http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster
The Chernobyl nuclear power station explosion, north of Kiev, Ukraine, Soviet Union, in April, 1986 caused many fatalities directly within the first few weeks and months of it's occurrence. And forced the evacuation of a wide area around the city of Pripyat, where the nuclear reactors were located; 336,000 people were forced out, and to this day, the area remains barred from human inhabitation, for safety reasons.
And, even now, the long-term effects of this disaster, which spread radiation around the entire Northern Hemisphere, are coming to light. A new study, by the New York Academy of Sciences, now estimates up to a million people were killed by radiation exposure, around the World, from Chernobyl. In the words of the report's authors:
"This is far and above previous official estimates, all of which chose to ignore though, findings from Soviet/Russian, and Eastern European sources. In the words of the authors of this study:
The New York Academy of Sciences says not enough attention has been paid to Eastern European research studies on the effects of Chernobyl at a time when corporations in several nations, including the United States, are attempting to build more nuclear reactors and to extend the years of operation of aging reactors.
The academy said in a statement, "Official discussions from the International Atomic Energy Agency and associated United Nations' agencies (e.g. the Chernobyl Forum reports) have largely downplayed or ignored many of the findings reported in the Eastern European scientific literature and consequently have erred by not including these assessments."
We don't find this surprising, at the Alaska Progressive Review. Powerful vested interests, not just corporations that manufacture and run nuclear energy and materials supply firms, but governments of many "first-world" nations like the U.S., France, Germany, the U.K., etc.., do not want this information to be widely disseminated. Because all these countries have dozens of nuclear power stations.
It is thought that this disaster, and the Soviet Union's initially inept response, and lid of coverage over it, was partially responsible for it's downfall. That this empowered then-premiere Mikhail Gorbachev and his followers in their efforts of "perestroika" (re-structuring), and "glasnost" (open-ness), of the corrupt, Stalinist-bureaucracy-dominated Communist government.
20 APRIL, 2010
An explosion on the Deepwater Horizon, an offshore oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico, 100 KM south of Louisiana, kills 11 workers, and leads to it's destruction. The entire platform was eventually engulfed in flames, and it sank to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, several days later. Run by the large energy corporation, British Petroleum (BP), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BP, it is proving to be a great disaster, for them, and soon, the entire Gulf of Mexico, and Florida.
This platform was constructed to enable drilling to occur for oil in deep waters, at very deep depths underground. Truly amazing to contemplate these numbers. The drill pipes and infrastructure first had to be set up on the seafloor at 1524 metres (5000 feet) depth, up to the platform. This giant platform, while this operation began, and proceeded, was held on-station by large diesel turbine engines. Then, drilling proceeded to a depth of nearly 6100 metres (20,000 feet)! The explosion occurred just 20 hours after all the drilling and setup operations were complete, and oil was beginning to flow. It is thought that a methane bubble, from the pressurised gas that exists at these great depths underwater and underground, raced up the pipes, and caused the explosion. The 11 dead crewmembers, of 124 total in place at the time, have never been found.
At first media focus and attention was on the terrible explosion and fatalities, truly a heart-wrenching disaster, for those involved in this exceedingly dangerous business. But it soon became apparent that oil, under pressure from methane gas deposits located within it, was uncontrollably gushing out from the wellhead, 1500 metres under the Gulf of Mexico. Initially estimates of the rate of oil gushing out were well below the lastest current "official" one of 800,000 litres (210,000 gallons) per day. With an estimated 13,300,000 litres (3.5 million gallons) having been released, of as 10MAY2010, into the Gulf of Mexico, a several-thousand square KM-sized slick has been created, parts of which are now washing up onshore from Louisiana, east to Alabama.
British Petroleum is undergoing major damage-control operations, to try and minimise this tragedy, and evade any U.S. governmental penalties and sanctions which may result from it. And, our corporate media is also, as usual, helping along their comrade, in their coverage process. Because, what is not being said, in the official BP-released information, since they are so-far, running the operation to try and stop the undersea gusher, is that this is a unique, and potentially catastrophic event. One that will have far-reaching effects, in both size, and duration. An uncontrolled rupture and release of oil/gas has never occurred this far underwater, from such a deep, pressurised well.
