Oil spill in gulf

[Morgan]

I am just becoming ill watching the oil spill heading ever closer to the wildlife in the Gulf Of Mexico.

Not sure how to help. Maybe I'll go clean birds this summer.

I've noticed the Dawn dish soap will donate 1.00 each time you purchase their dish soap for events such as these.

How Dawn Helps Save Wildlife | Dawn-Dish.com

My observant child pointed out that you do have to go to the website on the bottle to activate the dollar donation.

It just wants a number off the back of the bottle, your zip code, and store you purchased. Nothing else. No e-mails, etc.

Hope everyone is doing as well as can be expected.

Morgan

[jonsi]

Hi Morgan,

I'm worried too. Thank you for the info on Dawn dish soap. I'm almost out and will go to the website you provided.

Peace,
~jonsi

[Morgan]

You're welcome jonsi.

Here is more of the story. It appears that Haliburton played a role in the rig explosion. Good God. Can't say that I'm at all surprised.

___________________

Halliburton is named as a defendant in most of the more than two dozen lawsuits filed by Gulf Coast people and businesses claiming the oil spill could ruin them financially. Without elaborating, one lawsuit filed by an injured technician on the rig claims that Halliburton "improperly and negligently" performed its job in cementing the well, "increasing the pressure at the well and contributing to the fire, explosion and resulting oil spill."

Cementing is a process of applying a liquid slurry of cement and water to points inside or outside of the casing, a pipe used to prevent the wall of the hole from caving in during drilling and providing a means of bringing oil and gas up later if the well starts producing.

Halliburton said it had four employees stationed on the rig at the time of the explosion, performing a variety of tasks, including cementing.

"Halliburton continues to assist in efforts to identify the factors that may have (led) up to the disaster, but it is premature and irresponsible to speculate on any specific causal issues," the company said in a statement Friday.

__________________________


Bird Coated In Oil As Louisiana Gulf Spill Nears Wetlands (PHOTOS)


Morgan

[Sadsack]

I've been worried sick about all this. The implications are mind-boggling.... wildlife, fishing industry, economy, ecology, price of fuel, tourism, etc, etc.

I live a quarter mile from a Gulf beach.

This is so horrible - yeah, Sarah "drill baby drill".

SS

[Jo]

It is a nightmare. It could take months to stop the leak according to BBC.

It took over 10 million man hours to install the rig to plunge down into a mile of ocean and 3 miles of mud, rock and salt.

BP make me mad.

[Sadsack]

Trouble reading this e-mail? View it online.

OIL DRILLING DISASTER IN THE GULF: YOUR HELP NEEDED!

Birds in Trouble
A number of species are prompting special concern, including the Brown Pelican — just removed from the Endangered Species List, and beach-nesting terns and gulls (Caspian Tern, Royal Tern, Sandwich Tern, Least Tern, Laughing Gull, Black Skimmer) and shorebirds (American Oystercatcher, Wilson's Plover, Snowy Plover).

The coastal Reddish Egret, large wading birds (Roseate Spoonbill, Ibises, Herons, Egrets), and marsh birds (Mottled Duck, Clapper Rail, Black Rail, Seaside Sparrow, Marsh-Dwelling Songbirds) are all threatened as well.

Already, ocean-dwelling birds may be affected, like the Magnificent Frigatebird, should they come in contact with the oil.

Migratory shorebirds (plovers, sandpipers and relatives) and migratory songbirds (warblers, orioles, buntings, flycatchers, swallows, and others) may find their landing places despoiled by oil.

