Two Spills, Two Continents, Two Vastly Different Approaches: Which One Will Succeed?

Fireball resulting from Oil Spill in China's Yellow Sea

The Gulf Coast is so badly polluted that it may have stolen your attention away from a similar catastrophe that has gone on in China’s Yellow

Sea.  Yes, more oil in our precious oceans.  On July 16, two oil pipelines exploded at the Chinese oil storage facility at the Dalian city port, when workers injected desulfurizer into pipes for the refinement process.  A fireball ignited, shrouding the city in smoke, after raging for 15 hours and spewing 47,600 gallons of crude oil.  Although this is a very large oil spill, by comparison, it’s much smaller than the BP oil spill in the gulf, in which approximately 94 million to 184 million gallons of oil has been spilled.  The BP oil spill is 2,000  to 4,000 times larger, but the boys at BP have had 106 days so far and haven’t begun to close in on a solution; whereas the China spill was cleaned up in ten days.  What’s the cause for such different outcomes?  There are numerous factors involved in the nature of the spills, but the main deviation is in the methods used for clean up.

What makes the Deepwater Horizon spill so much more devastating, is that it’s happening deep underwater.  Instead of oil floating only on the surface of the water (as in the China spill), in the gulf a constant supply of oil was gushing underwater; causing some of the oil to form plumes at depths of up to a mile below the surface of the ocean.

The other main difference is the approach.  BP has been rather close-minded about the whole process of cleanup.  They have only used skimming and dispersants and even refuse to use nontoxic dispersants.  The problem with dispersants is that not only do they thin out the oil and spread it over a larger area, but they are also an additional pollution for the environment. The China oil spill, on the other hand, was handled immediately and with ease.  The cleanup consisted of dispersants, scooping up the larger portions of the spill, and one vital ingredient: Bacteria.  Using bacteria to clean up waste is an environmentally safe, economically sound, time-efficient and proven method called bioremediation.  The Chinese government recognizes this and had its oil spill cleaned up in ten days.  Why is bioremediation not being used in the Gulf Oil Spill? NVOC is investigating this and conducting a feasibility study to determine the benefits and potential obstacles in using this bioremediation in the Gulf.

Although the China spill was cleaned up quickly, there is some extended damage that has been done to the environment; Greenpeace, an organization involved in the cleanup in China, indicated that the environment will be adversely affected for at least 30 years.  This considered, we have to ask ourselves, how long will the environment be adversely affected in the Gulf?  If it is at all related to how long the oil’s been in the water, and at what quantity, just imagine what an ongoing 106 days of over 100 million gallons of oil will give us.

–Adam Catalfano

Resources:

http://www.examiner.com/x-43877-International-Trade-Examiner~y2010m8d3-BP-refused-to-use-nontoxic-dispersants-in-oil-spill

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0422/Amid-search-for-Deepwater-Horizon-oil-rig-survivors-What-happened

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2010/0723/Oil-eating-bacteria-to-the-China-oil-spill-rescue

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100720/sc_afp/chinaenvironmentoilpollution

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jul/27/world/la-fg-china-oil-spill-20100727