Latest attempts to stop the gusher have been unsuccessful. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8673815.stm.
Think about the logistics involved, with any attempt. At a depth of 1500 metres, only small, manned submersible craft, or remote-controlled submersibles can operate, in the crushing pressure, cold, and dark. Oil and methane gas are stirring up, and clouding the area. The longer it keeps going, the weaker the containment structures and seafloor around the undersea well are becoming, because of the highly pressurised oil/gas mixture shooting out. In fact, it is estimated now, by non-BP oil industry sources that the leak RATE may become 12 times worse, if it remains uncapped for several weeks, to months longer (which now seems likely) . The deposit from which this oil/gas emanates is estimated to contain many billion barrels (one barrel contains 160 litres) of oil, and equally vast amounts of methane. Even if it remains at the current rate of 800,000 litres per day (which seems unlikely, it will likely increase much higher), in 90 days, 72,000,000 litres (18,950,000) gallons will have been released into Gulf of Mexico waters. This will far exceed what happened in Prince William Sound, Alaska in 1989, when the Exxon Valdez tanker ran into Bligh Reef and disgorged it's contents into that pristine environment. But again, this is a very low estimate, it will likely be much higher, possibly by an order of magnitude, or larger.
Vast areas of the Gulf of Mexico coastline in the US and Mexico will have their highly productive fisheries operations destroyed, possibly for decades. Tourism of course, will also suffer. There are currently 400 other deep-water oil-production platforms operating in the Gulf. All of these will need to be shut down and inspected, to limit the potential for additional incidents of this nature. The oil slicks will be carried by currents through the Florida Keys, fouling the waters there, then northward along the Florida, Georgia, and Carolina coasts, by the Gulf Stream. There is also the complication of the coming hurricane season. Any size tropical storm or hurricane will delay and jeopardise mitigation craft and response efforts/personnel, but could, if it were strong enough, and with the proper trajectory, push a monstrous oil-laden storm surge onshore, anywhere along the Gulf Coast. Think about what that would do.
Adding up all the costs from destroyed fisheries, tourism, and costs to try and clean up coast-lines and save oil-soaked and ravaged wildlife, will be astronomical. Billions and billions. Think BP will be forced to pay that? That's even if this gusher can be tamed, if it proves to keep expanding, and billions of barrels are released, the entire Gulf of Mexico would be poisoned, which would then spread through the Atlantic. Truly a frightening thought! Some engineers have speculated that if all else fails, and the US military has to get involved, by bombing or torpedoing the gusher, to try and collapse the seafloor around it, and plug it up, that this would actually make it worse. Because the pipe casing would have long since been destroyed in the 6100 metre deep hole, and the rocks around weakened by the pressurised oil/gas shooting out. So that any explosive-type operation could lead to a much larger hole in the seafloor, with a volcano-like oil/gas eruption resulting. All we can do now is hope for the best!
Did this have to happen? Reading the following article, by one of our favourite investigative journalists, Greg Palast, makes us think, probably not:
Slick Operator: The BP I've Known Too Well
Wednesday 05 May 2010
by: Greg Palast, t r u t h o u t
News Analysis
"I've seen this movie before. In 1989, I was a fraud investigator hired to dig into the cause of the Exxon Valdez disaster. Despite Exxon's name on that boat, I found the party most to blame for the destruction was ... British Petroleum (BP).
That's important to know, because the way BP caused devastation in Alaska is exactly the way BP is now sliming the entire Gulf Coast.
Tankers run aground, wells blow out, pipes burst. It shouldn't happen, but it does. And when it does, the name of the game is containment. Both in Alaska, when the Exxon Valdez grounded, and in the Gulf last week, when the Deepwater Horizon platform blew, it was British Petroleum that was charged with carrying out the Oil Spill Response Plans (OSRP), which the company itself drafted and filed with the government.
