You Are Tired Of Hearing About It
So you are sick and tired of hearing me rant about the BP oil well spewing oil into the Gulf, so I guess I should talk about something else.
How about Another Gulf oil spill
The Deepwater Horizon is not the only well leaking oil into the Gulf of Mexico for the last month.
A nearby drilling rig, the Ocean Saratoga, has been leaking since at least April 30, according to a federal document.
While the leak is decidedly smaller than the Deepwater Horizon spill, a 10-mile-long slick emanating from the Ocean Saratoga is visible from space in multiple images gathered by Skytruth.org, which monitors environmental problems using satellites.
Federal officials did not immediately respond when asked about the size of the leak, how long it had been flowing, or whether it was possible to plug it.
Of course, the fact that all of this oil is leaking into the Gulf from wells doesn’t stop people from worrying about lost oil jobs.
Sorry, but we don’t profit from the drilling and it has put oil on our beaches, about which we care a great deal. Florida has an official 12% unemployment rate which translates into a real rate of un- or under-employment of almost 1 in 4 Florida workers. The summer tourist season gave people some hope about the possibility of earning some cash, and now we have oil on our beaches.
I guess we can’t depend on the government to tell us when industry has these problems, so now we have to depend on volunteers scanning satellite photos.
10 comments
Nope! I for one am not sink and tired of your *rants* (or public service bulletins). 😉 I *AM* sick and tired of the fact that the debacle continues… and continues…
We’ll be lucky if it is resolved as quickly as your Montara oil spill.
The real problem is all of the oil that is trapped in those plumes below the surface. You need warmth and sunlight to break it down, and that isn’t available in the deep Gulf. The first tropical event the area could be a blessing or a curse, but we won’t know until it happens.
There is around a million barrels of oil and a million gallons of dispersant in the Gulf and no one seems to know what’s going to happen. All we know for sure is that no one was prepared for this, and we still don’t have the resources in place to deal with it.
All the talk on the local evening news (CBS station) was of lost oil, lost offshore drilling jobs if the practice is ended, lost profits and lost taxes for the State of Texas. Not a word… not one @#$% word… about environmental damage, spoiled beaches, lost jobs due to the spill itself, lost lives, lost tourism, etc. You can tell what side CBS’s bread is buttered on in Houston. I do not belong here.
The thing that gets to me is that working on the rigs is temporary employment, it’s not a career. The money may be good, but most of the people I’ve known who worked off-shore ended up broke, and that was after the divorce if they found time to get married.
The oil is not going to last forever and people need to start looking for a new line of work now. Unfortunately, work on the water is gone for an unknown amount of time. Almost everyone is a contract worker who have to pay someone to get the job, and there are no benefits.
This is not the time to be looking for work, but we can’t afford any more mistakes over here. They can’t prove that it is safe, and we can’t accept anything less than proof.
If more people had been concerned about the consequences of a major screw-up, we wouldn’t be talking about a gusher in the Gulf. If more people had worried about losing jobs and money, this wouldn’t have happened.
Me either. Make that three that are definitely not sick and tired. I think most of us are just in shock at what’s happening right before our eyes. BP either can’t or isn’t doing anything about it. The government can’t seem to do anything about it. They don’t want the people on the ground to do anything about it. We’re immobilized and able to do nothing while the horror just keeps getting worse by the minute.
Just for the record, when I want to know what’s really happening in the Gulf, it’s your site that I go to first.
Thank you, Juanita. I’ve been trying to calm down, but the outrages still continue. They are bringing in crews from the Carolinas and not telling them of the dangers of handling crude, or providing them with the equipment to do it, while they are telling volunteers that they have to attend training classes. The difference seems to be that the people who have been hired have to sign gag orders, while volunteers can talk.
That seems to be the thinking behind the wildlife rescue work. The existing Gulf Coast network has the people and training, but they will talk to the media and BP doesn’t want people to know how bad things are.
Yes indeed, there certainly DOES appear to be a double standard, doesn’t it? I am dismayed by the lack of respect being shown to the local people. After all, it’s their home that’s dying. Your outrage is understandable and you’re in interesting company. I just happened across the following Associated Press article.
My favorite quote in the article is “I told him I don’t care if it’s light crude or dark crude or sweet crude, I don’t want it in my damn river.”
There isn’t enough of anything to go around, so every time the oil heads towards a new area people have to wait for equipment to arrive. You have the same people who are telling you close an area turning around and saying it’s illegal to close it. Boats are leased and not used, so they are not available to people who need boats. Resources keep getting shifted, so even if you do get boats, you can’t be sure that the other equipment you need will be where you were told it was located.
This public-corporate partnership means that no one is really in charge or responsible for the failures.
Walton county wanted to use hay to absorb the oil, and the powers that be said they couldn’t because it wasn’t effective. A week later they are using hay to stop the oil in Louisiana.
Tempers are really getting short, and someone needs to clue BP in on the number of armed people in the area, because sooner or later someone is going to snap. Someone needs to get their act together and start providing some hope. If this continues through the summer and we have some hurricanes, the state is looking at the loss of about 200k jobs and billions of dollars.
Don’t stop! I am so disgusted with everything concerning this (BP, media, Bawacko, you name it) . It is unconscionable to me that they don’t pull out all the stops, try everything – or that our guvmint hasn’t just thrown them the frig out of the way. Then again, they have no nads. And your blog is one of the few places that does, so don’t stop. K?
I have no intention of stopping because every day BP and/or the government does something to tick me off anew. In addition the Republican leadership in the state legislature still hasn’t given up their dream of selling leases off my coast, in my Gulf.
The sand and water are all we have to offer people. If they lose their value, this place dries up and blows away, like so many little towns in the Dust Bowl.
Local people are finally realizing that this is existential – if we lose this battle, we will cease to exist and all of the money they have invested in the area will be gone.