Oil

Posted on | 1 year, 8 months ago, in the late evening | 22 Comments

When I was about nine years old, I moved to Texas with my mom and sister. Our new home was in Orange, about six miles from the Sabine River, and maybe half an hour from the ferry to Galveston Island — where we day-tripped from time to time.

Although we’d moved to Texas from Chicago, I had very firm and fond memories of living in Tampa, Florida (where I was born). I remembered the ocean quite vividly, and the sand that looked like sugar, and the weird little things left in pools or tangled up in the sea oats when the tide went out. Therefore, I had some fairly high expectations tied up in the idea of “beach.” These high expectations were, quite frankly, not always met on the Texas beaches. At the time, I was a snob about this as only a fourth-grader can be.

When my mother announced our early beach-visiting intentions to the locals, we were warned. They told us to, um, beware. Don’t bring your good towels, they told us. Don’t wear expensive bathing suits, they added. There’s offshore drilling and whatnot going on over there … and the beach isn’t so much … well … clean. Whatever you wear, bring, or tote is likely to come home with tar on it. Yeah. Sorry.

But in truth, I don’t remember it being that bad. I recall a ruined towel or two, and one particular tar-blob that was positioned at the unfortunate nook of my lower butt-crack, leading my little sister to tease me about having pooped my suit. Such is life.

Eventually we moved back to Florida and then I moved away from Florida, though I still considered it “home, over there.” It became that place I go on breaks from college, to visit family, and beach-comb, and shop, and body-board and sunbathe. (Yes, I was always kind of terrible at being a goth.) I’ve lived in Illinois, in the Texas panhandle, in Indiana, and Kentucky, and (for a rather long time) Tennessee. But at the end of the day, and in the back of my head … the Gulf Coast is my home. It’s where I was born, and where I always return.

I liked Tennessee a lot, and I’d half-planned to stick around there for a while; but always I’ve assumed that one day I’d go home.

* * *

So I’m finding it hard to talk about the BP oil spill. It is horrible in the most literal sense — it instills within me a sense of true, deep, abject horror. It is creeping and (for the moment, at least) unstoppable. It is killing everything it touches, and it is huge, and it is trying to touch everything.

Jesus Christ. We broke the ocean.

(Yes, we. All of us who drive when we could walk or ride our bikes or use public transportation; those of us who pick up the marginally cheaper product when it comes to these things and many others when there are often more responsible options available. All of us who haven’t been paying attention while the protective laws and regulations have been gutted, eliminated, and ignored. We did this. We made these oil companies rich. We gave them the power to do this. And therefore, we too are responsible – and if that sounds terrible, good. It ought to.)

The spill is leaping up and down on a whole host of my sensitivities. Besides the obvious — that it’s attacking my Gulf — it’s also tap-dancing on the same psychological nerve that compels me to be on time for everything. If you’ve ever met me, or had any occasion to rely on me for something, then you know it’s true: I’m ludicrously and insistently punctual. This applies to deadlines, too. I’ll stop eating and sleeping to keep from missing a deadline. It’s just one of those things I don’t let slide.

I can’t explain it any better than this — I feel like every moment that the spill goes unchecked, a deadline is being missed. The fix isn’t just late, it’s too late. It’s one of those nightmares where you’re trying to catch a plane, and things keep getting in the way, and you’re never going to make it — it’s going to leave without you — but you keep struggling toward it. I hate those nightmares worse than I hate the nightmares about having loose or broken teeth. I hate them because they trigger this same almost-physically-painful hysteria I experience when I’m going to be late for something. Is it irrational? Yes, totally. I don’t deny that for a moment.

But this fear. This hysteria. This horror. It is not irrational.
It is fair, and that makes it even worse.

* * *

Nobody knows what to do — that’s the real killer. There aren’t any ideas, at least not any good ones. Nobody knows how to fix this. Nothing is working, though God willing, by morning maybe the most recent management attempt will ease the situation. I pray. But I know better than to hope.