What's so insane, when I look over that sickening slick moving toward the Delta, is that containing spilled oil is really quite simple and easy. And from my investigation, BP has figured out a very low-cost way to prepare for this task: BP lies. BP prevaricates, BP fabricates and BP obfuscates.
That's because responding to a spill may be easy and simple, but not at all cheap. And BP is cheap. Deadly cheap.
To contain a spill, the main thing you need is a lot of rubber, long skirts of it called a "boom." Quickly surround a spill, leak or burst, then pump it out into skimmers, or disperse it, sink it or burn it. Simple.
But there's one thing about the rubber skirts: you've got to have lots of them at the ready, with crews on standby in helicopters and on containment barges ready to roll. They have to be in place round the clock, all the time, just like a fire department, even when all is operating A-O.K. Because rapid response is the key. In Alaska, that was BP's job, as principal owner of the pipeline consortium Alyeska. It is, as well, BP's job in the Gulf, as principal lessee of the deepwater oil concession.
Before the Exxon Valdez grounding, BP's Alyeska group claimed it had these full-time, oil spill response crews. Alyeska had hired Alaskan natives, trained them to drop from helicopters into the freezing water and set booms in case of emergency. Alyeska also certified in writing that a containment barge with equipment was within five hours sailing of any point in the Prince William Sound. Alyeska also told the state and federal government it had plenty of boom and equipment cached on Bligh Island.
But it was all a lie. On that March night in 1989 when the Exxon Valdez hit Bligh Reef in the Prince William Sound, the BP group had, in fact, not a lick of boom there. And Alyeska had fired the natives who had manned the full-time response teams, replacing them with phantom crews, lists of untrained employees with no idea how to control a spill. And that containment barge at the ready was, in fact, laid up in a drydock in Cordova, locked under ice, 12 hours away.
As a result, the oil from the Exxon Valdez, which could have and should have been contained around the ship, spread out in a sludge tide that wrecked 1,200 miles of shoreline.
And here we go again. Valdez goes Cajun.
BP's CEO Tony Hayward reportedly asked, "What the hell did we do to deserve this?"
It's what you didn't do, Mr. Hayward. Where was BP's containment barge and response crew? Why was the containment boom laid so damn late, too late and too little? Why is it that the US Navy is hauling in 12 miles of rubber boom and fielding seven skimmers, instead of BP?
Last year, CEO Hayward boasted that, despite increased oil production in exotic deep waters, he had cut BP's costs by an extra one billion dollars a year. Now we know how he did it.
As chance would have it, I was meeting last week with Louisiana lawyer Daniel Becnel Jr. when word came in of the platform explosion. Daniel represents oil workers on those platforms; now, he'll represent their bereaved families. The Coast Guard called him. They had found the emergency evacuation capsule floating in the sea and were afraid to open it and disturb the cooked bodies.
I wonder if BP painted the capsule green, like they paint their gas stations.
Becnel, yesterday by phone from his office from the town of Reserve, Louisiana, said the spill response crews were told they weren't needed because the company had already sealed the well. Like everything else from BP mouthpieces, it was a lie.
In the end, this is bigger than BP and its policy of cheaping out and skiving the rules. This is about the anti-regulatory mania, which has infected the American body politic. While the tea baggers are simply its extreme expression, US politicians of all stripes love to attack "the little bureaucrat with the fat rule book." It began with Ronald Reagan and was promoted, most vociferously, by Bill Clinton and the head of Clinton's deregulation committee, one Al Gore.
Americans want government off our backs ... that is, until a folding crib crushes the skull of our baby, Toyota accelerators speed us to our death, banks blow our savings on gambling sprees and crude oil smothers the Mississippi.
Then, suddenly, it's, "Where was hell was the government? Why didn't the government do something to stop it?"
The answer is because government took you at your word they should get out of the way of business, that business could be trusted to police itself. It was only last month that BP, lobbying for new deepwater drilling, testified to Congress that additional equipment and inspection wasn't needed.
You should meet some of these little bureaucrats with the fat rule books. Like Dan Lawn, the inspector from the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, who warned and warned and warned, before the Exxon Valdez grounding, that BP and Alyeska were courting disaster in their arrogant disregard of the rule book. In 2006, I printed his latest warnings about BP's culture of negligence. When the choice is between Lawn's rule book and a bag of tea, Lawn's my man.
