Oil Spill Chronicles

This is as good a time as any to retreat back to my blog, and express all the horror that now surrounds me. A contaminated sea is lapping at the shores not more than a mile from my house, and somewhere out there are pelicans struggling to fly free from the oil that grips them from beneath. A beautiful sea turtle is looking for a hole in the oil to pop up and breath only to inhale a toxic stew of petrol death. The images of pain and suffering seen out there in my recent travels - acting paramedic to a MSRC skimming vessel contracted by BP - has me intuitively sensitive to that which largely goes unseen short of being captured by a greenpeace activist and posted to a CNN livefeed.

It's now been over a month since BP's Transocean rig suffered a catastrophic blowout killing eleven workers and scaring the souls of over a hundred survivors, and still we see no end in sight for stopping this apocalyptic ecological tragedy. When it first occurred people were concerned and mindful, but soon the story became secondary to other events like Fergie taking a bribe or N Korea accused of sinking a S Korean warship; that is, until the ugly goo began washing up into the marshes and staining the beaches of Grande Island. Until that began to happen it was of little concern to all but the fisherman who depended on the gulf for business, or the rare Southern environmentalist - count me as one. The report and video of oil spilled up and down the Grande Isle beach stirred up local officials and recreational anglers like someone hitting a hornet's nest with a big stick. Then, and only then, did the response by BP appear inordinately slow - it was of course, the oil spill was huge - and the finger pointing, demands, and rumors flew fitfully between state and parish officials, the feds, EPA, Coast guard, and even celebrities (Keven Kostner and his miracle machine). Everyone seemed to have an accusation that supported their claim that BP wasn't doing enough - quite obvious - that they could do it better (I doubt it), and every hair brain out of their garage idea that could be conceived of to absorb oil...even hair from the barber shop was balley hooed on the nightly news! It isn't that I don't believe any of these methods can or would work, they do, but there are many more things that go into oil spill mitigation than a good idea. There's logistics, quantity, testing, safety, costs - although this shouldn't be a factor - and on and on. It does make people feel like they're playing their small part, being the hero, or simply hoping to make a killing on a patented idea. Little does everyone know that this spill is being organized, controlled, and manipulated by the orchestrations of corporations and their endless bank accounts. While many people who are employed by BP care about the environment and feel impassioned to defend the wetlands and pelican rookeries, they are easily eclipsed by the power of the corporate entity. That entity is completely apathetic and calculatingly cold. People have a tendency to project their morals on a company that has only one capitalistic goal - profits and the protection thereof. That's the hard truth behind the power.

Meanwhile the oil gushes out from broken pipes, leaking BOP's, and some say even the sea floor! There's endless debate over how much exactly is leaking, the official amount 5,000 bpd - grossly underestimated in my opinion, an opinion based off 3 weeks of direct observation during skimming operations. If it's 5K bpd than why did 10 300 ton vessels skimming for oil in one day haul in 40,000 barrels and we didn't even make a dent in the oil that was spreading across the gulf? Why have scientist found huge plums of undersea oil that still, as of yet, reached the surface? Why have MIT scientists, using fluid dynamic models, calculated a figure far exceeding 5K bpd? I'll tell you why - it's not, it's a made up figure, or one that NOAA calculated by looking at some satellite photo's, imagery that in no way shows the full extent of this spill, and that brings up another issue - dispersant's. BP has been using dispersant's since day one, without consulting EPA, and using a product that has been banned in Europe for over a decade and has never had any toxicological studies done on, but hey, this is BP, they can do anything out there they like - right? The clear demonstration of their corporate power came when the EPA ordered them to switch to a less toxic dispersant and BP refused citing that there wasn't a product that was less toxic and readily available, which if anyone did any research at all (a simple google search shows many products that would easy to get on site too) would show that wasn't the case. Also, it has been established that the company that makes the dispersant has a profitable deal worked out with BP before hand - naturally. The issue I personally have with corexit dispersant is that it makes the oil impossible to skim up, miscilizes the oil into huge red underwater clouds that will likely do untold damage to reefs, fisheries, and oyster beds, and no one knows what it does to the respiratory system of clean up workers - but who cares about them? Certainly not corporations which have a long history of treating people like disposable inorganic machinery. I know because I still have chest congestion from working out in that spill...do I sue BP? I'd never see the money, and so what if I did, it's not like money is useful while rotting away in my deathbed, or will it give me any consolation while I wait for the gamma knife that's warming up to zap a tumor buried in my head. Oh sure, the MSRC vessel contracted a industrial hygienist to measure gas readings - VOC's, benzene, and hydrogen sulfide gases, but the respirators were never utilized when the readings regularly exceeded safe limits. One day out there the VOC's exceeded 120 ppm, twice what is safe, but the project manager brushed it off as too much trouble to get the respirators out. If something doesn't kill you today, corporations will care less if it kills the worker multiple decades later because they know it becomes near impossible to connect the two.

Tomorrow, BP prepares to conduct 12 hrs of testing before initializing a live top kill which I expect to fail. Even BP is preparing for just such an eventuality - as if they already know. The president has ordered BP to keep the live ROV feed up during the procedure, originally BP was against this because they know that if they fail their stocks will plummet on the news. Concerned citizens will watch in hopeful rapture.

Here's a link to my offshore experience with pics and video (found on utube - pelican rescue: megadoom911) http://www.doomers.us/forum2/index.php/topic,67380.0.html