This should never have happened. Back in the 70′s we started talking about the need for alternative fuel sources. Big business and the government farted around because there was so much profit to be made from oil and we are still being held hostage by oil companies. The Exxon Valdez oil spill happened in 1989…..21 years ago and it seems we learned little and made little progress in dealing with our oil addiction and it’s inherent dangers.
We’ve had many discussions nationwide about global warming and there are still those that say man has nothing to do with global warming. My question is, who cares? Seriously, global warming is merely a distraction from the bigger problems we face and that is the fact that we’ve polluted our waters, we’ve polluted our air and our food sources are becoming increasingly less safe. What do we think we are going to do when we hit that tipping point? What if there is a point of no return, a point where we can’t clean up the air enough, or the water enough, or gain some kind of control over our food sources? What then?
I grew up not far from Covington, VA where the MeadWestvaco paper mill has operated for many years. The paper mill spews out who knows what constantly and everything in Covington is covered with a haze of something all the time. The smell is abominable and the paper mill destroyed the Jackson River years ago. This kind of thing goes on all day, every day, all over this country.
We see more and more articles about water contamination. Our water is so polluted, we have to limit our intake of fish because of mercury in the water and God knows what else.
That brings me to our food. Most of us think as the United States being more sophisticated in our health standards, yet a report has come out about Mexico rejecting meat from the U.S. in 2008 because of copper content.
Instead of arguing over whether or not global warming exists, or whether or not man contributes to global warming, can we all at least agree on the fact that we need clean air to breathe; clean water to drink; and pesticide free, chemical free, antibiotic free, bacteria free food to eat?
Now we have this oil gushing into the ocean. This isn’t an oil spill like the Exxon Valdez that had a limited amount of oil to spill out. What we have with this latest oil disaster is an unknown amount of oil that could possibly be gushed out into the ocean at an unprecedented rate……over a million gallons of crude oil in a week’s time.
BUT….yes, there is a BUT, there is some good news. There have been other major oil spills, most of which we haven’t heard or read much about. As we have often seen, mother nature is quite resilient and has a way of repairing some of the damage we do. That, however, shouldn’t give us license to continue to abuse our own environment. And this oil gusher is by no means inconsequential.
“The oil that is still leaking from the well could seriously damage the economy and the environment of our gulf states and it could extend for a long time,” Mr. Obama said. “It could jeopardize the livelihoods of thousands of Americans who call this place home.” SOURCE
There will be a price to pay and we can look for ways to avoid future disasters or we will continue to pay.
I’m not a person given to chicken little syndrome….I don’t think about the sky falling and I don’t lose sleep over things like this, but I have to say this could possibly be an environmental disaster that far surpasses my imagination. But, I don’t think it’s the end of the world.
Mother of all gushers could kill Earth’s oceans
The original estimate was about 5,000 gallons of oil a day spilling into the ocean. Now they’re saying 200,000 gallons a day. That’s over a million gallons of crude oil a week!
I’m engineer with 25 years of experience. I’ve worked on some big projects with big machines. Maybe that’s why this mess is so clear to me.
First, the BP platform was drilling for what they call deep oil. They go out where the ocean is about 5,000 feet deep and drill another 30,000 feet into the crust of the earth. This it right on the edge of what human technology can do. Well, this time they hit a pocket of oil at such high pressure that it burst all of their safety valves all the way up to the drilling rig and then caused the rig to explode and sink. Take a moment to grasp the import of that. The pressure behind this oil is so high that it destroyed the maximum effort of human science to contain it.
When the rig sank it flipped over and landed on top of the drill hole some 5,000 feet under the ocean.
Now they’ve got a hole in the ocean floor, 5,000 feet down with a wrecked oil drilling rig sitting on top of is spewing 200,000 barrels of oil a day into the ocean. Take a moment and consider that, will you!
First they have to get the oil rig off the hole to get at it in order to try to cap it. Do you know the level of effort it will take to move that wrecked oil rig, sitting under 5,000 feet of water? That operation alone would take years and hundreds of millions to accomplish. Then, how do you cap that hole in the muddy ocean floor? There just is no way. No way.
The only piece of human technology that might address this is a nuclear bomb. I’m not kidding. If they put a nuke down there in the right spot it might seal up the hole. Nothing short of that will work. [See Paul Noel's ideas above.]
If we can’t cap that hole that oil is going to destroy the oceans of the world. It only takes one quart of motor oil to make 250,000 gallons of ocean water toxic to wildlife. Are you starting to get the magnitude of this?
