How much? Too much! BP, Stick a plug in it!
Photo courtesy of AP
When asked about volume with regards to anything the non-statistician/“normal Joe” usually answers, “Tons!” when it’s a large amount or, “Not much,” when it is indeed not much. I would think that most people who are seriously concerned over the situation right now in the Gulf of Mexico would answer, “Tons!” because a precise figure is needed only by those who have either given up hope, and so now think it would be interesting to find out exactly how much of BP’s crude continues to flow into the waters of the Western Hemisphere, or by those who have forgotten how to think about the “here and now”.
On Sunday, 54 days into what is amounting to a global disaster, engineers from British Petroleum deployed deepsea sensors so they could produce a more accurate number of how much oil continues to flow into the Gulf of Mexico. Initially BP officials measured the daily flow-rate between 1,000 and 5,000 barrels (42,000 and 210,000 US gallons respectively). It wasn’t long before “outside experts” got involved for that number to be pushed aside, however, and the tally has continued to grow ever since. For a long time it was nothing more than a guessing game, factored largely by the video captured of the endless spew from the broken pipe one mile beneath the water’s surface.
At the start of last week BP had pinpointed a number as the collection cap was securing the oil at a rate of 630,000 gallons a day. A sense of relief rippled, even through the relentless statisticians. But the measure was short-lived, however, as an unknown amount was still seen leaking from around the capture point of the broken pipe. From this point new estimates of the “new” amount being leaked came in, registering at approximately “hundreds of thousands” of gallons per day. Of course, the vague figure still left the curious-minded without that precise figure.
The most recent estimate reported between 760,000 gallons to 1.8 million gallons continues to pump from the broken pipe each day. Though with the assistance of these deepsea sensors – that seemingly have been left to sit in storage up to this point, perhaps along side of some contraption also idly awaiting to be put to use, called a Miracle Plug – we’re finally going to have an accurate number of gallons, or barrels still leaking from the floor of the Gulf. As if it really matters.
In 1992, the city of Chicago experienced a flood in which 250 million gallons of water leaked into a tunnel that was once used in the early 1920’s for the transportation of coal. It happened when construction workers were driving new pilings into the Chicago River. The hammering caused a weakening of the tunnel walls which cracked under the pressure, and resulted in the flooding of the intricate network of tunnels, passageways, and basements throughout Chicago’s downtown “Loop”.
In both cases, the errors were the fault of humans wholly ignorant to what effect their operations were having on the surrounding workspace. The difference in reaction was drastic, however, in the sense that the officials in Chicago knew they needed to focus on nothing but plugging the hole. They called in truckloads of cement, rocks, and dirt in their hasty attempts at stopping the leak. At one point they even tried closing off the hole with truckloads of mattresses. Yes, it sounds silly, almost comical that people would take the tampon method of plugging the leak, and figure that a mass amount of mattresses might do the trick, but we have to give them the utmost credit, simply because they spared nothing in their attempts to plug the hole. The point is, nobody sat around trying to figure out the flow-rate of the water as it passed through the city’s underground, only how to stop the flow completely.
To this point we’ve watched high definition video of the flow coming from the floor of the Gulf, and now we know we can do a fairly decent job of surgically manipulating the area as we witnessed a submersible clip the pipe with a fixed set of shears. We’ve watched BP set “hats” and “caps” on top of the pipe, and all the while oil flows steadily toward the shores of the United States and beyond, yet they still can’t seem to find the urgency in which to drop in everything that isn’t buoyant to try plugging the leak.
There’s a point when we should be able to discount the priorities of someone who seemingly lacks the urgency necessary to quell a situation, and simply shove them out of the way. These people who need an exact figure to measure whether or not we need to take immediate action in any potential dire situation, should be forced to remain sidelined until the situation has been remedied. It seems too often they need to be reminded of the situation at hand, and what is most important. Sure, we can keep them at the sidelines where they could be used to simply answer questions such as, “Have we tried stuffing it full of mattresses?” In the meantime, take a backseat while we panic our way to dumping everything including the kitchen sink to dam the flow from the hole BP punched into the earth, where really no human should be allowed to play.
