If BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill wasn’t enough of an environmental disaster, two new independent scientific studies indicate that the company’s use of chemical oil dispersants to break down the oil may have done more ecological damage than the oil alone.
Now that BP has temporarily plugged the oil spill and remains confident that a successful permanent plug is within reach, federal scientists estimate 4.9 million barrels of oil have gushed into the Gulf since April 22. The calculation makes BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill the largest in history, far surpassing Mexico’s 1979 Ixtoc spill, which released 3.3 million barrels into the Gulf.
For more than 6 weeks, many residents of the Gulf Coast have become impromptu BP employees, cleaning up a toxic oil spill that threatens to ruin their communities and their livelihoods. Because most of the cleanup workers are not intimately familiar with the dangers of crude oil, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has created a safety guide and fact sheet, which it is distributing by the thousands to workers throughout the Gulf Coast.
BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill has been compared to the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska’s Prince William Sound ever since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank to the bottom in April. Additionally, BP’s cleanup and containment efforts in the Gulf have invited comparisons to the botched cleanup efforts in Alaska 20 years ago, which, as it turns out, weren’t managed by Exxon at all, but by BP.
The Department of the Interior’s Minerals Management Service allowed the oil industry to write federal policy governing the implementation of safety systems and backups, according to a New York Times report.
As the Deepwater Horizon oil slick looms in the Gulf of Mexico about 50 miles south of the Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Northwest Florida coasts, the area’s tourism industry has already felt an enormous impact. Except for parts of Louisiana by the Mississippi River Delta, no oil has washed ashore in the threatened area, but already the hotels are swamped with reservation postponements and cancellations, sport fishing and scuba diving boats sit idly in marinas, and hundreds of restaurants and shops are burdened by empty tables and vacant aisles.
BP CEO Tony Hayward has said that his company will pay for all “legitimate” damages caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, but those expenses are impossible to calculate as the site continues to spew more than 200,000 gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico every day. As the costs escalate, both the White House and Congress are taking measures to ensure that BP adequately compensates for the economic damage that is bound to occur in the volatile communities along the Gulf Coast and possibly beyond.
The impact of BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is impossible to determine because it ultimately depends on how long it will take to contain the leaks. But one thing is certain: the costs will reach into the tens of billions of dollars at the very least. Can Americans expect the oil giant, which posted profits of $6.08 billion in the first quarter of 2010 alone, to pay for all the damage that the company’s disregard for safety and lack of disaster failsafes created?
On March 24, 1989, the Exxon Valdez oil tanker spilled 11 million gallons of North Slope crude oil into the Alaska’s Prince William Sound, one of the cleanest, most unspoiled coastal ecosystems in America. More than two decades later, animals and residents continue to suffer from the spill’s devastating effects, and scientists say that it could be another 2 decades before the area fully recovers.
With more than 700 oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico sucking fuel from the beneath the sea bed, many people might think it was just a matter of time before something catastrophic happened. Something like a blowout from a riser pipe a mile below the surface and a resulting gush of oil that can’t be stopped for weeks.
