Did you ever hear of Ixtoc before the Deep horizon event?

[hedgehog]

It was pretty serious, but I have no memory whatsoever of this happening. Was it a case of the oil didn't exist because it didn't hit our beaches?

[babylonsister]

1. I don't recall. I think it was a case of not having 24/7 news

coverage back then. Probably mentioned on nightly news during the half hour that was on, then out of sight, out of mind.

[MyNameGoesHere]

2. Not really we were being inundated with yellow ribbons and

Iranian hostage crisis day number xxx. Come to think of it this was probably when the name everything a crisis thing started.

[Lithos]

3. Yes, remember it

Was young at the time, so did not understand as much as it was happening as I do today.

[Angry Dragon]

4. I did not know of it

[hobbit709]

5. The tarballs washed up on TX beaches

but it wasn't anything like we're seeing now.
But I remember the beaches looking like white sand with black polka dots.
Everybody carried a bottle of Baby Oil to get the tar off your feet.

[G_j]

6. or the Atlantis?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8489418

http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/06/next-deepwater-horizon


The Next Deepwater Horizon?

Obama halted new offshore drilling, but allowed existing production to continue—including another BP Gulf rig flying numerous red flags.

— By Kate Sheppard

Fri Jun. 4, 2010 3:00 AM PDT

Last week, President Barack Obama put new deepwater drilling operations on hold for another six months. With the Gulf of Mexico spill entering its fifth week, this move was meant to show that the administration is taking a more cautious approach to offshore drilling, after it had announced a vast expansion just weeks before the BP disaster.

Many news accounts on the moratorium extension implied that all deepwater Gulf operations had been shut down. But that's not the case. The administration is allowing deepwater drilling operations already in production in the Gulf to continue—including some that may pose a greater risk than the Deepwater Horizon. Exhibit A: BP's other major Gulf operation, the Atlantis, which sits 124 miles off the Louisiana coast.

Kenneth Abbott, a project control supervisor BP contracted to work on the Atlantis, and the environmental group Food & Water Watch filed suit against the federal government on May 17 seeking a temporary injunction to force the Minerals Management Service (MMS) to shut down the platform. Abbott claims that his contract was terminated shortly after he alerted management to the rig's lack of crucial engineering documents in late 2008.


According to Abbott, the BP Atlantis lacks more than 6,000 documents that are key to operating the rig safely. Abbott has said that the vast majority of the project's subsea piping and instrument diagrams were not approved by engineers, and the safety systems are out of date. In March 2009, Abbott took his concerns about the rig to MMS, the Department of Interior office responsible for regulating offshore drilling. He says the agency requested some of these documents from BP, but failed to seek specific diagrams of key components necessary for ensuring the rig's secure operation.

..more..

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/28/bp_oil_spill_confirmed_as_worst


Although President Obama has extended the moratorium on new deepwater drilling permits for six months and halted operations at thirty-three deepwater wells in the Gulf of Mexico, some oil rigs are continuing their operations. The Center for Biological Diversity has filed a lawsuit to halt forty-nine offshore drilling plans in the Gulf of Mexico that were approved without full environmental review. Meanwhile, the group Food & Water Watch is leading an effort to shut down the Atlantis, another BP oil rig in the Gulf. The group warns an oil spill from the Atlantis could be many times larger than the current spill and even harder to stop. (includes rush transcript)

<snip>

WENONAH HAUTER: Well, the first thing that needs to happen is that the BP Atlantis platform needs to be shut down before we have another accident. For the last year, we’ve been trying to get MMS to act on this, and we now believe that it’s President Obama who needs to take action in shutting down this very dangerous platform. We filed suit last week against MMS, demanding that the platform be shut down. And we’re asking people to go to the website www.spillthetruth.org and ask President Obama to shut it down immediately.

AMY GOODMAN: Just one minute on this issue of Atlantis. I don’t think most people realize that these oil—deep sea oil drilling sites are continuing now, as they talk about moratoriums and the closings of, shutting down of these in the Gulf of Mexico. Wenonah Hauter, where is the Atlantis deep sea oil drilling rig?

