Oil spill

“ Executive Order 13554 of October 5, 2010, was issued after the blowout and explosion of the mobile offshore drilling unit Deepwater Horizon that occurred on April 20, 2010, and resulted in the largest oil spill in U.S. history (Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill) . ”

“ The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and resulting environmental crisis is a stark reminder of how vulnerable our marine environments are, and how much communities and the Nation rely on healthy and resilient ocean and coastal ecosystems. ”

“ To achieve that goal, we must pursue clean energy and energy efficiency, and we’ve taken significant steps to do so. And we must also pursue domestic sources of oil and gas. Because it represents 30% of our oil production, the Gulf of Mexico can play an important part in securing our energy future. But we can only pursue offshore oil drilling if we have assurances that a disaster like the BP oil spill will not happen again. ”

“ The apparent correlation is a coincidence, but the growth of the oil industry, the wealth of which might have been expected to mitigate the rural decline, has created additional problems: oil industry infrastructure has taken away scarce agricultural land and pipelines have, in addition, blocked footpaths; oil spills contaminate water ”

“ Oil Blowouts from wellheads as a result of poor maintenance or damage. The chances of blowouts are fairly high because Nigerian oil is naturally contained under pressure. Pollution from blowouts is made worse if the area around the wellhead is not properly sealed. Blowouts may also occur during drilling. Oil Spillage from pipelines and flowlines as a result of poor maintenance or damage. Oil Spillage at flow-stations during separation from water. ”

“ A subsequent impact of oil spillage is on human health and especially mental health. In areas of intensive oil industry activity, local people often complain of increased physical and psychological symptoms which they blame on the presence of oil in their ecosystems. ”

“ They see themselves as part of a much wider world and their communications with that world are important (the bus stop is a very important place) , because it represents access to resources that are no longer available at home. But the intrusion of that world into their lives as represented by the oil industry is sensed as a threat: the oil flares, the pipelines and the oil spills are constantly referred to. ”

“ Right now, the law places a $75 million cap on the amount oil companies must pay to families and small businesses who suffer economic losses as a result of a spill like the one we’re witnessing in the Gulf Coast. ”

“ There is nothing more deserving of the label 'refuse' than oil spilled into a river.
That seems to us to be the common sense of the matter. The word 'refuse' includes all foreign substances and pollutants apart from those 'flowing from streets and sewers and passing therefrom in a liquid state' into the watercourse. ”

“ The Commission shall: (a) ⁠ examine the relevant facts and circumstances concerning the root causes of the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster; (b) ⁠ develop options for guarding against, and mitigating the impact of, oil spills associated with offshore drilling, taking into consideration the environmental, public health, and economic effects of such options, including options involving: (1) ⁠ improvements to Federal laws, regulations, and industry practices applicable to offshore drilling that would ensure effective oversight, monitoring, and response capabilities ”

“ Its waters ate away the insufficient foundations of tanks, and rivers of naphtha and gasolene and kerosene overran the river of water for miles. A spark did the rest. Oil refineries took fire, tanks exploded. There were two raging seas—water beneath, fire above. Men, women, children, animals, property were swept along in their intermingled waves. From every overturned tank and blazing refinery fresh streams of oil flowed into the sea of flame, which climbed the hills for the victims the other sea could not reach. Those who escaped drowning breathed in a more dreadful death. ”

“ But this was when thousands of barrels of petroleum had been stored up in vats, and when the combustible fluid was spouting from the wells at the rate of many hundred barrels per day. Before the present deep wells were bored, oil was not produced in sufficient quantities to cause such a conflagration, and there was never seen upon the creek a stratum of the fluid of such consistency as to be inflammable. ”

“ One man wanted to steam it to death, another to drown it, another to squeeze its life out, another to smother it with straw, another to dig a hole and cut off the flow, another to roll a big log over it, another to blow out its brains with dynamite, another to blind it with carbolic acid, another to throw up earth-works and so on until the pestered owners wished five-hundred cranks were in the asylum at North Warren. Pipes were finally attached in such a way as to draw off the oil and the flame died out. ”

“ Direct pollution such as offshore and on-shore spillage, gas flaring and abandoned installations. Alteration of the environment by activities such as the construction of access slots, pipelines, flowlines, roads, drilling sites and wellheads. Pollution and alteration of the environment by other primary and by secondary and tertiary industries encouraged by the oil industry. More insidious costs include the build up of heavy metals in ground-water, changes in soil acidity caused by atmospheric pollution and disruption to local communities and their relationship with their natural resources. ”

“ As regards the circumstances favoring the accumulation of petroleum, it appears that there should be a shale or other fine-grained rock forming to protect the organic matter during its deposition, a porous stratum above to be penetrated by the hydrocarbons resulting from the decomposition of the organic matter, and finally another shale or slate above, to prevent the further escape of the volatile products. If the sand-rock which usually forms the porous stratum is filled with fissures, large quantities of oil may collect in these. ”

“ This law, as has well been said, forms the foundation of all successful boring experiments, and the search for natural fuel, therefore, becomes as easy and as reliable a duty as that for artesian water or for coal. The great oil fever of the West was attended at first, as Professor M'Gee tells us, with much waste of the product. Wells were sunk everywhere, and the oil overflowed the land, tainting the rivers, poisoning the air, and often driving out the prospectors from the field of discovery. In Baku accidents and catastrophes have, similarly, been of frequent occurrence. ”

“ There is a heavy gas pressure in the Oklahoma City field. Where proportional taking from the wells in flush pools is not enforced, operators who do not have physical or market outlets are forced to produce to capacity in order to prevent drainage to others having adequate outlets. In Oklahoma prior to the passage of the act, large quantities of oil produced in excess of transportation facilities or demand therefor were stored in surface tanks, and, by reason of seepage, rain, fire, and evaporation, enormous waste occurred. ”

