BP oil spill is nothing new

[StackerKen]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHmhxpQEGPo&feature=player_embedded

[TheNocturnalEgyptian]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/05/opinion/05herbert.html?src=mv&ref=general

BP’s calamitous behavior in the Gulf of Mexico is the big oil story of the moment. But for many years, indigenous people from a formerly pristine region of the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador have been trying to get relief from an American company, Texaco (which later merged with Chevron), for what has been described as the largest oil-related environmental catastrophe ever.



“As horrible as the gulf spill has been, what happened in the Amazon was worse,” said Jonathan Abady, a New York lawyer who is part of the legal team that is suing Chevron on behalf of the rainforest inhabitants.

It has been a long and ugly legal fight and the outcome is uncertain. But what has happened in the rainforest is heartbreaking, although it has not gotten nearly the coverage that the BP spill has.

What’s not in dispute is that Texaco operated more than 300 oil wells for the better part of three decades in a vast swath of Ecuador’s northern Amazon region, just south of the border with Colombia. Much of that area has been horribly polluted. The lives and culture of the local inhabitants, who fished in the intricate waterways and cultivated the land as their ancestors had done for generations, have been upended in ways that have led to widespread misery.

Texaco came barreling into this delicate ancient landscape in the early 1960s with all the subtlety and grace of an invading army. And when it left in 1992, it left behind, according to the lawsuit, widespread toxic contamination that devastated the livelihoods and traditions of the local people, and took a severe toll on their physical well-being.

A brief filed by the plaintiffs said: “It deliberately dumped many billions of gallons of waste byproduct from oil drilling directly into the rivers and streams of the rainforest covering an area the size of Rhode Island. It gouged more than 900 unlined waste pits out of the jungle floor — pits which to this day leach toxic waste into soils and groundwater. It burned hundreds of millions of cubic feet of gas and waste oil into the atmosphere, poisoning the air and creating ‘black rain’ which inundated the area during tropical thunderstorms.”

The quest for oil is, by its nature, colossally destructive. And the giant oil companies, when left to their own devices, will treat even the most magnificent of nature’s wonders like a sewer. But the riches to be made are so vastly corrupting that governments refuse to impose the kinds of rigid oversight and safeguards that would mitigate the damage to the environment and its human and animal inhabitants.

Pick your venue. The families whose lives and culture are dependent upon the intricate web of waterways along the Gulf Coast of the United States are in a fix similar to that of the indigenous people zapped by nonstop oil spills and the oil-related pollution in the Ecuadorian rainforest. Each group is fearful about its future. Both have been treated contemptuously.

The oil companies don’t care. Shell can’t wait to begin drilling in the Arctic Ocean off the northern coast of Alaska, an area that would pose monumental problems for anyone trying to deal with a catastrophic spill. The companies pretend that the spills won’t happen. They always say that their drilling operations are safe. They said that before drilling off Santa Barbara, and in the rainforest in Ecuador, and in the Gulf of Mexico, and everywhere else they drill.

Their assurances mean nothing.

President Obama has suspended Shell’s Arctic drilling permits and has temporarily halted the so-called Arctic oil rush. What we’ve learned from the BP debacle in the gulf, and from the rainforest, and so many other places, is just how reckless and inept the oil companies can be when it comes to safeguarding life, limb and the environment.

They’re dangerous. They need the most stringent kind of oversight, and swift and severe sanctions for serious wrongdoing. At the same time, we need to be searching with a much, much greater sense of urgency for viable energy alternatives. Treating the Amazon and the gulf and the Arctic as if they were nothing more than toxic waste sites is an affront to the planet and all life-forms that inhabit it.

Chevron doesn’t believe it should be called to account for any of the sins Texaco may have committed in the Amazon. A spokesman told me that the allegations of environmental damage were wildly overstated and that even if Texaco had caused some pollution, it had cleaned it up and reached an agreement with the Ecuadorian government that precluded further liability.