WENONAH HAUTER: The Atlantis is 150 miles offshore from New Orleans, and it’s 7,000 feet deep. So it’s much deeper than the Horizon. And none of the safety documentation has been verified. So we’re very concerned that there could be an accident at any time.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And in terms of this particular platform’s importance to the general Gulf oil production, how big is it? And why is there such a resistance to looking at it?

WENONAH HAUTER: Well, it produces 8.4 million gallons of oil every day. And so, if there were to be a spill, it would be five—it could be five times larger than the Horizon spill within five days. And the thing is that we have a lot of evidence about what’s going on with BP Atlantis because of a whistleblower, but we suspect that this is the case with all of the deepwater platforms.


<snip>

[SoCalDem]

7. Back then it was just a blurb in the newspaper, and because it was off Mexico's coast

not many here were concerned.. gasoline was 34 cents a gallon, and the coastal communities of Mexico were not "touristy" yet....and we had the Iran Hostage crisis going on that year...and news was 30 minutes a day at 5:30 pm on 3 channels..

[dipsydoodle]

8. It did affect Texas but eventually cleaned itself up.

MALAQUITE BEACH, Texas -- The oil was everywhere, long black sheets of it, 15 inches thick in some places. Even if you stepped in what looked like a clean patch of sand, it quickly and gooily puddled around your feet. And Wes Tunnell, as he surveyed the mess, had only one bleak thought: "Oh, my God, this is horrible! It's all gonna die!"

But it didn't. Thirty-one years since the worst oil spill in North American history blanketed 150 miles of Texas beach, tourists noisily splash in the surf and turtles drag themselves into the dunes to lay eggs.

"You look around and it's like the spill never happened," shrugs Tunnell, a marine biologist. "There's a lot of perplexity in it for many of us.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/06/12/1677370/ixtoc-offshore-well-gulfs-other.html#ixzz0r1KwFzeo

[hedgehog]

10. Here's hoping the same happens again!

If the river is re-channeled to re-build the delta marshes, maybe that will help absorb the oil, too.

[dipsydoodle]

15. That's what the hurricane issue was about.

Its considered that a biggy would pick up water and oil , carry it over the marshes and dump on dry land where it was easier to clean off. Of course that went down like a lead balloon here. Its the same with any disaster : you can't please everyone.

[KittyWampus]

14. The Hudson River also "cleaned itself up". It required a lot of work from activists to get it going

[treestar]

9. Nope

Only the Exxon Valdez sticks out for me as precedent.

But I'm sure they are many cases.

[dipsydoodle]

11. It also interesting

that the Persian Gulf apparently suffered "little long term damage" :

The New York Times reported that a 1993 study sponsored by UNESCO, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the United States found the spill did "little long-term damage": About half the oil evaporated, a million barrels were recovered and 2 million to 3 million barrels washed ashore, mainly in Saudi Arabia.<5> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War_oil_spill

[izquierdista]

12. Sure, it was big news

Oh, that's right, I read about it a lot in the Spanish publications. La Opinion covered it pretty well. Of course they do try to keep Mexicans abreast with what is happening back home.

[livetohike]

13. I lived in Houston, TX then and it hit the beaches of Galveston

I remember having to use GoJo to get the oil stains off of my feet :-(. This was in 1980 though and a year after the event.

[timo]

16. south padre

yup tarballs all over the beach on SPI

[Vogon_Glory]

17. I Remember Hearing Of It

I remember hearing of and reading about the Ixtoc oil spill. I think that the reason that it was ignored, despite the fact that it hit Texas beaches, was because it happened in Mexico, and even Mexican events that impact the US are filed away under "foreign events" by the corporate MSM.

[hedgehog]

18. And in 1980, MSM was all we had!

[wordpix]

19. I was living up north and didn't hear of it

[hedgehog]

20. I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who was clueless!

Too bad though; if more people had known about this, maybe there would have been more push back on the deep water drilling!