'Swine Wednesday' May 26 BP Oil Spill Update

"Our Titleist golf balls can withstand even the earth-shaking force of a ferocious, off-balance, downward-pressuring vector-force that squirts the ball wildly off in any ol' direction on the compass." (below)

1. Pensacola Oil Forecast
No appreciable change from yesterday in the weekend forecast. Lookin' good for Memorial Day Weekend. A little rain, perhaps, but odds are low and any showers on the beach probably will be brief and bring a welcome cooling-off period.

2. Spreading Oil, Proliferating Projections.

BP's river of oil has spread so far and wide in the Gulf of Mexico that about a week ago NOAA began publishing two separate projection maps (see left), one for the "near shore" and one for the southern parts of the Gulf, which NOAA denominates as "offshore." How long will it be before they have to make a third map, projecting the oil flow up the East Coast?

3. Pigs Will Be Pigs.

Pensacola publisher Rick Outzen reported yesterday for The Daily Beast on the discovery of two internal BP memos that cast a dark cloud over the oil driller's business ethics -- to say nothing of its humanity. One company memo coldly calculates the value of a worker's life versus the profits to be made by skimping on safety. The other sneeringly compares the cost of building a pig's house with bricks, to foil the big bad wolf from blowing it down, and concludes the pig's life isn't worth the expense.

Outzen explains:

The two-page document, prepared by BP’s risk managers in October 2002 as part of a larger risk preparedness presentation, and titled “Cost benefit analysis of three little pigs,” is harrowing:

“Frequency—the big bad wolf blows with a frequency of once per lifetime.”

“Consequence—if the wolf blows down the house then the piggy is gobbled.”

“Maximum justifiable spend (MJS)—a piggy considers it’s worth $1000 to save its bacon.”

“Which type of house,” the report asks, “should the piggy build?”

It then answers its own question: a hand-written note, “optimal,” is marked next to an option that offers solid protection, but not the “blast resistant” trailer, typically all-welded steel structures, that cost 10 times as much.

The two documents originally surfaced during pre-trial discovery in connection with wrongful death lawsuits brought against BP after its Texas City refinery caught fire in 2005. Fifteen plant employees were killed in the inferno and 170 were injured. Eventually, Rick writes, BP settled the cases for $1.6 billion, BP was convicted of a felony violation of the Clean Air Act, it paid a fine of $50 million and "was sentenced to three years probation."

As with too many recidivist criminals, BP didn't learn its lesson. Outzen writes:

Last year, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration levied the largest monetary penalty in its history, $87 million, for "failing to correct safety problems identified after a 2005 explosion that killed 15 workers at its Texas City, Texas refinery."

A BP spokesman told The Daily Beast that BP has reformed its ways since then. “Those documents are several years old,” he said.

Has the corporation found religion? Was it 'born again?' Outzen isn't convinced:

We know that the Deepwater well lacked the remote-control, acoustical valve that experts believe would have shut off the well when the blowout protector failed. The acoustic trigger costs about $500,000. How would that stand up to a similar “Maximum Justifiable Spend” analysis (especially when BP’s liability is officially capped at $75 million by federal law)?

For a direct look at BP's swinish memos, click here.

4. Top Kill Reality TV.

If BP's "Top Kill" maneuver actually does begin today, you can watch it, live, right here. The Los Angeles Times has the vivid details:

Heavy mud will be forced into the well to counteract the upward pressure of the leaking oil and gas. Then cement will be poured in after the mud to seal the opening.

If for some reason the mud alone cannot push down the oil, BP officials said they might also try to stop the flow with a "junk shot" filled with golf balls, among other objects.

Success of the venture will depend on loading enough mud and cement into the well to stop the surge of oil and gas — a tricky proposition. Iraj Ershaghi, director of the petroleum engineering department at USC, estimated that the upward pressure was likely to be about 9,000 pounds per square inch. At a depth of 5,000 feet, the water pressure bearing down on the leak is about 2,500 pounds per square inch, he added.

That leaves a difference of about 6,500 pounds per square inch of upward pressure at the wellhead, explaining why the oil and gas flowing upward can easily overwhelm the water pressing down on it and why the crude has continued to gush into the ocean.
* * *
To make up the pressure difference, technicians plan to pump mud into the blowout preventer, a kind of surge protector that sits on top of the wellhead. The device had failed to cut off the flow of oil when the pressure surged too high.

