The oil spill that began last April 20 in the Gulf of Mexico extends and tomorrow could reach the coast of Florida. The BP states that bear the costs.

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The forecasts are devastating: at the moment is impossible to stop the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, with the difficulty that the winds are favoring the spread of oil, while the Florida State authorities estimate that the oil slick will arrive tomorrow the northwest coast of the state.

Sunday, the U.S. president, Barack Obama, visited Louisiana to see the evolution of the spot and, after assuring the fishermen that the Government will spare no effort to tackle the disaster, urged BP to assume the responsibilities arising from accident.

The oil was quick to confirm that it will take "all necessary cleaning measures and pay legitimate claims for damages. The accident was not our fault, but we are responsible to clean up the spill, "said company CEO Tony Hayward. However, these statements have not avoided the punishment of the New York Stock Exchange, where the titles of the BP fell yesterday at around 7% (in the past three days, Britain has lost more than 15%).

This new disaster calls into question the safety of oil operations. However, Professor José Luis García Fierro, the Institute of Catalysis and Petrochemistry, Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), insists that "oil drilling is a very recent, only a few decades ago, and each learning new accident new security measures. " Considers that the company is properly managed landfill, "and I have no doubt that the engineers are working from the first hours to plug the damaged pipeline, but it will take time because it is a task that requires an extremely complicated technology."

High Blood Pressure
One solution is to develop a robot capable of installing a kind of tap to cut crude output. The problem is "the high pressure (150 atm) which is the depth at which there is piping and can not support these devices." This alternative seems, a priori, inaccessible, so immediate is resorting to measures to contain the physical and chemical spillage.

But they are not the solution: the former are inadequate and are already seeing how the wind favors the escape of oil. "In the best cases, physical barriers can retrieve 30% of fuel," says the professor of the CSIC. "As cast detergents to clean the spill is not an option because of the strong impact that has on marine wildlife and vegetation."

So, the reality is imposed on the optimism and hopes that nobody will contain the spill in the coming days. It is also unanimous in finding that irreparable environmental damage will be long term. The executive director of Greenpeace in Spain, Juan Lopez de Uralde, stressed that "there can be another priority right now to stop this dumping at sea of nearly a thousand tons a day, a number that go on" leave little to the Exxon Valdez or the Prestige, "he said.

A positive note, the amounts of volatile compounds into the atmosphere does not pose a health risk.