Stories tagged BP oil spill

One (short!) year ago today, BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig exploded 42 miles off the coast of Louisiana. Eleven families lost loved ones on that day, but the social, economic, and environmental damage had only begun.

Oil slick
Oil slickCourtesy U.S. Coast Gaurd

By April 22, 2010 the $560 million rig sunk, leaving oil spewing from the seabed into the Gulf of Mexico. On the 29th, the state of Louisiana declared a state of emergency due to the threat posed to natural resources, and U.S. President Barack Obama stated that BP was responsible for the cleanup.

Hopeful in those first days, remote underwater vehicles were sent to activate the blowout preventer, but the effort failed. In the following weeks that turned into months, controlled burns, booms, skimmers, and dispersants were used to cleanup oil as efforts to stop the oil flow were underway. The Justice Department launched a criminal and civil investigation, a moratorium on oil drilling was enacted and later rescinded, and the no-fishing zone grew to 37% of American Gulf waters. After 5 months, 8 days, and roughly 5 million barrels of spilled oil, a pressure test finally determined that a relief well had successfully stopped the oil flow. The spill was the world’s largest accidental release of oil into a marine environment.

The BBC wrote an article to commemorate the event and bring readers up to speed on the status of the Gulf today. National Geographic also has some neat zoomable maps.


Oobleck: It's pretty awesome when you put oobleck on a speaker and play music, but you might want to use a speaker from a yard sale rather than one you ever intend to use ever again for actual music enjoyment.

I know you've probably moved on from the BP oil spill to bigger and better things, like Charlie Sheen. But it's worth resurrecting old news for this: oobleck could have succeeded where drilling mud had an epic fail. A researcher at Washington University in St. Louis, MO, came up with the idea to use oobleck because it doesn't behave like a normal liquid--that is, it flows like a liquid if you pour slowly, but behaves like a solid if you apply force to it or try to move it quickly.

This quirky, non-newtonian fluid would have been a big asset to BP's top kill strategy, because the oil's own force would have caused the oobleck to behave like a solid and plug the well, whereas the oil broke up the drilling mud they used and dispersed it. The challenge lies in getting the oobleck quickly into the well without triggering its solid-like behavior too soon.

Have you ever played with oobleck here at Science Museum of Minnesota or elsewhere? It's pretty great stuff, and you can make your own! Who'da thunk it could actually be useful?


A stretched metaphor: Original image altered, of course.







Wendy Schmidt oil cleanup X challenge

Cleaning up oil spills costs big money. BP says the Gulf cleanup cost is $8 Billion. Hoping that next time we can do it better, faster, and cheaper, Wendy Schmidt has offered $1.4 Million in prizes to inspire a new generation of innovative solutions.

A $1 Million Prize will be awarded to the team that demonstrates the ability to recover oil on the sea surface at the highest oil recovery rate (ORR) and the highest Recovery Efficiency (RE).

If you are interested click here for the competition rules.

MIT robotic seaswarm vehicles

MIT may have a jump on the competition with their Seaswarm project. Last week they showed off what looked like a solar powered treadmill that lapped up spilled oil. Using GPS and wireless communication, a swarm of these devices autonomously coordinate their movements.


They estimate that 5000 of their robotic sea-swarm vehicles could clean up a Gulf sized spill in a month.

This article describes a new sugar-based compound in development by researchers at the City College of New York that has the potential to make oil slick cleanup a lot easier in the future. The compound turns the oil to gel, which can be easily skimmed from the water's surface. This is a great alternative to dispersants like the ones BP used because it's nontoxic and shouldn't harm ocean organisms. Check out the video on the same page of that stuff in action--pretty cool!





The new cap BP has placed on the leaking oil well a mile below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico seems like it might actually be working. That means that for the for the first time in almost three months, oil has stopped flowing from the well.

I'm hesitant to let out a cheer for this, if only because we've already had quite a few gotcha-moments with "solutions" in the response to the oil leak. Right now the pressure from the well is being monitored to determine if the cap should stay tightly sealed onto the well or not—if the pressure stays high, that's good, but if the pressure drops, it could mean that the pipe has ruptured underground, which would be bad. Leaks beneath the sea floor would be much more difficult to manage, because the oil would seep up through the sediment in many places, instead of gushing from one broken pipe.

Anyway, here's hoping that the cap holds, leak free, until relief wells are completed and the leaking well can be shut off entirely. Stay tuned...


BP: Sweet. Thanks a mil.
Someone else: Yeah, it's totally leaking still.
Someone else: Yeah.
Someone else: Yes?!
Someone else: Yes, you've tried it a couple times.
BP: All right then! Operation Top Hat is go!



We'll see, eh?


Buzz readers who really know me know my passion for the Doobie Brothers. So I have to absolutely post this parody video featuring their song "Black Water." This effort even has the band's official okay!!

Found on the NYTimes Dot Earth blog, this little video uses


(25,000 barrels is now the low estimate of how much oil is spilling into the Gulf of Mexico from the ruined Deepwater Horizon wellhead every day.)

I was intrigued, but the lack of scale bugs me. 25,000 barrels obviously makes a big pile, but just how big is big?