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.




1 comment:

  1. 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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Memorable quotations

The best way to know you are having an adventure is when you wish you were home talking about it." — a mechanic on the Alaska State Ferry System. Or as in my own case planning how I will be writing it on this blog.

"You can't promote principled anti-corruption without pissing off corrupt people." — George Kent

"If only the British had held on to the airports, the whole thing might have gone differently for us." — Mick Jagger

"You can do anything as long as you don't scare the horses." — a mother's favorite saying recalled by a friend

A poem is an egg with a horse inside” — anonymous fourth grader

“My children will likely turn my picture to the wall but what the hell, you only get old once." — Joe May

“Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.” — Ernest Hemingway

When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth. Kurt Vonnegut

“If you wrote something for which someone sent you a cheque, if you cashed the cheque and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.”Stephen King

The thing about ignorance is, you don't have to remain ignorant. — me again"

"It was like the aftermath of an orgasm with the wrong partner." – David Lagercrants “The Girl in the Spider’s Web.”

Why worry about dying, you aren't going to live to regret it.

Never debate with someone who gets ink by the barrel" — George Hayes, former Alaska Attorney General who died recently

My dear Mr. Frost: two roads never diverge in a yellow wood. Three roads meet there. — @Shakespeare on Twitter

Normal is how somebody else thinks you should act.

"The mark of a great shiphandler is never getting into situations that require great shiphandling," Adm. Ernest King, USN

Me: Does the restaurant have cute waitresses?

My friend Gail: All waitresses are cute when you're hungry.

I'm not a writer, but sometimes I push around words to see what happens. – Scott Berry

I realized today how many of my stories start out "years ago." What's next? Once upon a time?"

“The rivers of Alaska are strewn with the bones of men who made but one mistake” - Fred McGarry, a Nushagak Trapper

Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stared at walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing. – Meg Chittenden

A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity. – Franz Kafka

We are all immortal until the one day we are not. – me again

If the muse is late, start without her – Peter S. Beagle

Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. ~Mark Twain Actually you could do the same thing with the word "really" as in "really cold."

If you are looking for an experience that will temper your vanity, this is it. There's no one to impress when you're alone on the trap line. – Michael Carey quoting his father's journal

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. – Benjamin Franklin

It’s nervous work. The state you need to write in is the state that others are paying large sums of money to get rid of. – Shirley Hazzard

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence -- Bertrand Russell

You know that I always just wanted to have a small ship to take stuff from a place that had a lot of that stuff to a place that did not have a lot of that stuff and so prosper.—Jackie Faber, “The Wake of the Lorelei Lee”

If you attack the arguer instead of the argument, you lose both

If an insurance company won’t pay for damages caused by an “act of God,” shouldn’t it then have to prove the existence of God? – I said that

I used to think getting old was about vanity—but actually it’s about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial. – Eugene O’Neill

German General to Swiss General: “You have only 500,000 men in your army; what would you do if I invaded with 1 million men?”

Swiss General: “Well, I suppose every one of my soldiers would need to fire twice.”

Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.—Gloria Steinem

Exceed your bandwidth—sign on the wall of the maintenance shop at the West Coast/Alaska Tsunami Warning Center

One thing I do know, if you keep at it, you usually wind up getting something done.—Patricia Monaghan

Do you want to know what kind of person makes the best reporter? I’ll tell you. A borderline sociopath. Someone smart, inquisitive, stubborn, disorganized, chaotic, and in a perpetual state of simmering rage at the failings of the world.—Brett Arends

It is a very simple mind that only knows how to spell a word one way.—Andrew Jackson

3:30 is too late or too early to do anything—Rene Descartes

Everything is okay when it’s 50-below as long as everything is okay. – an Alaskan in Tom Walker’s “The Seventymile Kid”

You can have your own opinion but you can’t have your own science.—commenter arguing on a story about polar bears and global warming

He looks at three ex wives as a good start—TV police drama

Talkeetna: A friendly little drinking town with a climbing problem.—a handmade bumper sticker

“You’re either into the wall or into the show”—Marco Andretti on giving it all to qualify last at the 2011 Indy 500

Makeup is not for the faint of heart—the makeup guerrilla

“I’m going to relax in a very adult manner.”—Danica Patrick after sweating it out and qualifying half an hour before Andretti

“Asking Congress to come back is like asking a mugger to come back because he forgot your wallet.”—a roundtable participant on Fox of all places

As Republicans go further back in the conception process to define when life actually begins, I am beginning to think the eventual definition will be life begins in the beer I was drinking when I met her.—me again

Hunting is a “critical element for the long-term conservation of wood bison.”—a state department of Fish and Game official explaining why the state would not go along with a federal plan to reintroduce wood bison in Alaska because the agreement did not specifically allow hunting

Each day do something that won’t compute – anon

I can’t belive I still have to protest this shit – a sign carriend by an elderly woman at an Occupy demonstration

Life should be a little nuts or else it’s just a bunch of Thursdays strung together—Kevin Costner as Beau Burroughs in “Rumor has it”

You’re just a wanker whipping up fear —Irish President Michael D. Higgins to a tea party radio announcer

Being president doesn’t change who you are; it reveals who you are—Michelle Obama

Sports malaprops

Commenting on an athlete with hearing impairment he said the player didn’t show any “uncomfortability.” “He's not doing things he can't do."

"… there's a fearlessment about him …"

"He's got to have the lead if he's going to win this race." "

"Kansas has always had the ability to score with the basketball."

"NFL to put computer chips in balls." Oh, that's gotta hurt.

"Now that you're in the finals you have to run the race that's going to get you on the podium."

"It's very important for both sides that they stay on their feet."

This is why you get to hate sportscasters. Kansas beats Texas for the first time since 1938. So the pundits open their segment with the question "let's talk about what went wrong." Wrong? Kansas WON a football game! That's what went RIGHT!

"I brought out the thermostat to show you how cold it is here." Points to a thermometer reading zero in Minneapolis.

"It's tough to win on the road when you turn the ball over." Oh, really? Like you can do all right if you turn the ball over playing at home?

Cliches so embedded in sportscasters' minds they can't help themselves: "Minnesota fell from the ranks of the undefeated today." What ranks? They were the only undefeated team left.

A good one: A 5'10" player went up and caught a pass off a defensive back over six feet tall. The quote? "He's got some hops."

Best homonym of the day so far: "It's all tied. Alabama 34, Kentucky 3." Oh, Tide.

"Steve Hooker commentates on his Olympic pole vault gold medal." When "comments" just won't do.

"He's certainly capable of the top ten, maybe even higher than that."

"Atlanta is capable of doing what they're doing."

"Biyombo, one of seven kids from the Republic of Congo." In the NBA? In America? In his whole country?

"You can't come out and be aggressive but you can't come out and be unaggressive."

"They're gonna be in every game they play!"

"First you have to get two strikes on the hitter before you get the strikeout."

"The game ended in the final seconds." You have to wonder when the others ended or are they still going on?

How is a team down by one touchdown before the half "totally demoralized?"

"If they score runs they will win."

"I think the matchup is what it is"

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"Somebody is going to be the quarterback or we're going to see a new quarterback."

"That was a playmaker making a play.”