The good news is that more than a million gallons of leaking oil are now being captured every day from the broken Gulf of Mexico well. The not-so-good news is that about 400,000 gallons of that is being burned off spectacularly by an “environmentally friendly” device that’s not all that environmentally friendly. And the even less good news is that as much as a million gallons are still leaking into the Gulf every day. That situation won’t change for a couple of weeks.

But down the road, the news should improve again. More oil-recovery ships are on the way to site, and the operation that's billed as the ultimate fix for the leaking well - a weeks-long effort to drill relief wells 13,000 feet beneath the sea floor - is ahead of schedule. The drill bit working on the deepest relief well is just 200 feet from the pipe, in fact, but the most difficult and time-consuming part of the operation is just ahead.

Here's how things stand in what's shaping up as history's biggest and most expensive single well-capping operation:

Oil-capture system near capacity
The BP oil company hit a new record on Thursday for most oil captured over a 24-hour period: About 16,020 barrels (672,840 gallons) of oil were brought up from the deep through a cap-and-riser system for processing aboard the Discoverer Enterprise, along with millions of cubic feet of natural gas that was flared off. That's close to the estimated daily capacity of 18,000 barrels. Another 9,270 barrels (389,340 gallons) of oil went through a different line to the Q4000 rig. That's also near the estimated capacity of 10,000 barrels daily. But the Q4000 doesn't have any processing facilities available, so all that oil has to be burned off.

Can burning oil be 'environmentally friendly'?
At current crude-oil prices, that burn rate suggests that $700,000 worth of petroleum is going up in smoke every day. Admittedly, it's not your usual "smoke." BP is using in a smokeless atomizing burner that is supposed to be more environmentally friendly than the usual equipment. However, the EverGreen Burner still carries an environmental cost. A report from Total E&P UK, prepared for North Sea drilling operations, says high-efficiency green burners are the "safest option" for burning oil, but they nevertheless produce irritating ozone, sulfur dioxide, greenhouse gases and nitrous oxides. Fallout from the burn can drift several miles (kilometers) away, according to the environmental study. The burning is said to pose a "moderate risk" to the environment - and that's upsetting to some activists. But in BP's view, at least, the risk is outweighed by the benefit of keeping that much more oil out of the gulf while reinforcements make their way to the site.

More ships are on the way
Sometime in the next 10 days, the Helix Producer processing ship is due to arrive on the scene - and start pumping up 20,000 to 25,000 barrels (840,000 to 1.05 million gallons) of oil daily from yet another line connected to the Gulf of Mexico well's broken blowout preventer. That will provide a huge boost to the oil-capture capacity. It's even conceivable that BP could discontinue the Q4000 oil-burning operation, if the output from the broken well is toward the low end of the current estimates (35,000 barrels leaking per day). By mid-July, still more processing ships (including the Toisa Pisces and the Clear Leader) will be collecting oil. The capture capacity would rise to 60,000 to 80,000 barrels a day, which would cover even the most dire estimates to date. By mid-July, the cap on the blowout preventer and the hookups to the well would be replaced with equipment designed to weather the hurricane season.

Relief wells close in on target
For weeks, two drilling rigs have been carving new holes through the seafloor, with the aim of intersecting with the 7-inch-wide pipe for the original, now-broken well at a depth of around 18,000 feet (which includes 5,000 feet of water plus 13,000 feet of drilling beneath the seafloor). As of Thursday, the well-drilling operations had reached depths of about 16,000 feet and 9,800 feet. More significantly, the deepest drill bit is only 200 horizontal feet away from the side of the well pipe, BP executive Kent Wells said today. But it will take weeks more to finesse those final feet. "We're actually going to go right beside it - that's what takes the time," he said.

BP spokesman Robert Wine told me that the team directing the drill is using magnetic sensors to get a fix on exactly where that pipe is in relation to the bit. Once the bit drills into the pipe, heavy mud and cement will be pumped down the relief well. It's expected that the gunk will flow up the pipe, harden and block the broken well completely. Wine said the drilling is proceeding ahead of schedule so far, but BP is still targeting August as the expected completion date. If the first relief well doesn't do the trick, then the second relief well would serve as a backup. But it could take several attempts to hit the pipe in the right place, as it did during a similar well-killing operation in Australia last August.

"It's a little bit like driving a car from the back seat," oil-industry observer Bob Cavnar told NBC News. "You can reach the steering wheel but it's a little hard to control."

Meanwhile, the disaster continues
As bad as it sounds to spray burning oil and gas into the air, burning the oil on the surface of the gulf raises more questions. "There are a couple of concerns," said marine biologist John Hocevar, Greenpeace USA's oceans campaign director. "One is the pollution. ... But also, where there is enough oil to make it worth skimming, along with the oil you find algae and other materials that tend to cause marine life to aggregate around it."

The oil and the fires pose a double threat to marine species such as sea turtles and dolphins. "Greenpeace has observed some of this from the air," Hocevar said. But the main concern is the cumulative impact of the oil that's been fouling the gulf and Louisiana's wetlands for weeks. As of Thursday, rescuers have collected 639 oiled birds and released 42 back in the wild. More than 100 sea turtles have been rescued alive, but only three have been released. Hundreds more dead birds and turtles have been collected. It's not clear, however, what role the oil spill played in their death.

