It is quite likely that as much as 200 million gallons of crude oil will have gushed from the BP well before relief wells can stop the horror.
Most of the leaked oil stays on the surface and will in due time reach the beaches of all five Gulf States. One sizeable portion of the leaked oil is going to stay in the deep waters of the Gulf for a very long time and will kill most aquatic life. Another part will escape into the atmosphere and will irritate and harm residents living near the Gulf.
The longer the spill drags on and the more the oil weathers, the more oil will be driven by wind and waves toward the shores of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. Another part of the oil will be carried by the Gulf current to the Keys, will be released into the North Atlantic, and will reach the eastern shores of Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas.
Well designed oil boom, with large floats and deep skirts, can protect the inlets of estuaries and keep thickened crude and tar balls from reaching beaches as long as waters stay calm. Virtually none of the weathered crude disappears.
Therefore, it is mandatory that virtually all of this toxic debris is removed as quickly as possible from the waters of the Gulf. Otherwise more than one hundred million gallons of this filthy, sticky, and greasy gunk are going to foul beaches, destroy commercial and sports fishing, and cripple tourism along in the Gulf States for years before the rest escapes through the Straits of Florida.
Incomprehensibly, neither the oil industry nor responsible agencies of the US Federal Government have thought it necessary to develop high performance, large capacity oil skimmers that are able to not only operate in calm waters but are also capable of continuing their duty when winds pipe up and seas get rough. Worse yet, neither the oil industry, the Minerals Management Service of the Department of the Interior, nor the US Coast Guard thought it necessary to put any programs in place that will reliably protect the Gulf States from the unavoidable damages that leaking oil wells and damaged oil tankers can inflict on one of the most wondrous natural treasures of the US.
European countries like the Netherlands, Germany, and France have developed such skimmers for doing duty under the usually more difficult conditions in the North Sea. Actual experience has shown that large, specially designed, oil skimming vessels can collect and take aboard as much as 2000 barrels per day for a few consecutive days of deployment.
A flotilla of ten vessels with advanced skimming capabilities and supported by a small fleet of lightering vessels could potentially have kept the BP oil spill contained to a very small area around the failed Deepwater Horizon Drilling Platform.
It seems entirely feasible for a single vessel to collect as much as 5,000 barrels a day with a technologically advanced and likely entirely different skimmer design.
Unfortunately, such equipment capabilities were not available on the date of the well failure and absolutely no efforts have been expended since to put such vessels into service posthaste.
Lightering ships are able to upload periodically a reasonably dewatered crude oil mixture from skimmers and can facilitate 24/7 skimming duty. Because the oil must be transported to specially designed separation and storage facilities onshore and because lightering vessels can steam only at moderate speeds, a rather sizeable tanker fleet must be in continuous operation for keeping skimmers collecting oil continuously.
Early in July, the Taiwan ship "A Whale" arrived in the Gulf with the declared purpose of sucking up oil and water and separating it onboard. With a length of more than one thousand feet and a beam of 175 feet she has a huge displacement, and can hold close to 2 million barrels of crude.
It is only natural that this very unusual vessel was greeted with much anticipation. First tests in agitated waters were inconclusive. It is highly unlikely that the concept of the skimming devices installed on this tanker will work immediately as designed.
All one can do is hope that this huge ship with its deep draft and its huge tanks can install workable skimming capabilities and can deliver on its promises of cleaning the surface waters of the Gulf, soon. Even in the event of failure, her Taiwanese owner has demonstrated one trait that has been missing from the efforts of his American and British counterparts; taking a major financial risk to help the suffering residents of the Gulf of Mexico.
The Gulf needs one more such hero. Deepwater oil drilling is in desperate need of a design for a large containment dome that can reliably prevent leaking crude oil from reaching surface waters. The continuation of drilling at depths that cannot be accessed by human divers is a death sentence for the Gulf. The thought of a second oil well breakage in deep waters should give pause to even the most greedy oil interests.
After all, the citizens of the Gulf are suffering for one and only one reason. Satisfying the greed of a few tax-advantaged operators has condemned the entire Gulf Region to years of suffering and financial hardships!
Less than ten percent of the annual tax savings, bestowed by US Congress on the oil industry, could have prevented the BP disaster. Now the actual damages the Gulf and its residents are exposed to will exceed many times the insufficient BP escrow amount of $20 billion.