BP has admitted several times that their worst case scenario estimates were wrong, the latest such admission coming this morning when, before members of Congress, BP revised their worst case leak estimates up from 5,000 barrels/day to 60,000 barrels/day. That's an order of magnitude difference (and over 2.5 million gallons per day).
This is a big problem. The BP Oil Disaster is not an oil spill; BP has essentially unleashed an oil gusher that it may not be able to stop. This oil is gushing directly into our oceans. Truthout.org elaborates on this in their truly chilling article, "Things Fall Apart." They quote an article from Pure Energy Systems here:
[T]he BP platform was drilling for what they call deep oil. They go out where the ocean is about 5,000 feet deep and drill another 30,000 feet into the crust of the earth. This it right on the edge of what human technology can do. Well, this time they hit a pocket of oil at such high pressure that it burst all of their safety valves all the way up to the drilling rig and then caused the rig to explode and sink. Take a moment to grasp the import of that. The pressure behind this oil is so high that it destroyed the maximum effort of human science to contain it.
...
If we can't cap that hole that oil is going to destroy the oceans of the world. It only takes one quart of motor oil to make 250,000 gallons of ocean water toxic to wildlife. Are you starting to get the magnitude of this?
Everyone should watch this story very carefully; if this situation is not resolved in the next week, the stakes of this disaster will begin to rise non-linearly.
Traditionally, the reach of the oil companies has exceeded their collective grasp; they have sought to incur risks that they are not able to manage. For humanity's sake, I hope that the real worst case result of this reckless behavior does not come to fruition.
Drill baby drill, indeed.
19 comments:
I agree the media is underestimating the damage we're looking at, but I do think this is alarmist. Someone should double check this, but here's my crack at the numbers:
Ocean contains 1.4 billion cubic kilometers of water = 3.4e20 gallons.
Taking your one quart/250,000 gallons, we need 1.4e15 quarts = 3.5e14 gallons to toxify the whole ocean.
At 25e6 gallons per day, that would take 1.5 million years.
Now, obviously, you don't have to toxify the whole ocean to do a ton of damage, but unless my numbers are just totally off, "extension-level event" is overboard.
Your math assumes there is no locality to species. I'm sure there are plenty of species that rely solely on the Gulf for living, breeding, feeding, etc. who could face something close to extinction.
There is also an assumption in the Pure Energy Systems analysis that all animals need the same level of toxicity to die off.
Finally, no one knows how long this thing is going to spew oil for.
Those are excellent points, and also there's the fact that oil stays on the surface, which means it doesn't have to toxify the entire depth to kill all the life below. That said, I think we have to start with some kind of estimate for how much oil it will take to kill everything and work from there. I'm no ecologist, so I'm pretty happy to accept a number with reasonable authority behind it, but I do think you have to have such a number to make this kind of claim.
Hey look! this is what I do. Well, not quite this, but close. A few things:
BP does not own the rig. Transocean owns the rig. BP was leasing it from Transocean. The well is owned by BP, but it is unclear to me whether the BOP (blow out preventer), which is the thing that failed that is causing oil to flow out of the well and into the ocean at large rates, was installed by BP or Transocean. Also, apparently Haliburton was running the drilling operation. There's probably enough oil down that hole to pump out at 60,000 bbl/d for 10 years, but BP *will* be able to stop it. But the manufacturer of that particular BOP, will probably never sell another one.
The Petroeum industry rarely uses a 'worst case scenario'. This is because in this industry, a worst case scenario is when every valve, pipe, compressor, etc. on the facility fails at exactly the same time and all chemicals are released in the air/water immediately and depending on who/what we are aiming at destroying, ignited on a delay or (probably in this case) not ignited at all. This is not impossible though it may sound, but it is about as likely as winning the lottery every day in a row for 10 years. Though, it is much more likely now that we are halfway there. Now, the reason BP most likely had the lower number originally is that the BOP manufacturers try to claim that their BOPs never fail. Ever. That is not only impossible, but as we now see, proven very wrong (there have been other failures of BOPs. Just none this catastrophic).
