42,000 gallons of oil per day are leaking from a drilled oil well in the Gulf of Mexico after the April 20th oil rig explosion, fire and final sinking. Add to that the remnants of the 700,000 gallons of fuel that were on the oil rig, chemical dispersants, and whatever other toxic chemicals have been created in the fire and sinking, and you have a devil’s brew heading toward the coast. The 1900 sq.mile (s4,920 sq.km.) oil slick is growing, and it is likely oil will start coming ashore this Saturday.
NASA’s April 25th images, taken using the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite and Advanced Land Imager on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite, show the magnitude of the environmental catastrophe-in-the-making.
The Mississippi Delta can be clearly seen, as the oil slick grows ominously, threatening the gulf coastline. Ocean waves, ships, and the Louisiana Chandeleur and Breton barrier islands are clearly visible, just over 30 miles (48kms) away. Sea birds, ocean mammals, fish, alligators, oysters, crab and beaches along the Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Florida coastline are all vulnerable to the effects of the oil pollution and any clean-up operation.
Remotely piloted underwater robots have been unsuccessful at stopping the oil flow using a system that was meant to prevent such a disaster. Now there is a suggestion to use underwater capture dome and siphon-off the oil before it gets to the surface, and to set fire to the surface oil when it is contained behind special booms. Burning it is supposed to remove 50-90% of the oil from the ocean surface but it only transfers the problem to the atmosphere where toxic fumes will most likely return to the ocean and land with rainfall.
The final option is to drill another well and plug the damaged one but that can take two months or more, so at least another 2,520,000 gallons of oil will have escaped by then.
Maybe BP should be relieved of a large slice of its US$5.6billion (€4.26b) profit it got just in the first quarter of 2010. Maybe President Obama should reconsider the oil exploration proposed for the Atlantic, Gulf and Alaskan coasts. Maybe BC should never allow oil tankers or exploration around the BC coastline and Britain should not continue oil exploration around the Falkland Islands. Or at the very least, maybe people should stop and think just what is the real cost of oil every time we drive our cars.
Via: NASA Earth Observatory
Trevor Williams is a University of Victoria Mechanical Engineering PhD candidate specializing in renewable energy, power grid modeling and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. He has a bachelors in Aeronautical Engineering, a Masters in Management Science and over 23 years international experience in the space industry, having worked on Earth observation and telecommunications satellites. He is the author of the Eco-Geek blog.
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well, the damage has already been done.
written by iformz , April 29, 2010