Oil is here

It appears BP has been making one mistake after another. Besides all their violations before the rig explosion, after the rig exploded and the oil started coming out, it seems there only concern was how to capture the escaping oil, not stopping the flow of oil, nor were they any bit concerned about the oil that had already leaked out. They should of had miles upon miles of booms to contain the initial slick and tankers there as fast as possible to pump the surface slick into. Instead all there focus has been on capturing the escaping oil... Pathetic. BP should pay dearly for their unadulterated greed.

-Mark
 
So Mark from NYC--do you have the expertise to know what BP's motive was? Lots of monday night quarterbacking--and I guess there is the "Blame" generation.

No matter what BP did, they would be blamed. But they had integrity to stand up and say that they would take care of it. Sure a lot of it is PR--but they could have said it was Transocean's for Halliburton's fault.

Sure this is a horrible mess. But people have to have the integrity to not take advantage of the situation and do what can be done to make it right.
 
There is a program on the Discovery Channel right now on the oil situation in the Gulf. It just started (6:30 pm Mountain Time), so I can't say what the slant might be.
 
It {The show]appears to not be funded by BP.
I still believe they are they are trying to do good,but my feeling after trying to reach out to the multiple contractors and service providers is that its a Giant Cluster flux .
Marc
 
I grew up on the California coast where offshore oil seeps have been common since pre-settlement times. I wonder how significant the the gulf spill is by comparison. I do not mean to downplay the impacts to people and wildlife from the present situation.

I do have a hard time blaming the oil industry for this event. Oil companies would not be drilling in deep water with the resulting problems if good judgement allowed the use of our abundant natural resources and new, safer technologies to harvest it.
 
Seepage vs BP spill. Interesting question. An interesting article on this is posted at http://www.eoearth.org/article/Deepwate ... _oil_spill. The bottom line -- the current spill is unprecedented and in exponentially greater flow and concentration than natural seepage.

Time magazine summarizes the National Academies of Science:

"A 2003 report from the National Academies, estimates 980,000 barrels seep into the Gulf of Mexico each year. And moreover, there are as many as 600 points on the Gulf’s floor where seeps occur, according to a 2000 Earth Satellite Corporation study.... The water does have its own natural way of breaking oil down gently into the ecosystem so that it doesn’t hurt anything. Bacteria breaks it down and it turns into carbon dioxide. And, here’s the key difference: because the oil is released in many places over a vast period of time, the oil is very thin and can’t do any harm. But BP’s spill is rushing into the water very fast and from the same place at once, causing very thick plumes that can easily choke life away."

http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/06/03/nat ... eas-fault/
 
As technology takes us into greater and greater complexity in our lives, disasters, natural or man caused, show how helpless we can really become dealing with them. Katrina showed us that nature is the master,
far surpassing human shortcomings. BP has showed us that challenging the ocean floor a mile deep can have huge, negative consequences not easily corrected.

I recall a story that was attributed to Mark Twain. The story is apocryphal because Twain died in 1910. Anyway, the story is about the German U-Boats sinking allied shipping crossing the Atlantic during WWI.
Anti-submarine warfare was primitive at best in 1918. People became aroused and were meeting in town halls across the nation discussing what to do. Twain was attending one of these, and volunteered a solution. He said, "Just bring the oceans to a boil."

A young man had the temerity to question the soundness of Twain's solution, and asked the question, "How this was to be done?" Twain's replied by saying, "Young man I told you what to do, not how to do it."

It appears our only "hope" beyond government now is to expect the technology which brought us the problem to find the solution, quickly.
That may not happen quickly. The quip about there being no free lunch has broad applications. John
 
Hi,
Just for fun I wonder if we could count all the gumint agencies involved with the clean up. I wonder how many are actually are part of the solution and how many are just getting in the way. Accidents happen alright and this one is a doozie. I always wanted to fish out of Venice, La. Katrina put that on hold and now this, I'll be dead before the fish come back. What strikes me as funny is all of the required placards for boats concerning disposing of waste, plastics etc. and the Gumint forgot about the plan for offshore oil rigs pipes, breaking / leaking a mile down from the surface. I sure hope they revise the law about how many clean up dollars the oil companies can be held accountable to pay. You won't be able to buy tuna in a can with water anymore, it will only be available in oil.
D.D.
 