The Truthout article you linked is almost entirely speculation and hysteria: "when madness, greed and fear combine and conspire to show us what it looks like when the gates of Hell crack open" (oh my goodness, seriously?) and quotes Pure Energy systems who is a "work station for the world of inventors and investigators into the exciting field of alternative energy technologies" and if you are going to try and tell me they have stock in analyzing petroleum disasters in a way that's 'fair and balanced' ... well, let's just say I don't think you will.
"When the rig sank it flipped over and landed on top of the drill hole some 5,000 feet under the ocean" I don't see anywhere that says this is what happened. Have you ever tried to drop a quarter onto a platform to win a free pizza? It's very very very unlikely. More likely than winning the lottery. But less likely than you getting into a car accident.
"Then, how do you cap that hole in the muddy ocean floor? There just is no way. No way." *That* is just a lie. Just a simple, outright lie. There are several ways to do this. BP was working on a cement and steel cap that simply sits on top of the whole thing. oil collects underneath it. There's also work on a way to stop up the well by drilling into its pay area from another location and injecting something that seals the well.
Really, really bad for the gulf of mexico? of course it is. It's a huge oil spill. Extinction of the world? please.
Thanks for the info, Kendall. It's good to hear there is a potential "fix" (to the extent that something this catastrophic can be fixed).
While I agree that it's unreasonable to think this will cause "extinction of the whole world", it's certainly not unreasonable that this could cripple a Gulf Coast species beyond regrowth or even push it to extinction.
Interesting points, Kendall.
Just one thing I wanted to say to clear something up for everyone that doesn't bother to follow the wikipedia link. An "extinction event" is not "extinction of the world." It refers to the extinction of a species. Pius has said that man has not yet caused such an event (though I actually do find that surprising).
When you think of an extinction event as of a single species, the claim is not all that unrealistic, is it? Especially given the locality of some species as Jacob pointed out.
"Indeed, the worst case scenario is that this disaster turns out to be the first extinction level event caused by mankind. And perhaps the last."
haha. I read 'perhaps the last' to imply extinction of at least the human race. Which the Pure energy article more straightforwardly implies. Also, the wikipedia graph does not include the current era on it. The human race has caused the extinction of many species. Off the top of my head, the larger species of American Buffalo was hunted to extinction in the 1800s.
Haha, ok, fair enough. That does seem to imply that...Pius?
Hey Ike, thanks for commenting. I'd say there are a few confounding factors to your analysis. Primarily, I guess it depends on what your definition of an extinction level event is.
The first factor is that generally, as you said, "you don't have to toxify the whole ocean to do a ton of damage." According to Wikipedia, an extinction event is "a sharp decrease in the diversity and abundance of macroscopic life." I'd say that, for instance, destroying the entire set of species of what we consider food fish plus stopping all primary production in the ocean would more than qualify. Actually, the latter would cause the former, so we can reduce it to that.
Let's work from there. All our food fish and all oceanic primary production occurs in the photic zone (top ~200 meters) of the ocean, which is only 2% of the ocean's volume, reducing the numbers by two orders of magnitude right off the bat. But that assumes that you actually have to toxify every cubic meter of the photic zone in order to shut it down. You don't.
Primary production will stop in water as soon as light can't break through (i.e. the surface is covered). I think it's fair to say that a centimeter (1e-2m) of oil over the surface would do the trick. Oil is of course lighter than water, so it'll flow up from the ocean floor and end up on the surface anyway, so you can expect it to coat the ocean pretty efficiently. Given that the ocean's surface is 3.61e14m^2, you'd need 3.61e12 cubic meters of oil to accomplish that.
250,000 barrels per day of oil is 3.97e4 cubic meters of oil per day leaking into the ocean. At that rate (we're estimating naively here), the entire surface of the ocean would be covered in about 250,000 years.
Now that's for the entire ocean. You limit it to the Atlantic and it becomes 50,000 years. Again, that's covering *every square meter*. Large swathes of ocean will obviously die much sooner than that. These orders of magnitude (measured in thousands of years) would be enough to call this not just an extinction event, but a fast one.
Hey Kendall, thanks for the comment. As Andrew mentioned, an ELE is decidedly NOT all life dying. But yeah, "perhaps the last" was probably too much. :)
Oh and Kendall, extincting one or two species is not enough. We're talking killing off a significant percentage of the genera, not just, say, dodos and buffalo.