When I spoke with Hocevar over the phone, he was on his way back from a tour of the barrier islands around Grand Isle, La. He estimated that there were 25,000 dead hermit crabs washed up on the shore. "It's awful to see," he said. "One of the reasons this is troubling is that this means the sand is no longer able to sustain life."

Bottom line? Let's hope that the reinforcements traveling in high gear, that the burning downshifts soon, and that the hurricane season stays stuck in low gear.

More on the disaster in the gulf:

• NBC video: BP increases capture capacity
• Methane adds to oil-spill concerns
• Interactive: The physics of oil spills
• Live leak video could hurt Obama
• Full coverage from msnbc.com

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BP has fast-tracked a plan to collect all the oil leaking out of its deep-sea well in the Gulf of Mexico by the end of the month - but this new plan isn't risk-free.

Last week, the oil company said it needed until mid-July to have all the ships and plumbing set up to deal with the daily flow of as much as 50,000 barrels of oil, gushing up from a broken well 5,000 feet beneath the surface of the Gulf. In response to orders from the Obama administration, BP came up with a way to shave two weeks off that schedule - basically by hooking up the plumbing to the spigots that are available now instead of taking the time to switch the pipes around.

Eventually, BP and its industrial partners will still have to do that extra pipe-switching. But in the short run, the revised plan should take care of all the oil and gas, assuming it works anywhere close to advertised.

BP's chief operating officer, Doug Suttles, laid out the details in a letter to the Coast Guard dated Sunday, but here's the breakdown in simple terms:

• 1. Discoverer Enterprise, steady as she goes: The current system brings up about 15,000 barrels of oil to the Discoverer Enterprise drillship for processing, through a cap assembly that was installed over the sawed-off top of the well's blowout preventer earlier this month. That capture capability can be boosted to 18,000 barrels, but under the current system, the rest of the oil has to spew through the cap's ports into the Gulf.
• 2. Q4000, for the burn: Another rig, known as the Q4000, was used last month in BP's unsuccessful "top-kill" attempt to close off the well. Now one of the two lines that was used in the top-kill try has been converted to reverse the flow. The collection system leading to the Q4000 could bring up another 5,000 to 10,000 barrels a day, starting as early as Tuesday. But there's no equipment onboard that rig to process and store that oil. Instead, the oil will have to be burned off, using an "environmentally friendly" piece of equipment known as the EverGreen Burner. Some question whether this arrangement is all that environmentally friendly. Clean or not, the burner might have to be used for the next month.
• 3. Pulling a switch with two heavy-hitters: Last week's plan called for setting up another Q4000-type system by the end of the month, which would have accommodated another 10,000 barrels a day. The revised plan goes with a more ambitious operation to handle an additional 20,000 to 25,000 barrels a day. BP has just arranged to have two oil-processing ships sail to the oil-leak site. Either the Helix Producer I or the Toisa Pisces will be hooked up to the other line that was used during the top-kill operation. BP will go with whichever ship is ready first. These three simultaneous operations - the Deepwater Horizon, the Q4000 and one of the two heavy-hitter ships - should be able to handle up to 53,000 barrels of oil a day.
• 4. Make the system more solid: Between the end of June and the middle of July, BP will fine-tune the system to make it more hurricane-proof. The company will also send down a new type of cap that will be sealed more securely on the top of the blowout preventer, with two attachments for riser lines. By mid-July, both of the heavy-hitting processing ships should be ready for service.
• 5. Shift the plumbing: In the latter part of July, the line leading to the Q4000 will be switched over to the other big ship, which brings two big benefits. First, BP will no longer have to burn off hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil every day. Also, the daily processing capability using those two ships alone will balloon to between 40,000 and 50,000 barrels. The Discoverer Enterprise can still take care of 10,000 to 15,000 barrels a day, sucking up oil from the new, improved cap on the blowout preventer. Yet another ship, the Discoverer Clear Leader, can handle another 10,000 to 15,000 barrels flowing through a second line leading from the cap on the blowout preventer. The four simultaneous operations will have a daily capture capacity of 60,000 to 80,000 barrels - far more than the current worst-case estimates for flow from the oil leak.
• 6. Relief wells, still the long-term fix: If the system works as planned, BP should be able to take care of all the leaking oil. But this system can only collect the oil. It can't do anything about controlling the flow or stopping the leak. BP still has to rely on a relief-well system for that part of the job. Right now the first two wells have reached depths of about 14,000 feet and 9,000 feet (including 5,000 feet of water), and they're expected to hit the required 18,000-foot mark by August. There's no guarantee that these first wells will do the trick, but if BP's system is sucking up all the oil by that time, it's not so crucial that the first relief wells are exactly on target.

This is the current best-case scenario, but Suttles' letter points out the potential risks as well. The top-kill lines that are currently connected to the blowout preventer (and figure so prominently in steps 2 through 5) were never designed to be used for continuous oil flow. There's a risk that those lines may erode - or they may get plugged up with the junk left behind by the top-kill attempt.

