Big Oil Leak Off The California Coast

Oil on southern California beaches was quite natural for millions of years. There were many natural oil seeps and the beaches always had oil on them. Indians used it for waterproofing and the Spanish used it to tar the roofs of the missions. Modern oil development and production has taken the pressure off of the shallow oil fields and mostly stopped the natural oil release. Even with the occasional spill there is less oil on the beach now than there was historically.

Not something well known to the public.

Huntington Beach ~1940
ahuntington-beach-historical-oil-deckers-lg (1).jpg
https://www.huntingtonbeachca.gov/about/history/
 
HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. - Some beaches along Orange County are closed after 126,000 gallons of oil spilled into the waters off Huntington Beach.
According to the city, the shoreline between the Huntington Beach Pier to the Santa Ana River Jetty is closed until further notice. State beaches in the city are also closed. Officials said they had identified a 5.8-mile oil plume running roughly from Huntington Beach Pier to Newport Beach. foxla.com
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More oil leaks into the oceans naturally than is spilled unnaturally. Not saying the spills are not sometimes a problem, but they need to be put into perspective. Even in Valdez there is more natural petroleum hydrocarbon in the sediments than hydrocarbon from the Exxon spill.
SeaBreeze said:
How many times is this going to happen?
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Its been happening naturally for many millions of years, and that process will continue.
 
I don’t think it’s funny, I think it’s tragic. A natural oil event is one thing, but the risk to the environment is becoming unacceptable. In addition to the suffering and dying wildlife and pollution of air and water, in the mercenary consequences, there are countless businesses that depend on clean beaches and waters whocwill lose their livelihood for some indefinite time.
 
This extremely minor oil spill is "a tempest in a teapot." In the grand scheme of things, it is no worse than one house fire in a city filled with houses.
 
Geezerette said:
Chef, many house fires can be prevented. Many adverse events can be prevented by using existing knowledge or gathering more. The low statistical probability doesn’t matter if it happens to be YOUR house that burns up.
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Perhaps so. However, this most recent oil leak is a minor affair and certainly not a "big oil leak" as the title of this thread says.
 
Geezerette said:
I think it’s tragic. A natural oil event is one thing, but the risk to the environment is becoming unacceptable.
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Oil is natural, not a manmade thing. And oil releases, particularly in this area are quite natural. This one of course is not a natural spill, but it is acting much as the natural releases in the area acted for millions of years. Trapping and killing wildlife has always been a part of that, think about all the animals that have died in the La Brea Tar Pits ( https://tarpits.org/ ).

Not saying oil spills are good things, only that they are natural and have been a part of the ecosystem a lot longer than we have. The problems from manmade oil spills are often that a whole lot more oil is released in a single event and in a single place than naturally. However I don't think this is the case with this spill, as Senior Chef pointed out this is a relatively small spill, and it happened in a place where natural oil releases occurred, and until we started pumping oil were quite common.

Since we have started pumping oil and taking the pressure off of the shallow reservoirs in the area natural releases have substantially declined in Southern California. People have forgotten that, but the biggest "impact" we have had on the ecosystem with respect to oil in this area is stopping those natural releases. And as you pointed out people have built businesses that depend on the unnaturally oil free beaches.
 
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Gee! It wasn't so long ago that there was a big oil spill along the Alaskan coast. I seem to remember it was the "good ship" Valdez". That was in Prince William Sound and the year was 1989. What a mess that was! The company that had to clean it up was Exxon.
 
Packerjohn said:
Gee! It wasn't so long ago that there was a big oil spill along the Alaskan coast. I seem to remember it was the "good ship" Valdez". That was in Prince William Sound and the year was 1989. What a mess that was!
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Yep, it was a mess, and a much bigger spill than this one. Best estimates I can find for the current spill put it at about 3,000 barrels, the Valdez was about 260,000 barrels, almost 100 times more oil. The spill Saddam Hussain created after the first Gulf War was about 4,000,000 barrels, though estimates vary.
Remy said:
The damage to wildlife and sea life makes me beyond sad.
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I don't like to see damage to wildlife either, just don't. However Mother Nature can be harsh, many natural events kill a lot of wildlife, hurricanes, earthquakes, lighting caused wildfire... the list goes on.

More devastating to wildlife however has been the huge unnatural habitat loss we humans have created. Wildlife once flourished on land that is now our homes, roads, farms etc. Comparatively oil spills are a small drop in a large bucket.
 
Estimates are that about 120,000 barrels of oil seep out naturally in California every year ( https://incidentnews.noaa.gov/incident/8934/22546/26338 ). An amount equal to the recent spill seeps out naturally every 9 days or so. Historically these natural seeps produced more oil, as I have said modern oil production has cut much of this off.

More oil is released to the oceans by these natural seeps than by manmade spills. This is also of concern to some people, see: https://soscalifornia.org/
 
I remember being out at sea in the Pacific Ocean and seeing tar balls floating on the seawater. I thought they were a natural globs of stuff that rose from the sea floor because we were so far from any oil rigs and land. I wonder if in the olden days when tar balls washed up on a beach the local natives would thing that it was a gift from the gods for they had many ways the tar could be used.
 
Some sources are speculating that the damage to the oil pipeline was caused by a ship anchor....from one of the dozens of cargo ships stacked up in the area, waiting to be unloaded......wouldn't surprise me.
 
Alligatorob said:
Yep, it was a mess, and a much bigger spill than this one. Best estimates I can find for the current spill put it at about 3,000 barrels, the Valdez was about 260,000 barrels, almost 100 times more oil. The spill Saddam Hussain created after the first Gulf War was about 4,000,000 barrels, though estimates vary.

I don't like to see damage to wildlife either, just don't. However Mother Nature can be harsh, many natural events kill a lot of wildlife, hurricanes, earthquakes, lighting caused wildfire... the list goes on.

More devastating to wildlife however has been the huge unnatural habitat loss we humans have created. Wildlife once flourished on land that is now our homes, roads, farms etc. Comparatively oil spills are a small drop in a large bucket.
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I know. This thread was about the oil spill. But you are right, we as humans have encroached on the wildlife's habitat, polluted their habitat. The animals could take the loss' from natural disasters but not from what humans have done.

There are natural fires of coarse. But one fire in northern California recently was caused by some idiot trying to boil water out in the forest. Moron. And don't get started on PG&E. They burn down entire towns.
 

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