Oil spill

[bmccasland]

Sorry, no insider information. Everything I know, I get from the news.

But yesterday when I got home from work, I thought I was crazy, thought I smelled oil. Winds are out of the south. Well, this morning, it's confirmed, on www.nola.com, we are smelling the spill in New Orleans, which is more than 90 miles away.

The oil is expected to hit the outer marshes today.

[Tuckervill]

What a disaster. I thought they could contain spills like that, but I guess it's just too much.

Karen

[crazycanuck]

Beth, Western Australia experienced something very very similar late last year-earlier this year http://www.watoday.com.au/environmen...1109-i59k.html

Last month..a chinese tanker ran aground on the bottom edge of the Great Barrier reef... http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news...0405-rmju.html

I'd be bloody pissed off as well if it hit local beaches/nature reserves

We're stuck between a rock & a hard place in Western Australia...Large Iron Ore, Gold, Nickel, etc etc deposits plus offshore oil in the Timor Sea...What do you do when the boom ends?? So many other questions...

Sorry you have to be so close to the action

[malkin]

At least the Obama administration seems to be rethinking their move to lift the moratorium on offshore drilling.

Sad.

[smilingcat]

It saddens me a great deal when I hear of this kind of accidents. It didn't have to happen. Norwegians and Brits have safeguards for the offshore oil drilling. Some kind of a Christmas tree to shutoff the oil flow at the base of the oil well, where the pipe goes into the ground.

Why can't these people understand that bit of prudence and safety measure might save them in a long run. Perfect example of penny wise pound foolish.

And another reason to start thinking about alternative energy. Mainly solar.

I could rant and rant... And really sad to hear about this tragic situation.

[bmccasland]

There was an auto-shut off, it malfunctioned. Unfortunately it's waaay down at the bottom

The spill has hit Chandelieur National Wildlife Refuge - a refuge on barrier islands. It's also hit the jetties on the South Pass shipping channel of the Mississippi River. FYI - the most common one used by the big ships is Southwest Pass.

To get an idea of what the Miss River delta looks like, stick you left arm out and splay your fingers. SW Pass is your index finger, S Pass is your middle. Tiger Pass is your thumb. About your wrist is Venice which has been mentioned in some of the news coverage. Then your arm is all that river, encased by levees, natural and man-made, marshes or not on either side - eventually coming to your shoulder which is where the New Orleans metro area is. Drive time from New Orleans to Venice is 2 hours (the road is NOT straight).

And the oil rig that went down was off of S Pass, 50 miles.

[bmccasland]

Just got this email -
(I should explain that Audubon Nature Institute is best known for Audubon Zoo and Audubon Aquarium, they are not affiliated with the birding Audubon Society)

At Audubon Nature Institute, we are heartbroken to learn of the loss of life and the potential for ecological disaster to Louisiana's coastline in the wake of the oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico. So much remains unknown and inexplicable. What we do know is that Audubon Nature Institute has expertise and resources we can mobilize to do our part to lessen the impact of this tragedy on our area's precious wildlife.

We are proud to let you know that Audubon Aquarium of the Americas http://www.auduboninstitute.org marine mammal trainer Michele Kelley is the statewide coordinator for the Louisiana Marine Mammal and Sea Turtle Rescue Program (LMMSTRP). She is working tirelessly with NOAA to ready Audubon facilities for an unpredictable number of oiled animals such as dolphins, whales, manatees and sea turtles. Audubon employees and volunteers will work in triage for as long as it takes to give these injured animals the best possible chance for recovery.

We don't know how our future will be affected by this unprecedented situation. But you can rest assured that the dedicated employees of Audubon Nature Institute will meet this challenge, doing the very best for the wildlife we all cherish. We couldn't do it without your support, and for that we are most grateful.

As our role becomes clearer, we will keep you informed of ways you can get involved. Thank you for joining us in this critical endeavor to save our state's animals.

Sincerely,

L. Ronald Forman
President and CEO
Audubon Nature Institute

If you are so inclined to donate to a cause - they are a non-profit worthy group.