The mud that will be used, drilling mud, is a dense mixture of water and minerals such as bentonite clay. It can be made even denser by adding heavier minerals such as barite and galena.

The heavier the mud, the more it will suppress the flow — but on the flip side, the harder it will be to pump in.

The mud will be pumped from surface vessels with a combined 50,000-horsepower pumping capacity into the internal cavity of the blowout preventer. BP officials said they planned to pump the mud at a rate of up to 40 barrels per minute.

It's unclear how much mud will be needed to stop the flow of oil, BP spokesman Bryan Ferguson said. It's possible, he said, that the entire cavity of the blowout preventer will have to be filled.

Once the oil flow has been contained, the hole will be covered with cement to permanently close the well.

5. Junk Shot Brand Placement.

Plan B (or is it "C" or "D"?) may follow immediately if the Top Kill fails. This means a "Junk Shot." Or, as the L.A. Times puts it, shooting into the disabled blowout preventer "odd objects such as rope knots, golf balls and shredded tires" to try to clog the leak.

These materials are picked for a reason — each odd shape serves a different function, and the more varied the shapes of the collected junk, the more effective the clog will be.

BP will not confirm that it plans to use Titleist golf balls in this maneuver. In our personal experience this brand of golf balls would be very effective.

Although we haven't tried it at a depth of 5,000 feet, based on prior experience we can say our Titleist golf balls can withstand even the earth-shaking force of a ferocious, off-balance, downward-pressuring vector-force that squirts the ball wildly off in any ol' direction on the compass. When the golf ball comes to rest a few feet farther on, moreover, it usually shows only one or two ragged cuts in the surface. The inner core remains perfectly intact.

Consequently, just as we do, BP could use and re-use a single collection of Titleist golf balls over and over again as the company's deepwater wells in the Gulf of Mexico blow up, one after the other. Less new "junk" to buy, more profits for the stockholders!

6. Golfo de Sopa.

7. Hurricane Debris.

Top Kill or no, hurricane season is right around the corner. And that means anything in the Gulf -- even lakes of oil and dispersants embedded in the sea bottom -- could wind up being transported deposited by high winds and water surges onto coastal beaches, wetlands, and marshes.

Pensacola Beach residents know better than anyone outside of Louisiana how much ancient detritus from the seafloor can be scooped up by a strong hurricane and thrown on shore. After hurricanes Opal (1995), Ivan (2004) and Katrina (2005), the shallows where the waves curl and then exhaust themselves on the beach all along Santa Rosa Island -- from Navarre Beach to Ft. Pickens -- yielded a treasure trove of huge ancient shells in shapes and colors most beachcombers had never seen before. Many looked primeval.

"Top Kill" or no, the approaching hurricane season is very bad news for coastal residents everywhere. It means that in addition to the usual daily anxiety about reported storms we'll have something new to fear: that the remains of BP's leaking oil, in whatever form it may take after chemically bonding with the 785,000 gallons of Corexit BP has poured into the Gulf, will be invading our homes and businesses.

8. Palin Country Oil Spill.

Mother Nature has a perverse sense of humor. Reuters is reporting that an oil pipeline in the ex-half-term Alaska governor's state "shut down on Tuesday after spilling several thousand barrels of crude oil into backup containers, drastically cutting supply down the main artery between refineries and Alaska's oilfields." Drill, baby, drill.

EPA Backs Down on Dispersants

Late this afternoon, EPA director Lisa Jackson backed down on the agency's order, issued last week, that BP cease using its Corexit 9500 dispersant. Instead, she said, the agency would continue to research and monitor dispersant use.

On May 20, in EPA's own words, the agency ordered BP --

to identify a less toxic alternative – to be used both on the surface and under the water at the source of the oil leak – within 24 hours and to begin using the less toxic dispersant within 72 hours of submitting the alternative.

On the same day, however, BP replied that the large store of Corexit it had on hand:

was the only dispersant that was available immediately in sufficiently large quantities, to be useful at the time of the spill. Subsequent efforts have identified Sea Brat # 4 as a possible alternative that is equally effective at dispersing oil, but has fewer acute toxicity effects.

