This oil spill is certainly a catastrophe, and the Exxon Valdez seems like a reasonable benchmark for the order-of-magnitude of the effect. (There are lots of differences of course – the Valdez was a one-time point event, effectively, whilst this looks like it’ll be running for weeks if not months; the Valdez was in a narrow enclosed waterway, whilst his is 70 miles or so offshore; the difference in latitude makes a difference, as will currents, water temperature profiles, local wildlife populations, and of course the clean-up response.) It’s certainly Very Bad News, but the coastline will recover in time.

We don’t have to go back 80 years for inappropriate juxtapositions or wanton hyperbole. Smoking guns and mushroom clouds and all that.

The plan they’ve got to stem the flow of oil – essentially drop an inverted funnel over the point where the oil is leaking – sounds like it should work.

It’s now looking pretty insane that BP didn’t have at such a funnel pre-built and able to be deployed, as a response to this kind of accident. It costs a few $mil. to build, whereas the liabilities they’re facing for having to wait a fortnight after the leak starts to build it are measured in $billion.

This is not an oil tanker with a hole in it.

This is an oil field with three holes in it.

And one that’s a mile deep.

There is no oversight over the magnitude of this disaster, but there is an awareness that it is growing.

And it will most certainly have long term repercussions on the local economy and the environment.

I’d rather see someone exaggerating the gravity of this disaster than downplay its importance.

Knowingly or unwittingly, you have summarized our times perfectly.

That said, however, all of you anti-energy people should realize that without oil, there will be no tourism – higher gas prices = less travel. Without oil, most of us who don’t live on the coast will not have have the chance to eat ocean seafood – less consumption = lower employment in the fishing industry. Plus, without gas-powered boats, how will the fishing industry operate while still catching the equantity it now does? Without coal and oil, scarce electricity will keep you fantasy-world-living folks off the Internet.

Your rich, lefty group funding godfather, George Soros, has invested in Brazil’s oil development industry. Why – because the world needs fossil fuels and George Soros will do anything for a buck. Tragic, yes, but drilling for oil is a risk we must take for our survival. If you wish to live in a cave – free from dependence upon fossil fuel – be my guest. Leave your computer, iphone, automobile and TV behind and go live off the land. Just make sure to clean up the dead bodies of the birds that are crushed by your inefficient windmill – no one wants to look into the eyes of dead animals killed by human activity.

Drill, baby, drill – oh, and Go Nuclear Power!

Interestingly (to some of us) there’s a link to the CDO-driven bank implosions: risk management, or rather, the failure of RM processes to correctly price the probability of a catastrophic event.

@danegeld:

this is a wake-up call about the dangers of off shore oil drilling, in the same way that Chernobyl sounded a death-knell of civilian nuclear power in Europe.

I disagree. It’s a wake-up call to petrochemical companies to reassess their insurance strategy, to the drilling engineers who designed the BOP and the rig, and there may be some long-term increase in environmental awareness. However Piper Alpha[1] didn’t stop North Sea production, Torrey Canyon[2] and the Amoco Cadiz[3] (which both had a devastating environmental impact over here) didn’t stop Milford Haven, Exxon Valdez didn’t stop Alaskan production and this won’t even stop deep-water production in the Gulf, let alone anywhere else.

Note that the novel technical aspect of this well was that it’s in very deep water. North Sea rigs (and others on shallow continental shelf waters) are typically anchored to the sea bed which is only 100-200 feet deep. This is much deeper water, and there’s less industry experience with this type of operation. Drilling engineers are going to be very interested to find out what caused the initial explosion and fire, and why the blow-out preventer evidently failed. Somewhere, there’s at least one engineer who is never going to work again. And somewhere, family and friends of eleven men are mourning their deaths.

[1] Piper Alpha: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piper_Alpha
[2] Torrey Canyon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrey_Canyon;
[3] Amoco Cadiz: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrey_Canyon

“A new study released on the twenty-fourth anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster says the death toll is far higher than previously thought.

In a book published by the New York Academy of Sciences, a Russian author and a Belarusian author say nearly one million people have died from exposure to radiation released by the Chernobyl reactor. According to the book, the disaster’s radioactive emissions may have been 200 times greater than the initial estimate of 50 million curies, and hundreds of times larger than the radioactivity from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The authors based their findings in part on Slavic sources they say have never been available in English.”

Source: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/4/27/headlines#6

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/5/2/862592/-Its-Worse-Than-You-Think

The underlying point is that we don’t know if this is the worst case yet or not (though it is looking pretty bad). But the odds are that expanded drilling means expanding the risks.

Hey southern states,

Aren’t you glad you voted in Bush/Cheney now?

Signed,

Twinkled-toed, flip-flopping, bleeding heart, environmental wacko progressive

P.S. Libertarians, conservatives… could you possibly NOW see how deregulation might not be so great after all? Nah….. doesn’t fit into your predetermined mindset, I suppose.

[cow punches wall and slowing walks out of room while staring evilly at conservatives]

Every additional safety system that is added, adds another degree of complexity to the project and more complexity means more things to go wrong.

Tote, you’re not even a decent apologist. Give it up. I don’t think even BP wants you on their side at this point. You are making no sense whatsoever and make assertions that are frankly full of shit.

From the relevant wiki page:

On 20 April 2010, a fatal explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig operating in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana resulted in a huge fire, the sinking of the rig, and a massive oil spill that is currently discharging an estimated 5,000 barrels (210,000 US gal) to 25,000 barrels (1,100,000 US gal) of crude oil daily.[1] Eleven workers died in the explosion and 17 were injured.

Not that comparing loss of life establishes significance somehow. I don’t know if Chernobyl comparisons are inapt, so I don’t take issue with your post, just wanted to point out the deaths.

The ecologies in the exclusion zone around the reactor are doing pretty well, which just goes to show that humans have a worse impact on the environment than nuclear meltdowns.

As Tote points out, any further failsafe mechanisms would have connected to and attempted to operate this valve. And they would have failed.

I think these companies do a cost-benefit analysis, but that they trend toward more and more reckless behavior until something like this happens, and then they will make a very public show of new safeguards they are putting in place for their future endeavors. Then nothing will go wrong for a while and they will start behaving more and more recklessly. Lather, rinse, repeat.

$500,000 is chump change to a company like BP. They probably lost more than that in oil alone the first day of this disaster. That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have value-engineered something like that extra mechanism out of the schematics.

Hell, for no more than a grand, Exxon could have installed a breathalyzer on the bridge of the Valdez. Think what that would have saved them. However, 20 years later it’s still not standard equipment on oil tankers. Where’s your outrage about that?

“Most Americans think of Exxon Valdez when it comes to spills. But the potential and likelihood here “is well beyond that,” said University of Rhode Island ocean engineering professor Malcolm Spaulding. Because the Deepwater Horizon well has not been capped and may flow for months more, it should be compared to a bigger more dangerous one from a well explosion in 1979, said Tunnell. That was Ixtoc 1, off the coast of Mexico. It was the worst peacetime oil spill on record.”

I’m afraid that it is going to take a long time to cap this one. People here who think there is a chance that everything in and along the Gulf will be back to the way it was before in a year or two are deluded.

There has been oil on the beaches of the Florida panhandle for two days already.