[7rider]

Why can't these people understand that bit of prudence and safety measure might save them in a long run. Perfect example of penny wise pound foolish.

The same could be said about that coal mine disaster in WV recently.

My agency is deeply involved in the response to this disaster, providing everything from tidal and weather forecasts, to satellite imagery, to mitigation and damage assessments. Our Office of Response and Restoration has a special website here with loads of info on this.

[malkin]

Disaster.

I wish we hadn't used the word for bunt cookies and smelly laundry, so it would have more strength left.

[shootingstar]

It's interesting that the name of the oil firm (BP) isn't consistently splattered all over the press.

Latest I heard was that it might take up to 3 months to cap off that underwater oil well polluting gusher. It's a technical challenge to get at underwater oil well facilities to cap it.. If it was easy, the gusher would have been stopped/capped already by now.

Dearie spent most of his career for a major oil firm in Canada before he retired ....so I heard stuff in general about the oil industry.

[oz rider]

But yesterday when I got home from work, I thought I was crazy, thought I smelled oil. Winds are out of the south. Well, this morning, it's confirmed, on www.nola.com, we are smelling the spill in New Orleans, which is more than 90 miles away.

This has been in the news here pretty well since it happened, but I wouldn't have imagined smelling it 90 miles away; thanks for the local knowledge.
BP has been named a few times here, with a few grabs from its comms guy who didn't seem to be convincing anyone.

[Skierchickie]

This is horrible. If absolutely ANYTHING positive can come from this, hopefully it will change a lot of people's thinking on environmental and energy issues. Maybe because it has hit America in our own yard? The Exxon Valdez was horrible, the Barrier Reef incident was horrible, but were they too far away to feel real to people?

I work at a research facility that is part of a (primarily engineering) university. I'm amazed at how often I hear pretty scientifically-oriented people at work talking about climate change not being real. Making statements about how humans just don't affect the planet that much. Okay - I'm no expert, and everyone has a right to their opinion. Maybe it isn't real. I, personally, do fully believe that climate change is real, and can see the possibilities whenever I look at a city, a pollution-belching factory, etc. How can we NOT be hurting things? One co-worker said to me "Humans are animals, too. We're part of nature." Do people not get it that we're doing things that no other creatures do, and these are things that do have an impact?

This oil well explosion is a terrible tragedy, and one with repercussions that I can't even imagine. I can't wrap my brain around 5000 barrels of oil per day. For months on end. Accidents happen, yes. Malfunctions happen, yes. But if we're going to strip the planet of all its resources, we'd better have some serious safeguards in place for when those accidents and malfunctions happen, so we don't destroy everything else in our path. There isn't any easy answer to the energy issue, but can't we at least try to do things right, rather than trying to get as rich as possible? Is there no concept of doing the right thing, because it's the right thing, and not only when it makes us the most profit?

Sorry for the rant. I'm upset.

[sundial]

Bmccasland, I've been thinking of you during this oil spill and was wondering if you will be on clean-up duty. This oil spill is not only going to affect NOLA, but the entire gulf coast according the latest developments.

Oil-Spill Fight Bogs Down
BP Says Stopgap Plan to Cap Well May Take Weeks; Weather Slows Effort to Limit Slick

By BEN CASSELMAN, STEPHEN POWER And ANA CAMPOY

VENICE, La.—Engineers prepared to try containing the gushing Gulf of Mexico oil well with giant underwater boxes and siphons, as seaside towns braced for landfall of a giant slick.

BP PLC, the oil giant that leased the rig whose sinking last week caused the disaster, has failed in efforts using unmanned submarines to activate a shutoff device on the undersea well.

A stopgap solution BP is planning—covering the well with containers and pumping the oil out—will take weeks to roll out and is untested at the one-mile depth of this well, however. BP said it would begin working this weekend on a permanent solution to the crisis, drilling a new hole to cut off the damaged well, but industry scientists said that could take months.

The Deepwater Horizon, operated for BP by Transocean Ltd., burned and sank last week, leaving 11 dead and an open well on the ocean floor.