If a hurricane blows through the area, all the ships will have to disconnect from their lines, and oil will once again flow freely into the Gulf through those lines until the storm has passed and the ships can be reconnected.

Even if all the lines are working, the operations team will have to juggle four oil-processing operations simultaneously and safely. "Work is ongoing to confirm that this combination of four production vessels is indeed possible within appropriate safety parameters," he said.

"The risks of operating multiple facilities in close proximity must be carefully managed," Suttles said. "Several hundred people are working in a confined space with live hydrocarbons on up to four vessels. This is significantly beyond both BP and industry practice. We will continue to aggressively drive schedule to minimize the pollution, but we must not allow this drive to compromise our No. 1 priority, that being the health and safety of our people."

Any offshore oil operation requires workers to deal with lots of toxic materials and burn off the natural gas that comes up from the well along with the oil. A methane flare-up is thought to be the immediate cause of the April 20 oil-rig explosion that touched off this disaster. Suttles said the stepped-up oil-recovery operation could run the risk of a "major surface accident" - a scenario that one assumes might involve a flare-up from one ship sparking another explosion on a nearby ship.

Coast Guard Rear Adm. James Watson's written response to Suttle's letter, released today, noted BP's stepped-up efforts but held off from voicing explicit approval. "We have continuously demanded strategies and responses from BP that fit the realities of this catastrophic event, for which BP is responsible," he said. "We will continue to hold them accountable and bring every possible resource and innovation to bear."

BP spokesman David Nicholas told me that the team managing the comings and going of the ships converging on the epicenter of the Gulf oil spill will have to serve as "air traffic controllers" for what's shaping up as an unprecedented oil-processing operation. The most crucial two weeks of the response to the disaster in the Gulf may be just ahead. Is this the best BP can do? Are there ways to reduce the risks? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.

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How much oil is being lost every day in the Gulf of Mexico spill? That’s one of the contentious issues surrounding the disaster, but another issue has to do with how much can be captured.

Two weeks ago, BP's medium-term strategy was to seal off the oil leak rather than suck up the leaking oil. The company pumped in thousands of gallons of heavy mud, hoping to overwhelm the upwelling oil and gas. Then the top-kill operation stopped, and BP switched back to the strategy of capturing as much of the leaking oil as possible.

Why the switch? Outside experts have suggested that the top-kill effort was leading to a "doomsday scenario," in which the pressure buildup ruptures the cement linings and rock layers surrounding the well, hundreds or thousands of feet beneath the seafloor. Such an underground blowout could cause oil to seep out uncontrollably from multiple fissures, which would be a nightmare for containment efforts. Some reports raise the prospect that we're already close to that situation. The Washington Post, for example, quoted an unnamed BP official as saying "we discovered things that were broken in the subsurface" during the top-kill attempt.

BP spokesman Jon Pack told me today that such concerns were indeed part of the reason for turning away from the top-kill strategy. "The possibility of an underground blowout - that could be a result if we were to carry on doing that," he said. But the chief concern was that experts simply couldn't predict the effect of putting extra pressure on the well, he said.

"Because we don't have enough accurate information about what was going on in that wellbore, the safest thing to do is move away from that and go to containment," Pack said.

Huge amounts of oil to be burned
That's why BP sheared off the top of the well pipe, and then attached a cap with a hose attached to bring up the leaking oil. Now about 15,000 barrels (630,000 gallons) of oil are being brought up to the surface every day. That oil is being transferred from the Discoverer Enterprise drilling ship to a barge, which will take it to an onshore terminal for processing. More ships are converging on the site to help with the transfer operation, Upstream Online reports.

But the current containment system can't capture all the oil, as anyone who has looked at the live video feed from the oil-leak site knows all too well. At best, the system can bring up and process only about 18,000 barrels (750,000 gallons) daily. To collect more oil, BP and its partners are retrofitting the plumbing that was used for the top kill to bring up as much as 10,000 barrels (420,000 gallons) more every day. The base of operations for this second system will be the Q4000 drilling rig, which was used earlier for the top-kill operation.

The only problem is that there's no capacity available for processing that extra oil on the Q4000. Instead, the oil will be atomized and burned off right at the site, using an imposing piece of equipment known as the EverGreen Burner. Its manufacturer, Schlumberger Limited, calls the EverGreen an "environmentally friendly" burner that is fallout-free and smokeless. But if it works anything like what you see in the artist's conception above, the EverGreen should put on quite a show.

Yet another Q4000-style system could be brought to bear by the end of the month, the Coast Guard says.

Running the numbers
Burning off hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil a day may seem like a colossal waste, but BP's Pack told me that "it would take much longer" to bring in the equipment required for processing that much crude oil. The current containment cap and the Q4000's capture-and-burn system are considered mere stopgaps, to be used while BP builds a more permanent floating-riser oil-collection system for hurricane season. That system should be ready sometime next month.

The charts in this PDF file show all the options for oil collection. If you tally up the numbers released by BP as well as the Coast Guard, you come up with a daily capture capacity of 28,000 barrels (1.2 million gallons) by next week, 38,000 barrels (1.6 gallons) by the end of the month, and 50,000 barrels (2.1 million gallons) by the end of July. That should cover even the high side of the estimates for daily flow from the oil leak. And the permanent fix may come in August, when BP is expected to finish drilling its relief wells and kill the well for good.

