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'The Exxon Valdez is Going to Pale in Comparison'
US Military Joins Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Effort
The US military has joined efforts to stop an oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico as fears rise about its scale.
Five times as much oil as previously thought could be leaking from the well beneath where a rig exploded and sank last week, US officials said earlier.
The slick is 45 miles (72km) by 105 miles (169km) - almost the size of Jamaica - and heading for the US coast.
A third leak has been discovered, and a fire-fighting expert said the disaster may become the biggest oil spill ever.
"Probably the only thing comparable to this is the Kuwait fires [following the Gulf War in 1991]," Mike Miller, head of Canadian oil well fire-fighting company Safety Boss, told the BBC World Service.
"The Exxon Valdez [tanker disaster off Alaska in 1989] is going to pale [into insignificance] in comparison to this as it goes on."
Scientists say only a quarter of local marine wildlife survived the Exxon Valdez disaster.
Some 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons) a day were now thought to be gushing into the sea 50 miles off Louisiana's coast, said the US Coastguard's Rear Admiral Mary Landry.
If those estimates are correct, the spill could match the 11m gallons spilt from the Exxon Valdez within two months.
Controlled burn
The scale of the operation to contain the oil spill and protect both the US coastline and wildlife is unprecendented, with the military and other government agencies collaborating with BP - which had hired the sunken rig - and industry leaders.
Welcoming the US military's offer of help, BP's Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said the company would take help from anyone to combat the spill, but gave no specifics of what form that help might take.
Efforts to stem the flow are being complicated by the depth of the leak at the underwater well, which is about 5,000ft (1,525m) beneath the surface.
Weather forecasters have meanwhile warned that changing winds could drive the oil slick ashore by Friday night. Its leading edge is now only 20 miles (32km) east of the mouth of the Mississippi.
A coast guard crew has set fire to part of the oil slick in an attempt to save environmentally-fragile wetlands.
The "controlled burn" of surface oil took place in an area about 30 miles (50km) east of the Mississippi river delta.
But Mr Miller warned that burning off leaking oil was not a long-term solution.
"The object of this game is to shut off the flow," he said.
Relief well
Engineers are working on a dome-like device to cover oil rising to the surface and pump it to container vessels, but it may be weeks before this is in place.
It is feared that work on sealing the leaking well using robotic submersibles might take months.
BP is also working on a "relief well" to intersect the original well, but this is experimental and could take two to three months to stop the flow.
President Barack Obama had been briefed on the new developments, and BP has welcomed the offer of assistance from the defence department to help contain the spill.
Seventy vessels - oil skimmers, tugboats barges and special recovery boats that separate oil from water - as well as five aeroplanes were working to spray dispersants and round up oil, BP said.
Burn zone
Eleven workers are missing and presumed dead after the worst oil rig disaster in almost a decade.
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal said the top priority was "to protect our citizens and the environment".
With the spill moving towards Louisiana's coast, which contains some 40% of the nation's wetlands and spawning grounds for countless fish and birds, it was hoped a "controlled burn" of oil contained by special booms would limit the impact.
Environmental experts say animals nearby might be affected by toxic fumes, but perhaps not as much as if they were coated in oil.
On Wednesday afternoon, BP and coastguard boats swept the thickest concentrations of oil into a fire-resistant boom.
This was then towed to a five-mile "burn zone" set up inside the slick, where it was set alight shortly before nightfall.
100 Comments so far
Show AllDrill, Baby, Drill!
Julie, You got that right!
Part of me is hoping that this will create a backlash to Brand Obama's recent pronouncement regarding off-shore oil exploration.
The timing is pretty good for anyone with eyes open...
unless, of course, you're a Democrat.
"with eyes open" ?
touché!!! :-))
Spill, Baby, Spill!
Drill, little babies, drill!
Kill, man, kill!
Do the math:
The cost of the disaster continues to rise and could easily top $1 billion.
- ASSOCIATED PRESS
BP’s quarterly profits jumped to $6.08 billion from $2.56 billion during the January-to-March period in 2009, while revenue rose to $74.42 billion from $48.09 billion.
