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| The industry term for it is "best available technology." |
It is such a damn shame that every time there's a spill, for all their promises and contingency plans, oil companies are chronically slow to respond, with inadequate equipment and try to spin the best possible scenario for what they've done.
One thing I learned in 12 years of working in the world of oil spill response is that oil spills do not get smaller. Industry consistently gives a low estimate of the original spill and then has to adjust upward as the travesty unfolds.
The original estimate for this spill along the coast of California was about 20,000 gallons. Tuesday the company said it was more like 105,000 gallons. Smart money is that the spill will eventually be larger even than that.
And, what is the most effective way to clean it up? Forget all those high tech skimmers and booms, this oil is being collected in five-gallon buckets. And it took several days for that to start because initially volunteers were prevented from going to work on the oil. There are reasons for that; spilled oil is considered a hazardous material and OSHA and EPA demand that workers have specific training. Those agencies also demand that workers wear adequate protective gear. Volunteers were just allowed to work on the oil over this past weekend.
Look at the guy in the picture. He is wearing leather or fabric shoes, when oil resistant boots are required. Shorts? The guy has oil on his leg up to his shorts. Gloves? Those look like cotton and would be very absorbent helping to confine the oil against the skin on his hands. Oil can cause severe problems for people who get it on their skin. This guy is just a time bomb waiting for the effects of the oil on his body. Who knows what he is inhaling from that oil as fresh as it is. And, you have to believe everybody else who is working on the spill is pretty much dressed the same way.
Given the warm temperatures normal along the California coast, it can be expected the lighter ends evaporate fairly quickly. But as those vapors rise they contain carcinogens that people there are breathing and most often the damage doesn't show up for years.
This is all indicative of one company and an industry that is in no way ready to handle an oil spill. According to MSNBC this company has been fined for oil spill violations at least 10 times in the last decade in four other states. The company, Plains All American, based in Houston, has been called one of the the "worst violators" by the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Administration.
Every spill exposes the inadequacy of the industry to perform any sort of cleanup. The company has claimed it has collected 20 percent of the spilled oil. That is an outrageous claim. Best recovery rates with good equipment usually come in a little more than 10 percent and looking at what's going on there, it's doubtful this operation is doing any better than that.
It is really an outrage that in 2015 after lessons learned from massive spills like Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon and thousands of smaller ones that people still have to pick up oil in five-gallon buckets. A friend of mine did that from his fishing boat during Exxon Valdez and it looks like the technology hasn't improved much. Better technology exists, better collection methods exist though none get more than the 10 or 11 percent normal recovery despite the claims of industry contingency plans. There are also some effective techniques and equipment for protecting shore from oil. None of that is evident in any of the photographs of this spill so far.
We are facing a huge challenge with Shell preparing to drill in the Arctic and the proposed Keystone pipeline, not to mention aging, deteriorating pipelines all over the place, just like the one that ruptured off California. I guess we just save our five-gallon buckets against the day it happens close to home.
And just an aside, juduging by the color of those buckets it looks like the only one making a profit here is Home Depot, but unfortunately there isn't a Home Depot within 500 miles of where Shell plans to drill in the Arctic.
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