All words, images, by Paul “MaccA” McManus – apart from those referenced appropriately
OIL SPILLS in the HOME
better to prevent, than respond?
Ever spilt olive oil in the kitchen, or engine oil in your drive-way?
Fun to clean up, right?
It happened to me a few years ago.
While I was at University, I worked at the local supermarket. It sucked – but it paid for my beer and coffee for the year (a student’s major outgoings.)
A customer dropped a bottle of Olive Oil off a shelf, and of course, it smashed and covered a huge amount of the floor; a one litre 33oz bottle goes around 40 square feet!
Even that small amount took me well over an hour to clean it up.
Any Moms who’ve ever spilt oil in the kitchen, or Dad’s who’ve dropped oil on the driveway, will know that. Oil is a slippery customer to clean-up.
The Gulf of Mexico spill, if nothing else, taught humanity that. The effects, while still being documented and understood, will last for decades, despite the media’s short attention span on natural disasters.
But, you might say, it’s fixed… Isn’t it?
Not necessarily…
According to Doug Rader, Chief Ocean Scientist for Environmental Defense Fund, “The Gulf spill was an environmental catastrophe. It’s just one we haven’t been able to fully quantify yet.”
Reams of marine biologists and Oceanographers will spend decades tracing the effects of Corexit (does it?) and the many types of hydrocarbons that spewed into the Ocean that tragic, fateful day.
It’s all good – dispersants to the rescue!
What?
A dispersant is a chemical used to ‘dissolve’ the oil and make it soluble in water.
Thus out of sight, out of mind for the humans that caused it. A good solution?
If you return to the oil in the kitchen analogy, a dispersant is like the detergent Dawn – a toxic soap that allows water to bond with the oil. It’s the mediator in this chemical feud.
Dispersants are a little like releasing foxes to kill rabbits – then the foxes turning rabid and eating people; they can make a terrible problem in some ways worse.
By mixing the oil with a soap-like substance, surface creatures and beaches are saved, in the short term. The oil sinks, and the immediate problem is resolved.
The longer-term problem?
The Ocean is no ‘kitchen floor’ or driveway! Almost every part of it contains life.
Diving into the Ocean is like “jumping into minestrone: but all the little bits are swimming around,”2 according to one of my heroes, Her Deepness, Sylvia Earle.
A leading Oceanographer, and conservationist – she is one of a handful of humans lucky enough to have spent, literally, hundreds of hours under the Ocean’s blue green skin.
Imagine cleaning your driveway with a product that could potentially poison your children and your pets? Essentially, that’s what dispersants could do. Not on the surface – but in the minestrone of life under the waves. Corexit, the dispersant BP used to clean up the Gulf Spill, hasn’t been tested with respect to its effects on wildlife at depth.
In this case, the dispersant was sent into the flow of oil under the ocean – sending a plume off into the great unknown. Where did it go?
Carl Safina, ecologist, author and former fisherman raises some interesting questions in his blog regarding the ability of marine creatures to withstand the water-borne oil-dispersant mixture –
“How would they fare in a toxic soup? Would the oil and dispersant be degraded and diluted enough to let the next generations flourish?”
The jury is still out on that one – the results are mixed.
Commercial fisheries appear largely unaffected; but deeper in the water column the news isn’t quite so rosy. Ecosystems we don’t fully understand could yet suffer.
Shrimp are losing their eyes!
You might say, a blind shrimp is still a tasty shrimp… and easier to catch! I don’t disagree. But it does raise bigger issues on the ability of the ocean to absorb what is essentially a toxic substance for much of the food web.
And what happens to us if we eat these chemically-blinded shrimp?
The technology in Oil and Gas extraction has out-paced our knowledge of deep-sea ecosystems, in some respects. It’s truly phenomenal what engineering can achieve. But, our knowledge of deep sea ecology is still small – more of the moon has been explored than the bottom of the Ocean!
Isn’t that a little bit like Car companies putting all their research into making their engines more powerful, without fixing the airbags or the brakes?
While I was studying Chemical engineering, a lecturer made the pertinent point that the temperatures, pressures and depths that we’re now extracting oil and gas from, are many, many times what they were even 20 years ago.
In 1980, in the Gulf of Mexico, we needed to go 2000ft under the water to find oil. Now, we’re far in excess of 10, 000ft. That a 5 fold increase in water depth – not even taking subsurface drilling into account.
OK – so if you’re still with me – we understand that, while currently necessary, oil is hard to get, very expensive, and can be downright dangerous.
Remember how bad it was spilling oil on the driveway, or kitchen?
Well, just imagine…spilling oil… just before winter and the driveway froze over.
Or, dropping that Olive Oil in the freezer! How much worse would that be?
Currently, Shell Oil has rights to drill in the Arctic. BP (of “The Gulf Spill” fame), is currently applying for permits to join them. As it stands, the regulations haven’t quite come into line to protect this invaluable ecosystem.
Imagine a Polar Bear covered in Oil! It is a frightening possibility that we must prepare for.
The Environmental NGO Audubon Alaska have created an image to show what would happen if the Gulf of Mexico Spill happened in the Artic. If a spill happened just before the winter, it would be orders of magnitudes more difficult to clean up.
The Bowhead Whales would be pissed! After hunting them in the mid-century for whale oil, now we flood their habitat with sticky, black liquid gold!
There’s no switching off the Arctic freezer and waiting for it to thaw!
This is why, if we’re going to drill in the Earth’s freezer, adequate and appropriate measures are absolutely necessary to cover the worst case scenario.
why are we drilling for oil?
For one thing, it’s worth a ton of money. In fact, in the short term, there’s more money to be made in prolonging the problem, than changing the economy to cleaner forms of fuel.
The other aspect? We have built modern civilisation around oil as a cheap form of energy, and building material. It is pervasive in almost every aspect of modern life. From when you get a coffee first thing – your milk bottle is probably made of oil, transported with oil distillate, you drive to work on a road made of an oil and gas by product – it’s literally everywhere!
Most plastics, in fact, are oil and gas derivatives. So, the more we use single-use, throw-away plastics – straws, water cups and the like – the more the gas price will hike!
So, we do need oil for packaging.
Or do we? Our grandparents never needed it. How did they survive…?
Glass. Recyclable glass.
You may have heard Grandpa utter “it was better in my day…” Environmentally, in some ways he could be correct. But don’t tell him that – he’ll likely bore you with hours of stories about how he used to ride a bicycle to buy an onion for a nickel.
Do we really need Oil then? Can you imagine a world without it? I can’t. Not yet.
Why do we keep drilling for Oil? If the impact of a spill is so devastating, why not move away from oil to alternative energy? Is oil is a necessity in the short run for the current infrastructure to cope with our expanding population’s demands?
It’s said that no problem gets better without first being acknowledged. This one is so big and complex, that for some it is better to ignore it.
The question of oil dependence has no simple solution. It cannot be solved by anyone, but it can be solved by everyone. Starting now.
As Japanese poet Ryunosuke Satoro states truly;
“Individually, we are one drop.
Together, we are an ocean.”
Further information:
The Histrory of Oil Spills by WHOI http://www.whoi.edu/deepwaterhorizon/chapter1.html
The Gulf Disaster – One year on http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/the-gulf-oil-spill-one-year-later-nothing-fundamentally-has-changed-20110419#ixzz1uI3KVX1r
Carl Safina on the Gulf Disaster – Two years on http://carlsafina.org/2012/04/23/gulf-blowout-aftermath-two-years-and-worsening/
Dr Sylvia Earle – Hero of the Planet, TED Prize Winner 2009 http://www.thesealliance.org/
