BP Dispersants: It seemed like a good idea at the time

Man oh man oh man. You ever notice how, when a guy does something really stupid, the long rambling excuse he offers up later so often starts with the phrase, “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”? Yeah, well, see, there was this big oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico awhile back. It was in all the papers. Sure, they capped that puppy, but not before a whole mess of gooey oil got loose. One of the first things the oil company did, in response to the massive leak, was to spray dispersants on the oil that gathered over the surface of the water. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Dispersants. Not gather-it-all-upants. Not make-it-go-awayants. Dispersants. So then what did the oil do? Class? That’s right, Johnny: It dispersed. It did not go away and it was not gathered up. It dispersed. The big gooey mess was, through the magic of toxic chemicals, reduced to teeny, tiny little messes that maybe no one would see. Or so I’m sure they hoped. All together now: It seemed like a good idea at the time.

I have to admit: I was really skeptical at the time when the marine science guys from USF came back from the northern Gulf of Mexico and said they had found oil plumes moving well under the surface of the ocean out there. I mean, come on, we all know oil floats. How can oil not float? It’s oil. Apparently, if you spray crude oil with the right dispersant, it breaks up into very small molecules and does not float. Out of sight, out of mind. Were they out of their minds? We’ll leave that topic for another blog. Right now, we’ve got an oil mess to clean up. If we can find it.

So now we have the Gulf of Mexico looking virtually free of surface oil, but: They are finding more and more oil moving below the ocean’s surface or sunk to the bottom in sizes small enough to enter the food chain. And dude, you are part of that food chain. This is your food chain we’re talking about here. The phrase “fish oil” is taking on a whole new ugly meaning. How soon before we see this oil in the fish we can’t eat?

Even though this all started months ago, we still have not seen the last of it. People are just now finding out how badly the dispersed oil has messed with the subsurface environment in the Gulf of Mexico. It may be years before we know the full impact and how long it might take for the oil to work its way out of the ecosystem. Until then, expect this to be a sort of lingering annoyance thing. It’s no longer news, as it is no longer spectacular. The ongoing contamination of life in the Gulf will not make the headlines. It will be the subject of quiet reports and research papers. No biggie. It’s just the death of the ocean. Who’s gonna notice?

Maybe the oil company wasn’t so stupid after all. They got rid of the visible signs of their screw-up. Subsurface microscopic oil contamination is tough to film for the evening news. The situation has become all technical and scientific, and who wants to read about that? Too many big words. Maybe, from BP’s point of view, it wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

Maybe, like so much else they BP does, it was simply evil.