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Yes, oil in water is bad. But there's no scale - how does this 100, 300, or 700 barrels per day compare to natural seeps? "In the Gulf of Mexico, there are mo
by kbutler 8y ago
Yes, oil in water is bad. But there's no scale - how does this 100, 300, or 700 barrels per day compare to natural seeps?
"In the Gulf of Mexico, there are more than 600 natural oil seeps that leak between one and five million barrels of oil per year, equivalent to roughly 80,000 to 200,000 tonnes."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_seep https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_seep with reference)
I think we really need to figure out where all this oil goes.
For another yardstick, deepwater horizon was estimated at 210 million barrels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill.
Even if it is 1000 barrels per day, Taylor has a while to go (575 years...)
- azinman2 8y agoBut why add to it?
- Rjevski 8y agoNot saying we should add to it on purpose, but if an artificial leak is only the equivalent of 1% of the natural leaks, then it's probably not going to have any serious impact on the environment.
- rbanffy 8y agoStill, if a company drills a hole, they should allocate the funds to cap it properly. Making that mandatory would sure help with situations like this.
- Ntrails 8y agoRight, but claiming a thing is a planet/ecosystem defining disaster when in context it's just a bad thing from which the world will inevitably recover is just scaremongering
- BioMeditate 8y agoI think it's more like I'm trying to teach my 5yr old. When you make a mess, you get to clean it up. Simple as that
- abernard1 8y agoIt was estimated at 210 million gallons, not barrels. The natural oil seeps are larger than Deepwater Horizon, every year.
- kbutler 8y agoYes, thanks for the correction - 210 million gallons, or 4.9 million barrels. That estimate puts it at the top of the range of estimates I saw for natural seeps within the gulf of Mexico. And that does put the upper range of Taylor estimates approaching the range of deepwater horizon total estimates.