Deepwater Horizon well could become unchecked gusher

[Rajiv]

Leaked report: Government fears Deepwater Horizon well could become unchecked gusher

Leaked report: Government fears Deepwater Horizon well could become unchecked gusher

By Ben Raines

April 30, 2010, 2:18PM

View full size(AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano uses a map of the Gulf of Mexico during the daily press briefing at the White House in Washington, Thursday, April 29, 2010. A leaked memorandum obtained by the Press-Register on the unfolding spill disaster in the Gulf makes clear the Coast Guard now fears the Deepwater Horizon well site could be on the verge of becoming an unchecked gusher shooting millions of gallons of oil per day into the Gulf. 'The following is not public' document states

View full size(AP Photo/U.S. Coast Guard)This image provided by the U.S. Coast Guard Saturday April 24, 2010, shows oil leaking from the drill pipe of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig after it sank. A confidential government report on the unfolding spill disaster makes clear the Coast Guard now fears the well could be on the verge of becoming an unchecked gusher shooting millions of gallons of oil per day into the Gulf. A confidential government report on the unfolding spill disaster in the Gulf makes clear the Coast Guard now fears the well could become an unchecked gusher shooting millions of gallons of oil per day into the Gulf.

"The following is not public," reads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Emergency Response document dated April 28. "Two additional release points were found today in the tangled riser. If the riser pipe deteriorates further, the flow could become unchecked resulting in a release volume an order of magnitude higher than previously thought."

Asked Friday to comment on the document, NOAA spokesman Scott Smullen said that the additional leaks described were reported to the public late Wednesday night. Regarding the possibility of the spill becoming an order of magnitude larger, Smullen said, "I'm letting the document you have speak for itself."
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Also - BP's containment problem is unprecedented

The company must stop a relentless gush of oil nearly a mile below the surface, in a situation that hasn't been dealt with before.

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico presents BP Exploration and Production with a problem of unprecedented severity — a limitless gush in very deep waters — forcing the London-based company to grasp for fixes that have never been tried before.

The problem with the April 20 spill is that it isn't really a spill: It‘s a gush, like an underwater oil volcano. A hot column of oil and gas is spurting into freezing, black waters nearly a mile down, where the pressure nears a ton per inch, impossible for divers to endure. Experts call it a continuous, round-the-clock calamity, unlike a leaking tanker, which might empty in hours or days.

"Everything about it is unprecedented," said geochemist Christopher Reddy, an oil-spill expert and head of the Coastal Ocean Institute at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. "All our knowledge is based on a one-shot event…. With this, we don't know when it's going to stop."

Accidents have occurred before in which oil has gushed from damaged wells, he said. But he knew of none in water so deep
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[aaron]

Re: Deepwater Horizon well could become unchecked gusher

This is a real Black Swan event. If they cannot contain this problem, it will cost the economy billions. There will be no more oil drilling in the gulf (no effing way!). The seafood industry will be crushed. Other wells will be closed. Oil will go up. Stocks will go down.

[bpr]

Re: Deepwater Horizon well could become unchecked gusher

April 26 (Bloomberg) -- BP Plc said it may take months to drill a well to stop an oil spill under the Gulf of Mexico that threatens to become an environmental disaster.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/201...rig-sinks.html

If it takes months to stop the flow, the cleanup is almost certainly going to run well into hurricane season.

The estimates are increasing quickly, too, it started out as 1,000 barrels a day, and it's up to 5,000 last I heard. Rajiv's link talks of "millions of gallons" per day: one million gallons would be about 23,000 barrels per day.

[peakishmael]

Re: Deepwater Horizon well could become unchecked gusher

Darned environmentalists! We gotta drill, baby drill or else we won't be able to run our cars for under $3 a gallon! Might not be able to run 'em AT ALL!

[Camtender]

Re: Deepwater Horizon well could become unchecked gusher

This is a real Black Swan event.

