Oil Spill Perspective
News reports say that the ruined Deepwater Horizon oil well is leaking an estimated 210,000 gallons a day into the Gulf of Mexico. How concerned should we be?
Worldwide, the Congressional Digest reported that roughly 180 million gallons of oil a year enter the ocean from natural seeps. The Coal Oil Point seeps, cracks in the ocean floor a few miles off the coast of Santa Barbara, release 2,000 to 3,000 gallons of crude a day. Initial studies suggest that microbes eat a lot of it, that some evaporates, and that the remaining large compounds end up in seafloor sediments. According to John Farrington and Judith McDowell of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, natural seeps account for an estimated one-third to one-half of the oil in the ocean.
Spills from oil drilling and production platforms account for a relatively small fraction of ocean oil. Accidental spills from all sources, including ships and oil drilling, accounted for an estimated 10 percent of the oil entering the marine environment between 1990 and 1999. In U.S. waters, where fewer accidents occur, spills account for 3 to 4 percent of the total.
The Ixtoc I blowout on June 3, 1979 released 140 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico between June 3, 1979 and March 23, 1980. An estimated 1-3 million gallons of the total ended up at the Texas coastline. A 1982 report for the Bureau of Land Management summarizes the chemical and biological effects. The abstract says that it was difficult to measure the effects of the Ixtoc I spill.
The biggest oil spill in history occurred when Iraq sabotaged Kuwait’s oil fields in January 1991 and pumped an estimated 520 million gallons into the Persian Gulf. Little spill mitigation took place. A National Academies report suggests that there were no significant long-term impacts on subtidal habitats including coral reefs and seagrass beds. However, heavily oiled shorelines in sheltered bays with little exposure to waves and currents will require decades to recover. The shrimp population suffered a serious decline in 1992, but some authors feel that the temperature drop caused by the large volume of smoke was a bigger factor than oil contamination.
The International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation (ITOPF) administers technical responses to oil and chemical spills on behalf of tanker owners and insurers. It has published a general review of oil spills, of how crude oil decomposes when released into the ocean, of how proper clean-up methods will differ, and of the types of economic and environmental damage that can be expected. Technical reports cover the effects on fisheries and methods of cleanup.
Lets do some simple math. The current rate of the Deepwater Horizon is about 80 million gallons a year, about 50% of the annual natural seepage rate. The natural seepage consists of many many small leaks distributed over very large expanses of the ocean. The Deepwater Horizon spill is 50% of the worldwide seepage concentrated in a relatively tiny area. Thank you, The real perspective is that the Deepwater Horizon spill is a monumental catastrophe.
I don’t agree that it is a catastrophe. It’s unpleasant for the people who live there. It kills fish, birds, etc. But eventually the oil washes away and the wildlife returns. Oil spills don’t cause lasting damage. They cause temporary damage.
Isn’t it interesting that the company is BP. They have been cozying up to the environmentalists, giving money to Obama and the Democrats. Now all the people they have been funding are turning on them with a vengeance.
Let’s hope they pay a steep price for their negligence.
Tom sez: “They cause temporary damage”
When New Orleans was washed away, that was also temporary. When the World Trade Center was destroyed, that was temporary. When we dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima, that was temporary. The reality is that it’s highly likely it will take months to stop this spill. The economic effects on the fishing industry, tourism and even shipping in the gulf could be significant. One little factoid, much of the fish caught in the gulf is used for animal feed, the spill could significantly increase food prices. It’s easy to see how the effects of the spill will take years to correct.
One other point, I think that comparing an annual worldwide seepage rate to a daily local spill rate is at best deceptive and in many ways dishonest. There are good estimates that the spill rate is not 5,000 barrels a day, but twice that amount. That make the spill rate the same as the worldwide seepage rate. In addition, comparing it to worldwide seepage is like comparing annual rainfall to a hurricane at your doorstep. An honest comparison would be to compare the daily natural seepage in the oil exploration areas in the Gulf of Mexico with the Deepsea Horizon’s daily spill rate.
I recently attended a primer on ozone standards and was the only one in the audience to ask what the naturally-occurring ozone level was. Apparently we’re pretty close to it. It turns out that trees emit quite a bit of ozone and that pollen and other natural events create ozone too.
My analysis on this issue follows that related to ozone: It’s probably not a good idea to have oil gushing out into the ocean, even if it does occur naturally (arsenic is also natural). It kills birds and fish, and it’s not something you would let your kids swim in. It would be great if we humans could clean it up, and we should, since it’s our mess. But if we don’t the earth won’t go crashing into the sun.
What I think makes this an interesting piece of news is that despite the prevalence of oil spills in world history, it doesn’t seem like we’ve gotten any better at containing them. Why is it that we can track our Amazon purchases as they traverse the globe, but we can’t seem to stop a tanker from springing a leak?