This just in: Becnel tells me that one of the platform workers has informed him that the BP well was apparently deeper than the 18,000 feet depth reported. BP failed to communicate that additional depth to Halliburton crews, who, therefore, poured in too small a cement cap for the additional pressure caused by the extra depth. So, it blew.
Why didn't Halliburton check? "Gross negligence on everyone's part," said Becnel. Negligence driven by penny-pinching, bottom-line squeezing. BP says its worker is lying. Someone's lying here, man on the platform or the company that has practiced prevarication from Alaska to Louisiana."
Then there was this article we presented in our last post, wherein a BP whistleblower presented documents proving that they willingly and knowingly ignored numerous safety regulations and procedures in the construction and operation of an even-larger deepwater platform, Atlantis, which pumps 8.4 million gallons per day, 320 KM south of New Orleans.
I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that most Americans don't trust the oil/energy companies. Their continuing record-profits (for all corporations, ever in history), while also directing US governmental policies in waging immoral, illegal, and aggressive warfare in the Middle East is well-known. And all of the corporate World has been behind the deregulatory push, began aggressively during the Reagan administration, but fully continuing under all subsequent ones, of US capitalism. Which has resulted in a nearly-destroyed economy (by the uncontrolled greed of the big banks), the highest unemployment since the Great Depression, and now this: the potential poisoning of a significant part of the global ecosystem, in the drive for faster, and greater profits. How much longer can the Earth sustain this? Could the Deepwater Horizon tragedy serve as a catalysing agent for positive change (like the Chernobyl tradedy did, for the USSR), forcing people in the US and other countries to see what unregulated capitalism brings? http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/7/government_exempted_bp_from_environmental_review
And then forcing stronger regulatory policies and procedures to be re-implemented, and strengthened (as well as the realisation that greed is not a healthy and sustainable basis on which to run a society)? We will do our best here at A.P.R. to aid in this process!
NATIONALISE THEM!
What does it mean, when you hear, or read of "nationalised" industries? Simply put, it means some industry, or entire sector of industry, is owned and operated by a national government. Instances abound, in this country, and all the other industrialised nations. For instance, the U.S. Postal Service is one, or the federal energy companies, Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), or Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which market power from federal dams to industry and households in the Northwest, and Southeast.
Many nations even have nationalised oil and energy industries. Not just supposedly "socialistic" ones like Venesuela, Bolivia, China, etc.., but even Norway, and Mexico. The reason these countries, and others, do this, is because they want to use the vast economic benefits that result from oil and gas production, to help fund their governmental operations and efforts to provide better standards of living for their populaces.
Of course, in the US corporate world, and media, Nationalisation is a dirty, and demonised word. And rarely, if ever mentioned, for it is a threat to the overall structure of deregulated capitalism which is ravaging the planet, and if left unchecked, will kill the host, as any unchecked tumour would.
US and some European nations, pressure by corporate entitities, have a long history of subverting efforts of other countries to nationalise some industrial concerns, and even roll back ones already in place.
We came across this interesting little article in the Democracy Now web-site the other day.
History of BP Includes Role in 1953 Iran Coup After Nationalization of Oil
As tens of thousands of gallons of oil continue to spew into the Gulf of Mexico from the BP oil spill we continue our series on BP. Sixty years ago, BP was called the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. We look at the story of the company’s role in the 1953 CIA coup against Iran’s popular progressive Prime Minister Mohamed Mossadegh.
Guest: Stephen Kinzer, author of “All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror.” See full interview
AMY GOODMAN: As we wrap-up, as tens of thousands of gallons of oil continue to spew into the Gulf of Mexico from the BP oil spill, we continue our series on BP. Yesterday we looked at their horrendous safety record on the millions of dollars they’ve spent on lobbying congress to prevent regulation. Today, we’re going to look at the history, sixty years ago, BP was called Anglo Iranian Oil Company. In an interview on DEMOCRACY NOW!, Stephen Kinzer, the former New York Times bureau chief, author of “All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror”, told the story of the Anglo Iranian Oil Company’s role in the 1953 CIA coup against Iran’s popular progressive Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadegh. Let’s go to a clip of what Steven Kinzer says.
