One of the key tools for reassurance the government possesses as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill continues to expand is the containment boom. The Joint Information Center, which brings together the public relations of BP and Transocean with the Coast Guard keep reporting how much length of boom they have deployed along the Gulf Coast so far. As of yesterday “Overall, the combined response has deployed 275,580 feet of boom, staged 316,470 feet, and has on order an additional 250,000 feet.”
So, the Gulf Coast is protected, right? It’s not that simple.
Although miles of protective booms have been deployed, they aren’t staying in place. Choppy seas are washing over the booms, and breaking them apart. These are just normal rough seas. When the hurricanes start arriving in a month or two, what chance do the booms have then to stop the spill from washing ashore?
Louisiana’s delta wetlands have dodged the bullet for now – or, rather, the bullet has dodged them. Just as the thickest part of the oil spill was about to hit land, the winds changed to come more from the west. So, the oil spill is now headed to Mississippi, Alabama, and the white sands of Florida’s beaches. It’s now being discussed how long it will take for the Gulf Stream to take the oil around the south tip of Florida to Florida’s east coast.
Meanwhile, Sky Truth, which provided excellent reporting on last year’s huge Timor Sea oil spill while American news media established a near-moratorium on the story, is describing a new, frightening vision of what’s really going on with this oil slick. The official story of the leak at the Deepwater Horizon has changed a great deal, from no leak, to one thousand barrels of oil per day to five thousand barrels of oil per day, and suddenly yesterday to “exact estimation of what’s flowing out of those pipes down there is probably impossible at this time”.
Sky Truth refers readers to Dr. Ian MacDonald, a professor of Oceanography, Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science at Florida State University for a possible explanation of this suddenly ambiguous description of the rate of spillage from the Deepwater Horizon disaster site. A specialist in remote sensing, image processing and oil and gas development, Dr. MacDonald has analyzed the information from the April 28 Coast Guard map of the oil spill, and estimated (using conservative figures for oil slick thickness) the amount of oil that’s leaked from the Deepwater Horizon site was at 8.9 million gallons at that time.
Given the flow rate required to have created an oil slick of that size, SkyTruth estimated that a minimum of 12.2 million gallons of crude oil had flowed into the Gulf of Mexico as of yesterday. With a rate of over one million gallons of oil per day, the size of the oil spill would be over 13 million gallons of oil today.
Let’s put that in perspective. The size of last year’s Timor Sea oil spill was estimated by SkyTruth to be 9 million gallons.
The official size of the Exxon Valdez oil spill was 11.1 million gallons.
If Dr. MacDonald is correct, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is now bigger than the Exxon Valdez spill, and set to become much larger.
In response to this information, Coast Guard Admiral Mary Landry stated “I would caution you not to get fixated on an estimate of how much is out there.”
Why would we not get fixated on how much oil is spilling into the Gulf of Mexico?
This a tragedy! Has no one read “Ishmael”?? It’s always about US..what we need, what we want…with no regard to how it affects animals, the earth and even other humans. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! No more off-shore drilling! Stop the madness…stop being gluttons America…the LA coast is about to be destroyed and BP is doing the corporate shuffle! Boycott BP and PlEASE reduce your use of petroleum products!!!
The word is “boom,” as in a long pole, pipe or rod.
don’t get fixated because the number is going to be so great. 12 million gallons so far; this is just the beginning. extrapolate out 12 weeks at 12 million gallons a week. that’ one-hundred-forty-four million gallons spilled into the gulf in three months. that is a gross prognostication (slight pun intended). we will be lucky if B.P. get these leaks contained any sooner.
i agree ramone and Linda, this is terrible and completely exposes all the problems with a country being run by corporations.
Well, the good news is it is heading for white sand beaches. Thise are tourist attractions which means people pay money there. That will actually give them some motivation to work harder. they could care less when it is going to animal refugees
send more money to haiti that should fix our problems
im sure the haitians will help us out with our oil spill!yea they’ll return the favor! hey here is an idea we could bring in a bunch of cheap mexican labor !open the boarders they want to help for a fraction of wages we wont do it for!hey i should be a politition and i cant even spell it
im thinking im probably on a list of bad guys for speaking my opinion!i see more than 100 cable tv trucks a day on most days!they all work for big brother! i estimate 1 in 3 is pretty accurate.so if the gov has that many employees “spys” whose making all the money?why are they collecting so much info?what good could it do to dig into the average guys life? answer! they need to know how to fleece us better, and keep track of our opinion of them!scary aint it?boycott BP they will never fix what a one million dollar remote shut off valve could have! this will be a dissaster of astronomacle proportion! i cant even spell and i know that much!
How would you boycott BP? Where is your gas stations gas delevered from? 10 dollars says even the clerk there doesnt know where it came from. I worked as a manager for 5 years at a Quick trip and didnt know where the gas was coming from until it showed up.
You point to a problem with the “Boycott BP” idea: The problem’s in the system of dependence upon crude oil, not just in one oil company. Do we really think that switching to ExxonMobil gasoline is a solution?
The solution is to redesign our lives, bit by bit, so that we use less fossil fuel energy.
I think that’s very wimpy. Bit by bit is so ineffective, that it will not compensate for the growth of industry and western-style living in highly populated areas like China, India, and similar third world areas.
They will swamp the “bit by bit” approach in Amerika.
Boycott’s can be very powerful tools. I studied the effects of the Valdez spill on Exxon from both the business and environmental impact perspectives while in college and while working in the environmental industry in the 90s. Exxon’s financial and public relations folks were very busy for a solid decade after Valdez to restore consumer confidence in the Exxon name. Though it will never be fully disclosed to the public what the financial impact of Valdez was on Exxon in terms of their decrease in consumer confidence after Valdez, boycotting of the company definitely had a financial impact.
In this day of social networking and activist sites like http://www.facebook.com/pages/Boycott-BP/119101198107726, as well as grassroots Boycott BP products like http://cafepress.com/bpsticker already being distributed worldwide, BP is going to be in a similar situation with a loss of business as a result of the Gulf Oil Spill, as Exxon was with Valdez. The BP name will be tarnished for this disaster for the next 20 years.
please send free shirt as promised thank you
you need to make good on free shirts
you keep wanting more comments which you are the ones who advertised so you need to keep your word and not lie to people thats what i was thinking and writeing a letter to the editor to warn people of fale advertisement
Um, Steve… where did we write that we were handing out free shirts? Please point to the URL.
you have my comment i think you need to check again