The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is bad — no one would dispute it. But just how bad?According to another article this leak will have to continue at the current rate for 200 more days before this spill will even make it into the Top 10 oil spills of all time.
Some experts have been quick to predict apocalypse, painting grim pictures of 1,000 miles of irreplaceable wetlands and beaches at risk, fisheries damaged for seasons, fragile species wiped out and a region and an industry economically crippled for years.
President Obama has called the spill “a potentially unprecedented environmental disaster.” And some scientists have suggested that the oil might hitch a ride on the loop current in the gulf, bringing havoc to the Atlantic Coast.
Yet the Deepwater Horizon blowout is not unprecedented, nor is it yet among the worst oil accidents in history. And its ultimate impact will depend on a long list of interlinked variables, including the weather, ocean currents, the properties of the oil involved and the success or failure of the frantic efforts to stanch the flow and remediate its effects.
As one expert put it, this is the first inning of a nine-inning game. No one knows the final score.
The ruptured well, currently pouring an estimated 210,000 gallons of oil a day into the gulf, could flow for years and still not begin to approach the 36 billion gallons of oil spilled by retreating Iraqi forces when they left Kuwait in 1991. It is not yet close to the magnitude of the Ixtoc I blowout in the Bay of Campeche in Mexico in 1979, which spilled an estimated 140 million gallons of crude before the gusher could be stopped.
And it will have to get much worse before it approaches the impact of the Exxon Valdez accident of 1989, which contaminated 1,300 miles of largely untouched shoreline and killed tens of thousands of seabirds, otters and seals along with 250 eagles and 22 killer whales.
No one, not even the oil industry’s most fervent apologists, is making light of this accident. The contaminated area of the gulf continues to spread, and oil has been found in some of the fragile marshes at the tip of Louisiana. The beaches and coral reefs of the Florida Keys could be hit if the slick is captured by the gulf’s clockwise loop current.
But on Monday, the wind was pushing the slick in the opposite direction, away from the current. The worst effects of the spill have yet to be felt. And if efforts to contain the oil are even partly successful and the weather cooperates, the worst could be avoided.
“Right now what people are fearing has not materialized,” said Edward B. Overton, professor emeritus of environmental science at Louisiana State University and an expert on oil spills. “People have the idea of an Exxon Valdez, with a gunky, smelly black tide looming over the horizon waiting to wash ashore. I do not anticipate this will happen down here unless things get a lot worse.”
Dr. Overton said he was hopeful that efforts by BP to place containment structures over the leaking parts of the well will succeed, although he said it was a difficult task that could actually make things worse by damaging undersea pipes.
Other experts said that while the potential for catastrophe remained, there were reasons to remain guardedly optimistic.
“The sky is not falling,” said Quenton R. Dokken, a marine biologist and the executive director of the Gulf of Mexico Foundation, a conservation group in Corpus Christi, Tex. “We’ve certainly stepped in a hole and we’re going to have to work ourselves out of it, but it isn’t the end of the Gulf of Mexico.”
Engineers said the type of oil pouring out is lighter than the heavy crude spilled by the Exxon Valdez, evaporates more quickly and is easier to burn. It also appears to respond to the use of dispersants, which break up globs of oil and help them sink. The oil is still capable of significant damage, particularly when it is churned up with water and forms a sort of mousse that floats and can travel long distances.
And yet, politicians are running to the mics to decry offshore oil drilling or cancel future plans. The Governator in California has already withdrawn support from an offshore deal that not only would have increased our locally developed energy supply, but would have provided funds to pay for all of California's State Parks and probably gone a long way to reducing the State's huge budget deficit. It's foolish to allow one accident to stampede people into making bad decisions. The industry as a whole has been very, very safe.
It was suggested early on by the left that any person who supported offshore drilling should show up on the beaches in the Gulf and report for clean-up duty. If that's the way we're going to play, than anyone who opposes offshore drilling should stop using anything that depends on oil to run. Park your cars, quit using electricity if yours comes from an oil-fired plant, and stop buying stuff with petroleum products in them, like plastic.
Let's see how serious the anti-drilling left really is about all this.
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3 comments:
Rumors about that there is a long-standing plan to deal with this kind of spill by burning the oil.
But the US government (as a cost cutting measure?) has declined to buy the equipment needed.
And the Russians have technology using bombs to staunch the flow, but we won't consider that, I supposed.
What'sup with that?
"Let's see how serious the anti-drilling left really is about all this."
We all know it's "El Zippo", other than "no drilling, not ever, never".
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