STEVEN KINZER: At the beginning of the 20th century as a result of a corrupt deal with the old dying monarchy, one British company, owned mainly by the British government, had taken control of the entire Iranian oil industry.
AMY GOODMAN: The company?
STEVEN KINZER: This one company had the exclusive rights to extract, refine, ship, and sell Iranian oil. And they paid Iran a very tiny amount, but essentially the entire Iranian oil resource was owned by a company based in England and owned mainly by the British government.
AMY GOODMAN: [Inaudible] British Petroleum?
STEVEN KINZER: Anglo Iranian Petroleum, later to become a British Petroleum and BP. I’m still on my one-man boycott. Like I go to the Shell station, as if Shell is somehow morally superior to BP. But still, in my own mind I feel like I’m redeeming Mossadegh when I pass by one of those BP stations. Anyway, what happened was that Prime Minister Mossadegh, who really was an extraordinary figure in his time, although he’s in somewhat forgotten by history, came to power in 1951 on a wave of nationalism aimed at this one great obsession, we’ve got to take back control of our oil and use the profits for the development of one of the most wretchedly impoverished nations on earth at that time. So the Iranian parliament voted unanimously for a bill to nationalize the Anglo Iranian Petroleum Co. and Mossadegh signed it and he devoted himself, during his term of office, to carrying-out that plan. To nationalize was then Britain’s largest and most profitable holding anywhere in the world. Bear in mind that the oil that fueled England all during the 1920s and 30s and 40s all came from Iran. The standard of living that people in England enjoyed all during that period was due exclusive to Iranian oil. Britain has no oil. Britain has no colonies that have oil. every factory in England, every car, every truck, every taxi, was running on oil from Iran. The Royal Navy, which was projecting British power all over the world, was fueled a hundred percent by oil from Iran. Suddenly Iran arrives and says, ‘Oh, we’re taking back the oil now.’ So this naturally set-off a huge crisis. And that’s the crisis that made Mossadegh really a big World figure around the early 1950s. At the end of 1951 Time magazine chose him as ‘Man of the Year,’ and they chose him over Winston Churchill, Douglas MacArthur, and Dwight Eisenhower; and they made the right choice because at that moment, Mossadegh really was the most important person in the world.
AMY GOODMAN: That was the former New York Times reporter Stephen Kinzer. Wrote “All the Shah’s Men.” Talked extensively about the Anglo Iranian Oil Company which was renamed British Petroleum. That’s BP. That does it for our show.
What followed for Iran after Mossadegh's overthrow, was the 25 year reign by the US-backed Shah of Iran. Who maintained a harshly repressive government. His secret police agency, SAVAK, was trained by the CIA in methods of torture and repression.
Tens of thousands of people were tortured and murdered by them, during the Shah's 25 year rule, for opposing it, or working for any basic human rights issues. It was this harsh rule which led to his violent overthrow in 1978-79, followed by the subsequent, and still in power, Islamic fundamentalist government. We have to wonder, what would have happened, had Mossadegh's government been left intact? Iran could have been a beacon for democracy and just economic and social policies in the Middle East. But it was not to be...
When we look at the history of Iran, and the Middle East, it becomes clear that privately owned fossil fuel corporations are responsible for the deaths, and misery of millions of people, over the past 60 years or more. This is why we at A.P.R., call for all governments to NATIONALISE THEM!. Because then governments would be less likely to subvert others due to greed and political payoffs from these monstrously profitable corporations. And some form of democratic control of the oil industries would be possible, to use the profits from their oil and gas production, for all manner of social benefits. The development of basic infrastructure, schools, hospitals, affordable housing, transportation networks, and alternative energy research and development. But first people in the US and other industrialised nations need to know and understand, that nationalised industries can and will directly benefit them. Which is why we here at A.P.R., are working to do this.
