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How Much Worse Can The BP Oil Spill Get? This Much.

June 2, 2010 at 4:20 PM | by | Comments (0)

As if you haven't heard enough about the British Petroleum oil spill, the news just keeps getting worse. Nevermind Florida Governor Crist's effort to extort BP, declaring that his state's hotels would experience an irreversible implosion if BP didn't give him lots of money, and our calling him out on it, the situation is about to get more dramatic.

The news this morning is that BP's blown well is going to be spilling tons of oil into the Gulf all the way through... Christmas. All the Gulf states—at a minimum—are going to see some sort of impact. No one knows how bad things will get, but the situation is undeniably going to get worse. Now that BP's top kill efforts have failed, the industry and the government are, excuse the pun, in uncharted waters. The current White House plan seems to involve asking James Cameron to figure out a solution, and suffice it to say we're not optimistic.

It really is impossible to know exactly how bad things are going to get. There are serious people talking about hurricane-driven "oil waves," where the slick would get thrown miles inland. That seems kind of far-fetched, both because it's a worst-case scenario and because even BP's incompetent tools can prevent that.

If nothing else, the chemicals BP pours into the ocean will keep the oil away from the water's surface (how much oil is floating underwater destroying sea life, of course, is a different discussion). Though the longer we go without a solution, the more states like Louisiana are going to see oil wash ashore. And it seems like we're going to be without a solution for a while still.

The current numbers on the disaster, expressed as total gallons of oil spilled? 20 million. Good Lord.

[Photo: US Coast Guard / Wiki Commons]

Related Stories:
· BP Oil Leak May Last Until Christmas in Worst Case Scenario [Bloomberg]
· Politics [Jaunted]
· Florida Travel [Jaunted]

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