No pun intended........

[GRG55]

Re: Deepwater Horizon well could become unchecked gusher

This is a real Black Swan event. If they cannot contain this problem, it will cost the economy billions. There will be no more oil drilling in the gulf (no effing way!). The seafood industry will be crushed. Other wells will be closed. Oil will go up. Stocks will go down.

It's no more a "Black Swan" event than the crash of a commercial airliner. When all is said and done this is going to go down as yet another major industrial accident, where a sequence of events, each of which was individually predictable and able to be addressed, combined in a way that was not anticipated...and produced a catastrophic result...

And just as yet another fatal commercial air disaster has never stopped people from getting on an airplane, this event won't stop Americans [or anyone else] from consuming petroleum products in the millions of barrels each day, it won't stop drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, and it won't cause any of the existing wells to be premanently shut in. Everything we do of this industrial nature is a function of risk and reward...and society shows absolutely no indication that it is willing to give up the "reward" of ready access to petroleum in exchange for uncontaminated seafood or clean beaches. In the past places like California could institute bans on offshore drilling and transfer the risks and costs to some other jurisdiction, while they continued to enjoy the "rewards". In a peak cheap oil world, that is rapidly becoming less of an option.

And once again coming back to my airliner crash analogue, investigations will be undertaken, lessons will be learned, regulations and procedures will be changed in an effort to prevent this from happening again.,,and some day in the future some other sequence of events will again combine in unanticipated ways, and we'll have yet another air crash and yet another oil well blowout.

Some of the hysterical commentary that has come out in the media from so called experts is good for comic relief, and nothing more...

[we_are_toast]

Re: Deepwater Horizon well could become unchecked gusher

And just as yet another fatal commercial air disaster has never stopped people from getting on an airplane, this event won't stop Americans [or anyone else] from consuming petroleum products in the millions of barrels each day, it won't stop drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, and it won't cause any of the existing wells to be premanently shut in. Everything we do of this industrial nature is a function of risk and reward...and society shows absolutely no indication that it is willing to give up the "reward" of ready access to petroleum in exchange for uncontaminated seafood or clean beaches. In the past places like California could institute bans on offshore drilling and transfer the risks and costs to some other jurisdiction, while they continued to enjoy the "rewards". In a peak cheap oil world, that is rapidly becoming less of an option.

And once again coming back to my airliner crash analogue, investigations will be undertaken, lessons will be learned, regulations and procedures will be changed in an effort to prevent this from happening again.,,and some day in the future some other sequence of events will again combine in unanticipated ways, and we'll have yet another air crash and yet another oil well blowout.

Some of the hysterical commentary that has come out in the media from so called experts is good for comic relief, and nothing more...

I think I understand where you're coming from (a bit cynical maybe), but we may be way too early to come to the conclusion that we'll just accept this disaster, jump in our SUV's and move on until the next disaster.

Your expertise is much needed here. I don't seem to recall a problem like this ever occurring in the oil industry before. It's one thing to have a well blow out, but it's quite another for it to happen 5,000 feet below the ocean surface. Also the very fact that this well hasn't been capped already, indicates that there are major technological problems with stopping this leak, and this scenario was not anticipated. If the riser pipe fails, as some at NOAA fear, this will rapidly become the worst, and most visible, oil spill ever.

The media will be filled with pictures of oil covered birds and beaches, reports from biologists describing how one of the worlds most diverse and productive estuaries is being devastated and won't recover for decades, and fisherman who've lost everything and had their families crushed,... The media is now treating this as a disaster for Louisiana, but it will soon spread to other gulf states, then maybe Mexico, Cuba, then out into the Atlantic...

This administration won't treat this like Bush/Cheney would. As Rahm Emanuel would say, "You never let a serious crisis go to waste." We could very well see an attack on all the oil/gas subsidies in order to pay for clean up, and then some major new efforts to switch to Alt-E. Other than being just a horrible disaster for the planet and our children's future, this could be the black swan that starts the Alt-E bubble that EJ had given up on. Time to buy Alte-E?

