Ecological Disaster Looming in Gulf of Mexico

[Eva Libre]

The Deepwater Horizon oil platform burns of the coast of Louisiana on Wednesday. Officials said the platform burned for 36 hours after a massive explosion, then sank into the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday.

 

April 22, 2010

Coast Guard officials say an oil rig that exploded Tuesday off the coast of Louisiana could be spilling thousands of gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

Officials previously had said the environmental damage appeared minimal, but when the rig sank Thursday that changed. The Coast Guard says the Deepwater Horizon carried 700,000 gallons of diesel fuel and could spill as much as 8,000 barrels of crude a day.

Meanwhile, crews continued to search by air and water for 11 workers missing from the rig. Adrian Rose, vice president of rig owner Transocean Ltd., said crew members who survived indicated the missing may have been near the blast and unable to escape. Officials had hoped they might have been able to get to a covered lifeboat with supplies.

The rig was doing exploratory drilling about 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana. Rescue crews have covered a 1,940-square-mile search area by air 12 times and by boat five times.

Carolyn Kemp of Monterey, La., whose grandson, Roy Wyatt Kemp, 27, was among the missing, said family members have been told it's unlikely anyone survived. Roy Kemp would have been on the drilling platform when it exploded.

"They're assuming all those men who were on the platform are dead," Carolyn Kemp said. "That's the last we've heard."

Other relatives waited anxiously for hourly updates. Family members of one missing worker, Shane Roshto of Amite, Miss., filed a lawsuit in New Orleans on Thursday accusing Transocean of negligence. The suit said he was thrown overboard by the explosion and is feared dead, though it did not indicate how family members knew that was what happened.

The suit also names oil giant BP, which contracted the rig. A Transocean spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment and BP wouldn't discuss the suit.

The family of Dewey Revette, a 48-year-old from southeast Mississippi, said he was also among the missing. He worked as a driller on the rig and had been with the company for 29 years.

"We're all just sitting around waiting for the phone to ring and hoping for good news. And praying about it," said Revette's 23-year-old daughter, Andrea Cochran.

Transocean Ltd. spokesman Guy Cantwell said 111 workers who made it off the Deepwater Horizon safely after Tuesday night's blast were ashore Thursday, and four others were still on a boat that operates an underwater robot.

Seventeen others hurt in the blast had been brought to shore Wednesday with burns, broken legs and smoke inhalation. Four were critically injured.

Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry said crews saw a one mile by five mile sheen of what appeared to be a crude oil mix on the surface of the water. She said there wasn't any evidence crude oil was coming out after the rig sank, but officials also aren't sure what's going on underwater. They have dispatched a vessel to check.

BP said it has mobilized a flotilla of four aircraft that can spread chemicals to break up the oil and 32 vessels, including a big storage barge, that can suck more than 171,000 barrels of oil a day from the surface.

The federal Minerals Management Service said it had inspected the rig three times since it moved to the site in January and found no violations.

The rig is 400 feet by 250 feet, roughly twice the size of a football field, according to Transocean's website. A column of boiling black smoke rose hundreds of feet over the Gulf of Mexico.

Rose, the Transocean vice president, said the explosion appeared to be a blowout, in which natural gas or oil forces its way up a well pipe and smashes the equipment. But precisely what went wrong was under investigation.

One worker said he was awakened by alarms and scrambled to get on a life boat.

"I've been working offshore 25 years and I've never seen anything like this before," said the man, who like others at a hotel where workers were taken after they reached land declined to give his name.

Stanley Murray of Monterey, La., was reunited with his son, Chad, an electrician aboard the rig who had ended his shift just before the explosion.

"If he had been there five minutes later, he would have been burned up," Stanley Murray said.

A total of 126 workers were aboard. Seventy-nine were Transocean workers, six were BP employees and 41 were contracted.

The blast could be one of the nation's deadliest offshore drilling accidents of the past half-century.

One of the deadliest was in 1964, when a catamaran-type drilling barge operated by Pan American Petroleum Corp. near Eugene Island, about 80 miles off Louisiana, suffered a blowout and explosion while drilling a well. Twenty-one crew members died. The deadliest offshore drilling explosion was in 1988 about 120 miles off Aberdeen, Scotland, in which 167 men were killed.

Rose said the Deepwater Horizon crew had drilled the well to its final depth, more than 18,000 feet, and was cementing the steel casing at the time of the explosion.

"They did not have a lot of time to evacuate. This would have happened very rapidly," he said.

According to Transocean's website, the rig was built in 2001 in South Korea and is designed to operate in water up to 8,000 feet deep, drill 5½ miles down, and accommodate a crew of 130. It floats on pontoons and is moored to the sea floor by several large anchors.

Workers typically spend two weeks on the rig at a time, followed by two weeks off. Offshore oil workers typically earn $40,000 to $60,000 a year — more if they have special skills.

