Ixtoc: The Gulf's other massive oil spill no longer apparent

[babylonsister]

Cold comfort, I know.

* Posted on Saturday, June 12, 2010

Ixtoc: The Gulf's other massive oil spill no longer apparent

By Glenn Garvin | McClatchy Newspapers


MALAQUITE BEACH, Texas ... The oil was everywhere, long black sheets of it, 15 inches thick in some places. Even if you stepped in what looked like a clean patch of sand, it quickly and gooily puddled around your feet. And Wes Tunnell, as he surveyed the mess, had only one bleak thought: "Oh, my God, this is horrible! It's all gonna die!''

But it didn't. Thirty-one years since the worst oil spill in North American history blanketed 150 miles of Texas beach, tourists noisily splash in the surf and turtles drag themselves into the dunes to lay eggs.

"You look around and it's like the spill never happened,'' shrugs Tunnell, a marine biologist. "There's a lot of perplexity in it for many of us.

For Tunnell and others involved in the fight to contain the June 3, 1979, spill from Mexico's Ixtoc 1 offshore well in the Gulf of Campeche, the BP blowout in the Gulf of Mexico conjures an eerie sense of deja vu.

Like the BP spill, the Ixtoc disaster began with a burst of gas followed by an explosion and fire, followed by a relentless gush of oil that resisted all attempts to block it. Plugs of mud and debris, chemical dispersants, booms skimming the surface of the water: Mexico's Pemex oil company tried them all, but still the spill inexorably crept ashore, first in southeast Mexico, later in Texas.

But if the BP spill seems to be repeating one truth already demonstrated in the Ixtoc spill ... that human technology is no match for a high-pressure undersea oil blowout ... scientists are hoping that it may eventually confirm another: that the environment has a stunning capacity to heal itself from manmade insults.

more...

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/06/12/95793/ixtoc-the-gulfs-other-massive.html

[Ruby the Liberal]

1. Ixtoc wasn't in the gulf current.

[BeFree]

3. Also

Most of the Ixtoc vapors were burned at the surface. And the well was in only 160 feet of water and was not injected with dispersants like this one, so nearly all the oil floated to the surface while most of the oil now is dispersed into the water below.

Ixtoc was not in a biologically rich area like this one at the mouth of the Mississippi river.

[HughMoran]

5. Can you explain the significance of that?

[Ruby the Liberal]

6. The oil stayed within the currents off Mexico and Texas

and as noted above, chemicals weren't used to sink the oil. They flowed it to the top and burned/skimmed it. Also noting the depth.

Here, we have chemicals pumping into oil at 5k feet, causing it to rise in blobs into the water channels. Being that this is getting into the gulf stream, it is being picked up, sent south and will soon enter the Atlantic current - once it befouls the Keys and Cuba.

This is going to be a MUCH more wide spread catastrophe than the (relatively) isolated Ixtoc spill.

[HughMoran]

8. Widespread yes

some might argue that dispersants breaking it into smaller blobs and spreading it out farther will actually cause it to breakdown faster.

[Ruby the Liberal]

9. The oil, perhaps. Do you trust what is in the dispersants themselves?

[HughMoran]

10. The volatiles in the dispersant are dangerous to those who are near where it is dispersed

Those volatiles evaporate rapidly so the effects are most dangerous for the crew members of the rigs and other vessels cleaning the Gulf. The benzene released by the crude is as toxic or moreso than the dispersant, so there are plenty of dangers for the oil workers :(

Once the dispersant has done it's work, the effects are not known, but I think the smaller blobs are supposed to be easier for the ecosystem to breakdown. Even Norway and other places who are better at this than we are use dispersants, so they do appear to serve a purpose, though this can be disputed.

[wordpix]

2. 30K bpd for 10 months is a lot but this one could top that---estimates now at 50K, conservatively

& no one knows when it'll be over

[HughMoran]

4. When I search I see 20k - 40k bpd

Can you link me to the 50k bpd conservative estimate?

[gateley]

7. Although the conditions differ, I'm so pleased to hear that area

has 'healed'. We may not be so forunate. :(

[moondust]

11. Just below the surface of the sand and rocks at Prince William Sound

are the obvious traces of Exxon's oil: the look, the smell, the feel. Some TV reporter (?) went up there and did a report recently. That spill was 21 years ago and roughly eight times smaller than the BP spill is right now.

:(