- HOUSTON CHRONICLE
I don't care how much it costs. I hope it costs a king's ransom. I don't care about beach property in Louisiana and Mississippi. All I care about is the wildlife. They are not to blame for the filthy hominids who have hijacked their environment.
Thank you. Simpatico Soul here.
The wildlife. The wildlife. The wildlife.
My heart is flooding the place...with love, care, more love.
The AP is engaged in propaganda for damage control.
Damage will go trillions, and no, BP cannot pay. Are you kidding? A greater-than-Valdez disaster in populated areas? Fatalities to workers involved in cleanup, SE US residents dying of cancer over a generation?
As in similar incidents -- Valdez, Bhopal, TMI, Chernobyl -- the greater part of corporate damage control goes not to control the spill but to control the information.
It may be less important even for them, but it is more effective, and they are better equipped for it.
And apparently AP is not too difficult to hire.
There is a simple concept in economics called externalities. basically, it is a cost i create that i make others pay for. if the SOCIAL costs (capitalism does a horrible job of accounting for social costs) are greater than the benefits it shoudn't be done, even if PRIVATE benefits are greater than costs. but that's capitalism though. they basically say, "yeah, we're making YOU pay for our costs and the costs are far greater than the benefits for YOU, but we wouldn't be able to make a profit if we paid for our costs."
This all seems like a curse has been placed on the USI--all their evil coming back upon them--they wanted oil--well here it comes.
Time after time they were warned about the devastation of off-shore oil drilling--time after time they were cautioned about going to war for oil--now we have a battle with the oil itself--let's bring in the troops--we might be changing the name of my town from pensacola to pansofoil--hope not, but all we can do now is hope and pray for a miracle.
Despite this calamity, the oil industry shills and their dupes will still chant "Drill, Baby Drill!"
Of course. I should think it will be harder sell, however.
at least we're improving efficiency...we're now streaming the oil straight from the ground into the ocean, rather than plasticizing it or running it through our surface and air systems first...
direct deposit...
is the earth to be like my retirement fund?
pretty to look at as I age, but unavailable to me the whole time, and likely to be gone when I really need it, and are finally given access?
hmmm...could say about the same for the multitude of random sexy women...
All of these oil wells need an Automatic Shutoff Valve. Something like a Deadman Timer that shuts off unless it is continually told to stay open. The US government could require this if they cared a whit for their human population. The oil companies could put them to manage risk. This 'leak' is half the size of Israel and growing by the minute. When's the next hurricane?
The next hurricane is as soon as the oil sheen prevents water from evaporating and so it prematurely heats up the Gulf's surface water, and then the oil disperses.
That had not occurred to me.
Is the idea of a flammable hurricane just sci fi? Is there some reason oil would not be picked up into a cloud just like water?
Probably I am overlooking something obvious. Most of the wet of a hurricane is falling most of the time, but far from always. And most of the liquid in the air would be water, obviously.
But water tends to scatter an oil fire rather than douse it.
And, hurricanes feed on warm water, becoming stronger and stronger. Imagine a category 5 hurricane sucking up all that oil and raining it over thousands of square miles. Nice. Real nice.
Imagine.
New Orleans + Hurricane Katrina + Worst Oil Spill in History = Biggest Human Disaster short of Chernobyl.
I remember how apoplectic Bill O'Reilly got during Katrina. How the government dithered and tens of thousands suffered displacement, and hundreds died, no few from police hands and vigilante guns.
This should be very instructional should it come to pass.
"When's the next hurricane?"
Oh s#!+, I didn't even think of that... it would actually rain oil over a huge geographic area. If this "leak" (more like a blow-hole) isn't stopped before the next hurricane we will have a horrendous environmental catastrophe.
Well, karma IS a bitch, isn't it?
KARMA IS JUST.
