Am I the only one freaking out about this issue???????

New Dome Is Prepared to Contain Leaking Oil
After a 98-ton steel containment dome failed to stop a leak that continues to pour oil from a runaway well in the Gulf of Mexico, BP executives said on Monday that they would take another attempt at stemming some of the flow later this week with a far smaller containment device. An estimated 5,000 barrels of oil a day has been spilling into the gulf since the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig leased by BP 50 miles offshore. Ever since, the company has tried one highly technical maneuver after another with little success. Heavy winds and choppy seas became another challenge on Monday, with workers on cleanup vessels forced to wear respirators to protect themselves from fumes coming from burning the oil slick. “This is a very challenging environment to work in,” Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer for exploration and production, told reporters at a briefing in Robert, La. With no chance of capping the well in the next few days, the company was left with few options except shooting a chemical dispersant from a remote-controlled submarine robot into the thick of the leak, 5,000 feet under the gulf. The company used the dispersant last week, but suspended the operation so the Environmental Protection Agency could begin to test the potential impact on the environment. Workers began spraying the dispersant again Monday, and BP executives said they had successfully broken up much of the oil and kept much of it from reaching the surface. In another containment effort, National Guard helicopters in Louisiana’s Lafourche Parish dropped sandbags onto outlying island beaches on Monday in an attempt to safeguard the area’s wetlands. BP executives concede that containment has been easier than plugging the leak, which must be the ultimate solution to the problem well. Officials had hoped that a four-story, 98-ton containment dome deployed over the weekend would funnel 85 percent of the leak from the riser pipe to a pipeline connected to a containment ship. But it became clogged by an unexpectedly high buildup of gas hydrates, crystal structures that form when gas and water mix in the low temperatures and high pressures of deep ocean waters. The new hope is that a far smaller, two-ton container, known as a top hat, will capture less seawater, eliminating some of the risk of hydrate formation at its opening. But Tony Hayward, BP’s chief executive, acknowledged on Monday that due to the container’s much smaller size, “It’s unlikely to be as effective in capturing all the oil.” The E.P.A. has also given BP permission to inject methanol into the containment dome as the equivalent of antifreeze in another effort to keep the gas hydrates from clogging the system. The containment vessel will be lowered while still attached to a drill ship. Kent Wells, a BP senior vice president for exploration and production, compared the operation to “heart surgery under 5,000 feet” of water. The work is monitored around the clock from a crisis management center at BP headquarters in Houston, where BP technicians, along with technicians from other oil companies and government officials, view a bank of three-dimensional seismic images transmitted to them by the submarine robots. As early as next week, the company is preparing to execute a technique called a “junk shot,” reconfiguring the crippled blowout preventer above the well and injecting golf balls, pieces of rubber tire, knots of rope and other materials to choke off the well.