The Exxon Valdez is going to pale in comparison

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The title is a quote is from this BBC article.

This story has been percolating in the news for several days but if the public starts seeing birds, otters and aligators covered in oil the you know what will hit the fan.

Longer term, I would not be surprised to see Obama back away from the plan to open up more territory for drilling, especially since Lindsey Graham has already pulled his support for a Climate Change bill.

Wasn't BP selling themselves as the hippie-dippy enviro-friendly oil company?

"percolating" is the right word. I hear tidbits and snippets, and I saw the first rather lengthy coverage last night on NBC.

What I haven't heard yet is the estimated economic cost this will have on Louisiana's coast. That statistic that only 25% of wildlife survive the exxon valdez disaster is pretty heartstopping, though.

Just in time to launch some new, safe off-shore drilling.

Posted this on Twitter, but it probably stands a better chance of being answered here:

Any engineers want to weigh in on consequences for catastrophic failure at offshore wind farm?

Would that just be debris in the water and the loss of that generation capacity?

St. Bernard Parish should get some of the worst of this, but it's not constrained to only Louisiana. The Mississippi Coast, which was damn near leveled by Katrina will bear the brunt of this as well, along with the Alabama Coast and possibly part of the Redneck Riviera in the Florida Panhandle. This could really be bad. I've read that the Oystermen in Mississippi will likely be filing a lawsuit against BP, too.

I am not sure if this gets at drill baby drill. By keeping things closer, we need not gamble with long shipping, the risks that foreign freight practice would be insufficient.

More important for me, and this relates back to the coal mine disasters. At what point do we draw a line? How many tanker spills, mine collapses will it take to get off fossil fuels? When this makes landfall in the Gulf, the economic fallout will be tremendous as we are in supreme tourist time. Memorial day is around the corner.

Another report that I read indicated that Louisiana has given the go ahead for a special shrimping season to try and save what they can of this year's shrimp harvest, and that the shrimping industry will be pursuing a class action suit against BP.

If the economic impact proves to be large, that will be a tough break for a region that is still dealing with fallout from Katrina.

Badferret wrote:

the shrimping industry will be pursuing a class action suit against BP.

buzzvang wrote:

I've read that the Oystermen in Mississippi will likely be filing a lawsuit against BP, too.

Good, because I hasten to add that I thought BP billed themselves as responsible too.

IANAOWFE (Offshore Wind Farm Engineer)

I would guess some bits of fibreglass and turbine end up in the sea and the destroyed turbines can't generate electricity.

SpacePPoliceman wrote:

Wasn't BP selling themselves as the hippie-dippy enviro-friendly oil company?

Yes, they always have sold themselves like that. They have never BEEN that. This is not their first ecological disaster (in 2007 they spilled a bunch of methanol) or plant explosion (2005, a major refinery in Texas). There are multiple cases of them stomping all over human rights issues to protect their assets.

Just because their logo is a pretty flower doesn't mean they're saints.

As for the Exxon Valdez comparison, the leak has so far been much, much smaller in terms of raw quantities. That's not to say it can't get there eventually and if the slick moves inland it can cause a lot of ecological damage.

KingGorilla wrote:

I am not sure if this gets at drill baby drill. By keeping things closer, we need not gamble with long shipping, the risks that foreign freight practice would be insufficient.

More important for me, and this relates back to the coal mine disasters. At what point do we draw a line? How many tanker spills, mine collapses will it take to get off fossil fuels? When this makes landfall in the Gulf, the economic fallout will be tremendous as we are in supreme tourist time. Memorial day is around the corner.

About as many soldier deaths as it will take to get off war. Which is to say, just about infinity unless we institute a coal mining draft.

KingGorilla wrote:

At what point do we draw a line?

When we run out of fossil fuels.

I think in the big picture events like this are seen as "acceptable losses" much like casualties in a war. The cost of moving to a clean energy infrastrucure is, politically, far more expensive than the lives of a few humans or a bunch of animals.

Simply more of the short term thinking that our political systems encourage. One day it will likely be the end of us.

But...but...they're setting it on fire. Doesn't fire cure everything?

Rat Boy wrote:

But...but...they're setting it on fire. Doesn't fire cure everything?

Nuke the Gulf of Mexico from orbit. It's the only way to be sure we get all the oil.

Funkenpants wrote:
Rat Boy wrote:

But...but...they're setting it on fire. Doesn't fire cure everything?

Nuke the Gulf of Mexico from orbit. It's the only way to be sure we get all the oil.