“ On the islands beyond the peninsula, projecting out from the Baku section, petroleum gas has flamed for centuries, lighting the heavens at night with a lurid glare that is visible far out at sea.
In Baku Bay, between two peninsulas, there was a spot, now commercialized into a producing oil well, where the gas came to the surface with sufficient force to upset small boats. Many of the oil wells are spouters for a long time after they are first bored, and when they cease to spout they can frequently be made to renew their activity by deeper boring. ”

“ When the wells cease spouting and it is not deemed advisable to bore deeper, pumping is employed. Generally the oil coming from the wells is conducted into large, carefully tamped excavations in the ground forming ponds or lakes. In these huge reservoirs the sand and heavier parts soon sink, making the bottom impervious. After the settling the petroleum is either pumped into large iron tanks or sent directly to the refinery by pipe-lines. ”

“ As we have stated, products analogous to those derived from cannel coal are obtained by the destructive distillation of bituminous shales and schists, and lignites or brown coals. On the Continent the production of shale oils has of late years declined considerably, owing to their unsuccessful competition, in point of price, with the American petroleum oils. The oil obtained from bituminous shale or from coal is generally of higher specific gravity than that procured from petroleum; it is deeper in colour, and not so pleasant in smell. ”

“ Occasionally in passing through the shale, small fissures in the rock are passed through, with circumstances indicating the presence of a stratum or vein of water, as at such times the sand accumulated in boring all disappears, leaving the bits clean and bright. At other times small veins or cavities of petroleum are pierced, the product of which rises to the surface of the well, and indicates its presence by appearing in the sand pump. In the earlier stages of the business this 'show of oil,' as it was termed, was considered most favorable to ultimate success ”

“ Refineries and tanks of oil caught fire and covered acres of the watery waste with flames. Helpless men, women and children tottered and tumbled and disappeared, the death-roll exceeding fifty. The two elements seemed to strive which could work the greater destruction. Above Oil City a huge tank of benzine was undermined and upset on Friday morning. The combustible stuff floated on the creek, which had risen four feet over the floors of houses on the flats. The boiler-fire at a well near the Lake-Shore tunnel ignited the cloud of benzine. ”

“ The places of most copious escape to the surface were regarded as the favored spots where ‘the drainage from the coal measures, in defiance of the laws of gravity and hydro-dynamics, had obligingly deposited itself. Such shows’ were always illusory. A great ‘surface show’ is a great waste; where nature plays the spendthrift she retains little treasure in her coffers. The production of petroleum in quantities of economical importance has always been from reservoirs in which nature has been hoarding it up, instead of making a superficial and deceptive display of her wealth. ”

“ Regions of bitumen, like that of the Dead Sea, are liable to eruptions of a most destructive character. Of these we have had examples in the oil regions of America. In a narrative of one of these now before me, and which occurred a few years ago, [110] in the oil district of Petrolia, in Canada, I read that a borehole struck a reservoir of gas, which rushed upward with explosive force, carrying before it a large quantity of petroleum. ”

“ The well may prove to be a gusher and pour out hundreds of thousands of gallons a day; or the oil may refuse to rise to the surface and have to be pumped out even at the first. Naturally, no one is prepared for a gusher, and millions of gallons have often flowed away before any arrangements could be made for storing the oil. Sometimes a well that gives only a moderate flow can be made to yield generously by exploding a heavy charge of dynamite at the bottom, to break up the rock and, it is always hoped, to open some new oil-holding crevice that the drill has not reached. ”

“ Oil extraction severely conflicts with the exploitation of other resources primarily in the way that it affects water resources. The irony is that if the oil industry took the same care as it takes elsewhere, for instance in North America and in the United Kingdom, there would be much less conflict: despite the pollution caused by the subsequent mis-use of oil products, oil extraction can be a clean industry and there is no reason why it should not be clean in Nigeria and the Niger Delta. ”

“ This frequently causes explosions, tearing out the side of the well or blowing out the casing, and making the oil-well useless. The surplus gas is usually piped to one side out of the reach of danger, and then burned to get rid of it. ”

“ Fifty years before Pennsylvania oil-wells had been heard of the Kanawha salt-seekers were drilling what to-day would be paying oil-wells. Instead of saving the oil, which is enriching West Virginia operators now, they wasted it and saved the salt-water. They wasted the natural gas, the best fuel of the century, and boiled their salt-water with wood, the most expensive and least satisfactory fuel of the valley. That is often the way humanity gropes in the dark. ”

“ It's a danger we can no longer afford to ignore. Katrina, after all, was a natural disaster that affected only our domestic oil supply. But just imagine the threat to our national security from a geopolitical disaster - a war or an embargo - that cut off our supply from the rest of the world, where we get most of our oil. ”

“ The vast majority of oil tankers to-day, true to their calling, derive their power from oil, for they burn it under their furnaces, and, therefore, are not liable to those tedious delays so inseparable from the use of coal, and should severe storms beset their passage in Mid-Atlantic, then a little oil pumped overboard will quell the most turbulent sea and permit a safe passage onward. ”

“ It is pleasant to know that on every side we are surrounded with mines of unexamined wealth. Some of the old workings may be exhausted; but if we be only devout and diligent new veins will open. Forty years ago, so much oil was required for lighting the streets of cities as well as for private dwellings, that fears began to be entertained lest the great oil-flask of the Northern Ocean might run dry, and the whale family be extirpated. ”