BP Oil Spill: Clean-Up Crews Can't Find Crude in the Gulf
For 86 days, oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico from BP's damaged well, dumping some 200 million gallons of crude into sensitive ecosystems. BP and the federal government have amassed an army to clean the oil up, but there's one problem -- they're having trouble finding it.
At its peak last month, the oil slick was the size of Kansas, but it has been rapidly shrinking, now down to the size of New Hampshire.
Now, granted, there may very well be "millions and millions" of gallons of oil lurking just below the surface that we haven't seen. It's possible that there still looms an ecological armageddon just waiting for humanity to become complacent again, then foisting a petroleum-based Godspilla on us when we least expect it. I don't claim to be an expert on the oil business by any stretch of the imagination, but I know a little bit about chemicals, specifically dispersants and surfactants, and it's simply amazing what a little bit can do.
It's also possible that the cries of "low-balling" the oil spill rate might have been unfounded - I mean, it's not like the environmentalists have never played fast-and-loose with the truth for some perceived gain before... Smarter people than I pointed out, repeatedly, during the actual crisis that no one wanted that spill stopped more than British Petroleum - every single gallon that leaked out of that well was a gallon they couldn't sell. On top of being a PR nightmare and an environmental disaster, it lost them a ton of money - not even counting the money they had to set aside for cleanup.
Perhaps we ought to accuse the enviro-Nazis of "high-balling" the damage?
That is all.
3 comments:
I'm making my prediction right now. Spring break 2011: nobody will be able to point to a single beach contaminated with oil. And the gulf water will be a clean as it ever was (i.e. nasty)
Evaporation is one possibility - the lighter fractions, the ones that eventually become gasoline among other things, evaporated. The heavier fractions were mopped up, came ashore for photo ops, or may have sank or been dispersed into balls too small to photograph well and be hanging out just under the surface.
My $.02 worth.
LittleRed1
Paul the pirate or another marine biologist type can explain this better than me, but I've learned a thing or two working with the Schlumberger/Halliburton/Transoceans of the planet to wit, crude oil seeps from the ocean bed and dry land all day long. In the ocean, especially the sunny, fracking hot in the summer, golfo de meheeco, petroleum evaporates. I know it's a difficult concept for the earth firsters, but they're called volatile compounds for a reason, back me up here chemistry guy. The marine biology part is where the same microbes that put a shelf life on diesel also digest petroleum and other things that spend too much time in sea water especially under the hot sun. It's only surprising, unexpected, and asonishing to the ministry of truth and the teleprompter hayzoos.
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