Oil Changes Everything
July 28, 2016 at 4:25 p.m.
By Gary [email protected]
Mary and I have been wistfully envisioning the day when we sail out of Indiana and move to a quaint little Gulf Coast fishing village somewhere north of Clearwater.
Our family has been vacationing in Florida for years. Usually around Fort Myers Beach. But we've been to Gainesville, Daytona, Miami Beach, South Beach, Naples and Bonita Springs.
Just this past February we spent a week in Pass-A- Grille - which is south of Treasure Island near St. Pete - while visiting our daughter who is attending grad school at USF in Tampa.
We love Florida. And all we've ever done is visited for a week or two at a time. We love the people, the atmosphere. All of it.
I gotta tell ya, this oil spill thing in the Gulf of Mexico almost makes me well up in tears when I think about it. I can't imagine what people up and down there are going through.
I think the blame game is ridiculous. I know who to blame. I saw the "60 Minutes" episode. The Transocean driller guy said the BP guy ordered him to finish the job even though broken pieces of the blowout preventer seal were coming out of the well. Duh.
And I really don't like the disingenuous way this thing is playing out.
At first, there was this optimism. The BP guys were saying things like "minimal environmental impact." Are you kidding me?
Nobody in government or BP is telling the truth.
The truth is, this is already the biggest environmental disaster of our time and it's not even close to being over. Drillers are likely not going to be able to be able to stop this thing for months.
BP is drilling two relief wells. Once at least one of those is done, they can plug the original well. BP says that can be completed by August, but that sounds wildly, unrealistically optimistic.
I read a story in the New Orleans Times-Picayne that put things in perspective for me. You basically have to hit something the diameter of a dinner plate from miles away while drilling through solid rock.
Drilling of a relief well - fortunately - is a rare undertaking. Nobody has a wealth of experience in it, but there are precedents.
The world's worst well blowout and spill, the Ixtoc I well in Mexico's Bay of Campeche, was ultimately stopped with a relief well after a containment dome, junk shot and top kill failed.
Sound familiar?
This oil platform sat in only 150 feet of water. The well blew out in early June 1979. The oil stopped flowing on March 17, 1980. The company initially estimated it would take three months to shut off the oil. It took them nine months and 22 days.
Technology today is better than it was in 1979 but regardless, this relief well business is extremely complex and difficult.
Just last August, a Thai company was drilling in 260 feet of water in the Timor Sea off Australia when the well blew up and began leaking.
It took 10 weeks and five tries to drill the relief well. The target was 8,600 feet below the sea floor. (BP's target is 18,000 feet below the sea floor.)
The oil was finally stopped on Nov. 3, but it took until mid-January to cap the well. That's five-and-a-half months.
The point of all this is that I believe the oil is going to flow for a long time and I don't think we've been fully informed by the media as to the likely level of devastation.
I'm not saying this oil catastrophe will turn the Gulf of Mexico into the Dead Sea, but it's bad. Real bad.
Computer models show the spill has the potential to travel via the loop current through the Florida Keys, past southeast Florida beaches and along thousands of miles of the Atlantic coast as early as this summer.
The entire Gulf Coast of Florida is at risk from wind and wave action pushing oil ashore.
This is the stuff floating on top I'm talking about.
While the sight of tar balls and oil-covered birds on fine white sand beaches is sickening, and while the damage to commercial fishing, recreation and tourism in the Gulf and beyond is unfathomable, scientists say the spill's worst environmental destruction is under water.
At least two submerged clouds of noxious oil and chemical dispersants already have been confirmed and there are signs of several more. The largest is 22 miles long, six miles wide and 3,300 feet deep - that's roughly half the volume of Lake Erie. Another spans an area of 20 square miles.
The spill is creating huge undersea dead zones.[[In-content Ad]]An article by Emily Dugan last week in the UK's "The Independent" is dire.
In previous spills, oil rose to the surface and was dealt with there, but due to the use of dispersants, as well as the weight of this particular crude oil and the pressure created by the depth of the leak, much of the oil has stayed submerged in clouds of tiny particles. At least 800,000 gallons of dispersants were sprayed at escaping oil in a frantic attempt to keep it offshore, but it now seems this preventative measure has created a worse disaster. The chemicals helped to keep the oil submerged and are toxic to marine life, resulting in unprecedented underwater damage to organisms in the Gulf.
... Forests of coral, sharks, dolphins, sea turtles, game fish and thousands of shellfish could all face destruction. ... If (the plumes) do eventually rise to the surface, they may end up on the shoreline months or years from now, causing a second wave of destruction.
The largest of the clouds ... has gone deeper than the spill itself, defying BP's assurances that all oil would rise to the surface. It is now headed north-east of the rig, toward the DeSoto Canyon. This underwater trench could channel the noxious soup along the Florida coast, impacting fisheries and coating 100-year-old coral forests.
More than 8,300 species of plants and animals are at risk. Some, such as the bluefin tuna, which come to the Gulf to spawn, could even face extinction. Scientists predict it will be many months - even years - before the true toll of the disaster will be known.
OK, that's enough. You get the picture.
I wonder how environmentalists feel about this?
You know, maybe - just maybe - if oil companies could drill in godforsaken places like the Artic National Wildlife Reserve, they wouldn't have to drill 30,000 feet in mile-deep water 60 miles off shore in one of the most important and pristine ecosystems on the planet.