At least that's the plan. Over the past 53 days, we've repeatedly seen that the best-laid plans to end the Gulf disaster have often gone awry. Who knows what the next 53 days will bring? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below.

Update for 3 p.m. ET June 12: The plan to burn off hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil every day is sparking environmental concerns. The company that makes the oil-burning equipment may say the process is "environmentally friendly," but a McClatchy Newspapers report quotes health experts and environmental advocates as saying the operation could expose workers in the area to additional toxins. "It seems like a no-brainer that you wouldn't want to do this," Diane Bailey, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, is quoted as saying.

Meanwhile, the Coast Guard is expressing unhappiness with the pace of BP's efforts to deal with the additional oil that can be brought up. Rear Adm. James Watson sent a letter to company executives on Friday saying they had 48 hours to come up with a better plan that can be implemented more quickly.

Update for 2:40 p.m. ET June 14: BP has given federal authorities a plan to raise its oil capture rate to as much as 53,000 barrels of oil a day by the end of June. Details are scant, but it sounds as if the plan would phase in the use of the floating-riser oil-collection system earlier than previously scheduled, and also hustle up the arrival of more production facilities at the oil-leak site.

More on the disaster in the Gulf:

• NBC video: How much oil is leaking, and why does it matter?
• BP's failures made worse by public-relations mistakes
• Frequently asked questions about the Gulf spill
• Daily Nightly: How you can help
• Updates from Upstream Online
• Special report on msnbc.com

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Rehabilitated birds from Louisiana's oil-spill zone are being airlifted to a new home that's famous for flight: NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Six brown pelicans, four laughing gulls and one common tern were flown from a bird-rescue center at Fort Jackson in Louisiana to Florida over the weekend. The birds were released on Sunday at the 140,000-acre Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, which is co-located with the space center. "They looked pretty normal," the refuge's supervisory park ranger, Dorn Whitmore, told me today. "They acted happy to be free again. If pelicans could look happy, that's how they'd look."

Bird-rescue crews were gearing up for another Louisiana-to-Florida transfer on Thursday, but Sharon Taylor, a veterinarian with the Fish and Wildlife Service in Louisiana, said the trip had to be postponed. "There was a problem with a last-minute health check," she told me. After the birds are cleaned up, they need a few days of drying and preening to make their feathers waterproof again, Taylor explained. During this evening's final check, she and her colleagues determined that the feathers weren't quite right yet. So it'll be another couple of days before the next airlift can take place.

Why go through all this trouble? The folks in charge of the bird cleanup don't want to release birds back into the oil-contaminated environment that forced the fouled fowl into rehab in the first place. Marsh birds such as egrets and herons are brought to inland marshland in Louisiana, such as the Sherburne Wildlife Management Area. But aerial searching birds, such as pelicans and gulls, like to dive right into the water to find their food. For them, the waters off Louisiana's shores are not a good option.

The lagoons on the space center grounds were judged the best place to relocate such species. "It's pretty safe in the immediate vicinity of where they're being released," Whitmore said. "Of course, we don't know what the birds are going to do after we release them."

During the earlier phase of the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, some of the cleaned-up birds were brought to Egmont Key National Wildlife Refuge on Florida's Gulf Coast, but as the plume of oil spread, experts switched the relocation effort to Merritt Island. "As best as we can tell, it's out of the main trajectory," Taylor said.

America's main rocketport may seem like an odd place to put a wildlife refuge, but it's been that way since 1963. Today, Kennedy Space Center provides a home for more than 500 species of wildlife, including endangered sea turtles, manatees, bald eagles and alligators.

Whitmore said the rehabilitated birds will be flown aboard a Coast Guard airplane into the space center's shuttle landing facility. From there, the emigres will be bused to release areas outside NASA's restricted zone. Each bird bears a leg band to facilitate future tracking, and the Fish and Wildlife Service is considering a more sophisticated monitoring effort that will involve fitting rehabilitated birds with radio transmitters.

As of today, 442 oiled birds have been collected alive from four states affected by the oil spill (Louisiana, Alabama, Florida and Mississippi). Rescuers have gathered up 633 dead birds. Only 40 birds have been released so far. But you won't find Whitmore or Taylor suggesting that the birds aren't worth trying to save.

"Everything we've released so far, they've looked really good when we've released them," Taylor said.

Whitmore said Merritt Island offers plenty of habitat for the new birds on the block. "We don't feel that overpopulation will have any impact at all," he said. The pelicans in particular should feel right at home.

"They seem to get along pretty well," Whitmore said. "There are hundreds and hundreds on these islands where they roost every night. They're what we call a colonial nesting bird. They seem to be gregarious. ... I don't think it's an issue that these new birds have a Louisiana accent."