Wow Yellowstone John,

The story is apocryphal because Twain died in 1910.
Click to expand...

Your argot is prodigious! :mrgreen:

D.D. I sure hope that things don't get that bad. It could though with all the unknowns especially the dispersants.

We will find out some day. In the mean time the helpless waiting continues.

Dan
 
Not sure what location has to do with responses on here, but for you Bob Austin I see it has a significance... As for your remark about BP standing up and saying they would take care of it, you must of missed their redirecting liability for the accident to Transocean and Halliburton.


-Mark
 
B.P. has created the "B.P.welfare economy" here in short order .Almost all seafood industry work has ceased and there is a $5000.00 monthly check for almost anyone with a pulse that has ever been near a boat.
Our water and seafood are still clean for now , yet there is a total lifestyle paradigm shift for the worse .They are wasting well over 100k a day just in our small area on "Vessels of Opportunity" and much more in other areas .
This has been and will be world changing for us . Hope I'm wrong ............
Marc
 
Marc at Wefings
Just got word that Scallop season has opened early(June 19th). Guess Crist figures the oil is coming or under pressure. Any size to them this early and what's your take on it?
Linda
 
Mark NYC--there are a number of Marks on this site. Certainly those of use affected most by the spill have a great interest. If you had read all of my comments there is note of the various outer companies involved. People make a not of unfounded assumptions based on the blabs on TV and media. There is no question in most people involved in the industry that the most important issue is to stop the spill/collect oil and prevent further spread.

As for seepage vs the spill, again it is concentration. The seepage occurs over a fairly large area, and a large amount of time. Oil on the beaches has been a way of life in Calif. for many decades--long before drilling. My grandmother had oil seeping up in her back yard in Long Breach, CA for years, She also received royalties from the time the first oil wells were drilled in the area. This home was at least 100 feet above sea level (even after subsidence due to oil removal).

Marc--none of us know what the future holds for the Gulf's wild life. We do know that it has been heavily overfished--there has been prior massive polution--(Rivers, agriculture, industry). You mentioned Corexit. We don't know the full effect of it--but there is a huge dilution factor. The amount of dispeinrsement is somewhere more than a million gallons. A cubic mile of sea water contains over 10 to the 18th gallons of sea water. There are over 600,000 square miles of the gulf, and the average depth is just under a mile. So the amount of dilution is immense. You noted that the reef might be under more stress because of dispersements, and oil, than the swamp. However, I neglected to mention that there were many gallons of pesticide, oil, paint, and sludge from the aforementioned paper mill (whose river produces 2 headed fish etc) Marie and I pulled many empty containers out of that area--so I suspect that the stress on the swamp was more than an open water reef. The point was that there is immense restorative power of Nature.

I have spent the last two days with scientists in Texas who are working with the University of Texas, and there are a number of innovative "solutions" which are being proposed. There are over 150 people just at this institution working on the problem--not hired by BP or the government.

We have to keep all of this in prospective. Although this is an immense ecological disaster, there have been far worse. The environment has recovered.
 
Marc and Dr. Bob,

Keep us posted. We can trust Marc to tell us what is happening in his area. Since he is not a talking head from a news company he can be trusted.

Dr. Bob studies and thinks before he speaks-something I many times forget to do. I always read his posts carefully and usually learn something.

Fred
 
This morning two boats were setting booms on the west side of East Pass (Destin, Fl). One of the boats was a dive boat from the Destin Harbor, the second boat was a skiff with 1 scuba diver.

They started setting about 300' of boom around 11am this morning and by 4pm, the boom had already dislodged and bunched up on itself. It seems the current is to much.

It seems that they are getting paid to do next to nothing.

I can't imagine that the boom will provide much protection.

For whats its worth...I haven't seen any oil around Destin or the Okaloosa Island seashore yet.
 