Mary and I have been wistfully envisioning the day when we sail out of Indiana and move to a quaint little Gulf Coast fishing village somewhere north of Clearwater.
Our family has been vacationing in Florida for years. Usually around Fort Myers Beach. But we've been to Gainesville, Daytona, Miami Beach, South Beach, Naples and Bonita Springs.
Just this past February we spent a week in Pass-A- Grille - which is south of Treasure Island near St. Pete - while visiting our daughter who is attending grad school at USF in Tampa.
We love Florida. And all we've ever done is visited for a week or two at a time. We love the people, the atmosphere. All of it.
I gotta tell ya, this oil spill thing in the Gulf of Mexico almost makes me well up in tears when I think about it. I can't imagine what people up and down there are going through.
I think the blame game is ridiculous. I know who to blame. I saw the "60 Minutes" episode. The Transocean driller guy said the BP guy ordered him to finish the job even though broken pieces of the blowout preventer seal were coming out of the well. Duh.
And I really don't like the disingenuous way this thing is playing out.
At first, there was this optimism. The BP guys were saying things like "minimal environmental impact." Are you kidding me?
Nobody in government or BP is telling the truth.
The truth is, this is already the biggest environmental disaster of our time and it's not even close to being over. Drillers are likely not going to be able to be able to stop this thing for months.
BP is drilling two relief wells. Once at least one of those is done, they can plug the original well. BP says that can be completed by August, but that sounds wildly, unrealistically optimistic.
I read a story in the New Orleans Times-Picayne that put things in perspective for me. You basically have to hit something the diameter of a dinner plate from miles away while drilling through solid rock.
Drilling of a relief well - fortunately - is a rare undertaking. Nobody has a wealth of experience in it, but there are precedents.
The world's worst well blowout and spill, the Ixtoc I well in Mexico's Bay of Campeche, was ultimately stopped with a relief well after a containment dome, junk shot and top kill failed.
Sound familiar?
This oil platform sat in only 150 feet of water. The well blew out in early June 1979. The oil stopped flowing on March 17, 1980. The company initially estimated it would take three months to shut off the oil. It took them nine months and 22 days.
Technology today is better than it was in 1979 but regardless, this relief well business is extremely complex and difficult.
Just last August, a Thai company was drilling in 260 feet of water in the Timor Sea off Australia when the well blew up and began leaking.
It took 10 weeks and five tries to drill the relief well. The target was 8,600 feet below the sea floor. (BP's target is 18,000 feet below the sea floor.)
The oil was finally stopped on Nov. 3, but it took until mid-January to cap the well. That's five-and-a-half months.
The point of all this is that I believe the oil is going to flow for a long time and I don't think we've been fully informed by the media as to the likely level of devastation.
I'm not saying this oil catastrophe will turn the Gulf of Mexico into the Dead Sea, but it's bad. Real bad.
Computer models show the spill has the potential to travel via the loop current through the Florida Keys, past southeast Florida beaches and along thousands of miles of the Atlantic coast as early as this summer.
The entire Gulf Coast of Florida is at risk from wind and wave action pushing oil ashore.
This is the stuff floating on top I'm talking about.
While the sight of tar balls and oil-covered birds on fine white sand beaches is sickening, and while the damage to commercial fishing, recreation and tourism in the Gulf and beyond is unfathomable, scientists say the spill's worst environmental destruction is under water.
At least two submerged clouds of noxious oil and chemical dispersants already have been confirmed and there are signs of several more. The largest is 22 miles long, six miles wide and 3,300 feet deep - that's roughly half the volume of Lake Erie. Another spans an area of 20 square miles.
The spill is creating huge undersea dead zones.[[In-content Ad]]An article by Emily Dugan last week in the UK's "The Independent" is dire.
In previous spills, oil rose to the surface and was dealt with there, but due to the use of dispersants, as well as the weight of this particular crude oil and the pressure created by the depth of the leak, much of the oil has stayed submerged in clouds of tiny particles. At least 800,000 gallons of dispersants were sprayed at escaping oil in a frantic attempt to keep it offshore, but it now seems this preventative measure has created a worse disaster. The chemicals helped to keep the oil submerged and are toxic to marine life, resulting in unprecedented underwater damage to organisms in the Gulf.
... Forests of coral, sharks, dolphins, sea turtles, game fish and thousands of shellfish could all face destruction. ... If (the plumes) do eventually rise to the surface, they may end up on the shoreline months or years from now, causing a second wave of destruction.
The largest of the clouds ... has gone deeper than the spill itself, defying BP's assurances that all oil would rise to the surface. It is now headed north-east of the rig, toward the DeSoto Canyon. This underwater trench could channel the noxious soup along the Florida coast, impacting fisheries and coating 100-year-old coral forests.
More than 8,300 species of plants and animals are at risk. Some, such as the bluefin tuna, which come to the Gulf to spawn, could even face extinction. Scientists predict it will be many months - even years - before the true toll of the disaster will be known.
OK, that's enough. You get the picture.
I wonder how environmentalists feel about this?
You know, maybe - just maybe - if oil companies could drill in godforsaken places like the Artic National Wildlife Reserve, they wouldn't have to drill 30,000 feet in mile-deep water 60 miles off shore in one of the most important and pristine ecosystems on the planet.
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