Paul Rademacher has created a Google Earth mashup in which you can overlay the extent of the Gulf of Mexico oil spread as of May 6th on any place on the globe. How big is the slick compared to where you live? Remember that the gusher will only keep widening in extent as long as the oil continues to spew out of the leaks in the riser

Covers major leak and allows room for rovers and other equipment to reactivate the blowout preventer over the wellhead. Note that this graphic commits to the leak being approximately 600 feet from the wellhead. [Source: LiveScience]

Now if, for the love of God, it just works.

Today, the fabled “containment dome” is lowered onto one of the leaks in the fallen riser, not the well head itself as some seem to think.

… Once the containment dome is lowered, remote operated subs will guide it into place. Engineers will use the drillship Discoverer Enterprise to lower two pipes, a smaller one inside a larger one. They intend to flow the leaking oil up 5,000 feet through the smaller pipe into storage tanks on the drillship at the surface.

Think of it as placing a slushie lid over (what I hope is) the leak closest to the well head, sticking a straw within a straw in the lid and gas-lifting the emulsion to the surface. Oilfield engineers explain that this is a dangerous procedure given the gas needed to mobilize the oil. Hence the straw within the straw.

[BP executives Bob] Fryar and [David] Clarkson said they are concerned about gas hydrates that form ice plugs inside the drill pipe as the oil begins to flow upwards. They intend to pipe warmer surface water down between the larger pipe and the smaller one to keep ice plugs from forming. Injecting methanol may also help dissolve ice plugs, they said.

The New York Times warns, “The dome will not shut off the gushing well, which is still spilling an estimated 210,000 gallons of oil a day; the goal is just to keep some of the oil out of the water by capturing it and then funneling it [out].”

Speaking of the estimated amount of oil still spewing out, a Florida State University professor says that satellite images indicate that 10 million gallons of oil could already be in the Gulf so far, much higher than the three million gallons estimate. Basic math time: 210,000 gallons per day estimated x 16 days = 3.36 million gallons total to date. 10 million gallons as hypothesized by Professor Ian MacDonald divided by 16 days = 625,000 gallons per day. That’s 3 times the BP and Coast Guard estimation. Let us hope he is SO SO wrong.

“It may be that they’re right.  I hope they are,” he said.  “The less oil that’s out there the better, and the only purpose of trying to do this is to get as many points of view as we can so we have the best understanding of what we’re facing, ’cause we’re all in this together.”

Lately, I’ve been on the receiving end of emails/chats from conservative friends who think I want oil and gas exploitation in the US stopped, while liberal friends argue that I am siding with the oil companies. It’s not that black and white. If you want a statement, I agree completely with Cousin Pat:

We’re going to keep drilling, and that’s going to happen no matter who is President or Governor. Our political choices at this time are not “drill, baby, drill” vs “no drilling ever;” our choices are “drill, baby, drill” vs “drilling is catastrophically dangerous, complicated, and we’d better be very careful about how we do it, and let’s see what we can do to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels.“

This includes a full investigation into why the failsafes failed, punishing those who conducted any illegal and/or unsafe activity, and demanding much smarter and much, much safer hydrocarbon extraction. [Note that I use the terms exploitation and extraction, instead of development, green flowers and happy sea creatures. Don’t be ashamed to call it what it is.]

And to those who ask how I can decry and defend the oil industry in the same breath: I was an oil worker for about a decade and not once did I feel good or bad about myself. Why? It’s hard to view your job and yourself in those terms when you are loved and cheered for making discoveries to fuel the world and absolutely hated when things go wrong, both with excellent reason. But, it’s not hard to view things objectively. The oil industry as a whole cannot be implicated for what is happening in the Gulf, but it is way past time all of its companies ACT on the fact that they have not at all achieved the high safety standards they set for themselves everyday. Just because something didn’t happen doesn’t mean it can’t.

I am also having a hard time wrapping my head around the word “preventable” any more. Explanation when I’ve thought further on it.

Update: Satellite images show oil coming close to ashore. This is extremely hard to view objectively.