John Vidal of The Observer reports on the effect of oil drilling in the Nigerian delta, where activists claim that oil leaks are common and cleanup and compensation are rare. “There are more than 300 spills, major and minor, a year,” said Nnimo Bassey, the Nigerian head of Friends of Earth International. “It happens all the year round. The whole environment is devastated. The latest revelations highlight the massive difference in the response to oil spills. In Nigeria, both companies and government have come to treat an extraordinary level of oil spills as the norm.” (HT: Chris Blattman) [%comments]
Where Oil Spills Happen All the Time
TAGS: environment, oil
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@1 thats assuming even dispersion. I can of paint in all of NYC is a very tiny percentage, not even enough to see if distributed evenly across the city, butput your face in front of my paint sprayer, and you will turn interesting colors, and probably would require a mask to deal with the toxic inhlation issues. I agree once its dispersed its controlable, but the issue is that its at dangerous concentrations and will continue to be unitl the leak is fixed.
To correct an error and respond to comments–
….50,000 barrels of petroleum per day = 0.0000019 cubic mile per day (the highest estimate). So in 60 days the BP well could spill 0.000114 cubic miles-Or in round numbers about 1/10,000 of a cubic mile. Imagine a one-mile-square meat loaf pan filled up to your ankle with crude.
Emoticons might have helped, but I don’t think the BP gulf spill should be made light of, and that wasn’t my intent. My purpose was to imagine visualize just how much oil we are talking about. Recent revisions say that 25,000 barrels per day–about half of the above figure–is more likely.
Frankly, I can’t stand to see another dead or dying creature covered in oil.
on nigeria, not that this makes spills right, but a significant number of the ‘spills’ in this country are the result of folks tapping into pipelines, filling containers w/ oil or gasoline (if downstream of the refinery), and then leaving the hole to flow unencumbered until the oil or pipeline company finds it. hence a spill. the real problem here is that the gov’ts (read: local gov’t officials) don’t share the wealth w/ the people so the people justify drilling holes in pipes, taking the oil or gasoline, and then file for damages due to a resulting spill. not fair but maybe just.
Regarding Eric Jones calculations, I wanted to ask his comments on the recent discovery (or stated discovery) of a 6 mile wide, 22 mile long 1/2 mile thick plume located below the surface GoM. That’s a great deal more than 50,000 barrels x 60 days worth of oil and it seems to be more than just hearsay (http://www.zerohedge.com/article/bp-official-admits-damage-beneath-sea-floor). Even assuming the plume is composed of just 1% oil, the picture gets substantially worse. According to the article, members of the oil and gas industry (apparently including anonymous BP analysts) are reporting that oil is emanating from the sea bed, not just the riser.