Booms and Skimmers – These guys suck up oil and water from the ocean surface. “Booming the area off with floating dams to protect these areas is the best option, but the size of the spill will exhaust the world’s supply of oil booms very quickly.”
Underwater Containment Dome – This is what we’ve heard the most about. The idea is to cap the leaking wells and collect oil at the surface. A 12m tall, 7m wide, 4m deep steel-concrete box will be dropped in to a spot where the two leaks are releasing the most oil. A second box well be placed near a third leak. Oil will be collected and piped to a ship over the course of about a week. Unfortunately, no dome has been deployed at depths of 1524m before, and there’s a 2-4 week construction time.
Dispersants/Detergents – These chemicals turn crude oil in to fine droplets for microbial breakdown. Unfortunately, the amount of oil in the gulf would “overwhelm such efforts”. Another option is to try to apply the dispersants and detergents right at the leak site, but it’s unclear if that will work or not. “Dispersants have proven far more effective than skimmers, which may only be able to soak up 10 per cent of the spill,” the Coast Guard said today.
Burn – This method is pretty straightforward: set fire to sections of the slick and let the crude burn off. It’s generally the last resort.
Microbes – Breeding microbes on a large enough scale to combat spill is impractical. Also, the microbes don’t really break down the crude, rather they work on the substance at the interface between the surface water and oil, so this probably won’t be explored too deeply. [Research by Don Nguyen; Sources: The Big Picture, Tech News Daily, FoxNews.com, Chron.com, LiveScience]
Alex
Thursday, May 6, 2010 at 10:18 AMThey should just nuke it. No, really think about a small tactical nuke or maybe even just a large conventional explosion will seal that hole right up. Ive read the soviets did this around 3 times when they experienced similar problems.
Alex
Thursday, May 6, 2010 at 10:53 AMhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ojCbqfRRr8&playnext_from=TL&videos=_hCSs0itmDU&feature=sub
DMZFreak
Thursday, May 6, 2010 at 11:01 AMYears ago I saw a documentary on car safety amade and one of the crash experts made an interesting point, which was about how we measure the consquences of reckless behaviour. Because cars were becoming safer a number of people started to think that it was OK to drive in a reckless manner and cause crashes. However, if cars were rigged in such a manner that the smallest incident can cause the car to blow up then you would have nothing but the safest drivers you could imagine.
A simular principle needs to apply in terms of these risky drilling operations. What needs to happen is that the oil companies have to front up a desposit, or huge security bond like you would have for a rent agreement. When damage does occur it is forfitted to pay for the clean up. The financial impost would be so great they would be obliged to invest vastly more in the safety of their operations.
Walter Starck
Thursday, May 6, 2010 at 1:19 PMFollow up studies of oil spills have repeatedly found that clean up efforts have only increased
environmental damage and delayed natural recovery. Crude oil is a natural organic substance. The volatile components largely evaporate within a few days and much of the heavier residue is broken down by microbial action over a few months. The heaviest residue accumulates sediment particles
and sinks to the bottom where it mixes with further sediment and ends up no more harmful than
pieces of the bitumen used for roads.
Dispersants result in a toxic sludge which mixes into the water column where it is far more
damaging to marine life that if left to naturally degrade while floating on the surface. Their
only real purpose is cosmetic and PR at the expense of the environment.
The popular image of dead and dying birds and mammals covered in sticky oil is a relatively brief event and as sad as it may be at the time, their populations soon recover.
In the First Persian Gulf War in 1991, the largest oil spill ever occurred when 6-8 million tonnes was dumped into an area of shallow water and reefs. With a thousand oil well fires to contend with, no effort was made to do anything about the marine spill. Follow-up studies found that within 4 months most of the oil had been degraded naturally and within 4 years even the most heavily affected areas had largely or completely recovered.
A major blowout like the current one is a disaster for all of the companies involved and they do everything possible to prevent it. Imposing giant fines and huge costs for a useless cleanup charade is beyond stupid. This only adds huge increases to production costs which ultimately have to be paid by the end consumer. In the end, the only one really being penalised is ourselves
All the phony righteousness and hand wringing is disgusting. Either get over it and leave the
industry to deal with it or decide to live with less oil, more expensive oil and all that this would mean.
Geoff
Thursday, May 6, 2010 at 2:17 PMUmmm, Walter… do you work in the oil industry?
You appear to be saying that the oil company responsible for a spill should not be penalised any further, and that the loss of their valuable oil and equipment is punishment enough.
The Montara oil spill in the North West of Australia was caused by human mistakes and allegations of a culture of short-cuts. But of course, PTTEP have suffered enough and we should just get over it, yes?
And anyway, it’s a natural substance and it all sorts itself out in a short time. (btw: how would you like to have a large amount of crude oil dumped on your suburb? It’s a natural product)