BP Incident, The Largest Accidental Oil Spill in The World
The U.S federal scientists announced on Monday that the BP spill is the largest accidental release of oil into marine waters in the world. The scientists have analyzed the oil flow which has been released into the waters, and have estimated that almost five millions of barrels of oil have been spilled into the water so far.
Everything started on 20 April when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, killing 11 people, and destroying the well which contained the oil. Up until this incident, the most Mexican rig Ixtoc I in 1979 was the world’s largest accidental release. The incident from 1979 spilled almost 3.5 million barrels of oil into the water. It was known that the Deepwater Horizon incident was the largest of its kind in the history of the United States of America, but it was unknown if it would manage to overpass the event from 1979. Ian R. MacDonald, a professor of oceanography at Florida State University stated that there has never been a spill of such magnitude in the ocean. He believes that the spill will have a huge environmental impact.
Many species of fish and turtles have been affected by the spill, including the Kemp’s ridley turtle, but the experts believe that the real damages will come in the future months. MacDonald believes that the event will affect the environment for tens of years, and as a result the economy of the areas affected by the spill will be affected as well. The federal scientists and the engineering teams were the ones who got the most accurate data of the spill so far. They have discovered that 53,000 barrels of oil have been spilled in the water each day until July 15 when the well was finally closed. The experts also revealed the fact that the flow of oil started to decrease with each passing day.
In the beginning 62,000 barrels of oil a day were spilled, the amount decreasing to 35,000 towards July. The reason for that was that the reservoir of hydrocarbons feeding the gusher started to deplete. This is the reason why the ones in charge with solving the problem managed to place the containment cap on the well. They tried to do that before but they failed because the pressure of the oil and of the gases was too high. The teams believe that their predictions might be off with about 10 percent. Even though BP has been accused of being very slow in solving the problem, it has been estimated that they have collected almost 1 million barrels of oil from the waters. They used different equipments and boats in order to solve the problem.
Even so, about 4 millions barrels of oil still remained in the water. This means that the British company will have to pay lots of money for the spill. The Clean Water Act states that the company which is responsible for the spill has to pay $1.100 per barrel, or if the accident has been a result of gross negligence, then it has to pay $4.300 per barrel. Since the well spilled 4.9 million barrels of oil into the waters, that means that the company will have to pay $5.4 billion dollars. If they are charged with negligence, then the situation will be worse because they will have to pay $21 billion. However, British Petroleum
might state that they have recovered 800,000 barrels of oil. If they will manage to convince the authorities, then they will “only” have to pay $4.5 billion or $17.6 billion.
Even since the beginning of the incident, there were disputes regarding the spill. In the day following the explosion, the British company stated that the oil is not leaking from the well; it then stated that 1,000 barrels are leaking, then 5,000, and so on. The company has been harshly criticized for the way in which they tackled the situation. The company however always stated that their main task was to stop the spill, and that they were doing their best to do so.
The Obama administration quickly created a scientific group which had the task of analyzing the flow of the oil into the water. The group stated that in May, between 12,000 and 19,000 gallons of oil were spilled into the water, but the figure was met with skepticism by the media. Now since BP managed to cap the well, the group will have the possibility of analyzing the flow, by measuring the pressure readings within the well. They performed these measurements at the beginning, when the well was first constructed, and as a result they might analyze the situation and see if any changes have occurred. The clues indicate that changes have indeed occurred.
Currently the company wants to completely seal the well. They want to pump dry mud into the well, and then to pump cement into it. They believe that by doing so they will manage to stop the problem for good. They have attempted to do this approximately a month ago, but because of the gas and oil pressure, they were unsuccessful. They also want to connect a secondary release well to the one that got broken, in case that it will fail again, the secondary one to be able to stop the oil flow. The British company is confident that the attempts to seal the well completely will be effective.
They want to pump more than 2,000 pounds of mud into the well this week. Thad W. Allen, the retired Coast Guard admiral who is leading the federal response to the spill, stated that the problem has not been solved yet, and that since the operation is a difficult one, many things can go wrong. Kent Wells, senior vice president for exploration and production at BP stated that he is optimistic that the problem will be completely solved by August 15. It is unknown how much time the pumping of the mud and the cement will take. It might take a few days or it might take weeks.
