The amount of oil found on Louisiana’s coast has surged this year – three years after BP’s Macondo spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority said last night.
Some three million pounds of “oily material” were cleaned up on Louisiana’s coast from March to August this year, up from 119,894 pounds in the same period last year, according to the state Department of Natural Resources.
BP said its own tally showed 3.1million pounds of oily debris collected in the first nine months of this year, up from 941,000 pounds a year ago.
The state did not say why there had been a big increase in the amount collected this year, but a US Coast Guard official said frequent tropical storms could move sands around on beaches to either cover up oily material or expose it.
BP incident commander Danny Wallace said the rise in recoveries this year stemmed from where BP was focusing its efforts after Hurricane Isaac rearranged sands in August 2012.
He said the state had initially shied away from allowing the company to dig deeply to recover oily material but, after Hurricane Isaac, scooping up the oil became easier and posed fewer environmental risks.
BP added that some of the oil on the shore could have come from natural seeps on the sea floor.
