A Little Perspective on the Macondo Well (Deepwater/BP) Oil Spill
While hanging out at the condo pool with the kids during my recent Destin vacation someone pointed out at the Gulf and said woefully "Look. I think the oil is coming in". It was seaweed. The next day there was a stir down on the beach when what appeared to be a piece of charred wood washed up. Some guy on a 4-wheeler rode up, proclaimed it a piece of charred wood, and tossed it into a nearby trash can. Onlookers seemed more disappointed than relieved.
On the way back to Texas we stopped in Louisiana and talked to, among others, an acquaintance who runs a vacuum truck service. Business is good as his trucks and drivers are under contract 24/7. The only bad thing, he said, is that the work is boring as there's been little to vacuum up; less than a gallon. On the other hand, the media livened things up from time to time by shouting things like "Where are you hiding the oil?" and "Who ordered you not to talk to us?" at his workers.
So where's all the oil? More than 100 million gallons have bubbled up according to the higher estimates. That's a lot, right? It is, of course. But according to an AP report, It wouldn't fill the Superdome. And that's not subtracting the oil that has been burned, dispersed and eaten by microbes.
The point of this post is not to minimize the spill or its impact but rather to explain why oil isn't all over the coast. It's a big Gulf (6,000 trillion gallons of water) and a long coast (over 1,600 miles long - just along the U.S. portion).