And even if it were fixed tomorrow … then what? How do you clean up everything that happened between the break and the fix? I’ve been wracking my brain, for all the good it does anyone. I’ve literally been losing sleep over this, because I keep wondering, what can I do? What can anyone do? And it’s not bad enough that I, personally, don’t know. It’s much, much worse that no one else does either.

I appreciate the internet’s attempts to crowdsource, though. I like that everyone from LiveJournal to CNN is asking for suggestions from everyone — from us all — and taking them, and posting them, and talking about them. On the one hand, they’re asking the wrong people. We aren’t experts in this kind of thing. But on the other hand, maybe that’s good. Maybe we’re exactly the right people to ask, because we don’t understand the limitations — and we know how to think past them, because we don’t know how not to.

I lie awake and fantasize about the things I know that pick up oil. Corn starch. Hair. Fabric. Hay. Bounty — it’s the quicker picker upper! And I dream of fleets of tugboats with nets that are weighted down and trawling with blankets of hair, filtering and flushing. I imagine them coming in waves, arcing behind one another until every drop is sopped. And I don’t have the faintest idea if anything like that is even possible, much less likely or useful.

But shit. It’s not any dumber than some of what’s already been tried.

* * *

Bobby Jindal says that the marshes on the coast of Louisiana are dead. “There are no bugs out there. There’s no marine life out there. It is absolutely still. You cut the engines on your boat and it is the most deafening silence you have ever heard.” And the oil is still coming. Coming for Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. Coming for the Caribbean, and for Mexico. Coming for the Atlantic coast, too.

It makes my soul hurt.
But it does not care. And it is still coming.

Category: misc

Comments

22 Responses to “Oil”

  1. Mark Rossmore
    June 3rd, 2010 @ 10:32 pm

    I’m in Pensacola – and the oil has arrived.

    Our beaches are that same sugary, white consistency that you describe – and I will miss them terribly if – God help us, *when* – they are swallowed by that horrific, noxious, orange taffy from hell.

    I’m an air traffic controller as my day job. This gives me a “big picture” view of everything going on. A survey aircraft I worked this morning reported it was tracking a sheen just a couple miles offshore. Over the past several days, National Guard helicopters have started flitting in from all sides. The Coast Guard presence has increased as well. Every day for weeks Civil Air Patrol aircraft have cruised up and down the shorelines making sure all the booms are in place and none have been stolen (yes, there are truly evil people in this world).

    Tar balls have now begun to wash ashore. Clean up crews are being hired, trained, and assembled. So many business already struggling are pushed further towards the brink. County and state officials are in a constant struggle for information and assistance. Many have already told BP to f*** off, for they no longer trust the oil giant’s ability to make good on a single one of its laughable promises.

    Nothing good awaits over the horizon, for all that glitters is certainly not gold. Here, it is only the ominous sheen of raw crude.

  2. Kambriel
    June 3rd, 2010 @ 10:33 pm

    Thank you Cherie ~ I agree wholeheartedly that maybe it’s not the “experts”, maybe it’s the people who are simply compelled that are the ones meant to help. Afterall, it always comes down to what we as individuals are willing to do. Governments are merely representatives of ~us~ afterall. Big oil is focused on business-preservation and the almighty dollar.

    Is there a reason there’s been no massive call for volunteers? If we show up with shovels, and soap and towels, would we be turned away? Is it possible that naivety accompanied with idealism and great care can equal great power?

    ~If~ we aren’t allowed to get our hands dirty because of toxicity, that’s something we need to know too ~ the true level of just how toxic we’ve made that water and land.

    One thing’s for sure, no matter where we are, we are faced with making a variety of choices every single day, and one path will lead us to the further depletions of our shared environment, whilst others can put us on the path to protecting and sustaining it. It’s our choice to make.

