A little off topic for my blog, BP in the Gulf

On a more global outlook I cannot even grasp my mind around the problems in the Gulf of Mexico over the last 65 or so days. When the Deepwater Horizon sank and 11 people died we knew it would be bad. When we realized the riser pipe had broken off while it sank we knew it was getting worse. Then we realized the blow out preventer was not functioning and oil was pouring into the Gulf we knew things were getting much worse. After a few failed attempts at stopping/containing the spill in various ways BP used a scissor-like shear to cut the pipe in an attempt to cap the pipe once again. Well they cut the riser but the cut wasn't clean and the cap idea is not working as well as expected.

When the Deepwater Horizon first sank people said it could not be worse than Exxon Valdez. Right after the sinking the media was reporting that about 1,000 barrels a day were leaking. I was seven when the Exxon Valdez hit the reef in Prince William Sound but I remember reading about it in school and seeing it on children’s shows for years thereafter. The low end estimate for the Valdez is 10.8 million US gallons of crude. This amount covered roughly 1,300 miles of coastline and 11,000 square miles of ocean. We all thought that was as bad as it could get. Take the original estimate of 1,000 barrels a day and lets do some math. 1,000 barrels at 64 days would yield a little over 2.6 million gallons which is not quite at Exxon Valdez proportions. Unfortunately estimates of how much oil is actually leaking have done nothing but get larger. The numbers and estimates vary wildly but one worst case scenario now touted by the federal government is around 44,000 barrels a day. It sounds worse when you extrapolate it out, 2.85 million barrels over 64 days comes out to 130,000,000 million gallons of crude.

How can all of this happen may be the first question you ask yourself. That answer may be any number of things including but not limited to corporate greed, lack of enforced regulations, or poor construction of the well or its components. Maybe it was too much turning a blind eye by politicians and businessmen or possibly a simple mistake made by an oil worker.

I tend to believe the correct question is “Why is there no better solution for fixing the leak?” It seems to me that we were led to believe that BP was coming up with these ideas on the fly. BP warned the fixes may not work because the leak was over 5,000 ft below the waves but they were the best options available and had proven to work in the past on shallower leaks. A clip from Rachel Maddow on MSNBC was brought to my attention which illustrates these “fixes” have been attempted in the past and did not work in shallower water. Please note that I rarely watch Rachel Maddow and rarely agree with one sided commentary from any source but this clip is worth the watch.



If the relief wells that are being drilled were our only true “fix” all along was all of the hurried work BP has done to this point merely a public relations campaign to look as if they were trying to fix the problem? As Maddow pointed out why hasn’t the technology to fix a leak improved at the same pace as the technology to drill deeper faster. Why hasn’t a better containment process been developed since the 70’s.

I simply don’t know what to say at this point.

Lets talk cleanup. How do you get 130 million gallons of oil out of the Gulf of Mexico? How fast can it be done? Will it be in time to miss a hurricane sweeping through the Gulf this summer? I don’t think anyone has a plan for collecting all of the oil from the surface of the Gulf let alone any oil suspended below the waves in the so called “oil plumes”.

More questions fill my head every time I spend any amount of time thinking about this issue. I know it’s an old picture but you cannot tell if he is just thinking or praying. I like to think he is doing both, he needs to be in this case.