Gulf Oil Slick random questions.

Factual Questions
1

  1. Could a hurricane pass through that area and pick up alot (all) of the oil off the top of the water? Would that result in an “oil rain”, killing crops and whatnot inland?

  2. Is there any way for BP to reclaim the oil from the top of the water and process/use it for anything useful?

2

Re: 2). A news story somewhere a couple of days ago said yes, the oil on and in water can be processed but it is sometimes rather complicated.

I’ve a third random question about oil on and in water. Has anyone experimented with adding an oxidant of some sort to improve the burning of the oil in situ.

3

Rains of frogs and the like are pretty uncommon, and the salt concentration of rain at sea is usually pretty low.
However with unusual conditions, such as waterspouts, you could get some oil slick transported into the atmosphere.
Of course, if it came down in a thunderstorm, lightning would set the oil on fire and your crops would burn rather than be poisoned. :wink:

4

I don’t know about picking up the oily water and later raining it out, but couldn’t a storm surge push it inland? I am reminded of the Murphy Oil spill in Chalmette (Hurricane Katrina) although that was a different situation.

5

very different. The storage tanks ruptured after the storm passed (probably due to the storm) and the oil spread out on the water. But it didn’t get into the marshes (at least not so that anyone noticed). Murphy bought a lot of homes as a result. Which was fine with them. They had been trying to buy many of those folks out for years. But getting a Chalmatian to move, or do anything she doesn’t want to do, takes a major hurricane and an oil spill and several hundred levee breaches, and a second hurricane (Rita broke the temporary levees), and worst of all FEMA. And a whole bunch still didn’t leave. :slight_smile:

I talked to one elderly man who, along with his wife, lived in Chalmette for several days after Katrina in the second story of their home (no water in the second story). He and his wife would go out in the morning in their boat and he would dive down into the flooded convenience stores and scoop up a few cans of something for lunch and dinner. Worked for them.

6

With hurricanes think of the storm surge. A storm surge can transport quite a bit of the oil inland.

7

Murphy Oil spill in Chalmette in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; very different. The oil company didnot implement its hurricane preparedness plan; failed to fill this one tank. The storm passed, the MRGO ship channel provided regeneration of wave action, the levees failed and the storm surge inundated the entire parish. The tank lifted, dislodged and released a million gallons of crude oil into the adjacent residential neighborhoods and neighborhood canals. The neighborhood canals were pumped into the central wetlands along Lake Borgne (the normal route for storm water discharges in this community). The oil slick was visible from the tank farm west to Paris Road (about a mile or so), however, Murphy Oil’s subsequent class action court order (two years later) required offers to purchase homes only in certain sections of the first four blocks west of the tank farm.