However, BP's letter added:

Sea Brat #4 contains a small amount of a a chemical that may degrade to a nonylphenol (NP). The class of NP chemicals have been identified by various government agencies as potential endocrine disrupters, and as chemicals that may persist in the environment for for a period of years. The manufacturer has not had the opportunity to evaluate this product for those potential effects, and BP has not had the opportunity to conduct independent tests to evaluate this issue either.

Several years ago, the EPA described nonylphenol in a previous advisory as --

an organic chemical produced in large quantities in the United States. It is toxic to aquatic life, causing reproductive effects in aquatic organisms. Nonylphenol is moderately soluble and resistant to natural degradation in water. It is used as a chemical intermediate and is often found in wastewater treatment plant effluent as a breakdown product from surfactants and detergents.

At this afternoon's brief news conference, EPA director Jackson said the agency will continue to evaluate the dispersants identified by BP for both effectiveness and toxicity. If an alternative to Corexit 9500 in sufficient quantities can be found, she implied the agency would proceed with orders for BP to make the switch.

The root problem, however, Jackson said as she began winding up the presser, is that "the science of dispersants has not in any way kept up with the science and technology" of deep sea drilling.

Last week, Sylvia Earle, a famed oceanographer in her own right and former NOAA director, told a congressional committee, "Until we know more about the dispersants, I'd follow up with BP and EPA and tell them to stop, stop."

Still Waters Wednesday: May 19 BP Oil Spill Report

"Pensacola Beach has rarely looked cleaner or more inviting."

UPDATED BELOW

1. Still Waters on Pensacola Beach.

A reader was wondering early this morning if the Internet web cam images of Pensacola Beach were showing an oily sheen. The simple answer is "no."

What is visible is one of those glorious beach days when the sun is shining, the wind has died, the sand is blindingly white, the surf is so calm you can see it reflect birds as they fly overhead, and a small pod of dolphins lazily gambols above the underwater sand bar offshore, feeding off a school of mullet (click here or photo, left). The still waters are running clean.

There is, as yet, no sign of oil on Pensacola Beach. Quite the opposite: Pensacola Beach has rarely looked cleaner or more inviting. The reason is, no one is here. The beach is weirdly empty. Tourists have, with few exceptions, simply fled.

The operator of the sand cleaning machine, a standard fixture on the beach as early morning beach walkers know (click here or on photo, above), told us this morning he hasn't even found much of the usual Thoughtless Tourist Trash -- cigarette butts, plastic cups, beer cans, etc.

"It's almost empty," he complained, pointing at the collection hopper (photo insert, above). "Not much trash 'cause nobody's here. And I've just finished a run down the entire beach."

2. The Oil Straw.

The new BP videos released yesterday by senators Bill Nelson and Barbara Boxer have raised public apprehension over the amount of oil that continues pouring into the Gulf. They also should have thoroughly killed whatever faith the public and our elected officials still may have invested in the credibility of BP executives. As the old sarcasm would have it, 'Who you gonna believe, the suits at BP or your own lyin' eyes?

One more thing the videos have done: reawaken concern over the injection of a secret chemical mix generically known as "dispersants" at the point of the leak. Distributing dispersants at this depth and with a leak this size is an untested palliative with unknown consequences for the environment, sea life, and human health. The one thing we do know is the dispersants don't destroy the oil; they merely break it up into smaller molecules that likely will behave, chemically and physically, in different ways.

3. What Lies Beneath: Dispersants Damage

A couple of days ago Joel Achenbach of the Washington Post published an article whose importance cannot be over emphasized. ["Oil Spill Imperils an Unseen World at the Bottom of the Gulf".] In it, he warns that the larger threat of the BP oil disaster is not what we see, but what lies beneath, hidden in the deep:

Fan corals, lacylike doilies, form gardens on the seafloor and on sunken ships. The deep is full of crabs, sponges, sea anemones. Sharks hunt in the dark depths, as do sperm whales that feed on giant squid. The sperm whales have formed a year-round colony near the mouth of the Mississippi River, and have been known to rub themselves on oil pipes just like grizzlies rubbing against pine trees.

