Nick Seagers

Today we enter the ninth consecutive week of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico.  Since the rig explosion on April 20th, crude has been spilling from a pipe in the ocean floor.  A cap was installed to help contain some of the oil and was working to siphon a percentage of the spill until it was bumped today by an undersea robot, prompting the removal of it.

Countless organizations have been blamed for this ongoing tragedy.  Transocean, BP, the US Government and Barack Obama and the MMS (now the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement).

Numerous news organizations are covering the damage, of course, as everyone has seen.  Stories from who’s to blame, to what’s a stake to how many people are ultimately going to be touched by the spill have filled newspapers, podcasts and magazines.

I am not an objective journalist (neither are most journalists these days) so I am free to speak my mind without threat of being edited.  On this site at least.

Instead of playing the blame game and looking into future charts to see how far the oil will make it up the East Coast (pretty far, by most accounts) how about we stop the oil spill?

Just fucking stop it.  Stop the flow.  Halt it.  Pinch it off.

Get as many engineers and experts as it takes, but stop the oil spill.  Figure it out.  I understand that the pipe is a mile down.  I understand that nothing like this has ever been attempted before.  I don’t care.  Every organization and company that has any liability or may have liability needs to get on it.

Whatever it takes.  Whatever the hours.  Whatever the cost.

Analysts are working on cost estimates regarding what BP will be held accountable for.  How?  We don’t even know how many barrels of oil are actually pouring out.  5,000 barrels?  25,000 barrels? 60,000 barrels?

The situation in the Gulf does not allow for educated guesses at this time, and any attempt to do so is futile.

Review of what we know:

• Oil is coming out of a pipe
• Oil is on the surface of the ocean
• Oil is on beaches and animals

Independent fishermen out of Louisiana are reporting that there is a large volume of oil relatively close to shore that is hovering between the ocean floor and the surface.  What this means is that the oil is not simply floating to the surface where it can be more easily dealt with via burning, absorbent boom or siphoning.  What this means is that the oil is not reacting to ocean currents and salinity levels the way we expected it would.

The cleanup will be huge.

Certain species will not survive.

Individual and corporate business will undoubtedly be scarred for years and many will go out of business.

All of this will need to be dealt with, and soon.  Those who can’t help stop the spill should work to help in any way they can.  One city in Florida has already told the government that they can stay out off their beaches when it comes to cleanup.  They’ll take care of their own.

Whatever your political views, personal preferences or grand thoughts on Mother Earth, voice your thoughts to BP, the US Government, and any news organization that doesn’t rely on Bill O’Reilly as a talking head.

We can’t all help in a direct way but at the least we can voice our outrage and hope someone’s voice is heard.

Oh yeah, and men and women are fighting in two countries, Haiti is still screwed from the earthquake, medicinal marijuana isn’t legal yet, ‘Too Big to Fail’ is still a joke, the US advances in the World Cup, stem cell research is frowned upon, Van der Sloot is receiving marriage proposals, Brazil recently suffered massive flooding and Mexican drug runners are still running the Southern US border.

Looking for some backup facts about the above?  Email me.