Oil Spill Disasters....

[TeaSea]

I kept hearing about the size of the current crises in the Gulf of Mexico with the Deepwater Horizon incident, and I've heard more than one individual, inside and outside of government describe it as potentially the greatest spill in history....didn't sound right to me...so I looked it up.

Currently Deepwater Horizon is estimated to have put 8.5 million gallons of oil into the water (we don't know yet, but that's a reasonable figure and is on the high side of the estimate range). That's a lot of oil and certainly has a significant impact on the environment...but let's give it some context.

Exxon Valdez, to which it's being compared, put just shy of 11 million gallons into the water...however that was in a fairly constrained stretch of water, not open ocean. Most likely DH will meet or exceed that amount, but it's in the much larger Gulf of Mexico.

This isn't the first incidence of oil leaks in the Gulf....the largest accidental discharge of oil also happened to take place in the Gulf of Mexico, that being the Ixtoc leak in 1979. It was Pemex responsible for that one, not BP. The amount of oil put in the water.....




are you ready for this....


126 million gallons (low estimate, other estimates go up to 150 million gallons).

It took Pemex 9 months to plug the leak.


This of course is not the largest oil spill of all time...but is the largest accidental spill. The largest oil spill of all time is courtesy our old friend Saddam Hussein. Retreating Iraqi forces opened up all the taps on the GOPLATS in the Arabian Gulf off Kuwait and put (you won't believe this one...) 462 million gallons of oil in the water. Doesn't count the worldwide impact from countless oil heads burning for weeks on end....


DH is certainly a tragedy (11 people died), and will have a tremendous negative impact upon the Gulf, but we need to put all the hyperbole into some sort of context. The fishing season from the Ixtoc spill was destroyed for two years....but it did not destroy the fishing industry in the Gulf as a whole....and the environment did bounce back from a much more significant disaster. Not much comfort right now, but context and history teach us more than excited newscasters.

 

[PRB]

Interesting perspective!

 

[tigisfat]

Actually Teasea, I feel a lot better. Thanks for that.

 

[johnh_049]

There you go, clouding all the retoric with facts....

 

[EasyEd]

Hey All,

Your off by a bit there TeaSea. Current estimates are actually 18 to almost 30 million gallons and perhaps higher. The 5000 barrel a day estimate was just krap - BP admitted capturing that much through their "straw" (pipe in the pipe) and said that was at most 20% of the actual flow.This is apparently the largest spill in US History.

Hopefully the topkill works.

As for perspective I suggest your perspective might vary a bit if you were Forrest Gump fishing or ran a restaurant or motel/resort dependent on tourism dollars. Or maybe even if you are a taxpayer who will likely ultimately be picking up the tab for direct and indirect costs over time. Numbers I've seen indicate that just Louisiana's fishing industry is worth 2.4 billion annually and that gulf tourism is worth 20 billion annually

See here as just an example of the estimates and look around.

http://industry.bnet.com/energy/100...-larger-than-we-thought-and-than-bp-admitted/

Who knew measuring what comes out of a pipe could be so hard.

-Ed-

 

[N2056]

Personally, I take any of the estimates of how many barrels have been belched out of this screw up with a giant grain of salt.

I think this is way worse than anybody that has a stake in it has the guts to admit.

 

[Wing_Z]

Spinning the Disaster

One of our local journalists clearly has an issue with the damage control to date:

http://traceybarnett.co.nz/recent.htm

 

[Naismith]

I wonder what happens when the hurricanes start coming? They are predicting a high average this season anywhere between 14 and 23 apparantly.

 

[stansdds]

I put no faith in the annual hurricane forecasts, these are the same people that cannot accurately predict weather 24 hours in advance. How can they be accurate with a 180 day forecast?

As for the spillage, BP has grossly underestimated the amount and testimony is starting to point all fingers towards BP and their decisions on how to cap the well as the reason for this disaster. BP may have been trying to save some money on an over-budget project, but now they are on the hook financially and have a big corporate black eye.

 

[aeromed202]

Good points. It is handy to know the finite amount of material you have to start with so one can say with accuracy what a maximum amount of loss will be. But as in the examples mentioned some cannot be accurate due to the unknown or unlimited amounts of material coming from the source(s), like the current situation. I presume there is no no device down there that is measuring the rate of flow and they are left with estimates based on visuals. It's hard to get the details amid the drama.