Bob,
Actually, there are about 10^12 gallons in a cubic mile (not 10^18 ). The gulf is close to 600,000 sq miles and with an average depth of 1 mile, that's about 600,000 cubic miles. So 6 x 10^5 cubic miles * 10^12 gallons/cubic mile approx = 6 x 10^17 gallons. The current estimate of about 2M barrels of oil translates into 84M gallons. So the dilution factor is at best (6 x 10^17/8.4 x 10^7) approx = .75 x 10^10 or 7.5 x 10^9. BUT that assumes that the oil is evenly distributed across the entire Gulf of Mexico - even from top to bottom and even across the entire area. At present, the main extent of the spill looks to be distributed over about 1/20th of the gulf in area. Without dispersant, given that oil is lighter than water, the distribution in the water column would be far less than a few 10's of feet (so maybe 20 out of 5280 = 1 out of 264. With the dispersant, it's hard to say how the oil is distributed top to bottom. But if it's only 20' and the spill is contained to 1/20th of the gulf (evenly distributed), the dilution factor is then 7.5 x 10^9/(264*20) = 1.4*10^6. E.g. 1.4ppm of oil.

The toxicity of diluted crude oil depends greatly on species, source of the oil and the degree of weathering but many petroleum products have 50% lethal concentrations (LC50) in the 1ppm range for chronic exposure to fish. So while I agree that nature has amazing restorative power and that the spill is being greatly diluted, I'm still very concerned about the long term effects of chronic exposure to fish (and worse yet, shell fish and other filter feeders that will concentrate toxics). Given the concentrations that will occur in certain marsh and estuarine nursery areas, it's also likely that some parts of the food chain will suffer far more than others. The long term effects of this on the rest of the food chain are not so predictable but I lean far more to the "gloom and doom" side of the equation than you do.
 
I was 50 miles from the dock off of Cape San Blas today fishing on a classic summer day in our area .
The fisheries science is junk . It took us all of 15 minutes to get limits on two species [red snapper and king mackerel]. We then caught dolphin till our arms were sore .Sharks were abundant [I like sharks, they have an important role in the ecosystem] Sorry, the Gulf [in our area, and till recently in Alabama and Louisiana ] is alive and productive and not overfished , but it is over regulated at this juncture . Bob , come fishing or diving with me and Ill prove it to you .
On another sad note . Friday the coast guard looked for oil of Pensacola in the AM and didn't find anything new . By after noon there was a 2 X 40 mile area of oil [plume] that had come through the thermocline and to the surface . Possibly due to corexit use .The term they used in the emergency management meeting Anita attends every day was "popped up".Most of us fish and dive within 50 miles of shore .
This is from the Florida DEP site Friday ;
"Florida Specific:
 A large plume of weathered oil was detected nine miles south of Pensacola Pass.
The plume is two miles wide and goes south for 40 miles. An additional plume of
non-weathered oil was verified through state reconnaissance data. The plume is
located three miles south of Pensacola Pass. Response assets, including skimming
vessels, have been dispatched to the area.
 Dime to five inch-sized tar balls and tar patties were found in widely scattered areas
from the Florida state line to Okaloosa County. Tar ball and tar patty findings are
more concentrated in the western-most Florida counties. Clean up teams continue to
be on scene. Heavy impacts, in addition to tar balls and tar patties, have not been
reported in Florida at this time.
 Perdido Pass and Pensacola Pass will be closed with the tide to prevent oil from
entering inland waters. Boom will be deployed across each Pass at flood tide (water
coming in) and removed at ebb tide (water going out)"
The booms have already failed .

Ill say it again , I hope I'm wrong , everyday I fish off shore and inshore could be my last .

Joel , I have a couple Tugs I could put to work . Somehow I think they would stand out with the generator and A/C running and bow and stern thrusters .A nice Green and yellow color scheme would be attractive . If BP writes enough checks , maybe all the oystermen will buy them . Maybe the CEO will buy one to observe the flowing oil from.
I wear my heart on my sleeve when it comes to this event . No question about it .
Marc
 
Interesting article in today's paper about how BP is restricting access by the media to the beaches, even to the extent of prohibiting use for background during TV reportage. I wonder how this compares to the Exxon Valdez spill -- S.O.P. or a more focused, sophisticated effort to spin the story in a light favorable to BP?

Warren
 
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