BP spill eclipses Exxon Valdez, says governmentOn May 17, there were at least 130,000 barrels of oil on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, and a similar amount had been skimmed off the surface or evaporated, according to a panel of government scientists known as the Flow Rate Technical Group.
The findings, made public by U.S. Geological Survey Director Marcia McNutt, confirm that more oil has been spilled from BP's leaking well than the estimated 257,000 barrels that fouled Alaska's Prince William Sound by the grounding of the Exxon Valdez tanker.
If the panel's calculations are accurate, a total of at least 260,000 barrels of oil had spilled into the ocean by May 17.
The high-end estimate of oil on the water that day was 270,000 barrels, with a similar amount contained or evaporated, the panel found.
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The Exxon clean up took years.
How was the spill cleaned up?Complicated question. It took more than four summers of cleanup efforts before the effort was called off. Not all beaches were cleaned and some beaches remain oiled today. At its peak the cleanup effort included
10,000 workers, about 1,000 boats and roughly 100 airplanes and helicopters, known as Exxon's army, navy, and air force. It is widely believed, however, that wave action from winter storms did more to clean the beaches than all the human effort involved.
link There are more than 20,000 people involved in the clean up and containment effort in the Gulf.
The Ongoing Administration-Wide Response to the Deepwater BP Oil Spill: May 26, 2010By the Numbers to Date:
•Personnel were quickly deployed and more than 20,000 are currently responding to protect the shoreline and wildlife.
•Approximately 1,300 vessels are responding on site, including skimmers, tugs, barges, and recovery vessels to assist in containment and cleanup efforts—in addition to dozens of aircraft, remotely operated vehicles, and multiple mobile offshore drilling units.
•More than 1.85 million feet of containment boom and 1.25 million feet of sorbent boom have been deployed to contain the spill—and approximately 300,000 feet of containment boom and 1 million feet of sorbent boom are available.
•Approximately 11 million gallons of an oil-water mix have been recovered.
•Approximately 840,000 gallons of total dispersant have been deployed—700,000 on the surface and 140,000 subsea. More than 380,000 gallons are available.
•17 staging areas are in place and ready to protect sensitive shorelines, including: Dauphin Island, Ala., Orange Beach, Ala., Theodore, Ala., Panama City, Fla., Pensacola, Fla., Port St. Joe, Fla., St. Marks, Fla., Amelia, La., Cocodrie, La., Grand Isle, La., Shell Beach, La., Slidell, La., St. Mary, La.; Venice, La., Biloxi, Miss., Pascagoula, Miss., and Pass Christian, Miss.
The Obama administration has launched a massive clean up effort, employing more than twice the number of people involved at the peak of the Exxon Valdez clean up.
Aside from criticizing that effort, the media pundits are attempting to shift focus from eight years of dereliction under Bush to accuse the Obama administration of oversight failure, specifically at the MMS.
As Robert Kennedy Jr. points out, the
MMS was corrupted under Bush:
Then, between January and March of 2001, incoming Vice President Dick Cheney conducted secret meetings with over 100 oil industry officials allowing them to draft a wish list of industry demands to be implemented by the oil friendly administration. Cheney also used that time to re-staff the Minerals Management Service with oil industry toadies including a cabal of his Wyoming carbon cronies. In 2003, newly reconstituted Minerals Management Service genuflected to the oil cartel by recommending the removal of the proposed requirement for acoustic switches. The Minerals Management Service's 2003 study concluded that "acoustic systems are not recommended because they tend to be very costly."
The
Obama administration took immediate steps to address the corruption.
Steven Benen puts it in context:<...
Indeed, it wasn't Obama who approved this rig. It wasn't Obama who ignored the need for remote acoustic shutoff switches. It wasn't Obama who corrupted the MMS. It wasn't Obama who spent eight years downplaying the need for regulations and oversight of the oil industry.
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