The Long Crisis

Archive for the ‘crisis’ Category

Scientists say that the discovery of giant oil plumes forming deep in the Gulf of Mexico indicate that the flow rate of the crude oil spewing from the ruptured oil well some 5000 feet below the surface is much higher than British Petroleum or the US government first indicated.

Rather than the 5000 barrel per day flow rate estimated by BP, scientists state that the flow rate may be as much as 80,000 barrels per day. To date, BP executives seem to be in a state of denial as to the full extent of the DeepWater Horizon oil rig disaster.

Samantha Joye, a researcher at the University of Georgia who is involved in one of the first scientific missions to gather details about what is happening in the gulf said there’s a shocking amount of oil in the deep water, relative to what you see in the surface water. There’s a tremendous amount of oil in multiple layers, three or four or five layers deep in the water column.”

The plumes are rapidly depleting the oxygen dissolved in the gulf, a great concern to scientists, who fear that the oxygen level could eventually fall so low as to kill off much of the sea life near the plumes.

Dr. Joye stated that the oxygen had already dropped 30 percent near some of the plumes in the month that the broken oil well had been flowing. “If you keep those kinds of rates up, you could draw the oxygen down to very low levels that are dangerous to animals in a couple of months,” she said Saturday. “That is alarming.”

Scientists have requested that BP give them permission to use sophisticated instruments that would be deployed near the well head in order to accurately measure the rate of flow of oil spilling forth from the broken well. “The answer is no to that,” a BP spokesman, Tom Mueller, said on Saturday. “We’re not going to take any extra efforts now to calculate flow there at this point. It’s not relevant to the response effort, and it might even detract from the response effort.”

At this stage of the disaster BP seems to be more interested in attempting to play down the potential environmental disaster that will likely be caused by oil plumes spreading out in the Gulf of Mexico rather than to assist the research scientists in collecting more accurate information as to the extent of the oil flow rate. Unfortunately for BP and for the population of the states bordering on the gulf the extent of the disaster will likely be monumental, far worse than the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.

The United States government must immediately take a more direct role in attempting to contain the oil spill. The government should insist that BP fully cooperate with the scientific community in determining the amount of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico as well as drawing upon the scientist’s experience and knowledge as to how the spill might be contained.

A tremendous problem is that there is just not much knowledge about how the release of so much crude oil in a deep water environment can be controlled and alleviated. The formation of giant oil plumes that are spreading out several thousand feet beneath the surface is as unprecedented as it is alarming. There is a growing fear that the oil plumes will eventually find their way into what is called the loop current. Should that happen, the oil plumes would migrate into the Key West region and from there enter into the Gulf Stream.

Should that occur the potential environmental and financial disaster would be devastating. Not only would the beaches, fishing industry, and tourism industry of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida be drastically affected but the oil plumes could be carried by the Gulf Stream along much of the eastern seaboard of the United States.

BP is now frantically trying to cap the broken oil well. Should their efforts fail it may take until August for a relief well to be drilled that would intersect the broken well and hopefully allow for the oil now flowing into the Gulf to be routed through the relief well and captured by surface ships.

We should know within a few days just how disastrous the oil spill will be. We already know that a considerable amount of environmental and financial damage will occur. Oil is already entering the environmentally sensitive wetlands along the Gulf. Reportedly, BP has already occurred $450 million in expenses related to the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Financial analysts that follow the oil drilling industry are beginning to fear that if oil is flowing at the much higher rate of 50,000 to 80,000 barrels per day, and there is a 2 to 3 month delay in capping the oil well, the liability to BP may become so great that it may bring down the giant oil firm. The United States government has been seeking assurances from BP that the oil company will fully cover the cost of the oil spill.

No doubt, that if giant oil plumes are forming in the Gulf to the extent as determined by initial scientific exploration, the Deepwater Horizon disaster will be the greatest natural disaster ever experienced by the United States. It is a humongous disaster that will likely take decades to fully rectify and is likely not only worse than we imagine but is worse than we can imagine.

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Over the past few weeks we have been given a glimpse of how the failure of complex technological systems can, when they fail, cause havoc and destruction. In much of the world of today humans rely so heavily on technology that the failure of critical technological systems could even lead to the failure of civilizations.

One scary example of a complex system that temporarily failed is the insane drop of 1000 points in the Dow Jones industrial averages that occurred on Thursday, May 6, 2010. In recent years trading activity has heavily shifted from human traders and market makers to complex high-speed computers program with exceedingly complex computer trading programs and algorithms. No one seems to be sure as to what caused the terrifying plunge in the Dow and the equally swift 650 point recovery but logic dictates that there was a failure of some sort within the complex high-speed trading system.

The really scary aspect of the bizarre stock market price action is that since no one really knows the cause so far nothing within the system has been fixed. This causes great uncertainty among traders as there is the possibility that such an occurrence could happen once again. The loss of $1 trillion in market value within just a few minutes is obviously a serious matter. It appears that an over reliance upon complex technological trading systems may frighten retail traders away from the stock market. It is frightening to think that the very health of the world economy depends upon over confident computer geeks and programmers who perhaps have overestimated their ability to eliminate potentially fatal errors and perhaps even cyber attacks from the trading system.