It failed,Humbaba the failsafe failed,whood a thunk it?
peace
President Obama has just announce that BP will pay the cost of cleanup in the Gulf. It's the law of the land, right? As you drive down the busy freeway it is not hard to imagine how BP could recover any lost revenue with the stroke of a pen. his patronizing eloquence is getting almost as hard to bear as the
folksy phony Texas George.
Actually, there's no way BP could pay that. The "recovery" will amount to discounting most of the damage with the stroke of one pen or another.
Boshama's shilling again.
Whatever BP pays, they'll put it down as a 100% tax deduction. But if the Exxon Valdez is anything to go by, BP'll never come close to paying. As soon as the cameras moved on out of Alaska and to the next photogenic catastrophe the money payments dried up.
"President Obama has just announce that BP will pay the cost of cleanup in the Gulf."
How many lies has Obama committed since his election? BP will never pay for this, but we taxpayers will. After all, we seem to have bottomless pockets, no?
Congratulations to Obama the Black Bush for his wonderful DRILL DRILL DRILL policy. We shall look forward to more memorable oil spills like this one under Pres. Obaminable's watch.
We must all remember the first person to use the "Drill baby drill" line was - drum roll please - Sarah Palin. Of course, we know she doesn't have a brain with opinions or thoughts of her own. This belief was fed to her by her Republican handlers. The force behind her brainwashing is obviously still at play in Washington, and uhnfortunately sucked Obama in.
What's the lesser of two evils, a corporate shill without a brain (Palin) or a corporate shill with a brilliant brain (Obama) capable of deceiving millions? Obviously Palin would be preferable, at least the American people would have a less formidable enemy.
There should be a moratorium on offshore drilling until the rigs have more safety features designed to prevent what has just happened. What has happened is equivalent to the earthquake in Haiti that leveled about every building. What needs to be done is to establish specifications and codes that make the probability of a catastrophic oil leak become vanishingly small. That might be a way to get around all of Obama's enthusiasm for offshore drilling: make it so hard to get a license to drill that no one will really want to get involved.
There will probably be bills proposed in both houses that do just that, but by the time they get out of committee, then through the floor and the floor amendments, with energy lobbyists going carefully over every single provision, and the final bill gets through conference and lands on Obama's desk, it will have nothing but cosmetic changes, and Obama will sign it as he claims it is "a great victory for the environment and the Ameridum people!" That is US "democracy" in action.
That is wishful thinking. The fact is offshore oil drilling cannot be made safe, its impossible. There are too many points of failure, and it only takes one disaster to totally screw up our environment and hurt ourselves. All of the safety features simply implement more mechanical systems that themselves can fail. Basically you are pulling oil up through water, it takes a broken pipe or some other accident. They call them accidents because they are not to plan. Safety features are based on the idea that things always work as designed, that there is never mechanical failure. This is not how things work in the real world. On a rig there is no way to prevent an accident with so much drilling pipe, mechanical equipment that can fail, etc.
There are a million things that can go wrong on a rig and there is basically no way to prevent these kinds of disasters. That we see a massive catastrophic spill from the same "clean safe" technology the oil companies have been harping about for years, but those of us who knew better did not believe, shows there is no way to make this fundamentally dangerous technology safe.
Furthermore, offshore oil drilling in the US will not make the US energy independant, so whats the point. Why risk destroying beaches, wetlands, seafood, fish, oysters, birds, manatees, whales? Just to make the oil companies rich? It seems so.
Thomas Edison, 1931, in conversation with Ford and Firestone.
We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Natures inexhaustible sources of energy — sun, wind and tide. ... I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.
last sentence is very instructive!
And Ford and Firestone said?
Ah, but I suppose we more or less know what they said.
This moment is doubtless a historic milestone: the birth of the now-ubiquitous phrase commonly expressed by the acronym "STFU".
Why suppose?
Ford's interest was creating inexpensive automobiles (and urban planning), not about selling gasoline (see Rockefeller. He sold fuel). In fact, Ford constructed flex-fuel cars early on. Ford once stated, "...There are more stills in this country than filling stations...."
