Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, recently visited the Gulf Coast to learn more about BP's plans to plug the leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico and to clean up the resulting oil spill. The spill stems from a sea floor oil gusher that started with an oil well blowout on April 20, which caused an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil drilling platform, roughly 50 miles southeast of the Louisiana coast.
During his stay, Bingaman joined Cabinet secretaries Janet Napolitano and Ken Salazar and several fellow senators for briefings by industry and government officials. Bingaman acknowledged the role that the national laboratories are playing in addressing the leaking well and related issues.
"After spending time in the Gulf, it's clear to me that there is an aggressive effort underway to solve this problem. I am also glad to know that both Sandia and Los Alamos [have] some of their best and brightest people working with BP and the federal government." LANL has about 75 people working on this initiative.
On a related note, the Department of Energy (DOE) "is working with leaders across government and the greater scientific community to address the oil spill in the Gulf by developing an approach for securing the damaged well head, stopping the leak, and minimizing impact from the spill," according to its website. And as a part of this effort, President Obama tapped Energy Secretary Steven Chu to lead a team of top administration officials and government scientists in an extensive dialogue regarding potential solutions with BP officials in Houston.
Department of Energy Activities in Response to the Deepwater BP Oil Spill
At the request of the President, Secretaries Chu and Salazar traveled to Houston and participated in meetings with DOE and national lab staff, industry officials and other engineers and scientists involved in finding solutions to cap the flow of oil and contain the spill.
Secretary Chu assembled a group of top scientific experts from inside and outside of government to join in discussions about possible solutions. This team includes:
- Dr. Tom Hunter, Director of the DOE's Sandia National Labs
- Dr. George A. Cooper, an expert in materials science and retired professor from UC Berkeley
- Richard Lawrence Garwin, a physicist and IBM Fellow Emeritus
- Dr. Jonathan I. Katz, professor of physics at Washington University
- Dr. Alexander H. Slocum, professor of mechanical engineering at MIT.
DOE national laboratories staff have employed the labs' high-powered supercomputers to assist with imaging and sampling of the seafloor; measuring pressures in the blowout preventer stack; and analysis of the riser structure and fluid flow.
Support provided to BP by DOE lab teams includes:
- Contributing ideas and strategies for pressure and flow measurements in the riser and BOP.
- Assisting with interpreting acoustical measurements to determine the blowout preventer ram status and riser integrity.
- Providing information using gamma radiography to obtain a better picture of the current state of the blowout preventer and riser.
- Offering technical assistance, together with university scientists, in understanding hydrate formation.
- Performing modeling to understand conditions in the riser just above the blowout preventer and elsewhere in the structure.
- Offering input and technical advice to develop an option to introduce material into the blowout preventer to stem the flow.
In addition, the Department is offering the following support to the National Response Team:
- DOE's Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability is monitoring the impact of the spill on power generation facilities and other energy infrastructure in the Gulf region.
- DOE national labs have activated their modeling and simulation capabilities to increase the understanding of the potential infrastructure impacts of the spill and assess the results of the in-situ burn of oil on the water surface.