See Oil Spill: Wildlife at Risk, New York Times.
The tragic oil platform explosion off Louisiana’s Gulf Coast is rapidly becoming an environmental disaster.1
The loss of 11 oil workers may be just the beginning of this tragedy as millions of gallons of oil head for land, putting birds, wildlife and the coastal environment in grave danger.
Audubon Mobilizing to Help
Audubon staff across the country are marshalling resources and personnel to respond to the looming disaster. Audubon Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi staff and chapters are working to prepare for impacts to birds, wildlife and important habitat as the spill makes its way toward land.
Audubon is coordinating volunteer efforts and you can help! From cleaning oiled birds (requires proper training) to counting birds to picking up trash on beaches before the oil hits — there are many things that you can do to help. If you are interested in volunteering, please sign up here. We will be back in touch soon with more details.
While every hand is needed and welcome, it's vital that volunteers offer their help through coordinated efforts like this so that the greatest good can be focused where it is needed the most. Please avoid going to affected areas or handling wildlife until you are part of coordinated responses. Even well-intentioned people can inadvertently interfere with important recovery efforts.
Audubon has our people on the ground and is working with state and federal agencies leading the response — we can help find the best volunteer job for you.
Let's Stop Further Spills
If you have not already submitted comments on the Interior Department plan to expand offshore oil and gas drilling, now is the time. A long-term energy strategy should focus on clean, job-producing, renewable technologies, not expanded drilling off our sensitive coasts.
1 "Size of Spill in Gulf of Mexico Larger than Thought," New York Times, 4/29/10
Do you know someone else who cares about protecting America's beaches, birds and wildlife? Help us to spread the word:
Tell-a-friend!
Trouble with the "Take Action" link in the message? Try cutting-and-pasting this link into your web browser: www.audubonaction.org/site/Advocacy?id=823. To get to the volunteer page, use this link: www.audubonaction.org/SpillResponse.

Audubon

1150 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20036
(202) 861-2242 | audubonaction@audubon.org

[Sadsack]

I am scared to death about the implications of this....and not just for those of us on the Gulf Coast.
I heard an editorial the other day that said that every person in the U.S. will be impacted one way or another, and beyond the boundaries of the U.S. Obviously, this includes Mexico, but it goes beyond that. This will be the worst man-made disaster in the history of the planet (including Cernobyl).

SS


Scientists Say Gulf Spill Is Way Worse Than Estimated. How’d We Get It So Wrong?
Posted: 14 May 2010 10:42 AM PDT
Videos of the oil leak 5,000 feet down in the Gulf of Mexico are coming out, and according to some scientists, the news is even worse than we thought.
If you remember back a few weeks to the outset of the BP oil spill, the official estimate was that 1,000 barrels of oil (42,000 gallons) was leaking into the Gulf of Mexico. While that’s nothing to sneeze at, the total wasn’t catastrophic compared to historic spills like the Exxon Valdez. Then, more than a week after the Deepwater Horizon exploded and sank, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration did their own quick calculation and quintupled the estimate to 5,000 barrels per day.
BP later acknowledged to Congress that the worst case, if the leak accelerated, would be 60,000 barrels a day, a flow rate that would dump a plume the size of the Exxon Valdez spill into the gulf every four days. BP’s chief executive, Tony Hayward, has estimated that the reservoir tapped by the out-of-control well holds at least 50 million barrels of oil [The New York Times].
Now, according to an independent analysis done by Purdue’s Steve Werely with video footage of the leak, that worst-case figure by BP is close to what’s actually happening, and the true total might be even higher. Werely estimates the leak at 70,000 barrels per day, and with a 20% uncertainty in the numbers, that gives a range of 56,000 to 84,000.

