74% of BP spill eliminated

The good news - an impressive 74% of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill is estimated to have "already evaporated, dispersed, been captured or otherwise eliminated":

A government report finds that about 26 percent of the oil released from BP’s runaway well is still in the water or onshore in a form that could, in principle, cause new problems. But most is light sheen at the ocean surface or in a dispersed form below the surface, and federal scientists believe that it is breaking down rapidly in both places.

That bad news is that 5 billion barrels of oil was a lot to start with.

Strange disaster math

Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution:

Number of birds killed by the BP oil spill: at least 2,188 and counting.

Number of birds killed by wind farms: 10,000-40,000 annually.

Number of birds killed by cars: 80 million annually.

Number of birds killed by cats: Hundreds of millions to 1 billion annually.

Don't worry there is some good news.

Number of birds killed by fisheries: tens to hundreds of thousands annually (fortunately for the birds, some of these fisheries are now shut down).

BP blues

Despite a reportedly successful meeting with President Obama, BP can’t be too happy. It still has to find the money to fund its $20bn commitment, that by the way is in no way a cap on its liability (Obama called it “a good start” and “not a cap.”). Credit markets are currently pricing in a 36% chance of default within the next five years(!).

Short-term disaster, long-term hope

The ugly stories and pictures of the Deepwater Horizon spill's impact on the Gulf Coast ecosystem and economy are rolling in. But while the short-term prospects look grim, reason for longer-term hope can be found in an analysis of Mexico's devastating Ixtoc oil spill (an anagram for "toxic," I noticed) of 1979.

Soto, who followed the fish and shrimp population off Mexico closely, found to his surprise that for most species the numbers had returned to normal within two years.

"In 1979, the islands around Veracruz looked like black doughnuts, there was so much oil clustered around them,'' he remembers. "It was 12 to 15 inches thick in some places. But as I came back over the years, it got harder and hard to find. After five to seven years, it was hard to see the outline, and by 2002, an unsuspecting person would have thought it was a rock ledge ... it was covered with algae and shells and just looked like a normal part of the environment."

Even under water, where the sun can't help the oil break down, nature subverts it, says Mexican marine biodiversity analyst Jorge Brenner. "If you visit the coral reefs in the Gulf of Campeche, the tar has been covered with sea grass, algae and sediment,'' he says. "You actually have to dig a little bit to find it, although it's definitely there."

The spill might also be, ironically, good news for environmentalists, although perhaps not across the board, as finite public attention and energy for environmental and sustainability issues is diverted from less acute (but still enormous) challenges like climate change.

The other oil spill

The Deepwater Horizon spill has continued to worsen - the latest estimates of leak volume have doubled (again), BP's reputation is plummeting (as is its market value), the Obama administration appears largely powerless and increasingly blamed, and U.S. consumers and taxpayers appear to be the major losers in the long term. But as the Guardian pointed out, Nigeria's agony dwarfs the Gulf oil spill - and it has been going on for decades.

One report, compiled by WWF UK, the World Conservation Union and representatives from the Nigerian federal government and the Nigerian Conservation Foundation, calculated in 2006 that up to 1.5m tons of oil – 50 times the pollution unleashed in the Exxon Valdez tanker disaster in Alaska – has been spilled in the delta over the past half century. Last year Amnesty calculated that the equivalent of at least 9m barrels of oil was spilled and accused the oil companies of a human rights outrage.

That is a wide range of estimates - at 7 barrels per ton, Amnesty's estimate for last year is almost equivalent to the other estimate for the past century. But even if we take the former estimate, it would take the Deepwater Horizon well almost a year flowing at the new estimated 30,000 bbl/day rate to equal the amount of oil leaked into the Niger Delta over time - and look at the horrific environmental and economic consequences after only a month.

The problem with Nigeria, of course, is the security challenges atop the technical ones.

Last month Shell admitted to spilling 14,000 tonnes of oil in 2009. The majority, said the company, was lost through two incidents – one in which the company claims that thieves damaged a wellhead at its Odidi field and another where militants bombed the Trans Escravos pipeline.

I don't have any answers - it is such a complicated situation that it is hard to know the best way to intervene, even if the political will could be summoned. But maybe one tiny silver lining of the Gulf disaster is that Americans will now appreciate more vividly the consequences that Nigeria has faced for so long - I know I do.

Louisiana spill quickly worsening

Lots of things look very bad about the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill, starting with the fact that it can now be seen from space:

It is also five times larger than originally thought (and they have discovered a previously undetected third leak), only 16 miles off the Louisiana coast and expected to come ashore on Friday, the military has been called, state of emergency declared, and platform owner BP has already started finger-pointing at operator Transocean.

Meanwhile, Geoff Styles is, while still dignified, about as defensive as I have ever read him. For example, while it may be true that much more oil leaks naturally than from man-made spills, natural leakage simply does not cause the magnitude of environmental impact that I fear we will see shortly on the Louisiana coastline, so its relevance is negligible. His conclusions are more robust, but still optimistic - first, that

However we assess the cost of such spills when they happen, the benefits of offshore drilling are still compelling

... which is probably true, but could turn into political kryptonite depending on how badly this environmental disaster plays out. His second main conclusion is that

It is only right and fair for states like mine that are adjacent to the federal waters in which drilling would occur to share in the royalties this will generate. Politicians in inland states might see those royalties as belonging to the whole country, but their states won't bear any of the risk, no matter how small it might be before the fact.

This is very reasonable, but may not be very relevant for his home state of Virginia, among others, if this very visible accident swings the political tide against "Drill, baby, drill!" for the foreseeable future.