We’re so used to our politicians creating false crises to forward their criminal agendas that we aren’t recognizing that we’re staring straight into possibly the greatest disaster mankind will ever see. Imagine what happens if that oil keeps flowing until it destroys all life in the oceans of this planet. Who knows how big of a reservoir of oil is down there.
Not to mention that the oceans are critical to maintaining the proper oxygen level in the atmosphere for human life.
We’re humped. Unless God steps in and fixes this. No human can. You can be sure of that.
So, are we just screwed and there is nothing that can be done? I don’t think so and I think the article above is a bit hyperbolic, but have no doubt that this is a serious situation.. How damaging this incident turns out to be could very well depend on how well man is able to come up with the technology to stop the leak.
One possible fix that is being discussed is a dome. Keep in mind, the dome can’t be ready for as many as 8 days.
BP Hoping Dome Can Cap Oil
‘It’s a dome that would be placed over the leak and instead of the oil leaking into the water column it would leak into this dome structure,’ coast guard spokesman Prentice Danner told AFP at the time.’The dome would capture or gather the oil and allow it to be pumped out of that dome structure.’
If robotic submarines fail to restart the giant blowout preventer valve on the sea floor, the dome is seen as the best short-term solution. Drilling relief wells to divert the flow of oil would take months. ‘If you could picture a half dome on top of the leak and the oil collects inside of this dome and is pumped out from there, that is the idea behind it,’ said Danner. He compared it to welded steel containment structures called cofferdams used in oil rig construction, but stressed this would be an original design. ‘This is the first time this has ever been done. This idea didn’t exist until now. It has never been fabricated before.’
Here is an animated graphic of the spread of the soil since April 22.
I’ve never been a proponent of the ‘drill, baby, drill’ mentality, and am even less so now. Until we understand what happened with this particular oil rig, and until we know the consequences of drilling thousands of feet below the ocean we need to step back and take a long, hard look at drilling off shore anywhere, anytime soon.
Remember, we still don’t fully understand what caused this accident in the first place. We don’t know why the rig exploded, killing the 11 workers.For more information on the spill see Why It’s So Tough To Stop The Gulf Oil Leak
No, this never should have happened and if we hadn’t been so oblivious to the dangers and easy on regulations it may not have happened. BP was warned as far back as 2006 when it had the region’s largest oil accident when a BPO pipeline ruptured on the North Slope of Alaska. It was the region’s largest oil accident on record and sent hundreds of thousands of litres of crude pouring into the Arctic Ocean after a badly corroded BPO pipeline ruptured.
‘For years we’ve been warning the company about cutting back on maintenance,’ Marc Kovac, a union official told the New York Times. ‘We know that this could have been prevented.’ In the interview, Marc Kovac, an official of the United Steelworkers union which represents workers at the BP facility, said he had seen little change in BP Exploration Alaska’s approach despite the warnings .SOURCE
Two things strike me about what’s going on, neither political, thankfully
. One, the Valdez had a SET amount of oil aboard. ( don’t know the figure) so when it spilled they KNEW how much oil there was . This is not a ‘spill’. This is oil flowing out of the ground , so it’s volume is unknown. That means they don’t know how long or how much can come out. Overnight I saw a magnified figure that not 5k barrels a day but as much as 25k barrels a day are now coming out. Thats GIANT! Two, if this is the world’s giant untapped oil reserve and it’s now flowing into the water, what happens when it’s gone. Is that it? Is that all the oil? Is PEAKOIL coming to fruition before our eyes and being wasted to boot? The implications on the environment can only be described as unknown at this point, I’d say. Sure, it’s bad, horrifying in fact. But I guess it will be years before the TRUE IMPACT is known. Have we eaten our last shrimp? Seen our last seagull? Seen the end of the white beaches of the coastline?
When this first happened, I thought ( like an idiot) they would get it under control in short order and it’ll be nasty but probably contained somehow. That was naivety on my part. They, govt, bp or whoever, have NO idea what to do. That much is clear from the reports and Mother Nature is resisting any attempt they make, so maybe she’s had enough of our dependancy on oil as well. Maybe now things like solar and wind and electric power may be FORCED on big oil. Maybe this is the turning of the tide.
I think this is truly a time for us, the THINKERS, to really get serious about making ourselves energy independant. Like I said before the costs of solar panels is LOW. Yes that’s not impacted, necessarily, by this oil spill. But it could be a big wakeup call for us each to do our part for ourselves and our households. Because literally in the blink of an eye, we could be scrounging for energy. Let’s be prepared !