  3. LS
    June 3rd, 2010 @ 10:49 pm

    I’m in Alabama and Pensacola has been a big part of my family’s lives since I was tiny. We go every year, spending as many weeks as we can manage during the summer. Our summer trip was cancelled this year, and it shocked me how sad that made me. The stores we go to, the restaurants, the seafood, the sugary white sand, the off-limits dunes covered in sea oats, the long trip from one side of Santa Rosa to the other- we won’t be a part of it for a long time. And it likely won’t be just this year. Maybe my offspring won’t even remember it well by the time we can go back there safely. The oil will taint those beaches for a long time. We will all miss it terribly.

  4. catfriend
    June 3rd, 2010 @ 11:48 pm

    I’m not surprised that there has been an accident at an offshore oil rig. If you build enought of them and run them long enough something seriously bad is bound to happen. What stuns me is these fuckwits had no contingency plan. It’s like it never occured to them that something could go wrong. Really? If iI’m walking through the woods I come up with a plan of what to do if someone or some animal attacked me out of the blue….

    But I’ll be postive for you. Since you like beachcombing, but you’re not on the Gulf Coast but here in the miserable PNW I’d like to give you some suggestions on where to go. We are entering the period of the lowest tides of the year (especially check out the weekend of the 19-21), and these low tides will occur at hours yu might even be awake. My personal favorite beaches are on the Olympic Peninsula. If you go to Rialto (pretend Twilight never existed) and walk north close to a mile you’ll get to a series of stacks and a place called Hole in the Wall (you’ll know it when you see it). This area has fabulous tidepools, often with anemones, crabs, starfish and the like. If you’re a big starfish fan head to Ruby Beach. It’s a number of miles south of Forks on the 101; the parking lot is well signed, although you do have to walk down to the beach. There are stacks and lots of starfish. It’s just different than the Hole in the Wall area. If you don’t want to go THAT far try Larrabee State Park up near Bellingham. I’ve seen all sorts of sea creatures there, although due to its easy accessibility there can be a fair number of people there. It’s still a drive, but worth it in my opinion.

    So, yeah, there is NOTHING positive to say about the Gulf situation. But….happy beachcombing in the northwest.

  5. We Just Tore Up Our Contract With Mother Nature
    June 4th, 2010 @ 4:51 am

    [...] the touching, frustrating blog post by Cherie Priest put me on the path toward writing this blog post. (And may I again say, “Read [...]

  6. James Floyd Kelly
    June 4th, 2010 @ 5:18 am

    I, too, am originally from Florida… my home beach is Navarre, about 30 minutes east of Pensacola Beach. We used to skip school and drive out there, park, and walk 1 or 2 miles to get a strip of beach all to ourselves.

    Hurricane Opal wiped out Navarre once but it came back… and now this mess. I agree with you that we can’t claim complete innocence since we love what the oil companies provide to us (and not just in gasolines and plastics). But I also think there’s a certain expectation of safety and intelligence that we have assumed the oil companies instill in their rigs… but that’s gone out the window as well.

    I’m waiting to hear from my brother that the oil has hit Navarre beach. I have a feeling it’s inevitable.

  7. Connie Hirsch
    June 4th, 2010 @ 5:58 am

    This is going to be a marine Dustbowl — brought on by bad business practices and lax regulation, and affecting a huge swathe of America.

    (Did you know, Washington didn’t take the Dustbowl seriously until dust storms reached the East Coast?)

  8. Sherry
    June 4th, 2010 @ 6:06 am

    The hair idea is not dumb at all…in fact it’s an established practice. http://www.matteroftrust.org/programs/hairmatsinfo.html My hairdresser sends all her sweepings there, as do many others. But it doesn’t hurt to spread the word.

    I live on the Canadian east coast–I can see the ocean from my living room window–and I can’t imagine the horror of watching this creep closer and closer to my home. I listen to the news with a terrible sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. The helplessness and frustration are overwhelming.

  9. David Cranmer
    June 4th, 2010 @ 6:09 am

    I recently spent over a year working in Louisiana and visited many of these places now being destroyed. It’s heartbreaking.

