After the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, operated by British Petroleum, exploded and sank, the resultant oil spill has ran virtually unchecked for the past two weeks. An estimated 210,000 gallons a day are gushing out of a broken pipe 5,000 feet below sea level.
President Barack Obama called the spill “a potentially unprecedented environmental disaster.” The Pentagon said that 17,000 National Guard troops were called up by the Gulf Coast states to help battle the spill on Tuesday.
The potential environmental consequences, according to some experts, include ruined natural habitats and even perhaps fragile species wiped out of certain ecosystems.
The shrimp and fish industries will have massive economic setbacks because of the spill. The spill could potentially reach all the way to the Atlantic due to the strong current coming out of the Gulf.
Edward B. Overton, an environmental science professor at Louisiana State University said, “People have the idea of an Exxon Valdez, with a gunky, smelly black tide looming over the horizon waiting to wash ashore, I do not anticipate this will happen down here unless things get a lot worse.”
The infamous Exxon Valdez spill occurred in 1989 off the coast of Alaska and resulted in the contamination of 1,300 miles of untouched shoreline and killed a good portion of the wildlife in the region.
The chief operating officer for exploration and production at BP, Doug Suttles, said that BP was spending approximately six million dollars a day in clean up efforts. He said the company was planning on using some type of tent or dome to contain the oil, and was two to four weeks away from implementation.
Overton said he was hopeful that BP’s containment efforts would succeed, but said the difficult task could potentially damage the underwater pipeage, and cause even more unchecked oil flow.
Engineers said the type of oil leaking from the Deepwater Horizon is lighter than the crude oil from the Exxon Valdez spill, and is easier to break up with the use of dispersants, chemicals that break down the oil and cause it to sink. This oil though, when heavily mixed with water turns into a thick, slimy, buoyant substance that can float for many miles.
David Yoskowitz, the chair of the socioeconomics department at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico studies in Corpus Christi, TX, said that the damages from the Gulf oil spill have reached an estimated $1.6 billion.
“And that’s really only the tip of the iceberg,” he went on to say. “It’s early in the game and there’s a lot of potential downstream impacts, a lot of multiplier impacts,” said Yoskowitz.
What people do not realize, however, is that the Gulf is not the “cleanest” natural environment to begin with. Thousands of gallons of oil flow into the gulf every day from underwater seepage cracks, and hundreds of onshore plants and refineries dump large quantities of pollution everyday as well.
Despite all the potentially catastrophic consequences, other experts said that there are many reasons to remain optimistic.
“We’ve certainly stepped in a hole and we’re going to have to work ourselves out of it,” said Quenton R. Dokken, a marine biologist and executive director of the Gulf of Mexico Foundation.
“But it isn’t the end of the Gulf of Mexico,” Dokken said.
