“Spill, Baby, Spill”

Photo Source: NASA

Depressing news….. and a lot of oil has been spewing out of a deep-water oil rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico last week.  One cannot overstate the seriousness of this environmental disaster.  An estimated 210,000 gallons of oil gush from the ocean floor every day to add to the oil slick that scientists believe is the size of Rhode Island.  The slick is so large NASA was able to capture the photo above from space.   

Cleanup professionals and the U.S. Coast Guard are doing everything in their power to corral this mess.  BP, the owner of the well, has constructed a floating barrier to protect the Delta National Wildlife Refuge in Louisiana and similar structures are planned to be placed in Mississippi, Alabama and Florida to protect birds and other sensitive areas from pollution. Skimming crews have aided in containment and cleanup by collecting more than 6000 barrels of oil mixed with water off the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.  The situation is so dire that officials announced yesterday that they are seriously considering setting fire to certain thick areas of the spill to limit environmental damage. 

History has not been favorable for containment of these types of spills.  In 1979 a blowout of a rig off the coast of Mexico spilled 33,000 gallons a day, threatened the coastline of Texas and took 9 months to contain.  Techniques of containment have improved since then, but our new drilling technologies pose additional problems.  Trying to robotically shut off an oil-well located 5000ft below the ocean surface has never been attempted. 

“We’re very concerned that east of the Mississippi River, based on currents and winds we’re dealing with now, this oil will reach the shore,” Chuck Wilson, a Louisiana State University oceanography and coastal sciences professor, tells CNN. “That could be a huge environmental problem and a significant financial blow to fisheries.”

In 2006 17 years after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, students posed this short, upsetting YouTube video about the remaining environment damage left onshore.  Let’s hope that all the parties involved are more successful with the containment and cleanup of this mess.