Oil Slickonomics
May 3rd, 2010Via: The Big Picture:
Three scenarios lie ahead. They rank as bad, worse, and ugliest (the latter being catastrophic and unprecedented). There is no “good” here.
The Bad.
Containment chambers are put in place and they catch the outflow from the three ruptures that are currently pouring 200,000 gallons of oil into the Gulf every day. If this works, it will take until June to complete. The chambers are 30-foot-high steel configurations that must be placed on the ocean floor at a depth of one mile. This has never been done before. If early containment is successful, the damages from this accident will be in the tens of billions. The cleanup will take years. The economic impact will be in the five states that have frontal coastline on the Gulf of Mexico: Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida.
The Worse.
The containment attempts fail and oil spews for months, until a new well can successfully be drilled to a depth of 13000 feet below the 5000-foot-deep ocean floor, and then concrete and mud are injected into the existing ruptured well until it is successfully closed and sealed. Work on this approach is already commencing. Timeframe for success is at least three months. Note the new well will have to come within about 20 feet of the existing point where the original well enters the reservoir at a distance of 3.5 miles from the surface drilling rig. Damages by this time may be measured in the hundreds of billions. Cleanup will take many, many years. Tourism, fishing, all related industries may be fundamentally changed for as much as a generation. Spread to Mexico and other Gulf geography is possible.
The Ugliest.
This spew stoppage takes longer to reach a full closure; the subsequent cleanup may take a decade. The Gulf becomes a damaged sea for a generation. The oil slick leaks beyond the western Florida coast, enters the Gulfstream and reaches the eastern coast of the United States and beyond. Use your imagination for the rest of the damage. Monetary cost is now measured in the many hundreds of billions of dollars.
jeezus, I live on the Gulf…given the Katrina response I can see this being a ginormous cluster-fuck beyond all imagination, so I pick scenario number 3…
No doubt. There is a common political perspective, paradoxically often centered in the libertarian direction, that we need to get over our kneejerk environmental fears and solve our energy problems with modern, high tech, low risk nuclear plants, with some good examples on display in France. ‘what could go wrong’.
I’m not sure which style of management is more risk prone – government or corporate. Probably corporate is a bit more risky. In any case, what if the engineers, security, technicians fail at any step.
Here’s my own personal variation on the Good the Bad and the Ugly:
The Good: the oil slick causes severe problems in most Coastal towns, ocean life dies in the droves, and most people worldwide decide that their dependance on oil is not worth the convenience…(not likely).
The Bad: the oil spew continues on for the next few months, but all we know if that it’s gradually contained, that towns on the Coast are miffed, but Gulf trade-traffic is little effected.
The Ugly: the media grows tired of the story in another week or two, things grow worse, but we don’t really care anymore, and we continue to not care anymore. Just like every other major crisis in the last few years.
Just sayin’.
If you go onto the NOAA website, the map of the oil spill shows that there are Air Force Unexploded Ordance Dumping Zones nearby the now defunk oil rig.
http://response.restoration.noaa.gov/topic_subtopic_entry.php?RECORD_KEY(entry_subtopic_topic)=entry_id,subtopic_id,topic_id&entry_id(entry_subtopic_topic)=809&subtopic_id(entry_subtopic_topic)=2&topic_id(entry_subtopic_topic)=1#downloads
I don’t know how you enlarge that freakin picture.
And I also don’t know if something drifted off that explosive dump that finally was exploded by all the freaking air gun sonar that oil companies have been pounding the Gulf with since its now freeedom to drill wherever you want to.
(I will not quote Sarah Palin).
But this is quite sickening to me.
A few links that brought on my illness:
http://www.acousticecology.org/oceanairgunexecsumm.html
http://www.gomr.mms.gov/PI/PDFImages/GandG/2/2186.pdf see page 14, item 5 (don’t know how to make a direct link where I want to send you)
But this sucks! Jesus, Mary, and whoever, since when can our Air Force dump unexploded ordance into the Gulf? Fluck!!!
I have no advice for anyone, but you know this makes me sick.
I’m keeping my head down this spring/summer season, and if the freakin shitstorm this oil spill will bring to this earth, I might still be growing a crop of Roma tomatoes for canning (I’m about out of canned tomatoes).
This oil spill is scaring me. Big time. Crying about it. Anyways, good luck friends. Not a one of us gets out of here alive.
I reread my post and the first link did not take you where I intended. Here is another linK:
http://www.gomr.mms.gov/homepg/regulate/environ/jl06006.pdf.
Then look-ee-see this:
http://www.saic.com/aquatic-sciences/environ-sci/underwater-uxo-mec.html
So there’s all this oil and unexploded ordance in the Gulf of Mexico.
I can’t come up with the picture, but there’s something about the two of these together that spells the cause of the oil spill in the Gulf today.
Hope Kevin can pick it up. Thanks.
Dumping unexploded stuff into the sea and lakes?
Every army does that. Everywhere. In Switzerland, almost all lakes have some contaminated layer or a site with dumped unexpordonance. Sad and ugly, as always. Nobody cares about, except the environmental agencies, but you know that they are crazy lunatics, right?
So, this catastrophe makes me wonder how long the half life of fear in todays media world is and when the next drill-baby-drill chant erupts from the wingnuts. Or the collective craze for nuclear plants.