The world has never seen an oil leak like one in Gulf of Mexico

[Pathfinder]

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

 

[Pathfinder]

Re: The world has never seen an oil leak like one in Gulf of Mexico

Gulf oil spill is 'the bad one'

Sun 01:38 PM

snip

Gulf Coast experts have always talked about "the potential for a bad one", said Wes Tunnell, coastal ecology and oil spill expert at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.

"And this is the bad one. This is just a biggie that finally happened."

It hasn't quite become a total disaster yet. But it's hard to imagine it not being devastating, said Ed Overton, who heads a federal chemical hazard assessment team for oil spills. The Louisiana State University professor has been testing samples of the spilled crude.

He compared what's brewing to another all-too-familiar Gulf Coast threat:

"This has got all the characteristics of a Category 5 hurricane."

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More at:
http://m.3news.co.nz/3news-display.aspx?aid=153765&title=Gulf-oil-spill-is-%22the-bad-one%22

 

[Pathfinder]

Re: The world has never seen an oil leak like one in Gulf of Mexico

Oil spill could be worse than any seen before-EPA

MIAMI, May 11 (Reuters) - The unchecked oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico could be worse than anything previously experienced in the United States if efforts to control it fail, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson said on Tuesday.

"It has the potential to be worse than anything we've seen," Jackson told CNN.

(Reporting by Pascal Fletcher)

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1126401220100511