[metalman]

Re: Deepwater Horizon well could become unchecked gusher

I think I understand where you're coming from (a bit cynical maybe), but we may be way too early to come to the conclusion that we'll just accept this disaster, jump in our SUV's and move on until the next disaster.

Your expertise is much needed here. I don't seem to recall a problem like this ever occurring in the oil industry before. It's one thing to have a well blow out, but it's quite another for it to happen 5,000 feet below the ocean surface. Also the very fact that this well hasn't been capped already, indicates that there are major technological problems with stopping this leak, and this scenario was not anticipated. If the riser pipe fails, as some at NOAA fear, this will rapidly become the worst, and most visible, oil spill ever.

The media will be filled with pictures of oil covered birds and beaches, reports from biologists describing how one of the worlds most diverse and productive estuaries is being devastated and won't recover for decades, and fisherman who've lost everything and had their families crushed,... The media is now treating this as a disaster for Louisiana, but it will soon spread to other gulf states, then maybe Mexico, Cuba, then out into the Atlantic...

This administration won't treat this like Bush/Cheney would. As Rahm Emanuel would say, "You never let a serious crisis go to waste." We could very well see an attack on all the oil/gas subsidies in order to pay for clean up, and then some major new efforts to switch to Alt-E. Other than being just a horrible disaster for the planet and our children's future, this could be the black swan that starts the Alt-E bubble that EJ had given up on. Time to buy Alte-E?

grg... isn't the issue here that wells oil at those depths are under so much pressure? isn't that why the oil rig blew up and why 200k barrels/day is gushing into the ocean?

[Master Shake]

Re: Deepwater Horizon well could become unchecked gusher

Eyewitness account of what happened by some guys who were fishing at the rig when it blew.

http://www.mudinmyblood.net/forum/showthread.php?t=6104

[aaron]

Re: Deepwater Horizon well could become unchecked gusher

It's no more a "Black Swan" event than the crash of a commercial airliner.

This looks to be worse than the Exxon Valdez spill and we have been hearing about that for 20 years. How's that been for the drilling in Alaska? I sure hope you are right that this is just another crash of a commercial airliner. I was all for drilling, but after this event I would be willing to pay more for my gas. Alaska is way out in the middle of nowhere. This is our gulf coast. Very few people are willing to give up seafood and beaches for cheap gas in their SUV. Peak oil be damned.

[GRG55]

Re: Deepwater Horizon well could become unchecked gusher

grg... isn't the issue here that wells oil at those depths are under so much pressure? isn't that why the oil rig blew up and why 200k barrels/day is gushing into the ocean?

No that is not correct.

If you have not yet seen it, I have an explanation of the sequence of events that caused the blowout in the "SUPPLY Destruction" thread in the Select News section that I posted a couple of days ago. The industry has successfully drilled many wells much deeper than this one. In fact BP holds the depth record in the Gulf of Mexico when it drilled Tiber in 2009. The total depth of Tiber well is roughly 15,000 feet deeper than the well that just blew out.

The industry has also had more than a few blowouts on wells that were not nearly as deep or as complex as this one. Here's a link to a few of these disasters.

Once again I want to emphasize, as with almost all serious industrial accidents [including commercial airplane crashes], this was caused by a sequence of events that compounded to create the final catastrophe...it is not one thing that is responsible. When they finally find and recover the Air France Airbus that crashed into the Atlantic last year they will confirm exactly the same thing...a sequence of ever worsening events that compounded and ultimately overwhelmed the flight deck crew.

The description from the fishing boat that Master Shake posted on this thread is consistent with the events I laid out in my earlier post referenced above. The "water cascading down from the rig" that they describe is the seawater that the rig crew had circulated into the 5000 ft riser being ejected by the gas entering the wellbore and then expanding as it rose towards surface where the pressure is lower. The water would have been followed very shortly by the drilling mud that was being ejected from the wellbore.