  10. ProfessorTom
    June 4th, 2010 @ 7:10 am

    Bicycles require oil for their chains. Buses and subways require oil to operate. These are not safe alternatives.

    If you really want to make a difference, you will convince people if they aren’t walking then they can’t reach their destination.

  11. Corey Feldman
    June 4th, 2010 @ 7:31 am

    Incredibly sad and frightening disaster and you’re right, we are all culpable on some level.

    I have to tell you, when I first heard the story, I thought about you, more specifically I thought of BoneShaker – greed spawning massive environmental damage and the systemic impact that kind of damage can have. Obviously we don’t have zombies crawling out of the gulf, but the timing of your beautifully written book was sadly apropos.

  12. ChrissyMay
    June 4th, 2010 @ 11:29 am

    A heart wrenching post being a Florida native, Naples to be exact, and having lived there my entire childhood, it breaks my heart to know that the place I grew up in is being destroyed. I type this as my living room fills with the smell of exhaust from yard maintenance equipment working outside my window. How fitting *sigh*

  13. Lydia
    June 4th, 2010 @ 12:38 pm

    Pensacola. Raised there from 6 months old, still think of it as home.

    I remember getting ready for hurricanes, doing everything you can do, going through it and after, cleaning, putting things back together, going on — it took years for the blue roofs to disappear from Pensacola, after Kristina.

    Even so, Mother Nature was a lot kinder to us than we have been to ourselves.

  14. Katy Love
    June 4th, 2010 @ 1:24 pm

    My “second home” is Alabama and Gulf Shores area. Me and my family are crushed by this environmental nightmare. Power in the wrong hands.Good post.

  15. Joe Rodgers
    June 5th, 2010 @ 4:18 am

    “we” may have broke the ocean, but I think that’s spreading the blame so thin that it’s meaningless.

    Remember _Who Framed Roger Rabbit_? The bit where the public transit lines were to be bought up and replace with freeways? This really happened in about 20 markets- a consortium with a gas, tire and auto company bought up public transit and deliberately ran them into the ground. They were tried in a Chicago court, found guilty, and fined a whopping $500 for their sin.

    Do I even need to point you to the ‘green zone’ map of Afghanistan? Compare that map with the route of the Oil pipeline, and you’ll see why we’re there to begin with. Iraq is no different

    If I were to wholeheartedly share the blame here, I’d pretend we live in some kind of democracy. My money choices decide what happens to those starving polar bears. But it’s not my money choices, it’s the money choices of those who own the means of production. I’m just a renter here, and no amount of money I pay will induce these companies to behave less reprehensibly.

    It’s not the items we buy, it’s not even the elections we vote in: it’s the system that owns us.

    If you really want to take the gulf spill to heart, you’ll start looking into alternatives to capitalism. “The Market” is more to blame than simply “Us”. And it has no answers for this one.

  16. Dana in Philly
    June 5th, 2010 @ 6:03 am

    Cherie, I’m feeling so bad about this too. Struggling for a productive way to respond. Do you think it’s possible that we could make moving to a different energy economy the major issue in this November’s mid-term elections? What to do?

  17. anita
    June 5th, 2010 @ 11:15 am

    I disagree with your statement that “we” broke the ocean. I don’t own a car and do use public transportation – which, as has been pointed out, uses gas and oil. I buy groceries (transported by truck, whether it’s nationally, or at my local farmer’s market.) I buy household goods – transported by truck. Etc, etc, etc.

    If that makes me culpable in your eyes, so be it. But until producers start shipping via rickshaw, we’re going to use gas and oil. I would love an alternate energy source for transportation, but no one’s listening to me.

    BP ignored safety regulations and the fact that the valve was breaking up. They are solely responsible for this mess.