Now it’ll get taken care of FER SHER !
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/us/02oil.html?hp
You should see the froth and stink of our waterways here during spring thaw. It’s all field run off and from the chemicals of herbisides farmers put on their crops. The state tried to put it on private septics at one point by demanding stricter designs for them.
While that is good in my mind, It hasn’t solved the problem.
One good thing, they no linger spray the roadsides with it. The reason they did that was cost though. Now they mow a couple times in the summer and in between we have a glorious display of wildflowers.
Thank God the fields behind me are organic!
timesr Reply:
May 3rd, 2010 at 11:24 am
@Wizcon, “You should see the froth and stink of our waterways here during spring thaw. It’s all field run off and from the chemicals of herbisides farmers put on their crops.”
Part of the problem is that people who care about cleaning that stuff up are labeled environmental wackos and ridiculed. Remember soon after Bush and Cheney (the rig that exploded was worked on by Halliburton the day before) took office, Cheney making fun of the energy conserving ways of Carter?
A quick question….I heard a representative from BP this morning start to turn more blame on the rig company that BP rents from. Who owns the rig company? Not just the name of the rig company, but also who is on the board of directors, etc.? Please excuse my paranoia and suspicious mind, but I wonder if there are ties there to Halliburton, Cheney, etc.
And thanks, timesr, for pointing out that Halliburton workers had been working on the rig hours before the explosion. I don’t think they sabotaged anything, but remember the shoddy work they did in Iraq for our military?
Sage Reply:
May 3rd, 2010 at 1:19 pm
AliSilver Reply:
May 3rd, 2010 at 2:01 pm
@2fewfactsaround, Why be so quick to say you don’t think they sabotaged anything? They very well may have .
Guess What!
1)A $500 Thousand Emergency Blowout Preventer could have taken care of this explosion before it happened. It could have prevented it.
Darth Vader (DICK CHENEY) ANd HIS SECRET CLOSE DOOR ENERGY DEREGULATION MEETINGS DURING THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION took that requirement off the table.
2) It was Halliburton the subcontractor who was ‘plugging holes in the pipeline seal by pumping cement into it from the rig. ‘
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/30/halliburton-may-be-culpri_n_558481.html
dARTH vADER LIKES TO PLAY WITH DANGER, FIRE AND OIL.
timesr Reply:
May 3rd, 2010 at 4:13 pm
@skyagunsta, “1)A $500 Thousand Emergency Blowout Preventer could have taken care of this explosion before it happened. It could have prevented it.”
According to this article, it had a blowout preventer but it failed. That, apparently is a pretty frequent occurrence.
http://www.kansascity.com/2010/04/30/1914996/us-report-found-failure-of-offshore.html
So when the “drill baby, drill” gang tells us that offshore drilling is safe, they’re blowing smoke.
Sage Reply:
May 3rd, 2010 at 4:44 pm
I’m seeing contradictory reports about this. I wonder where the truth lies.
‘The initial likely cause of gas coming to the surface had something to do with the cement,’ said Robert MacKenzie, managing director of energy and natural resources at FBR Capital Markets and a former cementing engineer in the oil industry. FROM THE HUFFPO ARTICLE.
The problem could have been a faulty cement plug at the bottom of the well, he said. Another possibility would be that cement between the pipe and well walls didn’t harden properly and allowed gas to pass through it. aLSO FROM THE huffpo article
Heard somewhere today, this well tapped into a resovoir that is under extreme High pressure. I misght point out it’s in an area of increased earthquakes.
Because we can’t see it does not mean that the shifting weight of oceans due to dispalcement of melt off of glaciers and tapping into resources deep below the surface does not affect the plates.
We are really messing up the earth.
Rush Limbaugh thinks the environmental wackos blew up the oil rig.
“But this bill, the cap-and-trade bill, was strongly criticized by hardcore environmentalist wackos because it supposedly allowed more offshore drilling and nuclear plants, nuclear plant investment. So, since they’re sending SWAT teams down there, folks, since they’re sending SWAT teams to inspect the other rigs, what better way to head off more oil drilling, nuclear plants, than by blowing up a rig? I’m just noting the timing here.”
http://www.wwltv.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/Limbaugh-suggests-oil-rig-explosion-an-inside-job-says-cleanup-unnecessary–92622459.html
I think he’s had half his brain tied behind his back too long.
I think a good question right now is Halliburton And British Petrol ? Friends or Foes ?