This is the unseen world imperiled by the uncapped oil well a mile below the surface of the gulf. The millions of gallons of crude, and the introduction of chemicals to disperse it, have thrown this underwater ecosystem into chaos, and scientists have no answer to the question of how this unintended and uncontrolled experiment in marine biology and chemistry will ultimately play out.
* * *
The well is surrounded by a complex ecosystem that only in recent years has been explored by scientists. Between the uncapped well and the surface is a mile of water that riots with life, and now contains a vast cloud of oil, gas and chemical dispersants and long, dense columns of clotted crude.
* * *
More is known about the surface of the moon than about the world at the bottom of the sea.
* * *
The depths of the gulf are also a potential answer to a question that has been in the air for weeks now: Where, exactly, has all the oil gone? A partial explanation is that the slick has been bombed with more than half a million gallons of the chemical dispersant Corexit 9500, made by Nalco. More dispersants have been applied at depth, directly on the main leak. Much of the oil sinks to the bottom.

"If you apply the dispersants to the source of the oil down there, you are completely hiding the problem," said Kert Davies, research director for Greenpeace. "It looks like it's gone away, but there is no 'away' in the ocean. It's like sweeping it under the rug."

4. Banned in Britain.

ProPublica today adds this (with supporting links, to its great credit) to the dispersants debate:

• "The two types of dispersants BP is spraying in the Gulf are banned for use on oil spills in the U.K."
• "[T]wo products" from BP's "Corexit" line of dispersants are "more toxic and less effective in handling southern Louisiana crude than those made by competitors.
• Equally chilling, "Corexit was also used after the Exxon Valdez disaster and was later linked with human health problems including respiratory, nervous system, liver, kidney and blood disorders."
• One of the two Corexit products also contains a compound that, in high doses, is associated with headaches, vomiting and reproductive problems.

The inescapable truth is that no one knows for sure what BP may be doing to the entire chain of life in the Gulf of Mexico as it applies its favored dispersants at the source of the oil gusher. As NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco told PBS' News Hour Monday, both oil and dispersants are toxic to sea life. NOAA decided to approve BP's use of dispersants only because they are considered "less of an evil" than oil.

But one is left to wonder, just how can she know it's a "lesser" evil when the effects of dispersants applied at the depth of BP's oil gusher have never been studied or tested?

5. Keys Tarballs Not from BP.

Those twenty-five tarballs found at a state park yesterday are not from the BP oil spill, the U.S. Coast Guard is saying. The tarballs were sent for analysis to "US Coast Guard Marine Safety Laboratory in New London, Connecticut."

According to the commanding officer of the coast guard's Key West sector, " these tar balls are not from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill incident."

5. Oil Slick Coming to Florida Keys, Nevertheless.

Not to worry. The Florida Keys will be seeing the BP river of oil soon, anyway.

According to computer models developed by the University of South Florida's College of Marine Science, the Florida Loop will be transporting it to beaches in the Keys "in the next eight to 10 days," reports Christine Stapleton of the Palm Beach Post.

A Post artist, working from the USF models, has prepared a graphic showing the expected route of the oil. (Click here or on graphic, left.) It's a little cartoonish for scientists, no doubt, but it does dramatically illustrate how far, and how quickly, the oil may reach:

Scientists and researchers said Monday that their data showed oil was sucked into the Gulf Loop over the weekend. On Tuesday scientists at the University of South Florida released trajectories based on five models.

"All the five model trajectory forecasts … show that this southern part of the oil slick will be transported along with the Loop Current," according to the University of South Florida oceanographers. "Our best estimates of the arrival dates of the oil spill, transported along with the Loop Current, for Key West, the middle Keys, and Miami are around May 23-24, May 26 and May 28, respectively."

Happy Memorial Day, Keys! It will be one to remember.

UPDATE - LATE AFTERNOON
5-19 pm

Mid- and late-afternoon beach walkers report a southwest breeze brought the distinct odor of oil along with it.

Misdirection Monday: May 17 Oil Spill Update

"I make the weather! All of this moisture coming up out of the Gulf is gonna push off to the east and hit Altoona."

