By Wendee Holtcamp
Writer and journalist, Wendee Holtcamp, lives on the Gulf Coast and is sending in reports.
April 30, 2010 — How about you come on down to Lews-ee-ana in September to celebrate the state’s 75th annual Shrimp & Petroleum Festival? As their website says, “This is an event that will prove that oil and water really do mix.” Ahem. We’re about to see just how well.
This year, the aptly named festival will have a distinctly different tone: Shrimpers filed a class-action lawsuit against those responsible for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill 50 miles off the Louisiana coast (BP, Transocean, Halliburton, among others). The spill threatens shrimpers’ livelihood as the oil snakes its way towards ecologically fragile barrier islands and coastline that provide nursing grounds for young shrimp.
The Transocean-owned rig, leased by petroleum giant BP, exploded in flames on April 20, sinking into the ocean on April 22. When the rig sunk, it snapped a pipe, which now gushes approximately 5,000 barrels (or 210,000 gallons) of crude oil every day since into the Gulf, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. The rig actually has three total leaks, and attempts to cap the subsea well using a robot have proven unsuccessful. As of Thursday, the slick covered a circumference of 600 miles.
What was initially dismissed as a minor controllable spill is now called potentially as catastrophic — or more so — than the Exxon Valdez, which at 11 million gallons is America’s largest oil spill ever. If they don’t cap the well, it will take just 52 days to release as much oil as the Valdez. If the Montara rig explosion off Western Australia is any example, it’s not an unlikely scenario. That rig erupted in flame in August 2009 and spilled up to 2,000 barrels per day until November. Attempts to cap the leak failed time and again, and creating another well to alleviate pressure takes months.
Image courtesy of NOAA
Out in the Gulf, frantic cleanup crews have conducted limited burns to remove oil, have sprayed chemical dispersants to break it up (itself not so great from an environmental perspective), and have attempted to use an undersea dome to contain the mess, but nevertheless, as of last night, oil has just begun to reach shore. “Booms” — long floating absorbent ‘noodles’ — have been deployed to protect coastal wetlands, but from recent experience from the January 2010 Eagle Otome tanker crash near Port Arthur, Texas, booms never work perfectly, and may fail to get placed in critical regions due to human communication errors.
So what impacts might the BP rig spill have on marine life? NOAA reported that several endangered sperm whales have surfaced amidst the oil. The Gulf has 29 species of marine mammals, all protected, as well as six threatened or endangered sea turtle species. Most large marine critters can swim away, but toxins in the oil, in the dispersants used, and fumes from the fires used to burn it off could cause wildlife deaths, health issues and cancers for months and years to come.
View of spill from space
Image courtesy of NOAA
But the worst problems for fisheries and wildlife – and the associated commercial and recreational industries — will arise when oil hits the estuaries and wetlands on the shore. Oysters, snapper, speckled trout, grouper, and of course shrimp, live in or breed in near-shore estuaries, which are a delicate mix of salt and freshwater. According to the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), commercial fisheries in the five Gulf States is a $661 million industry, annually. Three-fourths of wild shrimp harvested in the U.S. come from here (though shrimp-trawling overall is a very wasteful fishery), and the estuaries also provide breeding grounds for rare and declining Atlantic bluefin tuna.
I’ve read media reports that offshore rigs still have a stellar safety record, but does that account for the small and medium size spills from ships transporting the oil, which get very little media play? I’ve reported no less than three spills in the past several months -one off San Fran, the Montara rig explosion off Australia, and the Eagle Otome close to my own home in Houston. In January of this year, a tanker destined for the ExxonMobil refinery crashed into a tow-boat, spilling 462,000 gallons of oil off of Port Arthur, Texas, affecting fragile coastal marshes.
The Obama administration has pledged to respond swiftly to the emergency, and has sent Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to address the spill. The White House declared the spill “of national significance,” which helps ease the transfer of federal funds and assistance to state and local officials.
According to the Minerals Management Service, offshore drilling produces 1/4 of U.S. domestic oil production, and the Department of Energy report states that all offshore areas of the U.S. contain only a grand total of 76 billion barrels of conventionally recoverable oil, with 36.9 billion of that in the Gulf. President Obama has publicly endorsed opening more coastline to expanded offshore drilling, and it remains to be seen whether he will reconsider his plan to expand offshore drilling in the wake of the tragedy. Today, he announced all new offshore projects are on hold until officials determine the cause of the rig explosion that left 11 dead and millions of gallons still pumping into the sea, and just starting to reach the shore. I’ll report more on wildlife impacts in a few days.
