The world has never seen an oil leak like one in Gulf of Mexico
By JILL LEOVYLos Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES | The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico presents BP Exploration and Production with a problem of unprecedented severity ? a limitless gush in very deep waters ? forcing the London-based company to grasp for fixes that have never been tried before.
The problem with the spill is that it isn?t really a spill: It?s a gush, like an underwater oil volcano. A hot column of oil and gas is spurting into freezing black waters nearly a mile down, where the pressure nears a ton per inch ? impossible for divers to endure.
Experts call it a continuous, round-the-clock calamity, unlike a leaking tanker, which might empty in hours or days.
?Everything about it is unprecedented,? said geochemist Christopher Reddy, an oil-spill expert and head of the Coastal Ocean Institute at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. ?All our knowledge is based on a one-shot event. ... With this, we don?t know when it?s going to stop.?
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Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2010/04/30/1915436/the-world-has-never-seen-an-oil.html#ixzz0mjXhOwOs
By JILL LEOVYLos Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES | The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico presents BP Exploration and Production with a problem of unprecedented severity ? a limitless gush in very deep waters ? forcing the London-based company to grasp for fixes that have never been tried before.
The problem with the spill is that it isn?t really a spill: It?s a gush, like an underwater oil volcano. A hot column of oil and gas is spurting into freezing black waters nearly a mile down, where the pressure nears a ton per inch ? impossible for divers to endure.
Experts call it a continuous, round-the-clock calamity, unlike a leaking tanker, which might empty in hours or days.
?Everything about it is unprecedented,? said geochemist Christopher Reddy, an oil-spill expert and head of the Coastal Ocean Institute at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. ?All our knowledge is based on a one-shot event. ... With this, we don?t know when it?s going to stop.?
...
Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2010/04/30/1915436/the-world-has-never-seen-an-oil.html#ixzz0mjXhOwOs
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