Thursday, April 29, 2010

Oil spills and deja vu


Watching this oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has been so frustrating. It is like was nothing learned from Exxon Valdez? For years after the Exxon spill people in the area of potential oil spills have been warned that it could happen there as well, but to no avail. I used to tell people from the East Coast just for perspective that if Exxon had happened on that coast and traveled as far as Exxon oil, it would have stretched from Cape Cod to Cape Hatteras, This new spill has all the potential to be so much bigger than that.
One thing that comes up with people unfamiliar with oil spills and their effects is a tendency to believe industry estimates of the amount spilled. A rule of thumb with industry estimates is that oil spills never get smaller. Case in point, BP estimated the flow from this spill at 1,000 gallons per day. Then the Coast Guard spoke up and said it was bigger than that, as much as five times more than the estimate. BP argued but today admitted the release is more like 210,000 gallons per day. A million gallons every five days.
There appear to have been no preparations for a spill this size despite the exposure in the Gulf of Mexico. I see pictures of what look like local fishermen loading boom onto their boats. They are not wearing safety gear that is mandatory in Prince William Sound responses. I see futility. MSN.com has a photo today oil everywhere and in the center is a small boat or two towing a collection boom — oil in the boom, oil behind the boom, oil on both sides of the boom and oil out in front of the boom. How much oil can this one little boom collect? And more, what will they do with it? There don’t appear to be any collection barges anywhere. I have seen video of one skimmer. It was a Transrec capable of collecting 2,100 barrels of liquid per hour. I say liquid because more than half of that liquid is going to be water.
Yesterday there was mention of a test burn. No mention of burning today. They may have tried but no word yet if they did or if they did, if they succeeded. I have participated in training and exercises involving burning and it is not as easy as it sounds. For one thing they apparently were trying to burn emulsified oil, meaning mixed with water and thickened. This is almost impossible to burn. Also they attempted, at least in the test burn to start the fire with flares. Doubtful this would work. (Try throwing a lighted match into a small pool of gasoline sometime — it goes out, and gasoline has a much lower flash point than crude oil). In Alaska , they use what is called a helitorch. It is an apparatus dangled from a helicopter and simply stated it drops blobs of flaming gelled gasoline (napalm). The blobs say burning long enough to start the real fire. And, it is not the oil itself that burns. It is the vapors just above the oil. As the oil weathers, that evaporation becomes less and less as the lighter ends are dissipated. That makes it all the more difficult to burn. The worst part is this: In a test burn done here burning emulsified oil, it was found that 3 percent of the oil by weight sinks to the bottom in the consistency of peanut brittle. Think of the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, where all those bottom-dwelling shrimp come from, coated with black oily peanut brittle.
Ok, probably enough said about all this, just needed to get it off my mind. Bottom line is there is a huge spill, minimal equipment to deal with it and it is going to keep going for a while. Same thing was said when Exxon Valdez started.
A couple of big questions: Every one of these offshore wells has on it what is called a blowout preventer. It sits on the ocean floor and the well pipe rises through it. When there is back pressure, it is supposed to fire off and close the well. Finally about four or five days into this spill it was admitted the preventer didn’t work. Why? And if this didn’t work, do we have any guarantee the preventers on all the other wells WILL work?
And the other is broad. Industry assures us all time after time that spills and accidents can’t happen, and then tells us if they do happen they have the equipment and manpower to deal with it. They are making these assurances now as they prepare to drill offshore in the Arctic. Do we really want to believe them? If you think the answer is yes, take a look at the history of Exxon Valdez, the blowout off Australia in the Timor Sea last year and this one as it unfolds.




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  1. Patricia MonaghanApril 29, 2010 at 4:41 PM

    Think, baby, think!

    Great comments, Tim. As someone who knows firsthand what this looks like, I'm sure you're shuddering in your boots.

    ReplyDelete

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