Reporting from the Gulf of Mexico — Wearing purple fireproof gloves, George Ross leaned over the side of a small boat and gingerly placed his igniter package — essentially a modified Molotov cocktail — into a syrupy pool of black oil that had bubbled up from the BP spill site a few miles away.
The fuse sputtered, then a marine flare spit flames between two half-gallon plastic jugs filled with diesel gel and lashed together with foam and tape. In seconds, a blaze roared up, black smoke poured skyward and the air sizzled with the sound of burning oil.
"Accch, she's got the fire now," said Ross, a grizzled Scotsman who works on oil spills around the world. "Listen to her snarling and spitting and crackling."
It was the 13th burn of the day Saturday for the teams doing arguably the most dangerous and controversial work in the cleanup. In the three months since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank, killing 11 people, they have lit 329 fires at sea and burned more than 10.3 million gallons of oil.
No one has ever burned oil in U.S. waters after a spill, so government agencies, oil companies and environmental groups are watching closely.
"We've burned more oil than the Exxon Valdez spilled" off Alaska in 1989, said Ross, who helped clean up that disaster too. "No one can deny this is a success."
Coast officials and oil spill experts describe the offshore burns as a crucial tool to destroy oil before it can reach shore. The burning is likely to increase now that BP has lifted a containment cap from the wellhead, allowing oil to gush without hindrance, with the goal of installing a tighter seal by Sunday. Officials say they may be able to permanently close the well by early August.
But confusion and delays still plague the oil-burn program, and may hinder its utility in the weeks ahead.
The burns resumed last Friday after a break that began June 21, when environmental groups filed a federal lawsuit charging that young sea turtles may have been burned alive between the fireproof booms used to corral the oil.
The reptiles, most of them endangered species, forage and hide in beds of sargassum seaweed, which float on the currents that aggregate the oil. No one could confirm that any turtles had been incinerated, but the issue led to a public outcry.
BP and the Coast Guard agreed to place wildlife biologists with long-handled nets aboard the igniter boats to grab any turtles before a burn. Then rough weather forced more delays.
