Oil Spills, Earthquakes and Faults

Oil Spills NO Different to Earthquakes

They Both Spell Disaster, Occur Because of Faults and Happen Regularly in San Francisco Bay

Earthquakes occur in SFB because of geological faults: San Gregorio fault, San Andreas fault, Mt Diablo fault… and Hayward fault. Oil spills occur there as a result of oil companies faults: Arco’s fault, BP’s fault, Chevron’s fault, ConocoPhillips’s fault, Exxon’s fault… and Shell’s fault!

You’d forgiven for thinking there must be an oil spill and an earthquake in the SFBA each day! Because you’d almost be right.

The oil slick from the Dubai Star, an oil tanker  located at Anchorage 9 south of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Photo: KGO-TV/ABC7 via Mercury News. Image may be subject to copyright.

The latest spill, a blackish filthy brown slick of bunker fuel, covered a 250-meter by  4-km stretch of San Francisco Bay on Friday, caused by a “refueling mishap” between an oil tanker, Dubai Star, and a service barge alongside, the U.S. Coast Guard reported.

The slick has not reached land and is in a narrow band because there is little wind and much of it may burn off amid warm weather, giving clean-up crews the upper hand in containing it, Coast Guard Captain Paul Gugg told reporters at a press conference.

“The weather is very cooperative. We’re all over it.” Gugg said.

Gugg said the scope of the contamination does not compare to the massive spill in 2007 of fuel oil from another tanker in the San Francisco Bay that spread across its shores and killed thousand of birds.

However,  Gugg didn’t say how much bunker fuel had spilled into the bay.

The spill comes eight days before the two-year anniversary of the vessel Cosco Busan striking the Bay Bridge in dense fog, ripping open its hull and spilling more than 53,000 gallons of fuel oil that fouled much of the shoreline along the well-known California waterway.

The Busan spill killed more than 2,500 birds and deposited oil on 200 miles of coastline, Pacific Environment was quoted as saying.

Meanwhile,

The unscrupulous oil giant BP has been fined $87 million for failing to remove safety hazards at its massive Texas City refinery, the 3rd largest in the US, where an explosion in 2005 killed 15 workers and injured 180 others.  The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) cited 270 violations at the oil refinery, officials said.

In 2005, BP was fined $21.3 million and ordered to repair hazards at their refinery, but it didn’t

“Lawyers acting for victims of the disaster suggested that the renewed action could put BP in breach of a plea agreement two years ago in which it pleaded guilty to a single felony and paid $373m to settle a string of criminal charges.” UK’s Guardian reported.

Related Links:

• Gulf of Mexico receives its regular ration of oil spill
• Meanwhile the magnitude of the Australian ecological disaster, the oil spill in Timor Sea, grows daily.

• Timor Sea oil spill costs $5.3m – so far
• First attempt to plug oil leak fails
• Second attempt to plug oil leak fails

Additional Links:

• Timor Sea Oil Slick: Growing Australian Disaster
• Major Ecological Disaster Underway in Timor Sea
• Australian Oil Disaster May Get a Lot Worse

More Links:

• Australia Fails to Plug Oil Leak in Timor Sea
• How Much Oil Pollution Is Too Much?
• FEWW Earthquake Forecast: Timor Sea

• Magnitude 6.8 EQ Strikes BANDA SEA
• Deadly Earthquake Strikes Java, Indonesia
• Exxon Pays Peanuts to the Monkeys

• 4m liters of crude spill into French nature reserve
• Old MacDonald Had a Fleet
• Shell Leaks in Shabby Style!
• Exxon Mobile Court Orders Only Fraction of Damages
• Another Day, Another Oil Spill in Alaska

• Chevron should pay $27 billion in compensation
• US Govt Sues BP America
• Australia hit by another man-made disaster
• Large spill at Canada’s oil sands terminal

Shell Leaks in Shabby Style!

Gulf of Mexico Turning into Oil Tailings Pond

The Gulf of Mexico has more utility value as a sewage dump than as body of water for marine life to thrive!

Let’s face it, to the “Real World people” the Gulf of Mexico has more utility value as a sewage dump than as body of water for  marine life to thrive. Where else could you bury your oil pipelines, or let the agricultural runoffs flow to, if the Gulf wasn’t there?

Shell and the U.S. Coast Guard are working to contain a few thousand barrels of crude oil that leaked into the Gulf of Mexico from its 50cm diameter pipeline,which is buried about 20m under water.

Shell reportedly discovered the leak Saturday on its Eugene Island oil pipeline, some 50 km off the coast of Louisiana (about 100km southwest of Houma, Louisiana).

“The pipeline has been shut down, halting daily supplies of 100,000 barrels a day of Eugene Island oil. The Eugene Island line also was carrying new oil from Chevron’s Tahiti platform which began flowing in May.” Reuters reported.

“The oil spill was among the largest in recent years in U.S. waters, officials said. Helicopters and airplanes that flew over the spill viewed a 16-by-3-mile “rainbow-like” oil sheen, Coast Guard Petty Officer Tom Atkeson said.”

Saturday’s oil spill is compared to a November 2007 bunker fuel spill into the San Francisco Bay that contaminated the local beaches and drew sharp protests from the locals and environmentalists.

“Shell had no estimate on repairs or a target date for restart of the 20-inch diameter pipeline, but people knowledgeable about operations said fixing it in 60-foot-deep water could take a day if the problem is small to weeks if it is big. Restart requires government approval.” The report said

“At this time, we cannot forecast when restart will occur. Our top priorities during the response and restart phases are safety and the environment,” a company spokesman said.

Shell owns a large stake in the pipeline as its operator, with other majors stakeholders being ExxonMobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips and Marathon.

Axis of Pollution: ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Chevron , ConocoPhillips, Marathon …

Late Print:

As if to prove us right, the U.S. District Court in Washington has just said “it will allow the U.S. Interior Department to move forward with oil and natural gas leasing plans for the Gulf of Mexico that were drawn up by the Bush administration.”

The court said, “leasing plans for the Gulf could continue, as could drilling off Alaska, but the department would have to conduct a review of the environmental risks before approving significant energy development activities.” Reuters reported.

“Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said he was pleased [jumping with joy] with the court’s decision and will go forward with a Gulf of Mexico lease sale planned for August 19.”

Salazar said:

President Obama has made clear that a comprehensive energy plan that reduces America’s dependence on foreign oil must include domestic production, and the Court’s ruling allows us to move forward in a balanced way.

The American Petroleum Institute, which sued to allow drilling in the Gulf to continue, said:

The court made the right decision by allowing the continued production of oil and natural gas from Gulf of Mexico,” . “The nation’s energy security depends upon these resources.

Meanwhile, Caroline Cannon, president of a native Alaskan village who sued to block Bush administration’s five-year (2007 to 2012) offshore oil and gas drilling  plan, said:

This drilling plan and the associated seismic testing, increases in vessel traffic, proposed large onshore and offshore infrastructure projects, and projections of oil spills in our unindustrialized homelands is extremely stressful.

But who said anyone was going to buy that truth stuff?

Related Links:

• Exxon Mobile Court Orders Only Fraction of Damages
• Another Day, Another Oil Spill in Alaska
• Chevron should pay $27 billion in compensation
• US Govt Sues BP America
• Australia hit by another man-made disaster
• Large spill at Canada’s oil sands terminal