Tappress - Everybody on the Beach, There's a Killer at Sea

May 17, 2010

Everybody on the Beach, There's a Killer at Sea

By: Erin O’Brien

Tappress

 

On April 20, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana, exploded and sank.  Eleven workers were reported missing, and later found dead and seventeen others were seriously injured.  An estimated 50,000 barrels or 2.1 million gallons of oil are leaked into the Gulf every day.  This has since become the largest oil spill in US history, making it a larger oil spill than the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989 which leaked an estimated 11,000,000 into Alaska’s Bligh Reef. 

BP and Transocean Ltd., the offshore drilling contractors that BP hired, were running the well without a remote control shut-off switch used in two other major oil-producing nations, Brazil and Norway, as a last resort protection against underwater spills.  However, while that practice may be viewed by many as irresponsible, the use of a remote shut-off is not a requirement of U.S. regulators. 

Executives from BP and Transocean, as well as Halliburton, the company that built the rig’s well casing, have been called before Congress for a hearing in order to decide who is at fault for the spill.  Both have decided to place the blame on the other company, claiming to have no responsibility for this incident.  They have both also blamed Halliburton. 

The U.S. Government has named BP as the responsible party in the incident and officials have said the company will be held accountable for all cleanup costs resulting from the oil spill.  BP has accepted responsibility for the oil spill and the cleanup costs, but continues to insist that they are not at fault because the platform was operated by Transocean personnel.  BP expects that repairing the leak will take about two months and an estimated $60 billion. 

Due to ongoing disputes over the exact amount of oil that is being released, several scientists have been requesting the right to monitor the spill.  However, BP is refusing.  “The answer is no to that,” BP spokesman, Tom Mueller says, “We’re not going to take any extra efforts now to calculate flow there at this point. It’s not relevant to the response effort, and it might even detract from the response effort.”

There is a vast oil slick that covers a surface area of at least 2,500 square miles of the Gulf of Mexico, and it will continue to expand until the leak is repaired.  Scientists have also discovered that there are immense underwater plumes of oil, which are not visible from the surface.

The Macondo Prospect oil field, the site of the oil rig explosion and leak, was believed to have held approximately 50 million barrels of oil before the oil spill in April., Director Rich Luettich of the University of North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences said the oil could remain a problem for as much as a year, or even longer.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal declared a state of emergency on April 29 in the state after weather forecasts predicted the slick would reach the Louisiana coast.  Since then, the oil slicks have reached both the Louisiana marshlands and coasts. 

The oil spill continues to be a threat to the over 400 species, one of which is endangered, that live in the marshlands and small islands off the coast of Louisiana.  The cleanup process would end up lowering the oxygen levels in the Gulf, the impact of which is sure to be felt on levels even near the top of the food chain. 

The economy will also be taking a huge hit as a result of the spill.  The fishing industry will be set back an estimated $2.5 billion and tourism in the area is expected to loose about $3 billion.  These losses do not include the amount that it will take to clean up the oil which will be $760million, but is increasing by $10 million per day. 

This incident marks the third major health and environmental hazard caused by BP in the past five years.  In March 2005, BP’s Texas City Refinery experienced a fire and explosion that killed 15 workers and injured over 170 more.  Also, in August 2006, their Prudhoe Bay pipeline spilled an excess of 250,000 gallons of crude oil into Alaska's North Slope.