Ford believed in empowering rural communities and thought alcohol production would create a "rural renaissance". Noting the fuel created from one acre of potatoes was enough to run all the equipment for the whole farm.
In 1925, Ford proclaimed, "...ethanol was the fuel of the future...."
And by the way, back in 1896, Edison was a major reinforcement for Ford by arguing "...Your car is self-contained—carries its own power plant—no fire, no boiler, no smoke and no steam. You have the thing. Keep at it...."
Later, Edison and Ford would attempt to build an electric car --that's right Ford was interested in EV too-- but they could not come up with a marketable plan.
Edison believed in the electric car, while also supporting Ford's rural renaissance idea. Firestone and Ford and Edison were all the best of friends.
Edison was as bad as the others.
Many of the clean-up workers hired after the Exxon Valdez spill (many in their early twenties) contracted diseases and died in the following 5-10 years and thereafter. The oil-slick fumes are toxic. The chemical mist created by beach clean-up is toxic. Toxic chemicals also penetrate your skin, and are ingested when you eat meals on site. Solvents used in clean-up (for the site and for workers) are also toxic.
Anyone considering taking a clean-up job with BP should do some research. It could mean your life.
I've never seen any reporting past 1997-1999 over the "Valdez Crud". And the primary reason those articles were written was because a couple lawsuits against Exxon and Veco paid out.
During the clean up, some 5600 out of 11000 workers made medical appointments over the "Valdez Crud". I never got sick, but then again, I found a way to get off beach detail by week 3, and worked as a crew on one of the larger vessels which housed some 40+ beach crew members (all men).
Most of us were smokers too. And some of the guys would go out and get covered from head to toe in the oily debri. Others would try to keep as clean as possible. For some -- like picking up the biggest rock out of the crew-- being covered in the shit was a sign of masculinity. And well, it can get pretty macho on a boat.
Anyway, I've always wondered how many people may have died prematurely. You mention many workers in their early twenties contracted diseases and died in 5-10 years. Do you have a source, because I have a personal interest in it --if you know what I mean.
I used to have a folder of news stories. Now I can't find it. Might be on an old hard drive. I remember reading several stories in Anchorage Daily News. Also Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, I think. There have been quite a few lengthy, feature stories about the illnesses and deaths.
You could search their online archives. I know ADN has an extensive archive on the spill.
I did find this, from 2004: "About 1,000 of the original 32,000 plaintiffs in the class-action suit against Exxon have died, many of them succumbing to respiratory illnesses, brain tumors and cancers that a growing body of scientific evidence has linked to the spill and the subsequent clean-up."
That's from "Betrayed by an Oil Giant—15 Years After the Exxon Valdez Disaster, the Coast Remains Polluted and Compensation is Unpaid," The lndependent (London), March 25, 2004.
And if this was Alaska, and the Beaufort and Chukchi sea, it would be under ice and totally unrecoverable...hopefully this will start the sincere push to alternatives... which planet exactly, are these fossil fuel advocates planning on retreating to once they have destroyed their/our own?
Obama wants:
A new generation of oil drilling rigs up and down all our coasts.
A new generation of nuclear power plants all across the country.
To continue mining for "clean coal".
All of this after the Big Branch coal mine disaster in which 29 miner died and this BP oil spill. All we need now is another Chernobol nuclear melt down here in the States and we'll have a grand slam!
'grand slam' - is that the same as a 'hat trick' in british football?...........
I believe also that a hockey player who scores three goals in one game has also performed a "hat trick", though I don't know the origin of the phrase as it relates to hockey, or British football (what americans call 'soccer') for that matter.
'Hat Trick' originally comes from the card game Cribbage, when two points were made for playing a Jack of Spades, then claiming 'one for his hat'.
Trifecta! Grand slam is a four run homer.
A la Shrub:
"You know, I was campaigning in Chicago and somebody asked me, is there ever any time where the budget might have to go into deficit? I said only if we were at war or had a national emergency or were in recession. Little did I realize we'd get the trifecta." (Remarks at GOP Luncheon, February 27, 2002 White House release)