Our Fix-It Faith and the Oil Spill

“IF we’ve learned anything so far about the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, it is that it contains surprises. And that means an operator needs depth — depth in terms of resources and expertise — to create the capability to respond to the unexpected. ”

These prophetic words came from a 2005 presentation by David Eyton, who was then vice president for BP’s deepwater developments in the Gulf of Mexico. Reprinted that year in a journal of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists, the speech acknowledged that oil companies “did somewhat underestimate the full nature of the challenges we were taking on in the deep waters of the gulf.”

Still, Mr. Eyton expressed buoyant optimism that BP’s risk management expertise, as well as its new technologies, would play a “critical role” in allowing the company to triumph over nature’s daunting obstacles.

As the world now knows, it did not turn out that way.

As BP struggled last week to stanch the flow of spewing oil at the Deepwater Horizon rig, it has become clear that the pressure to dig deeper and faster from what Mr. Eyton then called a “frontier province” of oil exploration has in some ways outpaced the knowledge about how to do that safely. (And there is still the question of whether BP used all the tools and safety mechanisms available.)

Americans have long had an unswerving belief that technology will save us — it is the cavalry coming over the hill, just as we are about to lose the battle. And yet, as Americans watched scientists struggle to plug the undersea well over the past month, it became apparent that our great belief in technology was perhaps misplaced.

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Summer of Oil Looms for Beleaguered Gulf Coast

This summer on the oil-stained Gulf Coast promises to be like no other.

Just off Louisiana on Grand Isle, which was hit with oil from the spill, the beach reopened for Memorial Day weekend but with several caveats: No swimming or fishing, and stay away from oil cleanup crews. Elsewhere, fishermen were idled during what's normally a busy season, and floating hotels were being set up to house workers who will try to mop up the crude seeping into marshes.

With BP making yet another attempt to stem the flow from a blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico -- this time only to contain the leak, not stop it -- signs point to August before any real end is in sight. The new plan carries the risk of making the torrent worse, top government officials have warned. On top of that, hurricane season begins Tuesday.

''I was just sitting here thinking our way of life is over. It's the end, the apocalypse,'' said fisherman Tom Young of Plaquemines Parish on the coast. ''And no one outside of these few parishes really cares. They say they do, but they don't do nothing but talk. Where's the action? Where's the person who says these are real people, real people with families and they are hurting?''

Responding to suggestions that the military should take the lead in responding to the spill, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen said Monday the oil industry is better-equipped to deal with the disaster.

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Scientists Warn of Unseen Deepwater Oil Disaster

Independent scientists and government officials say there's a disaster we can't see in the Gulf of Mexico's mysterious depths, the ruin of a world inhabited by enormous sperm whales and tiny, invisible plankton.

Researchers have said they have found at least two massive underwater plumes of what appears to be oil, each hundreds of feet deep and stretching for miles. Yet the chief executive of BP PLC -- which has for weeks downplayed everything from the amount of oil spewing into the Gulf to the environmental impact -- said there is ''no evidence'' that huge amounts of oil are suspended undersea.

BP CEO Tony Hayward said the oil naturally gravitates to the surface -- and any oil below was just making its way up. However, researchers say the disaster in waters where light doesn't shine through could ripple across the food chain.

''Every fish and invertebrate contacting the oil is probably dying. I have no doubt about that,'' said Prosanta Chakrabarty, a Louisiana State University fish biologist.

On the surface, a 24-hour camera fixed on the spewing, blown-out well and the images of dead, oil-soaked birds have been evidence of the calamity. At least 20 million gallons of oil and possibly 43 million gallons have spilled since the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded and sank in April.

That has far eclipsed the 11 millions gallons released during the Exxon Valdez spill off Alaska's coast in 1989. But there is no camera to capture what happens in the rest of the vast Gulf, which sprawls across 600,000 square miles and reaches more than 14,000 feet at its deepest point.

Every night, the denizens of the deep make forays to shallower depths to eat -- and be eaten by -- other fish, according to marine scientists who describe it as the largest migration on earth.

In turn, several species closest to the surface -- including red snapper, shrimp and menhaden -- help drive the Gulf Coast fishing industry. Others such as marlin, cobia and yellowfin tuna sit atop the food chain and are chased by the Gulf's charter fishing fleet.

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The Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill: An Accident Waiting to Happen

It’s hard to believe now, as oil from the wrecked Deepwater Horizon well encroaches on the Louisiana marshes. But it was only six weeks ago that President Obama announced a major push to expand offshore oil and gas drilling. Obama’s commitment to lift a moratorium on offshore drilling reflected the widely-held belief that offshore oil operations, once perceived as dirty and dangerous, were now so safe and technologically advanced that the risks of a major disaster were infinitesimal, and managing them a matter of technocratic skill.

