With a big slap to the forehead, this country is faced with yet another environmental and economic disaster. The fire and collapse of the drilling rigg Deepwater Horizon in the northern part of the Gulf of Mexico has made head lines for the last 2 weeks. And rightly so. Owned by Transocean Ltd. and leased by BP PLC, experts are trying everything to get the spill under control.
Estimates from BP executives say a leaking well could spew up to 60,000 barrels of oil in the Gulf. Which translates to 2.5 million gallons a day. A more likely scenario if the leak gets worse is 40,000 barrels, or 1.7 million gallons. The oil spill is growing. View the satellite views from NASA
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=43846
Just to give you an idea how bad this spill could get, BP has already given $25 million grants to Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida to help them pay for their cleanup work. And it hasn’t even hit Florida yet.
On Thursday, a 40-foot-tall “containment dome” — which looks like a giant carton of milk — was lowered to the ocean floor to cover the leak and trap the spewing oil. Over the weekend the plan on hooked it to drill ship to pump out the oil and contain the spill.
At the end of the day, how does this effect us? The average Joe or Jane America?
Oil, oil, oil equal gas, gas, gas. No doubt gas prices wihch already rise in the summer is bound to go throught the roof this summer. Today, gas is now hovering at $2.96 in Florida and I can easily see it going to over $4.00 (yet again) in the near future.
Near and dear to my heart is food. Seafood prices are already on the rise for fish, shrimp, oysters and crawfish. All are big business for Gulf coast fishermen. If we are feeling the price crunch in Florida imagine someone purchasing Gulf shrimp or fish in Chicago.
At this point the fishermen are plain out of luck. BP has no plans on compensating the fishermen. http://www.politicolnews.com/bp-no-compensation-for-fisherman/
I’m sure that we are in for a long summer of environmental dissater, dead animals, ruinned beaches and coastline. We will hear adnauseum about the clean up efforts. And the media will spin the blame, the cleanup, the good and the bad into what ever the direction the wind is blowing that week. Who know how long the entire clean up will take? I, for one, hope my trip to the Keys in June isn’t ruinned by oily coastlines. It makes for crappy snorkling.
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O’Neal