Hurricanes will indeed add to the spread if they track Eastward far enough. Weather forecasting has been puffed up to be considered more accurate than it is. Any humble meteorologist will tell you that accuracy falls off almost exponentially each day or two out you go.

 

[TeaSea]

Hey All,

Your off by a bit there TeaSea. Current estimates are actually 18 to almost 30 million gallons and perhaps higher. The 5000 barrel a day estimate was just krap - BP admitted capturing that much through their "straw" (pipe in the pipe) and said that was at most 20% of the actual flow.This is apparently the largest spill in US History.

Hopefully the topkill works.

As for perspective I suggest your perspective might vary a bit if you were Forrest Gump fishing or ran a restaurant or motel/resort dependent on tourism dollars. Or maybe even if you are a taxpayer who will likely ultimately be picking up the tab for direct and indirect costs over time. Numbers I've seen indicate that just Louisiana's fishing industry is worth 2.4 billion annually and that gulf tourism is worth 20 billion annually

See here as just an example of the estimates and look around.

http://industry.bnet.com/energy/100...-larger-than-we-thought-and-than-bp-admitted/

Who knew measuring what comes out of a pipe could be so hard.

-Ed-

Oh yeah Ed, my perspective would definitely be different if I were a shrimper on the Gulf. No question. My perspective will be different if the nation decides as whole to ban or restrict off shore drilling over hyperbole. The long term economic and security impact from that restriction will far outweigh any short term impact economic impact from this spill. The facts dictate that after the initial impact, the eco system will recover. Historical trends show us that so will the economies. On a national level, that should be the major consideration. We can always address local economic impact, that is one thing the Federal government is actually pretty good at.

We pay our leaders to think beyond the local shrimpers...sounds hard, but there it is.

As for the amount of oil being spilled, clearly there will be no consensus for some time, however we know that these amounts are not near previous amounts spilled, and that pipe has to spew for a whole lot longer to even come marginally close. The intent of my thread was simply to put this event into some sort of historical context. That's lacking right now in all the hype.

As a point of order, I used multiple sources including the Federal Government to document that figure on DH...obviously today it's different from yesterday, but my number stood as of a two days ago. It's well documented in articles in USA Today, New York Times, and releases from NOAA. You will find the documentation on the other spills on Wikipedia, as well as NOAA and news articles from the time. The challenging part will be finding Gallons versus Barrels, but if you look long enough or do the math, it will be apparent.

As always, appreciate the discourse.....

 

[TeaSea]

Good points. It is handy to know the finite amount of material you have to start with so one can say with accuracy what a maximum amount of loss will be. But as in the examples mentioned some cannot be accurate due to the unknown or unlimited amounts of material coming from the source(s), like the current situation. I presume there is no no device down there that is measuring the rate of flow and they are left with estimates based on visuals. It's hard to get the details amid the drama.

Hurricanes will indeed add to the spread if they track Eastward far enough. Weather forecasting has been puffed up to be considered more accurate than it is. Any humble meteorologist will tell you that accuracy falls off almost exponentially each day or two out you go.

I'm going with the trained monkey!

http://www.nationalcenter.org/HurricaneForecast.html


BTW, this is not a dig at NOAA, which does yeoman work, but rather an effort to point out that climactic science is in its infancy, so much so that NOAA is wrong most of the time...and a monkey's guess will be just as accurate.

 

[wombat666]

You will find the documentation on the other spills on Wikipedia.
As always, appreciate the discourse.....

Now there is a reliable source of information....not!

 

[redriver6]

I put no faith in the annual hurricane forecasts, these are the same people that cannot accurately predict weather 24 hours in advance. How can they be accurate with a 180 day forecast?

Hurricanes will indeed add to the spread if they track Eastward far enough. Weather forecasting has been puffed up to be considered more accurate than it is. Any humble meteorologist will tell you that accuracy falls off almost exponentially each day or two out you go.

there are several reasons why NOAA is predicting an overly active hurricane season...they look at the past and look at what is happening now...sea temperatures are already higher in the Atlantic basin, lack of El Nino and possiblility of increasing La Nina. Last year high wind shear kept storm development way down...this year they think that won't happen...there are many other factors involved...high water temps, low wind shear, very wet conditiions in Africa where the tropical waves begin...lots of t-storms in the ITCZ....(Intertropical Convergence Zone)...

http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/outlooks/hurricane.shtml

some Hurricane + oil info..