This type of situation can deteriorate literally within a minute or two, and clearly caught the rig crew completely by surprise. It does not appear that they even had time to try to close the BOPs before the gas ignited. The survivors evacuated the rig within 5 minutes of the first explosion, which is a credit to the emergency response plan preparations. The priority sequence offshore is ALWAYS: 1. people; 2. the well; 3. the rig.

As to we_are_toast's observation that "the very fact that the well isn't capped already, indicates there are major technological problems with stopping this leak", that also is not completely correct. There are almost always major problems trying to "kill" an out of control hydrocarbon well, and it doesn't have to be offshore in 5000 ft of water either. Just one example that I am personally familiar with...On October 17, 1982 a sour gas well being drilled by Amoco [now part of BP, ironically enough] in the Rocky Mountain foothills south-west of Edmonton, Alberta blew out while the rig crew was trying to circulate out a kick. The well released 150 million cubic feet of 28% toxic sour gas and 20,000 barrels per day of liquids for 67 days before it was capped. And in the process it took the lives of two employees of Texas well control firm Boots and Coots [Asger "Boots" Hansen was one of Red Adair's earliest crew members]. This well was not in a remote area, difficult to access, miles offshore, or in some distant foreign land. The well blew out at 2:30 in the afternoon. Media video of the blowout was broadcast on that evening's dinner news hour.

This is anything but a "risk free" business folks. If I was Tony Hayward [CEO of BP] I might be thinking of converting the company into an investment bank right about now...there have to be easier ways to make a living than this.

[GRG55]

Re: Deepwater Horizon well could become unchecked gusher

This looks to be worse than the Exxon Valdez spill and we have been hearing about that for 20 years. How's that been for the drilling in Alaska? I sure hope you are right that this is just another crash of a commercial airliner. I was all for drilling, but after this event I would be willing to pay more for my gas. Alaska is way out in the middle of nowhere. This is our gulf coast. Very few people are willing to give up seafood and beaches for cheap gas in their SUV. Peak oil be damned.

This is neither the first nor the last oil well blowout. It's not even the first oil well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico [and unless a complete drilling ban is imposed, I doubt it will be the last either]. That is why I can't characterise it as a "black swan" event.

I am not in any way trying to understate or downplay how terrible this disaster is going to be on the ecology of the region, the families of the 11 workers that were killed, and all the other very real negative effects.

However, the behaviour of your fellow citizens does not accord with your statement that "very few people are willing to give up seafood and beaches for cheap gas...". The majority of the people in the USA labour under the delusion that they can have it all. Maybe this disaster will have the effect of changing that...of forcing a serious debate about choices...but I'm not counting on it...

[GRG55]

Re: Deepwater Horizon well could become unchecked gusher

No that is not correct.

If you have not yet seen it, I have an explanation of the sequence of events that caused the blowout in the "SUPPLY Destruction" thread in the Select News section that I posted a couple of days ago...

Here is my last post from April 29th on the other thread I mentioned above, for those that may not have access. Hopefully iTulip will indulge me and not cut off my access :-)

Some additional answers and speculations based on trying to fill in the blanks around the information that is coming out.

• To answer the question about whether there is something "wrong" about BP, I would say most definitely not. BP is as capable as any of its peer companies, and its operations standards, personnel and other related factors are as good an anyone else. When it comes to industry activities such as drilling operations offshore and in deep water there is a huge amount of industry collaboration. Everyone knows that they are all facing the same challenges and risks and that sharing knowledge, information and learnings is vital for the whole industry. BP's response to this terrible accident has been textbook perfect so far and shows how capable the company really is.
• They have already suspended existing operations on another well and relocated one of their semi-submersible rigs [the Transocean Development Driller III] to start operations on the first relief well and they are going to be moving a dynamic drillship [the Transocean Discoverer Enterprise] currently at Thunderhorse to start the second relief well very shortly.