The indigenous residents may be suffering (they’re in much worse shape than the people on the gulf coast) but the Chevron-Texaco crowd feels real good about itself. The big money was made, and the trash was left behind.

[TPTB]

That might just be the most surreal newscast I've ever seen... :-[

I wasn't much of a TV watcher back in 79, but I don't recall anyone even talking about that Gulf leak.

And the mess in Equador? Zip! Nothing.

On the other hand the Exxon Valdez was huge news.

Thanks for the news, guys.

[Twisted Titan]

They’re dangerous. They need the most stringent kind of oversight, and swift and severe sanctions for serious wrongdoing. At the same time, we need to be searching with a much, much greater sense of urgency for viable energy alternatives.



I can come up with a laundry list that can circle the globe but those in power have a vested interest in keeping use sucking on gas.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf4gOS8aoFk

[TPTB]

They’re dangerous. They need the most stringent kind of oversight, and swift and severe sanctions for serious wrongdoing. At the same time, we need to be searching with a much, much greater sense of urgency for viable energy alternatives.



I can come up with a laundry list that can circle the globe but those in power have a vested interest in keeping use sucking on gas.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf4gOS8aoFk


Hah, yeah, somebody probably bought up his invention all right. Probably someone like BP... >:( Just like they always do. It's either that or they just kill the inventor.

They aren't about to let some little inventor crush their $quadrillion petro dollar business.

[Fudup]

I would ask how much energy is used producing the radio waves that makes the saltwater burn?

Oh, and we are all still here from the huge spill 31 years ago. Millions did not die it seems. The world shall survive us.

[Quixote2]

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/06/how-bad-is-bp-deepwater-horizon/

How Bad is BP Deepwater Horizon?
By Barry Ritholtz - June 4th, 2010, 12:30PM

Here is a decidedly contrarian viewpoint, from University of Alabama Professor Dr. Roy Spencer.

Prof Spencer notes that the general commentary regarding the BP spill as “the worst environmental disaster in history” is wildly overblown. His graph below is designed to put this spill into perspective.

Now, before you wail that he is a global warming crank — he claims “global warming is mostly natural, and that the climate system is quite insensitive to humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions” — I have a serious question about the chart below. Is it true? Does it accurately portray the state of global oil spills?:

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/01125118_Par_4584.jpg

Assuming it is accurate, the chart itself is intriguing — and should touch off a broader discussion of Oil production and usage.

Note: I know I am going to get bombarded with emails about Spencer. Regardless of whether he is an industry hack, a science denialist, etc. (and he more or less is), I am referencing his data, not him. Unless you can demonstrate that the data underlying the chart is false, the rest of his background is irrelevant.

If his data is accurate, then the above is a fascinating chart . . .

[StackerKen]

thanks for the chart Quixote2.

That puts it into perspective.

[FunnyMoney]

...
If his data is accurate, then the above is a fascinating chart . . .




The data appears to be incorrect. The assumption of 15k/day is probably less than one-third the actual amount. And the end is currently not in sight.

[mick silver]

so what have they done to stop this leak so far ... i have been building a new barn and cutting hay i have not seen the news in about a week

[StackerKen]

so what have they done to stop this leak so far ... i have been building a new barn and cutting hay i have not seen the news in about a week


Not much, as a matter of fact, I think they made it worse...still flowing pretty heavy

http://www.wkrg.com/gulf_oil_spill/spill_cam/

[Serpo]

A device that is now sucking up significant amounts of the oil spewing from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico offered a measure of hope even as the government's point man on the spill warned problems would persist for months.

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said on CBS television's "Face the Nation" that the spill, which is ravaging beaches and wildlife, will not be contained until the leak is fully plugged and that even afterward "there will be oil out there for months to come."

The disaster, which began with an oil rig explosion in mid-April, will persist "well into the fall", Allen said.

The containment cap placed on the gusher near the sea floor trapped about 1.67 million litres of oil Saturday, BP spokesman Mark Proegler said Sunday, up from around 946,000 litres of oil Friday. It's not clear how much is still escaping; an estimated 1.9 to 3.8 million litres of crude is believed to be leaking daily.