Thanks again for the info, always nice to hear from people who are actually in relevant fields!
Piggybacking on Pius's comment - it's entirely possible that the direct impact of the oil not kill off all species to create an ELE or a local ELE. Losing a significant # of one or a few species can have a cascading effect, leading to the loss of other species in the food web (example).
Excellent point and an even better example.
Kendall, a few nitpicks of your comment:
"The Petroeum industry rarely uses a 'worst case scenario'. This is because in this industry, a worst case scenario is when every valve, pipe, compressor, etc. on the facility fails at exactly the same time and all chemicals are released in the air/water immediately and depending on who/what we are aiming at destroying, ignited on a delay or (probably in this case) not ignited at all."
I'm no petroleum engineer, but I *am* an engineer and this doesn't ring true for me at all. The worst case scenario is the worst thing that can happen as a result of a catastrophic system failure. I don't need every screw and piece of solder in my computer to spontaneously combust in order for a catastrophic failure to occur ... I just need a few subsystems to go down. Your description is giving BP a pass by greatly exaggerating the unlikeliness of catastrophic system failure.
"BP does not own the rig."
Systems are complex, you can always push blame downstream. If a contractor for Visa sells my social security number, I don't sue the contractor, I sue Visa, who can then sue the contractor if appropriate. The point is, I have no qualms naming BP, this is their operation.
For what it's worth, though, the official name would probably be the "Deepwater Horizon oil disaster," after the name of the rig.
"Really, really bad for the gulf of mexico? of course it is. It's a huge oil spill. Extinction of the world? please."
I think it's clear that I never said that.
Pius, I'm on board with your ELE definition, and I also buy your numbers (mostly - I have some concerns, but no better model, so I'll hold my peace). I think your argument is greatly strengthened by having them. I also know that plenty of historic dieoffs have occurred in the thousands-of-years timescale.
However, given that a) it's quite possibly fixable, especially if we have thousands of years to do it, b) we don't know that there are thousands of years of oil down there, and c) we haven't yet discovered the degree to which it can be contained or recovered from, it certainly feels premature to hit the alarm a few weeks into a disaster that will take scores of lifetimes to become disastrous (in the ELE sense). I have the sneaking suspicion it's not even the worst thing we're doing to the environment this very second.
Less seriously: hell, in the next 50,000 years, we'll have destroyed the Earth a zillion times over by much more efficient means. In two generations, we'll be filtering the sea water to run our flying cars with.
I'm not giving BP a pass! Just thinking that more than one company is at fault here, and everyone's picking on BP even though if the BOP failed there's not much they could have done about it. The BOP *is* what you do about these things. I think I would blame Visa *and* the contractor even if I only sue Visa.
But BP does have the deep pockets and they will, no doubt be sued and in turn put the BOP company out of business. Neither of which I am adamantly opposed to.
You are electrical? I would guess there are some crucial differences between chemical (and oil & gas) and electrical, maybe? The cascading effect that seems to have occurred on this rig is very rare (so rare we don't even calculate it). It is probably more likely on rigs, which are built to be compact (not at haphazard expense to safety, though). We never use the term worst case scenario, but maybe that's because we're consultants ... I was just thinking that was why BP's worst case scenario number may have been so far off.
It makes more sense that the ELE is more than one species. Is there a cut off? Do we have to kill a greater percentage than evolution's max? or is it a rate thing?
but this whole thing is just incredibly tragic. The pictures of the rig going down are so sad, and there aren't even any ocean critters in them. That oil slick is massive. http://www.google.com/crisisresponse/oilspill/ I can completely imagine it killing off a few species and permanently affecting the ecosystem in the gulf.
"I hate being alarmist, I really do."
It's very clear that you actually really enjoy being alarmist.
"Indeed, the worst case scenario is that this disaster turns out to be the first extinction level event caused by mankind."
If you look at the fossil record and compare, we are actually *well* into an extinction level event, up there with the big 6 across geologic history.
"Take a moment to grasp the import of that. The pressure behind this oil is so high that it destroyed the maximum effort of human science to contain it."
