In all of these posts I figured I’d better post about the BP oil disaster in the Gulf. It’s nothing any of us want to hear, especially if it’s the continuing news that they still haven’t fixed it.
According to BP, their latest containment dome effort has successfully siphoned 250,000 gallons of oil to the surface, but it’s only a third of the 798,000 gallons spilling daily. Hence the successfully.
According to BP’s senior VP Boy Fryar, “that operation has gone extremely well.” Well? Well? They finally managed to place the cap so I suppose that went well (after how many tries?), but considering how much oil is continuing to spill into the ocean, I doubt the word is well.
BP says that when the pressure inside the cap lessens, valves on the cap can be closed, allowing the apparatus to siphon up to 630,000 gallons to the surface a day. That’s a good number, but still not enough to divert all the oil.
Around the internet, there’s no shortage of places to find information on what’s happening in the Gulf (or opinions on how BP’s attempting to handle it) but here are a few particular powerful items that are making the rounds:
• Oilaholic is a new aggregator for all-things-oil-disaster, packing a live UStream, Flickr photos, and Twitter updates on one page.
• Boston.com’s Big Picture blog delivered some of the most powerful imagery of the saga yet with “Caught in the oil,” a disturbing collection of photographs showing oil-covered wildlife.
• And Robert Reich, Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, posted a disheartening item on his blog entitled “Closing the Hole in the Gulf: A Petroleum Engineer Responds.” Take Reich’s anonymous source with a grain of salt, but it makes BP look even worse than they already do.
So what’d we learn? A guess at how much oil is spilling into the ocean. That this is having a huge impact (and I’m guessing a much bigger one than we’re expecting right now.)
To get an idea of how big the spill is, check out this site that allows you to place it over any location. Goodbye Northern Utah. Goodbye Bay Area. Wowzers.