Werely told The Guardian he based his estimate on techniques which track the speed of objects travelling in the flow stream.”You can see in the video lots of swirls and vortices pumping out of the end of the pipe, and I used a computer code to track those swirls and come up with the speed at which the oils is shooting out of the pipe,” he said. “From there it is a very simple calculation to figure out what is the volume flow” [The Guardian].
A second estimate by Eugene Chiang of UC-Berkeley provided a window of 20,000 to 100,000 barrels a day. Though the margin is wider, the estimate roughly coincides with Werely’s. But, if these guys are right, then how the heck did initial estimates miss the mark so badly?
The 5,000-barrel-a-day estimate was produced in Seattle by a NOAA unit that responds to oil spills. It was calculated with a protocol known as the Bonn convention that calls for measuring the extent of an oil spill, using its color to judge the thickness of oil atop the water, and then multiplying [The New York Times].
But according to other experts, that method isn’t especially accurate for large spills, especially one like this with large quantities of oil below the surface, unable to be seen from above.
There’s another alternative way to measure this, too. Researchers can use ultrasound to measure the flow rate; they do it under happier circumstances to measure how much oil or gas a well is providing. But two researchers who were going to take these measurements were turned away because BP was about to commence its now-failed attempt to install a containment box over the leak. They haven’t been invited back yet.
It’s one thing to be wrong, but the troubling development in measuring the spill is that neither BP nor NOAA appears terribly interested in getting the right number. When asked about the varying estimates of the leak total, BP leaders have deflected the question and said that it doesn’t really matter how big the spill is because their response would be the same. The government has responded in much the same way:
“I think the estimate at the time was, and remains, a reasonable estimate,” said Dr. Lubchenco, the NOAA administrator. “Having greater precision about the flow rate would not really help in any way. We would be doing the same things” [The New York Times].
For immediate response that may be true. But what about after the spill is finally, someday, stopped? Just as one example, it came out this week that the Deepwater Horizon, like many other rigs in the Gulf, was given the go-ahead to drill without receiving permits for assessing potential dangers to endangered species in the area. Now that responders are playing catch-up after the fact, it might be nice to know whether the leak amounts to 5,000 barrels a day or an entire order of magnitude higher than that.
In any case, the Coast Guard is beginning to treat the spill as a major disaster, according to Commandant Thad Allen.
“It has the potential to be catastrophic … I am going to act as if it is,” Allen told reporters in a briefing [Reuters].

[Sadsack]

This is from 2 1/2 years ago - so what has happened since????


Salt water as fuel? Erie man hopes so

YouTube - Salt Water Fuel

[belle9]

Did you guys know that they use agrobac to clean up oil spills sometimes? How very Monsanto of them.

Originally Posted by Morgan

I am just becoming ill watching the oil spill heading ever closer to the wildlife in the Gulf Of Mexico.

Not sure how to help. Maybe I'll go clean birds this summer.

I've noticed the Dawn dish soap will donate 1.00 each time you purchase their dish soap for events such as these.

How Dawn Helps Save Wildlife | Dawn-Dish.com

My observant child pointed out that you do have to go to the website on the bottle to activate the dollar donation.

It just wants a number off the back of the bottle, your zip code, and store you purchased. Nothing else. No e-mails, etc.

Hope everyone is doing as well as can be expected.

Morgan

[belle9]

When the CEOs of these companies testified before Congress, they all simply blamed each other. No solutions were forthcoming. These companies don't seem to care how much death and destruction they cause.

Originally Posted by Morgan

You're welcome jonsi.

Here is more of the story. It appears that Haliburton played a role in the rig explosion. Good God. Can't say that I'm at all surprised.

___________________

Halliburton is named as a defendant in most of the more than two dozen lawsuits filed by Gulf Coast people and businesses claiming the oil spill could ruin them financially. Without elaborating, one lawsuit filed by an injured technician on the rig claims that Halliburton "improperly and negligently" performed its job in cementing the well, "increasing the pressure at the well and contributing to the fire, explosion and resulting oil spill."

Cementing is a process of applying a liquid slurry of cement and water to points inside or outside of the casing, a pipe used to prevent the wall of the hole from caving in during drilling and providing a means of bringing oil and gas up later if the well starts producing.

Halliburton said it had four employees stationed on the rig at the time of the explosion, performing a variety of tasks, including cementing.

"Halliburton continues to assist in efforts to identify the factors that may have (led) up to the disaster, but it is premature and irresponsible to speculate on any specific causal issues," the company said in a statement Friday.

__________________________


Bird Coated In Oil As Louisiana Gulf Spill Nears Wetlands (PHOTOS)


Morgan