The rig that capsized was in the final operation of the drilling phase of the well. The well was cased and they were not tripping out as I speculated in my last post, but had finished the last trip and were circulating the riser [that is the pipe system from the BOP stack on the ocean floor to the rig on the ocean surface] to seawater in preparation to disconnect the rig and move it off the well.

It is typical in a drilled and cased well to leave the wellbore filled with drilling mud and slightly overbalanced [the density of the drilling mud gives a bottom hole pressure that is slightly higher than the pressure of the formations], and I would guess that was the case here. However, seawater is typically slightly less dense than drilling mud so as roughly 5000 feet of riser was displaced from drill mud to seawater in preparation to disconnect the rig, the hydrostatic head of that portion of the column may have decreased enough to cause an underbalance

Regardless, something else had to have gone wrong, as the well was cased but would not have been perforated, so all the formations should have been isolated from the wellbore. That suggests something failed downhole [perhaps a liner lap?] to allow the formation fluid into the wellbore.

Finally, I went back and had a look at some of the video of the rig burning before it sank. There is one flame shooting straight up, at times higher than the derrick, which is probably the fluids flowing through the inside of the drill string section that would have been in the hole for the circulating operation. If you look carefully it's clear there is a second flame shooting out sideways underneath the helideck [in fact the later video shows it burned through the helideck before the rig capsized]. This flame is probably coming from the diverter, which means that the annulus [the space between the well casing and the drill pipe] was also flowing...and that implies that neither the pipe rams nor the shear rams were closed on the BOPs.

The failure of the BOPs is a real mystery. There's normally at least 3 locations on a rig from where the BOPs can be activated: the rig floor, the BOP control room [which is deliberately located well away from the rig floor], and usually somewhere in the living quarters...so it looking more likely that somehow gas entered the wellbore that was supposed to be isolated from all formations, and as it rose toward surface, expanded and rapidly displaced the drilling mud, taking the crew by surprise.

In most accidents it's a series of events or failures that leads to the final result, rarely is it just one thing. And this instance is starting to look that way also. First perhaps an underbalanced wellbore from the riser displacement, then some sort of failure of the casing/liner system downhole, and finally the failure of the BOPs to actuate. The rig that capsized is reported to be on its side more than 1000 feet away from the wellhead so there is no chance it damaged it. It's possible there's something in the BOPs that is preventing them from closing...either a drill collar or perhaps even the bit if the crew were circulating out as part of the last trip.

It will take perhaps 60 to 90 days from spud to drill each relief well, and I understand BP is working up the engineering on some sort of "wellhead cap"... a structure much like a steel umbrella that will be placed over the BOP stack [after they blow off the damaged riser that is now leaking]. That will capture the oil and allow them to flow it in a contained riser to surface to eliminate the slick. In the meantime the tethered remotes are still being used to try to get the BOPs closed. Let's hope their luck changes for the better soon.

[Rajiv]

Re: Deepwater Horizon well could become unchecked gusher

Very few people are willing to give up seafood and beaches for cheap gas in their SUV. Peak oil be damned.

The problem is not as simple as that. If a moratorium on drilling happens, the supply of oil is going to shrink rapidly. So think not $3 per gal, but rather $30 per gal. How then does that impact your life style? Is the North American public willing to make the necessary changes over the next two decades? Possibly Alt-E will come through. But what happens if the technological solutions are not as feasible as currently thought?

Dave Cohen had a good article - Oil Spills — There's No Free Lunch

Here we go again. The tragic explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig and subsequent oil spill has stirred up the usual offshore drilling debate in the United States. Apparently, the Halliburton people had just finished completing the well when something went terribly wrong. Such incidents are relatively rare, and it's not known what the (over) reaction will be yet.