Working on offshore oil rigs is a dangerous job but has become safer in recent years thanks to improved training, safety systems and maintenance, said Joe Hurt, regional vice president for the International Association of Drilling Contractors.

Since 2001, there have been 69 offshore deaths, 1,349 injuries and 858 fires and explosions in the Gulf, according to the federal Minerals Management Service.

The massive oil spill is predicted to reach land by Friday, and, after discussions with five Gulf state governors, the U.S. Government declared the oil leak a disaster of ‘national significance’. While pledging immediate aid to counteract the situation, U.S. officials say the primary responsibility, and ultimately the price tag for recovery efforts, rests squarely on the shoulders of the oil company BP PLC.

 

But the company has been slow to acknowledge the urgency of the situation, only conceding Thursday that the leak may be as bad as government estimates say it is. The U.S. Coast Guard says that a new leak has been found which looks to be five times greater than what was previously thought and estimates that as much as 5000 barrels a day are escaping. In the end, as much as 100,000 barrels or 4.2 million gallons of oil could be spewed into the Gulf, before rescue operations successfully halt the leak. However, the worst oil spill in U.S. history, the Exxon Valdez, leaked 11 million gallons in 1989 off the south coast of Alaska.

 

Emergency measures to deal with the spill include using booms, chemical dispersants and attempts to burn the oil off the surface of the water. However, bad weather has hampered efforts. As well, after failing to halt the leak by trying to activate a shut-off device with submersible robots, officials are considering drilling another well to control the flow, but this would require much time and effort as the well head is at a distance of 5000 feet underwater.

The amount of resources and funds required for cleanup is huge. Industries such as shrimp and other seafood businesses will be negatively impacted. But the heaviest implications will be ecological. As the spill moves ominously closer to the mouth of the Mississippi, biologically diverse coastal areas and fragile wetlands from Florida to Texas are at risk. Fish, birds, and other wildlife could die by the thousands.

The situation in the Gulf of Mexico is a reminder of the poor marks we deserve for stewardship of the earth. Grave environmental consequences resulting from accidents or human error cannot be undone overnight – they leave a permanent smudge on our ‘caretakers’ report card.

 

Watch CBS News Videos Online
The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has threatened countless plant and animal species, as Ben Tracy reports. Experts are still trying to determine the ultimate impact of the devastation.

[Patricia L Allen]

The message is loud & clear...stop drilling, & detox from the addiction to oil. What I am getting personally, is to move quickly into self sustaining living, away from any assumption that anything will remain the same.

[Jan]

they don't listen to us and they will not stop drilling as long as there are buyers. There is only one gas station which sales ethanol in my city and i drive there every time i need fuel. my Mini Cooper S can drive on 100% E85 (E85 is fuel with 85% ethanol content).
We have to make smart decisions with the "Good for all" in mind
blessings

[Patricia L Allen]

Right on Jan...it will happen, it is destined to!

[Jan]

I don't see it happening. it is 2 month and no one, including our governments, cares. do you thing the three of us here on this site care enough to compensate for the indifference of every one else? Remember the oposite of love and life is not hate and death, it is INDIFFERENCE!..................click.....

[Hayyim Feldman]

My friend Nate Peyman forwarded this to me. I pass it on as a reminder against despair.

Blessings,
-Hayyim

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Dear friends,
I wanted to share this with you with the intention of spreading the words and emotions of this prayer for the waters of the Gulf. Thank you. Much love and healing.

==peace
Nate==


Dr. Masaru Emoto's prayer for the Gulf of Mexico

Most of you know that Dr. Masaru Emoto is the scientist from Japan who has done all the research and publications about the characteristics of water. Among other things, his research revealed that water physically responds to emotions.

Many people have the predominantly angry emotion when we consider what is happening in the Gulf.

And while justified in that emotion, we may be of greater assistance to our planet and its life forms if we sincerely, powerfully and humbly pray the prayer that Dr. Emoto, himself, has proposed.

I am passing this request to people I believe may be willing to participate in this prayer, to set an intention of love and healing that is so large, so overwhelming that we can perform a miracle in the Gulf of Mexico.

We are not powerless.
We are powerful.

Our united energy, speaking this prayer daily...multiple times daily... can literally shift the balance of destruction that is happening.

We don't have to know how...we just have to recognize that the power of love is greater than any other power active in the Universe today.

(The prayer)

"I send the energy of love and gratitude to the waters and all living creatures in the Gulf of Mexico and its surroundings. To the whales, dolphins, pelicans, fish, shellfish, planktons, corals, algae ... humankind ... to ALL living creatures ...

I am sorry.
Please forgive me. Thank you.
I Love You."


Please join me in often repeating this Healing Prayer by Dr. Emoto.

Feel free to send it around the planet. Let's take charge ... and do our own cleanup!
--

ihealing.webs.com