Your lead author worked for one year at the Bonneville Power Administration, in Vancouver, WA, as a meteorologist, in 1994-95. I only spent one year there because I missed living in the smaller city of Missoula, MT, and being in the Rocky Mountains. But I found it to be a truly fulfilling place to work, not just financially, and with good benefits, but because all my colleagues and I knew we were engaged in highly useful and important work, providing energy needed to run our society. And so we worked hard, always giving good and honest effort in what were doing (and I'm sure it's still like that). Contrary to what corporate media would say about state-run operations, that people would be lazy and unproductive, because they couldn't be fired, and would have little oversight. When people are compensated justly, with living wages and benefits, and understand that what they are doing benefits their society, they will always be productive and healthy members of an operation.
So, let's all do our best to educate people about what nationalisation of industry represents, and how beneficial it would be for the oil industry to be so managed. Likewise support and push politicians who understand and would work for this. It won't be easy, but it has to be done, if we are to keep the cancer of unregulated capitalism from destroying it's host, OUR PLANET!
p.s. This just in: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/05/14-2
Gulf Spill Could Be Much Worse Than Believed
by Richard Harris
The amount of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico is far greater than official estimates suggest, according to an exclusive NPR analysis.
This image released by BP on May 11 shows the main oil leak (R) of the Deepwater Horizon rig which exploded April 20 and killed 11 workers.
(AFP/BP) At NPR's request, experts analyzed video that BP released Wednesday. Their findings suggest the BP spill is already far larger than the 1989 Exxon Valdez accident in Alaska, which spilled at least 250,000 barrels of oil.
BP has said repeatedly that there is no reliable way to measure the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico by looking at the oil gushing out of the pipe. But scientists say there are actually many proven techniques for doing just that.
Steven Wereley, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, analyzed videotape of the seafloor gusher using a technique called particle image velocimetry.
A computer program simply tracks particles and calculates how fast they are moving. Wereley put the BP video of the gusher into his computer. He made a few simple calculations and came up with an astonishing value for the rate of the oil spill: 70,000 barrels a day -- much higher than the official estimate of 5,000 barrels a day.
The method is accurate to a degree of plus or minus 20 percent.
Given that uncertainty, the amount of material spewing from the pipe could range from 56,000 barrels to 84,000 barrels a day. It is important to note that it's not all oil. The short video BP released starts out with a shot of methane, but at the end it seems to be mostly oil.
"There's potentially some fluctuation back and forth between methane and oil," Wereley said.
But assuming that the lion's share of the material coming out of the pipe is oil, Wereley's calculations show that the official estimates are too low.
"We're talking more than a factor-of-10 difference between what I calculate and the number that's being thrown around," he said.
At least two other calculations support him.
Timothy Crone, an associate research scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, used another well-accepted method to calculate fluid flows. Crone arrived at a similar figure, but he said he'd like better video from BP before drawing a firm conclusion.
Eugene Chiang, a professor of astrophysics at the University of California, Berkeley, also got a similar answer, using just pencil and paper.
Without even having a sense of scale from the BP video, he correctly deduced that the diameter of the pipe was about 20 inches. And though his calculation is less precise than Wereley's, it is in the same ballpark.
"I would peg it at around 20,000 to 100,000 barrels per day," he said.
Chiang called the current estimate of 5,000 barrels a day "almost certainly incorrect."
Given this flow rate, it seems this is a spill of unprecedented proportions in U.S. waters.
"It would just take a few days, at most a week, for it to exceed the Exxon Valdez's record," Chiang said.
BP disputed these figures.
"We've said all along that there's no way to estimate the flow coming out of the pipe accurately," said Bill Salvin, a BP spokesman.
Instead, BP prefers to rely on measurements of oil on the sea surface made by the Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Those are also contentious. Salvin also says these analyses should not assume that the oil is spewing from the 21-inch pipe, called a riser, shown in the video.
"The drill pipe, from which the oil is rising, is actually a 9-inch pipe that rests within the riser," Slavin said.