  18. Jody
    June 5th, 2010 @ 12:48 pm

    What a bunch of claptrap. “We” didn’t do anything. Even were most of us able to bike to work, the need for oil would still exist and has been in place since before our grandparents were adults at the least.
    What’s more, many other oil companies are operating with much better records than BP. See the Daily Show’s hilarious take down that talked about the huge gap in BP’s safety violations with respect to other companies.
    No, what we have here is a case of several companies being really poor coporate citizens. They should be punished accordingly while industries continue to strive towards alternative energy solutions, to make th profitable, affordable, and accesable.

  19. Mary Robinette Kowal
    June 5th, 2010 @ 1:35 pm

    Thanks so much for writing this, Cherie. I completely get what you are saying and have been trying to adjust my lifestyle so that I buy locally and walk, bike, or bus wherever possible. (ProfessorTom: A bike doesn’t actually need to be lubed with petroleum products.)

    I actually carry my own bamboo utensils for when I’m out so I can avoid using plastic ones.

    The current generation might not have developed the reliance on oil but that doesn’t absolve us of the responsibility for continuing the trend. Other countries have made pledges to live without oil and are making strides toward doing that.

    The technology is there but it will mean making lifestyle changes.

    The best analogy of Environment 101 that I’ve heard is from Paolo Bacigalupi. Check out what Paolo has to say.

  20. Mish
    June 5th, 2010 @ 3:13 pm

    The whole mess sickens me and pisses me off. With the need and demand for oil, society has backed itself into a corner. I loathe that I need a car because my local public transportation consists of taxis. Like others lifestyle adjustments have been made, but we’re outnumbered by those who don’t give a damn. Even if more lifestyle and legal changes are made and although I believe Earth can manage some repairs, I can’t help but wonder if it’s too little too late.

  21. Chips Reid
    June 5th, 2010 @ 9:04 pm

    I was an oil man in Trinidad. My job was to collect waste oil from an oil field to prevent it contaminating sugar cane and rice fields. When we had floods no booms could stop it as it flowed beneath the boom.
    So I have no solution to the polution problem.
    But as an Oilwell Drilling Engineer I can offer some perspectives regarding what needs to be done immediatley to stop the flow and what needs to be done in the future to reduce the extent of damage from an uncontrollable blowout/leak from a drilled well in such depths of water where divers cannot work on the seabed around the well head. In other words where we are today in the Gulf ( 5000 ft of water) and where we are drilling right now in Newfoundland, canada (7000 feet of water).

    The well was drilled very deep to 18,500 ft into the earth. The natural bottom hole pressure is huge! 9000-10,000 psi! Drilling into oil or gas bearing rock formations without a pre-drilled pilot relief well cased already to substantial depth ( perhaps 7000 feet or so) is insane.That must be required in all future ultra deep ocean drilling

    The government insisted that BP drill not one but two relief wells. Quite right! There could be problems at that depth and they could lose the first relief well due to a hurricane, loss of circulation and stuck pipe in the hole etc etc. There is no sure thing when drilling a well especially to these depths and in 5000 ft of water.

    The relief well’s objective is to penetrate the well bore of the blowing well. This must be done sufficiently deep to provide enough “head” to control the bottom hole pressure , So probably the relief well will need to go to the extreme depth of 17000 to 18000 ft. That’s why it will not be until at least August before they finish drilling to such a depth.

    Once you penetrate the original well bore then you circulate ( pump down) heavy drilling mud while closing off flow up the annulus of the relief well and forcing the mud up the well to be killed. The total column of mud, if sufficient, from a depth of 17000 ft to surface once no longer being contaminated by oil and gas will gradually stop the upward flow of oil and gas. Immediately liquid cement of high density is pumped behind the mud to fill the well bore displacing the mud. In time, if static conditions are met ( no flow), the cement will set and then we are safe.

    I can suggest more in a post to follow on changes to the International Law of the Sea to control how drill ships in ultra deep waters must operate in the future to reduce such extensive pollution of the sea.

    Chips Reid, Drilling Engineer (retired)

  22. What to do about the Gulf oil spill
    July 2nd, 2010 @ 12:06 am

    [...] Read the rest of the post here. [...]

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