-- Phil Connors (Bill Murray), Groundhog Day

1. Weekly Oil Spill Forecast.

For much of the past month since the April 20 BP oil platform explosion, Northwest Florida has been protected from direct damage by the river of oil in the Gulf of Mexico predominantly by Southeast-to-Northwest winds and water currents. The web site Windmapper, however, is forecasting a change for the first few days of this week.

Monday through Wednesday, it suggests, we are likely to experience a slowly strengthening trend of Southwest- to- Northeast winds. This is the worst kind for our beach.

One of the TV weathermen at local station WEAR-TV is saying, however, that the drift toward the northeast won't be strong enough to push BP oil onto Pensacola Beach. (click photo up and to the left). We'll see how well he imitates Bill Murray's Goundhog Day character in 'making the weather.'

To view Windmapper's daily forecast animation click here. For an hour-by-hour overview of each day of the week, click here.

2. Pipe Smoke Gets In Your Eyes.

Of course, one big news item yesterday was that on the third try, as McClatchy News puts it, the "BP Oil giant succeeded Sunday in connecting a mile-long pipe to help capture what it hoped will be a majority of the oil flowing from a damaged well into the Gulf of Mexico."

But confusion reigns. British Petroleum wasn't saying on Sunday how much oil it really was collecting on board the oil tanker tethered a mile above the wellhead pipe. All we could be sure about is that the pipe insertion didn't completely plug the "massive oil leak." According to Shaila Dewan of the New York Times, BP vice president Kent Wells "could not say how much oil had been captured or what percentage of the oil ... was now flowing into ... the insertion tube."

"Could not?" More likely, would not. The more BP talks, the less they seem to tell us. As a result, reporters can't even agree on the dimensions of the tube that BP inserted:

• WaPo's Steven Mufson and Joel Achenbach report the tube is "a four inch pipe."
• The UK Telegraph (London) yesterday claimed it was a "6-inch tube" that was inserted.
• Ms. Dewan of the New York Times reports it is a "4-inch-wide tube."
• The Los Angeles Times votes that it is a "6-inch suction tube."
• Bloomberg's Business Week says (with metric meretriciousness) that it's a "6 5/8 inch (17 centimeter) tube."
• CBS dodges the question by saying it's "narrow."
• AP voes for 6 inches.
• The Times Picayune casts its ballot for "a 4-inch-wide tube."
• Next door neighbor, NewOrleans.com, dissents; it is "a six inch hose," they say.
  
• The oil industry organ Marine Log bets on "a four-inch diameter."
  
• NPR this morning cautiously remained mum about just how wide they think the tube is.
  

We could go on. Near-endless examples exist. The real lesson to remember is that none of these reporters have a clue what they're writing about. Every one of them is dependent on BP, itself, for the numbers.

Apparently, the ancient adage 'You're entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts' is no longer operative in the Gulf of Mexico. BP drowned it.

3. BP's PR.

There also is a yawning chasm between what BP seems to be saying and what, in fact, it is saying. Only lawyers and those journalists accustomed to dealing with slippery oil corporations have noticed that BP is playing a very "cagey" game -- to borrow the admiring word from the Jakarta Globe, a newspaper published in a country that has a long and sad history of being shamelessly exploited by underwater oil drillers.

For just one example, an early report Sunday afternoon by Shaila Dewan of the New York Times at 1:58 pm CDT clashed with another by Jeffrey Collins and Jason Dearen of the Associated Press which was originally published within minutes that same afternoon. Dewan reported that BP would not disclose "how much oil and gas were taken aboard the... drill ship... as it is siphoned off" by the 4- (or is it 6-?) inch pipe. Contrariwise, Collins and Dearen claimed that "BP said a mile-long tube was siphoning most of the crude from a blown well to a tanker... ." [emphasis added]

At mid-day Monday, BP owned up to the reality. As CBS News, France's wire service, and other sources are now reporting, only "about 20 percent of the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico is being swallowed up by its insertion tube system." That "20 percent," moreover, is based on now-discredited estimates that the leak consists of 5,000 barrels a day.

In fact, yesterday's insertion of the "mile-long pipe" enables BP to capture only 1,000 barrels a day. This means the "success" yesterday is far less consequential than either the Times or the Associated Press were saying yesterday.

