Enough's Enough already.

I have avoided blogging about BP for some 55 days or so.  Really, what's the point?  Just Google 'BP Oil Spill' and you'll get some 61 million results.  There is much information, and much opinion, already floating around out there - there isn't anything I can say about it that hasn't already been said.

But come on!  First they told us that it was leaking a mere 1000 barrels of oil a day.  Then it was 5000.  But then somehow within the last month or so, BP has magically started collecting 15,000 barrels of the mess every day.  Three times more than what they were letting on was leaking.  Huh.  Someone's math was wrong.  Today's Globe & Mail reports:

BP said it could increase the volume of oil it was capturing from around 15,000 barrels a day now to 40,000-53,000 barrels by the end of this month and 60,000-80,000 by mid-July – but it could still not guarantee collecting all the gushing crude.

'No guarantee of collecting all the gushing crude.'   I think it's pretty safe to assume that this thing is leaking at least 100,000 barrels of oil each and every day.   By comparison, the Exxon Valdez (seemingly, the most notorious oil disaster of the past century) was a total of 271,000 barrels.  Deepwater Horizon is leaking 1 Exxon Valdez every 2-3 days.  For the past 56 days.  Some 5 million barrels of oil.

And yet, that merely puts it in third place in the list of the world's worst oil spills!   According to Wikipedia, (I know, I know... an excellent source of valid information),  The spill during the Gulf war could have leaked as much as 11 million barrels, and a spill in California in 1911 leaked 9 million barrels.  Actually, I don't know why we compare spills to the Exxon Valdez, aside from the fact that it's just plain hard to compare the size of a spill to anything.  The Exxon Valdez ranks 17th on the list of worlds worst spills.  By the time this is over, I'm sure that BP's Deepwater Horizon will be #1.

As much as they say that this spill could have absolutely unheard of consequences to our environment - and I've even come across some 'the end is nigh' rhetoric - this is the beginning of the end!  This oil spill is going to kill us all!!  -  Obviously, it's a mess.  It's gross, it's sticky, it's suffocating, it's going to kill a lot of things.  But the world has already lasted through worse spills.  Not to take away from the significant disastrous effects of this particular spill, but over the past 100 years, humans have been responsible for dumping 45,600,000 barrels of crude oil on the surface of the earth - (a sum of the worst 17 spills only).   And we're still here.  We're messy idiots.

1 barrel = 42 US gallons
1 US gallon = 3.75 litres

46 million barrels = 1,932,000,000 gallons = 7,245,000,000 litres.

That's the stuff that was accidentally spilled (that we caught companies red-handed accidentally spilling).  And it doesn't include the disaster of the Alberta Tar Pits with their constantly open pools/lakes of useless waste gunk.  Nor does it include the unimaginable amounts of crude which have been pumped, captured, refined, and burned in our machinery.  It's disgusting to think about.  And yet, someone said it right when saying that even a disaster this large doesn't make us blink at the gas pump while filling our cars.


Seriously though, why are we ('we' as in the human race in general) even drilling that deep?  Setting aside the fact that Deepwater drilled 5000ft deeper than the equipment was designed to drill...  I'm no scientist, but I do recognize the effects of pressure and what can happen when a substance is under pressure with only one way to escape.  Ask a 5 year old to put his hand over a running water hose, and he'll quickly get the idea that a) he's going to get soaking wet, and b) it's not going to stop the flow.  If you'd like a really great pictorial example of the earth, and atmospheric pressure, and just how deep the ocean is compared to this oil well, check out this link to 'Our Amazing Planet.com'.  It's pretty cool.

I'm sure it comes down to greed and mismanagement and all those things that we've been hearing about for the past month.  The Rolling Stone magazine recently posted a very thorough investigative report piecing together all of the events to date concerning BP and the governing bodies controlling the oil wells.   It's an 8 page article, a bit of a read, but very informative.  Did you know that BP was responsible for bungling the initial cleanup of the Exxon Valdez?  It's ridiculous that this company is even still in business.

The final paragraph of the article:

...the disaster in the Gulf will serve as a lasting and ugly reminder of the price we paid for our addiction to oil. "It was a bargain with the devil," says Steiner, the marine scientist who helped lead the response to the Valdez disaster. "And now the devil is gloating."

along with my simplistic idea that putting an oil well into the earth is sort of like jamming a straw into a water balloon (unless you keep your thumb over the end of the straw, you're going to end up with no water left in your balloon!), led me to doodling.....

Take from it what you will.
a) Greed will destroy the earth
b) Natural disasters are the handiwork of the devil
c) BP is the devil
d) I have too much time on my hands...
e) etc, etc

In conclusion, I promise I won't blog about BP and their oil spill again

...unless it's really good

...and they don't kill us all first.