I actually wondered about this approach, especially after hearing that Obama requested the military look into "alternative" approaches to stopping the leak.

A nuke is surely off the table, but could a submersible deliver something like a fuel-air bunker buster to the well head?

Fuel-air weapons work much better in the presence of air. Technical nitpicks aside, I really doubt they'd just set off a weapon on it. If you're using demolitions to keep a fluid from escaping, you need more control and precision than that. Otherwise you might just crack it open even further and destabilize the terrain.

I was under the impression that the burn will just "clean up" the oil that's already been spilled. I have no idea what they're doing to try to plug the thing. Hopefully something good, or at least something. Setting fire to the surface slick sure isn't going to do it.

Yeah, I figured as much on both points.

As to what they are doing to cap the current leak, ermm, not much. BP is still desperately hoping that they can somehow get their built in fail safe to fire, which should cap the leak, but as they have been trying for a week now, it doesn't look good. The two other approaches will take weeks, maybe months to implement, and neither is a sure thing.

BP is building what sounds like a giant domed coffee lid which they will lower over the leak, and then pump the oil out to waiting ships, the problem is that there are currently three leaks spread out over a fair distance from the collapsed piping.

The other approach they will try is to drill a new well and then horizontally intercept the existing well and inject concrete, but such a drilling maneuver has never been attempted.

The biggest problem with either is that they will take at the minimum weeks to get into to place, and either attempt could take well over a month or two, ohh and they just changed the estimate for how much oil is leaking upwards to 5,000 barrels a day, start doing that math for weeks or months and you can see how the thread title could come to pass. At that rate, in 43 more days this spill could equal the Valdez, and if this takes twice that long to cap (which seems to be a real possibility) then...

Badferret wrote:

BP is building what sounds like a giant domed coffee lid which they will lower over the leak, and then pump the oil out to waiting ships, the problem is that there are currently three leaks spread out over a fair distance from the collapsed piping.

I don't really see how that would fix the problem, unless they intend to keep that up until the thing is totally empty.

Dimmerswitch wrote:

Posted this on Twitter, but it probably stands a better chance of being answered here:

Any engineers want to weigh in on consequences for catastrophic failure at offshore wind farm?

Would that just be debris in the water and the loss of that generation capacity?

There'd be loose wind everywhere - it might make it all the way on shore. I don't even want to imagine the labor costs involved with getting all that wind off of the local seals and penguins. Wait, what?

Does Dawn soap clean off wind contamination?

I think the cover idea is off the table with the multiple leaks. BTW, NPR has had thorough coverage of this since it happened.

You can't build a wind farm in the Gulf. Too many hurricanes go through there. You'd be rebuilding your wind farm every year.

From the AP story:

Government officials said the blown-out well 40 miles offshore is spewing five times as much oil into the water as originally estimated - about 5,000 barrels, or 200,000 gallons, a day.

I'm not sure who I'm most angry at, all of us for not demanding that we stop the insanity of this unquenchable thirst for oil or the inbred nitwits who shout idiocy like "drill baby drill".

I think at this point I'd like to track down everyone who every shouted "DRILL BABY DRILL" cover them with crude and set them on fire...............

Bill Maher said it best on Twitter today: "Every asshole who ever chanted 'Drill baby drill' should have to report to the Gulf coast today for cleanup duty."

Yeah, if I have to abandon seafood, I'm going to start running SUVs and extended cab trucks off the road.

Dimmerswitch wrote:

Would that just be debris in the water and the loss of that generation capacity?

Hey, we might even get some nice skeletons for artificial reefs!

It isn't to Exxon Valdez levels yet, but it seems inevitable that it will get there. At current estimated rates, it will take 50 days for the oil to surpass the amount spilled during the Valdez disaster. I don't think anyone thinks they will be able to stop the flow in less than months.

At least this will stop anyone pushing for more offshore oil drilling from arguing that there's no risk to the environment involved.

Funkenpants wrote:

At least this will stop anyone pushing for more offshore oil drilling from arguing that there's no risk to the environment involved.

No, they'll still argue that there is has no risk to the environment.

Tkyl wrote:
Funkenpants wrote:

At least this will stop anyone pushing for more offshore oil drilling from arguing that there's no risk to the environment involved.

No, they'll still argue that there is has no risk to the environment.

What?

Their new argument will be that there are "new completely safe ways to drill!"

Come on, people still argue after Chernobyl that nuclear power is can be completely safe!

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