A Sea in Flames - Carl Safina [25]
One week in, BP plans to lower a large dome. A dome to capture the oil. To capture the oil, then pump it through pipes. To pump it through pipes to a vessel on the surface. First engineers have to design it. Then workers have to make it. Could have used Better Planning. Bereft of Preparedness.
We will now play a game called BP Says. BP says it’ll do this; BP says it’ll try that; BP says it has ideas; BP says it needs a month—. Perhaps its leaders don’t want to raise any expectations. BP spokesman, he says: “That kind of dome-pump-pipe-ship system has been used in shallow water.” BP spokesman, he says: “It has never been deployed at five thousand feet of water, so we have to be careful.”
Careful.
Here’s how careful: “From the air, the oil spill reached as far as the eye could see. There was little evidence of a major cleanup, with only a handful of vessels near the site of the leak,” writes the Associated Press on April 27.
Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal asks the Coast Guard to use containment booms, “which,” he notes, “float like a string of fat sausage links to hold back oil until it can be skimmed off the surface.” Oh, the innocent optimism of those early days.
The letting go of optimism. One week in, we learn the phrase “relief well.” The pressure driving oil and gas out of the well may overcome any attempt to stop the blowout by pumping material in from the top. That’s like trying to stuff pudding into a fire hose. So BP might decide to drill a whole other well. More likely, two. A parallel well could let workers pump material into the original well near the bottom, increasing the chances that they can clog and seal the well. No guarantees. BP says it will be a $100 million effort. We are so grateful for their generosity. And we’re told that the relief wells could take an inconceivable two months. Actually, it will require twice that time. Meanwhile, they’re going to try some other things. They don’t know what.
The newly arriving pessimism. “You will have off-flavors that would be a concern,” the oyster farmer says.
Misreported: “If the well cannot be closed, almost 100,000 barrels of oil, or 4.2 million gallons, could spill into the Gulf before crews can drill a relief well to alleviate the pressure.” It’s noted that the Exxon Valdez, the United States’ worst oil spill to date, leaked 11 million gallons into the waters and onto the shores of Alaska’s Prince William Sound in 1989. Compared to that, the forecast 4.2 million is meager. But the Associated Press is guessing one hundred days based on us being told three to four months, at 1,000 barrels a day.
Soon the estimate of the flow below gets quintupled. On April 28, Coast Guard rear admiral Mary Landry reports that federal experts have concluded that 5,000 barrels a day are leaking. BP had estimated—or at least said—only 1,000. Landry says BP officials are “doing their best.”
If that’s BP’s best, well, maybe it is.
As if New Orleans doesn’t have enough problems. As if shrimpers and fishermen, already staggered, need an oil spill that will finish them. Five thousand barrels a day. That’s 200 barrels an hour. When will it end? Now I’m hearing, “It could eclipse the Exxon Valdez.” And if the oil reaches shore—.
I read, “A BP executive on Thursday agreed with a U.S. government estimate that up to 5,000 barrels a day of crude could be spilling into the ocean.”
They agreed? Or got busted?
Mary Landry had said there was “ample time to protect sensitive areas and prepare for cleanup should the oil impact this area.”
She makes the mobilization feel like a Kabuki dance.
And now that government scientists are saying “multiply by five,” the reassuring lullabies evaporate. There is snarling. Fingers pointed. Blame to go round. Now Landry warns that if not stopped, the spill could end up being among the worst in U.S. history. Now it’s mature to say it’s catastrophic. Now President Barack Obama says he’ll deploy “every single available resource.” He orders his disaster people, his environmental people, to the Gulf in person.
Why’d it take so long?
Five thousand