Apr 30 2010

‘Gag-inducing’ fuel smell wafting over New Orleans (updated)

(noon. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

New Orleans residents are understandably annoyed over their city being enveloped by the smell of fuel. Mandie Landry, an attorney who works in the city’s Central Business District, told Yahoo! News that “it smells like it’d smell if a bus was in front of you blowing out exhaust fumes right in your face.”

Another local resident, Tulane University employee Laura Mogg, told us that she caught wind of the “terrible” and “gag-inducing” smell from her office building on the school’s sprawling uptown campus. “I smelled it the second I opened the door,” she said. “Really, it’s that strong.”

How many weeks/months will people in Louisiana and other states be forced to breathe these poisonous fumes as wave upon wave of toxic sludge hits their shores?  

What kinds short and long term health problems can these millions of people expect as a result?

We have yet to even remotely grasp the ecological, human and economic damage this disaster will cause.  Indeed, the more I read the more I fear that when the final butcher’s bill is taken, Deepwater Horizon could very well rival Chernobyl on the all time list of man-made disasters.  

And the most horrible part of all?  Nobody can do a damn thing to stop it.  

Update:

Holy Crap:

The worst-case scenario for the broken and leaking well gushing oil into the Gulf of Mexico would be the loss of the wellhead currently restricting the flow to 5,000 barrels —  or 210,000 gallons  per day.

If the wellhead is lost, oil could leave the well at a much greater rate, perhaps up to 150,000 barrels — or more than 6 million gallons per day — based on government data showing daily production at another deepwater Gulf well.

By comparison, the Exxon Valdez spill was 11 million gallons total. The Gulf spill could end up dumping the equivalent of 4 Exxon Valdez spills per week.

…

Thursday, federal officials said they were preparing for the worst-case scenario but didn’t elaborate.

Kinks in the piping created as the rig sank to the seafloor may be all that is preventing the Deepwater Horizon well from releasing its maximum flow.  BP is now drilling a relief well as the ultimate fix. The company said Thursday that process would take up to 3 months.

Officials are now openly talking about the possibility of Four Exxon Valdez spills a week for three months.

I’ll say it again.

Four Exxon Valdez spills a week for three months.

Chernobyl here we come?

15 comments

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  1. for a very sad owl.

  2. for Daytona Beach instead of PCB (in June)

    local news report PCB they’re worried…. and then theres this

    Governor Declares State of Emergency FLA

    04/30/10 – 11:49 AM

    Read more: http://www.panhandleparade.com…

    TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) – Florida Gov. Charlie Crist has declared a state of emergency in several Panhandle coastal counties because of the threat from oil leaking from the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

    Friday’s executive order covers Escambia, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa, Walton, Bay and Gulf Counties.

    The order says “The resulting oil slick is generally moving in a northerly direction and threatens Florida’s coast.”

    It designates the director of the Division of Emergency Management as state coordinating officer and orders activation of the Florida National Guard.

    The spill imperils wildlife along the Gulf Coast, one of the world’s richest seafood grounds.

    • Edger on April 30, 2010 at 21:35
    • #

    BP should probably be fined a couple hundred bucks at least for this, right?

    That’ll teach ’em… they’ll probably have to spend a grand or two to get out of the fine, or at least delay it long enough for a multi-billion dollar bailout from Washington to cover it, no?

  4. And then there’s this:

  5. … I was hoping somebody would finally put one up, I was debating hand drawing a rough sketch because as soon as Deepwater Horizon started looking like an apocalyptic marshmellow flambé this was going to be the result, and the MSM was reporting this bullsh*t  “only a 1000 barrels a day”  coming out of the wreck.  These wells are designed to be able to pull out 10 to 20 times that amount per day or 100,000 to 200,000 barrels.  A sister BP deepwater well to this one is called Thunder Horse

    http://www.theoildrum.com/node…

    The part that is not to scale is the bottom layer of the sea floor and the salt deposits that they have to go thru, which is 3.6 times the depth of the water, or over 3 miles underground.  So they are trying to do this remotely, over 4 miles away.  I am wondering if they are just going to try to hit the same formation and start sucking the oil out of a new well to drop the pressure enough to seal the old one, because hitting the old well bore is going to be so difficult. Let me rephrase that, impossible. Once you are IN the oil deposit you are in a cavity filled with oil and gas and you wouldn’t be able to steady the drill bit against a solid surface as you sought the old drill pipe casing the oil is gushing up and out of.  

    –U———  water with floating drilling rig

    ____X_________  sea floor with well head nearly a mile down

    *

    *

    *

    *

    *

    *

    *

    *

    __,_____,______.________top of oil deposit, they hope

  6. A horrific occurrence with horrific consequences to the people in the surrounding areas, the ocean, the environment, the eco-life — heartbreaking and, according to a whistleblower, a completely preventable disaster.

    A former contractor who worked for British Petroleum (BP) claims the oil conglomerate broke federal laws and violated its own internal procedures by failing to maintain crucial safety and engineering documents related to one of the firms other deepwater production projects in the Gulf of Mexico, according to internal emails and other documents obtained by Truthout.

    The whistleblower, whose name has been withheld at the person’s request because the whistleblower still works in the oil industry and fears retaliation, first raised concerns about safety issues related to BP Atlantis, the world’s largest and deepest semi-submersible oil and natural gas platform, located about 200 miles south of New Orleans, in November 2008. Atlantis, which began production in October 2007, has the capacity to produce about 8.4 million gallons of oil and 180 million cubic feet of natural gas per day.

    It was then that the whistleblower, who was hired to oversee the company’s databases that housed documents related to its Atlantis project, discovered that the drilling platform had been operating without a majority of the engineer-approved documents it needed to run safely, leaving the platform vulnerable to a catastrophic disaster that would far surpass the massive oil spill that began last week following a deadly explosion on a BP-operated drilling rig. . . . ..

    This? Despite the obscene profits BP has enjoyed for so long?

    Makes me feel sick inside!  

  7. …a very toxic brew.  It causes acid fog, acid rain, and general acidic conditions.

    My lung pathology dates from 1983-84 when the Southern California coast ( Huntington Beach -> South) experienced many months of acid rain and acid fog when Huntington oil releases combined with a stagnant air mass to produce a toxicity which “burned out” my lungs.  The Ph of the air was halfway between lemon juice and toilet bowl cleaner.

    If you have friends in NOLA and environs, tell them not to exercise outside and to be very careful.  For more info, contact me at my listed e-mail.

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