With a quick solution to shut off the spill looking out of reach Friday, the government and the oil industry struggled to contain the resulting slick and keep it from shore. The American Petroleum Institute alerted members that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar wanted advice from the industry on how to manage the spill by the end of Friday.

On Friday evening, the National Guard was mobilized to assist in the cleanup, and the Pentagon said BP would have to bear the cost. Earlier Friday, a small drilling rig tipped over in inland waters near Morgan City, La., the Coast Guard said, though no oil was spilled.

The Deep Horizon slick began threatening the wetlands of the Louisiana coast, raising fears of environmental disaster in some of America's richest shrimp, oyster and fish breeding grounds.

Strong winds and choppy seas hampered efforts to hem in the oil. Several vinyl containment barriers, known as booms, broke up in the rough weather. Others remained on shore, as high waves—expected to continue through the weekend—made it impossible to lay them in the Gulf.

An equally pressing emergency loomed more than 40 miles offshore, where the deepwater well kept spewing oil uncontrollably.

Industry scientists say the permanent solution is to close the entire well. To do that, they must drill another hole—through 13,000 feet of rock a mile under the ocean's floor—that will intercept the leaking well. They can then pump in cement to try to plug the leaks.

This operation will take up to three months and is highly complex; the drills must precisely hit the leaking well—which is just seven inches wide. When a well off the coast of Australia blew out last year, it took five attempts over 10 weeks to hit the old well and shut it down.

Within hours of the explosion, BP was sending unmanned submarines to the well to try to trigger a device called a "blowout preventer," which is essentially a powerful valve meant to clamp down on the well and shut it off in case of emergency.

The device should have been triggered in the explosion, but wasn't; that failure will be a central question in the investigation.

In theory, the blowout preventer can also be activated by underwater robots. BP has six robots working on it, and says it will keep trying, but so far the valve has not worked. "It's just not functioning appropriately," Tony Hayward, CEO of BP, said in an interview this week.

For now, BP is trying a series of stopgap measures. The company is constructing three steel boxes—each 40 feet tall and weighing 73 tons—that it will place on top of the gushing oil. Pipes running through the boxes will carry the oil to a ship.

A similar system was used after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to capture oil from smaller spills in shallow water. But the technique has never been tried in deep water, which involves much higher pressures and near-freezing water temperatures. Engineers are still figuring out how to connect the steel boxes to the ship. BP has said the project will take two to four weeks.

More here....

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...NewsCollection

[shootingstar]

I work at a research facility that is part of a (primarily engineering) university. I'm amazed at how often I hear pretty scientifically-oriented people at work talking about climate change not being real. Making statements about how humans just don't affect the planet that much. Okay - I'm no expert, and everyone has a right to their opinion. Maybe it isn't real. I, personally, do fully believe that climate change is real, and can see the possibilities whenever I look at a city, a pollution-belching factory, etc. How can we NOT be hurting things?

This amazed me also about some scientifically oriented people who don't believe in climate change. While I don't disagree there are a myriad of other factors causing unusual climactic patterns (include soil erosion, excessive tree-cutting), but when humankind introduces repetitive processes at a speed which the ecosystem cannot cope for continuous rebalancing/replenishing, then humankind does need to relook and change their practices.

Dearie's opinion on the low profile mention of BP at this time (which could change soon), he believes the oil industry execs...and U.S. senior govn't would be concerned about way too much limelight that could hurt oil production in general, by the U.S. particularily if its own citizens protest too much.

Meanwhile continue to ride our bikes ..

[OakLeaf]

It is a terrible disaster, and it may be a long time before we know the full extent of it.

I'm of two minds about how much focus should be specifically on BP right now. It isn't like any of the oil companies are any different. It's perhaps a futile pipe dream in a capitalist world, but you have to think that - for instance - if the Valdez disaster had been seen as a symptom of something endemically wrong with the oil industry rather than just something wrong with Exxon, more attention might have been given to energy alternatives.

Pipe dream, I know.