Another Gulf Oil Spill Adds Fuel to Movement Against New Offshore Drilling Leases [View all]

[Melissa G]

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/05/21/another-gulf-oil-spill-adds-fuel-movement-against-new-offshore-drilling-leases

Another Gulf Oil Spill Adds Fuel to Movement Against New Offshore Drilling Leases

bySue Sturgis



Last week a damaged pipeline at a Royal Dutch Shell deepwater production field about 100 miles off the Louisiana coast spilled what's been officially estimated at 90,000 gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico before the leak was stopped.

However, On Wings of Care, a nonprofit environmental watchdog group that flew ECOGIG scientist Ian McDonald over the spill, estimated that much more oil was actually released. They noted that the slick covered over 5 square nautical miles, or about 5,000 acres:

Even if the average thickness of the visible oil were a mere 100 micron (0.1 millimeter, vastly smaller than the areas of emulsified oil that stretch across the area), the visible surface oil would represent about 500,000 gallons of oil. We haven't seen images like this since the BP disaster of 2010.

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That's right: a modern pipeline at a high-tech deepwater development project leaked thousands of gallons of oil, and that leak was accidentally discovered. Not because high-tech telemetry on the pipeline signaled an alarm due to a drop in pressure; not because flow metering detected a difference between what was going in one end of the pipe vs. what was coming out the other. How long would this leak have continued, if not for the sheer luck of having a vigilant pilot happening by?

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http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/05/21/another-gulf-oil-spill-adds-fuel-movement-against-new-offshore-drilling-leases