pressure a little declined. BP now promises to retrieve most of the flight pending final clogging, in August. Washington breathes. But for the fishermen of Grand Isle or Port Fourchon, South of Louisiana, the battle has just begun. June 7, Erin Brockovich, the famous activist specializing in cases of pollution, by Julia Roberts in Steven Soderbergh's film, started his tour to collect the grievances of the fishermen in anger. Famous for having revealed the case of the pollution of drinking water in California, the self-taught to blonde Mane is strong to pay BP up to the lesser "dime".

"Ecosystems are more resilient than is only assumed, if we act quickly and seriously ...". "We will overcome this crisis, but the economic impact will be substantial and will last for some time", has recently launched Barack Obama, in the aftermath of the first "technical" of BP success. Yes, but how long And at what price for the New Orleans region, comes to sentence to heal the wounds of Hurricane Katrina which bites are still visible around the Lake Ponchartrain "After five years of recovery, the city had just to regain confidence with our victory at the Superbowl and the election of a new mayor." "The oil spill risk of any file on the ground", sighs Bigad Shaban, local correspondent for CBS in New Orleans. "Once the plugged wells, the treatment of the oil spill surface will last two months and the restoration of the environment and Habitat will take years," has not hidden Admiral of the coast guard, Thad Allen, responsible for the supervision of the operations.

The precedent of the "Exxon Valdez" is not likely to reassure. More than twenty years after the 1989 disaster that killed some 250,000 seabirds, 2.800 sea otters and hundreds of seals, traces of oil are still visible on the coast of Alaska. And biologists believe that the oil spill caused by the explosion of the platform Ixtoc I in 1979, the most serious to date, has permanently eradicated hundreds of millions of crabs and shellfish of Mexican beaches. Even if ecosystems generally survive partial evaporation of oil and the beneficial action of gloutons microbes of hydrocarbons, "the effects of the black tide will last for years if not decades", believes Doug Inkley, of the National Wildlife Federation, not to mention the unknown of the impact on plankton and fish larvae. Denied by the pattern of BP, but denounced with force by Samantha Joye, a biologist from the University of Georgia, the presence of large underwater areas could have a devastating impact on phytoplankton, the basis of the marine food chain.

The unknown of the Corexit

A month after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon platform, one of the main questions also focuses on the massive use of dispersant Corexit, a solvent prohibits the United Kingdom. Despite warnings from the Agency for the protection of the environment (EPA), the British group dumped more than 3.2 million litres of Corexit 9500 and Corexit EC9527A solvents in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including a party in deep waters, to split the oil droplets. "The choice between the lesser of two evils", according to the federal authorities. But some experts, the cure may be worse than the disease. Ronald Kendall, Director of the Institute of Environmental and Human Health of Lubbock, Texas, the use of Corexit in depth is highly toxic for the aquatic flora and fauna. After having authorized the use of the two solvents may 10 with the emergency, the EPA had also tried to BP to find an alternative less toxic. While keeping the composition of the confidential product, its producer, Nalco, says that "each of its six ingredients is used daily in household products." Some elected members of Congress questioned, however, the presence former BP and ExxonMobil leaders at the Council of Nalco, today, the former subsidiary of Exxon recovery by Suez in 1999, and then resold to a financial consortium in 2003, and whose principal shareholder is Billionaire Warren Buffett. "The use of Corexit is problematic because that is what has maintained the oil beneath the surface; If it had not been used, could have the burn, the siphon, and he could evaporate. "Any biologist knows that there are toxic components and it can only be used in deep water," said biologist Robert Thomas.

Between black and blue gold gold

However, as most local experts, considers inappropriate the suspension of the offshore exploration. "If a plane crashes, it does not suspend air traffic for six months." To understand the "schizophrenia" of the State of Louisiana, one of the poorest in the United States, bought for a pittance by Livingstone to the Napoleonic France in 1803, simply take Highway 23 to Venice, to the South of New Orleans. On the one hand, of vast bucolic pastures bordering the precious ecosystem of the Bayou, the marshy region South of Louisiana. On the other, large tankers back silently the course of the Mississippi along the huge tanks of Chevron and ConocoPhillips refineries. Taken in grip between the black gold and blue gold, it was there that settled the Cajuns, the descendants of the Acadians, driven out by the far east of the Canada English, during the great upheaval of 1755. The Cajuns and shrimp fishermen have already survived Katrina in 2005. They will again have to fight to not disappear.

"We need oil." "The best fish of the world is located in the mouth of the Mississippi with the oil platforms used as artificial barriers", says a fisherman from Pointe à la Hache. Oil alone generates $ 30 billion in revenue a year in Louisiana, "16 times more than the fishing industry", said Eric Smith, consultant to the Tulane Energy Institute of New Orleans. So that the decision of the Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, a moratorium of six months on drilling in deep water, is not popular locally. Offshore operations account for 80 in the production of the Gulf of Mexico, which itself represents 29 of the total of U.S. domestic production. Too many related interests... The suspension of the 33 platforms operating in deep waters in the Gulf of the Mexico threaten some 20,000 direct and indirect jobs according to the Louisiana Governor, Bobby Jindal. This is why many experts believe that the moratorium will not really be applied.

"I do not want this happen", has launched Barack Obama, June 4, on the port of Grand Isle, ensuring that it is or permanently halt offshore exploration, or "make decisions at the will-soon". Well will need to decide, however. Former Vice President Al Gore sees the Mexico Gulf crisis "a moment of truth". The dilemma of Barack Obama is: simply to pay BP, or take advantage of the explosion of Deepwater Horizon to revive an ambitious Bill the climate at the Congress.

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