Unlike 9-11, there's no crude awakening in the Gulf

[nashville_brook]

There's something about the BP oil disaster (oil spill, oil volcano) that reminds me of 9-11. Remember on that day, how all the hospitals stood at the ready to accept patients who never came? People lined up to donate blood, and everyone waited for the flood of injured survivors who never came. The hospitals stood empty because... there were... no... survivors.

Right now with the oil spill all eyes are focused on beaches and marshes within close proximity to the site of the late Deepwater Horizon. There's scattered reports of one dead pelican here, a few dead turtles there. Red sludge has washed up on some remote wilderness areas in Louisiana and a beach has been closed due to tar balls.



But, we're not seeing a vast onslaught of oil onto land because the oil is all DEEP underwater. So, just like with 9-11, we have volunteers standing at the ready for a rush of hell that isn't coming. Oh, and they won't be needing your donated hair for booms because BP has decided the hair isn't environmentally sound. I digress.

The images of idle volunteers are lulling us into a stupor because unlike the victims who went to work that morning in the World Trade Center, there's no headcount of underwater life that isn't showing up for dinner. And, this is allowing BP to get away with murder.

Usually a freighter carrying oil runs into trouble and dumps its contents "neatly" into a slurry that sits on top of the water. This allows for dramatic aerial photography that moves people...dare I say, nations... to action.

With an oil volcano a mile deep underwater, we've been able to go a month without any sort of narrative imagery. The oil plumes are nearly three-quarters of a mile deep and as of a week ago, have traveled in plumes 10 miles long. But BP and NOAA have been able to quell this news because it's all supposedly theoretical at this point. Field observations are dismissed out of hand, and mathematical models are floated and disputed. The PR efforts of a few marine biologists don't stand a chance against the oil giant BP.

BP can lie all they want about the amount of oil, because they control our access to data, and they have the only officially sanctioned microphone.

It's likely that as little as 1/60th of the oil from the hole in the sea floor is making it to the surface -- and that little bit has been thoroughly doused with chemical dispersants so toxic that they "fry brains." This 1/60th number comes from a field test of a similar scenario conducted in 2000 by a consortium including the Department of Interior's Mineral Management Service and...wait for it...BP. The test further found that oil from such a spill could continue for months IF NOT YEARS. BP's own best guess is that they might have the gusher fixed by AUGUST (BP is drilling a relief well it hopes can intersect the ruptured well and plug the leaks for good, but this will not likely be finished until August). And that's BP's best guess so you know you can add a few hundred days to it.

According to the Oil Spill Tracker on the Skytruth website, oil fumes are now invading beaches as far away as New Symrna Beach -- that's on the east coast of Florida between Daytona and Cape Canaveral. With millions of gallons of oil spewing into the Gulf every day, it's only a matter of time before all our beaches along the Gulf Stream stink of oil and death.

Here's a graphic explaining how dead zones form from regular old runoff:



Here's a map of pre-BP disaster dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico and up the eastern seaboard:



The nature of this disaster is occult. At this point we can only know it by the effects that wash up on shore. And still we wait... watch... and worry.




P.S. -- My google alerts are only sending back a minimum of useful news -- it's all BP newspeak. If you have resources that you're finding useful (RSS feeds especially), feel free to share.

[dgibby]

1. Thanks for posting.

What an excellent synopsis of what's actually occurring because of this unmitigated disaster. A tragedy beyond imagination.:cry:

[nashville_brook]

6. the whole thing has reminded me of an invisible, slow motion 9-11 from the beginning.

[DirkGently]

2. Excellent point. A spill a mile down won't generate the type of pictures

we associate with catastrophic oil spill. But the destruction is likely to be much worse. This could finish the job of killing the Gulf we've been working on for decades. I don't know what happens if the Gulf dies. Neither does BP or Sarah Palin. We won't know until it's too late, which it already is. And still, the corporations are in charge everywhere. When exactly will it penetrate to people that corporations will never and CAN never act in the world's best interest? It just isn't as profitable.

Great post. Fuck.

[nashville_brook]

5. boots on the ground...if you talked to people on the west coast of Florida

i think you'd find few singing the praises of our Oil Lords. hopefully i'll be on the east coast tomorrow checking things out for myself and might have something to report about the conditions there.

[starroute]

3. The Gulf Restoration Network is doing its best to find stuff out

The link to their blog is http://www.healthygulf.org/blog and there's also an RSS feed available on that page. Yesterday's entry talks specifically about how they're making frequent boat and plane excursions to the affected areas to provide an independent assessment of the damage.

[nashville_brook]

4. super! thanks!

i'm adding that now.

[dgibby]

8. Great site!

Thanks for posting!

[Individualist]

7. K&R

[nashville_brook]

9. shameless self kick...

[Lorien]

10. Since those fish aren't covered in oil, I'm guessing that it's the dispersants

at work. Fuck BP.

[DirkGently]

11. They're not the friendly "soap suds" BP would like us to think

A government source confirms for ABC News that last night the Environmental Protection Agency told officials from BP to find less toxic chemical dispersants than the ones the company is currently using to alleviate the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The EPA gave BP 24 hours to find a new dispersant and after it submits the list of alternatives BP must switch to an acceptable dispersant within 72 hours. The EPA’s order was originally reported by the Associated Press.

The announcement will be made later today.

BP officials have repeatedly assured the public that the dispersants are safe.

On May 17, 2010, BP managing director told Good Morning America’s George Stephanopoulos that “chemical dispersants are really the, essentially like soap suds. It's like a soap that breaks up the oil into small, very small droplets. And then it degrades, biodegrades. And that's part of the natural processing of it. So what will happen then is a little bit of the oxygen will be reduced. That means the bacteria is working. We think we see the natural processes at work here through the use of the dispersant.”

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/05/bp-dispersants-are-like-soap-suds-epa-start-using-less-toxic-dispersant-n

The chemicals BP is now relying on to break up the steady flow of leaking oil from deep below the Gulf of Mexico could create a new set of environmental problems.

Even if the materials, called dispersants, are effective, BP has already bought up more than a third of the world’s supply. If the leak from 5,000 feet beneath the surface continues for weeks, or months, that stockpile could run out.

On Thursday BP began using the chemical compounds to dissolve the crude oil, both on the surface and deep below, deploying an estimated 100,000 gallons. Dispersing the oil is considered one of the best ways to protect birds and keep the slick from making landfall. But the dispersants contain harmful toxins of their own and can concentrate leftover oil toxins in the water, where they can kill fish and migrate great distances.

http://www.propublica.org/article/bp-gulf-oil-spill-dispersants-0430

[Lorien]

13. Fing evil. Just evil.

:grr:

[nashville_brook]

14. Propublica has been doing some great reporting on the dispersants.

http://www.propublica.org/article/whistleblower-sues-to-stop-atlantis-bp-rig-from-operating

Whistleblower Sues to Stop Another BP Rig From Operating

A whistleblower filed a lawsuit today to force the federal government to halt operations at another massive BP oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico, alleging that BP never reviewed critical engineering designs for the operation and is therefore risking another catastrophic accident that could "dwarf" the company's Deepwater Horizon spill.

The allegations about BP's Atlantis platform were first made last year, but they were laid out in fresh detail in the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Houston against Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and the Minerals and Management Service, the agency responsible for regulating offshore drilling in the Gulf.

[nashville_brook]

12. i think that's prolly the case.