Horizon Deepwater Oil Spill: Too Deep to Fail

May 11, 2010 — The oil spill which began April 20 and after nearly 4 weeks is still emptying 5,000 barrels (or more) of oil each day into the ocean, has yet to give us the dramatic pictures that tell us the Earth has been harmed. Are we out of the woods on this one or just over our heads?

The Exxon Valdez was a greater photo op.

Where are the oil soaked birds dutifully being scrubbed clean by rubber-gloved volunteers? Is this really a disaster on the magnitude of the Exxon Valdez if we don’t see dead animals lining the shores of the Gulf covered in goo?

“This is a very strange spill for us, said Dr. Michael Ziccardi, veterinarian and director of California’s Oiled Wildlife Care Network. “Most spills do hit the shoreline and they do impact the coastal environment fairly heavily. [The oil] has been swirling around and not really behaving like anybody thought it would.”

But because this spill isn’t delivering iconic images doesn’t mean damage to the environment and wildlife isn’t happening. The Gulf Coast is home to 3 million acres of wetlands, more than half of the coastal wetlands of the lower 48 states. According to the EPA 97% (by weight) of the commercial fish and shellfish depend on the Gulf estuaries and wetlands at some point their life cycle.

Jim Murrian, executive director of the Nature Conservancy in Mississippi, calls this area the “ocean’s nursery”. If the oil hits at this crucial time of incubation, a whole generation of critical species could be lost.

An aerial view of Florida marsh and coastal forests, where much of
the planet’s food chain begins.

And if fish isn’t on your menu consider that the wetlands are the perfect buffer from storm surges during hurricanes and act as sponges, soaking up excess water that would otherwise flood the mainland. And let’s not forget, wetlands are also nature’s kidneys, filtering out pollutants and chemicals, a service desperately needed these days. As for clean up, Murrian says, “There are lots of ideas out there, but this is unprecedented.”

Even more distressing is what may be occurring far below the floating slick, the unseen part of the unfolding drama. According to Ziccaridi, “Some of [the oil] is going to sink. You’re going to have impacts to the bottom of the Gulf here. Animals may eat the smaller quantities. The question is again at what levels is this really going to be problematic. And we don’t have a huge amount of data on that.”

The dispersants used in the clean up may also be adding to the problem. Finding information about what chemicals actually make up dispersants has been a challenge and the understanding of what dispersants will do to marine life is nil.

“Long-term impacts of dispersed oil and even dispersant, we really don’t have a good idea as far as the impacts to larger vertebrate animals and we’re going to be learning a lot from this spill,” stated Ziccardi.

Even David Horsup, division vice president for energy services research at Nalco (makers of the dispersant) acknowledged, as reported by the Washington Post, that he didn’t know if tests with the product had been done in subsea conditions.

Oil from the Deep Water explosion in the Gulf of Mexico floats on the
surface of the water — surface oil is only the tip of the iceberg
of the Horizon Deepwater oil spill.

And that’s the major problem – we just don’t know the ramifications of an oil spill so far offshore. The process of gathering, distributing and using oil is damaging enough for the environment. Why are we allowing companies like BP to push the envelope of technology, while still using drilling techniques that really haven’t changed much since Upton Sinclair wrote Oil! in 1927? Why are we drilling to breathtaking depths when we have so little knowledge of the consequences? This spill has become our real-time laboratory for finding out what happens when you dump this much oil into the ocean and you have little hope of stemming the tide because the leak is too far away. Instead of too big to fail, it’s too deep to fail.

Whether we’ll see birds soaked in oil on the Gulf Coast beaches only time will tell. Whether or not this spill will affect wildlife and our food chain only time will tell. Eventually this great experiment will give us the results.