BP's oil spill catastrophe

BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has been spewing about 25,000-30,000 barrels a day for the last 50 days. That would be close to one million gallons per day. The damages resulting from the oil slick are estimated to be more than $10 billion. But how can one put a value for the death of all those sea animals. This has been a catastrophe of unimaginable proportion and the solution to cap the oil spill is still evading BP.

The irony is that this is not the first time that BP is involved in such a fiasco. There have been similar oil spills and one would have thought that BP would have at least learnt a few lessons from it. However, they have been fooling the world by stating that they have geared themselves to facing such crisis. It is now evident that the company is totally ill-equipped for such eventualities.

Now, it has become such a global disaster that problem is no more BP’S alone even though they are fully responsible and accountable. The “top kill” operation has not been successful and the experts are putting their thinking caps to come out with a solution. One hopes that the solution comes sooner than later.

This is a warning bell for all oil exploration companies and research efforts will have to focus on preventing such eventualities and also to finding quick answers if such a calamity happens. This also leads one to reiterate that the Governments world over will be better of to channel their efforts away from oil and focus on other forms of energy like solar, wind etc..

The damage this disaster has caused to the species in the ocean has to be evaluated. It is quite possible that some of the rare species are close to extinction. Already there is media news that some rare and endangered species of sea turtles are washed ashore dead. Pelicans have been spotted in Louisiana covered with the oil slick. It would be a big tragedy that the humans have brought forth to the Bio-diversity.

Let us hope that we learn from our mistakes.