While BP officials registered optimism, government officials monitoring the response to the spill were more cautious, wary of drumming up promises they couldn't deliver on.

BP chief executive Tony Hayward told the BBC on Sunday that he believed the cap was likely to capture "the majority, probably the vast majority" of the oil gushing from the well. The gradual increase in the amount being captured is deliberate, in an effort to prevent water from getting inside and forming a frozen slush that foiled a previous containment attempt.

The next step is for BP engineers to attempt to close vents on the cap that allow streams of oil to escape and prevent that water intake, and Hayward told the BBC that the company hopes a second containment system will be in place by next weekend. Allen told CBS that the oil would stop flowing only when the leak was plugged with cement.

Hawyard, who has faced criticism over his company's response to the spill, said that he wouldn't step down and that he had the "absolute intention of seeing this through to the end".

"We're going to clean up the oil, we're going to remediate any environmental damage and we are going to return the Gulf coast to the position it was in prior to this event," he told the BBC.

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the federal government's point man for the response, took issue on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday with BP officials who said they were pleased with results of the latest effort. He said progress was being made, "but I don't think anybody should be pleased as long as there is oil in the water."

He said on "Fox News Sunday" that he doesn't "want to create any undue encouragement" and that "we need to underpromise and overdeliver."
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While BP plans to eventually use an additional set of hoses and pipes to increase the amount of oil being trapped, the ultimate solution remains a relief well that should be finished by August.

The urgency of that task was apparent along the Gulf Coast nearly seven weeks after a BP rig exploded April 20, killing 11 workers and rupturing the wellhead 1.6km below the surface. Since then, millions of litres of oil have been rising to the surface and spreading out across the sea.

The oil is coating and miring waterfowl in the sticky mess, and dead birds and dolphins are washing ashore. Scientists say the wildlife death toll remains relatively modest, though, because the Deepwater Horizon rig was 80km off the coast and most of the oil has stayed in the open sea.

The oil has steadily spread east, washing up in greater quantities in recent days. Small tar balls have washed up as far east as Fort Walton Beach, about a third of the way across the Florida Panhandle.

Government officials estimate that roughly 83.3 million to 181.7 million litres have leaked into the Gulf and say they are using a variety of strategies to curb its spread.

"What we're doing right now is bringing all the skimming equipment in the United States that's not being used for anything else and bringing it to bear down there," Allen said on ABC television's "This Week."

A line of oil mixed with seaweed stretched all across the beach Sunday morning in Gulf Shores, Alabama. The oil was often hidden beneath the washed-up plants. Outside a huge condominium tower, Leon Baum scrubbed oil off his feet with Dawn dishwashing detergent.

Baum had driven with his children and grandchildren from Bebee, Arkansas, for their annual vacation on Alabama's coast. They had contemplated leaving because of the oil, but they've already spent hundreds of dollars on their getaway.

"After you drive all this way, you stay," Baum said.

At Pensacola Beach, Florida, Buck Langston and his family took to collecting globs of tar instead of sea shells on Sunday morning. They used improvised chopsticks to pick up the balls and drop them into plastic containers. Ultimately, the hoped to help clean it all up, Langston said.

"Yesterday it wasn't like this, this heavy," Langston said. "I don't know why cleanup crews aren't out here."

With no oil response workers on Louisiana's Queen Bess Island, Plaquemines Parish coastal zone management director P.J. Hahn decided he could wait no longer, pulling an exhausted brown pelican from the oil, slime dripping from its wings.

"We're in the sixth week, you'd think there would be a flotilla of people out here," Hahn said. "As you can see, we're so far behind the curve in this thing."

At the mouth of Alabama's Mobile Bay, hundreds of seagulls squawked on a beach dotted with countless small tar balls but not a cleanup crew in sight.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/americas/3783707/No-end-to-oil-spill-problem