The environmental disaster that has been playing out in the Gulf of Mexico is only getting worse. Though initially the spill seemed to be under control, last week it became clear that oil was still spilling uncontrollably from the well that the April 20th oil rig explosion left open and spewing into the ocean. The accident should have triggered a safety mechanism called a blowout preventer, but the mechanism failed. Now 200,000 plus gallons of oil are spilling into the gulf every day.
So far, all efforts to control the spill have all failed. ”It’s probably easier to fly in space than do some of this,” Charlie Holt, BP’s drilling and completion operations manager in the Gulf of Mexico, told the AP on Sunday. BP PLC is going to try to put a system in place that would siphon away the geyser through a series of 74 ton, concrete and metal boxes that would be lowered to the ocean floor to capture the oil and siphon it to a barge. The system has never been used at such depths, nearly a mile under water, and it will take six to eight days to get in place.
If BP can’t find a way to control the geyser, then it may flow for months until a second well can be dug to cut off the first. BP has had limited success with chemical dispersants, meant to break it up before it reaches the surface, but rough seas have made it difficult to skim the oil from the water.
Even if it works, environmentalists and fishermen alike are wondering how long it will take the gulf to recover, if it ever will. Commercial fishing has been shut down until the slick is under control. Ten days in the prime of the spring season is a hard enough thing for the families who depend on fishing for their livelihood to face, the prospect that this could affect their catch for years to come is devastating.
“My kids will be talking about the effect of this when they’re my age,” 41-year-old Venice charter boat captain Bob Kenney told the AP. It’s not just fishing, which is vital to the Gulf’s economy, that will be affected. The spill is perilously close to Mississippi River shipping lanes, which are still key to the US’s shipping economy as a whole.
