Oil could gush until August

As BP readied its latest fallback plan to stop oil gushing from one of its wells in the Gulf of Mexico, the Obama administration and the company warned that the crude could continue flowing until August, compounding threats to coastal wetlands, fisheries and beaches.

White House energy and climate adviser Carol M. Browner said Sunday that the oil spill was "probably the biggest environmental disaster we've ever faced in this country" and that "we are prepared for the worst." On the CBS show "Face the Nation," she said that the "American people need to know that it is possible we will have oil leaking from this well until August when the relief wells will be finished."

Those two wells, which BP began drilling early this month, are expected to intersect the damaged one and seal it near the reservoir far below the seafloor. The first has reached 7,000 feet below the seafloor, and the second has reached 3,500 feet below the floor, but progress gets slower the deeper the wells go. With the arrival of hurricane season Tuesday, the drilling could be slowed if the rigs need to be evacuated during storms.

The grim assessment came in the wake of the failure last week of BP's "top kill" effort to stop the flow of oil from the damaged well by shooting heavy drilling mud into the hole.

I don't think it''s quite sunk in yet how really, really, awful this is going to be. The area currently affected supplies 10% of our fish and shell fish. It is a playground for tourists as well as being a spawning ground for several vital commercial fish.

It will not only wreck the economies of LA and AL - at least - but may, if the currents are against us, wind the spill all the way around the tip of Florida to the Atlantic Coastline. This is not a distinct possibility, but we've never dealt with such a monumental amount of oil spilling into water and some scientists have at least proposed the possibility of this happening.

Only time will tell how successful the Obama administration will be in deflecting blame from itself for the extent of this disaster. Everybody loves to hate the oil companies so they may be more successful than they deserve to be. But the cleanup will be another story. And given what we've seen so far, the performance of the administration does not inspire much confidence that they can deal with it adequately.