More about the oil spill and wildlife:

• Clean the birds, or kill them?
• See how the oil spill has shifted
• Oil spill clouds World Oceans Day
• Spill slideshow: Wildlife threatened
• Show us your favorite place on the Gulf
• NBC video: In Louisiana, a crude awakening
• Disaster in the Gulf: msnbc.com special report

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How did so many things go so wrong at the Deepwater Horizon oil-spill site? Was it human error, an act of nature, or a blend of both? And why didn't any of those great engineering ideas to stem the spill work out? There are lots more questions than answers, even on Day 50 of the disaster on the Gulf. But a couple of things are clear: First, we got into this fix because of multiple failures and miscalculations. Second, still more ills could well surface before all this is over. Here's a quick recap of what went wrong at the wellhead, and what could go wrong in the future:

1. Why did the well explode in the first place? The Deepwater Horizon oil well, 5,000 feet beneath the sea surface, was right between the exploratory drilling phase and its operational phase. Executives from BP and the other companies involved in the drilling told a Senate hearing that heavy drilling mud was removed from the well without putting on a final cement cap. That move has drawn severe criticism, because it reduced downward pressure on the well. Oil and gas blasted up the line on April 20, touching off the initial explosion. The arguments over what the companies did or didn't do in advance of the blast will play a key role in the coming avalanche of lawsuits.

2. Could this rig have been saved? Firefighters worked mightily to put out the blaze, which killed 11 workers. Some have questioned whether the tons of water and fire retardant dumped onto the rig contributed to its sinking on April 22. If the rig could somehow have been saved from sinking, that would have made the job of capping the oil leak much easier. Instead, the rig fell to the bottom of the sea, mangling the riser line that led up from the wellhead.

3. Why didn't the blowout preventer work? The five-story-high contraption known as a blowout preventer, or BOP, was supposed to be the fail-safe option to close off the leaking well. The BOP contains a series of valves that should have closed upon command, or if the oil-and-gas pressure went out of control. Oil executives voiced profound disappointment that it didn't work. So why didn't it? Technology Review points to several reports, issued years ago, that say blowout control measures that are reliable in shallow waters are not so reliable below depths of 3,000 feet or so. This particular BOP might have been damaged by debris during the rig's fall, or it might have been unable to withstand the pressure from this particular well. Even remotely operated vehicles were unable to close down the valves - which suggests that the gush has irreparably damaged the BOP's plumbing. Would a backup BOP have done any good? That's a question to be considered during the crisis postmortem.

4. Why didn't the containment box work? In early May, BP had hoped that a 40-foot-high containment box could be lowered over the well's leaking pipe and suck up the oil and gas. The problem was that the box was too big: The seawater that was trapped within reacted with the methane bubbling up from the leak, forming crystals of methane hydrate. Those crystals essentially plugged up the hose so that oil could not be sucked up ... kind of like the hair that gets stuck in a vacuum-cleaner attachment. What's more, the crystals were lighter than water, which made the box too buoyant to keep clamped over the leaking pipe. In mid-May, BP switched to a different siphoning system that brought up oil from within the broken riser line.

5. What went wrong with the siphon? The four-inch siphoning tube worked, but it could collect only a fraction of the leaking oil - 5,000 barrels a day at best. During the early phase of the oil disaster, some experts thought the total leakage amounted to 5,000 barrels a day. The siphoning operation made it obvious that much more oil than that was getting into the Gulf. To plug the leak completely, BP pinned its hopes on an operation known as "top kill," which involved pushing enough heavy drilling mud down the well to counteract the pressure of oil and gas.

6. What went wrong with the top kill? BP pushed the mud down the well for hours at a time, for three days. But the operation could never get enough mud down the hole to keep the oil and gas from gushing back up. The exercise reminded me of trying to unplug a kitchen drain by running tap water down the sink with the garbage disposal on. Gunk just came flooding back up every time they turned off the spigot.

7. Why didn't the junk shot work? One of the extra twists to the "top kill" maneuver was to throw some extra debris - say, golf balls or strips of rubber - into the drilling mud, in hopes of plugging up the blowout preventer's leaky plumbing. This is what's known as a "junk shot." Engineers told The New York Times that the junk shot didn't come close to succeeding, apparently because the debris didn't gum up the works as they hoped. BP set aside the strategy of sealing off the wellhead, and instead tried to suck up the oil using a contraption known as the lower marine riser package, the LMRP, or the "top cap."

8. Is the top cap working? Sort of. The top cap doesn't run into the methane-hydrate problems that the containment box did because it closes more tightly over the pipe leading up from the blowout preventer. Less water gets inside the chamber, which provides less opportunity for hydrate crystals to form. Methanol can also be pumped into the cap to retard hydrate formation. To attach the cap, remotely operated vehicles had to saw off the dented riser line - and that part of the operation didn't go as smoothly as hoped. After the saw got stuck, a part of the riser had to be cut off with a giant pair of shears, leaving a jagged edge on the pipe. The cap has four vents to ease the oil/gas pressure while it's being put into place and checked out. So far, only one of the vents has been closed. As a result, lots of oil is still being vented into the sea. BP says progress is being made, with 7,850 barrels of oil being collected over a 12-hour period today. However, experts say cutting off the riser line actually increased the total flow of oil, effectively making things worse ... at least temporarily. Other oil-sucking systems are being put in place, including the Q4000 arrangement that was used for the unsuccessful top kill and a free-floating riser that's designed to ride out hurricane season.

