Learn About Our Waterways and How to Protect Them
Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Response
Hurricanes and the Oil Spill
What will the hurricane do to the oil slick in the Gulf?
• The high winds and seas will mix and “weather” the oil which can help accelerate the biodegradation process.
• The high winds may distribute oil over a wider area, but it is difficult to model exactly where the oil may be transported.
• Movement of oil would depend greatly on the track of the hurricane.
• Storms’ surges may carry oil into the coastline and inland as far as the surge reaches. Debris resulting from the hurricane may be contaminated by oil from the Deepwater Horizon incident, but also from other oil releases that may occur during the storm.
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Apocalypse Again
It’s happened before but you wouldn’t know it reading the New York Times. On April 28 the Times wrote a “Gulf Spill” editorial defending continued offshore oil and gas exploration. Without questioning its source it wrote, “the federal Minerals Management Service says there have been no major spills — defined as 1,000 barrels or more — in the last 15 years, a period that includes Hurricane Katrina. In that context, the blowout — while tragic and destructive — can be seen as a freak occurrence.”
But when I was down in the Gulf covering Hurricane Katrina less than five years ago the Coast Guard reported that over eight million gallons of oil spilled in and around the Gulf, more than two thirds of an Exxon Valdez. Of course that wasn’t from the 180 rigs damaged, destroyed or set adrift like the Jack Up rig Ocean Warwick that I saw grounded in the surf on Dauphin Island Alabama. The MMS, parsing things very finely indeed, was only counting spills from active offshore rigs, not the pipelines, onshore tank farms, refineries and other infrastructure essential to offshore operations.
To read the complete Blue Notes 73, please click here.
Obama's ocean of troubles
Less than six months ago environmentalists were celebrating President Obama's commitment to our public seas as they went to work in support of his proposed National Ocean Policy.
Of course that was before the president endorsed offshore-oil drilling.
His call for expanded fossil-fuel development on the Outer Continental Shelf at the end of March came less than a month before the catastrophic explosion of a deepwater oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico leased to BP. That April 20 Deepwater Horizon disaster left 11 oil workers missing and presumed dead and 17 injured, then burned for two days before sinking in almost mile-deep water, setting off what turns out to be something like a 200,000-gallon-a-day oil leak that's quickly covered a large part of the gulf and is affecting the Louisiana coastline.
Please read Blue Frontier President David Helvarg's articles from before and after the Gulf Oil Spill Disaster that appeared in the Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle, just click on the titles below:
- Los Angeles Times, April 1, 2010: Oil Drilling -- a Nasty National Habit.
- San francisco Chronicle, May 2, 2010: Obama's Ocean of Troubles.
- Louisiana declares a state of emergency as oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill reaches the Gulf of Mexico coast: http://www.guardian.co.uk/
- Gulf oil spill: 'This region needs the Mississippi'
Then join the Blue Frontier Campaign and others like Blue Frontier/Peter Benchley Award Winners Richard Charter of Defenders of Wildlife and Cynthia Sarthou of the Gulf Restoration Network in fighting to reestablish the national moritorium on any new oil and gas drilling on our public seas! Between Marine Pollution, coastal destruction, lost jobs, lost lives and the spiraling cost of oil-driven climate change we say enough is enough. Rekindle the call - Get Oil Out!