That's crap. The factually correct statement would be, 'the pressure...destroyed the laughably poor excuses for containment systems that the Bush admin appointees said were sufficient, despite being 30+ years out of date'. This was nowhere near the 'maximum effort', this was the absolute minimum.
"If we can't cap that hole that oil is going to destroy the oceans of the world. It only takes one quart of motor oil to make 250,000 gallons of ocean water toxic to wildlife."
Uh yeah, that's not a complete bullshit number pulled out of the author's ass.
"Are you starting to get the magnitude of this?"
That this article is a complete rag?
"if this situation is not resolved in the next week, the stakes of this disaster will begin to rise non-linearly."
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
Less hysteria, more practical cleanup, please.
Thanks for commenting, Todd, though the only substantive critiques you made were on a linked article rather than this one. There's not much in your comment to refute except to say that I'm well aware of what "non-linearly" means. Thanks for reading.
YES, THIS IS AN EXTINCTION LEVEL EVENT.
I'm an Ivy League graduated geologist and physicist. I used to work for two oil companies (one was BP) until I figured that the six-figure income wasn't worth the lies they were asking me to perpetuate.
As each day passes by while this oil disaster continues, more and more scientists (like myself) will begin to add to public concern that THIS IS AN EXTINCTION LEVEL EVENT.
For every $1 US Dollar that is being spent on providing an accurate estimate of oil pollution, BP is spending $1,000 to cover up and distort the actual numbers.
According to my calculations, along with some of my colleagues, we have determined the following:
1) The oil spill has already caused so much pollution that within months (4 - 25 months), parts of the oil contamination (even if microscopic) will be in our water and food. (We mean worldwide)
2) If the oil spill is not stopped immediately, the pollution IS ADEQUATE to cause complete extinction of the planetary complex (that includes human and animal) life.
We believe THE BEST METHOD to stop this oil gusher is to:
A) MAKE AS MUCH NOISE as possible. Slam the local and federal government with communications and messages to OVER-PRESSURE BP to finance the oil leakage solution. We have to fight BP hard, because BP has NO COMPUNCTION to lie, cheat, steal, nor kill to achieve any higher profit.
Even a single email helps.
BP IS FINISHED. The corporation will collapse within 18 months. My inside source says that BP execs are already cashing out on their retirement contracts because they know that in all practicality, the corporation is going to go into chapter.
The best BP can do is to utilize their swan song to fix this catastrophe and to stop spending millions to hide behind lawyers and try to mitigate costs.
They need to use all the cash AND CREDIT they can squeeze out to plug the leak.
If they don't plug the leak within 3 - 6 more weeks, not only is BP over; life on the planet will experience near-extinct scenarios. If the leak is not stopped within 12 weeks, the poison released will be sufficient to cause the "ELE" - total extinction.
None of us want BP to strip us of our (the group of scientists posting this fact) licenses and livelihoods. I know they play dirty. Hopefully, other scientists will quickly join our response soon - and we can uncover our names and professional backgrounds.
BP, I am warning you not to identify me. If you do, I will absolutely release files that show evidence of your cover ups involving numerous, malicious acts of negligence that resulted in this disaster. Two other law firms have copies of the data you tried to hide. If anything happens to me, the data will be released to the public.
FBI AND CIA (yes, this is also a foreign threat. And no, this is NOT an accident. This is a terrorist act) MUST NOW confiscate all BP computers and records, as the amount of communications they've employed to cover up risk assessments would make Enron's shredding seem like notes passed in the back of 2nd grade class.
BP, you tried using the best educated professionals NOT to warn you about disasters, but to rather find out how long you could gamble for - using cheap, unsafe methods to extract oil.
NOW LOOK WHAT YOU HAVE DONE.
This poisoning of our planet has NOTHING to do with an accident. We told you this would happen. We gave you MANY WARNINGS in WRITING that this was CERTAIN to happen. The only slight "if" was not whether it would happen, BUT WHEN.
Ask your own scientists to be honest with you. They'll confirm what I wrote here. If you don't fix this problem now (and the cost of doing so will destroy your company) - then you're going to kill us all anyway.
BP has COMMITTED A TERRORIST ACT upon America and the World that will very unfortunately, far overshadow the 9-11 nightmare.
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