As multiple news outlets are reporting today, the actual leak rate is now believed by scientists to "be between 25,000 and 80,000 barrels per day." Accordingly, a thousand barrels a day means the 4- or 6-inch pipe is capturing as little as one-and-one-quarter percent of the oil gushing into the Gulf every day.

Are we better off than we were on Friday? Reality has not appreciably changed. But insofar as public knowledge is concerned, in the space of just three days we've gone from 5,000 barrels of oil a day freely pouring into the Gulf to as much as 80,000 barrels a day, minus a measly one thousand barrels captured by the 4-inch -- or is it 6-inch? -- pipe plug.

4. Oil Lakes Beneath the Sea.

There are other, even more momentous issues, where it's useful to bear in mind all the misdirection going on. For example, independent researchers, like oceanography professor Vernon Asper of Southern Mississippi University, have found huge pools of oil "at substantial depths down to at least 1,300 meters, which is very close to the depth of the well."

We’re thinking that this oil is probably some fraction of the oil that’s not reaching the surface but instead is sort of spreading out and then the currents are taking it wherever the currents are going.

The pools of underwater oil are said to be just "too big" for the usual bottom-dwelling organisms that metabolize oil to "gobble" them up. (You can read the interview with Prof. Asper last Friday here; or, listen to the podcast here.)

As Justin Gillis of the New York Times reports:

Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick in spots.
* * *
“There’s a shocking amount of oil in the deep water, relative to what you see in the surface water,” said Samantha Joye, a researcher at the University of Georgia who is involved in one of the first scientific missions to gather details about what is happening in the gulf. “There’s a tremendous amount of oil in multiple layers, three or four or five layers deep in the water column.”

The plumes are depleting the oxygen dissolved in the gulf, worrying scientists, who fear that the oxygen level could eventually fall so low as to kill off much of the sea life near the plumes.

5. Damaging Dispersants.

This is especially worrisome given BP's practice of continuing to release hundreds of tons upon hundreds of tons of "dispersants" a mile below the surface near the wellhead. As USM professor Asper told The World radio program Friday, "we don’t know what affect the dispersants might have." And, as usual, BP isn't talking.

For more on the threat posed by excessive use of dispersants, check out The Truth about Gulf Oil Spill.

6. Swallowing BP's Word for It.

Journalists are one thing. Washington politicians should be even more embarrassed by their unquestioning acceptance of whatever BP says. As Sam Stein suggests over at the Huffington Post, foremost among them is our next-door neighbor, Alabama senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL):

Late this past week, Republicans in the Senate effectively blocked legislation that would have raised the cap on the amount of money oil companies like BP would have to pay for economic damages caused by oil spills.
* * *
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) suggested on Sunday that raising the cap was unnecessary because BP had given him it's word that it would cover the costs of the spill in the Gulf.

Not far behind is the Obama administration. It took them until last Friday to wake up to the legal reality that BP's oral word is meaningless when it comes to paying all "legitimate claims" for damages. As veteran reporter James Ridgeway writes, the company's reputation is "coated in sludge."

So far as we can tell, the oil company's only response to this hour has been to have their PR flack-catchers repeat the same oral assurances:

"What they are requesting in the letter is absolutely consistent with all our public statements on the matter," BP spokesman David Nicholas said.

But will they love us in the morning? We'll wait for an answer in writing, signed, and notarized by BP's chief executive officer and board chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg. Then, BP can kiss us.

Oral assurances that BP will fully pay all "legitimate" damages caused by this disaster are of no use whatsoever when the graven law imposes a $75 million limit on its liability.

Dept. of Amplification
05-17 pm
Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor, has additional thoughts along the same lines ["BP Stands for Bad Petroleum"]:

Saturday the White House warned BP that it expects the oil giant to pay all damages associated with the disastrous oil leak into the Gulf of Mexico, even if the costs exceed the $75 million liability cap under federal law. BP responded Sunday saying its public statements are “absolutely consistent” with the Administration’s request.

When you hear dueling public statements like these, watch your wallets. You can safely assume BP’s lawyers are already at work to ensure that the firm pays not a cent more than $75 million — not to taxpayers bearing cleanup costs, not to consumers whose gas bills will rise, not to businesses along the coasts that will lose a fortune. And BP won’t pay more unless or until there’s a law requiring it to.