A U.S. Interior Department official on Thursday would not rule out a pause in new deepwater oil drilling until oil companies can demonstrate they are able to control spills.

"Everything is on the table," Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes said at a White House briefing on what the government is doing to handle the widening oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico caused by an oil rig explosion last week.

It is impossible to demonstrate that oil spills can be controlled unless you can anticipate future events. In so far as only God and Warren Buffet can do that, new deepwater drilling should not be halted for this reason.

The oil slick moves toward the Louisiana/Mississippi coast. The spill has been sweeping across the gulf for nine days. At first, BP estimated the flow from the snapped-off, mile-down well at 1,000 barrels a day; now, officials say the flow is more like 5,000 barrels (about 200,000 gallons) per day

There's little doubt in my mind that this oil spill will be a terrible environmental disaster. How are they going to cap a snapped-off mile-down well? Assuming this can be done, how long will it take? This oil is not coming from a tanker run aground as with the Exxon Valdez.

At times like this, the only thing I can tell you is that Americans have made their bed and now they've got to lie in it. The oil & gas industry has an excellent safety record in the United States, but shit happens. It is naive to believe that we don't need deepwater oil unless lots of us decide to drive a lot less. But we created an economy based on energy from fossil liquids, so we won't have much of an economy if Americans drive a lot less. Our dependence goes on and on and on. There's a price to pay for all this, and now we're paying it.

There's no free lunch, but some people prefer to think lunches are free. For example, Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defence Council says—

Offshore drilling is dangerous work, as this tragedy reminds us. It also puts our oceans at risk, as we’re now seeing to our horror. We have an oil slick the size of West Virginia smothering marine life across the Gulf of Mexico and threatening to poison the fertile Mississippi Delta and the ecologically rich coastline along four states. And the best solutions our officials have come up with is to set it on fire. We have to do better than that.

Not only are our coastal ecosystems at stake, but so is America’s ocean-based economy, which each year generates more than $230 billion and provides more jobs than the entire farm sector. Ocean-related tourism alone supplies 2 million jobs — jobs that depend on clean, healthy beaches and abundant fish, not oil slicks.

Yes, yes, this is a terrible tragedy, but here comes the nonsense—

We simply don’t have to jeopardize our oceans economy in the name of fuel production. If we want to boost our domestic oil supply, we should focus on enhanced oil recovery from existing fields, a process that can supply more than 10 times the amount of oil that could be produced by drilling in our oceans over the same period. The better use of existing oil fields — together with fuel efficient cars — can help transition us to the 21st century without harming marine life or marine jobs.

Absurd CO₂ EOR production estimate from the NRDC. "The primary reason for this dramatic rise in domestic CO2 EOR production over the next several decades comes from the impact the [Waxman-Markey] climate bill is expected to have on the availability of captured CO2 for sequestration in deep geologic formations, such as depleted oil and gas fields."
Sorry, you can't simply mandate U.S oil production and CO₂ capture & sequestration—Life doesn't work that way

Yo, Frances! NO FREE LUNCH! I was writing about EOR long before somebody told you about it. Who the hell told you enhanced oil recovery (EOR) can supply more than 10 times the amount of oil we get from the offshore in the same period? Was it Vello Kuuskraa? Who makes a living writing bullshit, feel-good reports for the government? If not him, then who?

The oil problem in the United States has been 40 years in the making if we date it from the peak of domestic production in 1970. There are no easy answers, so we took the easy way out: we imported more and more of the stuff. Just more and more heroin to feed our habit, no methadone and no cold turkey.
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[Rajiv]

Re: Deepwater Horizon well could become unchecked gusher

Here is my last post from April 29th on the other thread I mentioned above, for those that may not have access. Hopefully iTulip will indulge me and not cut off my access :-)

The failure of the BOPs is a real mystery. There's normally at least 3 locations on a rig from where the BOPs can be activated: the rig floor, the BOP control room [which is deliberately located well away from the rig floor], and usually somewhere in the living quarters...so it looking more likely that somehow gas entered the wellbore that was supposed to be isolated from all formations, and as it rose toward surface, expanded and rapidly displaced the drilling mud, taking the crew by surprise.