But Wereley says that fact doesn't skew his calculation. And though scientists say they hope BP will eventually release more video and information so they can refine their estimates, what they have now is good enough.
"It's possible to get a pretty decent number by looking at the video," Wereley said.
This new, much larger number suggests that capturing -- and cleaning up -- this oil may be a much bigger challenge than anyone has let on.
WHO ARE YOU GOING TO BELIEVE, BP OR THESE SCIENTISTS?
So there you have it. This uncontrolled gusher of oil and methane from a 6100 metre deep well, 1500 metres underwater, has already put several Exxon Valdez disasters worth of oil in the Gulf of Mexico now, with no end in sight, and hurricane season starting. Cheers.
p.s. This just in: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/05/14-2
Gulf Spill Could Be Much Worse Than Believed
by Richard Harris
The amount of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico is far greater than official estimates suggest, according to an exclusive NPR analysis.
This image released by BP on May 11 shows the main oil leak (R) of the Deepwater Horizon rig which exploded April 20 and killed 11 workers.
BP has said repeatedly that there is no reliable way to measure the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico by looking at the oil gushing out of the pipe. But scientists say there are actually many proven techniques for doing just that.
Steven Wereley, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, analyzed videotape of the seafloor gusher using a technique called particle image velocimetry.
A computer program simply tracks particles and calculates how fast they are moving. Wereley put the BP video of the gusher into his computer. He made a few simple calculations and came up with an astonishing value for the rate of the oil spill: 70,000 barrels a day -- much higher than the official estimate of 5,000 barrels a day.
The method is accurate to a degree of plus or minus 20 percent.
Given that uncertainty, the amount of material spewing from the pipe could range from 56,000 barrels to 84,000 barrels a day. It is important to note that it's not all oil. The short video BP released starts out with a shot of methane, but at the end it seems to be mostly oil.
"There's potentially some fluctuation back and forth between methane and oil," Wereley said.
But assuming that the lion's share of the material coming out of the pipe is oil, Wereley's calculations show that the official estimates are too low.
"We're talking more than a factor-of-10 difference between what I calculate and the number that's being thrown around," he said.
At least two other calculations support him.
Timothy Crone, an associate research scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, used another well-accepted method to calculate fluid flows. Crone arrived at a similar figure, but he said he'd like better video from BP before drawing a firm conclusion.
Eugene Chiang, a professor of astrophysics at the University of California, Berkeley, also got a similar answer, using just pencil and paper.
Without even having a sense of scale from the BP video, he correctly deduced that the diameter of the pipe was about 20 inches. And though his calculation is less precise than Wereley's, it is in the same ballpark.
"I would peg it at around 20,000 to 100,000 barrels per day," he said.
Chiang called the current estimate of 5,000 barrels a day "almost certainly incorrect."
Given this flow rate, it seems this is a spill of unprecedented proportions in U.S. waters.
"It would just take a few days, at most a week, for it to exceed the Exxon Valdez's record," Chiang said.
BP disputed these figures.
"We've said all along that there's no way to estimate the flow coming out of the pipe accurately," said Bill Salvin, a BP spokesman.
Instead, BP prefers to rely on measurements of oil on the sea surface made by the Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Those are also contentious. Salvin also says these analyses should not assume that the oil is spewing from the 21-inch pipe, called a riser, shown in the video.
"The drill pipe, from which the oil is rising, is actually a 9-inch pipe that rests within the riser," Slavin said.
But Wereley says that fact doesn't skew his calculation. And though scientists say they hope BP will eventually release more video and information so they can refine their estimates, what they have now is good enough.
"It's possible to get a pretty decent number by looking at the video," Wereley said.
This new, much larger number suggests that capturing -- and cleaning up -- this oil may be a much bigger challenge than anyone has let on.
WHO ARE YOU GOING TO BELIEVE, BP OR THESE SCIENTISTS?
So there you have it. This uncontrolled gusher of oil and methane from a 6100 metre deep well, 1500 metres underwater, has already put several Exxon Valdez disasters worth of oil in the Gulf of Mexico now, with no end in sight, and hurricane season starting. Cheers.
