Contemporary American Politics - Essay Example

?Contemporary American Politics: Compare the BP Oil Spill and Santa Barbara Oil Spill of 1969 Two of the major oil spills that have occurred in the course of history included the BP Oil spill in 2010, also known as the Deepwater Oil Spill, and the Santa Barbara Oil Spill in 1969. This paper will be comparing the gravity of the two oil spills and the aftermath of these two spills. The Deepwater Horizon took place in the Gulf of Mexico and flowed continuously for three months in 2010 and according to some reports, it is still seeping a little. It is widely regarded as one of the largest accidental marine oil spills in the petroleum industry. This spill was basically initiated from a sea-floor oil gusher that was triggered from the 20th April 2010 explosion of Deepwater Horizon, which was drilled onto the BP-operated Macondo Prospect. This particular explosion caused the demise of 11 men working on the platform and also resulted in 17 people getting injured. The overflowing well head was capped on 15th July, 2010 after it had discharged a good 4.9 million barrels of crude oil. It was estimated that 53,000 barrels were discharged from the well before it was capped. However, it was also perceived that the consistent flow declined with time, i.e. starting at about 62,000 barrels per day and declining with time when the reservoir containing hydrocarbons feeding the gusher became exhausted. The relief well process was successfully executed on 19th September 2010 and the Federal Government announced the well as effectively dead. 1 In August, 2011, the oil and oil sheen which covered a broad expanse of water was reported as not surfacing from BP’S Macondo well. There was scientific research conducted, which verified that oil is a chemical match for Maconodo 252. The spill wreaked widespread damage and chaos in both the marine and wildlife habitats and also in the Gulf’s fishing and tourism industries. Anchored barriers, floating containment booms, skimmer ships, sand-filled barricades along the edge of shorelines and certain dispersants were used to safeguard the hundreds of miles of beaches, estuaries and wetlands from the diffusing of oil. It was also reported by scientists that certain underwater plumes of dissolved oil were seen, which weren’t entirely visible at the surface and also an 80-square kill zone, which surrounded the blown well. During late November 2010, around 4200 square miles of the Gulf became re-closed to shrimping after a certain number of tar balls were discovered in the shrimpers’ nets. The amount of area of the Louisiana shoreline affected by the oil spill increased from 287 miles (462 km) in July to around 320 miles, i.e. almost 510 km in late November 2010. During January 2011, it was reported by an oil spill commissioner that tar balls are continuing to remain washed up; there are trails of oil sheen which are spotted in the wake of fishing boats, and wetlands marsh grass continues to decay and gives off a foul stench. Furthermore, it was discovered that crude oil essentially lies off shore in very deep water and in fine slits and sands offshore. The Santa Barbara Oil Spill took place in January and February in the year of 1969 in the Santa Barbara Channel, near the eminent city of Santa Barbara in the region of Southern California. After its occurrence, it was speculated as the largest oil spill in the United State Waters and is now considered as the third largest oil spill after the Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010 and the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989. It also regarded as the largest oil spill to have taken place in the waters off California. The spill is said to have occurred primarily due to a blow-out on 28th January, 1969, i.e. an estimated 10 kilometers away from the coast on Union Oil’s platform. Within a period of 10 days, an approximated 80,000 to 100,000 barrels of crude oil leaked into the Channel with additional leaking taking place on the beach of Santa Barbara in Southern California. This basically formulates the coastline from two major places, Goleta to Ventura as well as the major four northern Channel Islands. Needless to say, this spill had a very vast and detrimental impact on the marine life residing in the Channel. It killed thousands of sea birds and various rare marine creatures including elephants, sea lions, dolphins and seals. It also received extensive media coverage and was the victim of widespread public outrage in the United States. This eventually culminated in various pieces of environmental legislation, which lasted for an extensive duration. Furthermore, this legislation also resulted in the creation of a regulatory and legal structure for the modern environmental movements to take place in the U.S. On 28th January, 1969, workers were relentlessly drilling a well, A-21 in the morning time, which had managed to reach its ultimate depth of 3,479 feet, a feat that had been managed and achieved in only 2 weeks. Of this entire depth, only the topmost 239 feet had been well fitted with a steel conductor casing; the rest of it was fitted once the drill bit was out. When the workers wrenched the drill bit out with some intense difficulty, there was a huge amount of gas, oil and mud that spluttered into the air into the rig and covered the mud with filth. Some of the workers tried to screw a blow-out preventer on the pipe, but the attempt wasn’t successful. All of the workers apart from those who were absorbed in the plugging attempt were asked to vacate because of the danger of explosion from the plentiful amount of natural gas which was blown from the hole. The workers then tried their last resort which involved dropping the drill pipe, measured at a length of almost 800 m long in the hole. Lastly, the top of the well pipe was crushed with extreme force by using a pair of blind rams. These were huge steel blocks, which were slammed together with great potency to prevent anything from escaping the well. This whole affair took precisely 13 minutes, i.e. from the time of initial blow-out to the time when the bind rams were activated. This was when the workers noticed the rise in bubbling at the ocean surface both on the rig and in the boats. The plugging of the well was futile in ceasing the blow-out, which was now speeding through the ocean floor in various places. Under normal circumstances, an offshore well would have been built, replete with 300 feet (91) of conductor casing, which was necessitated by the federal regulations at that point in time. This was an approximately 870 feet (270m) of a secondary inner steel tube, which was widely regarded as the surface casing. These protective casings were anticipated because they were to be used for stopping the cinch of high-pressure gas. This is what precisely happened at A-21. Since there wasn’t any casing available below 238 feet, i.e. 73 m, which would be enough for stopping the strong pressure of the gas, the oil and gas ripped through the floor and resultantly, a lot of oil and gas was discharged into the water. Over there, a thick oil slick had already begun to mount and spread. 