There was something interesting from Sharon Astyk - Drill, Baby...Oops!

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Moreover, as the Wall Street Journal Reports, the well doesn't have a particular sort of emergency automatic shut-off standard in Norway and Brazil - although there's some question of whether the shut off would have worked, the oil industry in the US apparently argued against the necessity of these devices:

The efficacy of the devices is unclear. Major offshore oil-well blowouts are rare, and it remained unclear Wednesday evening whether acoustic switches have ever been put to the test in a real-world accident. When wells do surge out of control, the primary shut-off systems almost always work. Remote control systems such as the acoustic switch, which have been tested in simulations, are intended as a last resort.

.Nevertheless, regulators in two major oil-producing countries, Norway and Brazil, in effect require them. Norway has had acoustic triggers on almost every offshore rig since 1993.

The U.S. considered requiring a remote-controlled shut-off mechanism several years ago, but drilling companies questioned its cost and effectiveness, according to the agency overseeing offshore drilling. The agency, the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service, says it decided the remote device wasn't needed because rigs had other back-up plans to cut off a well.

The U.K., where BP is headquartered, doesn't require the use of acoustic triggers.

On all offshore oil rigs, there is one main switch for cutting off the flow of oil by closing a valve located on the ocean floor. Many rigs also have automatic systems, such as a "dead man" switch as a backup that is supposed to close the valve if it senses a catastrophic failure aboard the rig.

As a third line of defense, some rigs have the acoustic trigger: It's a football-sized remote control that uses sound waves to communicate with the valve on the seabed floor and close it.

She also goes on to say

Meanwhile, the potential effect on fisheries and associated livelihoods, thousands of unique species and residents are likely to be disastrous. Among the potential victims:

The Gulf region contains about five million acres of wetlands, which are an essential habitat for three quarters of all of the migrating waterfowl that cross the US.

There are more than 3,300 marine species in the Gulf, including six endangered species of whale. Its shores include the only known nesting beach of Kemp's Ridley, the world's most endangered sea turtle. There are also populations of protected Hawksbill, Loggerhead and Leatherback turtles, which are about to begin their nesting season and would be particularly vulnerable to oil washed up on beaches.

There are several shark species declared to be "of concern" because of declining populations. The Gulf is also home to one of the world's largest populations of bottlenose dolphins, with an estimated 45,000 in its waters.

It is interesting that this emerging situation is occurring at the same time as the final approval of Cape Wind, the controversial wind farm held up by NIMBYism and shortly following Obama's opening of offshore drilling. Our future as a society is going to involve a certain measure of raping the environment - we know this. We have been casual about the consequences we can see, and reluctant to make visible the full consequences of our extraction - we assume that our resources are clean if we don't have to live near the pollution they engender. This, of course is not true.

It is easy to cry "Drill, baby, drill" and harder to live with the real world consequences of our consumption - increasingly hard. And there aren't a lot of good answers - but one of the things I think is essential is that we understand what we are talking about. It is easy to march to close a coal plant - and it is necessary that we do close them. But unless we are prepared to bring our electrical generation home, to do with less and to find ways to live with less, that march is meaningless. We can't oppose offshore drilling and drive around as much as we like, nor can we support offshore drilling...except when it might affect our lives and livelihood.

Americans live in a world where there's so much "away" - we laud ourselves for reductions in pollutants that we have merely offshored, we laud ourselves for costs that we have merely deferred upon the next generation. We throw "away" so many things, and push "away" so much knowledge. I'm deeply grieved about this oil spill, and I hope from it may emerge a little more knowledge, a little more recognition that there is no such place as "away"