Oil Clean-up Near Completion
Oil seems elusive for skimmers and clean up workers along the Gulf of Mexico. It has been just over 10 days since BP successfully capped the well on July 15th, stopping the flow of oil for the first time in 3 months. It has been just days after a fading Tropical Storm Bonnie passed directly over the site of the oil spill. Instead up churning up more oil and pushing it onshore, it is hard to find.
Before the well was capped, 800 skimmers were collecting an average of 85,000 barrels of oil each day. Since then, the take has been 56 barrels.
The latest information from the US government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) indicated only seven sizeable patches of surface oil, all light sheen.
Instead of the worse case scenario, is it possible that nature healed itself faster than we ever expected? Decades after the Exxon Valdez, oil can still be found under rocks on the shore, but this is a different situation. The Gulf of Mexico is semi-tropical. Frequent storms, high sun angle, and warm water temperatures between 85F and 90F all contribute to the natural breakdown of oil.