9. Who's in charge, and what have they got? Efforts to contain the oil on the surface are another story entirely, but the main concern here is whether enough resources are being brought to bear. BP is responsible for the cost of the oil cleanup, and over the past few days company executives have said they will "meet our obligations." But critics worry that the cleanup hasn't kept up with the threats posed by the spill. Today's report about an undersea plume of oil contamination stretching as far as 142 miles from the spill site raises the level of concern. Alaska marine biologist Rick Steiner, a veteran of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill response and a longtime critic of the petroleum industry, is worried that the cleanup effort is losing steam. He complained that marine contractors have "done a terrible job" of tending the containment booms around coastal areas. Disaster fatigue could become more prevalent as the crisis continues.

10. Will the relief wells work? Experts have been saying since late April that the long-term fix for the oil leak depends on the relief wells that are being drilled beneath the seafloor. Those 18,000-foot-deep wells are supposed to intersect with the gushing well, and provide openings for BP to push mud and cement down into the leak. As of Monday, the wells have reached depths of 12,956 feet and 8,576 feet, BP said. The wells are due for completion by August, but there's no guarantee that they'll actually intersect with the original well. Some have compared the job to threading a needle, or finding a needle in a haystack. Last year, after an Australian offshore-oil blowout, it took five attempts to hit the mark. If the Gulf of Mexico situation develops in the same way, that could add weeks upon frustrating weeks to the duration of the disaster.

Bottom line? It'd be great to have some strokes of good luck for a change: a top cap that works better than expected, or a hole in one on the relief-well front. But it's most important to have the will and the wherewithal to deal with what's shaping up as a long-term disaster relief project on America's shores. What do you think? Weigh in with your comments and suggestions below.

More sources on the spill:

• The Oil Drum
• Mark I. Moore
• Upstream Online
• Deepwater Horizon Response
• BP: Gulf of Mexico Response | Technical briefing | Slides
• Disaster in the Gulf: msnbc.com special report

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A biologist in Germany has stirred up a fuss with comments suggesting it makes more sense to kill heavily oiled birds from the Gulf of Mexico oil-spill disaster than to clean them.

"According to serious studies, the middle-term survival rate of oil-soaked birds is under 1 percent," Silvia Gaus, a biologist at the Wattenmeer National Park along the North Sea, was quoted as saying on Spiegel Online last month. "We, therefore, oppose cleaning birds."

Biologists on the scene who are actually involved in the cleanup tell a slightly different story: Sure, sometimes it makes sense to euthanize birds who aren’t going to make it, or leave them to die in their natural habitat. But ethically speaking, they feel a duty to try saving the birds if there’s a chance they can be saved.

For example, Rick Steiner, an Alaska marine biologist who was involved in the 1989 Exxon Valdez cleanup and is now assisting Greenpeace, said from a boat in the Gulf that he and the crew turned in a heavily oiled young egret for cleaning just today.

"It was in horrible shape," he told me via telephone, "and I doubt seriously that it will survive the day. But, you know, we caused their pain and suffering, so we owe it to them to do everything we possibly can to give them a fighting chance of survival.”

Today's numbers from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other groups involved in the cleanup show that 413 oiled birds have been collected alive, and 594 dead birds have been picked up. Of all those birds, only 39 have been released back into the wild.

The raw numbers from the Gulf certainly look grim right now, and Gaus expects those numbers to get even grimmer. She argues that rescuers' efforts to counter petroleum's toxic effects - for example, by having the birds ingest charcoal solutions or Pepto Bismol - are ineffective in the long run.

Spiegel Online says that Gaus bases her view on 20 years of experience: For example, she worked on the cleanup of the 1998 Pallas oil spill into the North Sea, which killed about 13,000 birds. The report also cites comments attributed to the World Wildlife Fund during the 2002 Prestige oil-spill cleanup off the coast of Spain, to the effect that oil-covered birds "can no longer be helped" and that the organization was "very reluctant to recommend cleaning."

During the present crisis, however, the WWF has been supportive of bird-cleaning. Although it's not directly involved in oil-spill response, one of its partners on the scene is the California-based Oiled Wildlife Care Network. And one of my sources at the WWF deferred to the International Bird Rescue Research Center, which is heavily involved in the bird cleanup effort.

Mark Russell, a project manager at the IBRRC, took strong issue with Gaus' claim that cleaning is ineffective: He told me that the studies on which she based her conclusions suffered from some gaps in procedure. (For example, what were the rehabilitation practices? Did the monitoring equipment that was strapped onto the released birds contribute to their demise? If you can no longer locate a bird with a transmitter, should you always assume that the bird died?)

Other studies indicate that the survival rate for cleaned-up birds can be quite high, from 78 to 100 percent, as noted on the "Living the Scientific Life" blog. And as bad as those oily pelicans may look in the pictures from Louisiana, Russell said it's often the oiliest birds that have the highest survival rate. That's because they tend to be picked up earlier, before dehydration, hypothermia and other ills have set in.

