from Sunday Herald, 26 December 2010

It started around 9.45 pm on 20 April, 2010. Methane gas came shooting out of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, ignited and exploded.

The ensuing fire engulfed the rig, killing 11 workers. And then the oil started gushing into the sea, becoming the largest accidental marine oil spill in history, and the worst environmental disaster so far faced by the US.

For the next three months it kept on gushing, and estimates of the amount of oil escaping every day kept rising. BP initially suggested it might be 1,000 barrels day, but then US authorities said it could be 5,000, then 30,000, then 60,000 barrels a day.

In total nearly five million barrels of oil are now thought to have spilled into the sea between 20 April and 15 July, when the well was eventually capped. That’s over 200 million gallons – a massive amount of the black stuff, which has resulted in huge pollution problems.

In May 6,814 square miles of water were closed to all fishing by the US government, an area that was increased to nearly 87,000 square miles in June. That covered more than a third of all the federally-controlled waters in the Gulf of Mexico.

The costs for the fishing industry were estimated at $2.5 billion. The federal government officially declared a fisheries disaster in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.

Although the fishing bans were gradually relaxed, as late as November 4,200 square miles had to be re-closed to shrimping after balls of tar were found in nets. In the same month the length of Louisiana shoreline affected by the oil was said to extend to 320 miles.

The damage to wildlife has been widespread. By November over 6,800 dead animals had been collected from the area, including 6,100 birds, 600 sea turtles and 100 dolphins and other mammals.

Dolphins were reported to be spouting oil from their blowholes, and some were alleged to be “acting drunk”. The Gulf of Mexico is very rich is animal life and hundreds of endangered species are at risk, including five kinds of turtle.

But the consequences have resounded far beyond the local fishing and wildlife, rocking boardrooms and governments. Estimates of the total economic losses due to the disaster have varied from $3 to $30 billion – and someone is going to have to pay.

The company’s chief executive, Tony Hayward, was widely vilified and lost his job because of the disaster. He never really recovered from telling a reporter in May: “There’s no one who wants this thing over more than I do – I’d like my life back.”

This is a big BOT for mining the sea floor …never mind the ocean acidification, the climate tipping points, the dead zones, the great extinction… we’re gonna make us a load of lovely LOOT.