UUCOC Conversations

I am sure that you, like most of the inhabitants of the United States, are appalled by the British Petroleum Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that is spewing between 5,000 to 100,000 barrels of oil per day (depending on which estimate you go with) into the Gulf of Mexico. What caused this spill and why are they having so much trouble stopping it?

According to an article at SolveClimate.com, written by David Sassoon on May 24th, the Minerals Management Service (MMS) was warned several months ago by Dan Zimmerman, an independent environmental investigator, of the dangers of methane gas hydrates in deepwater offshore drilling. “Between 1992 and 2006, almost 2,500 deepwater wells were drilled…there were 39 blowouts during that period—38 of them in the Gulf of Mexico.” Apparently deepwater drilling has been moving ahead so quickly that key safety measures have been overlooked. Key personnel are no longer qualified. All this has been done in an effort to make more money more quickly—why doesn’t this surprise me? Eleven precious lives were lost—in the name of greed?
Where there is oil, there is usually gas. The oil and gas industry is well aware that methane hydrates are the primary hazard when drilling in deepwater for oil.

What the layman doesn’t know is that vast quantities of methane are being released into the atmosphere daily as a result of ongoing oil and gas exploration. Methane is “a gas 20 times more powerful as a warming agent than CO2.”
There is much evidence to suggest—eyewitness accounts from survivors, the fact that the rig was located in an area thought to contain methane hydrates, and the fact that the cap which was lowered over the gushing pipe almost immediately became clogged with methane hydrates—certainly points to gas being the culprit. On May 26th, in articles in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and numerous other publications, it was reported that a Congressional Committee discovered trouble with rising gas levels several hours before the blowout.

Other than the problem with the methane hydrates why is BP having such a difficult time plugging the well? According to Ron Zimmerman, if the cement around the blowout preventer is damaged or if there is a leak in the bore hole, the “top kill” might not be successful. If that is the case, BP has very few options left. One of them is to drill a well adjacent to the blown-out well, but that has never even been attempted at such a depth.

It is my fervent prayer that this massive contamination of the Gulf of Mexico will cause our government and the regulatory agencies of the oil & gas industry to take their jobs more seriously. In addition to the loss of human life, as of May 24th, over 300 birds, 200 turtles and 19 dolphins have been found dead along the U.S. coastline since the Deepwater Horizon blew. Let your voices be heard. Tell your government how you feel about this gross negligence.

P.S. Just wanted ya’ll to know that “the Compost Experiment” at the Church Member’s Luncheon on May 23rd didn’t really go as planned. But to be fair, it was our first real go at separating compost materials from trash and recyclables. From one of my previous Green Tips and as a reminder, compost consists of “vegetable and fruit scraps, coffee grounds, tea bags, and crushed egg shells.” The paper plates we used didn’t have a plastic coating so they also are considered compost. Meat should be separated from the compost and put in the trash container. Let’s try harder next time!