Wizcon Reply:
May 3rd, 2010 at 8:24 pm
@AliSilver, I already boycott BP gas. My car doesn’t like it. LOL
AliSilver Reply:
May 4th, 2010 at 9:44 pm
@Wizcon, LOL wiz. But I meant to each other… are they competitors ?
@timesr. Pres.Carter was a Sunday school teacher before & after his presidency. He didnt bargain with humanity like some of the others before & after him. I was told 5yrs. ago to that the realestate market would collaspe. I was also told by that same man future wars would be over water. I’ve started storaging water & ordered me a 55gallon water drum. Disasters like these make you get vigilant.
AliSilver Reply:
May 4th, 2010 at 10:12 pm
@Tony 773, I’m with you on this one !
Let this calamity be a lesson to us, we need to be prepared for disaster as much as we can. As we see, man kind can screwup & screwup big. I have a family and as man of the house my duty is to do my best to handle a situation. Not 1st to wait on our govt.
Great!!! Hurricane Season starts June 1 and they report they are now “in a race to cleanup before it starts”. My thing is how do you cleanup such a spill over that wide range in less than 30 days.
OMG,,,,,,,,, hurricane season
The thought didn’t even cross my mind.
What a nightmare. Hopefully it’ll be
a super quiet storm season like last year .
Now the plan is to put a giant cement LID on the leak ? I’m not a scientist or an engineer, but I think I can say that this has almost no chance of working.
Grasping at straws seems to be the order of the day here !
@AliSilver LOL!! boy I just bust up laughing reading your cement lid post. You’re right this doesn’t stand a chance! Well, hey I just pulled the short straw what does that mean…LOL
AliSilver Reply:
May 5th, 2010 at 1:33 pm
@Tony 773, That means you can bury yourself in your yard under your concrete lid and maybe the oil won’t get ya
Everyone loves to tie bush/cheney with big oil. Now will they admit that BOTH sides love big oil ?
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/36783.html
Sage Reply:
May 5th, 2010 at 2:31 pm
Of course they all get money from big oil, but getting campaign contributions isn’t quite the same as private, personal profit from oil companies. I don’t think anyone should get corporate money from any industry but that’s just me.
AliSilver Reply:
May 5th, 2010 at 5:23 pm
@Sage, Campaign contributors are really the ONLY people who should EXPECT the elected to work for them. We’ve seen it time and time again.
Oh , even more curiosities……..
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/04/AR2010050404118.html?hpid=topnews
BP gets EXCLUSION from mandatory study in april 2009…..
“”In one assessment, the agency estimated that “a large oil spill” from a platform would not exceed a total of 1,500 barrels and that a “deepwater spill,” occurring “offshore of the inner Continental shelf,” would not reach the coast. In another assessment, it defined the most likely large spill as totaling 4,600 barrels and forecast that it would largely dissipate within 10 days and would be unlikely to make landfall. ”’
WHOOPSIE,,, just a tad over that.
I hope this government agency was looking at porn online on the clock and that is not their actual WELL THOUGHT and RESEARCHED answer, 4600 barrels?????
You rtight both sides loves the oil..and hey they made a educated guess.
Ok !!!!!!!!!!!
Let’s Do The Figure’s Here.
One Quart = 250,000 Gallons of ocean water Toxic
Now
Approx 3,000 mile of oceanwater times 5,000 feet =15,000,000 SqF
15,000,000 Quarts Times
250,000 Gallons of toxic Ocean Water
Holly Shit !!!!!!!! Thats Only 3,750,000,000,000
Can Sombody Check This Out and tell me what 4 Million Gallons of oil will do to Our Enviroment
For AWhile I was Getting 2012 Out of My Mine But This Shit Just Struck The Higest Core.
Why Not Get A 5,000 Foot Host Down There And pump that oil into
those containers they use for shipping as opose to creating something that,s only going to cost so much to built and not get anywhere. Beside the point, I did not know they make visable underwater Goggles that can see thru oil and to top that off Darkness !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mother Nature Might help out That’s A Joke !!!!
Do you think Catrina Might Come out and Pick Up your Oil Spill
And Dump It For You Guess Again.
@ AliSilver ,Well you were right that container didn’t work as you predicted….They in deep trouble.
AliSilver Reply:
May 13th, 2010 at 2:43 pm
@Tony 773, Well they’re going to try again, but this time with no ice crystals in it. I really don’t see how ice crystals will change the outcome. I was thinking about a faucet outside rupturing and spewing water and me going out with a tin coffee can and sticking it over the geyser. I might even ram it down in the mud an inch. Would that work? This is what I think of with their cement lockbox