Russell said there was once a long-running debate over whether the stress of rehabilitation does the birds more harm than good. (Research shows that it doesn't.) Even now, there's a debate over whether the resources spent on wildlife rehabilitation should be directed instead toward rebuilding the tarnished environment left behind by an oil spill. The way Russell sees it, cleaning up the animals is part and parcel of cleaning up the ecosystem. Keeping wildlife populations as healthy as possible will make the recovery easier. "This isn't a 'this-or-that' situation," Russell said.

To be sure, life-or-death decisions have to be made in the field. Steiner told me that oiled birds have a "decent chance" of surviving if they're brought in during the first 24 hours of exposure to oil. But as any veterinarian will tell you, sometimes the decent thing to do is to let the animals go ... and learn a lesson.

"There is a point at which, obviously, they are suffering needlessly, and certainly they should be euthanized," Steiner said. "Some are so far gone when you're capturing them for rehab, that the best thing is to leave them there and let them die in their natural habitat. ... It pulls at the heartstrings, but this is how people get the idea behind our oil addiction, by looking at these oil-soaked birds."

To get a better sense of the struggle to save Gulf wildlife, check out our slideshow as well as the IBRRC's blog - and feel free to weigh in with your comments below.

Update for 7:10 p.m. ET: In your comments, please refrain from talking about "euthanizing" or killing anyone. Some commenters have noted that the reported survival rate for Gulf birds brought in for rehabilitation is around 10 percent, not 1 percent. But it's too early to say how much longer those animals survive once they've been released. In the Spiegel article, Gaus says the 1 percent figure she cited applies to "midterm survival." Russell says that figure is too low, even for longer-range survival, based on the scientific literature he's seen.

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Berkeley physics professor Richard Muller, author of the new textbook "Physics and Technology for Future Presidents," says Barack Obama could learn a lesson from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Using offshore oil to solve America's liquid energy security issue poses a bigger problem than previously thought, he said.

You won't find the professor's answer to the problem in the back of the book, but it can be summarized in two words: natural gas.

"The thing the president really needs to know is that we have huge supplies of natural gas; that although it's not liquid, compressed natural gas is an alternative fuel for U.S. automobiles. And U.S. policy has not taken advantage of that in any significant way," Muller told me today.

Natural-gas drilling is fraught with controversy, but in the wake of the Gulf oil spill, policymakers and energy-industry executives may well shift their focus from offshore oil to onshore natural gas, Muller said. That's not something Obama is likely to talk about when he visits the Louisiana coast to assess spill damage on Friday. He's more likely to play up his administration's new steps to go slow on offshore drilling. Nevertheless, Muller said the oil-spill crisis provides Obama with a golden opportunity to widen the debate over America's energy options.

Multiple-choice questions
Muller addresses energy policy, climate change and many other hot-button political issues in his textbook, which is an academic spin-off of "Physics for Future Presidents," a book that's geared for less scientifically inclined audiences. The 532-page textbook covers twice as much material as the earlier book, and includes all the features you'd expect from a classroom text (including multiple-choice and essay questions at the end of each chapter). Muller says the text already been adopted by 15 universities in the United States, plus another university in Pakistan.

"The strangest place it's been used [as a textbook] is actually not in Pakistan, but in San Quentin," Muller said. He's heard tales of inmates at the California prison sitting around in the exercise yard, discussing physics. "That's the one place where I guarantee there's no future president coming out," he joked.

Muller said he's heard that first lady Michelle Obama promised to pass along a copy of the book to her husband, and he's gotten feedback from "very high-level people" in the administration (though he's not naming names). He's also proud of the warm reviews that "PFFP" has received from the left side of the political spectrum (Huffington Post) as well as the right side (National Review).

"To get good reviews from both sides on issues that are as contentious as terrorism, nuclear war and global warming is very gratifying," he said. "This is stuff that Democrats and Republicans can agree on. Physics is nonpartisan."

Pros of natural gas
So here's Muller's take on post-spill energy policy:

"When you're talking about energy, there are really three issues that get confused: global warming, local pollution - that's the issue that has thrust itself in here - and liquid energy security," he said. The United States has plenty of fossil-fuel energy reserves, in the form of coal and gas, but the challenge is how to put those reserves to use, along with energy alternatives, while addressing those three key issues.

The energy industry had thought increased offshore-oil drilling could boost America's liquid-fuel supplies, even though it wouldn't really address the global-warming issue. Muller said "the crisis caused by this spill reminds us that there's another dimension to liquid fuel that is bad for the environment" - that is, the potential for pollution on a regional scale.

The way Muller sees it, compressed natural gas offers a viable alternative for fueling the nation's automobiles. The greenhouse-gas impact of natural gas consumption is slightly less than that of burning gasoline. Natural gas contains more energy per pound than gasoline, although it's not as dense. America's energy infrastructure might have to be reworked so that drivers "fill 'er up" from a natural-gas pipe rather than from a gasoline hose. Natural-gas-fueled autos might have to have a shorter range than gasoline-fueled cars. But Muller thinks the problems are solvable.

"Natural-gas automobiles are much closer to widespread use than the president's favorite alternative technology, electric cars," he said. "I believe the physics says that his alternative is a poor choice."

