Most of you will probably remember the Exxon Valdez 'disaster', where the clean up actually caused more enviromental damage than the oil spill itself, or when the Iraqi army left Kuwait nineteen years ago, and just for a giggle they set fire to oil wells and released eleven million barrels of crude into the Persian Gulf.
Everybody was predicting that the world would come to an end, but it struck me that oil is a natural product (which admittedly can do a lot of short term damage if it's in the wrong place) so it would probably sort itself out, which it did. So I shall adopt the same approach with the recent one in the Gulf of Mexico.
No doubt the Yanks will engage in a lot of knee jerk stuff (like 'banning' future offshore drilling etc), rather than address the underlying regulatory failure* and Greenies the world over will adopt Louisana cray fisherman as their poster boys for a while but I give it six months and the oil spill itself will be history, with or without any mass clean up efforts.
* It must be said, the Yanks have an appalling record on this, there was another disaster yesterday.
Put On Your Big Boy Pants, Maybe?
1 hour ago
7 comments:
Yeah, its a bit like ionising radiation is evil right?
Well only if you eat U238 or something similar over a very short period of time.
Yeah on regulation corruption. But society operates better and produces more, more efficiently when it works together rather than individually. Just enough government is needed to make sure that continues fairly.
Small amounts of underground oil naturally seep to the surface all the time. The natrual seepage to the Carribean is greater per day than this accident.
@Neil. Its the concentration and timing that matter if you are a bird drowning.
There is also a natural nuclear reactor too. Its not harmful because of intensity and timing:
NATURAL NUCLEAR REACTORS (OKLO)
Mark, I would say the Americans have a pretty good record. The rest of your post notes that it's not a particularly serious spill, no matter what the shrieking media say, so the final para jars a bit.
As the French have shown, leave it alone is the best policy.
Neil is correct, the natural seepage in the Gulf is significant - A 2000 NASA quoted study estimated the natural seepage in the Gulf at about 500,000 barrels a year from several thousand sources, and all USA maritime waters at about 160,000 tons a year (N.B. change of units there).
A colleague told me of an incident when he worked in Texas, the land of long, slow trains. Some propane cars were derailed. The fire brigade turned up and played hoses on the cars. They exploded. The cause was, apparently, that many of the firemen were smoking as they worked.
The dispersal agent being used is more toxic than the oil, as I understand it.
RS, as to corporate responsibility, the government can make those part of the terms of the deal when granting the drilling rights: the more onerous the terms, the less it receives for drilling rights.
NC, Ch, I thought as much.
Ch, I'm no expert but these disasters with oil exploration and refineries; gas storage etc, seem to be quite common in the USA.
D, good anecdotal :-)
TT, exactly, that's what happened with Exxon Valdez.
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