May 16th, 2010
Environmental Pollution
Gulf of Mexico Oil Disaster Worse than Predicted
The Oil spill is now thought to be much worse than previously predicted. Initially the oil spill was thought to be gushing out at a rate of 5,000 barrels a day. But after experts looked at a video released by British Petroleum, they’ve come to the conclusion that the oil could be gushing out at a rate of 50,000 barrels a day.
If these new estimates are correct then the Gulf of Mexico oil spill could already be worse than the Exxon Valdez disaster of 1989 which leaked more than 250,000 barrels of oil.
BP officials have tried to play down the escalating seriousness of the situation by stating that there is no reliable way to estimate the rate of flow of the oil leak. But experts in the field don’t agree. There are known and well established ways to estimate the rate of oil flow. A method known as Particle Image Velocimetry was used to analyse the videotape of the gushing oil from the sea floor. A computer program was used to trace the flow of particles and from the data collected it calculated how fast the particles were moving. Another method was also used to calculate the fluid flow.
Both methods came to the conclusion that the rate of flow was more than ten times greater than was originally thought. BP has already started to discredit the results of the findings and state that there is no way to estimate the flow of oil coming out the pipe accurately.
But of course there isn’t a way to estimate accurately the degree of spillage. But the methods used are supposed to be approximations. It seems that the new results might be better approximations to the actual rate of flow than those first agreed upon by BP.
The problem with this particular environmental disaster is that it is happening incredibly deep in the Ocean floor (1500m). It is very difficult to guess the true environmental impact of the spill because by the time it begins to show it has already spread miles and miles from its point of origin.
Hopefully, the spill will be controlled soon but for progress to be made BP needs to face up to the seriousness of the situation.
For more information go to:
Silent Spring
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