Friday, June 4, 2010

Oil Turmoil

I’m a chemical engineer wannabe, and petroleum is one of our favourite industries, so I’ve taken a particular interest in the BP oil spill over at the Mexican Gulf. It is one of the biggest oil spills in the past decade and is estimated to cost BP over a billion US dollars (up-to-date) just to react to the spill.

Anyway, the spill on the 20th of April was caused by an oil rig blowout, which I’m pretty sure is just a fancy term for an error in design, in this case the design pressure. The platform in which the blowout occurred on was named the Deepwater Horizon, and the blow out caused an explosion on the platform itself killing eleven workers.

This oil spill is truly a major catastrophe, because experts has estimated that the amount of oil flowing out of the unplugged oil well (caused by the absence of the drill platform) was around 1.9 billion to 3.0 billion litres per day. I guess this goes to show that major oils are still only human and make human mistakes, despite them being one of the richest industries in the world and only hiring the cream of the crop to work for their companies. (that’s me ranting for not getting any interviews with major oils)

Well I’ve found this excellent site that puts the spill into a relative perspective so that we can understand the actual magnitude of this problem.

Here is the actual spill location in the Gulf of Mexico


This would be the equivalent spill radius if it was in Melbourne


And this is how it would look like relative to the size of Malaysia

Well I hope that puts into perspective how bad the oil spill actually is. And frankly my heart goes out the the people who have lost their lives working on the Deepwater Horizon platform, and to all the people whose lives are affected by this spill.

And in accordance to the main picture, if I had it my way, the oil spill would have been on a hot explosive mexican dude; and most certainly not an oil spill due to an explosion in the mexican gulf.

Signing out.

13 comments:

  1. I didn't know that it's that big!
    You wouldn't want an oil spill on a hunk, you'd rather see a seed spill on his tummy. Wakaka.

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  2. It's a good topic for biotech students as well... Last year, I did a research-review on the Exxon Valdez oil-spill, and how the applications of biotech can be used to clean it up by culturing bacteria in the waters. Trouble is that it's a whole different environment with this recent incident, so I suppose it'll take awhile for biotech to come up with a solution.

    Sad thing is that oil-spills at this scale is bound to affect (destroy) several ecosystems... :(

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  3. Wowww...graphically enlightening la!

    Under Stand now...seriously.

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  4. Haha Will... but that pic is hot tho...

    Yea Evann, Valdez was huge... bigger than this current BP one... Exxon survived that... wonder if BP will... rockbottom share prices at the moment...

    Yea immi... it is...

    Haha glad to have shone some light on the case Simon.

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  5. Thanks for the info. It seems BP has been having arse luck lately, latest being that they were held responsible for a driver being burnt to death in KL.
    +Ant+

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  6. Actually Ant, thats BHP, I'm pretty sure they are different companies... I sure hope Malaysians dont start boycotting the wrong company...

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  7. BHP is the new name for BP here. Rebranding exercise when Boustead Berhad took over the franchise. ;)

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  8. Yes I understand they were bought over by Bousted Berhad... but that doesnt make them the same company? Coz the current BP stands for Beyond Petroleum. (not british like it used to)

    I mean they maybe selling oil from BP, but the company profile and company policy should be entirely different... again, I'm not too sure about this though...

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  9. My mom's side of the family has been running petrol kiosk under the BP banner for over 30 years. ;)
    +Ant+

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  10. Lol, then you must be right :) That's like inside information. Haha

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  11. Not insider information lor lolz I think many people noticed too esp the regular clients, coz those BP kiosks changed from green to orangy during the re-branding ;)
    +Ant+

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  12. BHP was bought over by Boustead Bhd indeed.. public knowledge.

    but nice way of presenting the informnation.. i have no idea how large it was.. and i couldnt really be bothered actually :)

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