There's far less energy in a pound of car batteries than there is in a pound of gasoline or natural gas, even when you're talking about the high-tech batteries that go into a Tesla or a Chevy Volt. "This is not a realistic alternative for the bulk of the American people," Muller said. "It will work only for wealthy Americans."

Cons of natural gas
Natural gas is not without its own serious environmental issues: In addition to the greenhouse-gas impact, some gas-extraction companies have developed a bad reputation, as shown in the award-winning documentary "Gasland."

"What they do in order to extract natural gas is, they'll drill horizontal wells into shale, and then they'll pump water down and crack the rock [to release the gas]. You have this water that comes back up, and what do you do with it? You could clean it, but in the past the industry has not done a good job of doing that," Muller said.

Muller said he'd like to see Obama put together a study group to take a hard look at energy alternatives, building on the momentum generated by oil-spill outrage. All the options should be covered, including an intelligent approach to natural-gas drilling. "The drilling has to be accompanied by legislation that will assure that local communities can benefit, and that environmental damage will not be done," Muller said.

I'm still partial to approaches that go beyond fossil fuels - including terrestrial solar and wind, biomass, bacteria and algae, "negawatts" and nuclear, even space solar power and fusion in the long term. But Muller is correct that power portability has to be part of the equation. It'd be great to see revolutionary new battery technologies and ethanol/methanol initiatives, but maybe natural gas deserves some consideration as well, at least as a short-term alternative. What do you think? Feel free to leave your comments below.

Bonus round: I'm including four multiple-choice questions from "Physics and Technology for Future Presidents" below. Take a crack at giving the correct answers in your comment (for example, "1:A, 2:B, 3:C, 4:D"), and I'll weigh in with the answer key on Friday.

1. Which of the following contains the most energy per gram?

• A. TNT
• B. Chocolate chip cookies
• C. Battery
• D. Uranium

2. Compare the energy in a kilogram of gasoline to that in a kilogram of flashlight batteries:

• A. The gasoline has about 400 times as much energy.
• B. The gasoline has about 10 times as much energy.
• C. The gasoline has about 70 times as much energy.
• D. They cannot be honestly compared, since one stores power and the other stores energy.

3. Coal reserves in the United States are expected to last for:

• A. Hundreds of years.
• B. Three or four decades.
• C. 72 years.
• D. Less than a decade.

4. The efficiency of inexpensive solar cells is closest to:

• A. 1 percent.
• B. 12 percent.
• C. 65 percent.
• D. 100 percent.

Update for 4 p.m. ET May 28: I've added the book's answers to the questions as a comment below (#32).

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Never have so many hopes rested on so much mud: The "top kill" maneuver that got under way today is the latest best strategy for cutting off the catastrophic Gulf of Mexico oil spill. And the key to the top kill is millions of gallons of a viscous fluid known as drilling mud.

This mud is not your garden-variety sludge: It's an industrial-strength blend of water and minerals, generally including an absorbent, slippery kind of clay known as bentonite. Drilling fluid is used for a wide variety of purposes in oil fields - as lubricants, coolants, drill cleaners or hole fillers.

That last application is how it's being used in the Gulf: As shown in this interactive graphic, gallons of heavy, gloppy drilling mud are being pumped into the half-broken blowout preventer on top of the wellhead.

The idea is that the dense fluid will eventually press down on the oil rising from thousands of feet below and clog up the oil line. This posting on the Oil Drum forum compares it to trying to get your basement drain to back up. Another way to think of it is like ketchup that has a hard time blurping out of the bottle.

The BP oil company, which is still responsible for cleaning up the Gulf mess, has laid in 50,000 barrels (2 million gallons) of drilling mud for the job. The pumping operation began this afternoon, and as of this evening's news conference, BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles said more than 7,000 barrels had been pumped in.

"The job has been proceeding as planned," Suttles said.

BP executives have estimated that this latest strategy has a 60 to 70 percent chance of working. The problem is that the mud has to fill the blowout preventer and sink down into the well, counteracting the pressure of spurting oil. That pressure might be so great that the mud is pushed out of the leaking pipes as fast as it can be pumped in. There's even a chance that the drilling mud will ream out the contraption's partially closed valves, opening the lines to create an even bigger oil gusher at the bottom of the sea.

In the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War, oil wranglers like the late Red Adair used the top-kill strategy to stop up sabotaged oil wells in Kuwait - but doing it using robo-submarines a mile beneath the ocean surface is something completely different. Will Red Adair's successors pull this one off?

If this doesn't work, you can forget the top kill and start thinking about the next strategy, known as the lower marine riser package or LMRP Cap Option. That involves cutting off the top of the blowout preventer and putting a cap on top to suck up the oil. This slide presentation provides a graphic look at BP's next steps, and this BP video provides a technical overview.

More about oil-spill strategies:

• What the heck's a 'top kill'?
• Live video: Streaming view of oil leak
• Animation: How the top kill works
• Oil dispersants spark worries

Update for 12:50 a.m. ET May 31: The top-kill effort didn't work, and BP is moving on to the LMRP Cap Option.

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