Tag Archives: Deepwater

Why does media minimize the oil spill?

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Until yesterday, how many barrels of oil per day had you been informed were fueling the Deepwater Horizon oil spill calamity?
   a) 1,000    b) 5,000    c) 50,000    d) 100,000 +
Experts who aren’t BP said the answer from the beginning was D. The media is only now warming the public to C, even as analysis qualify it’s “at least” that, but BP is refuting revision of their original estimates saying now that it’s impossible to calculate the rate of flow at such great depth. They’re estimating the oil leak like a potential civil liability. Until a claim is made, appealed and/or settled, on the books it’s nothing. The bigger question: why is the media standing between you and the ugly truth?

BP Deepwater Horizon oil well blowout

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Oil drilling platform rigAt up to 30 gallons per second, is it a spill, a leak, or a torrent? Of course “Oil Spill” no longer means substance fallen out, nor leak, amount escaped. It describes the mess that’s left, and the Deepwater Horizon is still being downplayed as potentially worse than the Exxon Valdez, but nowhere near the biggest, in the other Gulf, during its 1990 namesake war, the deliberate draining of a pipeline. The second largest oil “spill” occurred just down our coast in 1979, and is referenced more descriptively as the IXTOC I Blowout. As the BP/Transocean well empties into the Gulf of Mexico, wouldn’t our emergency response be better served to call this disaster a “blowout?”

Spew, gush, geyser, the imprecision of these words tend to sputter, BP’s ongoing environmental fiasco a BLOWOUT!

We have no one’s word but British Petroleum’s to trust about the rate at which their oil is polluting the sea. First they said 1,000 barrels, then 5,000, though we learn 100,000 was being discussed as not outside the realm of possibility. Outside experts had only the telltale expansion rate of the initial oil slick to derive a candid measure of the outflow. Now that the oil has reached the coast, the measure is once again up to those who command the deep water submersibles. They can tell us they’ve capped a third leak, or a fourth or fifth, they could tell us the Madonna directed them where to deposit their giant concrete dome and how would we know?

Let’s call BP’s latest spill a “blowout.” With no help forthcoming for three months if that, we might as well project this blowout’s probable record-setting impact. How large did BP concede was the capacity of this well? No need to calculate the spill when we know the size of the bucket.

We don’t down-class hurricanes just because they haven’t reached us yet, then upgrade them as we feel their effect. Minimizing the size of this disaster can only justify being less prepared.

Sky is falling you commerce Pollyanas

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“If you talk about the sky falling too early, then people stop buying Louisiana oysters, blue crabs, and shrimp,” says LSU environmental scientist. We’re expected to believe the rate of the BP oil spill has only been deduced by hobbyists looking at foreign satellite images. At a possible 25,000 barrels a day, they calculate the Exxon Valdez benchmark has already been surpassed. The EPA has a site to crowdsource concern, while US space images are embargoed because damage control to consumer confidence is more important than protecting nature. Alas for those sardonic Gulf-is-half-empty types, the Deepwater Horizon oil missed the half already decimated by hypoxia.

Media disguise spill it’s 42 times larger

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Louisiana oil spill seen from spaceConfused about how much oil is spilling from BP’s offshore Deepwater Horizon catastrophe? When British Petroleum was asked, there was no spill, then an admitted manageable leak which TV pundits assured would produce a “sheen.” Viewers who thought they heard that the Coast Guard discovered the flow had become 42,000 gallons a day can be excused for their confusion when the accepted figure became 5,000. Because now the unit of measurement is barrels. The scale of the disaster suffered such an inflation that the PR currency had to be devalued. Never mind that gas is still priced by the gallon. BP officials insist the size of the spill is irrelevant, their damage mitigation will be unwavering. Let’s hope their standard for what constitutes contamination is not devalued. 5,000 barrels, by the way equals 210,000 gallons.

Oil spill photos free of offending oil rig

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The US Coast Guard has confirmed that an oil spill has indeed ensued after the Louisiana drilling platform explosion which claimed 11 lives. Suspicions now grow that Deepwater Horizon may have deliberately scuttled the damaged offshore rig yesterday lest images of the inevitable spill would depict the cause, reigniting the damning imagery that has long tarred oil industry efforts to pollute America’s coasts with the hazardous rigs. Instead of seeing a platform atop a massive oil slick, the public will see a despoiled patch of undefined size and origin; lacking a structure from which viewers could derive the disaster’s scale, or the felonious facility to damn for the deed.