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Recalling blowout 30 years ago
By Arne Jernelov |
June 1, 2010, Tuesday
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ON April 20, an explosion on Deepwater Horizon, a British Petroleum (BP)-operated oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, led to the most publicized oil spill in decades.
Another blowout in the same waters 31 years ago, further south on the Mexican side of the Gulf, turned into the largest peacetime oil spill ever. The platform where that accident happened, called Ixtoc 1, was operated by Pemex, the state-owned Mexican oil company.
The two accidents and the spills they caused have a number of similarities. although marine oil spills in general have profoundly changed in character in the three decades between the two events.
Oil tankers used to be responsible for the bulk of oil that was spilled. Blowouts were not infrequent, but most occurred on land or in shallow water, and most could be stopped relatively easily.
In deep water, blowouts tend to continue for a considerable time because of the difficulties faced in containing them. In the Ixtoc case, using such methods, Pemex (wanting to keep the loss figure low) estimated the spill to amount to a little under a half million tons. A United Nations expert group that I led put the figure significantly higher.
Similarly, whereas BP has been using a release figure of 800 tons per day from Deepwater Horizon, estimates by independent experts are many times higher.
The damage caused by the Ixtoc spill was huge. Beaches, mostly in Mexico but to some extent also in the United States, were hit, and birds succumbed in large numbers. Shrimp, squid, and some fish populations suffered, with fisheries hit even harder.
After Ixtoc, the blow to the Mexican fisheries became a blessing in disguise. The dramatic reduction in fishing pressure allowed the devastated populations to recover, and five years later one had to look carefully to spot either remaining oil or damaged populations.
It took nine months to cap the Ixtoc well. Drilling a release well finally did the job of stopping the flow of oil.
Deepwater Horizon is still spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico. It is far too early to assess the ecological damage and economic losses to fisheries and tourism from the Deepwater Horizon spill.
It is a safe bet that shrimp and squid populations will suffer, as they did in the Ixtoc case, but so is a close-to-complete recovery within a limited number of years.
(The author is a UN expert on environmental catastrophes. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010. www.project-syndicate.org. Shanghai Daily condensed the article.)
Another blowout in the same waters 31 years ago, further south on the Mexican side of the Gulf, turned into the largest peacetime oil spill ever. The platform where that accident happened, called Ixtoc 1, was operated by Pemex, the state-owned Mexican oil company.
The two accidents and the spills they caused have a number of similarities. although marine oil spills in general have profoundly changed in character in the three decades between the two events.
Oil tankers used to be responsible for the bulk of oil that was spilled. Blowouts were not infrequent, but most occurred on land or in shallow water, and most could be stopped relatively easily.
In deep water, blowouts tend to continue for a considerable time because of the difficulties faced in containing them. In the Ixtoc case, using such methods, Pemex (wanting to keep the loss figure low) estimated the spill to amount to a little under a half million tons. A United Nations expert group that I led put the figure significantly higher.
Similarly, whereas BP has been using a release figure of 800 tons per day from Deepwater Horizon, estimates by independent experts are many times higher.
The damage caused by the Ixtoc spill was huge. Beaches, mostly in Mexico but to some extent also in the United States, were hit, and birds succumbed in large numbers. Shrimp, squid, and some fish populations suffered, with fisheries hit even harder.
After Ixtoc, the blow to the Mexican fisheries became a blessing in disguise. The dramatic reduction in fishing pressure allowed the devastated populations to recover, and five years later one had to look carefully to spot either remaining oil or damaged populations.
It took nine months to cap the Ixtoc well. Drilling a release well finally did the job of stopping the flow of oil.
Deepwater Horizon is still spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico. It is far too early to assess the ecological damage and economic losses to fisheries and tourism from the Deepwater Horizon spill.
It is a safe bet that shrimp and squid populations will suffer, as they did in the Ixtoc case, but so is a close-to-complete recovery within a limited number of years.
(The author is a UN expert on environmental catastrophes. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010. www.project-syndicate.org. Shanghai Daily condensed the article.)
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