A Sea in Flames - Carl Safina [106]
Finally they’re ready to see if this cap is going to work. They begin closing a trio of ram valves. They monitor the pressure gauges. If the pressure holds, it means the cap is holding. If the pressure falls, it means the oil has found another route out.
New vocabulary term: “static kill.” Definition: using a device that should already have been invented, built, tested, and warehoused for this purpose before the blowout ever happened.
The Thadmiral tells us that BP tells him that the test of the pressure will last six to forty-eight hours “or more, depending.”
And as if our expectations could be lower, BP tells us to hold our applause, that such a cap has “never before been deployed at such depths” and that its ability to contain the oil and gas cannot be assured.
The pressure builds.
And so on July 15, a seismic shift: at about 3:00 in the afternoon, it looks like the new cap, with its valves shut, is holding the pressure. They’ve gotten control of the upward surge.
In other words, they’ve stopped the leak.
But no one celebrates. Everyone is holding their breath. No one knows whether the pressure will hold indefinitely. In the days to come, the pressure appears lower than expected, suggesting the possibility of leaks. Word of leaks near the well begins seeping out in the media. BP wants to leave the well capped and the valves shut. The Thadmiral wants BP to hook up the collection lines and let the oil go into waiting vessels at the surface. That would lessen the pressure, lowering the chances of a rupture through the nearby seafloor.
But it seems there are no leaks; they leave the cap closed.
This is how the blowout is over. It’s the end of the beginning.
Eighty-six days. Two thousand and sixty-four hours.
Kill the well, slay the dragon, conquer the demon. But it’s only liquid under miles and miles of the pressure of the Earth. Prick of a needle. That’s all it ever was. The real fire-breathing dragon, the real dangerous demon, lurking on the surface all along, can be located in the mirror.
It’s been the world’s largest accidental release of oil into ocean waters. Twenty times the volume spewed by the Exxon Valdez. They’d told us 1,000 barrels a day; then 5,000; then 12,000 to 19,000; then upward from there. Now the best estimate: 56,000 to 68,000 barrels per day. From April 22 to June 3, oil had spurted from a jagged break in the riser pipe at about 56,000 barrels, or 2.4 million gallons, per day. After June 3, when robots cut the riser, oil spewed into the ocean even more freely for a time, around 68,000 barrels—approaching 3 million gallons—per day, or 2,000 gallons per minute.
The Gulf got an estimated 4.9 million barrels, about 206 million gallons: 99,700 gallons per hour, 1,662 gallons per minute, about 30 gallons per second. Roughly 25 gallons each and every time your heart sent a pulse of blood up your aorta, for nearly three months.
But the beat goes on and the usual pumping and burning continues; we in the United States burn over 20 million barrels of oil a day, about the same as Japan, China, India, Germany, and Russia—combined. Per person, Americans burn more fossil fuels and emit more carbon dioxide than anyone else; 4 percent of the world’s population uses 30 percent of its nonrenewable energy.
Just as some of the hysteria was misplaced, now a false calm ensues. BP seems to be saying it’s all finished; the oil is gone. All gone. That is also hype, a kind of information junk shot, pumping smoke and mirrors into the media stream to jam the flow of clarity.
BP’s stock price rises.
LATE JULY
For a crisis begun so spectacularly, it’s a murky, uncertain ending. We begin the next phase with