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/hurricanes_oil_factsheet.pdf

 

[Panther_99FS]

Interesting points of reference but from what I can gather from local news reports. if you're a coastal resident of Louisiana, the comparison data from the other spills is meaningless....

Now am I biased because I'm currently living in Louisiana, you bet!

 

[TeaSea]

Now there is a reliable source of information....not!

Fair enough critique and one a researcher should always be sensitive too...that's why one should check the references....

Will you take the state of Alaska for the Exxon Valdez?
http://www.evostc.state.ak.us/facts/qanda.cfm

How about the U.S Bureau of Land Managment for Ixtoc?
http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=422054

Then there's the Research And Planning Inc, (a for profit organization think tank with ties to the environmental movement)
http://www.researchplanning.com/pub...ears Later- Consequences of Eco-Terrorism.pdf

None of these referenced organizations has any interest in minimizing the impact of these spills...in fact, it's the opposite. I would add that obviously the latter two spills are simply educated estimates. However the Exxon Valdez spill amount is known almost to the gallon (we know what the ship left port with, and we know what she had on board when she was recovered).

 

[Ken Stallings]

I think any time someone criticizes a source, he should produce better ones!

Anyway, I think TeaSea's points remain acurate as a comparison point. The main point being that the economic impact of the Valdez accident did not linger nearly as long as the original estimates maintained.

My sole disappointment with this current accident has been with the numerous indications of deliberate negligence by BP, and the way BP intimidated their two primary vendors (Deepwater Horizon and Halliburton) and by doing that, put their employees in danger and the environment at risk.

Like most companies that get sloppy and negligent, BP will end up paying a thousand times more money to clean up this mess they made than they would have spent had they not initmidated Horizon and Halliburton and simply let them do the job the way they had been doing so well so many times in the past.

The recent testimony under oath of the surviving employees are damning. Don't be surprised to see heavy fines and possible criminal prosecutions of BP executives for their role in this mishap.

Ken

 

[Bjoern]

Now there is a reliable source of information....not!

Serveral editors working on an article which hence reaches kind of a concensus in the final form versus an article written by one biased (it always is to a degrees) source.

Wikipedia clearly wins for me there.

 

[TeaSea]

Serveral editors working on an article which hence reaches kind of a concensus in the final form versus an article written by one biased (it always is to a degrees) source.

Wikipedia clearly wins for me there.

Well, if you suspect the data you can always check to see if it's referenced. Wikipedia allows that information to be posted at the bottom of the page. If there's no reference, or the reference is questionable then I would certainly cross check any claim. Even then I you might want to question the source, I mean, I'm not going to take information on adolescent sexuality from NAMBLA. I suspect anything they would write on that subject would be suspect.

Wikipedia's utility is that it allows a common reference point from which to start.

EasyEd and Wombat are both right to insist on an exercise of due diligence. They ask reasonable questons and make reasonable points. I do take offense at wombat giving me a wedgie, but will give him a nod for artistic license. Also, the little smiley guy doesn't look that much like me, and I wear boxers.

But again, all I wanted to do in this thread is provide context for the current hysteria. There's a lot of emotion being spread about. Time to introduce a little thinking.

BTW, ref the Gulf War spill, I had forgotten that the pressure and flow monitors on the GOPLATS were not damaged in the release of the oil (the two platforms in the gulf actually blew up and sank, with all the hydrological kit on them). Those who work in the industry (I do not) know that the flow of oil is carefully monitored for a variety of reasons. I've no evidence that the estimates from the Gulf War spill comes from those monitors, but if that were the case, they would be very accurate estimates. If anyone works in the industry I'd invite their comments.

 

[Toastmaker]

. . .But again, all I wanted to do in this thread is provide context for the current hysteria. There's a lot of emotion being spread about. Time to introduce a little thinking.

And I thank you for that. In anticipation of your permission, I cut and pasted your informative post, with credit to you, at the Quarter Moon Saloon, for the information of all in that venue. I hope you don't mind.