I know... I know

[zach619]

We all know about this oil rig that exploded off the Gulf Coast the past couple days. I am not trying to start another tree hugging, lets all hold hands thread...

But man, this sounds really, really bad. Only 50 miles offshore. Dumping millions of gallons of oil in the next couple weeks. The well on the sea floor is damaged, so the speculation is that oil is just excreting out of the sea floor into the open ocean. Aside from all the dead sea life, and the recreational beaches being detroyed for a while... Man, when will this kind of crap stop happening. I know we are largely dependant on oil in the nation, me included, but seriously... Just allowing unsafe rigging equipment and things like that is not ok around our coastal waters... Pisses me off that when company is operating a malfuctioning 700 million dollar oil rig that will kill all of our fish and detroy out beaches, when something like this happens, they just have to pay out a few small law suits... No people... Your whole operations should be shut down. You cant just take a crapshoot chance of something working or not. If you do not have the intelligence or equipment to succesfully operate something like this, you have no business doing it. BP should immediately go bankrupt...

Sorry, Im not hippie, but come one now....

[spongedude]

i don't know what the cause was, accident or failure, but either way it'll be tough on that area for some time to come. maybe the owner will take some of those amazing profits and invest in some cleanup...

[NJ SPONGIN]

Im with you on this one, im not a tree hugger or anything but this is pretty bad.

[steelwave42]

That sucks. But the only way to actually DO anything about things like this, things that destroy the environment, is to get into a position where you're not dependant on the products. I haven't driven a car for ten years. Haven't even needed public transportation for that long either. And I don't consider myself a hippie, I don't smoke pot all day, I'm not a ****ing vegetarian. So you don't have to be a hippie, you just have to MINIMIZE. If everyone who didn't NEED to drive got rid of thier car it would make a huge difference. But the sad fact is, people are generally to lazy.

[Swellinfo]

You dont have to be a hippie to get ticked off when a million tons of toxic oil gets poured into our oceans. 11 workers on the rig our feared dead. This is simply horrible, and I hope there is some serious penalties placed on those responsible.

I guess they dont know the extent of the damage as of yet, but they said if the oil reaches the coast it could be devastating.

[DaveyB]

i don't know what the cause was, accident or failure, but either way it'll be tough on that area for some time to come. maybe the owner will take some of those amazing profits and invest in some cleanup...

exactly, hope the owner invest into a clean up for this. its happened so we cant change that so a clean up effort should be next, then figure out how and why this happened so it never does again.

[wallysurfr]

Not trying to start an argument but isn't the oil there naturally? I understand that they were drilling yes and this explosion will cause the release of the oil into the water but the oil is there naturally, it's natural to the earth and so is the ocean.

Would we be so upset if the oil was just seeping into the ocean on its own and we weren't drilling? If it was happening on it's own would we push for it to be plugged and controlled from not entering the water? No, we'd probly be pushing for someone to go down there and collect it so our gas prices would go down. lol.

Throw in the fact that Americans are entirely dependent on oil which since you use it and need it, you have to accept the risk of something like this happening from time to time. And dont tell me you minimize your footprint because I guarantee you almost 100% of the things you use everyday contain petroleum or are made by machines driven by gas or delivered by trucks. So it's not just gas for your car...

Don't get me wrong and I don't know the whole story, I would rather not have oil dumped into the Gulf. But should BP go bankrupt because of a mistake they made trying to deliver oil to us? I personally don't think so. Yes I know they make a ridiculous amount of money but they also take on a lot of risk dealing with something so complicated/volatile and have invested billions into their equipment and infrastructure. It's called free market capitalism.

[aka pumpmaster]

That sucks. But the only way to actually DO anything about things like this, things that destroy the environment, is to get into a position where you're not dependant on the products. I haven't driven a car for ten years. Haven't even needed public transportation for that long either. And I don't consider myself a hippie, I don't smoke pot all day, I'm not a ****ing vegetarian. So you don't have to be a hippie, you just have to MINIMIZE. If everyone who didn't NEED to drive got rid of thier car it would make a huge difference. But the sad fact is, people are generally to lazy.

Do you ride a surfboard? Isn't that made of oil? Don't be a fukin hypocrite.

also, from Foxnews this morning: "Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry said Friday morning that no oil appeared to be leaking from a well head at the ocean floor, nor was any leaking at the water's surface. But she said crews were closely monitoring the rig for any more crude that might spill out."

[Zippy]

Not trying to start an argument but isn't the oil there naturally? I understand that they were drilling yes and this explosion will cause the release of the oil into the water but the oil is there naturally, it's natural to the earth and so is the ocean.

The oil that is there is encapsulated deep under ground and only on the rarest occasions would make it to the surface, and then in only tiny amounts.

[oipaul]

Title Investigation of the Nature, Extent and Fate of Natural Oil Seepage Off Southern California
Authors Paul G. Mikolaj, U. of California at Santa Barbara, Alan A. Allen and Roger S. Schlueter, MARCONSULT , Inc.
Source Offshore Technology Conference, 1-3 May , Houston, Texas

Copyright 1972. Offshore Technology Conference
Language English
Preview ABSTRACT

Natural oil and gas seeps in the Santa Barbara Channel and in Santa Monica Bay have been investigated using aerial, surface, and underwater survey techniques. These studies have provided an insight to the nature and extent of natural submarine seepage and have resulted in the development of procedures and equipment for investigating oily material in the marine environment. Ten separate zones of offshore seepage have been investigated and extensive bottom surveys at some of these sites have revealed ocean floor conditions, modes of oil release, and seepage flow rates. Oil is released from these seeps at a total rate approaching 100 barrels per day, and the resulting oil slicks contaminate several square miles of surface water. Standardized methods have been developed for sampling, classifying, and characterizing oil-tar beach pollutants; these techniques have been field-tested and have provided baseline pollution levels along several miles of coastline.

INTRODUCTION

A natural oil or gas seep is a place on the earth's surface where liquid and/or gaseous hydrocarbons have migrated from buried oil-bearing strata. Although not commonplace, numerous areas of natural seepage have been reported worldwide (Link, 1952; Johnson, 1971). They are most often found in the vicinity of major petroleum provinces and, historically, were used as indicators of promising areas for exploratory drilling.

Natural seepage can occur either on land or beneath an overlying body of water. The terres trail seeps tend to be localized with regard to their effects on the neighboring environment. Submerged (or offshore) seeps, however, may have a much broader range of influence. Depending upon its buoyancy, a released oil globule will either stay in the water column which in some cases results in the formation of tar mounds (Vernon and Slater, 1963) - or it will rise to the surface and form an oil slick. These oil slicks may then contaminate a large extent of the neighboring water and shoreline.

On the North American continent, natural submarine oil seeps are known to exist off the coasts of Alaska and California, and in the Gulf of Mexico (Emery, 1960; Johnson, 1971; Link, 1952; Vedder, 1969). What little knowledge currently exists about the nature and effects of oil seepage has been obtained from studies of the seeps off southern California. The first quantitative investigations were concerned primarily with the problem of beach contamination (Ludwig, 1960; Merz, 1959; Rosen, 1959). It was not until the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill, however, that serious efforts were made to study their in situ behavior. These later studies were focused on the seeps off Coal Oil Point in the Santa Barbara Channel and in the Santa Monica Bay (Allen, et al., 1969, 1971; Mikolaj, 1971). The locations of these seep areas are shown in Figure 1.

Although natural submarine oil seeps have an environmental impact on relatively small and localized geographical areas, their study has more than a parochial interest.