2 Americans had never had such a spill and they were astonished and outraged. There were wide-spread protests. A number of Californians responded to the spill by putting their gasoline credit cards on skewers and consequently setting them on fire; this was followed by further horrors. During the period of June, 1969, Cuyahoga River in Ohio burst into flames. The Congress passed a National Environmental Policy Act by the end of the year, also known by the acronym, NEPA, and this basically required all the federal agencies to file statements for all those actions which could have an important ecological impact. Hence, one spring later, millions of people went on the streets to celebrate the Earth Day. President Richard Nixon also created the Environmental Protection Agency during the second anniversary of the spring and brought into effect the Clean Air Act. When one tries to compare the Santa Barbara oil spill with the Deepwater Horizon spill, the Santa Barbara oil spill looks like a puddle. According to the available estimates, the BP oil spill into the Gulf of Mexico everyday accounted to how much the Union discharged into the Santa Barbara Channel in total, and the BP was at that time only in its second month. The news of the Gulf recently revealed that the spill formulated an entire undersea plume of oil, which was estimated to be ten miles long. Also, some of the oil entered the loop current and was carried towards Florida. Therefore, the Gulf area had to be increased in size (almost doubled) by the federal government, which had been previously closed due to fishing. According to President Barack Obama, the spill was a “massive and potentially unprecedented environmental disaster”, a description which truly underscores the gravity of the case and the situation.3 One striking similarity between the BP oil spill and the Santa Barbara oil spill is that it brought one of the dangers of fossil fuel dependence home to even the non-environmental American consciousness of a lot of people. People have now become awakened to the perils of drilling for oil under sea, which is located at depths beyond the reach of humans. This situation greatly resembles the Santa Barbara oil spill in 1969, where a lot of people got alarmed and frightened, which resulted in the termination of California off-shore drilling. When the oil spill is perceived in an immediate manner, the causes leading to the catastrophe can be considered as technical. The Deepwater Horizon well was not sealed properly, and natural gas would accumulate in it. When the workers on the rig would try to stimulate the well’s blowout preventer, it failed miserably. Any attempts taken to activate the blowout preventer led to no avail. An effort taken to cap the leak by using a hundred ton steel funnel also failed miserably. Sometime later, BP succeeded in putting a mile-long tube into the riser which led from the well. Accordingly, it was believed that it was accumulating a thousand barrels of oil in a day, and that’s why it was claimed that the well was leaking (crude oil continues to leak into the Gulf). However, the real reasons behind the disaster go much deeper. Since America consumes the world’s most readily accessible oil, it was forced to look for fuel in remote places and to extract it in slightly challenging ways. The Deepwater Horizon well was drilled in five thousand feet of water, with a total depth of eighteen thousand feet as opposed to the Santa Barbara well. The latter was drilled in only around two hundred feet of water; the total depth accounted for thirty five hundred feet.4 The 2010 oil spill wasn’t just important because the spectacle of the multi-billion dollar oil industry was trying and failing to close a blow-out in conditions which could be compared to working conditions on the moon, neither was the sight of marshes, pelicans and fishermen drenched in oil, which made it important. It captivated the attention of people worldwide because it represented a very important turning point in the tumultuous relationship with crude oil. Everyone could see the environmental cost that it bore. Even though environmentalists were furious after the oil spill, they saw it as a major opportunity. The Santa Barbara Oil Spill, which at that point in time was the biggest oil spill, helped to kick start the green movement and also ascertained that offshore drilling would not be extended till the Atlantic or Pacific coasts. They saw it like this: A big oil spill in a media-intensive moment which would help to persuade Americans to block all the new off-shore productions, taking place in the Gulf or Alaska, and this would help to create and raise support for more renewable forms of energy which would result in less spilling. Bibliography Clarke, K.C., and Jeffrey J. Hemphill. “The Santa Barbara Oil Spill: A Retrospective.” Yearbook of the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers 64, Editor Darrick Danta. University of Hawai'i Press, 2002. http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/~kclarke/Papers/SBOilSpill1969.pdf, Kolbert, Elizabeth. “Oil Shocks.” The New Yorker, 31st May, 2010. http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2010/05/31/100531taco_talk_kolbert. Mufson, Steven. “Two years after BP oil spill, offshore drilling still poses risks.” The Washington Post, 20th April, 2012. http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/two-years-after-bp-oil-spill-offshore-drilling-still-poses-risks/2012/04/19/gIQAHOkDUT_story.html, Accessed 14th May, 2012 Walsh, Bryan. “Two Years after the Gulf Oil Spill, Why We Won’t Stop Drilling,” Time Econcentric, on 20th April, 2012. http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2012/04/20/two-years-after-the-gulf-oil-spill-why-we-wont-stop-drilling/#ixzz1urfGTaIH. Read More