BP * * * [is] the poster child for PR masquerading as CSR.

There's a good deal more worth reading ...

Saturday BP Oil Spill Update: The Smell of Oil

1. Olfactory Sensations.

Multiple reports began circulating yesterday that the smell of oil has reached Pensacola Beach. One beach friend writes, "This scent is just -- WRONG. Smells like an industrial plant or heavy equipment garage, not like the lovely scents of the sea."

Almost made me cry -- not from fumes (it's nowhere near that strong), but just because it smelled like an omen, a forerunner of much worse to come. I HOPE I'M WRONG.

I flagged down a passing PBeach fire/rescue truck to let them know. They didn't seem impressed. Told me, yeah, it's out there, about 25 miles offshore (I thought it was 50; they reiterated 25). Told me it wasn't surprising I'd smelled it, what with the wind from that direction. The driver said let's hope that's all we get from it, is the smell.

Sean Dugas of the News Journal reports beach lifeguards began detecting "a kerosene-like smell" about 5 pm: "The smell was reported at various locations on Pensacola Beach as well as in the Navarre and Gulf Breeze areas."

2. Health Hazard.

The smell won't kill you, we suppose, but the oily source could. The public's attention largely has been trained on the widespread death of sea life certain to occur because of BP's Deepwater oil gusher. Surprisingly little has been written about the hazards to human health.

Expect that to change in the coming weeks. Beyond the foreseeable short-term "headaches, nausea, coughing and throat irritation," Business Week reports the oil spill poses "significant" and "long term" health risks for people. Dr. Gina Solomon of the National Resources Defense Council says the health hazards arise from direct exposure as well as through a contaminated food chain:

Health-care workers and the general public alike could face risks by inhaling various components of crude oil, such as benzene, toluene and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons, all of which may cause cancer, according to the NRDC.

Crude oil also contains mercury and lead, both of which can be dangerous if inhaled or swallowed, the group stated.

Among the most serious life-threatening health risks are cancer and chronic respiratory disease. Dr. Solomon explains that "chemicals like benzene... can be released in a vapor phase from the oil that's floating in the water."

These chemicals can cause acute health effects such as headache, nausea, vomiting, cough, dizziness. The chemicals can also cause longer-term effects, including the potential for miscarriage or low birth weight in pregnant women and risk of cancer over the longer term.

As the oil comes closer, smelling the beach air may be like pointing a gas hose at your head and squeezing the trigger.

3. Dispensing with Dispersants.

The New Orleans Times Picayune reports the underwater injection of dispersants at the site of BP's oil spill "were halted Thursday." The reason given is that, "science knows so little about life on the ocean floor that it's impossible to know what harm was being done by piping the antifreeze-like chemicals to the source of gushing oil some 5,000 feet below the water's surface."

Now they tell us? As a well known war criminal might have told them, we already knew what we didn't know. So, a question logically arises which reporter Sheila Grissett, to her credit, asks outright: "Was it a mistake to disperse in deep water in the first place?"

LSU professor of environmental sciences Ralph Portier offers this answer:

"We don't even have enough data to say that. We just don't know.''

It shouldn't surprise us if the answer eventually makes it way up the food chain: 'We've all died.'

4. Oil Spill Weather Report.

Locally, TV and radio weathermen have been forecasting the likely direction of oil slick sloshes with the same enthusiasm usually reserved for hurricanes in the Gulf and swirling winds in Tornado Alley. Even boatless beach people like us pay rapt attention to marine forecasts and wave height measurements of at-sea buoys.

Speaking of new internet tools to track the oily destruction of the Gulf Coast, the University of South Florida has developed an experimental animated Daily Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill weather map. (Click on the image, left, and choose the speed of animation to see the latest oil sludge forecast.)


5. The Facebook of Ignorance.

All in all, weathermen included, the BP oil disaster daily has been re-teaching us a lesson we seem to have forgotten, over and over, at least since May 7, 1954: Neither the various governments we elect, nor the multi-nation corporations, nor the "experts" have a clue. As Xeni Jarden asks over at Boing-Boing, "What's the only thing that could possibly make the catastrophic Gulf oil spill any worse?"

The answer? A "joint U.S.-BP" Facebook page!