Another Black Swan technological based incident is the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Drilling oil producing wells in deep water requires for there to be a great reliance upon cutting edge drilling technology. The oil well being drilled by the DeepWater Horizon drilling rig was being drilled in 5000 feet of water. The owner of the oil well, British Petroleum, was confident that the latest in high-tech fail safe devices were in place and that the disaster of an oil rig blowing up and then sinking was an impossibility. Once again, an over reliance on complex technology set the stage for an environmental disaster that will impact the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, and perhaps in time, should the oil spill find its way into the Gulf Stream, the entire United States Eastern Seaboard.

In general, our extreme reliance upon the use of fossil fuels to power our energy requirements in the modern world through complex technological systems, such as automobiles, aircraft, electric power generation stations, and ocean liners, set up a chain of dependence upon the sustained operation of our technological systems that leave us vulnerable to the break down of any one of perhaps thousands of parts.

Natural occurrences can also have a severe impact upon our complex technological systems. The recent eruption of the volcano in Iceland was a natural disaster that had a severe impact on one of our complex technological systems. For several days, due to a high level of volcanic ash in the atmosphere airspace was closed over much of Europe. This caused a severe disruption in the operation of airlines. This disruption not only inconvenienced travelers but caused breaks in the supply chain of high value supplies that are normally shipped by air freight.

While the overall consequences were fairly minor and not catastrophic it was only because the disruption lasted for just a few days. A volcanic eruption that spewed great quantities of ash into the atmosphere for several months would have tremendous disruptive, perhaps even fatal for some, consequences for the airline industry and for the industries that air travel serves. So while there was not a technological failure of the systems used by the aircraft travel and shipping industry a natural disaster led to a situation whereby vital technology, such as jet engines, could not be safety utilized.

There is a danger that the consequences of our reliance on complex technological systems could lead to the failure of our civilization as we know it. There are several examples in history of how once thriving civilizations suddenly failed. One worth noting is the Maya civilization. The Maya lived in the eastern one third of Mesoamerica, mainly on the Yucatan Peninsula, which is located in what is now Mexico. The Maya enjoyed a thriving civilization for 3000 years and yet that civilization suddenly failed.

While the collapse of the Maya remains one of the most intriguing events in human history many anthropologists believe that the Maya were dependent upon highly developed water systems that used sophisticated technology of their day to support the growth and development of their civilization. Their dependence upon technology to deliver and distribute water to their population perhaps failed to a long-term drought. Without fresh water as an input into their system their technology became useless.

There are many who believe that the further development of technology will save the human race. No doubt, in recent years we humans have made great advances in the development and use of technology in our daily lives. Consider how the use of computers, cell phones, wireless devices, and satellites have transformed the way we live and communicate. Yet it is only prudent that we keep in mind that technology is not yet fail safe and that failures can, and do, occur.

It is dangerous to the human race to rely so heavily on complex technological systems to such a degree that their failure could also lead to the destruction of our civilization.

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A Black Swan event is defined as an event that has a very low probability of occurring but should it occur the consequences are catastrophic. The oil drilling industry has a good track record in preventing oil spills but unfortunately the explosion and subsequent sinking of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010 highlights the fact that in deep water oil drilling when something goes wrong the results are likely to be catastrophic.

The gulf oil spill that is now threatening the marshlands, estuaries, beaches, the commercial and sport fishing industries, tourism, and hundreds of thousands of related jobs does fit the definition of a catastrophic black Swan event. As an estimated 5000 barrels of crude oil are still spewing into the gulf from the uncapped wellhead the oil spill is still spreading and is now threatening the coastlines of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. Unless the wellhead can soon be capped and the flow of oil stopped the spill may also extend to the Texas beaches.

The oil spill disaster is threatening many of the same areas that were so drastically battered by Hurricane Katrina. The long term affects of the oil spill will likely be even worse than those caused by Hurricane Katrina as with the beaches ruined and fish, shellfish, shrimp, birds, and other wildlife largely destroyed, it will take many years for the affected areas to recover. The probability is high that the oil spill disaster will cost hundreds of thousands of jobs as families who depend upon the fishing and tourism industries for their livelihood lose the very foundation of their businesses and places of employment.

The extent of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, sinking, and oil spill catastrophe continues to grow day by day. Thus far BP, the oil company that owns the blown out oil well, has been unable to cap the well and stop the flow of oil into the Gulf. The difficulty of that task is vastly compounded by the fact that the wellhead is over 5000 feet deep. BP has been unable to successfully deploy the underwater robots designed to handle such tasks. Until the well is capped no one knows just how catastrophic the event may prove to be. While the loss of eleven oil workers on the rig was tragic enough additional tragic events will follow. There is no doubt that the cost of the damage to wildlife, property, and employment is already into the many billions of dollars and that more human grief and suffering will occur with no end in sight.

At a time when the American economy is still struggling to recover from recession the Deepwater Horizon oil spill event has occurred at a most unfortunate time. However, that seems to be the nature of Black Swan event’s, their probability of occurring at all is considered to be so low that no one is prepared for the catastrophe that unfolds when the events do occur and they tend to occur when we are least prepared to deal with them.

Hurricane season in the Gulf of Mexico begins in about 30 days. Should oil still be flowing into the Gulf as a hurricane passes close by the Gulf oil spill catastrophe may mushroom into the greatest Black Swan event ever to affect the United States.

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