An Oil Man Puts Deep Horizon Oil Spill In Perspective

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No one can bring the oil workers killed on the Deep Horizon back to life. The oil rig itself was a total loss. But the environmental damage from the oil spill will be limited in both time and geographic area. The well control effort and environmental mitigation efforts are ongoing and extensive.

Open Choke blog is run by an anonymous oil man who offers his informed opinions on recent developments.

2. How much oil will this spill (worst case scenario)? A. 150,000 barrels.

3. How much is it leaking now? A. 5,000 barrels per day, although it sounds so much bigger when you multiply by 42 and put it into gallons.

4. How much natural oil seepage is there in the Gulf of Mexico? A. 5,000 barrels per day, although it is widely distributed and not point sourced.

5. Where will this rank? A. 37th in the world's top 71 man-made oil spills.

6. What happened to the 121,000 barrels spilled by the Mega Borg (the second largest spill in the GOM)? A. They burned it. 1800 barrels recovered, 270 barrels left after burning, so, in essence, via burning and wind and wave action biodegradation, 121,000 barrels turned into a little over 2000 barrels. The Prudhoe Bay incident was magnified because it had little wind or wave action... it was a closed system.

7. How does this compare to, say, wildfires? A. Wildfires fully devastate the areas they cover, and typically take 5-30 years to fully recover from a ground fire and up to 150 years to recover from a crown fire. Full recovery from an oil spill is typically a year or less. _OpenChoke

More graphs and discussion at the link above.

Here, the anonymous oil man blogger discusses the (unlikely) conspiracy theory that eco-terrorists may have destroyed the Deep Horizon.

Clearly, the long term damage depends upon how much oil is spilled, how quickly it is spilled, and where the oil is transported by wind and current. Light sweet crude will lose a lot of volume into the atmosphere via evaporation. BP is attempting to cover the spill with a containment vessel so as to capture and store as much leaked oil as possible before it can reach the surface. Modern bacterial and enzymatic treatments along with chemical dispersants can break up much of the floating oil, leaving much of the denser residues to sink.

It is safe to say that engineers and techs from BP, Halliburton, Transocean, US government agencies, and other interested parties, will be busy 24 hours a day working on solutions, until the well is controlled and the slick is contained.

Update: This news story quotes a US Senator and a US Representative who overflew the spill site earlier today:

U.S. Rep. Gene Taylor on Saturday said people shouldn’t be so scared about the massive oil spill in the Gulf; he said after flying over it, “it’s not as bad as I thought.” Taylor said the oil could break up before reaching Mississippi shores.

Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker said he is putting his focus on finding a way to contain the crude that continues to spill each day from the uncapped well in the Gulf.
Taylor flew over the site of the sunken Deepwater Horizon rig Saturday along with Department of Marine Resources Director Bill Walker and Rep. Jo Bonner of Alabama.

They viewed the spill from the extended ramp of a Coast Guard twin-engine plane 1,000 feet above the water.

“At the moment, it’s not as bad as I thought it would be,” he said, shortly after returning from the three-hour tour. Taylor told a group of reporters waiting at Atlantic Aviation he was less concerned about the spill after witnessing its movement firsthand.

“This isn’t Katrina. It’s not Armageddon,” Taylor said. “A lot of people are scared and I don’t think they should be.” _SunHerald