But in the space of two weeks, both the politics and the practice of offshore drilling have been turned upside down. Today, the notion that offshore drilling is safe seems absurd. The Gulf spill harks back to drilling disasters from decades past — including one off the coast of Santa Barbara, Calif. in 1969 that dumped three million gallons into coastal waters and led to the current moratorium. The Deepwater Horizon disaster is a classic “low probability, high impact event” — the kind we’ve seen more than our share of recently, including space shuttle disasters, 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina. And if there’s a single lesson from those disparate catastrophes, it’s that pre-disaster assumptions tend to be dramatically off-base, and the worst-case scenarios downplayed or ignored. The Gulf spill is no exception.

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The Spill vs. a Need to Drill

More than 40 years ago, a thick and pungent oil slick washed over the sandy-white beaches of Santa Barbara and went on to soil 40 miles of Southern California’s scenic coastline.

The Santa Barbara disaster of 1969 resulted from a blowout at an offshore platform that spilled 100,000 barrels of crude oil — 4.2 million gallons in all. It marked a turning point in the oil industry’s expansion, shelving any chance for drilling along most of the nation’s coastlines and leading to the creation of dozens of state and federal environmental laws.

Is history about to repeat itself in the Gulf of Mexico?

It may seem so this weekend. Emotions are running high as an oil slick washes over the Gulf Coast’s fragile ecosystem, threatening fisheries, shrimp farmers and perhaps even Florida’s tourism industry. Thousands could see their livelihoods ruined. A cleanup could take years.

Beyond railing at BP, the company that owns the well now spewing oil, some environmental groups have demanded an end to offshore exploration and urged President Obama to restore a moratorium on drilling. The White House has already said no new drilling permits will be approved until the causes of the accident are known. Additional government oversight seems inevitable.

But whatever the magnitude of the spill at the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana, it is unlikely to seriously impede offshore drilling in the Gulf. The country needs the oil — and the jobs.

Much has changed since 1969. The nation’s demand for oil has surged, rising more than 35 percent over the past four decades, while domestic production has declined by a third. Oil imports have doubled, and the United States now buys more than 12 million barrels of oil a day from other countries, about two-thirds of its needs.

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Ruptured Pipe Cuts Safe Water in Boston

For nearly a third of the residents of Boston and some of its suburbs, it was a weekend without clean tap water after a water main ruptured Saturday in the suburb of Weston and rendered water undrinkable.

Gov. Deval Patrick declared a state of emergency on Saturday, and emergency officials drove through neighborhoods using bullhorns to warn residents that water was not safe. Residents in affected areas also received reverse 911 calls telling them to boil their water before drinking it.

The alert set off a frantic rush for the last available bottled water in area stores, a supply that dwindled in mere hours.

The problem began Saturday about 10 a.m., when the pipe, which was 10 feet in diameter, broke in Weston, about 15 miles west of Boston, sending about 8 million gallons of water an hour gushing into the Charles River at the high point of the spill. The rupture affected water service to nearly two million people in 30 cities and towns.

As news of the break surfaced, people flocked to stores to buy bottled water. At the Trader Joe’s in Brookline, workers said that all the water had been quickly purchased from store shelves. In Lexington, a Stop & Shop reported that customers had emptied a 40-foot stretch of shelves of bottled water. To ease the run on the dwindling supplies, the state asked bottled-water companies to make more water available in Massachusetts. The National Guard also distributed emergency drinking water.

On Sunday, Mayor Thomas Menino said that city schools and restaurants would be open Monday, despite the water problems. Eighty percent of the city’s schools already use bottled water for drinking, and the mayor’s office said bottled water would be available at schools that do not use bottled water.

Workers managed to stop the spill on Sunday and to begin repairs on the pipe — which was buried 20 feet underground. Officials with the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority said that the water pressure was steady Sunday night. After the pipe is repaired, the next step will be to test for other leaks. Officials advised residents to continue to boil water for at least a minute until further notice.

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The Consumption Conundrum: Driving the Destruction Abroad

Every time someone pushes the on-button on an electronic device, there is an expectation that the unit will power up quickly and display images in vibrant color. There is the further expectation, especially when using electronic devices for communications such as email access, web downloading, and texting that the response time will be immediate. We live in an age of technological arms races in which manufacturers gain market edge by creating products that are faster, have more applications, have a broader network reach, and generally do more.

The processing capacity of digital electronic devices doubles about every two years (Moore’s Law), and this capacity increase is enabled by an expanded use of elements. For example, computer chips made use of 11 major elements in the 1980s but now use about 60 (two-thirds of the periodic table!). And the electronics sector isn’t alone. Engine turbine blades for aircraft are made of alloys of a dozen or so metals; motors and batteries of green-technology hybrid vehicles depend on several of the rare earths; advances in medical imaging have come about by the unique band gaps of elements such as gadolinium. It seems that there are no limits to what the imagination can create except for the fact that many of the metals are globally rare and, given the nature of current technology, non-substitutable.

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