The buzz on Twitter is that suddenly those controversial offshore wind farms don’t seem so ugly.
Any money spent now will be money well spent. All hands on deck! “A stitch in time saves nine”. Get Haliburton on it; it belongs to them and they are the ones that installed it with out the extra safety features. They all ready have all the money from the Fed from the last administration, and then they moved their HQ to Dubai so that they would not have to pay taxes on “all the money that we and our kids could have made in a lifetime.” Then they borrowed more from China who now thinks that they are entitled to a State, (we are not picky just give us one to start) they say.
The space photo shows the spill is tiny in relation to the Gulf of Mexico. There’s been no major die off of birds or other wildlife. Crude oil leaks occur naturally (e.g. Santa Barbara Channel). So what’s the big deal here anyway? Seems to be more of a financial windfall for the media, lawsuit attorneys and ecologists who hope to land big $$Grant$$ to study the temporary and reversible effects of the spill. Basically, all these special interests are robbing money from the taxpayer.
I’ve been following media coverage of the spill since it happened, and I’ve been disappointed to see how much of the reporting thus far has focused on economic damage, as opposed to environmental damage. Even in the NY Times, the reporting on biological impact is little-to-none.
This, to me, is just one more reason why we should get off oil and ride bikes instead. And…also, maybe stop eating seafood.
[...] prove that oil and water really do mix." Ahem. We're about to see just how well.Source:http://adventures-in-climate-change.com/editorsdesk/?p=137 Permalink Wednesday May 5th [...]
Verla Ryder, isn’t it a bit smug to make such an assertion so early in the game. We’re only 3 minutes into the first quarter in this event.
“What’s the big deal?” If you can say that, you sure are a spin doctor counting on the short attention span of many Americans, and you must not believe the statement, “God looked at his creation, and it was very good.”
The oil disaster is one of the biggest problems for the nature this time. I hope it is possilbe to reduce the damage and to help the nature to regulate herself.
We can’t believe the destruction the oil tradegy has caused.
I just came from my next door neighbors’ home and was flabbergasted when she said she had been at a political meeting for our local representative and a fisherman at the meeting espoused the idea that crude petroleum products leaking into the ocean were not going to effect the shrimping industry! The man said shrimp thrive on petroleum!
Is there any validity to this? Also the representative wanted to know by a show of hands how the audience felt about shallow water oil drilling. I wonder if this was some sort of attempt to test the waters of Florida voters to allow this type of oil drilling.
Verla – it seems small relative to the whole Gulf of Mexico, which is a massive area – the 11th largest water body in the world. However the oil slick – as of Apr 30 that is – was still the size of Jamaica. That is not small by anyone’s reckoning. Nor, in my opinion, does it matter how large or small the spill is to those organisms who die or suffer through no fault of their own, but due to our collective irresponsibility – oil companies, government oversight, and our endless demand for this stuff. Thank you everyone for your comments.
After viewing a recent segment on 60 Minutes regarding the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster and it’s lasting effects on the environment and the people involved, a person would have to be a blind fool to think that this is ‘no big deal’. That was 21 years ago and the effects are still all around them there! Lives have been lost, livelihoods have been ruined for generations, the effects from this disaster in the Gulf are not going to be washed away with the next turning of the tide.
This may seem like a small area geographically, but it’s a crucial area where food you probably eat and have eaten, comes from, not to mention the recreational areas at risk. Petroleum such as this will persist for years once it reaches land, not only what is visible, but what is invisible as well (seeping into the land, being absorbed by plant life, aquatic creatures feeding on that vegetation, etc)
For how irresponsibly they have acted, BP and it’s tentacled contractors MUST be held accountable for the ruinous actions and ignorance that has been displayed. The billions of profit dollars that they claim every quarter MUST be used to solve this and to pay for what ever it is going to take to clean this up! The circular fingerpointing has to stop.
Fran – That sounds like a line being fed to the fishermen by BP or someone with a vested interest in not having them cause a ruckus. I have read several studies on the dispersant itself as being harmful to fish and aqautic life. It binds to the oil, breaking it up into smaller bits of oil which then ake sthe oil more “available” to be taken into the skin and lungs of organisms, which can cause death and disease. My next blog will talk about this, including some links to the scientific studies. Stay tuned! If you want some resources in the meantime, try going to Google scholar and searching for Corexit 9500 which is the dispersant being used. However the EPA just told BP they have to find an alternative.
BP lying again. They have zero credibility. Ruin our coast and lie the entire way through it. Oil is great, eh?